But that's what skill challenge rules say, They have set of skills you can use and then set of secondary skills that might face higher DC. It even says:
"Characters must make a
check on their turn using one of the identified primary
skills (usually with a moderate DC) or they must use
a different skill, if they can come up with a way to
use it to contribute to the challenge (with a hard DC).
A secondary skill can be used only once by a single
character in any given skill challenge."
And:
"When a player’s turn comes up in a skill challenge,
let that player’s character use any skill the player
wants. As long as the player or you can come up with
a way to let this secondary skill play a part in the challenge,
go for it."
So by the rules as written just spamming you best skill, if it was one of the primary skills of the challenge is how it works, and the GM is not supposed to invent reasons why it cannot be done. So yeah, it is the fault of the rules.
Seriously? Because this is not a fair, or accurate, description of SCs in total. The rules ALSO state that skill use has to make sense in the fiction, the player must justify their use of a skill in a specific situation. This is not some dice rolling game. It is an RPG, remember!? You had to read the entire section (it is only a couple pages) to get those quotes. Don't make me conclude that this is not an argument in good faith, eh?
Because if the number of rolls (and the universal DC too) is fixed from the get go, then it really doesn't matter what you do. There are no better or worse choices, apart choosing the skills which you have biggest numbers in. It does not require thinking about the situation, engaging with it.
Again, you need to argue in good faith. It is a STORY in which, at certain points, the players are going to need to make decisions and roll dice to see if they successfully navigate towards or away from their goals. This requires them to tell the GM what they are doing, and they MAY suggest a skill or ability to check against. Otherwise the GM may choose one. As of the first errata the GM also chooses whom to require next to make a skill check, though presumably the players have some input on this as well, given that they are describing their actions.
I recently ran a prison escape in my 5e game. I guess it could have been a skill challenge. It wasn't. There was predetermined obstacles. Door, locking mechanism out of reach, a guards with predetermined locations, the location of the key etc. And different actions had different DCs depending on the actual diegetic difficulty of that specific thing in the fiction. What specific actions they took mattered, what items they had managed to smuggle in mattered. And they actually ended up trying two differEnt approaches, as the first one failed, but not badly enough that the guards noticed. And the first attempt had way less "steps" than their second, way more complicated and risky attempt that nevertheless succeeded did.
First attempt:
1) The bard uses mage hand to pick the out of reach locking mechanism with the lockpicks the rogue had smuggled in. (fail)
Next steps would have probably been
2) Rush the guard and kill/knock him unconscious.
3+) Get out of the building
Second attempt:
1) The rogue taunts the guard to get him come close.
2) The rogue kills the guard with one strike by a poison dart she had smuggled in (super risky, but amazingly succeeded)
3) The bard and the barbarian bend the bars of the door as now there is no guard looking (super hard, but they manage to bend them a little.)
4) The rogue, the smallest and nimblest member of the party tries to squeeze through the slightly bent bars. (success)
5) As the guard has no keys, the rogue picks the locking mechanism. (success)
6+) Get out of the building.
And As a skill challenge, how would this be wildly different? I would note that the players would know (as in, hey I'm going to run this as a CL5 SC) that they need 12 successes. Now, you have a couple choices here as GM. You could run this as a single SC, or even a couple of smaller ones, but assuming it is one, then you'd consider the failure count, this is probably something you can interpret a couple ways, but maybe a clean way is to think of it as both having done something that will be noticed eventually, and some period of time having elapsed in which there is leeway to still get away.
And the successes are just that, picking locks, moving to specific places, etc. Failing to overcome a guard for instance could be handled in a 'fail forward' kind of way with "Well, it took 5 minutes to successfully get the jump on the guard, he was very watchful" So you might proceed but with less time remaining. Or the players go out a different exit that is less advantageous, etc. No situation is without any leeway to move it along. This structure is actually HELPING you because it is avoiding hopeless no-win situations, which are no fun to play.
That's not what the rules say. They just need to roll the required number of successes on the skills determined for the skill challenge. Then you somehow describe how this overcomes the obstacles.
No, they don't!
"A skill challenge represents a series of tests that adventurers must face[...]—all of these situations
present opportunities for skill challenges,
because they take time and a variety of
skills to overcome." -Rules Compendium P 157
"A skill challenge should not replace the roleplaying, the puzzling, and
the ingenuity that players put into handling those situations. Instead, it allows the
Dungeon Master to define the adventurers’ efforts within the rules structure so
that the players understand their options and the DM can more easily adjudicate
the outcome." -Ibid
"The DM might tell the players which skills to use, let
them improvise which ones they use, or both." -Ibid
Page 158 -Components of a Skill Challenge- then goes into the elements making it up, which include
1. A Goal
2. Level and DCs - The GM sets a level, which determines the DCs. If a Challenge was extremely difficult, the GM can simply set the level of the challenge higher, relative to the PC's level. Here we get another bit of information:
"Most skill checks in a typical challenge are against the moderate DC of the
challenge’s level (see the Difficulty Class by Level table, page 126). However,
after a character has used a particular skill to achieve a success against the
moderate DC, later uses of that skill in the challenge by the same character
should be against the hard DC." -Rules Compendium P158-159
3. Complexity - every challenge has a complexity, from CL1 to CL5. CL2+ include an increasing number of hard DCs (4 at CL5). PCs also get 'advantages', starting at CL3, which just means they have the ability to get a mechanical bonus of some sort, like A success at a hard DC might also count as a moderate success, giving 2 successes, etc. The GM is in charge of how these are allowed, the players need to specify, in fictional terms, how they try to achieve them. So, for instance a Wizard might spend 50gp casting a ritual. This could count as a success and an additional success, with the player describing how he uses the ritual, and why it is advantageous, and the GM giving out the advantage where merited, and describing the outcome.
4. Primary and Secondary Skills - Normally an SC will have Party Size + 2 skills, of which 2 or 3 will be secondary (so typically 4 primary and 3 secondary for a party of 5). Primary skills MAY be limited total number of uses allowed, no precise number is given, but 2 + CL is suggested. Secondary skills can contribute AT MOST one success to a challenge, and may simply enable another skill, give a bonus to a primary check, etc.
5. Consequences - success or failure will have narrative consequences, and may have mechanical ones as well. The rules don't really dictate what these are, they relate to the story.
There are a number of examples, the one in the RC is notable in that each interaction which produces a check leads to a new circumstance or need, which then requires a DIFFERENT check. There's no spamming some one skill, this is simply a Trojan Horse of an argument against SCs. STOP USING IT!
Perhaps you run skill challenges better than what the rules as written suggest. In fact, I am pretty sure that anyone who has had significant success with them is doing so. But this is not due the published rules, it is due you inventing your own rules that have some slight structural similarity to 4e skill challenges.
I f you were to read DMG1, 2, and the RC you will find that you are reducing things to a bit of a drastic level.
PRIMARILY the overall situation in an SC is not static. And what skills can be deployed at a given moment depends on fiction, not some rote formula. It might indeed seem best to a player if he can simply roll Athletics 12 times, but how is he going to explain that to the GM? What is the fiction? As soon as he makes the first such check, the fictional position of the PCs is going to change, they swam across the moat, and now they need to sneak through the postern, how is another Athletics check going to do that? It just doesn't fly.
So, I think the rules that 4e presents ARE imperfect in some ways. I don't personally believe in the idea of any set Skills, such as the RC rules state. The fiction will dictate what skills might be brought into play at each stage, and they are almost sure to be different each time.
I think there's also a good bit of 'art' involved in really good SCs. If you find that yours don't seem very dynamic, maybe you are focusing too much on one small piece of action. Widen the scope. Instead of "how do we cross the river" make the challenge about the overall expedition to cross The Great Neck, gathering supplies, negotiating with natives, finding a guide, keeping the porters happy. There's plenty of variety of stuff that might be required. As long as you can describe the GOAL, the DIFFICULTY, COMPLEXITY, and CONSEQUENCES, you will be able to make it work quite well!
