How do you feel about Skill Challenges?

[wayne62682]

My main issue is that, to continue the example we're discussing... the player of said "city boy" is going to, at least in my experience, get flack for trying something that he knows he's out of his league in. If you know chances are you are gonna fail the roll, then why bother to roll and hurt everybody else?

That's my view, anyways. I disagree with your stance based on the fact that "forcing" someone to roll a skill check at something they suck at is going to screw over the whole group because it's pretty much an automatic failure (either way, based on your house rule) that hurts EVERYBODY.

In response to Derren, I assume we're using the as-written skill challenge rules... my DM has never mentioned any eratta about it, and he's running the challenge straight out of the adventure so... unless they updated it to reflect the eratta... all I know is that he let us aid one character if we wanted to... so because of the circumstances we all pretty much aided the ranger since she had the highest bonus to minimize our chances of failing the thing.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Maybe you should check out the Obsidian Skill Challenge System. It's a homebrew take on it. I haven't actually used it yet but I plan on doing so. It looks really good.

 

[Stoat]

Stalker0's Obsidian system, IMO, is superior to the WotC/DMG system, certainly for social/investigative style skill challenges.

So far, I think the WotC system is a good idea poorly explained. Mearls' articles have mostly focused on the mechanics of creating a skill challenge, and have not devoted enough space to the presentation of skill challenges in game. His article last month focused more on presentation, which I see as a positive sign.

Questions that I have about presenting a WotC/DMG skill challenge:

1) Tell the players that this is a skill challenge or no? Last month, IIRC, Mearls suggested no.

2) Tell the players what skills are available or no?

3) If some skills have a lower DC than others, communicate that to the PC's or no?

4) If a successful use of one skill "opens up" another skill, when and how to communicate that to the PCs?

5) If successful use of a skill has a result other than a success for purposes of the challenge (ex. removes a failure, gives a bonus on another roll) when and how to communicate that?

I doubt that hard and fast rules could exist, but I'd like to see more guidance about how Mearls et al. are doing it.

In particular, I think a podcast or transcript of a more complex skill challenge in actual play would be a good idea.

 

[Drammattex]

Love 'em.
Found Mearls' articles in DDI extremely useful for rationalizing and developing them. Strangely, I seem to find that skill challenges essentially just formalize what we've always been doing with the game. If anything, they sort of give an actual framework of how to avoid role-playing and problem-solving xp. In earlier editions it was very much ad hoc, but with the skill challenge system worked into the basic mechanics of 4th edition, I think players expect to encounter noncombat puzzles more often. I really like this. It's essentially a story-driven thing, but it gives players who don't give a hoot about story a reason to work through it: goal fulfillment and xp.

I understand what the op was saying about them seeming unwieldy at the start, but WotC has been continuously developing the concept over the past year and I'm pretty sure I read that there's an expanded section in DMG 2.

In practice, I don't think about them all that much. Sometimes in the middle of the game, I realize we're in a skill challenge and watch the PCs work through things, set some basic DCs and a complexity in my head, then award them the appropriate xp at the end of the session.

 

[Felon]

Questions that I have about presenting a WotC/DMG skill challenge:

1) Tell the players that this is a skill challenge or no? Last month, IIRC, Mearls suggested no.

2) Tell the players what skills are available or no?

3) If some skills have a lower DC than others, communicate that to the PC's or no?

4) If a successful use of one skill "opens up" another skill, when and how to communicate that to the PCs?

5) If successful use of a skill has a result other than a success for purposes of the challenge (ex. removes a failure, gives a bonus on another roll) when and how to communicate that?

I doubt that hard and fast rules could exist, but I'd like to see more guidance about how Mearls et al. are doing it.

The only part of a skill challenge that is even remotely challenging is deducing which skills are the best (and worst) to use. Otherwise, it's just a matter of everyone comparing numbers and forming a train behind the guy(s) with the best bonus and hoping for more good rolls than bad--and that hardly rates any kind of fancy title. So, I would say leave out some of the crucial details. Encourage the players to explore their options.

The weakness of skill challenges is the same weakness much of 4e has--namely, the designers are unnecessarily phobic about the dreaded c-word: "complexity." As they all but admit in articles and podcasts, they want everything to be so simple and unpunishing that in the development cycle some cool and clever ideas are toyed with for a while, then they wind up going with something straightforward and bereft of dynamics

 

[I'm A Banana]

They could stand to be ditched and replaced with something else.

The core of the idea -- get some successes before you rack up failures -- is pretty solid. But aside from that, it's bland at best.

I prefer to have my characters contribute something unique to exploration, or diplomacy, or whatever, rather than just have them roll their best skill or assist.

Give me more meat, more detail, more variety, more interesting things.

Skill Challenges are inoffensive when you're glossing over things in between combats, but they can't support a campaign on their own.

 

[Quickleaf]

I agree that Stalker0's Obsidian system is superior in every way, not just the core math, but the includion of partial victory conditions, "time limit" of 3 rounds, and giving everyone an incentive to get involved.

However, even with Stalker's system a skill challenge can feel bland even with great description by the DM. Why? Skill terrain, or the lack thereof.

A while ago on the boards a couple of us were talking about increasing the complexity of skill challenges. 4e combat really shines when you've got interesting terrain to interact witih, so why not do the same with skill challenges? But what would "skill terrain" look like?

Here's a couple ideas...

(1) Circumstances change as the skill challenge evolves. At X successes the PCs are faced with a moral dilemma. At Y failures the PCs suffer a setback or trigger a hazard.

(2) Using skills XYZ has detrimental effect outside of the skill challenge. You have to decide if it's worth it.

(3) Skill X is required to avoid some bad side effect/condition.

(4) The skill challenge stretches over a long span of time (an adventure or even an entire campaign) with actions in between providing bonuses to certain skill checks.

(5) The skill challenge is interrupted by another conflict, requiring some of the PCs to break off while some remain to work on the skill challenge.

(6) Certain powers/magic count as automatic successes towards winning the skill challenge.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Haven't found a satisfying way to use SCs yet. I've used them for hide-and-chase scenes and for avoiding repetetive combats, I've been a player for a social SC, but it always ends up being 'roll a bunch of dice until you win or lose.' I think there are ways to make player creativity and decision making a part of SCs, I just haven't gotten there yet.

 

[Jack7]

For example, we recently had a skill challenge to navigate through a swamp (P1: King of the Trollhaunt Warrens) so the primary skills were Nature, Endurance and Perception. Our ranger has the best bonuses in all three of those, with myself (a Dragonborn Fighter) having a slightly less Endurance; the rest of our skills in Nature and Perception were nigh useless, so most of the challenge was us Aiding the Ranger to give her bonuses to her checks. The prior skill challenge made use of a lot of soft skills but none of us really had that high a bonus so we ended up losing it.

I'm really not getting how Skill Challenges are meant to be worked into a game. It feels like a mini-game most of the time, but nobody wants to act on their own for fear of failing; instead we all aid the person with the best bonus to get it as high as can be. Somehow, that doesn't seem like the intent.

What are your experiences?

I think you've got a real good criticism here because to me they don't seem like they are constructed to test "skills" at all but rather just to reduce very, very basic general capabilities to not very productive mathematical probabilities and then regurgitate those probabilities as an expression of a single character's formulaic statistical averages.

It's like someone saying to me, "Hey, why don't you demonstrate your skill as an artist by drawing me three versions of a Lyger? If you get one close to right by number of properly colored pixels in the picture then you must know what you're doing."

That ain't a demonstration of any kind of real skill, it's paint by numbers till all the spaces get filled up. Or not.

 

[Aus_Snow]

So it sounds as though they work a fair bit like the rules they were directly ported from (i.e., Complex Skill Checks, found in 3e's Unearthed Arcana, and therefore The Hypertext d20 SRD (v3.5 d20 System Reference Document) :: d20srd.org). IOW, not enough to go on with, as is, but could perhaps be combined with other suitable mechanics, to provide a decent framework.

Slightly altered from the original, sure, but very much the same idea. And some or all of those alterations have been seen before [4e] as well.

Anyway, from what I hear, the 'Obsidian' house rules are the shiznit. For 4e, that is.