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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue" data-source="post: 7291036" data-attributes="member: 20564">I use the concept of skill challenges all the time.  I don't use anything even remotely close to the 4e rules.  But the concept of a skill challenge is great.The first change is that "skill" challenge is overly confining.  It's taking action, but that action could be a skill/ability check, but it could be using up a limited resource like an appropriate spell or magic item, or whatever.I do allow people as their action to intervene to minimize failed actions just as much as I allow them to help them to succeed in the first place.Also, not all successes or failures are even.  Clever ideas might count as several successes, while some tangential things might just make future checks easier.Finally, not everyone needs to be involved - but often my failure conditions are more about time spent to get enough successes and failures just introduce complications.  So not helping may leave them short.Let me give two examples of ones I've run:After defeating the Frost Giant sorceress Queen and her brutal semi-vampiric Frost Giant King, the Ice Castle the battle took place in started to immediately collapse.  While fighting them the party had blocked the doros they used to enter because hordes of frost giant zombies were trying to get in.So we have an escape from the collapsing castle, needed to be done in a short time for everyone, with frost giant zombies adding additional complications besides having to find a new route out from the very center of the castle.The final bit of that ended up with several people sledding down ice stairs on a large magical shield and finally battering into a set of doors that lead out.  Unfortunately they were more focused on getting out as fast as possible and the zombies, the the fact that they burst through to a several-story-tall balcony was not their happiest moment.  And the rest of the team was attempting to follow behind them and escape from the frost giant zombies that the lead team sledded past.As you can image, this was spells, checks, breaking into two groups unexpectedly, and working out the sledding on the shield thing.  And it was multiple rounds of quickly changing circumstances for each.  But also if they delayed too much (took too many rounds) it would have collapsed on their heads.An alternate one had to do with finding their way through a huge maze.  Mapping it out and running through the whole thing would have been a waste of sessin time, turning half an hour of play into multiple sessions and killing pacing.  This was spells, checks, but also just tactics & strategies they would use.  (For example, I knew the standard "left hand rule" or "right hand rule" would lead them into unpleasant encounters but would get them out eventually.)  The end results would determine how long it took and how many hazards of the maze they would run across.No one had to participate and people could help multiple ways, but there was no feedback at that point.  But failures and lack of successes both led to more time and more hazards.  On the other hand, tactics needed to be evaluated (and potentially given a check or just a auto-success/failure) on an individual basis.</blockquote>

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