Doh! Killed my party with a skill challenge

R

Retreater

Legend

• Oct 12, 2018

• #1

I've been following the advice of Matt Colville from YouTube, and introduced a Skill Challenge to model the party's escape from an exploding dungeon. Using some of the guidelines from his video (and the 4e rules), I came up with the following skill challenge for five 6th level characters....

10 successes before 3 failures. DC 15 checks. Accepted skills included: Perception, Athletics, Acrobatics, Survival, Nature, (or others if you could make a convincing argument). Failure was 9 points of damage unless someone could negate the failed check with a successful check.

So the group didn't come close to the 10 successes. After setting up the conditions of the skill challenge, it became impossible to "walk it back" even as things were clearly going bad. However, after letting the dice fall where they may, I tried to be accommodating for letting the players bring in new characters or to bring back their previous characters with as little setbacks as possible.

I guess my question is ... do any of you think skill challenges are worth having? Do you have any rules of thumb when designing them?

 

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Y

Yunru

Banned

Banned

• Oct 12, 2018

• #2

Successes before failures is the most arbitrary and least good way of running any skill challenge ever.

What is stopping the characters from doing the thing they are trying to do? How are they trying to overcome it? How does their success/failure effect things, loop to start.

 

G

Grognerd

Explorer

• Oct 12, 2018

• #3

I LOVE Skill Challenges. I think they are great, and yes, I also think that having them entail risk of damage/death is a good thing. So... absolutely worth having.

The only thing that I'd suggest that is sort of a rule of thumb is to remember that since Skill Challenges are narrative, be creative in your consequences. A failed Navigation roll could mean you are lost, sure. But that's boring. It could also mean that you aren't necessarily lost, but you took a slower route so that the storm caught up with you. It could mean that you at some point navigated through a more treacherous area of the trip that sets you up for an ambush. It could mean that you picked the best route geographically, but thereby forgot to circumnavigate around the evil giant's castle. Any of these three is more interesting than simply, "you got lost."

 

B

BluejayJunior

Explorer

• Oct 12, 2018

• #4

I think skill challenges can be pretty interesting. I'd love to run through more of them as a PC or DM.
10 successes at DC 15 is pretty high though. That is a tough challenge. If you're doing something you're proficient in (+3) and have a high ability score (+4, +5), you still need a 7-8 to hit DC 15, which is a still a ~35% failure rate. Rolling average, you would have 3-4 failures on 10 checks. And that is on optimal skills. You would need someway to overcome that deficit.

 

R

Retreater

Legend

• Oct 12, 2018

• #5

If you don't use successes vs failures, then what do you do?

Maybe, but that is the default way of running them. If that's not how you run them, how do you do it?
Otherwise, it's sort of like saying, trying to meet or exceed an Armor Class is a terrible mechanic to find out if you hit a creature in combat.

 

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Guest 6801328

Guest

• Oct 12, 2018

• #6

Was it really simply, "Ok, pick among these skills, and roll X successes before Y failures"? If it's as..."colorless"...as that I wouldn't enjoy it very much.

I would want some actual decisions, with trade-offs. "Ok, you have a choice between trying to run through a collapsing cave (anybody who fails a Dex save takes damage, but no time lost), or navigate through some twisting mine tunnels that look more stable, but you don't know where they go (pick one person to make Investigation checks, but on a failure you lose time)."

String together a whole bunch of those. You could even draw out an abstract map or schematic, connecting the various "nodes". E.g., if they choose the mine tunnels above, they end up in Node 8, choosing between fighting past a monster or taking a tunnel doing downhill, or whatever.

It requires more planning but feels more like real decision making and can increase tension.

 

iserith

Magic Wordsmith

• Oct 12, 2018

• #7

I love D&D 4e skill challenges and it's easily my favorite part of that edition. I just don't think they are a great fit for D&D 5e.

 

Y

Yunru

Banned

Banned

• Oct 12, 2018

• #8

Retreater said:

If you don't use successes vs failures, then what do you do?

Maybe, but that is the default way of running them. If that's not how you run them, how do you do it?
Otherwise, it's sort of like saying, trying to meet or exceed an Armor Class is a terrible mechanic to find out if you hit a creature in combat.

Click to expand...

Pretty sure there is no default way to run a skill challenge in 5e. As for what I do, I already said:
"What is stopping the characters from doing the thing they are trying to do? How are they trying to overcome it? How does their success/failure effect things, loop to start."

Just like hitting a creature doesn't solve combat, a single success won't solve "I need to journey from a to b."

 

jasper

Rotten DM

• Oct 12, 2018

• #9

GOOD GOOD. WELCOME TO THE KILLER DM CLUB. WE HAVE COOKIES. Okay we are going to borrow your debit card and buy the cookies. But hey we enjoy being evil.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxJrjV4PNXA&start_radio=1&list=RDQxJrjV4PNXA#t=30

 

iserith

Magic Wordsmith

• Oct 12, 2018

• #10

BluejayJunior said:

I think skill challenges can be pretty interesting. I'd love to run through more of them as a PC or DM.
10 successes at DC 15 is pretty high though. That is a tough challenge. If you're doing something you're proficient in (+3) and have a high ability score (+4, +5), you still need a 7-8 to hit DC 15, which is a still a ~35% failure rate. Rolling average, you would have 3-4 failures on 10 checks. And that is on optimal skills. You would need someway to overcome that deficit.

Click to expand...

In D&D 4e, you'd have Advantages built into a skill challenge of Complexity 3 or higher (8+ successes before 3 failures). Among other benefits, Advantages can negate accrued failures or grant more than one success per successful check. As well, D&D 4e skill challenges will never have had just one fixed DC in a Complexity 4 challenge - it would be 7 moderate DC checks and 3 hard DC checks. Further, a character engaged in a skill challenge could always opt to Aid Another instead of try to make a Primary Skill Check or attempt a lower DC Secondary Skill Check which typically granted bonuses to subsequent checks for other characters.

This doesn't necessarily translate that well to D&D 5e which is partly why I don't use skill challenges in D&D 5e, despite loving them in D&D 4e. As well, there is an assumption in D&D 4e that players will "use skills" by asking to make checks whereas that is not supported by D&D 5e. If anything, the smart play is to avoid making ability checks as much as possible.