Skill Challenge Play Examples?

[msherman]

I've got a challenge coming up in a few sessions where I'm trying something new. We use the Obsidian system, so challenges are always three rounds, and each player tries a skill each round, with a fixed number of successes required for victory or partial victory.

The entire session will see the pcs assisting in defending a fort against a monster siege. There's three combats, where the PCs are fighting a wave of monsters attacking the gate they're defending. Before each combat is one round of the skill challenge, where the PCs take advantage of the lull between waves at their gate to offer orders and assistance to defenders elsewhere in the fort.

In prepping the challenge, I went through the PCs and picked 3 unique trained skills for each character. For each skill, I figured out a way to "slow pitch" to that skill, so that if a PC doesn't already have an idea in mind for what to do during a skill challenge phase, I can give them a setup that plays to their strength. For example, the cleric (Raven Queen) will be asked to perform a benediction for the dead and soon-to-be-dead (religion), and the fighter will be asked for help commanding a cowardly unit that's trying to flee their post (intimidate).

I'm also going to give the PCs an option to spend a standard action during the fights to make a bonus check in the skill challenge. I don't expect this to get used, but if things are looking bad by the time they get to the third fight (after the last round of the skill challenge), they might want to take the risk.

I also set up a meaningful result for each possible outcome: failure, the fort falls, and the PCs are taken prisoner, leading to exciting adventures escaping the enemy camp. Partial victory, the fort holds, but the defeated monsters manage an orderly retreat, taking some of the available treasure with them. Full victory, the monsters are routed, and the PCs get an additional treasure parcel full of potions from the cart of an enemy witch doctor.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

There are a thread from Sagiro and Rel in the General RPG Discussion forum on the campaigns they are in (Sagiro plays "under" Piratecat) or run (Rel). They also contain a few ideas for skill challenges, and I think they are the closest to play examples you can get.

I notice that Piratecat seems to have found that "open" challenges work well - meaning that he declares the relevant skills and what they do.

In the podcast on skill challenges, the designers suggest that long challenges might not be such a great idea and you should try to split a longer challenges in multiple smaller challenges. This gives you a better ability to describe what is going on. (And they also note: Don't hesitate to break the DC guidelines. They are a starting point, designed to work even if no one is trained in the skills. If that leads to unsatisfying results, use something else. You know your players and their skills best.)

I suppose a skill challenges works best if you can actually describe what an individual skill check represents and how success advances the progress and failure causes setbacks.
For the challenge as a whole, defining the goals of the challenge and the possible outcomes might also be important.

I prefer the "round-by-round" method of skill challenges - each round, all PCs _have_ to make some kind of check. I am not fan of using aid another for that, but I haven't found good alternatives. There are challenges where this is all that makes sense for the other PCs to do (if at all). To make the aid-another a little harder, don't use DC 10, but a DC indicated for the challenge (probably a low DC). Except at lowest level, this will make things harder, but not impossibly so. And you might also want to introduce a variation of penalty/success (+2 / -2 to check).

 

[DanmarLOK]

I believe a big thing is partial successes/failures.

I ran this and it went well - Key Our Cars » Blog Archive » Skill Challenge: Defense

To sum up - They were on the run from a mob of orcs, obviously more than they could take. They spotted the commune and ducked inside with the orcs on their heels. The orcs pulled up to assess the situation.

The players had options in the skill challenge to work on the defenses. They could bluff or intimidate the farmers into performing better, they could build traps with thievery, deploy the forces to their best tactical position by reading the likely way the orcs would come in via the terrain or the orc's normal battle behaviour with nature, one of the leaders added a skill to the challenge by asking if he could deploy first aid supplies and thus use his Healing skill which I smacked my forehead for not thinking of myself.

Their level of success dictated the forces that would reach the walls and how quickly they would. THe more failures the more forces they'd have to face on the walls and the more farmers that would end up dead, the more successes and part of the forces would show up in waves, dead by traps etc.

All in all it the players enjoyed considering the real purpose of the challenge and how they'd best accomplish the needs.

 

[LostSoul]

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.

If Diplomacy and Intimidate are both good skills, do you still think there is no difference between using them?

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

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what's going on in the game world, right?

 

[LostSoul]

Here are some of the things I do.

1. Make sure the opposition has a goal.

2. Make sure the opposition can apply pressure to the PCs.

3. Make sure the opposition will apply pressure to the PCs in order to achieve its goal.

3. Don't define a list of skills that can and can't be used.

4. Don't assign a DC to any individual skill check.

5. Don't define what success or failure mean at the outset.

6. Make sure you keep your mind in the game world.

 

[Horatio]

Here's one of mines.
I usualy preapre a few "opportunity" skill challenges - optional, "unlocked" by a certain actions made by the characters. So here it goes:

In a village, the party rogue decided to look around the village to find something interesting (they were trying to undermine certain corrupted noble's operations and thought he might have something going in this village) and told me he's using his street savvy (aka streetwise), rolling 22 which was enough to get this information (among other things, not pointed out) - people talking about some landslide in nearby hills opening some sort of cave or something.

Meanwhile, the swordmage were at the local grocer, shopping for some general adventuring gear. The shopkeeper, chatting with the swordmage, mentioned something about more people coming and ordering more goods, calling for an insight roll (which was successfull) I told the swordmage, that it was not only a general chat, but that was a reason that he mentioned the shipment.

Not wanting to pass the opportunity, the swordmage indeed asked what's so special about it. "Well, shovels. Now that we can expect the treasure hunters...". Further questioning leading to the revelation of the (supposedly) tomb of one of the heroes of old - Conrad the Fender. Who was burried (according to the legens) with his famous armor. (1st success).

Getting back together, the group piled all information they got (the rogue wasn't the onnly one streetwising) and decided to investigate further.

The wizard asked if the name rings a bell and rolled history, asking if 26 is enough. Enough it was and I told him, that yes, deeds of said hero are well documented as is his armor. He wasn't originaly from this area. He spent his adventuring carriere in Tarengar (a kingdom east from their current location) and was supposed to return into his hometown of Westhaven (name unknown to all) after retirement. Though he never got there. (2nd success).

Now they all asked themselves if they know the name Westhaven or something similar. (3 "solutions" were possible now - either diplomacy, hard check, remembering about the fact that some diplomats (a special sort....) use to call the port Highcross byt the nickname West haven, or history again, hard chceck, in the dark ages, the name of Highcross was Westhaven, or finally religion, hard check, pointing out that the name was originally Vesta's haven, named after goddes Vesta, who's church is long forgotten, but was supposed to be around the location of today's Highcross). 2 heroes passed the checks (the warlord with diplomacy, the wizard with religion) (3rd success).

Now they knew, that Conrad indeed could travel through these lands and thus could actually be buried here. But where exactly? Treasure hunters are now on the way and we want to be there first!

Ok, time for the information gathering again. Where the rumors about the cave started? Streetwise time! (1st failure, as noone rolled high enough or came up with something elaborate enough to justify a bonus).

Dead end? Not so fast! Our clever ranger pointed out, that they were talking about landslide. Whcih is not a common event. Using his knowledge about nature and a map of surrounding areas, he tried to determine, where said landslides might be possible (as I did not expect his, I had to quickly decide and I went with moderate to high difficulty). After a very lucky roll, I gave him 3 possible locations. (4th success)

Now the warlord asked, if something special is known about Conrad's legendary armor - what the legends tell us. Rolling history (and succeeding), I told him, that the armor was called lifegiving in some legends. (5th success)

Wizards turn - do I know what "lifegiving" might be? - rolling arcana and (they were unnaturally lucky that day) succeeded again. So I told them, that said "ability" not only protects the wearer against negative energies, but boosts the lifeforce of nearby living allies.

Now the ranger again (frequently coming with interesting ideas or problem solutions) got another idea - which fields in the nearby areas have the best yield? You know - buried underground, boosting life nearby .... . As I really like this kind of thinking, I let them make an (easy) streetwise chceck to gather gossips from village farmers which of their "competition" has best quality / quantity. (6th and final success).

Now they just picked the (possible) landslide location closest to the "best crop farmer". Skill challenge done.

 

[LoneViper]

I use a modified version of the Obsidian system by Stalker0, so take this feedback with a grain of salt... I use a house-ruled variant of a custom system(!). I agree with those above that partial successes are key.

I tell players a single skill (or, rarely, a pair of skills) that I think is most relevant to the task at hand -- whether it's Nature for a wilderness jaunt, or Streetwise for gathering info -- and they get a +2 to all attempts with this Skill. Less imaginative players or those who can't come up with a good idea can always default to this recommended key skill.

Regarding the "use my max skill no matter what" mindset, I run Skill Checks by asking the players what they want to do in the situation, and then asking them for a check with whatever Skill I think is most relevant based on their idea. Obviously they could still outfox me by coming up with a Skill, and then telling me an activity that obviously uses that skill, but encouraging them to forget skills and narrate their behavior seems to break them out of that "how can I use my +12 Religion" mentality.

The Obsidian system virtually eliminates Aid Another because there are only three "phases," but if one of the players has a great idea and another just wants to help out, I have the aiding player make a reduced-difficulty check with that Skill and essentially double-or-nothing the original player's check. This is probably statistically unbalanced, but so is the +2 from Aid Another. I like this way more, though.

I allow players to continue using a successful Skill for as long as they continue to make their checks. If they fail at a Skill in one phase, they can't try it again in another phase (it's a dead end!).

I guess I run things fairly fast and loose, and it may be a little harder to succeed at Skill Challenges, but I tend to reward really brilliant thinking with bonuses... because I like to see great ideas succeed!

 

[Saeviomagy]

If Diplomacy and Intimidate are both good skills, do you still think there is no difference between using them?

The problem is that most characters will have a raft of skills that they can potentially use that are all roughly the same numbers: and if diplomacy and intimidate are the only options (and of them, only one is going to work because the DM has decided that this particular NPC is immune to fear or something), then the challenge is almost certainly a failure without some spectacular dice rolling.

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what's going on in the game world, right?

It sounds like you're not actually talking about the base skill challenge system. Could you explain exactly what you mean? I'm keen on finding ways to make skill challenges work, but using the rules as they are is what I find disappointing.

Oh, wait... I realise you just did that a few posts up. Would I be right in thinking that you're mostly improvising? DCs get set based on the described action, degrees of success and failure are decided at the end, "3 strikes and you're out" mentality of the current challenge system is totally gone?

Incidentally, I think that the "use my best skill or try to avoid participating" tactic is purely produced by the original skill challenge mechanics' limited failures before the entire challenge is failed. It's like telling players that if they miss with their attack, the entire party loses a healing surge each. Suddenly you're not going to have people with slightly sub-par attacks taking part in the combat. Trying and failing is worse than not trying at all.

 

[LostSoul]

Oh, wait... I realise you just did that a few posts up. Would I be right in thinking that you're mostly improvising? DCs get set based on the described action, degrees of success and failure are decided at the end, "3 strikes and you're out" mentality of the current challenge system is totally gone?

Kind of. I do stick to the DCs (I am using the old, pre-errata ones without the +5 modifier) and the number of successes vs. failures. I pick the DCs based on how difficult the action seems.

There is lots of improvising; it's in the fiction, when I have to figure out what happens after a skill check. I consider the skill used, how it is used (ie. what's said by the player), any bonuses that add into it, what other people do to aid, and anything else that's happened already.

What I mean is that a success from a Diplomacy check is going to result in a different outcome than a success from an Intimidate check - although both will still be successes. Maybe you spam Intimidate to get the Duke to lend you some support. It works, and he does, but he isn't going to like you much after that. Once he thinks you can't hurt him, or he can get back at you, he will.

Using Diplomacy won't produce the same result, though in either case you will get some support from him.

An example from a skill challenge I ran: the PCs were trying to fake creation of a magic item too high level for them. They sacrificed some animals to give it a spirit. Sacrifice, eh? That's not nice. When the Infernal-pact Warlock used his Beguiling Tongue on it, that gave it a bit of a devilish personality. That would not have happened had he not used the Beguiling Tongue power.

Incidentally, I think that the "use my best skill or try to avoid participating" tactic is purely produced by the original skill challenge mechanics' limited failures before the entire challenge is failed. It's like telling players that if they miss with their attack, the entire party loses a healing surge each. Suddenly you're not going to have people with slightly sub-par attacks taking part in the combat. Trying and failing is worse than not trying at all.

Totally agreed.

 

[Infiniti2000]

I still don't see how you can avoid people always using their trained skills and being limited by that. In fact, by encouraging people to use untrained skills, you're encouraging them to fail. And, once you boil it down to PCs always using a set list of 4-5 skills, they'll tend to not think out of the box.

Would it be better to simply scrap all PC's skill modifiers and let anyone try anything with a simple static modifier? Such as no matter what you try or do, your modifier is +X (maybe with a DM fiat or +/- 2 or some such for circumstantial modifiers perhaps for being very creative or whatnot). This would certainly alleviate that problem, but it would hamper the skill monkeys (which I don't personally find as an issue).