D&D 4E Skill Challenge DC questions for a new to 4E DM.

I'm DMing a new campaign and using 4E rules. (We finished up a long running 3.5 campaign early this year.)

I noticed in looking through some DCs for my first skill challenge that the players were blowing the DCs out of the water. With an 18 or 20 in a primary score, most of my six PCs will have a +9 or +10 to first level skill checks right out of the box on their trained skills. Plus, I think at least one of them has a power that gives them a +5 to their next skill check.

So, would I be correct in setting "Average" skill challenge DCs to be around 20 at first level, while "Easy" would be 15 and "Hard" would be 25? Then, going up by 1 every other level?

Well, there are a lot of considerations going into what the numbers are. If you have DDI go read Mike Mearls series of articles on skill challenges and the skill check numbers they use.

The idea is not to make the numbers super high. Level 1 has difficulties of 5/10/15, which means a character with no bonus at all can usually pull off an easy task, has a fair chance at a moderate task, and will usually fail at a hard task. Likewise your average character probably has either a high stat or training or maybe other bonuses so they generally will pass an easy check almost all the time, pass a moderate check most of the time, and have a fair chance to pass a hard check. Your super skilled guy with a +10 will fail a hard check now and then.

Now translate this to game play. Would you climb a high wall with a 50% chance that you would fall off and injure yourself? Probably not. If you were desperate you might do it, but the point is if its a hard check with DC15 then chances are only the trained expert will even try it. If you now set your DCs so high that said character requires a 15 on his check (DC25) the players will simply stop climbing walls and find some other way to do things. If you MAKE them climb a wall, then only the super skilled guy has ANY chance at all. If for some reason the super skilled guy is not available then the task is hopeless. The default DCs mean moderately skilled PCs can give something a shot in a pinch even if its difficult and can stand in reliably when its moderate. Even a totally hapless climber can at least TRY to climb the difficult wall. He'll usually fail but at least he has a chance.

As far as SCs go its pretty much the same sort of thing. Checks are moderate (usually), but with a variety of skills. Generally not all of these skills will be available or not all of them will be available at a +10. On a low complexity SC the chances of failure are almost non-existent, the challenge is more about the story of how the players accomplish the task and its not likely a super critical task plot-wise. Now, lets look at what a low complexity on-level SC is, its the same as a single monster of the same level as the party. A combat against a single equal-level monster is really not even a fight. It will be dead on round 2 and lucky to even get a hit. The XP reward is 1/50th of a level advancement. It isn't supposed to be hard and using an encounter like that is certainly not meant to be a failure risk. Its purely there for plot purposes.

Now, a HARD challenge for a level 1 party would be a complexity 5 level 5 challenge, which is a level + 4 encounter (which the DMG classifies as very difficult). Even here the party should win in the vast majority of cases, it will just require good tactics and some use of resources. The DCs on an SC of this level will be 7/12/17, so even a character with a +10 won't be guaranteed to succeed on a given moderate check. You need to now pass 12 checks before 3 failures, which is a 75% success rate. If even ONE of these checks is made with say a +5 and failed that creates a pretty good chance of overall failure. Note too that you can restrict which skills can be used multiple times, only allow each PC to use a given skill once, set some DCs to hard, etc. All of these things can be used to make a given SC more interesting.

I look at it this way: DCs of 5/10/15 assume a baseline of a random character at level 1: with a +0 bonus, you have about a 50-50 shot on a moderate check. The original 15/20/25 DCs assume a baseline of an optimized character: with +4 ability score and +5 training, you have a 50-50 shot on a moderate check.

Roughly speaking, you want your DCs to match the behavior of your players. If they refuse to make a skill check unless it's in one of their optimized skills or everyone is just making aid another checks to aid the PC with the highest bonus, then yes, perhaps higher DCs are called for. But it seems to me that the new numbers are meant to encourage people to try whatever creative skill usages come to mind, even if not min-maxing. (So perhaps you instead want to encourage behaviors that match the DCs.)

Thanks - good points by both of you.

I actually like DCs in the middle of the two ends described already - 10/15/20. Some small room for failure on moderate checks, still eminently able to be made by those who aren't trained or optimized for them. Hard is actually hard.

Then again, I also think that failing skill challenges should just happen. They're not TPKs - in many cases, failing the skill challenge should be more interesting than succeeding, and it should always be at least as interesting, even if more frustrating

Yeah, I usually figure DCs for skill challenges by asking myself, "Who would succeed if they rolled a 10?"

If the answer is "a trained 6th level dude with a +3 ability modifier," I set the DC at 21 (10 + 3 (level/2) + 3 ability + 5 trained).

keterys said:

I actually like DCs in the middle of the two ends described already - 10/15/20. Some small room for failure on moderate checks, still eminently able to be made by those who aren't trained or optimized for them. Hard is actually hard.

Then again, I also think that failing skill challenges should just happen. They're not TPKs - in many cases, failing the skill challenge should be more interesting than succeeding, and it should always be at least as interesting, even if more frustrating

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This wasn't a TPK situation. The PCs had performed heroically in defending the town from a goblin raid. If they made their skill checks on various challenges, the party's reputation would be further enhanced over the coming days & weeks. If they missed, people would have written them off as more lucky than good, and they would not have gotten free drinks/meals and the adoring young teenybopper types would have turned their attention elsewhere.

Yeah, what I meant is that people get paranoid about failing skill challenges - and I understand that paranoia for combat, since total party kills can end campaigns. Failed skill challenges, though, are just taking a different road.

Like in TV shows, characters need their setbacks and failures to make them more... believable, sympathetic, expose hidden character depths, generate new plot twists, etc. Skill challenge failures thought of in that lens are more helpful for the game, I think, than generic 'Do we lose a couple surges getting to the right place'.

I have mentioned on a number of occasions that I'm not a fan of the standard "three failed skill checks" failure condition used in by-the-book skill challenges. Because a failed skill check can significantly increase the chances of the party failing the skill challenge as a whole, I think it actually discourages PCs with low skill check modifiers from participating in a skill challenge.

IMO, the fact that a party can only suffer two failed skill checks also leads to a need for the DCs of the individual skill checks to be low. To succeed in a complexity 5 skill challenge, you need 12 successes and can have at most 2 failures. The success rate for each individual skill check has to be very high (12/14, or >85%) in order for the party to have a decent chance of overcoming such a skill challenge.

I scarcely follow the rules for skill challenges, at least in terms of success vs. failures.

The way I see it, it's not the number of failed checks that induce the failure of the skill challenge, but rather the nature of the failure.

In one skill challenge I ran on the fly, the PCs had to survive a storm that was beating the tar out of their patron's airship. I knew my players were creative sorts, so I merely threw problems at them such as a cannon threatening to roll and smash the hull from the inside of the ship or the ropes holding the sails whipping off and the captain flying off the deck.

The challenge wasn't a matter of whether they'd survive or not, but what they are able to do to reduce that ship's losses. It's a bit railroad-ey, but it leaves them the room to make mistakes or succeed immensely without derailing anything I'd prepared after.