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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Confoundo" data-source="post: 5142766" data-attributes="member: 129">I'm prepping for my next 4E campaign that should be starting within the next couple weeks, and I've got some ideas for skill challenges that I'd like to include. So far, skill challenges have not gone over very well with my group, but I think that there's some interesting stuff that's possible there - it's just that our execution has been lacking so far. Hopefully if any of my players are browsing this board, they'll do the right thing and not look at the spoilers below.[sblock]Skill Challenge #1 - Cockroach Horde!Bubbling up from below the city are an effectively endless horde of icky bugs - buzzing flies, cockroaches, centipedes, etc. While some of the party will be busy fighting off some giant versions of these insects, others will have to peel off and rescue some trapped citizens. Without knowing what PCs my players are going to be bringing into the campaign, I'm going to try and include enough skills to allow anyone to participate. Of the common skills, I'll include Athletics (to physically skirt the bugs), Diplomacy (to calm the trapped citizens), Endurance (to shrug off any attacking bugs), Intimidate (to get the citizens moving), and Streetwise (to know ways around the horde). Added to that would be Perception (to spot openings) and Nature (to know how the bugs might act). I'm also considering allowing the PCs to offset some or all of their failures by taking damage - one healing surge per failure? Some concerns that I have for the skill challenge are:1) I need to make sure that the players realize that they can't just wait until after the big bugs have been defeated for them to focus on rescue. How about an automatic failure for any round in which no skill challenge actions are attempted? I'll have 6 players, so maybe I should up that to 2 attempts per round.2) Should most of the skill attempts be standard or move actions? Making them standard actions means that those two players are effectively out of combat, but if they were move actions, they could still be laying down covering fire. 3) Would it be too complicated to make this a series of cascading skill challenges? First the players need to rescue the kids trapped on the wagon, then they need to focus on the merchants in the store, and finally they have to rush to aid the townsfolk near the well... each area could be a separate Complexity 1 challenge, all while the fight is raging near the center of the map. [/sblock]Has anyone run anything similar? Any suggestions or glaring problems?</blockquote>

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