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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 4756314" data-attributes="member: 3424">I guess part of the reason for the disconnect is: this is how I try to run skill challenges, too. Suppose the PCs have just defeated a band of kobolds when a bear that the kobolds have earlier captured escapes from its cage and advances on the party, growling menacingly.The ranger might try speak soothingly to the bear in an attempt to calm it down. The DM decides that this requires a moderate Nature check.The fighter might decide to shout at it to make it back down. The DM decides that this requires a Hard Intimidate check. Even though the DM normally prefers to separate skill checks to make progress from skill checks to avoid setbacks, he might decide that in this case, a failed skill check angers the bear further and counts as one failure.The paladin might ask if he can discover why the bear is angry. The DM calls for an Easy Perception check and a Moderate Insight check. If the paladin succeeds on the Insight check, he realizes that the bear is hungry. If he offers food to the bear, the DM decides that the party earns an automatic success. If the rogue succeeds on his Perception check, the DM also tells the party that the bear is wounded. If the cleric decides to tend to the bear's wounds, the DM may decide that an Easy Heal check will earn another success. If the cleric decides to use a healing word on the bear, the DM may decide that a roll is not even necessary.The DM may also decide to adopt a different model to determine when the skill challenge as a whole is overcome. The X successes before Y failures model works fairly well when the success factors and the failure factors are more or less independent (e.g. whether the party can navigate and row a leaky boat to shore before it sinks). In the above-mentioned skill challenge, where the successes and failures affect pretty much one single factor (the attitude of the bear), the DM may decide to change the overall success condition to when the number of successes exceeds the number of failures by a certain amount, and similarly, the overall failure condition to when the number of failures exceeds the number of successes by a certain amount.Essentially, I see no reason why skill challenges cannot be just as exciting, just as open to a variety of inputs from the players, and just as subject to discrete and dynamic resolution as combat.</blockquote>

Verification