Sample skill challenge

[Ruined]

Hello people. I'm prepping my 4e playtest game and wanted to show my non-combat skill challenge model. First off, many thanks to those of you who've cobbled together the information we have so far. Your enthusiasm makes this possible.

So, I've pulled in some thematic elements from Burning Plague, but kept many of the encounters the same. I'm starting with an outdoor kobold ambush, a village scene, leading up to the cavern battle with the kobolds (and boulder trap), followed by Nightscale. For story concerns, the group has been recruited to go retrieve an item of religious significance from a small village that recently discovered it. This has been pre-arranged, but the town is in dire straits when they arrive. They've contracted the burning plague not long after discovery of this artifact, and some even dare to say it is a curse brought upon by the gods. Also there have been raids by kobolds, wounding or slaying the town's hardiest protectors. The town council - a group of bitter old men - deny the group their item, saying that they can collect it off their corpses once the town has perished. The heroes can be heroes, but they may still leave empty-handed. So we begin the non-combat challenge.

I'm following the 6-4 method (reach 6 successes before 4 failures). Challenges I'm foreseeing are:

• Diplomacy to convince Council of their error. (Hard)
• Insight to see what the Council really means/wants (Easy)
• Heal to help the wounded guards (Easy)
• Heal to ease the suffering of some of the sick (Medium)
• Heal to cure a plague victim (Hard)
• Nature to determine how plague was contracted (Medium)
• History to recall stories of a similar outbreak (Medium)
• Athletics to handle some tasks done by wounded or dead, winning support (Easy)

and so on.

One thing I have noticed is a variance of numbers among the playtesters and DDXP attendees. Some say 10-15-20, others 11-14-19. Do we know if they're that fluid, or are they supposed to scale with level?

For results, I've worked out the following:

• Strong success (2 failures or less), they will grant the heroes a random grouping magic items toward the task. (use my item cards + post its).
• Moderate success (3 failures), the council will relent and promise the heroes the reward if they go investigate.
• Moderate failure, (3 succeses or more), the council will tell the party there's nothing for them here. Townsfolk will quietly ask them for help, point in right direction.
• Strong failure (2 successes or less), they will curse the heroes, giving some penalty for the upcoming fight. At least one of the party shows signs of the plague.

Any thoughts, or especially recommendations on skill target numbers?

 

[LostSoul]

What is the goal of the skill challenge? Is it to get the item, or is it to get a quest?

 

[evil bastard]

What is the reward for moderate success and what is the xp reward for suceeding at this skill test?

 

[Ruined]

The goal as I see it would be to get the initial item (macguffin!) that they've been sent to retrieve. The council doesn't want to honor their deal, due to the plague situation in town, so the PCs should try to sway them (or the small town as a whole).

It doesn't affect whether they go to investigate the kobold lair or not, but it could provide benefits or penalties based on high success/fail. Ultimately I'm just looking for a good example to try out the non-combat system, so any suggestions are welcome.

[As per the XP question, it's not something I've factored in. This is a one-shot.]

 

[LostSoul]

Ah, gotcha. Yeah, that's the way to do it.

Diplomacy to convince Council of their error. (Hard)

Make sure that a single skill check doesn't resolve the skill challenge. If I player says, "My PC is going to convince the Council of their error", on success have the Council be seeded with doubt in their actions. Until the skill challenge is completed, they won't be totally convinced, though.

For results, I've worked out the following:

I'm going to suggest not having a list of results worked out. Instead, I would look at the actions the PCs have taken throughout the skill challenge, keeping in mind which ones have failed and which ones have succeeded. Build the results off of those actions and what's been happening; I think you'll get a nice dynamic experience, with an outcome that will surprise everyone, including you!

Make sure you keep this in mind: if the PCs succeed in the skill challenge, they get the item; if they fail, they do not. No matter what else success or failure means, you should stick to this firmly.

For XP, 100 per PC sounds right. That's supposed to be a normal encounter's value. Maybe the XP is based on the number of successes needed * the XP for the difficulty - 1st level challenges, 10/15/20, is worth 100 XP.

 

[Pale]

That's... way too much time than I want to spend on a skill roll.

Sorry for threadcrapping, I just couldn't help myself.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

That's... way too much time than I want to spend on a skill roll.

Sorry for threadcrapping, I just couldn't help myself.

Crap aside, it's a valid concern. I don't want to spend that amount of time either, and that's coming from a guy who vomits when he sees the words "Use Rope" or "Forgery".

I think the idea is to only have those types of complex skill checks for the big hurdles of the adventure, which is what's going on here. The other standard skill checks can be handled with a die roll (or two). Do we know if this is the general premise of 4E vis-a-vis skills?

W.P.

 

[Gorrstagg]

Hello people. I'm prepping my 4e playtest game and wanted to show my non-combat skill challenge model. First off, many thanks to those of you who've cobbled together the information we have so far. Your enthusiasm makes this possible.

So, I've pulled in some thematic elements from Burning Plague, but kept many of the encounters the same. I'm starting with an outdoor kobold ambush, a village scene, leading up to the cavern battle with the kobolds (and boulder trap), followed by Nightscale. For story concerns, the group has been recruited to go retrieve an item of religious significance from a small village that recently discovered it. This has been pre-arranged, but the town is in dire straits when they arrive. They've contracted the burning plague not long after discovery of this artifact, and some even dare to say it is a curse brought upon by the gods. Also there have been raids by kobolds, wounding or slaying the town's hardiest protectors. The town council - a group of bitter old men - deny the group their item, saying that they can collect it off their corpses once the town has perished. The heroes can be heroes, but they may still leave empty-handed. So we begin the non-combat challenge.

I'm following the 6-4 method (reach 6 successes before 4 failures). Challenges I'm foreseeing are:

• Diplomacy to convince Council of their error. (Hard)
• Insight to see what the Council really means/wants (Easy)
• Heal to help the wounded guards (Easy)
• Heal to ease the suffering of some of the sick (Medium)
• Heal to cure a plague victim (Hard)
• Nature to determine how plague was contracted (Medium)
• History to recall stories of a similar outbreak (Medium)
• Athletics to handle some tasks done by wounded or dead, winning support (Easy)

and so on.

One thing I have noticed is a variance of numbers among the playtesters and DDXP attendees. Some say 10-15-20, others 11-14-19. Do we know if they're that fluid, or are they supposed to scale with level?

..snip..
Any thoughts, or especially recommendations on skill target numbers?

Actually, looking at this. I see some ideas, and my take on it. Right or wrong..

What's the goal of the players in town. This part is where you flesh out just some base brush strokes. Letting them know they've arrived at the village, and noticed the state of said, village, troops that are wounded, others in pain, etcetera.

Then leave the door open for your players to begin the adventure for you. Ask them each what their character wants to do in the context of the story. They see a suffering village, and that they happen to be adventurers. What do they intend to do?

(The base line here is presenting the experience and letting them seek out the adventure as it were. But doing it in such a way as to let each of them choose how they wish to proceed, with whatever task or goal. And give the players a minute to talk amongst themselves and figure out some basic things.. should they help, should they do something else, should they slink away.. etc..)

Once that's presented, they each tell you what they want to do. Take the one that fits your sense of order as going first, and ask them for the Easy, Moderate, or Difficult test as it relates to their task they wish to do. Which could be, the Warlock uses her streetwise skill to gather information about the village. She takes a moderate test, and so on.

Then go to the next person and ask them what skill they are going to use, to proceed with their goals, and each builds off of the previous player in a sense, thematically. Then go from there, and then build the narrative and when they reach the threshold for success or failure. Then tell them the results within the context.

So once the warlock figured out the town was experiencing issues with the burning plague, the ranger, uses perception and spots someone who looks like he's a town elder, and points it out to the group, the paladin goes over to talk to the Elder to see if there's something they can do to help the village. The cleric begins to go to tend to the worst off using his heal skill, the fighter uses her endurance to begin help hauling villagers to the main temple in the village area. The wizard uses knowledge history to understand the cause of the plagues source from a historical context..

And so on until they reach the point where your ready to move it to the next stage.

My personal guess, and this is purely speculation. But stringing together a small series of social encounters like this, will build a functional narrative that propels them to the rest of the adventure.

Heck you could even do what I described in a series of stages, with each stage advancing the narrative to the next stage. In that stage 1 find out whats going on and help as needed or not depending. Stage 2 now they know what's going on, what tasks are they going to focus on the real goal of stopping the kobolds, if they learned of it. Stage 3, haggle/prepare/rest etcetera for the upcoming days events as they go off to "Stop" the kobolds.. and so on.

That's the formative part, and you could conceivably have 3 social encounters, possibly tossing in a brief quick combat of kobolds attacking an outlying farm, with the players going to respond and encounter 4 for the day, fight with kobold raiding party.

Day 1 over.

Day 2, maybe one quick social encounter, that will potential provide some benefit for the upcoming encounters against the kobolds. But then tie in the travel to the lair, as one large social experience. And then they arrive, ready and raring to go. And then.. into the cave they go.

See my approach on this is that your actively engaging the players to come up with how they want to approach it all and thus empowering them to be actively a part of the story, and thus also totally helps accentuate roleplaying. And you can reward them with xp, per the difficulties associated with the tasks, etc..

Just an approach I've been trying now since the 4E kitbashed playtest we've put together..

At least it's my take on this whole thing so far. And ultimately as a DM, I'm adjudicating the story in the ultimate direction I anticipate it going. But let them take us on the twists and turns that push it forward to the next stage.

 

[Ydars]

Go Ruined; a nice encounter set up!

Other people have said that this is "over the top" for your game but I don't agree because your players will be completely unfamiliar with this type of skill challenge and so you should have some structure in your head.

Just try not to use it unless the PCs are COMPLETELY stymied.

The last post is a good way of thinking about how to actually present the challenge.

Remember, the PCs enter the town and ask for the item but are refused. They must first discover WHY they have been refused before the exact problem is revealed.

This type of situation must be resolved dynamically but it may not be that easy for the DM or players first time around. There must be SO many ways you could run this encounter.

 

[Celebrim]

Ok, my turn to 'thread crap'.

To understand best what is going on here, don't start by thinking of it as a 'skill challenge'.

Let's start with something familiar: "How would you run this scenario [in a mature manner] in 3rd edition?" Then, armed with that knowledge, it ought to be pretty easy to convert to 4e.

I think the key is what Gorrstagg said here:

Letting them know they've arrived at the village, and noticed the state of said, village, troops that are wounded, others in pain, etcetera.

Then leave the door open for your players to begin the adventure for you. Ask them each what their character wants to do in the context of the story. They see a suffering village, and that they happen to be adventurers. What do they intend to do?

In Gorrstagg's presentation, he begins by setting the in game stage. At no point is the DM saying, "Ok, let's have a skill challenge." The 'skill challenge' is the engine running underneath the game, and the players don't really have to know how it works. All they really need to know is, "We are in a suffering village. We are here to recover a gizmo, and the town elders don't like us."

If I were running this in 3rd edition, I might run the scenario like this. Initially, set a target DC on convincing the town elders to cooperate to something like DC 35 (diplomacy, bluff, or intimidate). That way, its possible that a very charismatic individual can walk into town and impress/terrify/scam the elders immediately, and have the quest end thier if they like, but its not particularly likely (and the elders would still beg the PC's for help, possibly leading back to the subquests depending on the character goals of the party).

Realistically though, the PC's would have to do things to change the elders relationship to the PC's. That could include initial attempts to use diplomacy to influence the town elders attitude (which might lower the DC by itself by a good amount), and it could include things like proving thier friendship by doing things which further the town elders goals. For this scenario, those goals might all be fundamentally the same - ensure the town survival. But in a typical scenario I'd run, each elder would be an individual with individual goals that depended on the NPC's alignment, motivations, and personality. For example, one elder would be grieving for a striken child and the main way to sway that elder would be heal the child (and possibly take the child away with them and see that he/she is cared for!). Another elder might be most open to bribery, and so forth.

By completing various subquests (including ones I might not have thought of), the required DC to win the gizmo using diplomacy would be reduced by various amounts. Conversely, if the PC's really flub something, then I'd raise the DC accordingly.

The thing I like about this is that it doesn't constrain the PC's. If a PC heals an NPC with 'Heal' or with 'Cure Disease', its the same thing. And I'm not railroading the party. If the party decides to overcome the challenge by killing every combatant in the villege, or by stealthily stealing the gizmo, that's thier decision.

(This is actually a pretty old method for resolving these kind of situations. The 1st edition DragonLance modules are actually filled with little subsystems for resolving these very sorts of things.)

I'm not at all convinced that 'skill challenges' give you anything new except a formalized system for handling all such challenges within a consistant framework. Having these new rules, I wouldn't change how I'd actually run the scenario at all. I'd simply have a different (well, slightly different) backend behind the scenes for keeping track of how well the PC's were doing so that I would know when the PC's could go to the elders and get the goods or perhaps even when the elders would go to the PC's and say that they've changed thier minds.

But I wouldn't ever say, "This is a skill challenge. What skill do you want to use to contribute to your success?"