Considering the "Skill Challenge"

Greenfield

Adventurer
One concept that I liked from 4e was the Skill Challenge. The idea of a specific mechanic for designing and implementing challenging situations that don't involve combat is a very good one. And while 3.5 is supposed to include Exp rewards for dealing with challenging RP situations, the implementation is rather amorphous.

The problem with the 4e Skill Challenge is that it's a party challenge that doesn't involve the party. It involves the one or two people who have the right skills to meet the specific requirements of the challenge.

For example, your party is in pursuit of a band of slavers fleeing across the desert. As a group you need to make 9 successful Skill rolls before you roll 3 failures, on any of a list of skills. The list might include Handle Animal to manage your mounts, Endurance to maintain a hard pace, Survival/Tracking to be able to handle the harsh environment and follow their trail, Knowledge: Geography to know where water holes are, and/or Knowledge:Nature for the same purpose.

In reality, the party Ranger is going to make the Endurance roll, since he has the feat automatically, the Druid is going to handle Knowledge: Nature. The Ranger will handle Survival/Tracking, and the Druid will roll Handle Animal. And if you don't have a Druid, the Ranger will make almost all of the rolls himself.

Why? Because people who aren't "trained" in those areas are the ones who will likely roll the failures, and the group can't afford any of those. If you don't roll, you can't fail.

So one man's skill with animals will manage all the horses. His Endurance feat will carry everyone else, automatically, so long as they don't roll a dice. His Survival training will suffice to keep everyone well rested, fed, hydrated and on track. And because the group can roll the same Skill check multiple times without penalty, they'll only attempt the ones that they have someone really good at.

The other problem was the general feel of them: They were an artificial construct, a game within a game if you will, when suddenly the normal rules changed, and PC behavior had to change with them to avoid failure.

So lets talk about a mechanic that can be used to present clear skill and/or RP challenges for an entire group, that will end up involving the entire group, and won't feel artificial in play.

I have a few thoughts, but I'd like to hear other ideas before I post them. I'm pretty sure that this group, collectively, is more creative than I am as an individual.

And no, this isn't a "Skill Challenge". We don't fail, as a group, if people try to contribute and fall short. All ideas are welcome.
 

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One thing that works out is the "group skill check" where you have everyone roll against a given DC and you get a "success" if half the group passes. This can be combined with a normal skill challenge and so on.

Another thing that works is simply granting successes based on described actions instead of requiring rolls all the time.
 

Requiring at least one roll from everybody seems reasonable. The "group roll" idea makes sense too, for things like Endurance.

While I appreciate good role-playing, I seldom use it in place of normal game mechanics. A good explanation will often give a circumstance bonus, but if I let that actually replace the character's skill check then it encourages players to not actually care about skill points and instead rely on player knowledge/BS potential. We get Grud the 8 Int, 8 Cha fighter who puts his one point per level into purely mechanical skills like Ride, or Spot and Listen, yet is still the party's main resource for Diplomacy, Bluff, Healing, Knowledge Nature, Knowledge Dungeoneering (the player memorized the Monster Manual), Survival (Boy Scout Merit badges), and so forth.

Been there, done that, don't care to go there again, thank you.

Putting all that aside, let's look at the nuts and bolts. Slice the Assassin is hiding in the Inn. The party needs to find him, and they have to do it in a way that he can't slip away. He's used all of his Shadow Step ability for the day.

How do we expect the party to catch ol' Slice?

Applicable skills might include Search, Spot, Sense Motive (in case he's managed a disguise.) We also need people at the exits and watching the upper floor windows, in case he exits that way.

How do we manage this as a Skill Challenge, rather than just a series of Search checks?

Remember that while I'm asking about a specific situation, the process/rules we come up with have to be good for other challenges, other circumstances.
 

If I were Slice, I'd have donned a disguise. An Inn is a crowded place, with a lot of people to blend in with, but not a lot of hiding room. Then, I'd try to start a large commotion (a bar fight, fire, etc) and escape in the ensuing chaos.

Lets assume a group is 6 people, a Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue, Ranger, and Paladin.
The Ranger can use his skills of observation in the main room, have him use his Spot check. Any thorough searching would alert Slice, and possibly upset the inhabitants.

The Rogue would be gathering information. Perhaps someone saw a guy changing into a different face, so to speak. He'd be mingling among the crowd with a question here, or an ear there. Again, the main room. Gather Information.

The Fighter would be upstairs, guarding an exit with a good idea of who he's looking for. Just looking intimidating is enough to give most people pause, and if Slice tries to attack him and make a break, he has a good chance of surviving (or winning). Intimidation check for him.

The Paladin can be mingling near the Rogue, trying to determine when people are lying or otherwise hiding the truth. I'd have him Sense Motive in the main room.

The Cleric (aside from spellcasting) doesn't have a lot to offer this skill challenge, so maybe we'll have him guard an exit with some of his defensive buffs up. He can almost take that initial hit as well as the Fighter can - while he won't excel at this challenge, he is still contributing.

The Wizard is obviously the physically weakest, but his familiar can be spying for him. No one is going to pay attention the cat walking around the banisters or corners of the room, or the invisible Imp that can watch everything. He'll also probably have a spell that can help his companions locate Slice, without giving away the answer automatically. Perhaps he can Hold Portal one of the lesser used exits, in case Slice tries to get out "the back door".

Every party member contributes, some will shine, and Slice might get caught depending on how well everyone does. No one will out perform the rest of the group (ie: Doing it all themselves, I'm looking [MENTION=85158]Dandu[/MENTION]), and although the Cleric isn't contributing to the best of his specific abilities, he doesn't feel useless.
 

(ie: Doing it all themselves, I'm looking [MENTION=85158]Dandu[/MENTION]
I don't make a habit of it, I just make sure to have the nukes armed in case the situation turns critical.

In Legend, we have skill games. Here let me link you; they're in Osaka Street Stories. Skill games are towards the back.
 
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The first and best step to making the group as a whole work with the skill challenge is to push the concept of having a specific, dm-tailored list of skills that are allowed right out the window.

Before 4e released, there was a sample skill challenge that (IIRC) was an "outrun the guards" type of thing. It didn't come with a list of applicable skills, it came with "Let the pcs try any reasonable skill that they can come up with a good justification for! If you think it would be especially easy or hard, adjust the DC."

When I write skill challenges, I try to list what I think are the most likely approaches pcs will take, along with DCs, as examples, but it's up to them. How should they know that trying to evade the guards requires Stealth, Acrobatics or Perception, and that they can't use Streetwise? In fact, why shouldn't they use Streetwise if it makes sense?

The only other thing I do is simply not let them skip out on the challenge unless it really makes sense. If the pcs are in a negotiation and someone wants to just stand there, everyone else can make one check first, but when it comes down to it, that strong silent dude has to participate too.

(There are exceptions- he could leave the room before the negotiations take place, for instance; in fact, if you're well known for putting your foot in mouth [low cha/no social skills] you probably ought to leave the room before important negotiations take place.)
 

Actually, negotiation is one area where it makes sense for the group to have their "leader" doing the talking for them. One voice can speak clearly, while several can easily become a babble.

But things like, "Make your way across the Chasm of Doom", where people need to work together stringing ropes and hauling loads, those shouldn't be based on the skills/abilities of one or two in the group. The 4e skill challenge system would allow the big Fighter to make all the Strength checks for the group and the Rogue to make all the Balance checks.

The "artificial/contrived" aspect was highlighted in a game I was in: We were in a long pursuit of a bad guy. We had to catch him before he reached a certain authority with a forged order.

In the middle of this we found ourselves riding through a small town. We asked a woman if she'd seen the other man, and how far ahead of us he was.

She answered, but then looked at the sky and warned us, "It's nearly sunset. You must leave town at once! Hurry!"

The planned scene would have had us stay to find out what the problem was, and to deal with it. It was a Skill Challenge.

The way it played out was: "Okay!", after which we rode out of town to continue our pursuit, leaving the DM slack jawed. He was cribbing from a published module, and it had apparently overlooked the obvious fact that we could heed the warning and hit the road before the sun set.

I still have no idea what problem we would have wasted the night dealing with. But it was obviously dropped into the middle of a story line with all the subtlety of a baseball through a window, and included absolutely no incentive for us to bother.
 

Before 4e released, there was a sample skill challenge that (IIRC) was an "outrun the guards" type of thing. It didn't come with a list of applicable skills, it came with "Let the pcs try any reasonable skill that they can come up with a good justification for! If you think it would be especially easy or hard, adjust the DC."

When I write skill challenges, I try to list what I think are the most likely approaches pcs will take, along with DCs, as examples, but it's up to them. How should they know that trying to evade the guards requires Stealth, Acrobatics or Perception, and that they can't use Streetwise? In fact, why shouldn't they use Streetwise if it makes sense?

Yeah, I totally do the same thing.

I remember after running my first skill challenge thinking to myself "Why on earth is all this text devoted to describing what PCs can do in the challenge? That's up to them. I'm the DM, give me DM goodies!"

Greenfield said:
So lets talk about a mechanic that can be used to present clear skill and/or RP challenges for an entire group, that will end up involving the entire group, and won't feel artificial in play.
So Obsidian doesn't do it for you?
 

I remember after running my first skill challenge thinking to myself "Why on earth is all this text devoted to describing what PCs can do in the challenge? That's up to them. I'm the DM, give me DM goodies!"

For this reason, I hate the whole "skill challenge" concept. I ran through a couple at Encounters (my only foray into 4E) and I found them boring and unimaginative - MMO like.

Let the DM make the challenge and decide its outcome. based on WHATEVER the PCs decide to do.
 

I think it's better, in some situations, to use skill challenges not as a way to adjudicate whether a substantial endeavor is successful or not but rather how successful or how costly it is. If they're trying to cross the desert, the ratio of successes to failures of appropriate skills will help determine how much, if any, the PCs have had to expend resources to survive or how much damage they have coming out of the ordeal. Or maybe a slipping ratio gives you a chance to insert special consequence encounters that they otherwise could have avoided.
For my money, Star Wars Saga Edition's Galaxy of Intrigue had some pretty good coverage of skill challenges and a really good sample one of the PCs leading an escape from an Imperial work prison. The more failures they had meant the more NPC escapees they lost and if the challenge failed they would have a fight at the end of the escape attempt to beat rather than a free run at the ship and jump to hyperspace.
 

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