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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenmarable" data-source="post: 4755721" data-attributes="member: 40359">I'm still getting comfortable with skill challenges, but I really like them. However, I also see them falling into 2 entirely different versions.#1) Skill Encounter - This is the classic and obvious skill challenge. The chase scene, negotiating with the king, etc. It's pretty much where we flip into skill challenge mode and resolve it in a single encounter.#2) Ongoing Skill Challenge - I think these are far more interesting and work much better. Basically this isn't any single encounter, but a series of encounters - like researching some artifact, or the "navigating the city undetected this week" example Mearls had in his column. It might be several encounters each talked out and resolved with a single roll or two, or even just a roll or two between encounters (like the navigating the city undetected whenever they go from place A to B). For my campaigns, I'm VERY open to allowing most any skill to be used in an encounter with a good enough explanation. If it is something rather odd, it'll most likely be at the Hard DC. Plus, even more importantly, I have most skill checks offer a bonus or penalty to the primaries, so they don't get counted among the success or failures.Just to use the city-boy cleric navigating the swamp - for one thing, I think it makes a lot of sense that the cleric might slow them down, so checks are warranted (and I'd play up the humor of any failed rolls to keep the cleric's player having fun with it), but I'd also allow odd things like - maybe there's signs of past indigenous people or moderately-intelligent monsters, so a Religion check can interpret the symbols they left behind to know which directions are more dangerous or have good food sources, etc. It's far enough out there that I wouldn't count it as a success or failure, but I'd definitely allow that check to influence someone else's roll.Between grasping the concept of ongoing skill challenges, as well as encouraging players to get creative with the skill ideas, I've found skill challenges have become far more interesting. Running a "this is a skill encounter, everyone take turns rolling skill checks from this list of skills" is rarely as interesting as the other options.</blockquote>

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