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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ourchair" data-source="post: 5099336" data-attributes="member: 85362">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.</blockquote>

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