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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5618035" data-attributes="member: 42582">Yes. Just as a combat can be between one PC and one or more NPCs/monsters.Yes. But just as, in a combat, if one PC hangs back it may often be bad for that PC and/or the other PCs, so likewise I would tend to design a skill challenge so that all the players have a reason to get their PCs involved. Again, this is really an issue of encounter design. The game is built around the assumption that overcoming a significant conflict (like turning an enemy into a friend) won't be done with a single skill check, anymore than winning a signficant fight will happen with a single to hit roll.But persuading a reluctant peasant to give directions might be a single check, just as cutting down that reluctant peasant for being rude would be a single attack roll (vs a minion).I don't understand how linearity comes into it. If Orcus is threatening to eat the lackeys loitering in the rear, there are any number of ways those other PCs could respond - from making their own attempt to be charming, to trying in some form or other to persuade Orcus that they're not lackeys (perhaps the party sorcerer kills a nearby Vrock with a single spell, thus demonstrating his/her prowess and contributing a success to the skill challenge). More generally - I don't see the connection between desigining and running an encounter so that it engages the whole party, and forcing a single path of successful resolution onto the players.Upthread I may have linked to another thread where I gave an actual play example of "negotiating" with a dire bear. In that particular encounter, the party decided to tame the bear rather than fight it. Two PCs intimidated it - the sorcerer (wreathing himself in lighting) and the paladin (shaking his sword at it). Two other PCs befriended it - the wizard (patting it with mage hand) and the ranger (reaching out to it and scratching it under the chin).The fighter - who had no nature or social skills - tried to grapple the bear to establish his physical superiority to it, but repeatedly failed.The upshot of the encounter, once 6 successes had been obtained, was that the bear shied away from the sorcerer and paladin, and wanted to eat the fighter, but was persuaded not to do so by the wizard and ranger.Had the player of the fighter not participated at all in the challenge, then the upshot for that PC would have been the same, or perhaps worse - because the bear hadn't seen that the fighter was a companion of the ranger and wizard, it may have been less inclined to listen when they tried to stop it from eating him.Anyway, this is what I mean when I say that encouraging full party participation is a matter of design and adjudicating resolution, rather than simply of mechanics.I don't follow this.To elaborate - I understand that you don't like scaled/tailored challenges. But why is this a reason not to let the PCs befriend an (ex-)enemy? Presumably, the PCs are allowed to do other things to change both their social/political situation in the gameworld, and to change the resources available to them to meet the challenges they face. For example, I assume that in your game the PCs can befriend merchants, hobnob with guard captains, ingratiate themselves to mayors and barons, and the like. Outside the immediate context of a combat or similar (which gives rise to the "dominate monster" balance problem you noted above), isn't turning an enemy into a friend in the same (permissible) category as these other things?</blockquote>

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