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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 7348328" data-attributes="member: 6777737">I would not stick to the old Skill Challenge pattern, but I might use something similar.  Consider the old "Arcane Lock" situation.  That is:I would probably not bother with this design now.  It's not a particularly interesting challenge to make the players roll over and over for the same locks.  It's easier to just have them roll once.  I feel like all we're adding here is more dice rolling to smooth out variance.  That's... not interesting.  It's really better than:Or the "Lost Navigation" situation:In 4e, failure consumed a healing surge instead of triggering a roll on the encounter table, so failure was even less eventful for the players than a random encounter.I'd rather do this:Sure, it's not open ended for endless failure, but I don't want my PCs stuck in a swamp all night.  And instead of forcing the challenge into a fixed pattern, it can just be designed to feel correct for the situation.  I mean, yes, that's realistic that they might get lost for days in a swamp, but it really isn't fun or interesting or what my players want to experience.Finally, I absolutely want to avoid the dreaded social Skill Challenge:I saw so many skill challenges like this in 4e.  It commits the sins of 1) Requiring the PCs to succeed to progress with the adventure (i.e., if you fail, you can try again indefinitely), 2) Discouraging role-play in favor of dice rolling to solve every challenge, (I don't need less reasons to role play and more reasons to roll dice!  We have combat for that!) 3) Ignoring the possibility of arguments so convincing that the encounter should end. ("The goblins that have this MacGuffin also took your only daughter."  "Not good enough, I need 4 more reasons.")I still remember one 4e Skill Challenge in a module from Dungeon where the party is expected to convince some mayor or prince to help them.  If the party fails, the module provides no guidance.  The only way forward is to convince the mayor.  If the party suceeds, they're still told to go find evidence and come back.  When the PCs do that, the the party has to complete another skill challenge to convince him even with the evidence.  Worse, the DCs for convincing the mayor/prince were higher after you had evidence because of the way DCs scaled with level in 4e.  And, again, if the party failed, their only recourse was to try again.  They had to have the mayor or prince's help to reach the next leg of the adventure.  It was just everything I hated about Skill Challenges wrapped up in a single package.  It was all about checking the mechanical boxes of having enough skill challenges to satisfy WotC so they could show off their brand new mechanic, and nothing about building a compelling or sensible narrative.  That has left such a horrible taste in my mouth that I simply don't like the skill challenge mechanic.</blockquote>

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