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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wayne62682" data-source="post: 5216833" data-attributes="member: 40455">Giving it some more thought I think the root of the problem is that EVERYONE, WotC included, tends to use SCs wrong.  The original basis of the SC was that it was just a decision fork, and no matter what the outcome you ended up going to the same area, just something different might happen.  For instance:You're seeking an audience with the king to tell him of some cultist activity in the city and have to get past the guards.  If you succeed on the challenge, you see the king, he becomes alarmed and commissions your group to root out the cultists, perhaps giving you some benefit later on or some reinforcments to make the final battle easier.  If you FAIL, you still see the king, but he basically just says "I'm rather busy, handle this for me an we'll talk more".  The same thing happens, but you don't get a bonus reward from the king, quite possibly someone is in league with the cultists and you get ambushed later on (to make up for the XP lost for losing the SC) and the final encounter is standard difficulty as you have no backup.THAT, IMO is how to use a skill challenge.  Far too often I see one where failure has an actual NEGATIVE impact.  Even most of the WotC adventures do this - if you fail a skill challenge it has some major negative impact, when it's supposed to just alter something later.  Take the very first skill challenge in KotS; perfect example of what I consider a very POOR challenge.  Failure means a monster MUCH higher level than you will attack the party, which probably causes a wipe/TPK.A good example of a skill challenge is in P1 King of the Trollhaunt Warrens (I think that's the name, been a while).  If you fail, you get lost and end up with some extra encounters that make up for the XP you didn't get for winning the SC, but you end up back at your destination with no other repercussions other than being a little more beaten up from the fights.In short:  There's not supposed to be a blatant negative effect on an SC, it simply affects the route that you end up taking to the same point.  It's a fork in the road, where Point A (success) is easier and Point B (failure) is harder, but both still meet up at Point C.  Too often, however, I see SCs where success is the only real option, or things come to a halt, or worse where if you fail there's nothing to make up for the XP that you lost from it, when an SC is supposed to take the place of a regular encounter, therefore if it doesn't come through the PCs will be one encounter short of what they should be facing, and therefore their XP will be skewed.</blockquote>

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