Skill Challenges: How Much Have They Improved?

[LostSoul]

Are you talking about the mechanical (character-building) choices they make, or the action/narrative, in-character choices they make?

I see mechanical and narrative (I usually call it "colour") choices as two halves of the same coin.

If the challenges are always tied to your skills, there isn't a need to "scrounge for bonuses" - e.g. if you're a bunch of Streetwise punks with nary an Arcana, Religion, or History skill between you, and you know you're going into The Library of Ioun, hiring a sage might be something to consider. You won't need to make choices on that level. These are usually narrative-based choices, but they're being made because of a mechanical need.

The same thing goes for combat encounters - if they are always tied to your abilities, you don't need to worry about doing things like buying Holy Water or Radiant weapons. (These are usually mechanical-based choices, but if you're only fighting for narrative-based reasons, the two feed back into each other; I find this sort of play more satisfying than one over the other.)

If you are always up to the task mechanically, you don't need to engage the setting as much in order to overcome the challenge.

This is why I see mechanics and colour as two halves of the same coin - the narrative decisions you make are influenced by the mechanical resources you can draw on ("Do we really want to fight undead when we have no one who can deal Radiant damage?"), and the mechanical resources you have are influenced by the narrative decisions you make ("Let's tell the Temple of Bahamut about the undead and see if they will lend us a hand.").

One informs the other and forces decisions to be made, on both levels.

This is interesting, and there's a lot to be said about the merits and drawbacks of different methods for designing skill challenges. For instance, "If the player chooses Intimidate over Religion, why force him into a skill challenge involving deep theological discussions?"

A big part of the fun and "value-add" of a good skill challenge is that it produces an interesting, directed yet non-deterministic group narrative. Of course success or failure in the challenge is important to "what happens next" in the big picture. But the journey is also part of the fun, and part of the point!

I totally agree; that's why I like the kind of mechanical resolution a skill challenge provides. It surprises the DM as well. You go into the skill challenge, a player has his character do something that changes everything, and you come out the other side with something completely different!

I am trying to look at what the rules say (I'm considering all the advice as rules, sue me, I'm crazy), what sort of play is "pushed" by the system, and how things have changed over time.

If someone wants to compile a list of articles from Dragon and Dungeon that talk about skill challenges, that would be awesome. I'm busy trying to figure out what a mad tiefling starlock was trying to do with oralloy.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If you're looking for info on Skill Challenges, the Dungeon's Master blog has a ton of info. Our own Mouseferatu has written a very good blog on skill challenges as well. I also have written a pretty good skill challenge if I do say so myself. If you're crazy, you can try to get LFR adventures from the WOTC website. You can find many different skills challenges in those.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Lots of good points here. The more I've worked with SCs the more I've come to the conclusion that the whole concept of fixed tallies of successes and failures is too rigid. People have tried a lot of different ways to play around with that, but I think it really only fits a limited subset of situations.

The whole question of variable levels of success is the first point. It is certainly possible to have varied grades of success, but often its not clear that there really IS clearly success and failure. You see a lot of acknowledgment of this but not so much discussion of the inadequacy of tallies themselves. Often a situation is more about different choices and types of success.

When it comes to what sorts of things to include in a challenge though I think it often may be more a matter of having essentially different challenges. You can try to make most challenges include an array of skills but the other option would be to simply offer multiple challenges. The party could travel away through the desert, or try to open a magic portal, or try to call down the griffons and get a ride out of there. Each choice might well have narrative ramifications beyond getting out of the city, but at the very least you have a back and forth between mechanical and narrative options and choices.

 

[Stalker0]

A lot of good conversation here.

From a mechanical perspective, I feel that skill challenges have come a long way. Whether you prefer the new versions that WOTC has put out, or one of the good alternative systems out there, I think the system is now solid enough to work (which I did not feel at its inception).


So to me, the open question that remains is: "Does the skill challenge mechanic perform its intended function?".

Having used skill challenges over time, I have found that there are certain areas where skill challenges do well, but others where I think they detract from the game.

I have found them very useful for investigative or research type adventures, but I do not like using them for diplomacy/heavy role play scenes. Research Adventures by their nature have an embedded structure in their flavor. You work to acquire facts, if you pass you get the facts, if you don't you don't. Retries would naturally indicate more time, or moving on to a new source of information. Further, research tasks are more hands off for players generally. Players tell the DM what they are looking for, the DM describes what they find. The important piece are the players choices moreso than their descriptions.

For roleplaying type tasks, its a bit different. Ultimately goals can be more subtle as are the consequences. Failure might mean I don't get what I want, it might mean I anger someone, it might mean I made the wrong ally, etc. Further, players often get a lot of satisfaction out of the actual participation of the task. Its not just about obtaining your ultimate goal, the roleplaying itself is part of the fun...which unlike a research task is constant active participation. The skill challenge system encourages you to break up that roleplaying into discrete packages, which I often finds spoilers the mood.


In my mind, I think the original flaw of the skill challenge concept is it tries to apply a single model to a wide array of different challenge types...several of which are very different from each other, and some of which aren't really good fits for skill challenges at all.

To give an example, one of the common challenges of a typical DM adventure is "rogue scouting". I'm sure many have had the campaign with the rogue who wants to do roguish things. He's got the good perception and stealth and so rightly believes he should scout for the party.

Well...rogue scouting can be a big time sink if you let it. How many stealth checks should he make? What constitutes a failure, what indicates he finds something big, etc.

If WOTC were to go back and "do it again" I would love it if they had created a "scouting skill challenge". But by that I don't mean use the generic skill challenge template and then tweak it for scouting...I mean create a skill challenge mini system designed specifically for the intricacies of scouting.

In this way the DM is provided 3-4 subsystems designed for some of the DM headaches that come up quite a lot (like scouting). DMs would continue to use the loose skill system for most of their needs...and over time if there were constant tasks that kept coming up in a lot of games WOTC might create a new skill challenge system specifically for that task.

In my ideal world anyway

 

[Quickleaf]

Thanks for kicking off this thread FireLance! Great discussion Following up on the concept of skill challenge scope, what if the default guideline were that ALL skills should be available in most challenges (at some point during the challenge)? I know that sounds nuts but bear with me... 4e philosophy has two relevant guidelines: (1) no save or die/gotcha effects, and (2) encourage don't limit (eg. vulnerabilites not resistance/immunity according to latest monster design & dev). Think of unavailable skills as a challenge's immunities; most monsters have 1 or 2 tops. Think of skills as powers; in most fights you can use any power (though certain powers are better tactical choices at various points in the fight). What if this were the defining feature of a skill challenge of suitable scope? Let's take it one step further. Auto-fails are the antithesis of 4e design (it is the save or die of the skill challenge); but what about auto-successes and bonus rider effects? These are the challenge's vulnerabilities and encouragement for players to vary skills used. Another incentive to mix up skills are the challenge's resistances - the varying DC associated with different skills. I'm not suggesting this approach for every challenge, and there are a host of problems it doesn't address (like degrees of success), but I think comparing skill challenges to the ideal of 4e combat could redefine how we develop and implement skill challenges.