Skill Challenges that KILL

[the Jester]

Yes they can, and sometimes they should.

IMHO if you get the same xp as for a potentially-lethal combat as for a skill challenge, there should be comparable risk. Generally "everyone loses a healing surge" is not a comparable risk to a combat.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Contrariwise to what the DMGs and many posters have said over the years I have no problem at all with lethal skill challenges.

That being said, there are many non-lethal conflict situations that can come up in a game, and SCs were specifically designed to allow you to deal with those. So there will inherently be a lot more non-lethal than lethal SCs in general. Of course games vary and in some styles of play lethal SCs could be fairly common.

Mathematically I'm not too worried about the SC mechanics. Random chance isn't going to be a big problem, as the variance in checks over say 15 tosses of the dice is pretty small. Not as small as it is over the maybe 100 tosses of a combat, but statistically they are pretty close. You just need to make sure that the checks are roughly in the right success range. I think Stalker0 did some basic calculations, but for a complexity 5 challenge failure starts to become a serious possibility when an appreciable number of checks require more than around a 3 to pass. This may sound like easy checks, and it is, but you also have to figure that lethal consequences should actually happen pretty rarely. Now, considering that PCs will probably have chances to erase failures, gain auto-successes, etc at times you can maybe tweak that a bit higher.

Which brings things to the question of control. Combat does provide a lot of chances to expend extra resources to 'step up' and deal with a fight that isn't going well. You can drop an AP or a daily, etc. You can also usually retreat or even surrender. So you will need to make sure that your SC has some similar possibilities. Usually this would mean things like certain rituals or powers providing automatic successes, maybe successes given for sacrificing an HS, etc. It should be fairly obvious how to incorporate these possibilities into many classes of SCs.

Another option might be to use a bunch of smaller SCs to represent a series of choices and possibly bad luck/planning/choices leading into an 'incident pit' kind of situation. This is kind of the classic 'disaster scenario'. A few small mistakes that usually wouldn't matter, a bit of bad luck, a bad decision, and then suddenly you're in over your head. Of course this gets back to SCs that probably aren't 'lethal' on their own, but as a whole you can have an adventure that doesn't need much/any combat and still has lethal potential on the whole. I think this is kind of what the DS survival stuff is aiming at, but I haven't read DS so I'm not sure exactly how they handled it.

I could also see lethal social challenge situations too. It sort of seems like there are more interesting consequences in that sort of situation though. I mean if you're going to have the PCs framed for murder and executed I suspect you'll probably try to run an escape, rescue, or whatever somewhere in there. So again it comes back to there's just a lot of stuff that isn't directly lethal that SCs usually get used for, not that they are inherently bad for lethal situations.

 

[SnowleopardVK]

I've seen a skill check that could have been fatal in a game I was playing recently (it was PF, not 4e, but the concept is similar enough). Three members of the party (the three other than me) had to cross over a rickety wooden bridge; it was essentially just a board over a chasm.

Now those three members of the group all have pretty good acrobatics, but natural 1s still can and do happen, and of course the cleric rolled one. Fortunately before crossing, the group had decided to all hold onto a rope. When she fell we got a second chance in the form of the other two rolling to hang onto the rope and pull her back up, and a third chance (that we didn't actually have to take because the other two holding the rope successfully pulled her back up) in that the drop had the potential to kill her but it wasn't guaranteed.

So yes she could have died, but the GM was kinder because the group made a good decision to hold onto a rope in case anybody fell. If they had made a bad decision (such as continuing to hold the rope when it was the 500+ lbs rogue's turn to cross then they would've probably been punished for it. If he had fallen they almost certainly would've been pulled down with him. (Of course he had a better acrobatics and was less likely to fall, but as I've said natural 1s are always possible.)

 

[MrBeens]

Lethal skill challenges are certainly possible as long as they are handled with the same sort of approach combat encounters are designed.

If the players realise they are in a lethal situation (in combat it is obvious, and their health/surges are usually lost over a period of time), then there shouldn't be a problem.
As long as the situation is described as dangerous and there are signs that bad things could happen (surges are lost during the challenge for instance).

Examples of places where lethal skill challenges would be appropriate:
Navigating a gauntlet of traps - much more exciting and engaging than a combat encounter against a bunch of normal traps
Climbing a difficult and long cliff.
Abstracting a fight through a mass of enemies to get to a specific location on a battle field.
Negotiating a series of underwater tunnels when you have no water breathing magic - my DM ran us through one of these recently and it was very tense and exciting. Most of the party got to the end having half drowned (lost some surges) and could have died if we had failed more rolls.

As well as outright dying imagine a skill challenge where there are multiple outcomes - succeed really well, fight averted; barely succeed, easy fight; just fail, normal fight; fail badly hard fight.
The hard fight might well result in 1 or 2 player deaths.

Other ways of potentially having "delayed death" from a failed skill challenge:
A player is cursed/disabled in some way - loss of surges until a counter is found; loss of a use of a daily power; cannot use encounter powers
Failing in the skill challenge results in extra encounters placed in the player's path in a time critical scenario

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

The problem is that PCs aren't always balanced, skill-wise. Compare the Rogue to, say, literally any other class.

This.

I'm playing a Fighter in a skill heavy campaign. I've multiclassed and used a background to get more skills, and I've taken feats that give skill bonuses, and I still suck at almost everything. I can manage Athletics, Endurance, and Perception. If you need something else from me, I better roll amazingly well.

If our skill challenges were lethal, I would have the life expectancy of a fruit fly. But the group bard would be a powerhouse.

Until we actually balance the classes for non-combat situations as well as they are now balanced for combat, it's a badly stacked deck.

 

[Riastlin]

Yes, but tread very carefully, and be sure to throw out the "3 strikes" rule.

This.

I certainly think you can do it (and the water filling room is a great example), but I think it should be more of a "You need X successes within Y rounds" rather than "You need 12 successes before 3 failures". Now sometimes the two might go more or less hand in hand, but I would probably build it such that they have enough time for more than three successes or at the very least make sure they understand the stakes and that they can use action points, etc.

I also think that while I often tend to be of the mindset of let the SC flow naturally as opposed to laying out the facts of the SC explicitly, you may want to make sure the party clearly understands that they are in a SC when the possible consequence is death.

All in all though, I think most DMs would agree that in the right situations, even a single skill check could potentially result in death (falling off the bridge for example) though often we would provide at least one additional chance for the PC in question to be saved. So, if a single skill check can potentially result in death I don't see why a skill challenge can't either -- particularly since (as mentioned above) a skill challenge carries with it the same potential rewards (XP-wise) as a combat.

 

[OnlineDM]

Can your PCs die to anything other than a monster attack? If so, then it should be possible to have something LIKE a skill challenge that can be deadly.

However, I'd just call it role playing, not necessarily using the structured skill challenge mechanics.

Imagine: The PCs have been taken prisoner, and most of them are shackled to the wall of the dungeon. The fighter, Mr. Bond, has been strapped to a table with a razor pendulum swinging ever closer. The rogue escapes his shackles and climbs onto the table to try to set the fighter free. If he can't get him out in time, Mr. Bond is cut in half and dies (and the rogue could get himself killed, too, if he's not careful).

I wouldn't necessarily use the exact skill challenge mechanics there, but it's a non-combat situation that could be lethal.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Could a skill challenge exist where the cost of failure is character death?

I would say yes, but I would make sure that the player or players were 100% clear that PC death was a possibility, AND that the lethal skill challenge was not the only way to advance the storyline.

 

[jbear]

The problem is that PCs aren't always balanced, skill-wise. Compare the Rogue to, say, literally any other class.

I'm pretty sure I've made Hybrids that only ended up with a piddly 3 trained skills. They'd be dead meat in such a skill challenge.

Also, skill challenges are generally less complex than combat challenges, which means players have less control over what happens to them. In combat, players have the option of fleeing if things go wrong, attempting diplomacy or intimidation midway through combat, using resources like Dailies, APs, potions and other consumables, or magic item powers to give them an edge...

In skill challenges, they roll a d20 and pray.

Tread carefully. The DMG2 advises specifically against this sort of thing for a reason.

Ugh. That makes skill challenges sound horrible and deathly boring. If the PCs don't die, the players surely will ... of boredom!

The skill challenges I run can often be as complex as combat. My players can use AP, powers and magic items to give them an edge. Player actions are every bit as important as how many skills your PC has trained. It's called role play. If you have a good idea then perhaps your PC will have lowered the DC to easy. If your idea is rubbish, well ... Hard DC. If your idea is just fantastic and you play it much to everyone's delight and enjoyment, why even bother with rolling a dice? These things aren't explicit, but making a challenge more than a simple roll a d20 and pray is implicit.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This.

I'm playing a Fighter in a skill heavy campaign. I've multiclassed and used a background to get more skills, and I've taken feats that give skill bonuses, and I still suck at almost everything. I can manage Athletics, Endurance, and Perception. If you need something else from me, I better roll amazingly well.

If our skill challenges were lethal, I would have the life expectancy of a fruit fly. But the group bard would be a powerhouse.

Until we actually balance the classes for non-combat situations as well as they are now balanced for combat, it's a badly stacked deck.

Eh, I'm not sure it is all THAT bad. Consider this, Athletics, Endurance, and Perception are generally the very skills that kick in when you have a physically life-threatening situation. Beyond that you're likely to have a decent check for a few other skills, like Heal, maybe Insight, perhaps Acrobatics depending on your fighter build. You might not WANT to rely on those for hard checks, but really if the DM is putting you in a situation where you MUST make a hard check on an off skill to stay alive, then that's a pretty darn lethal situation! Much more lethal than any normal combat would be. At the very least it shouldn't come up without a number of other failures coming up first, and the DM should certainly be looking for you to suggest a plan that provides some advantage (IE he might well allow you to say something like "OK, I make the ultimate effort to lift the rock, even if it rips half the muscles off my body") and let you succeed or erase a failure or something for the cost of a surge. You may also consider putting some kind of resource into that side of the character, a feat, a skill power, or some kind of minor item that can grant a reroll or a bonus on at least one of your skills. Maybe not even one you have a really big bonus on. After all a reroll when you need a 10+ is worth around +4, and if you need a 15+ it is worth more like +6.

And yeah, there can be that 'falling off a cliff' skill check kind of thing where failing a check can be instantly lethal. The very situation came up once a while back in my game. A character had to make a leap onto a ledge because of various circumstances and failed the check with a 1. In that case I gave the character a 'make a save to fall down' and had her hanging by her fingernails off the edge, which was a LOT more fun than "you fall 500 feet to your death." I might not always be that nice either, but in this situation the player didn't screw up and had no other choice and it would have been a bad spot to have lost a character as no replacement was logically going to show up for a while. Nor would the body have been recoverable.

So I guess the moral of that story is there's no one-size-fits-all answer to those things. It also depends on the tone of the game. If it is a nasty dark gritty high death rate game, well then by all means play grim reaper. In my case it was more fun to have the PCs all rushing to try to keep the enemy from finishing off the character and it made a really nice scene. Plus it is a bit more of a "PCs are big heroes that do super stuff" kind of a theme to the game.