My 4e campaign is in a bit of a rest and recuperation period after a big campaign arc (starting at 1st level) came to an end with the PCs at 16th level.
In the downtime, the players have been planning their next move(s), tying up loose ends, buying and making new equipment, planning the renovation of the temple of Erathis that they are re-founding, etc.
One interesting part of this, for me, has been running a number of complexity 1 skill challenges to resolve the various situations that have been coming up in the course of this.
To renovate their temple, the PCs first had to repossessit from the wererats currently occupying it. I had statted up the wererats who had taken it over, but he players decided to have their PCs bring a legal action rather than exercising self-help. I resolved this as a quick complexity 1 (4/3) skill challenge.
It was pretty clear that the PCs would win the court case - they'd already undertaken legal research, and the wizard/invoker had rolled 44 for the History check to draft the pleadings - but resolving the challenge was still quite interesting. The players had to make some choices about how their PCs argued the matter, and there was one failure (maybe 2? I can't remember) resulting in an interesting complication - the Patriach of Bahamut who was hearing the matter decided to set aside the transfer of title to the wererats on the grounds that the Baronial advisor who had authorised it was a traitor at the time, and therefore his administrative actions were legal nullities. This was what the players and their PCs wanted - but the Patriarch also explained his reasoning in these terms, that he was sure the Baron would not have agreed to the transfer, had he known that his advisor was duping him, and was in fact a traitor building up a subversive nest of wererats.
Given that there was already an undercurrent of power struggle between Baron and Patriarch in which the PCs have been caught up, and give that the Baron is currently in a state of collapse from nervous exhaustion, and given that at least until now the PCs have been more closely associated with the Baron than the Patriarch, this way of framing the resolution of the legal matter had political implications that they didn't like.
Another skill challenge was used for recruting some thugs the PCs had dealt with a few levels ago as temple guards. (The player of the wizard-invoker PC had been planning this for some time.)
Another thing that had been planned for some time, by the player of the dwarf fighter-cleric, was to have his dwarven smiths reforge Whelm - a dwarven thrower warhammer artefact (originally from White Plume Mountain) - into Overwhelm, the same thing but as a morenkrad (the character is a two-hander specialist). And with this break from adventure he finally had he chance.
Again I adjudicated it as a complexity 1 (4 before 3) skill challenge. The fighter-cleric had succeeded at Dungeoneering (the closest in 4e to an engineering skill) and Diplomacy (to keep his dwarven artificers at the forge as the temperature and magical energies rise to unprecedented heights). The wizard had succeeded at Arcana (to keep the magical forces in check). But the fighter-cleric failed his Religion check - he was praying to Moradin to help with the process, but it wasn't enough. So he shoved his hands into the forge and held down the hammer with brute strength! (Successful Endurance against a Hard DC.) His hands were burned and scarred, but the dwarven smiths were finally able to grab the hammer head with their tongs, and then beat and pull it into its new shape.
The wizard then healed the dwarf PC with a Remove Affliction (using Fundamental Ice as the material component), and over the course of a few weeks the burns healed. (Had the Endurance check failed, things would have played out much the same, but I'd decided that the character would feel the pang of the burns again whenever he picked up Overwhelm.)
In running this particular challenge, I was the one who called for the Dungeoneering and Diplomacy checks. It was the players who initiated the other checks. In particular, the player of the dwarf PC realised that while his character is not an artificer, he is the toughtest dwarf around. This is what led him to say "I want to stick my hands into the forge and grab Whelm. Can I make an Endurance check for that?" An unexpected manoeuvre!
Our most recent session ended on another one of these small skill challenges. The PCs had recovered an enemy wizard's spellbook, and it had Leomund's Secret Chest in it. Which immediately prompted them to try and recover the enemy's chest! (Which I should have foreseen, but hadn't.)
The wizard PC performed the ritual, but with the very Bluff-y sorcerer PC pretending to be the other wizard (wearing his robe, sitting on his flying carpet, reading from his spellbook, gazing into his crystal ball, etc). I can't remember the precise sequence of checks - Arcana and Bluff were both involved - there were failures, and so the PCs found themselves talking to a sphinx through the crystal ball, posing a riddle which (it said) they would be able to answer were they the wizard they were claiming to be. (I went with the sphinx because (i) I'd already been thinking about trying to bring in a sphinx somehow, and had even brought a riddle book to the session, and (ii) it seemed to fit as a guardian for a powerful Vecna-cultist wizard's secret chest.)
After puzzlilng over the riddle for a bit, I mentioned to the player of the sorcerer that he could probably use Slaad's Gambit to teleport himself and the wizard through the crystal ball to just fight the sphinx. The sorcerer player leapt at this opportunity - and we will run the combat next session.
I'm still finding that the skill challenge mechanic isn't as bad as it is often said to be.
In the downtime, the players have been planning their next move(s), tying up loose ends, buying and making new equipment, planning the renovation of the temple of Erathis that they are re-founding, etc.
One interesting part of this, for me, has been running a number of complexity 1 skill challenges to resolve the various situations that have been coming up in the course of this.
To renovate their temple, the PCs first had to repossessit from the wererats currently occupying it. I had statted up the wererats who had taken it over, but he players decided to have their PCs bring a legal action rather than exercising self-help. I resolved this as a quick complexity 1 (4/3) skill challenge.
It was pretty clear that the PCs would win the court case - they'd already undertaken legal research, and the wizard/invoker had rolled 44 for the History check to draft the pleadings - but resolving the challenge was still quite interesting. The players had to make some choices about how their PCs argued the matter, and there was one failure (maybe 2? I can't remember) resulting in an interesting complication - the Patriach of Bahamut who was hearing the matter decided to set aside the transfer of title to the wererats on the grounds that the Baronial advisor who had authorised it was a traitor at the time, and therefore his administrative actions were legal nullities. This was what the players and their PCs wanted - but the Patriarch also explained his reasoning in these terms, that he was sure the Baron would not have agreed to the transfer, had he known that his advisor was duping him, and was in fact a traitor building up a subversive nest of wererats.
Given that there was already an undercurrent of power struggle between Baron and Patriarch in which the PCs have been caught up, and give that the Baron is currently in a state of collapse from nervous exhaustion, and given that at least until now the PCs have been more closely associated with the Baron than the Patriarch, this way of framing the resolution of the legal matter had political implications that they didn't like.
Another skill challenge was used for recruting some thugs the PCs had dealt with a few levels ago as temple guards. (The player of the wizard-invoker PC had been planning this for some time.)
Another thing that had been planned for some time, by the player of the dwarf fighter-cleric, was to have his dwarven smiths reforge Whelm - a dwarven thrower warhammer artefact (originally from White Plume Mountain) - into Overwhelm, the same thing but as a morenkrad (the character is a two-hander specialist). And with this break from adventure he finally had he chance.
Again I adjudicated it as a complexity 1 (4 before 3) skill challenge. The fighter-cleric had succeeded at Dungeoneering (the closest in 4e to an engineering skill) and Diplomacy (to keep his dwarven artificers at the forge as the temperature and magical energies rise to unprecedented heights). The wizard had succeeded at Arcana (to keep the magical forces in check). But the fighter-cleric failed his Religion check - he was praying to Moradin to help with the process, but it wasn't enough. So he shoved his hands into the forge and held down the hammer with brute strength! (Successful Endurance against a Hard DC.) His hands were burned and scarred, but the dwarven smiths were finally able to grab the hammer head with their tongs, and then beat and pull it into its new shape.
The wizard then healed the dwarf PC with a Remove Affliction (using Fundamental Ice as the material component), and over the course of a few weeks the burns healed. (Had the Endurance check failed, things would have played out much the same, but I'd decided that the character would feel the pang of the burns again whenever he picked up Overwhelm.)
In running this particular challenge, I was the one who called for the Dungeoneering and Diplomacy checks. It was the players who initiated the other checks. In particular, the player of the dwarf PC realised that while his character is not an artificer, he is the toughtest dwarf around. This is what led him to say "I want to stick my hands into the forge and grab Whelm. Can I make an Endurance check for that?" An unexpected manoeuvre!
Our most recent session ended on another one of these small skill challenges. The PCs had recovered an enemy wizard's spellbook, and it had Leomund's Secret Chest in it. Which immediately prompted them to try and recover the enemy's chest! (Which I should have foreseen, but hadn't.)
The wizard PC performed the ritual, but with the very Bluff-y sorcerer PC pretending to be the other wizard (wearing his robe, sitting on his flying carpet, reading from his spellbook, gazing into his crystal ball, etc). I can't remember the precise sequence of checks - Arcana and Bluff were both involved - there were failures, and so the PCs found themselves talking to a sphinx through the crystal ball, posing a riddle which (it said) they would be able to answer were they the wizard they were claiming to be. (I went with the sphinx because (i) I'd already been thinking about trying to bring in a sphinx somehow, and had even brought a riddle book to the session, and (ii) it seemed to fit as a guardian for a powerful Vecna-cultist wizard's secret chest.)
After puzzlilng over the riddle for a bit, I mentioned to the player of the sorcerer that he could probably use Slaad's Gambit to teleport himself and the wizard through the crystal ball to just fight the sphinx. The sorcerer player leapt at this opportunity - and we will run the combat next session.
I'm still finding that the skill challenge mechanic isn't as bad as it is often said to be.
