D&D 5E 5e Skill Challenge help

[Ovinomancer]

Even a failed SC shouldn't grind to a halt, but 'fail forward' - advance the campaign in some way.

Well, sure, I wasn't suggesting that a failed SC end the campaign. Failure of the goal of the skill challenge is required, though.

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.

And if each was it's own skill challenge with the goal to be not robbed -- escape the flash flood, or avoid a deadly combat (respectively) -- then they'd be good individual skill challenges. These failures don't stand in for an overall failure, though, because the end goal of arriving at the destination isn't failed or compromised. This is why I asked what the fail state was -- what overall goal is being achieved through the skill challenge and what does failing that look like. As it stands, there isn't one.

Again, the presented scenarios are good stuff for vignettes to liven up travel. They don't add up to a skill challenge, though.

 

[Quickleaf]

I've had most success with skill challenges when I think of them as specific types of challenges (omit the "skill" part), not a one size fits all mechanic. By specific I mean NOT excessively abstracted, which was often the case with 4e's implementation.

With that in mind, let's look at your overall situation & each of your proposed challenges.

Here's the setup: the PCs will be traveling overland from Cragmaw Castle to find Wave Echo Cave, led by Reidoth the druid (NPC). It's roughly 8 to 10 hexes away, 40-50 miles. I normally roll random encounters, but I want to eschew that idea and instead do THREE challenges: Easy, Medium and Hard (DCs 10, 15 and 20 respectively). I thought I would do a social encounter, a hazard encounter and a combat encounter (Easy, Medium and Hard respectively).

The overall situation is that you want to run a resource attrition scenario during their 3-days travel. The challenges you've written may foreshadow things to come, but they seem primarily concerned with stripping the PCs of gear, Hit Dice, and/or imposing Exhaustion. Be aware that many modern players tire and/or get frustrated quickly with resource attrition scenarios; one way to ameliorate this is to introduce opportunities for them to gain something (information, gear, blessings) during their travel.

Easy (social) The PCs are near the Triboar Trail and camping for the night when a group of travelers join them. The travelers are actually bandits and will lull the PCs into trusting them so they can be robbed, pickpocketed, etc. (4 successes before 3 failures). How are some ways that this can play out in real time as the players use skill rolls? I am VERY rusty at challenges and forgot how to make these things flow well.

You need to establish what those 4 successes and 3 failures represent exactly – too often skill challenges break down because they lack specific context.

Sounds like the successes should be incremental hints that the travelers are actually disguised bandits. The couple hints should NOT immediately scream "they're bandits"; instead, there should be multiple possible explanations that get whittled down as the players gain more hints. For instance, shoddy scavenged gear with multiple villages/nations of origin could be explained if the "travelers" are nomadic, pilgrims of multiple ethnicities, former hirelings of a mercenary party, or they found/stole the gear.

What do the failures represent? And what does failing the challenge mean? Does failing the challenge mean that everyone turns in for the night unawares, and the bandits posing as travelers rob the PCs during the middle of the night, so the PCs awake to a bunch of missing gear and no sign of the bandits? What about the sentry the PCs posted, the familiar keeping watch, the alarm spell the wizard cast, etc? What if the PCs decide to follow the tracks and ride after the bandits (VERY likely given player psychology)?

Medium (hazard): Flashflood in the foothills. A torrential rainstorm fills a canyon and the PCs have to navigate to safety or lose HD or gear or gain Exhaustion or a combination. (6 successes before 3 failures). I guess this will mostly end up being physical challenges for the players, but I could use some examples of how others have done this.

I'm not entirely convinced about on this one. Anyone trained in survival (let alone a druid casting druidcraft) knows how to recognize signs of an imminent flash flood and that you want to get to higher ground ASAP. It's a very specific situation when a group of travel-hardened adventurers would be at risk from a flash flood. One of the obvious solutions is to get to high ground and hold position to wait it out, which is what I'd assume most parties would do unless there's a time pressure driving them forward.

Regarding using Exhaustion as a penalty for failing in a skill challenge... My experience is that players are extremely adverse to accumulating Exhaustion (many refer to it as a "death spiral") and will do everything in their power to get rid of it. Typically, this means long resting until no PCs have exhaustion.

Where I think the idea of a flash flood works better is a pressure that drives exploration. For instance, say we're following a river canyon when the ranger notices early signs of an impending storm – birds seeking shelter and being very active preparing, a sudden calm, gloomy clouds in the distance, etc. The PCs are now driven to seek higher ground. What is at higher ground? Which way do they go? Does the ranger notice the impending storm while the party is split up (e.g. some are portaging the canoe or hunting)?

Hard (Combat): In the mountains, not far from the entrance to Wave Echo, they stumble across Mondo the Hill Giant. He's big, he's stupid, he's an naughty word, and CAN kill the 4th level party pretty easy. (8 successes before 3 failures). This would only devolve to combat if they fail the challenge, OR I can knock them down HD automatically and say they escaped, or it takes days to circumvent Mondo and they gain Exhaustion by having to climb steep alternate routes.

Mmm, I'm not convinced a CR 5 hill giant is a death sentence for a 4th level party. What are you envisioning here? Is there a cowardly hill giant high up in the mountains who is throwing boulders down? So the challenge is an ascent while maintaining cover / staying hidden from the hill giant to avoid risking getting hit by a boulder? But once they're in melee with the hill giant, he has no interest in a fight? That seems to be what you're aiming for.

If so, then I'd probably handle it that each PC needs to make a successful check (or cast a spell that circumvents) to reach Mondo's position. Each round any failed check means that PC is temporarily exposed, and Mondo will throw a boulder at one of the exposed PCs that round. I'd look closer at average party HP and average hill giant boulder damage to determine whether to use the hill giant stats for the attack or derive my own numbers. Once everyone succeeds, the entire party reaches Mondo's position and the hill giant is no longer hostile. Of course...the players may very well be feeling hostile at that point so it could devolve to combat if you have some feisty players...

Notice that they succeed or fail as a group, and there's no "the wizard dimension doors first" or "the ranger reaches the ledge before the rest of the party." This is to avoid framing the situation as a normal combat.

 

[Nebulous]

I've had most success with skill challenges when I think of them as specific types of challenges (omit the "skill" part), not a one size fits all mechanic. By specific I mean NOT excessively abstracted, which was often the case with 4e's implementation.

With that in mind, let's look at your overall situation & each of your proposed challenges.

Thanks Quickleaf. I'm wondering if I should just run these three little vignettes as predetermined "random" encounters and eschew the challenge altogether. Maybe a skill challenge itself should focus on one single thing (not one of these) although the bandit scenario seems like the most likely one. Even then, knowing the players it would quickly devolve into "kill all the bandits" .

 

[Quickleaf]

Thanks Quickleaf. I'm wondering if I should just run these three little vignettes as predetermined "random" encounters and eschew the challenge altogether. Maybe a skill challenge itself should focus on one single thing (not one of these) although the bandit scenario seems like the most likely one. Even then, knowing the players it would quickly devolve into "kill all the bandits" .

You're welcome, hope that my perspective shined a light. Many ways to handle skill challenges.

Based on reading between the lines, I was thinking part of your goal with thinking about trying skill challenges is that you want to train your current players out of being so bloodlusty?

One thing you could do is have the bandits be hidden within a larger group of pacifist pilgrims, and they've pulled the wool over the eyes of pilgrim's spiritual leader. For example, a Religion check might pick out some eclectic iconography on a bandit that doesn't match the faith of the shrine the pilgrims are bound for. This setup could help deter violence, depending on the moral leanings of the PCs.

Like the "cowardly ogre", I think the way to frame these bandits is literally as weak CR 1/8 bandits who know they wouldn't stand a chance against a party of competent adventurers in a fair fight. If it ever got to the point where the players threatened violence or it seemed like initiative was about to be rolled, I'd have the bandits either (a) surrender and grovel for mercy, explaining how the economic hardship created by INSERT CAMPAIGN THREAT drove them to a life of banditry, or (b) flee on horseback, and run it using chase rules.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Maybe a skill challenge itself should focus on one single thing (not one of these)

Obviously, you can be less structured than a skills challenge. You don't need one specific win & lose condition (you didn't really with SCs, either), for instance. But you can keep the structure of involving everyone, and having consequences for failures. It might well end up shaking out like a regular bland journey with some random encounters and one PC doing a bunch of Survival checks, or whatever - you avoid some hazard, you fight some 'wandering' monsters - but it'll have involved the whole table, and there'll be more of a sense of the PC's having had something to do with it.

although the bandit scenario seems like the most likely one. Even then, knowing the players it would quickly devolve into "kill all the bandits" .

As a general rule, I don't like to use friendly-NPCs-are-pulling-something, because it's too hackneyed, it's too much the kind of shouting-at-the-screen stuff that players like "do right" when they're controlling the characters, and it seems like it takes at most 1 such scenario to condition players never to trust an NPC in your campaign again. (Yeah, 'at most 1' sounds silly, it's just that sometimes it seems even the intimation that something might be up is - or even every NPC always being totally forthright with PCs is not - enough to forestall player paranoia.)

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

The way I run skill challenges I'm open with my players that they are in a skill challenge and I let them know what is at stake. Because of that the bandit scenario wouldn't work for me since revealing that the outcome is to determine what is off about the people in front of them ruins the tension.

The flash flood is the kind of action scene that I like skill challenges for. Water begins rushing in to fill the canyon and you let the players know that this is a skill challenge. Success means getting to safety, failure means being swept away. The key to keep this kind of escape sequence interesting is to keep it dynamic. After a couple rolls describe how the water is now higher and the situation gets progressively more dangerous. As they are clinging to the canyon walls the storm has violently caused a mudslide or felled a tree to come crashing down on them. If someone fails a check they fall back into the water and are in danger of getting dragged under by the current or dashed against a rock. If you keep changing the situation you give more for the players to react to so that they don't eventually get to "well let's just keep rolling Athletics until this is done."

As for the giant I'd say it depends on how you want to handle it. I've used skill challenges to model chases to get away monsters way over the party's level. I find that skill challenges model chases better than the chase rules. You have players rolling various skills to put obstacles in the way behind them, looking out for a good path or place to hide, or even attempting to distract the monster into chasing them instead of the rest of the group. Sneaking can also be made into a skill challenge but like above you have to find ways to make the situation dynamic.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The way I run skill challenges I'm open with my players that they are in a skill challenge and I let them know what is at stake. Because of that the bandit scenario wouldn't work for me since revealing that the outcome is to determine what is off about the people in front of them ruins the tension.

...hmmm... wouldn't it create tension? Because, if you go through the whole encounter unsuspecting, you were never tense - just surprised when they turned on you?

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

...hmmm... wouldn't it create tension? Because, if you go through the whole encounter unsuspecting, you were never tense - just surprised when they turned on you?

There's tension, but a weird meta gamey tension as you know something is off when your character doesn't know. And while I'm not against all forms of metagaming this is one of those instances that takes me out of it.

Unless the DM just describes that "something feels off about this lot" but I'm not a huge fan of dictating judgments that the characters themselves should make. With my style of DMing I'd prefer to just let this type of scene play out as roleplay with skill checks called for as needed.

 

[Maestrino]

Surprising no one has linked Matt Colville's vid about importing skill challenges to 5e...

 

[Tony Vargas]

There's tension, but a weird meta gamey tension as you know something is off when your character doesn't know.

Right, like the characters in a movie don't know there's a bomb under the table, but the audience does. The players are sometimes like actors, sometimes like audience. If they're like the characters, in this case, there's no tension. If they're like the audience, there is.

There's also the issue of calling for checks when you are trying to keep the players ignorant on the theory the characters are ignorant: as soon as the player makes an insight check, he knows something's up. Unless you call for insight checks all the time, when there's no reason to, which is a fair bit of investment, really...

...sorry, age-old RPG issue.

Another way to address it would be to RP the scene to the end, then announce the SC, explain what's up, and run through it. On success, the PCs stop the bandits just as they're about to start stealing things (or even maneuver them to steel something they don't mind losing, if they've a reason to avoid open conflict), on failure they don't.