Are PCs expected to beat skill challenges?

[keterys]

I think I'd consider any of the following:
* spending a Healing Surge as part of the Arcana/Religion gives you a bonus (+2 to +5) to the roll
* the backlash deals a healing surge instead of raw damage
* A success gives a minor benefit, such as stopping the tentacles or causing damage or a penalty to Kalarel
* Just reducing the DCs - I think I'd consider having the DC start easy and get more difficult -or- vice versa, or perhaps ebb and flow with the progress of the battle. Like if the PCs are doing well against Kalarel that round, the DC gets lower for the round, etc.

 

[jaer]

Hmmm... No, I don't see it that way:

On reading the challenge and the encounter, I would say both outcomes are a full win. Slaying Kalarel means he is dead and the ritual has failed. The portal closes. Closing the portal using the challenge means a win as well, so I'd make it so Kalarel gets dragged into the portal as last-second gesture by Orcus. Either way, you give the XP allotted to the challenge the players completed. The combat or the skill challenge.

Gotcha. So defeating the skill challenge is like an alterative ending to winning the battle. If you pull it off, you could win it faster and without the damage of a knock-down, drag-out fight. But lose it and you make winning the fight a little more difficult.

Would still like to see some more reward mixed in with the successes since failure is both likely and seriously damaging, but I could see how it might be balances in that "you could win in four rounds and not get the beating a prolonged fight would deal."

 

[Lacyon]

Gotcha. So defeating the skill challenge is like an alterative ending to winning the battle. If you pull it off, you could win it faster and without the damage of a knock-down, drag-out fight. But lose it and you make winning the fight a little more difficult.

Would still like to see some more reward mixed in with the successes since failure is both likely and seriously damaging, but I could see how it might be balances in that "you could win in four rounds and not get the beating a prolonged fight would deal."

Actually, it looks like you could win the skill challenge in 3 rounds if you were lucky. (And am I crazy, or did those Arcana/Religion checks say minor action this morning? It says free action now.)

The fight is listed as a 6th-level fight, so using a 6th-level challenge to "bypass" it seems okay to me (though it looks rough to me).

 

[FadedC]

Keep in mind too that the module is meant to be played by regular characters and not just pregens. I'm not sure what races and feats are available to give +arcana but you could easily have an arcana or religion master who rated to beat the challenge. And if you want to make the player feel like his master skill levels that he gave up combat ability for really helped, then you need to make it hard enough that you'd be unlikely to succeed without it.

 

[DrSpunj]

To those discussing how to integrate skill challenges into their game:

I think I'm going to start off being rather heavy-handed about them. While I probably won't say flat out "this is a skill challenge" too often, I already ask for random d20 rolls from my players several times during a session. I may ask one, several or all of them to roll a d20 and tell me their results, without any modifiers. Sometimes I ask for their character sheets thereafter but usually not.

I'll admit most of the time this is just to keep them off balance, but many times it's to see if they pick up their enemies laying in ambush before the combat starts, to see if their character has an insightful idea to help the story/plot along or whatever.

For the skill challenge in this adventure I expect I'd ask those with the most appropriate skill set for a d20 roll and if they roll high enough let them know they "have a hunch they might be able to disrupt the ritual" or some such. I wouldn't make the DC as high as what's listed in the challenge since the point is to make them aware of the skill challenge, not actually start it.

As to this skill challenge in particular, I prefer tailoring things a bit to make this skill challenge a viable solution to the entire encounter, tying together the ritual caster's health or fighting ability or whatever to how well (or poorly) the ritual itself is progressing. Many of the choices listed by others here appeal to me, though I haven't see the entire adventure yet and don't have the specifics of the entire encounter. I hope to pick up my copy of KotS in the next couple days.

 

[Rabbitbait]

If the players decide to try and disrupt a ritual by reading a book IN THE MIDDLE OF A BATTLE, it should make the battle harder. Yes there is a small chance of it working. That's good, I wouldn't want it to be easy.

Its not as if the characters are locked in. They can choose to stop at any point if it is not working out for them.

I like that this gives another option. I also like that it is not the easy option.

 

[The Shadow]

Fire, I want to brush up on my probability, and I'm trying to figure out how you did the math. I can calculate up to 11 rolls, which is a 4.6% chance of victory. Past that point you have to take into account not just the probability of what can occur, but the timing of when failures and successes occur.

No, not at all. The combat challenge takes at most 11 rolls - 8 successes and 3 failures. You can't get more than 8 successes or 4 failures, as the challenge would end before you go there. Furthermore, a successful skill challenge has to end with a success.

It's just binomial probabilities, with the caveat that the final roll has to be a success. So it's:

C(7,7) * (0.45)^8 * (0.55)^0 +

C(8,7) * (0.45)^8 * (0.55)^1 +

C(9,7) * (0.45)^8 * (0.55)^2 +

C(10,7) * (0.45)^8 * (0.55)^3 = 0.061

 

[Stalker0]

No, not at all. The combat challenge takes at most 11 rolls - 8 successes and 3 failures. You can't get more than 8 successes or 4 failures, as the challenge would end before you go there. Furthermore, a successful skill challenge has to end with a success.

It's just binomial probabilities, with the caveat that the final roll has to be a success. So it's:

C(7,7) * (0.45)^8 * (0.55)^0 +

C(8,7) * (0.45)^8 * (0.55)^1 +

C(9,7) * (0.45)^8 * (0.55)^2 +

C(10,7) * (0.45)^8 * (0.55)^3 = 0.061

Check me on this. Couldn't we just treat this as always being 11 rolls, and just doing straight probability from that? Basically it would be:

C(11,8) * (.45)^8 * .55^3

Yep I got it. I wasn't including the possibility of doing more than 8 successes in that series of rolls. When I include that, I get the same number you do.

 

[Korgoth]

Well, it's a "Skill Challenge" not a "Skill Cakewalk" or a "Skill Automatically Win Because You're Cool".

Nothing says that it's supposed to have an easy or even average chance of success. And total victory is evidently possible without it. It's just an extra thing you can do that, if you pull it off, makes your life easier.

It should be hard. The whole ritual reversal is framed as a hard thing to do.

 

[Simplicity]

The problem with it, in my book, is that it's a distraction which virtually guarantees combat failure. That combat is going to be HARD. You can't just take one guy out of it and expect to win. Now, sure most of the actions are minor actions. But still, you're putting you're wizard all alone with a couple of skeleton soldiers around. Is that going to be tactically wise? Or you're putting your cleric far away from the people he needs to heal. Perhaps also not wise.

As a DM, I don't really want to dangle a poisoned carrot.