How do you feel about Skill Challenges?

[wayne62682]

Am I the only person who finds that Skill Challenges really don't bring much to the table? I like the idea of them, but the execution I find lacking - it seems like the skills which can be used mean that everyone ends up aiding one player (the one who has the best bonus, naturally) for fear of racking up a failure if they try on their own. I thought this was what Skill Challenges attempted to get away from?

For example, we recently had a skill challenge to navigate through a swamp (P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens) so the primary skills were Nature, Endurance and Perception. Our ranger has the best bonuses in all three of those, with myself (a Dragonborn Fighter) having a slightly less Endurance; the rest of our skills in Nature and Perception were nigh useless, so most of the challenge was us Aiding the Ranger to give her bonuses to her checks. The prior skill challenge made use of a lot of soft skills but none of us really had that high a bonus so we ended up losing it.

I'm really not getting how Skill Challenges are meant to be worked into a game. It feels like a mini-game most of the time, but nobody wants to act on their own for fear of failing; instead we all aid the person with the best bonus to get it as high as can be. Somehow, that doesn't seem like the intent.

What are your experiences?

 

[thatdarnedbob]

In my game, a player can be aided by only one other, and we go around the table with everyone making a check of some sort. It hasn't come up yet, but if someone refused to try it would be an automatic failure. So far the players have enjoyed them, but then again I use them for extended dramatic scenes instead trivial things. The skill challenges I've run so far have been controlling and saving a ship in a hurricane, escaping the temple of a sleeping demi-god as it awakes, battling that demi-god in mental combat, and crossing a city that is overrun by a chuul army.

 

[Hjorimir]

I'm still coming to terms with the best way to use Skill Challenges myself (if you have a DDI subscription, I highly recommend Mearls' series on Skill Challenges...highly).

My experience has been that Skill Challenges are best when the players are not immediately aware that they are in one. For example, I wouldn't tell them here are the three best skills, roll guys. I would describe a mini scene within the challenge that seems appropriate to one or more of the skills and have the players naturally tell me which they use and how.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Skill Challenges have become essential for my game - i use them in those situations, where:
a) i want more than one skill check to resolve the action and
b) where continuous player input into the how/what/why of the check enriches the game.
Skill challenges are really just a rules vehicle to get your players to be creative with the stuff on their character sheet.
For that, they are indispensible.

 

[Ktulu]

I love them, but wish there were more expanded ways to use them. Often, they begin to feel a bit "same as it ever was", due to the skills and suggestions of use. As such, most of my time is actually spent working them into unique situations.

It's a lot of fun, but I do wish there were more templates (and they were on the DDI for ease of use.)

 

[JustKim]

I think they're overrated at best. There is not much to them and they're difficult to use, requiring extra prep work.

At worst, a skill challenge in combat takes one or more characters out of the flow of combat and reduces them to repeating skill checks every round. What rogue wants to sit in a corner and roll Thievery for 6 rounds while everyone else has all the fun? That is just bad design.

 

[Derren]

In my game, a player can be aided by only one other, and we go around the table with everyone making a check of some sort. It hasn't come up yet, but if someone refused to try it would be an automatic failure.

So to use the "navigate a swamp" example from above, the city born cleric who was never farther away from the city than a days travel would not be allowed to "just shut up and let the pros do it" and instead has to try to navigate a swamp and most likely endanger himself and the rest of the party?

My suggestion is not not use skil challenges (the X successes/ 3 Failure part) and instead just give the PCs a goal which they can only solve with multiple skill checks.

@OP and others
What version of Skill Challenges are you using?
The original "Less than 10% success chance" ones, the errataed "Impossible to fail" ones or the ones developed here on the board?

 

[Cadfan]

I just use skill challenges as a framework for determining how quickly to decide that a party's efforts have succeeded, or whether they've failed.

From the player's perspective, they probably can't tell the difference between a skill challenge and the 3e system, except for a slight emphasis on multiple skill checks that I already tried to do before.

You know, under 3e, you try some skills and roleplay some efforts, and eventually the DM determines whether you succeeded or failed.

Under 4e, you try some skills and roleplay some efforts, and eventually the DM uses the skill challenge framework to guide him in determining whether you succeeded or failed.

 

[subrosas]

A couple of thoughts

Oddly enough I just blogged a few days ago about how I've been using skill challenges in my campaign.

Summary: I've eliminated all skill checks that aren't part of a skill challenge.

As a result, I plan set skill challenges the way I might plan set encounters. The key has been to make sure that a variety of skills are used to keep as many players involved as possible. This avoids the problem described above (from P1) where only one character has all relevant skills and all other players just play a support role.

One way to get more players involved is to require more than one participant. If one character is belaying rope to a climber, rather than allow a simple assist, I might require both the climber and the belayer to make skill checks. If both succeed, it counts as two successes. If either fails, it counts as two failures.

If I can't rationally come up with a way to get the majority of the players involved in a skill challenge, then I don't make it a skill challenge, nor do I resolve it with skill checks. At that point I usually make it a gimme for the players. As a result the old dungeon standby of searching for the presence of traps has pretty much vanished from my game. Instead when a trap is encountered (or a secret door is found) it is the process of figuring out how to disable the trap or open the secret door that is the skill challenge.

During play I also use improv skill challenges. In this case, the players want to do something that lends itself to being arbitrated as a skill challenge, but I don't have anything prepared ahead of time. What I've taken to doing is creating generic skill challenges the way I used to design random encounters ahead of time. Its a bit more work, but really not as much as you might think.

So far the results have been mixed. On the good side: the skill challenges have become more fun when they do occur, the game pace has quickened since we have eliminated extraneous skill checks - no continuous perception checks for secret doors or traps, no navigation checks in the wilderness, etc. On the bad side our game has lost a little more of that old-school feel. For us I think the positive has outweighed the negative, but YMMV.

 

[Felon]

So to use the "navigate a swamp" example from above, the city born cleric who was never farther away from the city than a days travel would not be allowed to "just shut up and let the pros do it" and instead has to try to navigate a swamp and most likely endanger himself and the rest of the party?

Are the pros toting him around in a portable hole? Makes perfect sense to me that having a city-boy along for the ride would make it tougher for the group to stay out of trouble, and that's the way I run challenges. I'm pretty disappointed that the errata....err, I mean "revisions"...um, no that's not it...oh "updates", that's right...now allow characters to sit out skill chaallenges.