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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gunpowder" data-source="post: 5024181" data-attributes="member: 57702">Personally I like skill challenges. They help me structure the narrative but I think they should really be a "behind the curtains" thing, announcing skill challenge time usually heralds a mediocre experience.  I have had a mixed bag regarding skill challenges. Good: The PCs were involved in an assassination attempt against the head of the occupying Thranish forces in Thaolist (planting explosives in the pyre the crazed cardinal was going to light). After the explosion, the challenge was get out without getting caught. First route they took was stealth. Both PCs failed (they were at separated at this point) and so both attracted the attention of some guards. PC1 successfully bluffed the guards to leave to attend other matters (the fire for instance) but one stayed and tried to recruit PC1 into helping. PC1 decided that killing him would be easier than another bluff, short combat and another successful stealth check later and he was in the clear, (3 success (PC1 killed the guard before he could raise an alarm so that counted)/1 fail). PC2 couldn't shake his guards (bluff failed hard) so he had a harder fight(3v1) when he decided to fight and had to run like hell after it. So PC2 ended with 0 success(one of the guards was able to get the attention of others)/2 failures. So in the morning at the hideout, the PCs found out that PC2 was on wanted posters complete with a general description, "elf wearing such and such armed with a bow"(he had peppered three guards with arrows), and he had left a blood trail that lead the guards to the general area of the hideout. But PC1 succeeded his SC and there was only a brief mention that the elf had "possible accomplishes." This was actually ran in 3.5 with just the preview WOTC put out of the skill challenges. The DM ran it as 3 success before 2 failures but didn't announce it. The concept of structuring the story as a series of skill checks helped the DM plan and improvise the action.  A different experience was a skill challenge involving a staff that was stuck in a planar rift which had to be closed to get the staff back (staff was macguffin the party was sent to get). What ended up happening was that the monk spammed arcana while the barbarian spammed endurance to give the monk a +2 to his check (the skill challenge required 6 success before 3 failures and arcana and nature were the only two skills that counted for success. Endurance was a minor skill that gave bonuses (the barbarian was helping brace the monk against the buffeting energies). The problems this one had were:  Scale. Very short and linear. I can understand wanting a couple arcana rolls to safely close a hole in reality but that's more like a complex skill check than skill challenge. It's hard for multiple PCs to participate, there's one very obvious right way to solve it and very little wiggle room for other solutions. The skill challenge was a pass/fail. Pass: story goes on. Fail: staff is lost forever. Good luck getting your reward now. Which I think was addressed in one of those articles about S.C.'s. that skill challenges shouldn't stop the story but change how it goes. Instead of poofing, the staff could have come out but it would have brought something else with it and fixing the damage a loose earth elemental or demon could do would be the next plot hook. Presentation. I think a major contributor to SC problems stems with its newness and some DMs are not sure how to describe it. It gets boring just announcing the numbers of skill checks just as it gets boring as announcing the numbers of to hit rolls. But people are more experienced spicing up combat with descriptions, those skills just need to be applied to SCs as well.   On the subject of scale:I think one way to improve most SC is to widen the scale of them. A SC shouldn't be "talking with the king" but "gaining an audience with the king". In the audience chamber, diplomacy is pretty much the only skill worth using, and it makes the most amount of sense. The roll to get the king to help you should be the capstone skill check not the beginning. But "gaining an audience" opens up the possibility of multiple skills. Flatter/threaten (bluff/intimidate) the bothersome bureaucrat to schedule you in to talk to the king or sneak in and slip in a foraged copy in the docket for the day that includes your appointment (a use of that copy ritual and stealth). A display of martial prowess on the practice fields and ability to hold your liquor in the bar (short sparing match or athletics and endurance) could befriend the captain of the guard and who could put in a good word for you.</blockquote>

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