I thought I saw "A skill challenge shouldn't be something that can be resolved in a single check, Instant Friends resolves something with a single check, therefore anything it resolves shouldn't have been a skill challenge."
Ok, let's rephrase that a bit for what I'm actually saying:
-A Skill Challenge shouldn't be something that can be resolved in a single check.
-Any challenge that Instant Friends can actually solve on its own is a situation that already is simple enough it would have been more appropriate as a single Diplomacy check than a Skill Challenge.
The party must convince a suspicious, unfriendly merchant, to allow them to secretly accompany his carravan, so they can draw out the band of brigands they're after. The merchant has a rival thinks this could be a plot of his to sabotage his business, and doesn't believe in the threat the brigains pose. The players must provide proof that the threat is real, that they can handle it, and that they aren't in the pay of his rival. But, if one of the adventureres is a trusted friend - no problem!
No problem... bringing along that trusted friend. In a normal skill challenge, would each PC have to convince the merchant of their worth? Why wouldn't that be the same case here - a free success or two as the Wizard becomes his friend, but the rest of the challenge remains for the rest of the party. After all, a trusted friend simply vouching for the rest would be asking the merchant to bring along 4-5 possible saboteurs on a valuable caravan trip... and thus, asking him to 'risk his property', which Instant Friends doesn't do.
Also, 1d4 hours later, he kicks them all out of the Caravan.
The party must convince a very powerful, capricious fey to tell them of a secret way into a castle in the feywild - and, incidentally, not kill them as it is sadistic when bored. The DM intends that the party find ways to 'entertain' the creature (intimidate to tell a scary ghost story, bluff to tell a hillarious joke, accrobatics to juggle, etc), amusing it enough that it wants to see what will happen should they get inside. But, hey if it likes and trusts one of the characters...
Information gathering does seem to be the strong part of the power. I'd imagine the challenge would become convincing the fey to
let the wizard leave - a sadistic, powerful and capricious fey might want to hold on to his newfound friend, rather than let it go off into danger. So now they have to entertain him just to get him to let their friend
go.
Also, this seems like the sort of place where Instant Friends could be really dangerous to use. The risk of the fey saving against it, recognizing what you've done, and being upset would seem pretty significant.
the party needs information about the criminal underground, and they have a snitch in custody. But, he's terrified - of the PCs, the crime boss, just about everything, really. The PCs must not just convince him of their sincerity and he rightness of talking, but convince him they can protect him. If only they had someone he trusted....
...they wouldn't have any benefit at all. You've already said the core of the challenge is that he fears telling them anything could get him killed. Instant Friends specifically says you can't ask your friend to risk his life. The challenge remains the same - convince him that helping you
isn't a risk. Maybe the power gets you a success or some bonuses, but letting it win the challenge is outright ignoring how it works.
The party needs access to the archives of a temple. The archivist is a cranky fellow at best, and strongly disaproves of adventurers on general principle, prefering the company of his friends in the local intelligencia (with whom he often trades rare books). But, he's known to be susceptible to bribery and curiosity, both. He also has the temple's Avenger guards to defend him if anyone tries anything. The DM envisions a series of diplomacy or bluff checks, a cash bribe, maybe even a side quest to acquire a rare book, in return for what they need.
If the Avenger guards are around, I imagine they'll get upset when they see the party enchant their boss.
But, actually, this feels like one of those flawed skill challenges I talked about earlier. The goal is too simple. What happens if they simply present him with a forged note from his superiors to let them pass? What happens if they disguise themselves as people with access, and just walk in? Use a ritual or power to find an unwatched way in?
The fact the DM is already ok with the PCs bypassing the challenge by turning over some money is - at least to me - a sign this doesn't need to be a full skill challenge in the first place. Make a Hard diplomacy check, or an Average bluff check, or give him some cash, or go on a minor quest for a book. This just doesn't seem robust enough as it is to need the full framework of a challenge.
The party is taken prisoner by the kobold minions of a dragon, and taken before it as 'sacrifices.' The kobolds obey the dragon unquestioningly, so only the Dragon's opinion of the adventurers matters. The party needs to escape with their skins, but the dragon is canny and untrusting, by nature, but greedy. It might be prevailed upon to let the party go in return for a sufficient bribe and more to come, if it can be convinced to trust them.
We again run into the risk of trying and failing to enchant a powerful creature that has your life in its hands. But beyond that - again, the dragon will probably gladly release its friend the Wizard. But it certainly won't freely turn over its property (the other PCs) to him! It might lower the asking price for them, but they'll still need to convince it to let everyone else go, and that the rest of the group can be trusted.
The party come accross a village that has been raised to the ground. There is one terrified, near-catatonic survivor, a small child. He knows who destroyed the village, what powers they used, and where they headed. But, he is far too terrified to so much as converse, and everyone he knew or trusted died before his eyes. The DM envisions a series of heal checks to help the boy recover physical, social checks to win his trust, and a key History check or two to come up with facts about the village that might make them seem more familiar and normal to him, snapping him out of it enough to answer their questions.
And so Instant Friends will bypass the social checks needed. There is no reason why you wouldn't still need the Heal checks, along with knowledge checks to direct the questions where you want them to go.
OK, so there's a few samples.
And, in general, I think they show why you are overestimating the danger of this power. The big things to keep in mind:
-Only lasts 1d4 hours.
-Subject won't risk life or property.
-Only makes the caster the friend, not the rest of the party.
Most challenges involve something that goes beyond those requirements.
From the above examples, only two seem like Instant Friends could actually solve them. One of them, the archivist, seems readily bypassable in plenty of other ways. So that just leaves the fey - a situation where using Instant Friends is risky, and the DM has options to alter the skill challenge is they really want it to happen.
In the end, I
do still think there are challenges it can help with, mainly information gathering ones. But in most cases, I think 'help' is the operative word - I see few where it will resolve
everything the challenge needs, rather than simply help with some portion of it.
Now, it is true that a utility like Arcane Gate can bypass a skill challenge like "climbing to the top of a 50' cliff while being harrassed by stirges." But, it /is/ a 10th level utility, and climbing a modest distance isn't exactly a challenge for most 10th level characters, anyway. Similarly, a 'trek across a desert' might be trivialized by a high-level, expensive, teleportation ritual.
I don't know. Is the difference between 2nd and 10th level that extreme? Should many movement based challenged be made obsolete by the wizard? Note that in this scenarios, Arcane Gate is typically automatic and much more universal at helping the party. That almost seems worse, to me, than Instant Friends, which is a
chance at suceeding, and is closely enough tied to the Wizard that it won't always help the rest of the party.
Social challenges, though, happen at all levels. From negotiating with a petty official of a small town at 1st, to interceding with a Deity over the fate of worlds at 30th. They're not the kind of thing that should be obviated by a low-level ritual.
Instead, they should be obviated by a Bard with an absurdly high Diplomacy score and Words of Friendship.
Seriously, though. Any challenge that is just about talking nicely to someone is too simple in the first place. There has to be some reason the challenge doesn't just end after a few Diplomacy checks. And all those non-Diplomacy relevant skills should usually still be relevant even with Instant Friends in play.
Also, good luck enchanting a god and not having that backfire in your face.
depending on how the DM read the power that day, and how argumentative the player wanted to get. (Groups are like any other set of personal relationships, sometimes, you choose your battles). Clear rules avoid such problems.
-Only lasts 1d4 hours.
-Subject won't risk life or property.
-Only makes the caster the friend, not the rest of the party.
Clearly written restrictions within the power itself. If a DM ignores them or rules inconsistenly on them, fair enough, but I don't think you can blame the power for that.
I hope to see Instant Friends errata'd to modify a Diplomacy check or provide an automatic success on diplomacy or something else in keeping with the general power and precedents of lowest-level utilities.
Honest, I'd simply like to see it a level 6 power instead of level 2. That would fit more with my own sense of balance. I don't think the actual capability of it is unreasonable in the game, but is a bit much at level 2 compared to some other options. I'd hate to see it just become another small skill-based thing - honestly, I've found
those are harder to reliably tell how it will work from one DM to the next.
