Good rewards and penalties for winning or losing a skill challenge

[I'm A Banana]

I tried having inclement weather, but I realized the tension of "we're cold" is kind of minimal. In combat, the party has mechanical options to let them work toward success, and their choices feel concrete -- make an attack, or move here, or heal my buddy. And your choices affect how your opponents react.
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I kind of feel like skill challenges try to inject mechanical tension into something that in previous editions I would just have left to interactive storytelling, often with the result of actually reducing tension and player involvement. Sadly, I'm not sure what would make for a palatable noncombat challenge mechanic.

Man, I have been grinding this axe since I first ran smack into Skill Challenges. WotC needs to give me things I can do out of combat to affect the success of my character's goals that are unique, concrete, and that aid the narrative flow, rather than gloss over the information.

My best solution is to boil down the flow of a skill challenge to the flow of a dungeon. Branching options, dead-ends, traps, "monsters," resource management....I still don't think it's a perfect solution, but it gets at it a bit better.

Also, KM, pardon my language pet peevery, but it's "lose" (rhymes with ooze), not "loose" (rhymes with moose).

We are all of us doomed without good editors.

 

[LostSoul]

My view of skill challenges has changed since they came out - in play I've seen what works and what doesn't. I have some ideas on how I like to run them but I don't know if I can describe my system.

Thoughts:
-Either have an opposing character (or characters) and use the Complexity as their stamina/endurance/resistance/stubbornness or have a specific number of things that must occur in the game world in order to achieve success
-The actions the characters take must determine what the outcome of that roll means
-Each roll must carry consequences
-Each action must carry consequences (doing nothing is an action)
-Don't set the outcome before you start playing
-Don't set a list of actions that can be used
-Play NPCs to the hilt

 

[Starfox]

My main use of skill challenges is for when my players try to change encounters from fights into something else.

• Talk your way past the guards; social skill challenge.
• Sneak your way past the guards; stealth/maneuvering skill challenge.

The consequence is quite straightforward when played this way. And setting up the challenge is quite easy, too; just use the level and numbers of the encounter.

 

[pemerton]

a lot of 4E is set up so that players can avoid the consequences of their choices.

LostSoul, could you elaborate a bit?

 

[pemerton]

I see a lot of reliance on “fail and you enter combat” with the combat being a level appropriate combat. Unless there is a severe time crunch or those used resources will really make a difference in the next combats (rare), then this is just another opportunity for XP and not a penalty at all!

There is also some incoherence between the published advice on skill challenge consequences - success leads to easier stuff, failure to harder stuff - and the advice on story structure and the pass/fail cycle in DMG2, which suggests that success at a skill challenge should lead to harder challenges.

 

[Jhaelen]

For instance, I see a lot of reliance on “fail and you enter combat” with the combat being a level appropriate combat. Unless there is a severe time crunch or those used resources will really make a difference in the next combats (rare), then this is just another opportunity for XP and not a penalty at all!

Yep, I strongly dislike those examples. Imho, skill challenges are supposed to be a change of pace, something different than yet-another-combat-encounter. Using _additional_ combat encounters as a penalty for failing a skill challenge (or even a single skill check) is the opposite of what I want.

Making a later combat encounter more difficult can work better, but only if it's made more difficult by something that doesn't increase the xp budget of the encounter. Otherwise it turns into a _reward_: Yay, more xp!

What works relatively well, imho, is granting the enemies a surprise round, adding terrain that helps the enemies or reducing available healing surges.

What I've been doing for overland travel skill challenges is reducing healing surges without a chance to recover them until the journey is over. Otherwise it would be a meaningless cost.

As has been pointed out, it's even better if there is something very important at stake and time is of the essence.

 

[wedgeski]

What I've been doing for overland travel skill challenges is reducing healing surges without a chance to recover them until the journey is over. Otherwise it would be a meaningless cost.

Exactly the kind of approach I have taken. I find the meaner I am, the more that Skill Challenges start to matter, and the more seriously the players take them.

Failed your Wilderness survival SC in an arctic tundra? You're Vulnerable 5 to the Cold keyword until you find a warm bed. That is a good and meaningful consequence to a Challenge that doesn't have a defined goal other than "get successfully from A to B" where A and B can be geography, character knowledge, reputation, or whatever.

Challenges which have a clearly defined goal such as "stop the villain escaping the mine in his runaway mine cart" should be less severe; the consequence for failure is (presumably) obvious and every minor failure along the way build tension towards that binary victory or defeat (and hey, tax 'em a few Healing Surges or whatever along the way).

We're still in the Heroic Tier so consequences like this actually mean something. I'm twirling my moustache thinking about consequences for the Paragon Tier.

I still don't use enough Skill Challenges, because even after 18 months I'm still not comfortable with them. I think the framework was well-intentioned, but weakly implemented, and the early examples were comically bad.

However, over the months, hints and advice I've seen written up here, and of course the copious articles from one Mr. Mearls, have started to build a version of the mechanic that I think will serve me *very* well in years to come. I wish they'd thought of the idea a year earlier, so that the version as written was as mature as it is now.

 

[LostSoul]

LostSoul, could you elaborate a bit?

Everything's scaled to your level - risks and rewards - so you can't do something stupid or smart and reap the consequences. Even if you die, you come back at the same level. If you lose your PC somehow, you just make a new one of the same level.

Traps are easy to spot - you don't have to make sure you're looking out for them. Passive Perception isn't modified by the actions of the characters.

Diseases are easy to cure; you don't have to worry about messing up and contracting one.

There are no curses or cursed magic items, so you don't have to worry about poking around in the wrong place or picking up the wrong item.

Extended rests are easy to come by, and after one you're right as rain.

The lack of wandering monsters means that PCs can take their time doing anything they please.


This doesn't have too much to do with skill challenges; the mechanics there are sound enough. What lacks sometimes is the execution. Overland travel challenges are bad for this - lose a healing surge. Well, it's not like I wasn't going to sleep for the night anyway...

 

[bert1000]

Everything's scaled to your level - risks and rewards - so you can't do something stupid or smart and reap the consequences.

Yep, that's another vote for story related consequences I think.

As you said, the default of the game is that you can keep going if you want to and you are expected to gain XP and level up.

Story consequences are outside this framework, and thus can be real permanent consequences that don't gimp characters and mess with the game defaults but also should matter to the player.

This is a campaign style that players and GM need to agree to: Listen, sometimes you might fail and it matters. If you lose the skill challenge with the Duke and he won't lend troops to defend the village then the village gets razed. And there isn't always an alternative path to "win".

Now, I wouldn't let an entire campaign (or even major war) be decided on the outcome of one skill challenge alone but the loss should hurt.

 

[Somebloke]

I take healing surges/action points away from the party's daily totals for travelling, making the fights at the far end a lot more serious.

I have taken away 2 healing surges/failure and then hit points (this really grabs their attention).

I've offered one of them a very modest bonus and huge bragging rights against the other members of the party (oh boy did that grab their attention- never seen party members turn on each other so quickly!).

I've altered the entire flow of an adventure based on skill checks (you didn't make it on time..."she's dead, and all that is left is vengeance").

I've nearly driven a character to suicide via a despair aura clinging to a ruined city.

Iv'e supplied them with the wrong answer to a riddle to avoid an extremely overpowered trap.

In a Saga game using the same rules, failed checks would have resulted in a TPK when we had to shut down a critically damaged energy core.

Of course I've had plenty of rubbishy skill challeneges that resulted in very bored players and little in the way of story amendments. But it's a learning curve.