D&D 4E Running a 4e playtest and have a quick skill challenge question

Alright, so I've gotten bits and pieces of the skill challenge system, but I just wanted to summarize and make sure I understand how it works. I got a playtest on the way, so I want to do it right.

1) Declare a skill challenge. Determine the party needs X number of successes before Y failures.

2) Players in turn can announce a skill check they want to use. DM confirms or denies.

3) The player then says what difficulty he will roll the check (easy, medium, or hard)

4) Easy check: Success = 1 success, Failure = 2 failures. Medium: Success = 1 success, failure = 1 failure. Hard: Success = 2 successes, Failure = 1 failure.

5) For 1st level, easy = DC 10, medium = DC 15, hard = DC 20.

Is that right?

In the example that had been given thought it was 12-15-18 for E-M-H. That might be for just level 1 characters, and it "feels" better than 10-15-20.

Everything else looks/feels right...

Seems like one of the big things is to pretty much allow the players to come up with a way to use ANY of their skills in order to overcome a skill challenge. I'd also suggest not letting them use more than one skill per check per challenge. That way you don't have the one player always rolling his one or two highest rolls all the time. And remember it is successes/failures of the entire party not any single character. Good "numbers" for success failure ratios are 1.5*party members for success and 1*party members for failures.

I agree with all of this, and I'm actually just about to run a game with this challenge system as well, in a couple hours

I'm keeping the 5-point step difference though, 5 points (25% chance) seems to me to be a good difference to wager an extra success or failure on.

I've heard some people say that their DDXP DM did *not* let them choose their difficulty, but rather set it to his own judgemente from their descriptions, others say that it was their own choice. I'm keeping it the player's choice because I think it's a lot more compelling this way, letting the player himself choose the amount of risk vs reward.

As for Success/Failure, I'm going with 3/2 for small quick challenges, then 6/4, 9/6 and 12/8 for large and larger (and more important) challenges. The players will not know the size of the challenge but will now they have to get more successes than failures.

I'm also thinking about setting a general Challenge DC for all checks (ie, 'this challenge is DC 18') then easy and hard checks would simply be a 5 step up or down from that number (ie, easy would be DC 13, Medium DC 18, and Hard DC 23) to keep the whole thing consistent and snappy.

As for what checks are allowed, when the player himself can describe a concrete and plausible action using a skill, in a way that advances the challenge, as agreed on by everybody at the table (or adjudicated by me if arguments pop up), then he can decide on a level of difficulty and roll. If he can't describe the action and get everyone to agree that it makes sense, then he can't roll. Simple as that. Repeat-skills are usually not allowed except when it makes sense.

What else.. oh before the challenge starts I make it clear what the challenge is (whether it's something that was acted on by the players themselves or something I decided to srping upon them) and what the stakes of success and failure are. After the challenge is over, I describe two or three possible courses of action that they take depending on the results they got, which will lead on to other challenges, combats, and scenes.

That's what I'm planning and I gotta say, the system itself has made me more psyched to run a game that I've been in quite a while.

Wasn't it hard = 1 success and a bonus on another roll?

As I said on another post, I ran a chase scene to my 3.5 8th level players. I set the DC's at: 18 easy, 22 medium and 28 high.
I know these doesn't scale mathematically, but it worked for their level of power (a lot of them are very skill dependent). The scene went great (they were chasing a wounded dragon that couldn't fly so It decided the run through the city streets).
I'll also mention I have let them use not just skills but spells and attack rolls (the claric used a Spiritual Weapon spell and threw it at the dragon while a rope was attached to it. Afterwards he used a Ride skill check to make the dragon crash against a stone wall. The dragon lost a couple of HP's and capt on running THROUGH the wall.

It was a blast, although my players (being 12-13 years of age) had a hard time coming up with things the use as checks so I did a lot of suggesting. MAybe they'll improve nex time.

Good luck!

-HaBaal

Well, I'm just back from the game I mentioned above. It went AWESOME What a difference a bit of structure makes. We had characters debating arcana with old scholars, remembering the history of local legends, advising each other how best to sneak around a guard, climbing a tree in order to impress its dryad, cooperating as a team to dismantle a complex hangman trap, etc, etc, etc... all kinds of stuff that would never have ocurred to us to think about in free-form, make-a-check type of play. The whole thing really stimulates creativity and just knowing there's a definite end-point for each challenge keeps it from dragging out into staleness or into 'what now' territoy.

Two thumbs up, way up.