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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 5143037" data-attributes="member: 15470">Well, by RAW there was no penalty for not-attempting, just for failure, so it actually made sense to "sit out" if a skill challenge doesn't suit your character.Which is fine, for some challenges: my fighter should neither be contributing to nor harming the attempts of the party wizard, sorceress, and paladin to wrestle with that crazy arcane lock.But it doesn't work for other skill challenges, where the DM wants to push everybody to get involved, more like a combat: in that case, the DM may want to structure the challenge a little differently.Here's my suggestions:1. The DM may want to explicitly declare "no action" to be a failure; this forces characters to try something, anything.2. The DM may want to specify a number of successes-per-round mechanic rather than a successes-before-failures mechanic. Again, there's no penalty for failure .. unless enough of the party fail.3. Inserting skill challenges into combat makes them very interesting: now my fighter has something to do while the wizard and sorceress wrestle with the arcane lock, and the paladin has a tough choice to make whether to help me defend them or to help them out.4. The DM may want to encourage an improv-style "skill challenge"; one of our DM's does this to great effect. He basically divides his target-window for any given roll into "major success", "minor success", "failure", and "major failure".Then, he'll describe the initial set-up, and encourage the party to start. So, say the party are going wandering in the forest, and don't want to get lost. A traditional skill check might be "Nature, 4 successes before 2 failures". His version would be, "Okay, you're wandering into the woods. How do you make sure you get where you're going?"Ranger: "Well, I'll use my Nature to get us on the right track.  Oh, man! A one? Plus nine gives me a ten."DM: "Ouch, that's a major failure. Tell me what happens."Ranger: "Hmm. Well, we're making our way mostly to the north, but I fail to notice a patch of bad footing, and start falling down a ravine towards the stream below."DM: "Okay, fighter, what now?"Fighter: "I'll grab a rope, toss it to the Wizard, and rush headlong after him."DM: "What?"Fighter: "Well, I want to grab him, holding onto the rope, and pull us back up the rope. I figure, maybe, Athletics to grab him before we both reach the bottom?"DM: "Okay."Fighter: "16, plus 9 is .. 25."DM: "That's a success. What does that look like?"Fighter: "Great, I have a hold of the Ranger. But this rope is pretty useless just yet ..."DM: "Wizard?"Wizard: "I'll try a .. guys Thievery is like my worst skill. Well, I'll try tying the rope off before they reach the bottom."DM: "Okay."Wizard: "7. Minus 1. So, 6."Fighter: "Minus one!?"Ranger: "You should've tossed that to the rogue."DM: "Clearly that's a failure. In fact, that's a major failure. What happens?"Wizard: "Well, clearly I don't get the rope tied in time .. and since its a major failure, they probably jerk the rope out of my hands when they reach the bottom. It snakes down after them ..."And so on. From a players' perspective, really super fun, because we have a group that really go for it, and "gift each other the scene" as described (the ranger "gifted" the ravine and the stream, then the fighter gifted the wizard a rope to tie. The wizard kinda let down the next character by not doing do.) .. and also because we have players who won't min-max. I mean, yeah, the fighter probably shoehorned Athletics into a situation where it wasn't normally called for, but he also didn't turn it into a "and we win"; the wizard was willing to try a skill he was terrible at rather than just jump to something he knows he's best at. Takes a good group!</blockquote>

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