Compiled Skill Challege Advice

[LostSoul]

A while ago I was going to look at the official Skill Challenge advice from the various sources (Dungeon & Dragon, the DMGs). I wrote down the important ideas - through my own filter, of course - but never got any further.

Here is what I have. Might prove useful to someone.

*

You can't plan the outcome, so don't worry about it.
Run a skill challenge when the fiction calls for it.
Run a skill challenge only when more than one or two skills can apply.
Add sub-systems and incremental challenges into your skill challenge.
If the scope/scale of the skill challenge is large, it is easier to include many different options.
A skill challenge must involve interactive decision making.

Building a skill challenge:
Prepare to improvise if the skill challenge goes off the rails.
Failure in the skill challenge must not derail the adventure.
Aim for a number of key skills equal to the number of PCs + 2.
Half the key skills should be in the following group: Arcana, Athletics, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, Endurance, Heal, History, Insight, Intimidate, Religion, Streetwise
Primary skills push the characters closer to success, while secondary ones provide useful benefits without granting the party additional successes.
Come up with a list of other options - other actions that have a mechanical impact on the skill challenge.
Allow player choice based on the situation to alter the DCs.
Have repercussions of those choices affect the DCs and the situation.
Add random events to spice things up.
Script the options the players have to reflect the situation.
Script success and failure.

Automatic success: when you'd feel guilty or lame if the idea fails.
Automatic failure: if a child can see through it or it's slapstick comedy.
If the description of the PC's action would not require a check, don't ask for one.

Skill challenges don't always need to follow the x successes before 3 failures.
If there is no endpoint to the challenge don't use the 3 failures option.
Each failure should change the situation and the DCs to reflect that change.

Skill challenges are over when the situation has been resolved.
Individual skill checks cannot resolve the situation themselves.
Break one situation down into several small challenges to deal with partial success.
Modify the aid another option to stop players from "abusing" it.
If an ability check is called for, shift the DC down one category.
Don't use passive perception and insight to accrue successes and failures in a skill challenge.

The DM should add colour and details to the skill challenge to bring it to life.
Determine what skill is used based on the description of the action.
Reveal the number of successess the players have accrued by changing the situation to reflect their progress.

Don't tell the players they are in a skill challenge.

If the skill challenge is not working:
Start a combat encounter
Change the situation to allow different primary skills
End the challenge or save it for later

Each skill check in a challenge should do one of the following:
* Introduce a new option that the PCs can pursue, a path to success they didn't know existed.
* Change the situation, such as by sending the PCs to a new location, introducing a new NPC, or adding a complication.
* Grant the players a tangible repercussion for the check's success or failure (as appropriate), one that influences their subsequent decisions.

The characters should always be the active party in a skill challenge:
* Script options for the players so that they are the active party.

If one player has no interest in the skill challenge, use a lower complexity.
Script different sets of options for different types of players.

Exchange a monster for a skill challenge.

Create two concurrent skill challenges for different types of players.

 

[Nytmare]

Advising people to "prepare to improvise" tickles me pink.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Good stuff, Lostsoul. What's the chance of getting 5-7 fully fledged out examples? I'd like to see (1) urban chase scene, (2) overland travel through forest or grassland, (3) mountain climbing, (4) interrogation, (5) ambassadors.

 

[samursus]

Good advice. But one thing I have never seen is an example in play. I don't know why but any skill challenge I have ever run turns out forced and counter-intuitive (granted I have only run those presented in modules) and seems to interrupt the flow of the encounter. I never really grokked the Skill Challenge in play, although I have always LOVED the idea of it. Maybe its my aging brain cells (I try and keep it agile with Sudoku and NY Times Xwords!!) but I can't seem to make it work well enough for my purposes.

 

[LostSoul]

Good stuff, Lostsoul. What's the chance of getting 5-7 fully fledged out examples? I'd like to see (1) urban chase scene, (2) overland travel through forest or grassland, (3) mountain climbing, (4) interrogation, (5) ambassadors.

I should give that a shot.

Normally I don't pre-plan skill challenges - that's how I prepare to improvise! However, I tend not to use them except in social situations. It'd probably be a good exercise for me. Maybe I could add something to my setting creation rules that randomly generates a situation that calls for a skill challenge and a few guidelines/constraints for creating it.

Maybe tomorrow? I'll probably do the urban chase scene last since that one seems the hardest.

I'll also add in comments as to why I made the decisions I did.

 

[AngryMojo]

One thing I try is to include skills in the challenge that have a spread of ability scores. Because most PC's have two good stats, even if they're untrained in a skill, they can still contribute. For example, including Athletics as a secondary skill means everyone who is playing a Strength based class can contribute, even if they don't have Athletics as a trained skill.

 

[dragnsteph]

Skill Challenges are something I've been struggling with in my campaign, and I'm making myself keep plugging at them, because I think they COULD be really cool.

I think a large part of my group's problem with them is that they're so used to just rolling skill checks when asked, in previous campaigns for other DMs, that they tend to just sort of stare blankly at me sometimes when it's not quite that clear. They just shout out what they want to do, and expect an instant "roll a <x> check" response from me, when I have a skill challenge planned and have to sort of dial them back.. which leads to some lost enthusiasm, I guess.

We've been experimenting with a very scripted approach to them lately that I'm not really sure I like, where I read out every skill that can be used and what using it really means they are doing, and they select from their options and roll checks. I prefer this way to the freeform method we tried initially, which led to a lot of one player who had the primary skill getting aided by everyone else, and very little roleplaying. But I'm not really happy with having it be so super-scripted, either, since it feels too constrained.

What I'd really like, in terms of advice, is to hear how some other DMs set up their skill challenges, and to hear how they flow around their tables. I've been able to set up some pretty complex challenges, with dependencies and limited use checks and lots of neat story elements, but they're just not working very well into our game flow.

 

[Semah G Noj]

Good advice. But one thing I have never seen is an example in play. I don't know why but any skill challenge I have ever run turns out forced and counter-intuitive (granted I have only run those presented in modules) and seems to interrupt the flow of the encounter. I never really grokked the Skill Challenge in play, although I have always LOVED the idea of it. Maybe its my aging brain cells (I try and keep it agile with Sudoku and NY Times Xwords!!) but I can't seem to make it work well enough for my purposes.

I've been wanting the same thing. I stumbled across this podcast which is part one of three on the subject. Part 2 has an example in play. I haven't listened to all of it yet, but the other advice on that website is pretty solid.

 

[pemerton]

What I'd really like, in terms of advice, is to hear how some other DMs set up their skill challenges, and to hear how they flow around their tables.

I posted about this in this thread.

My approach is to describe the ingame situation, and then have the players explain how they're approaching it. Based on what they describe (which may or may not involve a reference to a skill or ability) I assign a method of mechanical resolution (skill check, encounter power, automatic success/failure, etc). I then keep track of successes and failures, and also explain how the ingame situation changes in response to each check that is made. Subsequent actions by the PCs reflect that changed ingame situation.

I don't find aiding another comes up all that often, because within the gameworld it's not that easy for the players to explain what that aiding would actually consist in. In order to get all the players involved (which is my general preference) I tend to use ingame techniques to motivate them to do something - eg in a social skill challenge someone addresses the fighter, or in a physical skill challenge I describe something dire about to happen to the wizard unless he responds to it (this is a technique I picked up from LostSoul).

The challenge as a GM - at least for me - is to find a way of narrating so that, after X successes or 3 failures, it makes sense to bring things to a conclusion.