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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WyzardWhately" data-source="post: 4303352" data-attributes="member: 33207">You're absolutely correct.  I'd be pissed at a player who insisted on racking up failures rather than sitting it out.  Sometimes you have to step out of the spotlight, and put the team ahead of your own interests.  Life's tough that way.  Same way that sometimes you need to cast an area-effect spell that includes your buddy, but usually you shy far away from that, even if it means you don't get to do much.  To my mind, these are nearly equivalent behaviors.  You're sabotaging the group in an attempt to show off at others' expense.See, here's where the comparison between combat and skill challenges breaks down.  In combat, you have several different options. Most characters are going to have several different things they can do in a round, with different cost-benefits.  There might not be choices that are strictly better than others.  Do I use Ray of Frost and try to slow the elite brute down, or do I use thunderwave to push his minions off a cliff?  See, there's not necessarily a clearly superior choice.In a skill challenge, the problem is that your options are mechanically fungible.  It all comes down to a die roll with a certain percentage: the difference between rolling +9 arcana and +7 religion has a clearly and strictly better option.  There are not nearly enough "special effects" attached to different skill uses for one to not be generally strictly better.  You look at the list of skills you have, and you hammer on the one with the best chance of success.  So, if you don't have a very high chance of success, your strictly best option is to try and aid another.  I have trouble conceiving of a way to fix this without making the system heinous.However, the best I can think of is to set up parallel interlinked skill challenges.  In essentially the same way that different types of combat encounters are set up (the dragon's den, wolf pack, etc.), there would be multiple different tracks with effects on each other.  In essence, you'd be running two or three skill challenges at once, all of which lead to the same goal, and each having milestones that contribute or detract from progress on the others.  An example might be two PCs using social skills at court to delay proceedings, while two others go wild on investigation trying to find the necessary dirt to put a stop to the scheme permanently.  If they can communicate new information to each other, they can give each other bonuses......as you can see, that's too complex and requires a convoluted setup, so it's not suited to starting one on the fly when the players want to do something and you need to make a big deal out of it.I suppose another option might be that a skill challenge could require certain "keys."  That is, a very complex one might require 10 overall, but there could also be certain minimums in there.  So, you might require two of those successes be from skill A, two from skill B, and either three from skill C or one from skill D which can only be unlocked by a hard test with skill E that counts as two successes if made.Clearly, there's room for permutation here.  Sorry for the lengthy and possibly out-of-place rant.</blockquote>

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