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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 5338771" data-attributes="member: 996">I thought I saw "A skill challenge shouldn't be something that can be resolved in a single check, Instant Friends resolves something with a single check, therefore anything it resolves shouldn't have been a skill challenge."How many would you like?The party must convince a suspicious, unfriendly merchant, to allow them to secretly accompany his carravan, so they can draw out the band of brigands they're after.  The merchant has a rival thinks this could be a plot of his to sabotage his business, and doesn't believe in the threat the brigains pose.  The players must provide proof that the threat is real, that they can handle it, and that they aren't in the pay of his rival.    But, if one of the adventureres is a trusted friend  - no problem!The party must convince a very powerful, capricious fey to tell them of a secret way into a castle in the feywild - and, incidentally, not kill them as it is sadistic when bored.  The DM intends that the party find ways to 'entertain' the creature (intimidate to tell a scary ghost story, bluff to tell a hillarious joke, accrobatics to juggle, etc), amusing it enough that it wants to see what will happen should they get inside.  But, hey if it likes and trusts one of the characters...the party needs information about the criminal underground, and they have a snitch in custody.  But, he's terrified - of the PCs, the crime boss, just about everything, really.  The PCs must not just convince him of their sincerity and he rightness of talking, but convince him they can protect him.  If only they had someone he trusted....The party needs access to the archives of a temple.  The archivist is a cranky fellow at best, and strongly disaproves of adventurers on general principle, prefering the company of his friends in the local intelligencia (with whom he often trades rare books).  But, he's known to be susceptible to bribery and curiosity, both.  He also has the temple's Avenger guards to defend him if anyone tries anything.  The DM envisions a series of diplomacy or bluff checks, a cash bribe, maybe even a side quest to acquire a rare book, in return for what they need.  The party is taken prisoner by the kobold minions of a dragon, and taken before it as 'sacrifices.'  The kobolds obey the dragon unquestioningly, so only the Dragon's opinion of the adventurers matters.  The party needs to escape with their skins, but the dragon is canny and untrusting, by nature, but greedy.  It might be prevailed upon to let the party go in return for a sufficient bribe and more to come, if it can be convinced to trust them.The party come accross a village that has been raised to the ground.  There is one terrified, near-catatonic survivor, a small child.  He knows who destroyed the village, what powers they used, and where they headed.  But, he is far too terrified to so much as converse, and everyone he knew or trusted died before his eyes.  The DM envisions a series of heal checks to help the boy recover physical, social checks to win his trust, and a key History check or two to come up with facts about the village that might make them seem more familiar and normal to him, snapping him out of it enough to answer their questions.  OK, so there's a few samples.Now, it is true that a utility like Arcane Gate can bypass a skill challenge like "climbing to the top of a 50' cliff while being harrassed by stirges."  But, it /is/ a 10th level utility, and climbing a modest distance isn't exactly a challenge for most 10th level characters, anyway.  Similarly, a 'trek across a desert' might be trivialized by a high-level, expensive, teleportation ritual.Social challenges, though, happen at all levels.  From negotiating with a petty official of a small town at 1st, to interceding with a Deity over the fate of worlds at 30th.  They're not the kind of thing that should be obviated by a low-level ritual.  Arguably, Instant Friends might not work at higher level for a variety of cooked-up-on-the-spot reasons, and might or might not bypass this or that specific skill challenge (including all my examples, above) depending on how the DM read the power that day, and how argumentative the player wanted to get.  (Groups are like any other set of personal relationships, sometimes, you choose your battles).  Clear rules avoid such problems.  I hope to see Instant Friends errata'd to modify a Diplomacy check or provide an automatic success on diplomacy or something else in keeping with the general power and precedents of lowest-level utilities.</blockquote>

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