Doh! Killed my party with a skill challenge

[robus]

I guess I’m confused as to why the DC for every check is identical? I would say that if you could have varied the DC (or sometimes been able to give advantage that might have helped. And I have to say a 10 : 3 ratio is pretty long odds with random rolls at DC 15! Why so many successes required?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I like Skill Challenges quite a bit. I experimented with porting 4e’s directly, but ultimately decided to do them as chained 5e group checks. For example:

The party has to run through a trapped room. I might start with a perception/investigation/arcana check to spot the magic runes.

Success/Failure on that would in turn lead to an athletics/acrobatics check to not get sucked into the portals that open up.

That in turn chains to a history/investigation check to determine where the heck they are, now that they’ve been transported somewhere?

I did a recent “exploding dungeon” where the PCs had to race to get out of a sinking airship. I did just two group checks there. One to run out of the ship and another to jump for the nearby docks. The problem I found with requiring too many skill check rolls in a row is that it starts to lose tension after a certain point. But for any tension to exist in the first place, they need to know the stakes, the fail condition – whether it’s 5e’s or 4e’s system at work.

 

[cmad1977]

Skill challenges are awful.

 

[Nagol]

Skill Challenges are problematic. The success probability is unintuitive and often much lower than people's gut feel. The original 4e skill challenge mechanic was terrible in this regard and the original example compounded the problem by adding auto-fail conditions to some tactics. Later on, I'm told the mechanic got improved, but the underlying problem that humans don't think in Markov chains remains.

 

[5ekyu]

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?

i recall that video and came away thinking "nope" myself but hey...

At the start in my 5e game i setup that we would resolve any extended task with a three-way or trios save race to three just like how death saves are handled except that actual skills and such are involved.

Since i also establish that the definition of failure in the PHB for ability checks will be used - and so i can as Gm decide any failed skill roll is still "some progress with setbck" that leaves a lot of room for how things pan out in the race to three. I myself have not seen any real gain in going mix-n-match on the number of successes thing, given the difficulty, types of skills, time for each check and so forth are all variable... i mean at some point you do need some part of your resolution system to be a foundation the rest is built-on right?

So, i lock down that we will resolve with the race to three and then let the other variables be the way the specifics of the event play into the scenes.

FYI - back in the days of VtM 1st ed, they used task checks with all three of the following varying by task:
Number of dice rolled.
Threshold on each die needed for success
Number of wins needed for "success".

that made for a very frankly busted system where at times the very broken math got in the way.

You really need one element of your resolution process to be locked down as a foundation IMO for the system to be playable with reasonable play, IMO. otherwise you get surprised more than you would like, in my experience.

In play in 5e this has worked out great. Each paretial success gives them a lead, often failures are "you get farther but now that is a tapped resource and you have to look elsewhere or try something else - different skill" so the resreach got you only so far at the church but it did lead you to the options of a hermit or the larger library in another town or maybe some ancient caves nearby to try for more answers.

 

[Kobold Boots]

Opinion:

Group has five players. DC 15 can be rough at low levels.

10 successes before 5 failures. With each failure one of the PCs is captured OR preferably, you run an actual combat encounter. If they pass the combat encounter they eliminate the failure but still need the rest of the successes. You can replace the combat encounter with some other riddle or task.

My recommendations for skill challenges is the same for developing plot. Go ahead as vaguely as you can and let the conditions that develop determine the path.

 

[Retreater]

I guess I’m confused as to why the DC for every check is identical? I would say that if you could have varied the DC (or sometimes been able to give advantage that might have helped. And I have to say a 10 : 3 ratio is pretty long odds with random rolls at DC 15! Why so many successes required?

I guess because that was what had been recommended before? And due to having 5 characters, it would give each player a chance to have a few rolls and draw it out to seem more important and involved? Maybe 7 would've been a better number?

 

[iserith]

If you're looking for some kind of structure to a non-combat challenge, I would do it this way:

Frame the scene and the overarching goal. Hopefully that goal is actually based on what the players described they wanted to do. Talk about what success and failure look like to make sure everyone's on the same page with regard to the stakes.

Then present a number of specific complications that arise while trying to achieve the overarching goal. For a shorter challenge, make it one complication per PC. For a long one, make it two complications per PC. Describe the complication to a specific player and ask what his or her character does to overcome it. Adjudicate as per the normal D&D 5e process - automatic success, automatic failure, or an ability check. The DM should not call for an ability check every single time unless the player's approach to the goal warrants it! The player should also not ask to make a check, but describe what he or she wants to do to overcome the complication in a reasonably specific way. The DC should be based on the player's reasonably specific approach to the goal, not an abstract number the DM came up with beforehand.

When the PCs have faced all of the complications, then tally up the number they've overcome and the number they've failed to overcome. If they succeeded at the majority of them, then they achieve the goal and earn whatever is set forth in the victory conditions. If they failed to succeed at a majority of the complications, they get whatever is laid out for defeat conditions. Progress combined with a setback is the DM's friend in the defeat conditions - the PCs achieve the goal, but it costs them something. The DM can get a little fancier with this part too and set up graduated success and failure. Perhaps success on all complications achieves the goal plus the PCs get a boon of some kind. More successes than failure simply achieves the overarching goal. More failures than successes is progress combined with a setback or cost. All failures and no successes is utter failure plus a big cost. Or something like that.

 

[robus]

I guess because that was what had been recommended before? And due to having 5 characters, it would give each player a chance to have a few rolls and draw it out to seem more important and involved? Maybe 7 would've been a better number?

The key is to keep the ratio number of successes to failures somewhat balanced (or even have more failures allowed than successes). Too many successes required over failures is a recipe for disaster There's a reason why the death saves are balanced between success and failure.

Anyway, the skill challenge (IMHO) is best reserved for some non-lethal difficult task. A great example was in a recent episode of Critical Role where they had to navigate a ship through a series of treacherous reefs, a few of the party had various tasks (steering, navigating, fending off, plugging leaks) etc but there was no chance that the party would die if they failed, just that they would lose their ship and have a new set of challenges (perhaps sharks, perhaps a long swim, perhaps being stuck on a desert island). The point is, life and death skill challenges are tricky to pull off, much better to run things narratively and throw what you want at them as they try to escape. Things going south? Stop/slow down throwing stuff at them. Things going to easy, pile the difficulties on. You need to remain in control rather than the dice

 

[Shadowdweller00]

So...just something to keep in mind: At level 6, the max skill bonus a non-rogue or bard will likely have is +7. If the DC is consistently 15, then the chance of failing is 35%. Which means that MORE THAN HALF THE TIME, with maximum skills, your party will get the 3 fails before they succeed 10 times. In practice, several PCs are likely to make attempts even WITHOUT optimal skills...meaning that the chance of success falls even more. If the price of failure is TPK, I might suggest you improve the odds a bit in the PCs' favor...or provide them with options (e.g. aiding each other for advantage or something) for improving their luck.