example skill challenge for 'against the giants'

Plane Sailing

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I didn't see anyone else mention this (please point me to other threads on the subject) but I thought there was a really good nugget in the "Classic adventures, 4th edition style" article.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080530a&authenticate=true

Specifically where Mike Mearls is thinking about the Steading of the Hill Giant

Mearls said:
You can handle this challenge in several ways. You might simply allow the giants in nearby rooms to make Perception checks if the PCs start a fight. While this solution seems like an obvious choice, it plays counter to one of the primary design conceits of 4th Edition. A single lucky Perception check could bring the entire fort down on the PCs. This binary outcome, either the PCs remain hidden or the giants attack, runs counter to 4th Edition's idea of slowing growing peril, as opposed to save or die spells and attacks.

Ideally, the players feel the tension and fear as their characters sneak through the fort. By tying their success to a single die roll, you deflate much of the drama and uncertainty of the PCs' situation. The characters are either safe, or they are in danger. In contrast, a skill challenge allows you to introduce variable levels of safety and danger. The characters must fail several checks, or the giants must succeed in several of their own, before the PCs trigger a wide-spread alarm. As the PCs sustain failures in the challenge, the giants become more and more active, forcing the PCs to change their tactics. The characters might become more cautious, or they could decide that acting quickly, decisively, and aggressively is the best response to the giants' growing alertness.

He then goes on to give a nice example of using a Skill Challenge (variant) and interpreting different results in the adventure.

It seems like a really neat way of getting away from the binary results of "any stealth check failure fails everything", and allows the game itself to support gradually increasing danger and chance of everything going pear-shaped.

Definitely worth a read and comment if you find the idea interesting.

If you think skill challenges are a pointless and useless idea, and the article is full of flaws... make a different thread for that discussion please. This thread is for those who find the idea interesting.

Thanks
 

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When I have done this sort of thing in the past, it was more "all or nothing". Either they stay stealthy and pick off the enemy, or the general alarm is sounded and the enemy starts to pour out of the woodwork.

I definately think this is a better aproach. So I guess this means I like it.
 

Saw it, liked it, and forgot about it. Shame on me. ;)

I hope I'll be able to use it in the future... Maybe even in Keep of the Shadowfell? (Specifically: In the keep?)
 

I really like skill challenges. The more I see of them, the more I like them! The Steading example was awesome, because it showed just how easy it is to tweak the skill challenge rolls to suit the circumstances you're in. I love it and am definitely going to steal the "sneak around the enemy camp" skill check early on it my 4e game!
 

My favorite thing about skill challenges is that you can, if you want, leave the whole "which skills are relevant" thing to the players. I did this with a D20 Modern game way back where we abstracted an hours-long "plan an Ocean's Eleven-style infiltration" into a fast-paced narration of the infiltration itself, with flashback cuts to the planning session.

So, say, the PCs would be coming up on the guard station, and we'd cut back to the planning room. One of the players says "We know there will be guards *here* and *here*, so we'll want to..." and he'd roll based on the skill he was going to be using. Cut back to the present, bam! that's one success or failure towards resolving the challenge.

It was a ton of fun because rather than play out the whole planning session as a bunch of people sitting around a table talking (pretending to be a bunch of people sitting around a table talking), I could introduce some new element and based on their roll, they'd planned for it or not. Saved a LOT of time and everybody felt like their characters were suitably sneaky and awesome.

Here's another crazy one: Play out an extended duel as a skill challenge! I always kind of thought the Corwin/Eric duel in Nine Princes in Amber would be the kind of thing that'd be fun to game out that way. (To be perfectly honest, after like 1 session, that's pretty much how I handled all the combat in that campaign, and it worked really well for us.)
 
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I liked the core idea here, but I'm not sure I like the implementation. In particular, I didn't notice any benefit to successes. The normal dynamic to a skill challenge is that successes and failures are "racing"-- the question is do you get to X successes and win before you get to Y failures and lose. That means that the PCs get to be active, with the players thinking "I'll try to intimidate him to get a success" or the like.

Here, I don't see what the mechanical incentive is for the PCs to do extra things. Take the example of propping up the giant to look like he's asleep, not dead-- a great example of a nice PC action, btw. As I read the article, if the PCs do that, they make a Bluff check. If they succeed, nothing happens. If they fail, bad things happen. There is no mechanical incentive for the PCs to not just head on to the next room.

That said, you can expand on this idea by telling the players "you need to make one check per room or per 15 minutes" or whatever. Then the players face the situation of either having to make a check or having a check of the DM's choice forced on them. (And of course, this can be done implicitly, where the DM is simply keeping the timer privately, rather than explicitly, although I fear that would encourage the players to avoid any actions that might trigger a check.)

So yeah... I think there's something good there, but I think it needs tuning up for maximum value. (I should note that I read the article quickly, so I may have missed something.)
 

Dang, I've just realised I've run a skill challenge once before, though more on the fly and not as codified as skill challenges.

It was an encounter between a whole gang of atachs (three armed aberration giants thingies, cr 9 I think) and group of PC's of level 2 or 3.

One of the best encounters I've ever run.
 

SweeneyTodd said:
My favorite thing about skill challenges is that you can, if you want, leave the whole "which skills are relevant" thing to the players. I did this with a D20 Modern game way back where we abstracted an hours-long "plan an Ocean's Eleven-style infiltration" into a fast-paced narration of the infiltration itself, with flashback cuts to the planning session.

So, say, the PCs would be coming up on the guard station, and we'd cut back to the planning room. One of the players says "We know there will be guards *here* and *here*, so we'll want to..." and he'd roll based on the skill he was going to be using. Cut back to the present, bam! that's one success or failure towards resolving the challenge.

It was a ton of fun because rather than play out the whole planning session as a bunch of people sitting around a table talking (pretending to be a bunch of people sitting around a table talking), I could introduce some new element and based on their roll, they'd planned for it or not. Saved a LOT of time and everybody felt like their characters were suitably sneaky and awesome.

Here's another crazy one: Play out an extended duel as a skill challenge! I always kind of thought the Corwin/Eric duel in Nine Princes in Amber would be the kind of thing that'd be fun to game out that way. (To be perfectly honest, after like 1 session, that's pretty much how I handled all the combat in that campaign, and it worked really well for us.)
The Ocean's Eleven idea is cool. I really have to use it. Maybe not D&D, but d20 Modern or Shadowrun might work... ;)
 


Cerebral Paladin said:
Here, I don't see what the mechanical incentive is for the PCs to do extra things. Take the example of propping up the giant to look like he's asleep, not dead-- a great example of a nice PC action, btw. As I read the article, if the PCs do that, they make a Bluff check. If they succeed, nothing happens. If they fail, bad things happen. There is no mechanical incentive for the PCs to not just head on to the next room.
I think the point is that the PCs are required to make the check every time they do something that could raise an alarm. If they get into a loud battle and kill off a sentry, and then just wander off without any effort to conceal the evidence, that should count as an automatic failure at best. At worst it would result in a full alert, N minutes later, when somebody happens upon the bloody corpse lying in plain sight.
 

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