Skill Challenge Play Examples?

[Saeviomagy]

My group have found skill challenges to be a bit... underwhelming.

There's no real decision to be made by players: pick your highest skill, think up an excuse to use it and roll. The only real difference between them and 3e's skill encounters is that those who've ended up with low skills are forced to take part and earn a failure for their team.

I think things would be a lot better if there was a countdown mechanic instead of the existing failure mechanism: With such a large penalty for failing a skill check, players are discouraged from doing anything interesting, and instead try to avoid taking part, or go with safety options like aid another if they think their modifier is relatively low.

 

[LostSoul]

There's no real decision to be made by players: pick your highest skill, think up an excuse to use it and roll.

That's only true if there's no difference between succeeding at a Diplomacy check or succeeding at an Intimidate check.

With such a large penalty for failing a skill check, players are discouraged from doing anything interesting, and instead try to avoid taking part, or go with safety options like aid another if they think their modifier is relatively low.

That is a problem, so put it back on the PC: if they don't do anything, bad things will happen to them.

 

[Iron Sky]

In my session Saturday night, I ran an Obsidian Skill Challenge for the 4 level 5 players that were there at the session. Obsidian has a set DC (20 for level 4), three rounds in which each player makes a roll, and requires x amount of successes for a success, y-z for a partial success, otherwise it's a failure. 7, 5-6, 4- in this case.

When I run it as follows:

Each player must describe what they are attempting to do before they make a roll.

After the description, they can suggest a skill or I give them a choice or two that seems appropriate.

They roll the check and at the end of the round, I narrate to the group the net results of their actions for the round.

My general rule is to find a way to say yes to whatever they want to do, figuring out what skill makes the most sense and imposing penalties on far-fetched or largely irrelevant rolls.

Here is a partial transcript from our session recording of how the skill challenge went:

Setup: The party was on the walking hut they'd just been gifted from a wandering Kenku Village, heading west through the Western Elder Wyld when the hours-long nuclear explosion of a Godstorm ignited a huge fire 100 miles to the south of them. As the forest in the far distance became a massive wall of fire, they turned the hut north to try to flee the flames, but as they ran the fire started catching up to them.

After two days of trying to outrun the fire, the Swordmage's player figured out they could make a backfire ahead of them, firebreaks, and the like to get safe from the fire. His character rolled a Nature check, succeeded, and so the player could use the idea. He announced his plan to the party and they stopped the hut at which point this <edited for coherence and relevance> transcript begins.

---

DM(me): "So the next morning after you've been pretty much fleeing from this slowly growing wall of fire, discussing the plan that the Hadarai spent the night figuring out, we're going to initiate a Skill Challenge with you guys figuring out a way to outwit this fire, creating a firebreak or whatever else you guys figure out. First round of the skill challenge..."

Vincent(Barbarian): "Um... let's see here. We have to make a backfire?"

DM: "Well, you can do anything you can think of to try to prepare for the fire reaching you."

<bad jokes about peeing on a fire being Sustain: Standard>

Vincent: "I'll do something with Endurance..."

DM: "Well you could also wait until somebody else does something and make your check to tag along with them."

Vincent: "My Endurance check will be to gather supplies needed to start the back fire. That's a 14."

DM: "Ok."

Hadarai(Swordmage): "Can I make an Arcana to just create the fire?"

DM: "Like, using your magical fire to start the fires?"

Hadarai: "Yeah."

DM: "Sure. I'll call it a -2, but go ahead."

Hadarai: "*Grunt* that's only a 14"

DM: "Ok, what are the rest of you doing?"

Vincent: "What is the underbrush and stuff like around here?"

DM: "You find that it's all really dry. It's the middle of summer here and looks like it hasn't rained since it rained on you guys a week ago."

Kanatash(Cleric): "I'm gonna pray this plan works."

DM: "So a Religion check? Ok -5 on this one."

Kanatash: "Uh, ok, I'll roll Nature instead, helping Vincent. That's going to be a 20."

DM: "Ok, what about Galentra?"

Galentra(Sorceress): "I know what I want to do, but it's hard to describe. Fire burns the underbrush, but also burns from treetop to treetop. I want to use my powers to knock down trees so it in the area so the fire doesn't jump over us. I don't know what skill that is..."

DM: "Well, since you're using your powers, we'll call in Arcana. -2 on this one too."

Galentra: "Ok, that's a 26."

DM(to Vincent): "You go around and gather up tinder and the like but you find that in spite of it being pretty dry here, alot of the underbrush you can reach is green and so you have slow progress chopping it down with your handaxe."

DM(to Hadarai): "You use your powers to try and start fires at strategic points, but you're having problems getting it going, maybe it's too green or something, but Galentra starts blasting trees down left and right to keep the fire from jumping."

DM(to Kanatash): "Kanatash goes around and actually finds some nice sources of dry tinder."

DM(to all): "So that took about half the day. Now you can look to the south and even when you're not on the hut you can see the fire over the tree tops. You guess the fire is going to reach you around midnight. Round two..."

---

We continued on for the second and third rounds. Here's the checks, brief descriptions, and final results.

-Round 2-

Vincent: Athletics check to knock down trees with his Stonebreaker Power(granting him a +2 on the check) and his Mordenkrad. Result: Natural 20(2 successes).

Hadarai: Athletics to stack/drag the trees Vincent is knocking down. Result: 26(success).

Kanatash: Nature again(-2 penalty for repeating skill in two sequential rounds) looking for a source of water. Result: 17(failure).

Galentra: Nature to start little fires in the gathered tinder. Result: 21(success).

-Round 3-

"By the time you're done, you can feel the hot wind blowing on you. You can see the wall of fire, close enough that it's hazy and raining ash as the sun sets."

Hadarai: Arcana to ignite sword and get the fire going. Result: 18(failure)

Vincent: Endurance to dig a big trench around the hut. Result: 22(success)

Kanatash: Heal to help others deal with heat, soak rags in water and get them ready for everyone(desperate gambit, -5 to check, 2 successes on success). Result: 19(failure).

Galentra: Arcana to try to convert the food rations given by their bag of endless provisions into water to douse the hut with(desperate gambit, -5). Result: Natural 20(3 successes).


End Result: 10 successes(7 needed for skill challenge success with 4 players). They huddled in their hut, soaked down, as the fire raged around them. Aside from having to make some Endurance checks to suffer through the heat, they were unaffected by the fire (well, unaffected except for the smattering of fire-based creatures that attacked them from out of the storm).

 

[Stalker0]

I actually haven't enjoyed skill challenges too much (that might come as a surprise considering I spent so much time developing my own challenge system).

The ones my group has enjoyed have two characteristics in common:

1) The challenge was a big one. It was epic and grand in scale. We have found quick challenges just aren't that enjoyable for us.

2) There some real penalties for failure. We've had challenges where everyone takes damage each round until they succeed, suffer healing surge penalties when they are doing badly....and of course have serious consequences for failure. That seems to drive them more.

 

[Turtlejay]

Setup: The party was on the walking hut they'd just been gifted from a wandering Kenku Village

You had me at walking hut. Godfire nuclear explosion or whatever was nice too.

Good skill challenge, and nice dramatization of it. Our group has not had a ton of luck or experience with them, but I did run a non standard skill challengy thing a few months ago.

It was a festival, and the party had the option of participating in a number of different events. Call it ripped of from Neverwinter Nights 2 if you want, but it was pretty successful. Pie eating contests, talent shows, things like that took up a couple of hours of roleplay. Good times.

Jay

 

[kaomera]

My group have found skill challenges to be a bit... underwhelming.

That was my experience as well, but not so much for mechanical reasons.

My usual response to this sort of thing (ans Stalker0's response gives me some pause on this) has been to ensure that succeeding is a bonus, rather than making failure a penalty. That was the rule of thumb I used to follow with complex tricks / traps, etc. in AD&D & 3.x Not that there shouldn't be some sort of penalty (traps blow up, resources get used), but in terms of the overall goal (usually: get through the dungeon to the boss and/or treasure) they should provide a shortcut or beneficial result (buffs, etc.) on a success, but not close anything off on a failure...

Of course, if the benefit is nice enough, then not getting it is a penalty, I guess...

I've seen several suggestions to stick to larger-scale (or long-term, time wise) stuff for Skill Challenges. I'm also beginning to think that making each check a discreet thing, with it's own lesser rewards and consequences may be the way to go. Not sure entirely how to handle that, but it would tend to make the players more thoughtful about what skill checks they made (rather than just sticking to their one best skill). At best it might get players thinking of how many failures (for the overall Skill Challenge) they can risk to go after personal gains (via the individual rolls)...

One other thing I'm kind of wondering about: Secondary skill checks and Aid Another. These seem like a really interesting resource for the players, but I can't really see how they would work that way, instead of just being the recourse of characters otherwise unsuited to the challenge, or everyone piling on to every check...

 

[Saeviomagy]

That's only true if there's no difference between succeeding at a Diplomacy check or succeeding at an Intimidate check.

Yeah, but 4e is a gem where your good skills are all roughly equivalent and your bad skills are all much worse. So the choice is <one of your good skills> succeeding or <any other skill> failing.

That is a problem, so put it back on the PC: if they don't do anything, bad things will happen to them.

So... if they don't do anything, they only have to suffer personal loss? Instead of letting the entire team down?

 

[Iron Sky]

I actually haven't enjoyed skill challenges too much (that might come as a surprise considering I spent so much time developing my own challenge system).

The ones my group has enjoyed have two characteristics in common:

1) The challenge was a big one. It was epic and grand in scale. We have found quick challenges just aren't that enjoyable for us.

2) There some real penalties for failure. We've had challenges where everyone takes damage each round until they succeed, suffer healing surge penalties when they are doing badly....and of course have serious consequences for failure. That seems to drive them more.

I try to limit skill challenges to once or twice a session for this reason. At one point, I tried to do skill challenges for every day of travel. All it ended up doing was diluting the "interest factor" of "Hey, a skill challenge!" and transforming it to "ok, looks like another skill challenge."


I've found that the most rewarding types of skill challenges for the players are ones they initiate. In the example I gave above, I had no idea how they were going to deal with the raging forest fire. I presented a resource-laden environment, an immanent threat, and they came up with the idea. Their idea seemed large enough to turn into a skill challenge, so I went with it.


When we've done regular(by-the-book) skill challenges, I've found that most of the time it's Aid-the-Maximust, with all the players pitching in +2s to the best roller. Statistically, unless there's a time-per-roll limit or the like, it just makes sense to do it that way. Sometimes you can find ways to split them up and make it interesting, but often I've found they tend to be long chains of near auto-successes due to all the assists.

Same with random skill checks. "I ask around town about the bandit king." "No, let me do it, I'm more diplomatic." "We all help him."


My basic rule of thumb for skill challenges is:

If I'm pretty sure it will add to the tension, drama, or player involvment in the story, it can be broken into interesting steps, and I can think of interesting possibility-creating and/or story-enriching results from success or failure, enter skill challenge.

 

[Eldorian]

I've also been mostly unhappy with skill challenges. The examples given in this thread look far more entertaining than the ones I've done.

Once, we were trying to research information about the Feywild and some trolls (doing king of the trollhaunt warrens).

My character has a 13 int, 11 wis, and his skills are bluff, intimidate, stealth, thievery, and acrobatics. Basically, since our DM allows us to aid another (a massively unsatisfying turn in the skill challenge). I aided others with various int and wis based skill checks. I attempted to use thievery to open locked books or secret passages in the library, but the DM told me this was impossible, so I aided another. I later left the library and stopped participating because it was pointless. We eventually succeeded based on the avenger's, wizard's, and cleric's wis and int based skills, along with various aid another attempts. Oh, and the DCs for success were in the mid 20s, too high for my untrained skills, which are around +6 at this point.

Later, we had to open a magic door during a combat, and I used thievery to disrupt the portal by damaging/moving symbols on the door. It wasn't really a skill challenge, but was OK I guess, as I very rarely get to use my thievery.

I'd say the skills I use most often are stealth and acrobatics, and acrobatics only because it's a prerequisite to a power or two that I have, and I count it as being used when I use that power. Attempts at bluff or intimidate usually just get NPCs pissed off it seems, even when successful. I do occasionally bluff our minotaur party member into believing silly things about drow society, such as that they keep minotaurs as slaves because once they're done working, it's time for steak. And also, in drow law, it's not murder unless they fight back. This provides amusement for me and the minotaur's player, but does little to progress the quest.

 

[Paul Strack]

More challenge ideas

Here are some of the things I think go into making a good skill challenge:

1) The challenge has to be about something the players care about. A meaningless challenge is boring. The challenge should be related to the story you are telling.

2) The players should have a chance to show off and be cool. A challenge that requires skills that none of the PCs are good at is not a good challenge. A challenge that lets one particular character shine, though, can be entertaining. One way to help this along is to present a general problem to the players, but let them decide how to approach it. They will usually choose an approach that plays to their own strengths.

3) You should have a meaningful result for both victory and defeat. A challenge that requires success is a bad challenge, because it means that the GM cannot allow the players to fail. "Succeed or die" is a bad challenge. "Succeed or you can't find the dungeon" is another bad challenge.

A good challenge might be: "Succeed and you get to ambush the bad guys, otherwise they ambush you." Another good challenge is "Succeed and you catch the bad guy before he commits the murder: then you fight. Fail and he kills before you catch him: then you fight."

Successful challenges can also give them bonuses: "Succeed and you get some extra healing magic to get you through the hard part of the dungeons. Fail and you get nothing"

Challenges can force them to take an unpleasant alternative that still moves the adventure forward: "Succeed and you find your own way into the castle. Fail and you have to turn to the thieves guild to get you in, and now you owe them a favor."

4) You should "prepare to improvise". Jot down some notes on what might happen for individual skill check successes and failures in a challenge. Once you've done it for while, it gets easier to make things up on the fly. Be prepared to respond to whatever crazy scheme your players come up with, even if it means pitching out you notes. Remember: the PCs just have to achieve the goal. How they get there is not so important.

5) Let the dice decide how things turn out. This is part of "saying yes" to the players. When your player comes up with an idea that you think is clever or stupid, don't judge for yourself. If the dice roll well, it was a good idea. If the dice roll poorly, it was a bad idea, or the PC got unlucky and there was some unforeseen problem. If the roll was good and you can't possibly see how what the PC was doing will help, make the *player* tell you how the result was helpful.