Skill Challenges that KILL

[AbdulAlhazred]

Excellent find, mneme. That's exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for. Interesting to see that such things exist officially, too.



Actually, I use Dungeoneering quite a lot in my group. Now, Streetwise, on the other hand...

lol, yet I think we've used Streetwise more in our game. Dungeoneering is OK, but it seems to have pretty specific uses.

 

[FireLance]

Ah, the potentially lethal skill challenge.

Also known as the trap.

That is all.

 

[Dragon Sin-Camealot]

This is pretty typical. You meet a sphinx or two. You need to use Diplomacy to talk your way out. And Bluff to tell the other the riddle.

The price of failure is being turned to stone or something. This might be the last challenge of the adventure.

Not hard to invent a believable situation at all.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'm another vote for "balance between individuals in the area of skills is ridiculous, so you have to be really careful with important skill challenges".

The skill challenge system is a lot more punishing too. Missing a monster 3 times doesn't lose you the battle in a combat. Getting knocked out doesn't lose you a battle. Getting EVERYONE except one party member KOd is still recoverable.

Hell, having to make a mini-skill challenge where you die from rolling 3 failures in a row is the consequence for having already lost!

So if you do this, don't do it with anything resembling the skill challenge rules as written, don't do it without making sure you read through the party's skill lists, and be really lenient.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

It's a good idea to know your group, and what skills they have when designing a lethal skill challenge... based on what skills the PCs have and how their attributes are distributed, the differences in skills can be quite substantial.

For example, my group has 5 level 12 PCs. At that level, an easy check is a 14, a moderate a 20 and a hard a 28.

The best skill in the group is an arcana of 29. On the other hand, the best acrobatics is a 12, with the average being about 6. With this group, a lethal skill challenge requiring a bunch of hard acrobatics checks has a good potential for a TPK, where as any that lets Mr. 29 Arcana spam that skill is a cake walk.

 

[MrBeens]

It's a good idea to know your group, and what skills they have when designing a lethal skill challenge... based on what skills the PCs have and how their attributes are distributed, the differences in skills can be quite substantial.

For example, my group has 5 level 12 PCs. At that level, an easy check is a 14, a moderate a 20 and a hard a 28.

The best skill in the group is an arcana of 29. On the other hand, the best acrobatics is a 12, with the average being about 6. With this group, a lethal skill challenge requiring a bunch of hard acrobatics checks has a good potential for a TPK, where as any that lets Mr. 29 Arcana spam that skill is a cake walk.

Indeed.
With skill challenges though one character with a high skill should not be able to "solo" the challenge. Inbetween him rolling arcana the rest of the group should be making checks too.
A well designed skill challenges with a good spread of minor and major skills (minor ones giving bonuses to other skills, reducing DCs, removing failures etc) the average group should probably be doing 2 or 3 checks each.