How do you present your Skill Challenges

[ThirdWizard]

Here are a few skill challenges I ran and how they worked out.

Melting Ice Cave
This was the first skill challenge in my 4e game I ran. (There was one before this that I wrote that they didn't bite.) This consisted of the PCs trying to escape from a melting ice cave before the melting ice flooded them in. I made this one an obvious challenge, success with them escaping, failure with them being washed away in the cold water (to be rescued by gnomes - which they would never live down).

It worked fairly well, every PC made their own checks to escape, with those succeeding on Difficult checks allowed to Aid Another as long as they stayed back with whomever they were aiding. I used successes as moving toward the exit and failure as not moving. It involved things like Acrobatics, Athletics, and Endurance. There was a very clear goal and a very clear way to do it.

It was a lot of fun, but very confusing. We weren't really sure at this point what we were doing, so we made stuff up if it sounded good. I think that's an important part of Skill Challenges. They're a great start, but don't feel constrained. if someone thinks of something outside the box, run with it!

However, there was a problem coming at it from this angle. It turned into a bunch of skill rolls. "I'm going to roll Endurance with a hard DC and Aid Tordek... made it! Okay, I'm going to do it again..." and so forth. Because there was no evolution to the "minigame" of the skill challenge as it progressed, it became very rote.

Defend the Fort
My latest skill challenge in my last session involved the PCs defending a fort from a goblin assault. Each PC was in charge of a platoon assigned to various locations. One PC on the wall, another at the gates, another in the courtyard who also commanded some reserves (aid another). They could use any skill as long as they could justify it. History to tell a rousing tale of a similar circumstance, Intimidate to drill the soldiers before the attack, Diplomacy to fire up the soldiers' morale.

I even used Attack rolls in the challenge to determine how well they fought if enemies made it to their position, with dynamic events based on other PC successes. So, when one PC failed their check at the walls, some goblins made it through to the courtyard. When the courtyard defenders stumbled, the PC in the keep had to keep them out.

For this one, I didn't use a strict success/failure value, I had a sliding scale where they had to have X successes to win the day, but also the better they did, the more survivors. I also had one PC running supply lines before the battle that would determine the difficulty of the defense based on how well fed the soldiers were.

All in all, very complex, but very worth it. I never used the words Skill Challenge. I presented the situation and asked how the PCs would deal with the problems they were facing, noting that it might be a good idea to look at their PCs' skills to guide how their PCs might react.

I think it worked out great, and they liked it. They got to defend a fort from assaulting goblins where their checks, but also their choices, actually affected the outcome! For example, the commander of the coutyard deployed forces to the walls in order to help keep enemies away from himself, and the supply runner made it back in time to help others at their posts during the actual invasion, choosing where to go and what to do, changing the course of the battle.

It was very transparent, very engaging. And, the real beauty, it didn't take that long to write up. I made a table showing how many successes would save how many troops, supplied some DCs, added some morale bonuses for having been supplied, and narrated on the fly. Oh, the PC on the walls failed the check? Now the guy in the courtyard has to make a check himself.

I guess half of running a good skill challenge is preparation, and half is spontaneous theatrics. As a DM you really need to be able to run with things, give them a flair. Make them meaningful, and make each action the PC takes important. A single check shouldn't be one action, it should be a series of actions.

I also think in the future that I'm going to have a sliding scale of success on most of my challenges. There should be a distinction between great success, moderate success, moderate failure, and great failure. Maybe even more layers. I'm also not a fan of X successes before Y failures. I'm more a fan of X rolls, compare successes to failures when you're done for most challenges I've run (though both ways have their uses).

Don't be afraid to play fast and loose with the rules. Think of how each roll affects the subsequent decisions the PCs should make, and try to keep the challenge flowing, changing, and engaging. Also, try to keep things in character - don't focus so much on successes and failures of skill check, focus on the PCs trying to accomplish their goals and how close or far they are from achieving them.

I hope this has been somewhat helpful.

 

[Caliban]

So far I've pretty much ignored them, because 5 out of 6 of my players think they are stupid and don't want anything to do with them. I may try to sneak one in soon anyway.

 

[Skyscraper]

I think it's possible to have different takes to skill challenges. Here's mine.

As DM, i don't tell players they're in a skill challenge. They just do their stuff and when they want to accomplish something that requires a skill challenge, well they tell me how they go about doing it as they would in any other circumstance (examples to follow in another post). I then have them roll skill checks.

The "something" to accomplish with a skill challenge is usually something more complex than usual. The example given above of escaping a prison where any single action might allow them to escape (climbing stairs, blocking the water inlet, climbing the wall, etc...) would NOT be a skill challenge IMO. A skill challenge requires a succession of actions for the goal to be reached.

The main difference between a skill challenge and any other normal action that requires a single skill check, is that a skill challenge allows for some failed skilled checks. Also, say you require 4 successes before 2 failures: well you need to provide narration that explains every skill use, be it a success or a failure, without allowing global success until the skill challenge is over of course.

I won't say to the players: you're in a skill challenge. For me, that breaks the moment quite a bit. I've only run a few skill challenges up to now mind you, but they went well.

I don't tell players which skill they need to use or what DC they need to match! For me, that is nothing short of inconceivable. It's like telling PCs what powers they should use in combat or what the opponent's AC is. No. They can use whatever skill they want. They can do whatever they want, in fact. I'll react to their stated action, associate a skill and a DC to what they want to do, ask for a skill check and use that as either a success or a failure.

Finally, i want to know what happens in the case of failures. It may be that each single skill check failure brings about something (e.g. resource expenditure); or it may be that beyond a certain threshold number of failures, something happens (e.g. they spend a healing surge). But i want the adventure to continue if they don't make it through.

Sky

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I cannot shake the feeling that skill challenges can be completely done by the DM without a real roll, just like they were in the original days of D&D. Sure, you can take some arbitrary checks from the characters, and then the DM applies those rolls to the situation. Roll high...get what you want. Roll poor...you botch the attempt, or partially fail the challenge.

My experiences with skill challenges have not been particularly positive. If it all boils down to the DM hiding all the info behind the screen, why not just make it all up in the first place? The players won't know.

Well, maybe I didn't describe it well enough.

They are still doing all the rolling and what skill they choose and how successful they are can effect the narrative of that moment (I have had a person use acrobatics to chuck a rock at a person they were chasing to slow them down (obviously was a successful there)).

What I simply don't do is say; "okay you must roll 5 successes to roll", "okay you should roll now", I let the roleplaying guide the skill challenge and let my players decide when/what dice to use as they see the narrative unfolding.

 

[Skyscraper]

Examples of two skills challenges run in my games:

1) Escape from prison

I had PCs wake up in a prison. They had been drugged, the jailers are now dead, the sleep-inducing drug doesn't affect them anymore, so all they need to do is get out of there. The prison cell doesn't have any windows and the single way out is a door that includes a lock and magical runes to protect it. (Obviously, windows would allow an eladrin to simply teleport out, so prisons don't include windows.) The PCs said they wanted out, of course. I asked how they went about it (not stating that it is a skill challenge.)

So one PC decided to try to decipher the runes (Arcana). Another, knowing they were in the temple, tried to make some sense out of the religious meaning of them (religion). I can't remember who made what check, but they managed to remove some magical protection on the door but not unlock it, said I. Another PC used a brazier that had contained the sleep-inducing incense to bash the door (Althletics DC). He damaged it, but didn't get through. Another disassembled the brazier and broke it down until he had make-shift thieve's tools to open the door (making it a harder DC without proper tools). In the end i can't remember what the last check was that made it, but the point being: each intermediate success or failure was described by me as having some incidence on the door. I would have allowed re-rolls of some skills until they got out; however for each 2 failures before 4 success, it would cost everyone a healing surge as their morale went down and fatigue kicked in. They managed their 4 success with a single failure.

2) Escape from a zombie mob

In this skill challenge, the PCs are alone in a city filled with zombies. They get spotted and hundreds of zombies come from all directions to kill them. They just battled 8 or 9 of them and had a hard time: they know they have to flee. I ask them how they go about doing that. (Not stating that it is a skill challenge. I have set this to require 6 successes. For each failure, they'll have to confront a group of 8 zombie minions at the end. So 3 failures makes it 24 minions, which should be a fair fight.)

Obvious they start by running. I have their athletic PC make an Athletics check. They make it and outdistance some zombies, but they're coming in from all directions. The PCs tell me that they try to go through hazardous terrain, over fences and the like. I have their agile PC make an Acrobatics check (they make it again). Many zombies are slowed down by the obstacles. One PC says that they'll even run over house roofs. I consider that to be included in the previous "obstacle" check and don't have them roll another check for this one. One PC tries to find shortcuts. Okay, roll a Streetwise check. They make it and find advantageous shortcuts to loose still more zombies. I'm forgetting one or two, but they ended up at one point with five success and a single failure, with numerous zombies still coming at them. But they lost a large group of them at least. They decided to find a suitable rooftop on which they'd climb and snipe zombies with arrows, magic missiles and eldritch blasts. Okay, say I, roll a streetwise check to find a proper rooftop (i guess it could have been an athletics check to climb there also, in hindsight: but it doesn't matter really): they make the (hard) check, find a roof top on which they climb by first using a pile of crates and then throwing it down. They then snipe away and kill scores of zombies. Now, how was it to have my final battle with the 8 minions, since they did have one failure? I could have had the zombies find a concealed doorway to the rooftop, but we were playing a zombie-flick type adventure, so i went all out: as they sniped the zombies, the zombie corpses piled up until finally a few of them managed to climb on the roof by stepping on their fallen comrades (does a zombie have comrades?) to engage the PCs in battle. Only a few: the 8 minions that made it were killed rapidly, as could be expected. Good for them, they rolled well in the skill challenge.

Examples of skills that i had thought could be used but were not: religion, to anticipate the zombies' actions; endurance, to outdistance the zombies.

Example of an action that i had definitely not anticipated: sniping the zombies from a rooftop. I fought my knee-jerk reaction to refuse it ("if you can climb, so can they") and transformed that into an action that got a good laugh out of everyone (this was not a serious game, we're a bunch of zombie-flicks amateurs).

The point being: by not asking for specific skills to be used, you open up the skill challenge to player creativity, which is great. And you also open up the skill challenge to DM creativity as you need to narrate on the fly the results of those unforeseen skill uses.

3) Conclusion

I never told the players they were in a skill challenge. At least one of them knew, both times. He didn't mention it either. It serves no purpose for him to delcare "i know what rule the DM is using now!" He just played along, and everyone seemed to have fun.

I am now on the point of running an investigation skill challenge in another game with other players. It requires information to be gathered to solve the investigation. I plan on the main information becoming available only when the fourth successful skill check (i plan for a 4/2 skill challenge) is made. In-between, they'll only find clues. It will be up to me to see what "intermediate" clues i'll provide, i'm still designing the challenge now. And also what will failures mean. Since an investigation is a long-winded event, i can't have them pay up healing surges for failures. Perhaps they'll be greated by more enemies for each failure they get (enemies learning that the PCs are trying to solve the issue), i'm not sure yet.

Sky

 

[Skyscraper]

I cannot shake the feeling that skill challenges can be completely done by the DM without a real roll, just like they were in the original days of D&D. Sure, you can take some arbitrary checks from the characters, and then the DM applies those rolls to the situation. Roll high...get what you want. Roll poor...you botch the attempt, or partially fail the challenge.

My experiences with skill challenges have not been particularly positive. If it all boils down to the DM hiding all the info behind the screen, why not just make it all up in the first place? The players won't know.

Nebulous: what you say here is exactly applicable to combat also. Why does the DM roll dice behind the screen and/or do the players roll dice modified by their stats on their sheet to determine the outcome of combat or a skill challenge? Why not simply roll-play it to conclusion?

I see a skill challenge as something that forces the DM to become creative, in that the challenge will require successive actions to be accomplished, with a number working and a number, not. The DM needs to react to those actions proposed by the players (without knowing what actions will be propose, though some can be anticipated) by providing narration to explain how some actions work and some not. And i also see a skill challenge as something that forces the players to become creative, in that the challenge will require them to find many solutions to solve a single problem.

Do you need a skill challenge for that? No. But then again, you don't need to roll any dice in D&D. I like dice to intervene regularly into the role-play action. I have PCs roll all their dice, even perception and insight for example, so that they get the sense that their fate is in their own hands.

Sky

 

[RavenSinger]

Thanks everyone for your well considered advice. It seems there are a range of approaches used by DMs from planning out fairly detailed contingencies to doing one's best to avoid the issue altogether. This is not surprising, as each DM has their own style and preferences. For myself, I really gravitate to the approaches outlined by Skyscraper and ThirdWizard. I think it is a good idea to not be so specific about when the skill challenge is occuring (my first mistake in my previous attempts), and to narrate as best you can. It is also clear that a little planning will go a long way in helping have a successful skill challenge in deciding what successes and failures may look like to the players. And even considering what a partial success or partial failure might look like. Of course, I also need to remember that the skill challenge should not be a dead end in and of itself. The PC's and the story must be able to continue even if they fail at the challenge.

Anyway, thanks for all the the thoughts and advice. I think I have some designing to do.
--RS

 

[DMZ2112]

Tried to post this the other day and the Internet decided I was not worthy. Most of what I say has already been said, but it seems a terrible waste to just throw out the post. Hopefully I hit on something new that is of some use.

It seems to me that Skill Challenges ought to be called "Skill Solutions," because they don't actually provide the dungeon master with a challenge to present his players. The nature of the challenge is still up to the dungeon master to devise, as it has always been. What Skill Challenges provide is a form of resolution, which is ludicrous, because resolving challenges is and has always been the players' responsibility -- that's why D&D is a game, and not collaborative storytelling.

The core problem with Skill Challenges is that they expect the players to guess what skills the author of the challenge has decided will be useful. Take the encounter with Sir Keegan in Keep on the Shadowfell, for instance. At one point, he outright asks the character with the highest skill rating in Arcana (how he knows is anybody's guess) if they are magically up to the task of sealing the rift. The player's answer is immaterial -- the rules tell you to have them make an Arcana check. An Arcana check? Why not a Diplomacy check, or a Bluff check? What does the Arcana skill have to do with an expression of confidence? Does the character whip out his laptop and generate a quick PowerPoint presentation on the theory and practice of rift closing? This is an excellent example of how NOT to run a Skill Challenge, but it is pretty much how the ROW tells you to do it.

You absolutely cannot tell a player, "You can make a timely reference to a battle the king fought in during the revolution if you make a History check now." You also can't list what skills would be appropriate to a given situation and have them pick the one they're best at, and then dictate the results. This is Dungeon Mastery 101 stuff. The only time it is ever acceptable for a dungeon master to order a skill check is when the need is clear and present, which generally means the player has initiated some kind of difficult action on their own, and has either suggested a skill check or expects you to call for one. Anything else is leading the players.

In my opinion, the only good way to run a Skill Challenge is to not run a Skill Challenge. Put the party in a challenging situation that will require them to use their skills, and when they suggest making a skill check, take the results into consideration as the encounter develops. Ignore the numbers given in the DMG and in the errata for required successes and allowable failures (and in many cases, even their suggested DCs). If you keep demanding skill checks from the players after they feel they've made enough, it starts to look fishy. You have to play it by ear. Sometimes, diplomatic encounters are best handled by a single character who is trained in social graces, and frequently the other players are more than happy to just stay out of his way. If the party is facing a challenge that they must all defeat, asking for multiple checks from each player is going to sound to them like you're angling for them to fail, which you are, when it comes right down to it.

In short, Skill Challenges take control of the players' characters out of their hands. It is a player's right to decide what actions and words their character is going to use, and while it is the dungeon master's job to know which skill checks best exemplify those words and actions in game mechanics, without the benefit of precognition dungeon masters can't plan out a list of skills that are "acceptable" in a given conflict or a number of times those skills must be successful in order for the victory conditions to be met. If they do, that's called railroading. That's pretty basic, and it terrifies me that Wizards missed it.

 

[Piratecat]

I ran one the other week where the PCs were brought out into a swamp, and were racing another group somewhere else in the swamp back to town. I didn't make it explicit that it was a skill challenge.

Instead, I asked how they wanted to handle it. They came up with several general strategies: "jump from hillock to hillock, sending the guy who can swim ahead to check for bad ground. Carry the less physical people. Use the sun and landmarks to figure out which way we need to go."

Then I had them make rolls as they said these - athletics, athletics, endurance, nature, perception, and so forth. Some of the rolls needed to be made multiple times, and when they ran across a fisherman with a boat I added diplomacy to the mix. I tracked successes vs failures, and then I compared these to similar skill challenges by the NPCs.

In my last game, I had a similar situation involving the PCs investigating a kidnapping. It was mostly perception rolls here as they unraveled the mystery, but once again I tracked success vs failure and made sure that there was a possible roll (or two) for each clue I had prepared. At the end I gave them a conclusion summary based on how well they had done.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

In short, Skill Challenges take control of the players' characters out of their hands. It is a player's right to decide what actions and words their character is going to use, and while it is the dungeon master's job to know which skill checks best exemplify those words and actions in game mechanics, without the benefit of precognition dungeon masters can't plan out a list of skills that are "acceptable" in a given conflict or a number of times those skills must be successful in order for the victory conditions to be met. If they do, that's called railroading. That's pretty basic, and it terrifies me that Wizards missed it.

That isn't railroading. Railroading is removing ALL choices from the players. Skill challenges don't do that. They let the player decide how to solve a problem.

Deciding that it will take 8 successes beforehand is NOT railroading. It's simply deciding the difficulty of something in advance instead of on the fly. Deciding a list of skills that are likely acceptable in advance is also NOT railroading, it is planning. If I know that during my next session the players are going to have to negotiate for the return of prisoners, I know Diplomacy, Intimidate and Bluff are likely going to be primary skills in a social Skill Challenge. I might also throw in History because the person they are negotiating with is a historian and respects people who have a knowledge of history.

I'd also be well within my rights to specify that Arcana doesn't help at all in the negotiations. Nothing railroady about that, it's just that a knowledge of magic and arcana doesn't help with the negotiations.

I think you misunderstand what railroading is. Railroading is when you tell the PCs that they are in a negotiation and they say "Hello, we would like the prisoners released..." and you say, "No, that's never going to happen" and they say "I'd like to use a Diplomacy check to convince him" and you say "No, no matter what you do, it won't convince them. You are thrown in a cell by some big burly guys who easily defeat you and you are unable to escape for a week."

The entire point of a Skill Challenge is to provide the PCs with a branching path so that it DOESN'T railroad them. If the Skill Challenge succeeds then X happens. If it fails, then Y happens. And I as a DM don't know which path the story will take until after the dice have their say. That's the exact opposite of railroading.


At any rate, on the original topic. Here's how I run Skill Challenges:

1) Get them into the challenge. This can be started any number of ways. Normally it is initiated by the players, but normally with some prompting by me. I generally don't run skill challenges on the fly. It has to be something important to the plot of the entire storyline and have a definite advantage or disadvantage that affects the story for succeeding/failing. It also must be a complex task with more than one step.

So: "Can you find the stolen goods or not?" is a Skill Challenge.
"Can you climb the wall or not?" is not.
"Are you able to successfully track down the murderer before he gets out of the city?" is a Skill Challenge.
"Can you convince the merchant to give you a discount?" is not.

2) You need to present it to the players. I generally don't tell them they are in a skill challenge. I try not to state the objective directly, but often it is implied. For instance, if someone asks them to track down some items that were stolen from them and they accept the mission, they are now in a skill challenge. They know the objective: track down to stolen stuff.

3) They must accomplish the goal. How they choose to do that is up to them. Some successes will lead them to places that will open up new uses of skills. For instance, they use streetwise to ask around and someone tell them about a fence(Success 1), they go to the fences place and use Diplomacy in order to convince him to tell them what he knows about the stolen goods(Success 2), he doesn't have any of the goods, but he knows another fence. They go and talk to the next fence who refuses all attempts at Diplomacy, he's too paranoid for that. However, if they threaten to turn him into the City Watch, he will tell him that he has a contact down at the docks who helps him ship things out of the city. If anyone was selling high value items, they'd want to get them out of the city fast(Success 3)....and so on.

I've found that Skill Challenges that are set too complex are the ones that stick out as kind of boring. If you have to make 10 successes to fix someone's house, then you might be wondering what the heck is going on about the 4th time you've made an Athletics check to carry wood. The finding stolen goods Skill Challenge is designed to be long and feels natural when it takes a while to move from skill check to skill check.

The best advice I've seen in the DMG about how to run Skill Challenges is that they should be run in Exploration mode. This means the DM is describing the environment and the players are exploring it and the DM is narrating the results. And one roll affects others. If someone makes an Insight check and you tell them that the person they are speaking to seems nervous and someone mentions this during a Diplomacy check, give them a bonus for it. Perhaps the person is not easily Intimidated, but if someone makes an Insight check they know that the one thing they really care about is their cat and an Intimidate threatening their cat is the only one that works.

Be flexible, but not TOO flexible. Don't let the players just suggest ANY skill. But don't say no without thinking about it.