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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 7349092" data-attributes="member: 20564">The way you streamline the Arcane Lock works great - minimizes the intrusion of rolling the same thing over and over.  Where you're just highlighting one character doing the same thing over and over, I'm with you to simplify mechanically.The other issue about progress on an adventure coming to a stop on a failed check is something DMs need to dealwith in many cases.  Did the players miss a clue?  (Repeat it three times.)  Did the fail to find the secret door that leads to the next level of the dungeon (fail forward - they took so long searching that a patrol came out of it).   We always need to aware of those, and design so a bad die roll doesn't stop progress.Where a (skill) challenge might be useful is where you want to spotlight multiple members of the party at the same time, or give them tough choices on where to apply themselves.To give an example, say it was only three locks but they were in opposite wall and needed to be opened simultaneously.  Suddenly it's multiple characters needing to get involved an not just your designated lock jockey.  Maybe one's an arcane puzzle while two are actual locks, again bringing different characters into it.  Heck, work it into your lore - I don't know the source material but an arcane lock sounds like maybe a wizard's tower.  It was originally a husband and wife, she's the wizard, and she had a bodyguard golem (which they will meet later with her lich form).  So the three locks are an arcane puzzle, and it's trapped with damaging acid spray (which she could avoid with her magical necklace - treasure for later), one if a brute strength with resetting spikes (which the golem could ignore) and the last a devilish mechanical key lock that released these construct hounds (which woudn't attack any of them).Even from there you can put in interesting bits - their later-born son wanted to be able to get in, and his mother had made him his own golem bodyguard, so in another room he put in place an override that would allow the key to be turned early - the construct hounds would still be released since it wasn't simultaneous, but it still counted and he could do the arcane lock while the golem did the strength part.  But it's not part of the original system, so three rounds after the door opens it closes and locks again.  (He had another way to get out.)</blockquote>

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