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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MarkB" data-source="post: 5011521" data-attributes="member: 40176">I don't think that fulfills the criteria for a skill challenge. It's more like:"Involves a complex sequence of actions to which multiple skill checks can be applied, with room for innovative thinking to bring different skills into play."Lifting a set of rocks doesn't qualify.Simply making it a skill challenge doesn't automatically get everyone involved. To do that, you need to structure the challenge to have 'hooks' that a number of different character builds can lock onto, each bringing their own strengths to bear. A purely physical, athletic challenge, even one in which you mandate that the whole party must participate, isn't an interesting group activity. Those who are rolling checks on their worst skills will become bored and frustrated.Also, if you insist on making this scene a skill challenge and drawing it out, you're unlikely to get your big reveal. You'll give your players too much time to think about it and realise the true nature of the situation.If I were dead set on making this scene a skill challenge, I'd abandon the big reveal - as I've said, I don't think it's something you can retain if you make it a skill challenge. Instead, let the players open up with Insight checks (not contributing to success or failure) to realise that there's no way any living child could be buried under this cairn of moss-covered stones, and from there realise that the mother is also a ghost, one who needs their aid.As they try to use Athletics to shift the stones, dark whispy forms gather and cling around the rocks, holding them in place. This opens up Arcana and Religion checks.A success on Arcana counts as a success on the challenge, and also reveals that this area is a weak point between the material plane and the Shadowfell, allowing some of the dissolute spirits from there to cross over. These spirits are mere remnants of lost souls, barely sentient, motivated purely by rage and self-pity, hating anything living, but they are too insubstantial to do any significant direct harm to living creatures, or to be attacked directly in return.A success on Religion also counts towards the challenge, and allows the character to make sense of the mother's seemingly-nonsensical explanations in the light of his religious knowledge. It turns out that she and her baby son were killed by wild animals while camping here as part of a trade caravan, many decades ago. Both mother and child were innocents, and would have gone on to whatever rewarding afterlife awaited them - but the dark spirits that haunt this place, remnants of souls doomed to wander the Shadowfell forever, were jealous of them, and snatched the child's defenseless spirit before it could pass on, attempting to drag him back to the Shadowfell. The mother's spirit remained on this plane voluntarily to defend her child, and they've been locked in conflict ever since, the mother able to prevent the spirits from taking her son across to the Shadowfell, but not strong enough to free him from their grasp.That unlocks further checks - Diplomacy, Bluff and Intimidate to confront the spirits directly; History to recall some great battle or cataclysm in this area, from which those spirits might originate, thus providing a bonus to social-skills checks against them; Arcana or Religion combined with appropriate powers to fend them off; Religion to conduct a ritual of consecration that will loosen the Shadowfell's connection to this place. Meanwhile, the boulders still need lifting, and the spirits are attempting to sap the strength of those doing that task, requiring Endurance checks to bolster them or Heal checks to stave off the spirits' harmful effects.Once enough successes have been achieved, the remaining boulders are lifted and the dark spirits retreat temporarily. With the child's remains revealed, a group Religion check can attempt to consecrate them, setting his spirit free to pass on to the afterlife. With that done, the mother stays just long enough to thank the PCs and grant them a boon, and the dark spirits disperse with a wail of infuriated anguish.</blockquote>

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