Make me a Skill Challenge?

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Stealth: if you've ever accidentally gotten drunk because you didn't notice someone was refilling your wine glass, then you can see how this might contribute. I suppose this one could also be thievery.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that would be theivery - thievery covers slight of hand and such, and what you are doing is basically sleight of hand.




Now, if any of my players (the Chain of World's campaign) are here, read no further...


I'm currently planning a skill challenge for my own group, where they act as counsel for one of the sides in a territoritorial dispute. The way I intend to get the entire party involved is to have the "planning" for the diplomacy portion be just as important as the actual diplomacy portion. Basically, each character will tell me how they plan on helping, for which I will require them to do a "mini skill challenge", which passes successes and failures onto the diplomacy challenge (haven't worked that part out yet).

Some possible activities:

Research legal precedents: diplomacy/intimidation/bluff (get librarian to help), history (research), have to think of some others.

Find out what other side's argument is:
- stealth version: stealth (sneak to listening post), thievery/athletics (get to ideal position), perception (listen in)
- drinking buddies version: bluff/diplomacy (get other side to trust you), endurance/thievery (out drink other side), insight (read their body language)

Go examine territory in question: nature (navigation), athletics/endurance (make it there and back in time), perception/arcana/nature/religion (notice important terrain piece)

Go get info from other location: athletics/endurance (hurry there), intimidate/bluff/diplomacy (get person to give it to you), insight (know whether you have all the infor you need)

In some situations, you may be able to swap skills - use heal rather than a social skill to get the book keeper to help you by treating their arthritis - is one example.

Anyway, it won't be for some weeks yet, so whoever wants the final info for this can send me a personal message now and I'll give you the details after I've run it.

 

[ourchair]

My gut tells me you should just straight roleplay this out. No rules, no die, do predetermined outcomes.

Jay

Yeah, that's how I deal with skill challenges. I like the fact that skill challenges give an XP-measurable structure and form to non-combat, but given how many curve balls my players give me, I tend to just improvise.

Lay out the highlights you need for the skill challenge - I work best doing this backwards from the goal - then wing it in actual play. For example, in Khyber's Harvest, I knew that essentially, the players had to:

* Find the magic trail that permeates the area and leads to a cave.
* Determine that something is putting the villagers on the edge, and its more than just "Onoes, there r heavily armed strangers!"
* Conclude that the person they are looking for did not leave, but is still around.

So, I knew they could use a combination of Arcana/Nature to deal with the trail, use some level of Diplomacy/Streetwise/Insight to learn that the villagers won't say anything and use Perception and Insight to search the house of the person they are looking for and use Religion or History to get some clues about the objects they find there.

For my first experiment with this method, I used all average DCs, save for some exceptional checks -- a moderately high DC was needed to know more about the objects, and had only ONE condition for 'failure': They piss the villagers off by making excess use of Diplomacy/Streetwise over other skills. Using Intimidate more than once triggers this also.

In terms of XP, I just gave each success the XP equivalent of half-monster of their level. So, the encounter stretches -- if they are thorough and cover all the clues, they get more XP. If they make a beeline from missing person to magic trail to cave, they get less. The idea is to reward thorough investigative work.

Anyway, that's how I do my skill challenges if I don't have less than an hour to prep them.