clearstream
(He, Him)
IMO, I'd like to see the following changes, which use a similar idea but link it to use of daily resources to "buy" the benefit...
3) add rules to allow expenditure of limited resources to cancel a close (within 5 and not a 'natural 1') failure. AP, Healing Surges (representing frustration and lost self-confidence as success eludes you), Daily Powers (I would limit those to Powers from a Class for whom the Skill in question is a Class Skill, though I would allow it even if this character is not personally Trained in it), and even Daily Magic Item Uses if there's some good story why that power could help. Possibly limit each of these options to once per Challenge (perhaps more Healing Surges).
This would seem to make Skill Challenges more like Combat Encounters, in that they usually end in success but sometimes at a cost in limited resources.
I quite like this. To me the issue is the mechanics, not the numbers. They're extremely crude.
The templates break down into about 8 distinct mechanisms.
Counts toward successes or fails needed
Required must be used Nx/round of the challenge
One-shot can be used once
Costs either for use or for failure, costs a resource
Modifier roll against this skill instead of the main skill to aid another
Hidden that this skill counts is revealed when you use another skill
Auto-fails
Effect triggers an effect off the first N successes or failures
The core mechanism is then a linear rocker. It's not even as detailed as Tennis, which includes the interest-adding Deuce mechanism.
Any numbers plugged into this structure will not mitigate its intrinsic poverty. The minimum intervention necessary is to detail the rocker, possibly adding one dimension or featuring it interestingly, and to detail the risks-pay-offs.
Even simple systems, well engineered, can be engaging; as many Parlour games attest. The pages spent on Skill Challenges were wasted on pointless exemplars that could have been summarised in one page of crunch.
Anyway, enough scathing criticism; suffice to say it's deplorable and the designer ought to be ashamed. To fix it, we need to know some things.
The first I can think of is whether it will work to let players up the stakes by committing a power to the challenge, that power not to be usable for the next encounter or next day if it is burnt by the challenge?
What do you think?
-vk