I've been following the advice of Matt Colville from YouTube, and introduced a Skill Challenge to model the party's escape from an exploding dungeon. Using some of the guidelines from his video (and the 4e rules), I came up with the following skill challenge for five 6th level characters....
10 successes before 3 failures. DC 15 checks. Accepted skills included: Perception, Athletics, Acrobatics, Survival, Nature, (or others if you could make a convincing argument). Failure was 9 points of damage unless someone could negate the failed check with a successful check.
So the group didn't come close to the 10 successes. After setting up the conditions of the skill challenge, it became impossible to "walk it back" even as things were clearly going bad. However, after letting the dice fall where they may, I tried to be accommodating for letting the players bring in new characters or to bring back their previous characters with as little setbacks as possible.
I guess my question is ... do any of you think skill challenges are worth having? Do you have any rules of thumb when designing them?
"Skill" Challenges are great things. Formally defined skill challenges are the antithesis of creativity. Plus 4e style skill challenges by definition artificially exclude anything that isn't a skill - often a "success" can be had through consuming a resource (a spell slot, a one potion, etc.) at the least. And there are time when a "no roll needed" activity also can provide a success - either there is no reasonable way to fail, or it's something like characters remembering pertinent information. But most of all, never get in the way of player creativity.
Here's an example from my campaign, similar to the idea of an exploding dungeon. Having defeated the Frost Giant Vampiric Sorceress, her castle is collapsing around them. They way in they knew they had blocked up to prevent hordes of Frost Giant Zombies who were coming out of the melting walls, so they didn't know how to get out. Just that they had a very limited time and no teleportation magic.
The group ended up melting through a wall, finding a grand stairwell of ice, half the party sledding down on the warforged magic shield as a toboggan bouncing occasional Frost Giant Zombies out of the way as the rest of the party tried to run after.
Just parse that for a second. No way I would have come up with that in planning, you need to be flexible on what works and what doesn't. In this case clearing FGZombies was causing them damage as well, but they were freeing up space for those running down behind. Things like melting through the wall used up spells, the sledding was crazy skill use. Bouncing FGZ out of the way was attack rolls. The other half were making athletics checks to go as fast as they could on slippery, melting ice stairwells.
I wasn't counting failures, I was counting time. As the castle came tumbling down. Luckily the sled was fast - IF they didn't hit into anything.
They finally saw double doors with sunlight around the cracks and managed to turn the shield-sled and slam into it. Unfortunately it was a balcony several stories up which with their momentum they were going over.
This is because of how they were looking to get out, looking for windows or sunlight. None mentioned anything about trying to make sure to get down to ground level first. I gave them options to try to roll off up top if they wanted - the all declined.
The rest of the party came up, running through the horde of Frost Giant Zombies who had been piling up at the bottle of the stairs. The rogue, who had messed earlier, was last. In order from closest to furthers I had them dodging the FGZ and moving to jump out. Some focused on dodging because they didn't have far to go, others used spells or stuff for the final bit or to help take less damage from the jump off the balcony. Again, two parts going on - time to escape and avoiding damage on the way. Let player creativity run and figure otu how to adjudicate it.
All out but the last, the rogue. Who then promptly rolls a 1 on his acrobatics check to tumble out. And this was the last round before collapse.
At this point the challenge was over, with the rogue failing. But for epicness and one last shot I started another.
I set the scene - ice castle collapsing NOW, rogue on his back surrounded by Frost Giant Zombies. Everyone else three stories down off the balcony. Everyone but the rogue had a single action, to do in whatever order they wanted, to try to save him.
It ended up not going well. The wizard turned the rogue invisible impulsively to help deal with the Frost Giant Zombies without thinking about the others trying to over him. It was a great bit of inadvertent dialog at the table:
Fighter: We can't watch him die!
Wizard: I cast invisibility.
In the end, all but one character had gone and they hadn't saved the rogue, when the Sorcerer used a short-range transpose-self-and-another spell and teleported the rogue our - and himself in. Martyred himself to save the rogue.
Great moment around the table. But to get back to Challenges, think like this:
I started with a goal: Get out of the castle, which you could think as requiring a certain number of successes.
And problems:Countdown timer to castle destruction, and random damage/grappling from Frost Giant Zombies.
From there I left it up to them to describe what they wanted to do. It could be skill, or resource usage, or whatever. I evaluated how hard it was, and if it would help with either the goal or either of the problems. (For example, no one did anything like Wall of Ice to help delay the castle from crumbling, but that was a valid thing they could have done. Also the "number of successes" to get out varied by path. Try and get to the top and survive the collapse? Retreat the way they came (their own barrier to overcome, more FGZ, but a known route), look for a safe way out? Look for ANY way out? The idea of sledding down the stairs helped the first group move a lot faster - but those same melting stairs would have been a big delay if the rest of the party had to dodge FGZ - so it was only so helpful because the sledders were slamming into them (and taking damage doing so).
In other words, set up your environment, but then completely let the party try to resolve it and don't balk at creativity.
