I am designing a skill challenge for my first 4e campaign, and reading through the rules I don't see what would prevent the party from having the same character with the highest skill applicable to the challenge roll over and over until all successes are achieved. Did I miss something?
Can one player do an entire Skill Challenge?
- Thread starter psyronin
- Start date
weem
First Post
Because it's your game and your designed skill challenge, one player could run the challenge themselves if no one else wanted to be involved... but the others would not be involved in the gaining of XP for it either I would imagine.
With that said, skill challenges are about getting everyone involved. In fact, from the book...
In a skill challenge encounter, every player character must make skill checks to contribute to the success or failure of the encounter.
I'm not sure how you would have a skill challenge that one player would have the best skills for in every aspect of it unless you didn't have a lot of skills available to be used, or if there are only 2 or 3 players.
Remember as well that on a characters turn (remember these encounters have initiative rolls and turns just like combat encounters), they could present a skill they want to use that may not be on your list but they may come up with a good reason for using it -- you would simply make the difficulty harder if you felt the need.
With that said, skill challenges are about getting everyone involved. In fact, from the book...
In a skill challenge encounter, every player character must make skill checks to contribute to the success or failure of the encounter.
I'm not sure how you would have a skill challenge that one player would have the best skills for in every aspect of it unless you didn't have a lot of skills available to be used, or if there are only 2 or 3 players.
Remember as well that on a characters turn (remember these encounters have initiative rolls and turns just like combat encounters), they could present a skill they want to use that may not be on your list but they may come up with a good reason for using it -- you would simply make the difficulty harder if you felt the need.
Last edited:
Smeelbo
First Post
Unfortunately, the skill check system for 4E is broken.
As printed in the current DMG, a level-appropriate skill challenge is roughly equivalent to flipping a number of coins with the aim of getting twice as many heads as tails. Obviously, this will fail almost all the time, and the more coin tosses, the more certain failure is. Apparently the errata'd skill challenge system has swung entirely the other way, and now success is almost entirely assured. Not very challenging.
There are alternative challenge systems around, one of which the author promotes here in his forum signature.
How I would do it is something more along the lines of this. The group agrees on an intent and a plan to fulfill that intent. The referee and the players then agree on the main skill to be tested, and the referee sets the DC based on how difficult he wants the test to be, then adds +5 to the DC to account for group effort. Each character besides the main tester proposes a skill test to effectively "assist" the main tester, the referee sets a DC for the assist, which may be higher than 10 depending on how effective the assistance is judged to be towards the end goal. Each successful assist adds +2 to the final test. Alternately, once could penalize any assist check that fails by 5 or more, and reward any assist check that succeeds by 5 or more.
So for example, you are trying to impress the mayor so that he provides some equipment for your mission. This is a reasonable request, although the mayor is reluctant to spend many resources on unproven adventurers. The players plan to combine reasoning with the mayor with intimidations intended to demonstrate the power of the adventurers and the seriousness of the situation. The referee sets the main diplomacy test base DC at 20, with +5 for the group size, or DC25 total.
The Warlord is the main tester, with Diplomacy +8.
The Rogue will assist with his Diplomacy of +3. This is a straightforward assist, so it is DC10.
The Ranger and the Fighter "assist" with Intimidates of +0 and +2 respectively. This is somewhat at cross purposes with the aim of diplomacy, but plausible, so the referee chooses DC13 for those "assists."
The Ranger and the Rogue succeed at their "assist checks" and so add +4 to the main test, for a total of +12 versus a DC25.
Seems like a reasonable result to me, but I have not thought long and hard about this yet. But it does give a 40% chance of success, which seems far more fair than the results of either the published skill challenge system, or its errata.
Smeelbo
EDIT: Found it! It's called Obsidian, and while I haven't tried it yet, it seems very well thought out. Here is the link:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan...skill-challenge-system-new-version-1-2-a.html
As printed in the current DMG, a level-appropriate skill challenge is roughly equivalent to flipping a number of coins with the aim of getting twice as many heads as tails. Obviously, this will fail almost all the time, and the more coin tosses, the more certain failure is. Apparently the errata'd skill challenge system has swung entirely the other way, and now success is almost entirely assured. Not very challenging.
There are alternative challenge systems around, one of which the author promotes here in his forum signature.
How I would do it is something more along the lines of this. The group agrees on an intent and a plan to fulfill that intent. The referee and the players then agree on the main skill to be tested, and the referee sets the DC based on how difficult he wants the test to be, then adds +5 to the DC to account for group effort. Each character besides the main tester proposes a skill test to effectively "assist" the main tester, the referee sets a DC for the assist, which may be higher than 10 depending on how effective the assistance is judged to be towards the end goal. Each successful assist adds +2 to the final test. Alternately, once could penalize any assist check that fails by 5 or more, and reward any assist check that succeeds by 5 or more.
So for example, you are trying to impress the mayor so that he provides some equipment for your mission. This is a reasonable request, although the mayor is reluctant to spend many resources on unproven adventurers. The players plan to combine reasoning with the mayor with intimidations intended to demonstrate the power of the adventurers and the seriousness of the situation. The referee sets the main diplomacy test base DC at 20, with +5 for the group size, or DC25 total.
The Warlord is the main tester, with Diplomacy +8.
The Rogue will assist with his Diplomacy of +3. This is a straightforward assist, so it is DC10.
The Ranger and the Fighter "assist" with Intimidates of +0 and +2 respectively. This is somewhat at cross purposes with the aim of diplomacy, but plausible, so the referee chooses DC13 for those "assists."
The Ranger and the Rogue succeed at their "assist checks" and so add +4 to the main test, for a total of +12 versus a DC25.
Seems like a reasonable result to me, but I have not thought long and hard about this yet. But it does give a 40% chance of success, which seems far more fair than the results of either the published skill challenge system, or its errata.
Smeelbo
EDIT: Found it! It's called Obsidian, and while I haven't tried it yet, it seems very well thought out. Here is the link:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan...skill-challenge-system-new-version-1-2-a.html
Last edited:
I am planning on having several skills, but if one of them is Diplomacy, and the highest skill bonus in the entire party is one character's Diplomacy, why would the party bother making anything but Diplomacy checks with that character? Is there something that prevents how many times total a skill can be used (outside of the once per challenge specials) or that it can't be used twice in a row?
The short answer is, if succeding in multiple rolls of one skill is sufficient to succeed in a skill challenge, that is not a well designed skill challenge.
A good skill challenge involves 4-5 skills as primary and 2-3 as secondary. In the skill challenges we've played through, everyone has to do something, but sometimes this can be as simple as aiding another. Another consideration is taking into account your players. If you have a skill challenge that involes stealth and perception and your party has 0 members who are trained in those skills, that's not a very good skill challenge for the party.
If you have DDI access, Mearls has a series of articles on skill challenges that are well worth a read.
A good skill challenge involves 4-5 skills as primary and 2-3 as secondary. In the skill challenges we've played through, everyone has to do something, but sometimes this can be as simple as aiding another. Another consideration is taking into account your players. If you have a skill challenge that involes stealth and perception and your party has 0 members who are trained in those skills, that's not a very good skill challenge for the party.
If you have DDI access, Mearls has a series of articles on skill challenges that are well worth a read.
Mr. Teapot
First Post
You, the GM, are that something. When the GM creates a skill challenge, they have a lot of leeway: looking at various published skill challenges, some allow unlimited use of skills, others limit how many successes you can get from a given skill, others create additional benefits or punishments for succeeding or failing on specific skills.
If you don't want Diplomacy to be the only skill used, simply say "Diplomacy can only get you so far when dealing with this NPC. You can only attain a maximum X number of successes using it in this skill challenge." Where X is lower than the number of required successes.
Or maybe Diplomacy just adds +2 or +5 or something to other skills. So Diplomacy guy can make everyone else look good, but doesn't get anywhere unless the PCs are rolling Religion or History or something (those examples assume it's some priest type you're talking to. Pick appropriate skills for the NPC).
What I wanted to reply has basically been said but yes, one player could. That said, I would find a way to get around that either by re-design or encourage others to get involved. I ran a game the other day where one player tried to make all the skill rolls. I simply redirected the asking of the skill roll to the other players to give them an opportunity to be involved.
rexartur
Explorer
Making no statement either way as to whether skill challenges are broken or not (we find they work in our group but seem to play through better when mostly transparent) the above quote from the DMG was errata'd.
Nothing really. So the onus is on you as the DM to create a series of skill checks which cater to multiple PCs. Look at your various PCs, see what their best skills are, and then find some way to incorporate them into your challenge.
