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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 7348264" data-attributes="member: 20564">Every other or every third session features something which has grown from the idea of skill challenges.  But it's much more organic and inclusive.First, dispose of the entire formalized 4e structure.Second, it's not a "skill" challenge - you can do a heck of a lot besides skills.  Have consumable resources you want to bring to bear like an appropriate spell or magic item usage?  Sounds good.  Knowledge or resource like a map of the reefs that you've previously found out that you're bringing to bear in an appropriate way.  Yup, that's worth a success.  Great planning can add successes.But that's just using the term successes when really these are all based on what they do for the situation.  Some things bring success, others make it easier to get successes, other pursue side goals.  Often there's more than one track they need to resolve as well as potential side goals.And roll with the players.  Often it's splitting the party as they handle different parts of whatever is going on.  Often they will come up with alternate route to solutions.  And frankly formal structures aren't the best for that.  My very first 4e skill challenge experience was in a official event at my FLGS that had us splitting the party, and half was trying to get information out of a minir dock official.  After it wasn't moving well that aprty of the party tried to intimidate him which was an automatic failure at the whole skill challenge - and the DM wouldn't le the other part of the party approach him in any way at a later point because we had "failed that encounter" and it "wasn't fair to let us have a redo".  Regardless that it made no narrative sense.Two sessions ago we had a great example of a Challenge.  After bombing the orken supply depot and taking out their transport barges at a major river, their crippled airship was crashing but managed to get some distance.  They were pursued by orc scouts on giant bats as well as orcish riders.This became a game of trying to escape.  But they also were buying time with booby traps and false paths, as well as trying to bring with them the wounded crew and the utmost important part of the cargo to the dwarven stronghold they were trying to get to a secret way in.  Choices like to slow down for injured, ditching cargo or not, these made big differences in the difficulties.  They also had the side goal of not leading the orcs to the secret entrance, otherwise it would need to be collapsed behind them which would be a blow to the besieged stronghold.Part way through they heard answering search drums from roughly ahead of them as another of the orc warbands started to search backwards toward them.  They ended up taking out a scouting party and then had to make a call should they ignore the signal drums - which would let them know a party was down and help the orken scout steer more towards the party, or attempt to beat the right patterns and keep them in the dark - or mess it up and let them know "here is where we are right now".Oh, and this ended up going from the airship attack before dawn, to almost midnight (when a special group invisibility would expire), so near the end there were also exhaustion checks which threatened to make everything worse, plus re-introduced issues like ditching the cargo as wounded crew couldn't keep the pace.And much was not black and white - they ended up making a travois so as not to have to abandon anyone, but it made it much harder to cover their tracks which lead to the airborne scouts finding their trail even though they didn't spot them.Now, that Challenge was a full session extended effort, but sometimes they are much more compact.  A memorable one was that after killing the semi-vampiric Frost Giant "King" and "Queen", their frozen ice castle kept up by magic was collapsing.  The party's route in had been blocked (by the party trying to keep out Zombie Frost Giants) and they needed to get out quickly before the ice castle collapsed on them, with both an unknown route and Frost Giant Zombies to deal with.  That was a skill challenge, and ended up with the party split. Two members were leadign the way, sledding on the fighter's magic shield down ice stairwells and through rooms towards the outside, drawing off zombies so the others could follow behind as quickly as possible.  The session feel was like a classic mine cart chase -- not at all what I was expecting by once the players started the sledding I kept the pace up and just ran with it.The finally navigated well enough to see doors with daylight behind them and sledded through them at great speed.  Unfortunately it was a balcony several frost giant stories up.  Whee!The final characters were following, and they were basically just doing actions to take care of themselves, with the rogue falling behind and no one spending their action to help him catch up.  We get to the final bit for them and they each make their individual checks to get out in order they get to the balcony with a horde of frost giant zombies right behind them.  Success, success, and ... did you just roll a 1?So the rogue is flat on his back, surrounded by frost giant zombies and the tower collapsing on him, with everyone else several stories down.  At this point I broke out of the Challenge to give everyone else one last action to save the rogue.As an aside, we got one of our memorable quotes.  The wizard was worried about the zombies and started casting.  Another character said "I can't watch him die" - and that's when the invisibility went off.We still don't let him live that down.Not to leave you in suspense, it went around the table with no one able to get him out until the last, our sorcerer.  Who had a special swap positions teleport.He got the rogue out, and was then buried in tons of falling ice.Songs were sung.</blockquote>

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