Do you use skill challenges?

Morrus said:

Reach x successes before the same number of failures to succeed in the challenge. Usually 3. Always the same number for each (I know 4E used to say things like "6 successes before 4 failures" but for me it's just "first to 3").

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I find the problem here is that you discourage players from taking long shots, or contributing to anything outside their bailiwick, and if nobody is willing to attempt anything, then the hazard... does nothing?

Personally I do this sort of thing much closer to a combat, wherein the PCs advance their cause by successful actions (rolls or otherwise), and the hazard advances it's own cause in some way (flat successes per round, rolling checks, forcing saves, whatever).

Now, is it possible for a PC to advance the hazard's cause? Sure - they could totally misread the situation and do something counterproductive. But they won't advance it just by failing, and meanwhile the hazard is racking up successes on it's own time, so they're encouraged to at least try.

I do use skill challenges in 5e. However, I follow two rules:

1- even a well made skill challenge is just a framework, not the be-all end-all. The DM must be ready to improvise and go with the flow, even if it means throwing half of the skill challenge out the window;
2- skill challenges are a DM's tool, and player should not be aware they are playing one. A well executed skill challenge is seamlessly integrated in normal roleplay.

Do you use skill challenges?

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No.

What I do, is just call for an ability/skill check at a time. Then depending on the result I narrate the consequence, and the player decides what to do next, which might eventually call for another ability/skill check.

It's quite normal for a success in a skill check to lead to new possible actions, as well as a failure in the first check to prompt the player to either try something different or having to take new actions to clean the mess of the previous failure, so it's not really that one skill check is always an isolated thing.

But setting a series of required skill checks beforehand? Nope. I can imagine that the whole procedure makes sense if associated to the narrative, such as the DM planning for example a whole "tree of possible outcomes" depending on each check's result, every "node" in the tree corresponding to a new narrative situation.

Example: a trap with an alarm, a pit door and poisoned spikes; player needs 3 checks to disable all the trap components, some checks may be correlated (e.g. succeeding at jamming the pit door means no need to disable the spikes), degrees of failure may be involved (i.e. differentiate between simply failing at disabling the alarm and actually triggering it).

The problem is that a skill challenge that isn't tied to narrative is just a series of checks, ultimately not different from a single check (probabilities may vary, but the DM is always in control of the probabilities by adjusting DCs). Possibly the only difference is in the ability for the player to withdraw from the attempt (e.g. before failing the last check), but this possibility can always be included also in a single check if wanted.

Bottom line is, I'd rather not plan too much ahead considering that the narrative is subject to the player's ideas, better just go with the natural flow!

I never heard of them before 4e. We dont use them in my current 5e but group checks get used a lot

We used them in a lot in my previous 4e campaign. Personally I found them great in abstract situations, ie navigating a valley when we were low level or navigating abyss at high level, or trying to operate a magical contraption. Rituals and spells were sometimes used creatively in SC. However, SC in concrete role playing situations was always more mixed: especially about how the resolve the great diplomacy roll couched in poor in game rhetoric vs a great rp idea which uses in game knowledge but gets a poor diplomacy roll.

JacktheRabbit said:

What do you do when a player makes a sucessfull skill check but then describes a course of action that will not help in the least for the overall challenge?

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The player needs the DM’s OK to make a check. If it doesn’t make sense, then the DM doesn’t allow it.

They don’t just go ahead and make checks. They describe what they’re doing, then the DM asks for whatever check is appropriate.

Saeviomagy said:

I find the problem here is that you discourage players from taking long shots, or contributing to anything outside their bailiwick, and if nobody is willing to attempt anything, then the hazard... does nothing?

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I’ve never had that happen. The opposite is more common, where players suggest things which the DM has to turn down.

Never used them. The 4e had them but for me they looked more like mini games that hampered the pace of narration and roleplay, perhaps it was good for that edition and how it did things but we didn't like it and we only played one afternoon before selling the game.
For this edition we play as always, depending on what the players do or say they will roll dice or not, perhaps with advantage/disadvantage and DCs are usually 15 or 20.

Personally I think SC's are an impressive tool which can assist immensely in the social and exploration pillars. I feel they have largely been misunderstood and misused at tables mostly because much of the guidance for the mechanic was not properly thought out and explained well enough for its users. So most DM's fumbled with it (I know I did), growing increasingly frustrated before dropping it all together.

It is easy enough to incorporate the SC mechanic into 5e. I have recently used it to assist in the narration for the PCs journey to Bryn Shander using the Ten Trail in Icewind Dale. Failures would not outright cost the PCs the journey but would see them lose Hit Dice (using a grittier rest system), cost them an additional day's journey (time is important in my campaign), cost the PCs resources such as a spell slot or equipment (broken/lost grapnel, torn rope) or incur one level of exhaustion...etc

Failures resulted in narrations such as - finding themselves in a middle of a hail storm and not finding the appropriate shelter, losing the trail or the trail blocked by an avalanche requiring them to find another path, reading the map incorrectly, losing a night of rest while defending the camp from a pack of crag beasts, losing time un-thawing food and water, spraining an ankle while climbing...etc

If it feels like a die-rolling exercise, you're doing it wrong. The checks should follow player action declarations as a result of the narrative with the results shaping/establishing the ongoing fiction.

JacktheRabbit said:

What do you do when a player makes a sucessfull skill check but then describes a course of action that will not help in the least for the overall challenge?

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Smack them for rolling out of turn?

The way you streamline the Arcane Lock works great - minimizes the intrusion of rolling the same thing over and over. Where you're just highlighting one character doing the same thing over and over, I'm with you to simplify mechanically.

The other issue about progress on an adventure coming to a stop on a failed check is something DMs need to dealwith in many cases. Did the players miss a clue? (Repeat it three times.) Did the fail to find the secret door that leads to the next level of the dungeon (fail forward - they took so long searching that a patrol came out of it). We always need to aware of those, and design so a bad die roll doesn't stop progress.

Where a (skill) challenge might be useful is where you want to spotlight multiple members of the party at the same time, or give them tough choices on where to apply themselves.

To give an example, say it was only three locks but they were in opposite wall and needed to be opened simultaneously. Suddenly it's multiple characters needing to get involved an not just your designated lock jockey. Maybe one's an arcane puzzle while two are actual locks, again bringing different characters into it.

Heck, work it into your lore - I don't know the source material but an arcane lock sounds like maybe a wizard's tower. It was originally a husband and wife, she's the wizard, and she had a bodyguard golem (which they will meet later with her lich form). So the three locks are an arcane puzzle, and it's trapped with damaging acid spray (which she could avoid with her magical necklace - treasure for later), one if a brute strength with resetting spikes (which the golem could ignore) and the last a devilish mechanical key lock that released these construct hounds (which woudn't attack any of them).

Even from there you can put in interesting bits - their later-born son wanted to be able to get in, and his mother had made him his own golem bodyguard, so in another room he put in place an override that would allow the key to be turned early - the construct hounds would still be released since it wasn't simultaneous, but it still counted and he could do the arcane lock while the golem did the strength part. But it's not part of the original system, so three rounds after the door opens it closes and locks again. (He had another way to get out.)