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Message: <blockquote data-quote="subrosas" data-source="post: 4753013" data-attributes="member: 24241">A couple of thoughtsOddly enough I just <a href="http://subrosas.net/rpg/node/111" target="_blank">blogged</a> a few days ago about how I've been using skill challenges in my campaign.Summary: I've eliminated all skill checks that aren't part of a skill challenge. As a result, I plan set skill challenges the way I might plan set encounters. The key has been to make sure that a variety of skills are used to keep as many players involved as possible. This avoids the problem described above (from P1) where only one character has all relevant skills and all other players just play a support role.One way to get more players involved is to require more than one participant. If one character is belaying rope to a climber, rather than allow a simple assist, I might require both the climber and the belayer to make skill checks. If both succeed, it counts as two successes. If either fails, it counts as two failures.If I can't rationally come up with a way to get the majority of the players involved in a skill challenge, then I don't make it a skill challenge, nor do I resolve it with skill checks. At that point I usually make it a gimme for the players. As a result the old dungeon standby of searching for the presence of traps has pretty much vanished from my game. Instead when a trap is encountered (or a secret door is found) it is the process of figuring out how to disable the trap or open the secret door that is the skill challenge.During play I also use improv skill challenges. In this case, the players want to do something that lends itself to being arbitrated as a skill challenge, but I don't have anything prepared ahead of time. What I've taken to doing is creating generic skill challenges the way I used to design random encounters ahead of time. Its a bit more work, but really not as much as you might think.So far the results have been mixed. On the good side: the skill challenges have become more fun when they do occur, the game pace has quickened since we have eliminated extraneous skill checks - no continuous perception checks for secret doors or traps, no navigation checks in the wilderness, etc. On the bad side our game has lost a little more of that old-school feel. For us I think the positive has outweighed the negative, but YMMV.</blockquote>

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