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General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
Skill Challenges: How Much Have They Improved?
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<blockquote data-quote="Jhaelen" data-source="post: 5198899" data-attributes="member: 46713"><p>Indeed.</p><p></p><p>I think skill challenges work like a charm unless the players realize they're in a skill challenge. As a DM I never announce one. The challenge is presented like any other description of the current situation and ends with the question "What do you do?"</p><p></p><p>The players simply state what their pcs do and I may ask for the occasional skill check. I'm tracking success/failure for relevant skill checks as they're being made and allow for auto-success/auto-failure when particularly (in)appropriate actions are taken by the pcs.</p><p></p><p>The problem is: This style of DMing skill challenges isn't well suited to be used in published material such as adventure modules. There isn't enough of a structure to allow a DM to run it smoothly unless the DM is already comfortable with running such 'free-style' skill challenges.</p><p></p><p>Having said all that, the presentation of skill challenges has improved in some of the more recent WotC products. E.g. 'The Plane Above' has an interesting tool-kit approach to create skill-challenges involving movement across Chernoggar. It presents about a dozen complexity 1 skill challenges that can be mixed and matched to create a single higher complexity skill challenge.</p><p>I've also seen a couple of good skill challenges in some of the RPGA adventure modules. I vaguely remember one involving trying to get into a fortress-like structure inside of a city with several different districts that I liked.</p><p></p><p>But again, I believe the main problem that still remains is that players should never realize they're in a skill challenge, otherwise they'll start to meta-game and act 'unnaturally' trying to always use their best skills or not participate at all for fear of failing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jhaelen, post: 5198899, member: 46713"] Indeed. I think skill challenges work like a charm unless the players realize they're in a skill challenge. As a DM I never announce one. The challenge is presented like any other description of the current situation and ends with the question "What do you do?" The players simply state what their pcs do and I may ask for the occasional skill check. I'm tracking success/failure for relevant skill checks as they're being made and allow for auto-success/auto-failure when particularly (in)appropriate actions are taken by the pcs. The problem is: This style of DMing skill challenges isn't well suited to be used in published material such as adventure modules. There isn't enough of a structure to allow a DM to run it smoothly unless the DM is already comfortable with running such 'free-style' skill challenges. Having said all that, the presentation of skill challenges has improved in some of the more recent WotC products. E.g. 'The Plane Above' has an interesting tool-kit approach to create skill-challenges involving movement across Chernoggar. It presents about a dozen complexity 1 skill challenges that can be mixed and matched to create a single higher complexity skill challenge. I've also seen a couple of good skill challenges in some of the RPGA adventure modules. I vaguely remember one involving trying to get into a fortress-like structure inside of a city with several different districts that I liked. But again, I believe the main problem that still remains is that players should never realize they're in a skill challenge, otherwise they'll start to meta-game and act 'unnaturally' trying to always use their best skills or not participate at all for fear of failing. [/QUOTE]
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