Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 5036424" data-attributes="member: 3400">That's not really an accurate reflection of what the DMG1 is suggesting. It does say to let the PC use whatever skill they want but includes the caveat "As long as the player or you can come up with a way to let this secondary skill play a part in the challenge, go for it." Some skills simply won't have a part to play and won't contribute to the success or failure of the skill challenge. It's not simply using the highest stat the PC has.Or they go find someone to talk to. It's not like the skill challenge must be dealt with all in a short span of time. They can extend over long periods.No, the only reason not to consider other skills for use in the skill challenge, if the player can come up with a good rationale for using it or find a good way to work it in (just like we would with free-form), is a failure of imagination or a stubborn refusal to let the PC's choices matter. Not allowing a skill application that is fairly clearly useless is not a failure of imagination.When providing the example used in the initial thread, thinking about the skill challenge mechanic got me to open up the PH, look at the skills in it, and come up with plausible ways for them to be used to determine what route may be bandit free. And by noticing Streetwise and Bluff, I thought of the network of people that typically surrounds bandit groups and how that's a way to get info both about and to the bandits given the right conditions.There are certainly problems with how skill challenges were initially presented, but they still serve as a pretty good mnemonic device for analyzing how defined skills can be used to solve challenges.But it doesn't have to be arbitrary at all. In some locations, using Streetwise and Bluff simply wouldn't work. White Plume Mountain, for example, is much more remote than Castle Greyhawk with far less traffic and far fewer locals. Neither of those skills makes as much sense in those situations. But it is true there's a certain amount of leeway for the art of DMing. Not everyone has the same take on what the skill challenge should encompass as a task, as a result, or what should contribute to it. A deciding factor, once the skill challenge is defined in the DM's mind, is the reasonability of PC actions toward achieving it and whether or not those actions are successfully executed.</blockquote>

Verification