Rethinking Skill Challenges

[Joshua Randall]

Everyone is forced to participate in combat, so I don't have any problem conceptually with everyone being forced to participate in a skill challenge.

However.

In combat, you get to use your best stat (usually) to attack with one of a number of powers of your choice. Very, very seldom will none of your powers work.

In skill challenges (assuming you're forced to participate), you might not get to use your best stat/skill, and often the choice of skill is taken out of your hands. Very often none of your trained skills will work for that part of the skill challenge.

Also, in combat some enemy is actively opposing you. In the vast majority of skill challenges, you're rolling against a set DC, and succeed or fail, it doesn't attack you back.

 

[pemerton]

In the vast majority of skill challenges, you're rolling against a set DC, and succeed or fail, it doesn't attack you back.

I think that this was part of LostSoul's point in his post upthread (& jbear made similar points too):

1. You don't do anything? Something bad happens. It might not be a mechanical failure, but it will suck.

You're running away from the dragon and you don't do anything. Fine, it eats you. You're supposed to be talking to the Duke and you don't say anything? He gets creeped out and thinks you have a secret to hide, so he starts talking to you. You still don't say anything? That's very rude; the Duke might throw you in jail while he finishes his talks with the rest of the PCs.

A lot of skill challenges have failure cost healing surges, or other penalties. I think that as a GM you have to describe what is happening in such a way that the player realises that inaction, which = failure, will make things worse for the PC. The player can then choose whether to participate or to take the consequence that the GM is describing.

 

[FireLance]

@ Firelance ~ I liked your breakdown of skill challenge categories and especially how to incorporate sub-challenges. Actually this was the direction I was headed with SC templates, so a chase/race challenge would have a different mechanical structure from an investigation or "surviving" a storm at sea or negotiating. I also wonder if you would include any of these as independent categories: Prepare (eg. Get ready for war, plan assassination, setup ambush), Handle Fallout (eg. Rescue people from collapsing bridge, setup refugee camp, what to do with many prisoners, put out fire), Compete (eg. A jousting or archery tournament, gambling game).

That would be an interesting way to come up with a varied collection of skill challenges: have a number of "standard" main challenges, and for each main challenge, come up with several modular sub-challenges that the DM could use to modify the main challenge.

As for the other categories of non-combat challenges, I am probably biased , but I think most of the examples you raised would be a combination of two or more of my existing categories. To be fair, this is probably because I define Learn challenges very broadly - a more accurate term would probably be "discovery and application of knowledge". In a way, I was probably influenced by the 4E skill system which does not really distinguish between theoretical knowledge and practical application. For example, Nature covers nature and monster knowledge as well as the ability to forage in the wilderness and handle animals.

So, planning an assassination or an ambush might involve a Learn challenge to discover information about the target or to find good spot, and a Move challenge to get there and remain undetected until the time to strike. Rescuing people from a collapsing bridge might require a Move challenge to physcially carry some people (children, the elderly, those too injured to move), a Persuade challenge to get the others to run in the right direction, and maybe a Learn challenge (in the practical application of knowledge sense) if the PCs are able to slow the collapse of the bridge by mechanical or magical means. As for competitions, I prefer to resolve them with opposed skill checks, ability checks or attack rolls, depending on the nature of the contest.

 

[Littimer]

This has been a very interesting post, and inspired me to write up an alternate system that I (hope) addresses many of the problems currently plaguing skill challenges. At the moment, I went the opposite direction from encouraging inaction to effectively mandating everyone act, but I'm still looking for a sweet spot between the two. Since the system tries to model skill challenges more off of monsters, perhaps by giving it hp equivalent to N-1 party members and then allowing one to sit out per round, assuming that all of the party participates in some way during it? Anyway, if you guys wouldn't mind giving it a look over, I would appreciate it.