Repository of Well Designed Skill Challenges

[ender_wiggin]

I'm of the opinion that designing skill challenges is an art form that can be mastered through seeing it done well, and that there is no uniform form or formula that can be applied to every situation where a skill challenge could be used. That's someone else's words.

My interpretation: the skill challenge is like a machine with an input and an output. The input is skill checks, the output is a myriad of possible results that the various permutations of successes and failures create. The machine works with a specific set of rules, and is theoretically deterministic, meaning that if you have the same input situation and you input the same skill checks, the same thing will come out every time (it's theoretical because this never happens). Furthermore, the machine is opaque to the players, but by using it repeatedly, they can develop insight into its internal workings and if it is around for long enough, they can be strategic about what kind of skills they use and when. Some machines are quick and simple contraptions thrown together ad hoc. Others are intricately designed devices that feature an elaborate set of moving parts. Every machine is different, and it takes experience and innovation to design skill challenges that are a blast to use.

If people have skill challenges that they have run that worked out well, I'd like to see what kind of inventive things people have done. If you have links to challenges other people have made (on or off this forum), that would be awesome as well.

I've read the magazines and have seen the cool things that the designers have put out (imho, Mearls's feature skill challenges are much better than the examples they use in the book -- the X successes before Y failures model is just one class of machine that is applicable to some situations but certainly not all). I've also read alternate skill challenge systems (like Stalker0's, which he put a lot of really good work into), and although I think they are interesting, I don't believe there is one model that is universally applicable.

What I'm really looking for is a collection of SPECIFIC challenges that work well, as I think that is the best way to learn how to do this effectively and on the fly.

 

[DracoSuave]

Well, there was this one I ran, which involved saving a woman and a child from a burning building.

The primary attributes were Athletics, Endurance, and Acrobatics. Clearly, this was a challenge involving some sort of physical test on the players.

HOWEVER:

The 2 mainly physical characters were off tracking down some kobolds escaping from the village raid. (A different skill challenge entirely)

Secondary skills in this case involved Perception (to properly find the villagers through the fire and smoke), Nature (to identify wood that was going to collapse from the fire) and Heal (both to shield selves from smoke inhalation, and to properly deal with the villagers once found.

And as always in a well-run challenge, you always let the player figure out their own way of solving it. At no point should you -ever- say 'No, you guessed the skill wrong.' or 'No, you can't use powers.'

See that last one?

Well one of the players got a bit outside the boxish. The beginning of the challenge I described the entrance to the burning house stuck shut. So the Eladrin in the group asked if she could see into the window, and into the house. I told her that she could. So she used her racial power and teleported inside.

That was worth a success right there.

What then happened was she decided she was going to Frost Ray what she could of the fire, while the rest of the team did the grunt work. So, I allowed 'using frost-ray attacks on burning wood to cool fire' as a skill to work towards successes.

And no, you can't always plan for that, nor should you.

 

[Markn]

I've run some really interesting skill challenges lately, by playing with the results of failures. Some are totally my own idea, some have been ripped off. Here goes:

Last session we hit epic tier and I designed a fight where the PCs would be fighitng on some earthmotes. The premise is that they were in Hestavar (MotP) and several portals from the Elemental Chaos opened up and diminished (weakened) primordials came through along with all klinds of elemental energy. This caused earth motes to crash together and made "getting to the encounter" a challenge. Basically, the PCs had to dodge flying earthmotes, various elemental phenomenon and so forth to get to the fight. Since the fight was up in the air on some earthmotes and they were in Hestavar I told the players that it was easy to find suitable flying transportation to get there (pegasus guided chariots, etc) but once they got there the flying transporation would be useless. They had to use various skills - acrobatics, athletics, arcana, religion, etc to dodge dangers. The intersting thing was that each failure delayed that PC in getting to the fight by an extra round and additonally, they would arrive on a different earthmote for each failure with multiple failures leading to the PC being further from the fight to start. So each PC had his own Skill Challenge needing 4 successes. This worked out really well and is a great change from the drab 3 strikes your out mechanic!!!!

I also recently used Mike Mearls Colossus of Laarn skill challenge. I totatlly reskinned it, dropped some of the skills he put in (as I really felt some of them were a reach) but the idea of a fight/skill challenge was a lot of fun. I highly recommend reading it.

I also did a skill challenge in the Astral Sea where the PCs were affected by a psychic storm. They had an astral skiff and it requires a pilot to fly it, and 3 crew members to help. There were 5 PCs that night and each round I through a different challenge at them - one PC fell out of the skiff and had to be rescued, a ghostly githyanki skiff attacked, etc. Combining the round to round issues they had to deal with and damage that automatically happened to their skiff (which got progressively worse if PCs did also not keep the skiff piloted) it made for a pretty intersting encounter becuase the PCs had to constantly split resources to success at all the little mini challenges. If they focused to much on one challenge or didn't resolve the challenges timely enough the issues would overwhelm them. Basically, they had to get three successes on certain skills to drive the githyanki away, use different skills and get a number of success to rescue the ejected PC, and if there wasn't 1 pilot and 3 crew members the skiff woud slow down for each failure and the skiff would incur more damage. Additionally, the PCs could also try to repair the damage to the skiff. I somehow had the balance work out really well. This turned out to be a lot fun.

One thing I will state - skill challenges need to be more like combats. IN combat, the DM responds to the players (or vice versa) forcing a change in strategy to be succesful. My early skill challenges were more having the PCs roll and they either got sucesses or failures. When I started introducing things that happened each round to change what was happening in the skill challenge they became WAAAAAAY more interactive and dynamic and a lot more fun. In fact, my players prefer these types of challenges over fights now and believe me, my players like fighting a lot so that says something.

I give PirateCat credit for teaching me this. I read one of his threads and some of his designs and found them way more interactive. Once you figure out how to do this skill challenges rock!

 

[Iron Sky]

I had one that worked pretty well in this thread. It wasn't necessarily designed, since I ran it on the fly, but it sure worked well.

 

[eriktheguy]

I've run some really interesting skill challenges lately, by playing with the results of failures.

One thing I will state - skill challenges need to be more like combats. IN combat, the DM responds to the players (or vice versa) forcing a change in strategy to be succesful. My early skill challenges were more having the PCs roll and they either got sucesses or failures. When I started introducing things that happened each round to change what was happening in the skill challenge they became WAAAAAAY more interactive and dynamic and a lot more fun. In fact, my players prefer these types of challenges over fights now and believe me, my players like fighting a lot so that says something.

I give PirateCat credit for teaching me this. I read one of his threads and some of his designs and found them way more interactive. Once you figure out how to do this skill challenges rock!

Thanks for the advice, I'ma give this a shot.

PS: I'm not talking to Ender because thirds disgust me

 

[Camelot]

The Merchant's Challenge

The characters volunteer to participate in a merchant's game. They have to perform various tasks, such as weight lifting, balancing, and even a quiz.

Have the characters roll group checks for each challenge in order. If at least half of the group succeeds, it counts as a success. If more than half the group fails, it counts as a failure and they must try the group check again.

Level 1 Skill Challenge (300 XP)

Complexity: 3 (requires 8 successes before 3 failures)

Primary Skills: Acrobatics, Arcana, Athletics, Dungeoneering, History, Nature, Stealth, Thievery

First Challenge, Athletics (DC 5, group check): The characters need to lift weights while an hourglass counts down for a minute.

Second Challenge, Acrobatics (DC 5, group check): The characters put down the weights, but now they have to balance on them for a minute.

Third Challenge, Stealth (DC 10, group check): The characters must tread carefully across a minefield of mousetraps without setting any of them off.

Fourth Challenge, Thievery (DC 10, group check): The characters take turns trying to reach through a small enchanted ring to snatch a small object on the other side. If they touch the ring, an alarm blares and they fail.

Fifth Challenge, History (DC 10, group check): The merchant asks a question about the history of your campaign setting. A good opportunity to develop flavorful background that might be important later in the story!

Sixth Challenge, Nature (DC 10, group check): The merchant asks a question about a natural environment nearby the town the characters are currently in. A good opportunity to foreshadow what beasts the characters may encounter!

Seventh Challenge, Dungeoneering (DC 15, group check): The merchant asks an obscure question about underground fungus.

Eighth Challenge, Arcana (DC 15, group check): The merchant's last question is his hardest: an obscure fact in the obscure category of arcana. Best if foreshadows an important plot twist later on.

Secondary Skills: Endurance, Streetwise

Endurance (DC 15): Each time the characters fail one of the first four challenges, each of the characters who failed may make an Endurance check. On a success, their failure turns into a success, but if there are still more failures than successes after every character who failed has attempted an Endurance check, the group check still counts as a failure towards the challenge.

Streetwise (DC 15): Each time the characters fail one of the last four challenges, each of the characters who failed may make a Streetwise check. On a success, their failure turns into a success, but if there are still more failures than successes after every character who failed has attempted a Streetwise check, the group check still counts as a failure towards the challenge.

Success: If the characters achieve 8 successes, they have completed all of the merchant's challenges, and he awards them a minor wondrous item for free.

Failure: If the characters accrue 3 failures, then the merchant ends the challenge immediately, apologizing to the characters and then continuing to advertize his wares.

I used this challenge to start my campaign. It was a perfect excuse to introduce the characters to each other rather than a normal ambush-combat-you-all-fight-together-now-you're-friends scenario. I had the Nature question be about kobolds and the Arcana question be about dragons, since that's the direction my campaign is headed. The players found it fairly easy, only accruing one failure, but they seemed to really have fun! Therefore, it must have been good. =)

I haven't seen any general ideas for skill challenges other than the standard success/failure and the Traveling through Suderham (or whatever it was called) in DMG2. I'd be really interested to see any other structures that work!

 

[ZetaStriker]

The last skill challenge I went through was actual a player vs. player opposed challenge, although I'm sure it could work just as well in a player vs. enemy environment. The new PC decided to introduce his character in an odd way, having come out to search for the player's old character, a Tiefling who had left the part in the previous session. He was an assassin, and she was his target, but when he snuck into the Swordmage's bath in order to interrogate her while she was vulnerable, he ended up starting a confrontation, the pair critically wounded each other with their dailies, and then he fled the scene.

We spotted him again later, and this time when he tried to flee, the entire party was ready for it. The opposed skill challenge started from there, with one group as the "aggressors", and the other as "defenders". The aggressor decided the action that would be taken for the round, declaring their action and rolling the appropriate skill check. The defenders would then try to counter that action, and would choose a representative to roll another skill check. The winner of the opposed checks would gain an advantage in the chase, and whoever got to 10 successes first would catch or lose the opposing party with their last check.

It ended up being a close thing. The rogue flipped over obstructions, dove through windows, used Diplomacy to stir up crowds, hid in the nooks and crannies of various buildings and used every advantage he could to pull away from the rest of the group. We countered with what we had, and tried several times to close the distance as our Barbarian charged through obstructing townfolk, the Bard interrogated passerbys, our Ranger searched with his keen eyes, and our Swordmage referenced building layouts. The rogue ended up escaping by a margin of one success, and eventually even joined the party after the rival the player made up on the spot ("Ricochet" XD) showed up in the campaign as one of our enemies.

It ended up being a lot of fun for the whole party, as everyone kept hatching plans and escape routes while basically the aggressors were free to imagine and describe the terrain they passed through on their own. It got a lot of roleplay out of the party, and was easily the highlight of that night of playing.

 

[Amaroq]

ZetaStriker, I ran a very similar skill challenge in our last session - again, the theme was a chase scene, though the circumstances were quite different. It could be boiled down to "way too many enemies to fight are trying to track down a character or the entire party, while the party is trying to escape."

I ran it with opposed active skill checks, e.g., Stealth vs Perception would be made against the NPC's active Perception rather than Passive Perception, as they were actively looking.

My mechanic was basically

- Start the party at +0
- A successful round would advance them by +1
- An unsuccessful round would reduce them by -1.
- If the party are at +1 or higher, they are "out of sight" and can take actions like hiding
- If they party are at -1 or closer, they are "almost caught", and can take actions to directly impede the opposition
- If the party reach +4, they escape
- If the party reach -3, they are drawn into combat by the "leading edge" of the opposition, maybe a Level+2 or Level+3 encounter where the party's goal would be escape rather than outright victory.

I did not inform them of the mechanic; as it turned out, they spent a lot of time hovering between +2 and -2, so description of how close the bad guys were kept the entire party on the edge of their seats throughout.

Much like your chase scene, this wound up with plenty of improvised terrain and excellent role-playing as people justified the use of different skills. In the dark, of course.