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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6851654" data-attributes="member: 97077">I can't claim credit. That was all [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION].Challenge accepted!My most recent scenarios generally don't mention even a single ability check in them. Like you, I'd rather leave that to the DM to decide during play based on the context I have written and what the players decide to do. In this case, I went back to the "traditional" way this presented, but there are a couple things to note:(1) The checks all establish uncertainty for a specific goal and approach e.g. "A tale of boldness and daring and a DC 10 Charisma check might impress the mercenaries..." If the players choose to do something other than tell a tale of boldness and daring when responding to Jack's call, it might be automatic success, automatic failure, or some other ability check or DC. So it's not "DC 10 Charisma check no matter what you try." That would invalidate the players' sense of agency as you say.(2) I don't include the skill that may apply to the Charisma check. Telling that tale of boldness and daring might be Deception, Performance, Persuasion - however the players approach it will determine what skill may apply (if any). I intend to make this a staple of my scenarios in the future. The Basic Rules also say that one approach to ability checks is the DM calling for the ability check and the player applying the skill (or asking to) rather than the DM asking for Ability (Skill) checks all the time. I think the former actually fits the game better. I'm interested in feedback on this part especially.On the subject of possibly failing that first check, the chances of the PCs failing are slim. With only a DC 10 and the party putting forward a Charisma-primary PC proficient in Charisma-based skills, a roll of 5 or better will get the job done. Add advantage to that and failure is a slim possibility indeed. Chances of failure go down even further for characters with expertise and go up if the party puts forward a less skilled character. Since I expect players to always try to do their best to succeed, I think we're okay on this first part of the challenge. It also serves the double purpose of getting the players to think about and describe past adventures which is always useful and fun in my experience. As to why the mercenaries would still rebuff the PCs even after being healed, well, they're kinda dicks. Or at least that's how I see them. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Failure in this challenge means a few things: Your rivals are still hostile. This means no information about their plans (short of dealing with Golly) and no easy access to their diving bell which is very useful for accessing the undersea path into the ruins. It could also mean they try to jump you after you leave the ruins. (This is noted later on in the adventure. There's also this whole side deal with Captain Argh onboard the Wild Hammer's ship and his dispute with Jack Wallop, but that's a different challenge.)Thanks, I'll check out the skill challenge you linked and see if I can incorporate some of the ideas. I'm a big fan of D&D 4e's skill challenges and the Wild Hammer's interaction challenge is basically the same idea but not structured in exactly the same way. There are effectively primary skills (Deception, Performance, Persuasion) and secondary skills (Insight, Medicine), plus set number of successes and failures that determine an outcome. In this case, three successes with primary skills results in the mercenaries becoming friendly. Two successes results in them becoming indifferent. One or zero successes results in them remaining hostile. It falls short of a Complexity 1 skill challenge in that there are only 3 complications to overcome instead of 4 and the first check is a "gate" for the rest of the challenge. There's even something of a fail forward built in since PCs gain glean at least some information from the interaction regardless of the level of success or failure.I appreciate the feedback! Good stuff for me to think about.</blockquote>

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