Skill Challenges: Please stop

[WizarDru]

Saturday's game had a three-stage skill challenge, run mostly free-form, though using some skill challenges grabbed from around the intarwebs.

The session began with the players emerging from a chamber under the castle reserved for a guarded teleport circle. They were returning from a lengthy assignment and opened the door to the courtyard to see the castle in flames and panic everywhere. Before they could do much of anything, the entryway collapsed, leaving flaming rubble and debris blocking the only exit. The first stage of the challenge? To escape before burning to death or suffocating from the smoke.

A challenge beaten extremely quickly, as it happened. The party's illusionist eladrin asked to burn an action point and teleport the entire party 15 feet, which would put them in the courtyard. DING. Phase I beaten.

The party was now presented with chaos. The Lord Captain's house, the barracks and the infirmary tower were all aflame. Recruits were running around, unsure what to do. Guardsmen were locked in combat with...something? The air was smoky and visiblilty low. Worse, servants were trapped in one of the structures, yelling for help. The knight immediately took control of the situation and used Intimidate to organize a bucket brigade from the well. Only problem? No Buckets! That's where the rogue ran-off, using his Streetwise skill to retrieve as many as he could find and locate the quartermaster to help. Quickly they set about fighting the fire. Meanwhile, the Tiefling Warlock took advantage of her natural fire resistance to get inside the burning building, to try and calm and direct the trapped servants. Diplomacy, however, failed. After quickly joking that she could Bluff by saying that it was actually safer outside, she used Intimidate to send them running out the now-safe back entrance where the fire brigade was. Phase II - Partly Completed.

While they were doing this, the illusionist and shaman managed to catch of glimpse of the attackers: creatures called Madfire Elementals. Seeing that there were many and defenders were already engaging they made a perception and religion check to figure out how these creatures had breached the castle's magical defenses. Reasoning that it would have to be outside the castle walls and guessing a location using Nature to judge the origin of the fires, they quickly ran to the main entrance. Attempting to use a slide power to move one of the creatures and failing, they accepted Opportunity Attacks to reach the main portal and use Arcana to shut it down. Phase III completed.

The rest of the party managed to use Endurance and Athletics to rescue the patients from the Infirmary. The rogue retrieved ladders while the warlock leaped through the flames, jumping from building to building. The knight directed her team and they all helped carry the wounded. Then they caught up with the other two and the captain, while fighting one of the creatures, dispatched them to the village below. Phase II completed, Skill Challenge now beaten.

Consequence I: they saved the lives of a great number of the castle's servants and fellow guardsmen. By saving them, they also freed up the guard's half-fey phsyicker and senior guardsment to the fight, preserving most of the castle structures. This will have long-term affects.

Consequence II: because they managed to relieve the burden at the castle, the captain was able to spare more than just their squad to protect the village, effectively halving the difficulty of their next encounter, which was to fight and defeat a madfire elemental before it killed any villagers or burned down any structures. With a second squad of equal ability to take on the the other elemental, they were able to concentrate fire entirely on one and defeat it (and then help the other group finish theirs off).

It was a great deal of fun and we all enjoyed it.

 

[Kannik]

• Create a scenario with an abjective
• Make some notes on how the PCs could use their resources to achieve their objective
• Define meaningful consequences of success and failure
• Let the PCs decide what their actions are, you tell them the result
• Use the mechanic to figure out where they end up

Which is pretty much how I run my SCs. KD, this ought to also fall into your request of some actual in-play examples of SCs...

This was an ad-hoc on the fly skill challenge I created for my game this past Sunday:

The party of three was walking to the docks, when two humanoids jumped down from the rooftops above them and blinked the Monk/Priest and themselves out of existence. This left the Paladin and the Feylock gaping at what just happened. (what just happened was the Monk/Priest had been gated/teleported into a pocket dimension of shadow) I let the players react.

The Paladin scanned the area (perception) but could find nothing (poor die roll). The Feylock tasted the air… and tasted magic (arcana roll success). He could tell something was there, and with his help the paladin could see the shadow (no rolls, no successes). The feylock pulled out his special magic dagger (one that deals with teleportation, don’t remember the name ) and jammed it into the hovering shadow, attempting to wrench it open (arcana roll success +1 for cool idea). The paladin channeled one of his radiant encounter powers into the small gap made by the dagger (religion roll for paladin, arcana roll by feylock to guide it, +1 for great use of an encounter power), widening the gap and pulling himself in (second religion roll). The feylock followed with a teleport (arcana) and the battle was joined inside the pocket dimension (already in progress for the Monk/Priest).

So it looks like there were 8 successes and 1failure. Similar skills were rolled throughout (perception, religion, arcana) but each use was different, that is, they were called for by me in response to the actions the characters were taking, in this case, searching, tasting (a search of a different way), using a magic item in a way that made sense, using an encounter power that made sense and channeling the power against the shadow walls, climbing or teleporting into the shadow dimension. So it didn’t feel at all like the same skills were being used repetitively and boringly. The players were engaged and tense and excited, and felt a good accomplishment when successful. (and this was considering there were only two PCs participating at the time... I was happy myself it came off well, usually there are more participants)

I didn’t announce it was a skill challenge, and I put it together on the spot using the framework to get a sense of how long to let it go, how difficult to make it (I figured around 8 successes) and what DCs to set the skill checks (they were going against equal level opponents, sometimes what they were doing was either easy, med or hard). So I created a scenario and, in this case, adjudicated what the players said they were doing, sometimes calling for skill checks, sometimes just letting it be an auto success (or no success), and going for a certain number of success that was at least 7 and ended logically, and avoiding the 3 failures.

SCs I think have ended up as one of those rules frameworks that can be great or poor, depending on how they’re used in the moment. Which is why these threads are great – I’ve learned a lot from everyone’s great SC examples. }:>

Peace,

Kannik

 

[Raven Crowking]

I am jumping off this thread, because I don't think I have anything more to add.

I would like to thank everyone, though, for expanding my understanding of skill challenges, and for allowing me to actually appreciate some uses of them (which I did not before).

I would also like to thank the participants for the degree of rational, respectful discourse in the thread. Sometimes it might feel as though these threads are just bitching and moaning, or that they serve no value. Well, this thread has value for me, and will remain in my bookmarks. I expect to steal many future ideas from the Jester and others!

Again, thanks!


RC

 

[Iron Sky]

In our group we use a variety of skill challenges depending on the circumstance:

Climbing a cliff? Each player makes an individual Complexity 1/2 skill challenge to get up. People who complete theirs before other people can Aid Another to help people that haven't. Fail, you fall.

The thief is breaking into a house and sneaking past the guards? Individual skill challenge with a mix of Thievery, Stealth, Athletics, and attacks to breaking, sneak, climb things, and kill guards without setting off an alarm. Fail, you set of the alarm.

The party is on a disintegrating asteroid-sized ball of magma covered with ice in the Abyss and trying to get to the slowly collapsing tower(and planar gate inside) on the other side of it? Obsidian skill challenge.

Party is trying to hotwire the imperial magitech airship before the elite Dragoon squad that owns it comes back? A Complexity 2 Thievery/Arcana challenge. Fail, the Dragoons come back before its hotwired and you have to fight them.

I've also come up with my Composite Skill System to attempt to make skill challenges more interesting, if anyone is interested in checking it out.

 

[LostSoul]

I wonder if skill challenges work best when the obstacles faced and the results of actions are necessarily abstract.

Crossing a 50' wide raging river isn't abstract. You know how wide it is, you can set the current (by giving it a level and an attack modifier against Fort), and what will happen based on different actions is pretty obvious.

Climbing a cliff is easily covered by the Athletics skill and movement rates.

Wilderness travel is covered by a map.

On the other hand, combat is pretty abstract because we're not swinging swords at the table. I tend to think of social conflict being abstract on the DM's side because I don't always know - or rather, want to know - how a given NPC is going to react to a given PC's words or actions. (If the DM does know, it's not abstract and there's no reason for skill checks in the first place.)

If I were to say, "This forest hex is haunted; the forest is alive and wants to trap PCs within its twisted paths", and I don't have a map of the entire forest, I think I'd have to handle it in an abstract manner. I could see running a skill challenge that way.

Something like creating a magic item is also abstract since I don't know how magic works! A skill challenge could work.

Overland travel can be abstract if you don't have a map. If I know that crossing the Mountains of Dread is dangerous but I don't have a map of the mountains, I could see using a skill challenge.


Just a thought.

 

[surfarcher]

Just like you implied that I force my will on my players regardless of what they want. Thanks mate.

Hang on, here's how I saw it...

• I gave an example of how I ran a very small "SC" as a result of party actions.
• You said I overdid it and would have called things off as soon as 2 PCs got to the top of the cliff. That I was throwing in extra rolls and making them play through a mechanic they didn't want to play through. That it's like forcing a fight to finish even tho there's only 3 mionions on the board.
• I responded that it's what the group was intent on doing and they were being enthusiastic about that. I tried to make the point that "cutting it short" here would, effecively, be railroading.
• In retrospect I seem to have offended you at this point by asking a rhetorical question. That wasn't my intent and I unconditionally apologise for the inadvertant offense.
• You continued to indicate that I was forcing rolls on the players and invoked "railroading".
• I was mildly miffed at your response to my last post and it showed. Apologies again.

I guess you can't identify there but I can live with that. Let's just put it behind us.

The point is, all DMs force their will at points on their players and unless the DM does something really heavy handed, cutting a skill challenge short when it's obvious that with proper tactics, there is no reason for more skill rolls is no more heavy handed than continuing on with the skill challenge.

I think you see SCs as very hard and visible structures. As a simple tracking and accounting mechanic it can be very powerful for adlibbing and building the story on the fly.

You didn't like the way I made one or two rolls. Fine. Pretend they didn't happen. Go onto the skills, actions and whateverthat the PCs used. It's no big thing.

It's a tool. There was a dialog. We had fun. The PCs enjoyed it. At least I assume they enjoyed it based on the comments afterwards... Continuing comments. It was out of the box. The way I used the mechanic was a massive factor in stremlining and directing all of that.

Maybe we just need to agree to disagree on that one.

Yes, having additional skill checks will allow for additional dialog, but it's often mostly meaningless dialog. There's no deep discussion here at this point. There are no NPCs to have deep discussion with. The players had already solved the problem.

Overall the player's objective was to get behind expected enemies and surprise them. They employed certain things including skills but also other actions, such as the creative use of powers and out-of-the-box thinking, to achieve their successes.

TBH I don't know why you are so hooked up on the "skills" aspect. It's only on way to count a success or failure.

Yes, the players can tell jokes and have fun and maybe even solve some minor little additional obstacles that the DM continues to throw at them. But after the first two PCs got up to the top of the cliff, were the minor additional little obstacles really worth it to continue the skill portion of it?

Isn't it possible that some of the players felt at that point that it was basically over? That they had solved it? Was it necessary to have the last few climb rolls and "Opps, the dwarf fell and took 2D10 damage"?

As a player, I would say "Wait a second". There are 3 of us at the top of the cliff. We can lift without being encumbered 350+ pounds and lift with being encumbered 700+ pounds, but the 300 pound dwarf who has ropes tied to him and is assisting in his own climb is a problem?" To me, that's +15 to the climb skill per PC assisting and an auto-success mate.

Maybe. Maybe they could have been discarded. There was a stealth check and other actions after that that I could have used instead. Criticise my implementation if you like.

To be honest it really just seems you just aren't interested in the point I'm trying to make. That you want to be heard to the exclusion of any alternative.

And isn't it possible that getting to the next more important portion of the adventure would have been just as much fun or more fun for the players? Are you positive that "Nope, the players had more fun doing it my way" is actually true?

That might be true if I was driving it. But I wasn't. They were.

Cause I know that as a player, there sometimes becomes a point in the game where the "set up" to the real adventure is taking too long and I do just want to cut to the chase. This often happens for me when pedestrian things are happening like minor side discussions with unimportant NPCs is occurring, or when players are hashing out multiple ways to accomplish the same thing for a long time, or quite frankly, when the DM explains a skill challenge that seems like it's blown out of proportion or when the DM squeezes out the last few skill rolls for a skill challenge.

Sure. And there are times when you are in the middle of the adventure. Like when you are past the initial encounters in an outdoor adventure. And you decide to climb a cliff to surprise the next bad guys.

But you are obviously right. When they got to the top of the cliff and asked "What do we see?!? Is there a path leading that way?!?"

I should have said "Oh forget about that of course there's a path. You get around behind them and have surprise. Combat on!"

Obviously answerring "There's a ledge leading in that direction. What do you guys want to do?" was a horrible, terrible railroading thing to do.

The WotC skill challenge of making Nature rolls to walk less than 100 feet north through a woods was a prime example. The first level module actually stated word for word "Any time a character makes a skill check as part of a skill challenge, another character must simultaneously attempt a DC 15 Nature check. If the Nature check fails, the party loses its way and gains 1 failure." I stopped the DM mid-explanation and asked if it was really necessary to have a SC to walk through less than 100 feet of woods. Were we really going to get lost doing that? She more or less realized that just because the SC was in the adventure module didn't mean that it added to the gaming experience.

Walking 100 miles through a wood? Sure, the PCs can get lost. 100 feet???

I agree with you there.

It was unfortunate that such a BAD SC was in this module because this was a first time DM who didn't have the experience to realize a bad one from a good one. Not that all experienced DMs would have caught it either. I suspect a lot of experienced DMs played that SC exactly how it was written in the module. And a lot of DC 15 Nature skill rolls are bound to be missed at 1st level if the players have to roll Nature each time they roll a different skill, especially if nobody in the party trained the Nature skill. That's a terrible mechanic even if it was 100 miles through the woods.

I agree with you here too.

My opinion is that if WotC modules can have such blatantly bad SCs in them, that many ad hoc and designed SCs from DMs probably have elements in them which players scratch their heads over as well. Your example of forcing the last two PCs to roll the Climb checks when there is enough physical strength above them to just pull the PCs up (plus the PC is climbing as well) is just such an example. IMO.

As I said you can criticise my implementation all you like. It's unfortunate that you don't care to listen to what I am trying to say and instead picking at details. Some people are like that tho.

Another aspect of skill challenges is the "high level" pedestrian challenge. Is it really necessary to have any skill rolls for 10th level PCs to climb that same cliff? These PCs are local heroes. They have climbed half a dozen cliffs by the time they got to 10th level. As DM, a cliff is no longer a challenge. I don't even bother with rolls and I don't bother with an explanation by the players of how they are going to do it. The PCs just say that they are doing it and it's done.

But I suspect that because the skill challenge mechanism is in the game system, many DMs go out of their way to create the 10th level equivalent of the cliff climb challenge.

DM: "The rock on this cliff is really crumbly. It adds +5 DC to the normal climb roll."

I would never do that to my players. At 10th level, they have better things to do than a SC to get over a cliff. A cliff challenge is for low heroic tier.

Anyone who has done that hasn't read DMG2. Honestly. It's terrible.

I think the vast majority of challenges with skills can be handled via a few skill rolls and cut to the chase. Having said that, I do think that there are some elements that most good skill challenges have in common.

1) They have to involve all of the players. There should be at least 4 primary skills in them and the 4+ primary should be a mixture of at least two of the four types of physical, mental, awareness, and interactive skills.

...snip...

A lot of good stuff in there. But I honestly think you've missed the boat in using the mechanic as a tracking mechanic.

Keep using your big SCs in the way you've described. You have a good handle on that aspect. When your mind is open to being more flexible to using the mechanic as a tracking and accounting tool that is a great help with adlibbing I'm here waiting to talk to you about it.

I'll be switch to lurk mode on this one soon folks.

 

[KarinsDad]

I guess you can't identify there but I can live with that.

...

I think you see SCs as very hard and visible structures.

...

To be honest it really just seems you just aren't interested in the point I'm trying to make. That you want to be heard to the exclusion of any alternative.

...

But you are obviously right. <snip sarcasm>

...

It's unfortunate that you don't care to listen to what I am trying to say and instead picking at details. Some people are like that tho.

...

When your mind is open to being more flexible to using the mechanic as a tracking and accounting tool that is a great help with adlibbing I'm here waiting to talk to you about it.

I didn't realize that I was the subject of the discussion.

The word "you" can be overused, just like skill challenges.

 

[wedgeski]

[MENTION=2011]KarinsDad[/MENTION] and [MENTION=84774]surfarcher[/MENTION], please drop it? This has been a great thread, let's not book-end it with a pissing match.

 

[Balesir]

I wonder if skill challenges work best when the obstacles faced and the results of actions are necessarily abstract.

Crossing a 50' wide raging river isn't abstract. You know how wide it is, you can set the current (by giving it a level and an attack modifier against Fort), and what will happen based on different actions is pretty obvious.

Climbing a cliff is easily covered by the Athletics skill and movement rates.

Wilderness travel is covered by a map.

[snippage]

This is an interesting conjecture, but I think I would modify/detail it a bit as follows:

"Skill Challenges are useful where you have no map that adequately represents the difficulties the characters will face".

As an example, I can have a topographical map of a swamp or forest, but that does nothing to indicate precisely how the view that travellers get from the ground while traversing it misleads and confuses them into wandering off course. The social case is clear, since mostly we don't have 'maps' of the phsychological "terrain" that must be navigated to 'win' the situation. Climbing a cliff is also pretty banal if the map just says "this is cliff face" when real cliff faces present a whole array of difficulties to select a route through.

For hybrid cases, running Skill Challenges on a grid with tasks required at various locations (whatever these might represent) seems a good option. Monstro, on the Wizards Community site, has written a nice blog about doing just this.

 

[That Darn DM]

First post here, so here goes.

I, myself, are against skill checks in general, because I enjoy the theatrics and role-playing that it creates, but I do understand someone who does not enjoy the idea of role-playing every single encounter. I'm in a Legend of the 5 Rings game right now, and I know nothing of the setting and the game requires a seriously proactive style of play, where role-playing and reading up about a person's role in Rokugan society is instrumental to his success in the game. I'm not comfortable with everything I say, but my DM can see the effort and the sometimes "zen" moments I have.

Drawing back to the first reply to this thread, about the "Barbarian played by a car salesman" I think that is a very weak conclusion. I don't think a player should be punished for merely rolling dice, but I don't think a player should be rewarded either. There's no effort or thinking in rolling dice. I do think if said "car salesman" is not playing his Barbarian properly, he should not be rewarded either.

Players should only be rewarded when that 20 appears, when they are clever, or when they work together. If it does not fall into any of these three occurrences, then Mr. Car Salesman shouldn't receive any reward. This isn't what the argument has roamed to, I understand, I just wanted to get that out of the way from the get go, but to be fair, I understand where that poster was coming from and I think if a person is not comfortable getting into the role, they shouldn't have to. If they think of something clever and say it detached from the role to the DM, such as:

"I mention the bandits we slain to the guard a month ago."

Things like that, coupled with skill checks should get rewarded (such as a bonus to skill checks; and role-playing with skill checks can be an answer as well, whatever feels comfortable), but the effort still needs to be there. Lack of trying and relying on numbers is what really breaks the game for me.

About the Skill Checks system in general: I still haven't seen a skill system that really makes me jump with joy, but 4e's is pretty much the best I've seen. Granted, most of it is from the Star Wars game, but not a bad thing, and this skill challenge idea is a welcome original.

If I ran a 4e game, I would think the best way to use the Skill Challenge system would definitely be the above "abstract" ideal largely taking into account the fourth dimension (*Snort* Nerd joke... since it's 4e with the 4d... what?). When passages of time are detrimental to know--fill your own situation here--that's when I see this system really shining. Otherwise, I think it really would be a good excuse for those DMs that want to aid the players in moving a game along or when dice don't like them.

"Roll"

"I got a 3"

"Uh, skill challenge, you get two more chances."

It's the archaic "Best two out of three" joke, but it works.