D&D 5E Questions About Converting Skill Challenges to 5e

[Azzy]

I’d like to ask those of you with some rules mastery in both 4e and 5e for help converting some elements of 4e’s Skill Challenges to 5e. For clarity’s sake, I’m referencing the rules as presented in the 4e Rules Compendium. I’m looking for a (fairly) straight conversion to 5e.

First up is the section on Level and DCs. 5e’s bounded accuracy and static DCs seem to obviate 4e’s DC by level. However, I’d like some thoughts on the matter since there is some variance in level (due to Proficiency Bonus and increasing Ability Scores).

Second, the Consequences section. The Failure subsection mentions the loss of a Healing Surge as one example. Since 5e doesn’t really have a direct equivalent, do you have suggestions for comparable mechanical losses?

Third, sill in the Consequences section. The Experience Point subsection is probably my biggest conundrum because 5e uses CRs instead of Levels for determining a monster’s difficulty to overcome and there is no simple, direct correlation between monster CR and a character’s Level. So, how would you handle assigning a CR (and, hence, XP) for a Skill Challenge?

Is there anything else that you would suggest or advise upon?

 

[Lyxen]

The DC should be appropriate for the difficulty of the challenge, as per the table in the 5e DMG, nothing more.

Healing Surges have been replaced by HD, and it's a good conversion, as it can be considered that the PCs used some of their recovery capability after the challenge, if failed.

I don't use XPs, and 5e is much less strict than previous editions, just award XPs for a challenge corresponding to monsters of the corresponding encounter difficulty for a party of that level.

 

[overgeeked]

My suggestion would be to not do a straight conversion. You can search for Obsidian Skill Challenges. They're on here somewhere, I think. They work really well. Alternately, I'd suggest giving individual obstacles a number of successes they need to be overcome. Like a normal lock is one success, a really fancy lock is 2 successes, etc. Make a dynamic encounter/skill challenge by including various obstacles that require differing levels of successes and different skills to overcome. This is a spiritual rather than straight rules conversion. It's what I've been doing and works great. Also avoids worrying about converting mechanics that are based off different math from prior editions.

For a straight conversion, it's fairly easy but I'm not sure you'd really want to do that. Especially with the DCs and the X successes before Y failures. The DCs obviously don't scale the same and there was a lot of analysis about the math behind X successes before Y failures being a really bad set up. Search the forum for that. I think I first saw it here.

Level and DCs. The PCs bonuses go up at 4th (assumed ASI), 5th, 8th (assumed ASI), 9th, 13th, and 17th. You could start with the baseline DCs of 10, 15, 20 and simply give them a +1 at those points, keeping up with the PCs bonuses...but that puts PCs back on the treadmill of 4E. They have to get their stats high asap just to keep up with the assumed math. And this pushes them back into only using their proficient skills with high stats. You also get into punishing the rest of the group for the rogue/bard's expertise when you account for that benefit. Just let them have the easier time with their expertise skill(s). That's literally the point of it. I agree with Lyxen, the DCs should be straight out of the 5E DMG, not adjusted for level, proficiency, expertise, etc.

Healing Surges are kinda Hit Dice...but really, really not the same. Their function is wildly different in 5E compared to 4E. You had to spend healing surges to heal almost every single time you got any healing in 4E. Healing that didn't cost you a surge was a really big deal in 4E. You don't have to do that with hit dice in 5E. So they're much less impactful when you lose one. They're barely a pacing mechanic to handle short rests during an adventuring day. In 5E you get one hit dice per level. In 4E you got healing surges equal 6-10 plus your Con mod...at first level...and that's it. They never went up...but as you leveled, and gained hit points, the amount they healed for went up (always 1/4 your max hp total).

4E's Levels to 5E's CR. 4E combat assumes one standard monster per person in a party of five...or one elite per two party members...or one solo monster per five party members...or four minions per party member...all roughly of equivalent level as the party. Traps, skill challenges, etc were used to simply replace some of those monsters (though mostly standard monsters). 5E combat assumes a party of four vs one monster of a CR equivalent to the party's level. So compare apples to apples. 5E party vs one monster and 4E party vs one monster. So a 4E solo monster's level is roughly the equivalent to a 5E monster's CR.

I would just use milestones. It's so much easier.

 

[dave2008]

I have not tried to really break down 4e skill challenges and port them to 5e, but I like the idea. So, I thought I would give it a try. So first I am going to based it on Chapter 3 - Skill Challenges from the 4e DMG 2. I remember everyone said this was better than the initial effort in the DMG 1. So let's break it down:

Step 1: Skill Check Complexity.
I don't see any need to change this section at all. If can be ported over 1 - 1.

SKILL CHALLENGE COMPLEXITY

Complexity	Successes	Failures
1	4	3
2	6	3
3	8	3
4	10	3
5	12	3

Step 2: Skill check Difficulty.
I don't see a lot to change here, just use the DC per task as recommended by the 5e DMG as @Lyxen suggested. However, we could modify per level to correspond to 4e. So, combining the two I might do this:

SKILL CHECK DC BY LEVEL

Level	Easy	Moderate	Hard
1st - 4th	5	10	15
5th - 10th	10	15	20
11th - 16th	15	20	25
17th - 20th	20	25	30

Step 3: Skills in a Challenge.
I don't see any reason to change anything from the 4e DMG 2 here. Just use it as is.

Step 4: Consequences and Rewards.
I want to break this down specifically into Consequences for failure and Rewards for success. However, the thing to remember is that 4e had 30 levels, but 5e has 20 levels. So whenever you adjust the level of the consequence / reward listed keep in mind how this relates to 5e level

5E TO 4E SKILL CHALLENGE LEVEL CONCERSION

5e Level	4e Level
1	1-2
2	3-4
3	5
4	6-7
5	8
6	9-10
7	11
8	12-13
9	14
10	15-16
11	17
12	18-19
13	20
14	21-22
15	23
16	24-25
17	26
18	27-28
19	29
20	30

Failure
* First I will not that the 4e DMG2 recommends tailoring consequences to the scenario, not a one size fits all solution. However, if you are looking for generic consequences I think you you have a few options here. You can definitely use HD in place of Healing Surges. But it is not a 1-1 trade as Healing Surges had a much larger impact on 4e than HD do in 5e. So you might look at the rest and/or exhaustion mechanic. Perhaps 1 or more levels of exhaustion or loss of one or more rests or possibly something like:

SKILL CHALLENGE FAILURE CONSEQUENCES

Level	Consequences
1st - 4th	-1 HD & disadvantage on checks until you finish a Rest
5th - 10th	- 2 HD & disadvantage on checks until you finish a Rest
11th - 16th	- 4 HD & disadvantage on checks until you finish a Rest
17th - 20th	- 6 HD & disadvantage on checks until you finish a Rest

Success
In 4e the XP rewards are based on the complexity of the challenge and level. With the level being related a standard monster's XP at the same level and then the complexity of the challenge is equivalent to the number of "monsters." OF course 5e is a bit different in how it assigns XP to CR versus level. In 4e 4 level equivalent monsters = a 4 PC group in theory. In 5e, it works out that 1 CR equivalent monster = 3 PCs (in theory). So, I think taking a CR equivalent monsters XP and dividing by 3 get us in about the right ballpark. So, I give you the table below. Just multiple the XP reward x the skill challenge complexity.

SKILL CHALLENGE XP PER CHALLENGE LEVEL

Level	XP (Complexity 1)
1	65
2	150
3	250
4	350
5	600
6	750
7	975
8	1300
9	1650
10	1950
11	2400
12	2800
13	3325
14	3825
15	4325
16	5000
17	6000
18	6650
19	7350
20	8350

 

[Charlaquin]

First up is the section on Level and DCs. 5e’s bounded accuracy and static DCs seem to obviate 4e’s DC by level. However, I’d like some thoughts on the matter since there is some variance in level (due to Proficiency Bonus and increasing Ability Scores).

Two ways you could go with this: either embrace 5e’s static DCs and set the difficulty that way, accepting that skill challenges will get easier as PCs level - this would be more in the spirit of Bounded Accuracy, and would probably be what I would do if I were to try and convert skill challenges to 5e.

Alternatively, you could emulate 4e’s DC by level quite easily, since proficiency bonuses increase at a predictable rate. If we assume the standard DC breakdown of 10 for easy, 15 for moderate, 20 for hard is based on starting characters, simply increase each of those by 1 whenever the party’s proficiency bonuses increase. So you would have the following:

Level	Easy	Medium	Hard	Very Hard
1st-4th	10	15	20	25
5th-8th	11	16	21	26
9th-12th	12	17	22	27
13th-16tg	13	18	23	28
17th-20th	14	19	24	29

Second, the Consequences section. The Failure subsection mentions the loss of a Healing Surge as one example. Since 5e doesn’t really have a direct equivalent, do you have suggestions for comparable mechanical losses?

Loss of a hit die is the most obvious answer. It’s not a direct equivalent but it kind of serves a similar purpose. Since healing surges in 4e served not just as additional healing but a soft cap on all healing received, you could probably better emulate loss of a healing surge in 5e with loss of actual HP. Maybe roll the character’s hit die and lose that much HP? Actually, the 5e DMG happens to have a table for improvising trap damage, which might work well for this purpose:

Level	Moderate	Dangerous	Deadly
1st-4th	5 (1d10)	11 (2d10)	22 (4d10)
5th-10th	11 (2d10)	22 (4d10)	55 (10d10)
11th-16th	22 (4d10)	55 (10d10)	99 (18d10)
17th-20th	55 (10d10)	99 (18 d10)	132 (24d10)

In 4e, healing surges were always 1/4 your maximum HP, and you got a number of them based on class. So, a healing surge basically represented between 5% and 10% of your total HP per day. So a truly faithful recreation would do the same in 5e, which works out to something like 0.5 HP/level.

Third, sill in the Consequences section. The Experience Point subsection is probably my biggest conundrum because 5e uses CRs instead of Levels for determining a monster’s difficulty to overcome and there is no simple, direct correlation between monster CR and a character’s Level. So, how would you handle assigning a CR (and, hence, XP) for a Skill Challenge?

I wouldn’t. I would take the 5e DMG’s advice for awarding non-combat XP and assign the skill challenge a difficulty of easy, medium, hard, or deadly, and award the amount of XP for an encounter of that difficulty for the party’s level (or average level if you have a mixed-level party). Just use the XP thresholds table from the Encounter Building section in chapter 3 of the DMG (or chapter 13 of the basic rules). It’s a little long to reproduce here but it should be easy to find.

Is there anything else that you would suggest or advise upon?

I mean, personally I don’t think 4e’s skill challenges translate well to 5e. But, I figured I’d treat this pretty much as a + thread. If you want to do this thing, the above is my advice on how do it the best you can.

 

[Oofta]

Lot's of good advice here, I would just add that there are several alternatives for failure. Exhaustion, damage, inability to get a short or long rest, story setbacks.

Personally I've used all of the above (except for no long rest because of pacing) but a lot of times it's as simple as: can they make the next set of encounters easier or bypass a combat encounter altogether. Base success or failure results on the story you're telling, not something predefined.

 

[overgeeked]

Alternately, I'd suggest giving individual obstacles a number of successes they need to be overcome. Like a normal lock is one success, a really fancy lock is 2 successes, etc. Make a dynamic encounter/skill challenge by including various obstacles that require differing levels of successes and different skills to overcome.

Just to expand on this bit because it was terse. In case anyone cares...

I really, really loved skill challenges in 4E. They had their flaws but it was a great idea. We found it really hard to come up with interesting consequences to failure that weren't forced combat, death, or lose a healing surge. To us that was boring. So we loosened up the already loose framework, but made it more concrete instead of abstract. Though it could still easily handle abstract and montage scenes well. The DM would set up some montage or action scene and would include obstacles to overcome. There was generally either a separate timer (be done in X rounds or bad thing Y will happen, survive the night, etc) or some consequential fail state, NPC dies, lose some resource, lose favor with NPC, etc.

You rolled as normal, a regular success counted as one and a crit counted as two. A failure counted as one but fumbles weren't used. A failure would either add a new obstacle (usually one success' worth) or would add one to a given obstacle. So you need to climb a wall that takes two successes. Get one success and you're halfway up the wall. Fail and you slide back down and now you need two successes to climb the wall. But it had to make narrative sense. If you're halfway up a wall and you fail the wall doesn't get taller. You slide down. And you populate a skill challenge with a few obstacles that take different skills to overcome and that require differing numbers of successes. You can see an official 4E skill challenge that basically works like this in Dungeon 173. The Colossus of Laarn. Because we'd already converted to doing it this way, switching over to 5E didn't mean abandoning skill challenges.

Two of my favorites were the giant obstacle course and the zombie horde.

We were captured by giants and forced to go through an obstacle course while the giants were cheering, jeering, and throwing boulders. A failure could mean either you fell, slid down a wall, or a giant threw a boulder at you. A PC was halfway up a wall, failed and fell down, failed again so a giant threw a boulder. DEX save or take damage. The player then used the boulder to climb up the wall. There was more to it, of course, but that was the most memorable part.

We were in a town attacked by a zombie horde and had to survive the night. Checks to sneak from building to building without being caught. Checks to scrounge for supplies. Checks to barricade the building we were in. Failures meant time wasted or attracting zombies. The zombie horde would degrade the barricades by one every few hours depending on how many were there. If we were loud more would show up and degrade the barricade faster. Each success made the barricade stronger so it would last longer, but we only had so many resources to work with. We went to the inn and broke up the tables and chairs for wood to barricade the door. One PC was a guild artisan carpenter and handled that while the barbarian pulled larger bits of furniture, barrels, etc in front of the barricade.

It's a loosey-goosey system but it was a lot more fun, dynamic, and interesting than the nailed down skill challenges as written.

 

[robus]

I really don’t like the fixed number of failures in the 4e skill challenge, it punishes larger groups or longer challenges or dissuades players from trying risky things.

To my mind a skill challenge should be more like a tug of war with a time limit. So achieve X within Y rounds. Of course it could be an utter failure and they fail the attempt out right so there needs to be bottom limit too. The DM seeds the start appropriately (closer to their goal, or farther away) depending on the starting circumstance.

 

[Shiroiken]

Probably not what you want, but I've found that Group Checks are the new Skill Challenges. Everyone has to make a check, with a standard set of options. If a player has a suggestion for another ability or skill with an explanation of why it makes sense, I might allow that character to make that check (no duplicate non-standard checks). The DC is set by the normal rules (10+) and at least half the party must succeed. If multiple rounds are desired, you track each time the party succeeds or fails, with a desired number of successes required before a set number of failures.

Consequences for failure really need to depend on the purpose of the challenge. If it's social, the party just doesn't get what they want. Exploration encounters might cost HD, HP, resources (food/water/equipment), depending on what it is. I was never very good at this part in 4E.

I use Exploration and Social experience. The difficulty of the DC easily transitions to a encounter difficulty (easy, medium, hard, etc). I then grant xp based on the number of affected characters. Traps and such usually only affect a couple of characters, but social encounters affect everyone there. Encounters usually only provide xp on a success, but I usually give full xp for traps that the party fails, since it still costs them resources (I toy with only half xp if failed, but waffle).

 

[Lyxen]

Probably not what you want, but I've found that Group Checks are the new Skill Challenges.

For me, not really, the principle of the skill challenge was that, on the contrary, not everyone rolls for a given skill, only the people who actually pursue that avenue to solve the challenge.

That being said, I must say that while I liked the idea of the skill challenge in 4e, I realised that I like a much more free form game just counting successes and failures. I think they are a great tool when you want to publish an adventure and explain to DMs a kind of balance about various activities that the PCs could do to solve a situation.

But our games are much more free form, for one, and I don't want to restrict PCs to the skills listed in the challenge if they find a brilliant new idea. Or to penalise them too much if there is one of the avenue that they don't pursue at all. In addition, and more importantly, I want to be able to reward/punish the group for exceptional successes or failures. Although it could be argued that as per the SC rules, you could count them as two successes or two failures, I much rather count on the enthusiasm of the players and their roleplaying to see where the situation leads. Finally, for social parts of the challenges, it does not have to be binary. You could get the information from an NPC but still piss him off, so how do you count this ?

So in the end, despite studying them quite a bit, I sometimes use part of the formalism to list a priori the skills that might help a situation progress, and judge the overall difficulty, but I rarely go down the road of formalising the resolution counting successes and failures.