D&D 5E Is there any 5e love for skill challenges??

[Azzy]

Here's one: https://boccobsblog.wordpress.com/2015/07/17/1421/

And here's a repost of Matt Colville's video explanation of adapting Skill Challenges to 5e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvOeqDpkBm8

Thank you!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

OT1H, Skill Challenges are structured in a way that's antithetical to aspects of the 5e DM Empowerment philosphy, OTOH, you can just take that structure behind the screen and use it as a DM tool, and you're fine. There's no need to get away from the basic DM-describes-situation>player-declares-action>DM-calls-for-a-roll-and/or-narrates-success-failure flow of 5e, just compose the skill challenge, the tasks (individual rolls or group checks) that'll be required to complete it successfully and tick 'em off behind the screen as the players engage with the situation as you presented it to them. Players running a character not suited to the Challenge might end up 'wasting turns' by declaring actions that don't advance (or cause failures) on the challenge, but since you're not presenting them with a turn structure that shouldn't be an issue.

If there are characters at the table who can’t meaningfully participate, I’d hesitate to make the scene a skill challenge in the first place, in 4e or 5e.

But then, I’ve very rarely found a skill challenge that everyone couldn’t meaningfully participate in.

Other than that, that sounds like pretty much how they work in 4e, to me.

 

[Wiseblood]

I'm imagining a situation where you need to build a boat, and the task requires 100 effort to accomplish, and different things like gathering wood or smoothing boards awarded different amounts of effort... and so you end up building a boat by only chopping down 100 trees, because that's the one skill on the list that you were actually good at.

It kind of reminds me of The Sims, with its different little resource meters. Like, instead of playing normally and giving them a reasonable daily schedule, you could just use coffee forever and never sleep; or instead of bathing, you could keep your hygiene meter full by just washing your hands a lot. When push comes to shove, but all you have is a hammer...

Good point. Lets go kill some boars.

Building a boat is crafting. Sadly, this is almost exactly how it is presented in 5e but substitute effort with gp value.

Effort might be a good tool to use in a crafting sense IF the item was big and needed multiple stages like a ship or castle. Or we just break out the ad-hoc machine and see what happens.

Skill challenges almost worked. They are kind of like secret door DC's. The players don't see it so there is no accountability, no standard and no way for players to understand how to engage it without being walked through it. It is the mechanical equivalent of pc background that is ignored or worldbuilding lore that only the dm knows.

That said if they get fleshed out they might get used at my table.

 

[Hussar]

OT1H, Skill Challenges are structured in a way that's antithetical to aspects of the 5e DM Empowerment philosphy, OTOH, you can just take that structure behind the screen and use it as a DM tool, and you're fine. There's no need to get away from the basic DM-describes-situation>player-declares-action>DM-calls-for-a-roll-and/or-narrates-success-failure flow of 5e, just compose the skill challenge, the tasks (individual rolls or group checks) that'll be required to complete it successfully and tick 'em off behind the screen as the players engage with the situation as you presented it to them. Players running a character not suited to the Challenge might end up 'wasting turns' by declaring actions that don't advance (or cause failures) on the challenge, but since you're not presenting them with a turn structure that shouldn't be an issue.

Also, BA - essentially like the treadmill but with smaller numbers - creates a foundation for Skill Challenges, since everyone, even the theoretically incompetent at a give task, can participate. So, it is too bad that 5e didn't present and improve Skill Challenges, itself, even as an optional module, but, at least it did retain Group Checks....

Considering the lengths they went to distance, at least in appearance, themselves from 4e, it's not really a shock that skill challenges didn't make the cut. The endless complaining from edition warriors would have been far, far more trouble than it was worth.