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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cryptos" data-source="post: 4203298" data-attributes="member: 58439">No actual skill challenge in complete form, just some thoughts and observations:I'm personally reluctant to set XP, DCs or success / failure thresholds without seeing the rules, and the save the village or broker a deal challenges seem like fun, and I even used the Escape scenario to explain skill challenges to a friend: "Remember that time you had planned that big, elaborate series of encounters on the space station, and I just launched myself out in an escape pod after disabling the targeting sensors?  Well, you wouldn't have to do that any more... just say 'Skill challenge! Escape from the space station!' and let me go at it."  (He stopped running games after I caused him to toss all his notes aside for several sessions of Star Wars in a row.)But I've also been envisioning the kind of puzzle challenges you see in Indiana Jones inspired games, or in place of the usual planned dungeon-based obstacles, and I think that just planning skill challenges and encounters might produce a "player-proof" way of creating a dungeon that would actually be more interesting to play in.A basic dungeon map, no map key, just open-ended descriptions, and a few notes for encounters and skill challenge encounters.  This would seem to simplify dungeon design while at the same time making it fun for the players by coming up with a plan, and the DM would not have to worry about a player doing something he didn't plan for and trashing said plans.  Not individual traps per se, but obstacles where you could produce many different trap-like effects, if desired, on failures depending on what the characters do.  I agree that individual traps and skill checks should be handled on their own, but something like what I describe below screams skill challenge to me.  "You walk out onto a balcony in a large, circular room finely hewn from the rock.  Idols and statuary line the walls, nestled in narrow alcoves at about twenty feet intervals around the outer wall.  On another balcony, opposite you, lies a pedestal with the crystal skull you seek.  There is no floor here, beneath the balconies is only what appears to be water.  Something stirs in the liquid below at that sound of your footsteps."And then just determining what happens on the fly based on what the PCs do, what sort of solution they're looking for, and whether they succeed or fail at it.  Maybe someone tries a Perception check to get a closer look at the creature in the water, and then a dungeoneering check to figure out how to tame it.  Maybe someone examples the statuary and sees a depression you can hit on each one that causes a bit of walkable platform to slide out from the wall.  Maybe someone uses Arcana, and notices the whole thing is an illusion.  And so on.  You could decide what it's not (it's not an illusion, for instance), but you don't necessarily have to decide what the solution is... you're just providing descriptions and keeping track of successes and failures.  And in that respect I think that the potential, and fun, of the skill challenge might be getting overlooked here.  It's a flexible, non-linear system for resolving a non-combat encounter where the players decide what skills or abilities to use.Or as I said in another thread, I could see skill challenges as an alternative to a linear, keyed dungeon where you have to find the blue key to open the blue door, then the red to open the red door (the example someone used as an objection to being able to destroy terrain):"Before you stand three very solid looking doors, each with a very complex, arcane looking locks each made of a different metal: one brass-looking, one like iron, and one shining silver.  It seems very clear that you won't be able to progress any further unless you get through those doors."And then just handle it on the fly as an alternative to the "X key is in Y locked chest in room Z, and opens door A" sort of dungeon planning.  Pick your threshold, and then just sit back and watch the PCs come up with a plan, and react to it.It would be a quick and dirty way to just play a D&D dungeon crawl with little prep time.  I have no idea what the "correct" solution(s) might be right this minute, but if players start asking to make skill checks, I'll be able to react to them and if they get enough successes, maybe let them through one or all of the doors, but definitely reward them in some way.  Open-ended (in terms of results, maybe they find a key, or maybe they use brute force, or maybe they figure out some kind of pattern of actions to open the locks) skill challenges seem like they could be a way to handle puzzles in dungeons without having the player waltz up and solve it right away because he knows the answer, or because they do something unexpected and bypass the whole thing.  Skill challenges as an anti-railroading device, basically.</blockquote>

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