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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5069304" data-attributes="member: 22424">Skill challenges should basically work as-is in 3e. It's just a matter of "X successes before Y failures", after all. The only difference is that characters will have basically no chance of success when using a skill untrained.(Of course, I'm not fond of the 4e suggestion that DC values should go up at the same rate as PC bonuses, so that skews things somewhat. I prefer a fixed DC of 15 for level 1, rising to 20 at level 5, 25 at level 10, and so on. But that's just me.)Two options: either grant a bigger bonus, or give an automatic success. For a spell like miracle I'd lean towards the latter, given the XP cost. For a GP cost, I would suggest a bonus equal to the spell level.However, unless there's a permanent cost associated with the spell/magic item, I'd be inclined not to give a bonus at all - the PC is just assumed to apply all his tools to the task at hand.For the skill challenge itself, I see two main options.If there are only two teams, and the PCs are all on the same team, then I would recommend just using a standard challenge - if the PCs get 10 successes before 3 failures (or whatever), then they complete their task first. If not, then the NPC team wins.If there are more than two teams, or the PCs are split between teams, then I would suggest effectively running the challenge independently for each team. Start by adding 'significant' NPCs to each team to equal out the number of participants. (You may well want to run an "interview process" whereby the players choose the additional members for their team(s).) Then, make a single initiative roll for each team in turn, using the highest modifier from any single member. And then run the challenge for each team in order of initiative - each 'cycle' of rolls represents a month of work; a team that gets 3 failures before 10 successes suffers a catastrophic failure; and the first team to get those 10 successes are the winners.You might simplify the rolling here by ruling that each significant NPC contributes a fixed number of successes and failures with each 'cycle' of rolls. This works best if there is no more than one fully NPC team, though.To make it seem more like a competition, I would recommend adding in some tactical elements to the rolls, and probably one or two encounters along the way.For example, the PCs might decide that they want to push their workforce harder than normal, and thus try to get more done in the time available. This could increase the difficulty of the rolls by a step, but allow each success to count double (or one-and-a-half, or whatever). Or perhaps they offer their workforce a bonus for early completion, thus gaining an extra Diplomacy roll per 'cycle'.As for the encounters - maybe word reaches the PCs of a famous Dwarven architect who has fallen into the hands of Nerull worshippers. If the PCs free him, he would contribute his expertise to the cause. Or perhaps they should launch a nocturnal raid on the opposing team to undo some of their work? (Or the reverse - their opponents send thugs to do the same, and the PCs must beat them back.)How much further you go with this depends entirely on how much detail you want to put in. If your players aren't really all that interested in building the cathedral, then a dead simple Skill Challenge is really the way to go. If they are very interested, then you can expand this out essentially to a full adventure, with all sorts of complications.</blockquote>

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