D&D 5E 5e Skill Challenge help

[Tony Vargas]

Well Wave Echo Cave is a pretty huge area, they will have to long rest at some point. Probably not in the cave though.

Hey, they could use L. Tiny Hut! (sorry, 'nuther thread)

 

[Nebulous]

Hey, they could use L. Tiny Hut! (sorry, 'nuther thread)

Aww Lordy. Yeah i've been in that thread. They're only 4th level and don't have that cheese yet lol

 

[Ovinomancer]

Skill challenges require clear success and failure conditions. What's the fail condition here?

 

[Nebulous]

At the very end of the skill challenge? It depends on the challenge itself. For the bandits playing nice, the PCs will get some loot stolen before they're aware of it. For the flashflood, they'll get swept downstream and lose some gear and/or gain exhaustion. For the giant, they might have to fight him or run away and take another much longer route.

 

[Ovinomancer]

At the very end of the skill challenge? It depends on the challenge itself. For the bandits playing nice, the PCs will get some loot stolen before they're aware of it. For the flashflood, they'll get swept downstream and lose some gear and/or gain exhaustion. For the giant, they might have to fight him or run away and take another much longer route.

Those aren't really skill challenges, though. Good scenarios, but not great skill challenges.

For a travel skill challenge, you need an overall goal for the challenge, like arrive before the enemy reinforces, or arrive healthy enough to do the thing. Ie, a goal that can be failed. Then you can list some consequences for failures as a guide and go to the challenge. An opening problem is necessary, then you follow the fiction. Successes move the fiction towards the goal, failures away. Use your complication prep as fodder to feed new problems to be dealt with if a fictional line stagnates. Feel free to use a combat as a complication , but establish a goal for the fight rather than hp elimination so you can sub it in for a success or failure.

 

[Nebulous]

Those aren't really skill challenges, though. Good scenarios, but not great skill challenges.

For a travel skill challenge, you need an overall goal for the challenge, like arrive before the enemy reinforces, or arrive healthy enough to do the thing. Ie, a goal that can be failed. Then you can list some consequences for failures as a guide and go to the challenge. An opening problem is necessary, then you follow the fiction. Successes move the fiction towards the goal, failures away. Use your complication prep as fodder to feed new problems to be dealt with if a fictional line stagnates. Feel free to use a combat as a complication , but establish a goal for the fight rather than hp elimination so you can sub it in for a success or failure.

Well, I don't know. Like I said I'm not good at skill challenges and only did a couple in 4e. All I can think of is that at the end of 3 days the group will be too weak to take on the lost cave, but they would just wait a few days and heal up with long rests. Unless I tell them there's nowhere comfortable to rest and get hit points and exhaustion back, but i've never done that to them in the wilderness thus far.

This was also just a way for me to test the waters with a 5e skill challenge. They aren't under any particular time pressure to get there. Although the longer they take the more time Venomfang the dragon has to attack Phandalin. But they don't know about that.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well, I don't know. Like I said I'm not good at skill challenges and only did a couple in 4e. All I can think of is that at the end of 3 days the group will be too weak to take on the lost cave, but they would just wait a few days and heal up with long rests. Unless I tell them there's nowhere comfortable to rest and get hit points and exhaustion back, but i've never done that to them in the wilderness thus far.

This was also just a way for me to test the waters with a 5e skill challenge. They aren't under any particular time pressure to get there. Although the longer they take the more time Venomfang the dragon has to attack Phandalin. But they don't know about that.

And what you have is good stuff, it's just not a skill challenge. If you think of a skill challenge as achieving a goal that requires multiple successes, you're on the right track. If, however, you can't think of the fail state, then a skill challenge will not work well because it'll have no teeth. From what you say, there's not much to hang a skill challenge on. However, what you do have is good -- a series of interesting vingettes to liven up travel.

 

[Tony Vargas]

. If, however, you can't think of the fail state, then a skill challenge will not work well because it'll have no teeth.

Even a failed SC shouldn't grind to a halt, but 'fail forward' - advance the campaign in some way.
Each of the three above certainly has an obvious consequence for failure - getting robbed, caught in a flash flood, or caught by a giant out of their league.

 

[Davinshe]

I'll add here, that if you bring in the injury rules described in the DMG, that can be a great way to provide consequences for a failure in a skill challenge that takes several days since it provides a consequence that can last more than a single day. If the group is forced to go through an entire dungeon with penalties due to injuries they suffered while traveling to the dungeon then those challenges feel meaningful.

 

[Nebulous]

I'll add here, that if you bring in the injury rules described in the DMG, that can be a great way to provide consequences for a failure in a skill challenge that takes several days since it provides a consequence that can last more than a single day. If the group is forced to go through an entire dungeon with penalties due to injuries they suffered while traveling to the dungeon then those challenges feel meaningful.

I'm not familiar with the injury rules in the DMG, I've never used them. I'm more inclined to use the Exhaustion rules. I already use those for when a player drops to zero hp in combat. So lingering effects like Exhaustion are something that causes them fear, it takes time to get rid of it, unlike healing hp.