Skill challenge design -- still wonky

[ashockney]

I'm a huge fan of the skill challenge.

The mechanic as it's written in the rules seems a little thin, basic, and generic. I've gotten some great advice from podcasts on open gaming, posts on enworld (especially related to KoTS), blog posts, and through some experimentation.

I've included my findings on my ENWorld blog on a number of 4e fronts, including the skill challenges I've fun.

A brief recap:

From the DMG, it is assumed that a skill challenge is to be specifically defined by a DM, with a set "level" of difficulty, complexity, and two to three skills that logically would apply to achieve success. The results of success and failure are determined by the DM. Per the errata, you should alter the number of failures to 3 for all complexities, and the DC's for all should be reduced to be more statistically relevant for the level (Easy = 5, Moderate = 10, Hard = 15). In the example (The Negotiation) it is suggested that you use other skills as "false choices" that will result in failure. It is suggested in the example that the use of certain skills be used as simple "rewards" and "penalties" for success and failure during the skill. In the DMG, a linear "example" is provided for each "success", with sample skill use "rewards". In the example in KoTS, a linear "example" is provided for each "success" with skill uses (Sir Keegan's quest). In the DMG, success typically results in relevant information or access to the "next step" in the plot, while failure usually results in a combat, loss of time, incorrect information, or the lack of relevant information to move forward the plot.

In my games, I've found that I am using some of the above, but have also taken on advice to make some slight modifications.

Determination of a skill challenge is a joint decision achieved by the players and DM. There should be a clear course of action available to the players that ignores the skill challenge. The outcome/result of a success should be determined by the players, and approved by the DM. The outcome/result of a failure should be determined by the DM, and agreed to by the players. This should include a complexity and level for the challenge, that is reflective of the "reward" to the players. In this way, a skill challenge is "announced". I believe that there should NOT be established skills for success, instead the players should be encouraged to be creative with their trained skills, and take the story where they'd like to see it, offering their own "version" of how they used their skill, assuming success. The DM offers a "consequence" for failure based upon the assertion by the player, along with a difficulty class for the roll. There's a chance here for fellow party members to assist, also requiring their relevant use of a skill and addition to the story, which is subject to DM approval. The roll by the player determines the outcome of that step in the challenge.

An example:
KoTS, the players determine they want to take assault the Kobold's Lair.
I indicate the players must find their way there. Their options include:
1) Pay 25gp to hire a guide (Ninaran)
2) Succeed in a skill challenge to "locate" the Kobold's Lair
The party checks skills on their characters, and agree they are up to this challenge. I indicate that failure will send them to a lair, the wrong one (goblin's lair for KoTS). I indicate this will be a complexity 2, level 1 skill challenge.
The party accepts.
They begin to tell the "story" of their departure from town, and highlight their primary skills. I determine the difficulty of each roll, and whether or not someone can "assist". Wherever possible, in advance of the skill check, I offer individual success and failure as a consequence for each check. I can also "force" a skill check in this challenge upon the party, based upon their circumstances, and I often do if they're going through a challenge too easily. The ability to leverage your "best" skills tends to make success come a little easier. I will use the limiting of skills in the challenge as a "consequence" to failure, and open easier skill checks as a "success".

This approach results in clear success/failure consequences along the way. Whenever possible I try to make EVERY roll matter.

We've had some great turns in the stories that form the foundation of the campaign. It has led to very entertaining, interesting, and laugh out loud outcomes.

 

[Ktulu]

One thing I've learned about skill challenges is...the ones that avoid combat only work for certain parties. Some groups like avoiding combat, and these kinds are good. Many like combat, and so avoiding it isn't truely a success.

What I recommend more is have the combat regardless of the success or failure of the challenge, but gives the players some benefit if they succeed. That lets them feel that the challenge had real meaning.

This is what I do. If the party succeeds, they might get surprise round, or maybe they'll have time to lay a trap, stuff like that.

If they fail, they might draw more enemies, get ambushed, etc..



As for Xp, I use the suggestion in the DMG that you level every 8-10 encounters. I just count each victorious encounter (whether combat or skill challenge) as 1 point. At 10 or so, they level. It's close to the basic xp rules, but less math, really hard for any player to "round" his numbers, and I have a clear idea of when they'll level without question.


On the other two questions:

Do you announce a skill challenge? I do, generally, let them know they have a goal. In the early games of 4e, I would ask for initiative and state the skill challenge. The party would then work it through. Now, though, I just let them know what their goal is, i.e. "M'lord's, the thief is escaping!" and they know they've gotta chase him down, etc...

Do you tell them what skills to use? Yes/no. generally, it's pretty obvious by my explanation of the situation what skils can/cannot be used. In the above chase, they know that athletics/acrobatics/streetwise work. They also know that arcana is not likely to be useful, nor diplomacy. However, any skill may be attempted, provided they have a good idea on what they want to do (that cannot be covered under a more obvious skill..obviously. I won't allow someone to use endurance to do something in place of an arcana skill, just because you have a high endurance...unless you've got a darn good explanation).

I often suggest obvious skills for a situation (especially after they explain what they want to do).


Also (gosh, I'm making this a long post) check out this site for a really nice breakdown of building a skill challenge (mechanically, at least)
http://athistaur.de/DnD/skill/Homebrew_SkillC.htm\

His addition of the epic DC really helps with those characters who have exceptionally high skills. I often give special success cases when a player uses one (I let a player know if one is available in a skill challenge) and even more lethal failures.

Ktulu

 

[Zerakon]

For example, in P1, see ecounter T1-2. **minor spoilers** You do a skill challenge where success means you find the adventure site and you get 1000xp. Failure means everyone loses a healing surge and you have a equal level combat encounter. The combat encounter gives you 3000xp, 1500gp, and a map to the adventure site. The combat encounter is not really punative. In fact, it is very likely to yield +2000xp and +1500gp vs. the skill challenge without any realy down side. The PCs may expend some resources, but there is nothing stopping them from resting before tackling the adventure site.

I just think this is poor design that keeps getting repeated (I've seen some similar in dungeon I think). Am I missing something here? Shouldn't a successful skill challenge that avoids some failure induced combat always yield at least if not more XP than the combat? (I guess the exception could be a failure combat that is say level +4 or something. Then there is a real downside to losing the challenge).

Personally, I think this argument is fallacious. Characters will generally earn some amount of XP per amount of time played. Characters who succeed in the skill challenge may miss out on the combat XP but they are likely to be earning XP from other encounters. As long as the campaign doesn't end when this adventure ends, there is no loss of XP. The party that succeeds in the skill challenges will be earning XP from the next adventure sooner.

If the argument is that the adventure 'promises' an amount of XP for completing it, but that some parties will earn more XP than others, then that I can't disagree with, but solving that problem in the context of a campaign is trivial.

Having said all this, I am not a fan of skill challenges. But I am a fan of adventures with many forking paths, choices of consequence for characters, and optional encounters.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

I just think this is poor design that keeps getting repeated (I've seen some similar in dungeon I think). Am I missing something here? Shouldn't a successful skill challenge that avoids some failure induced combat always yield at least if not more XP than the combat? (I guess the exception could be a failure combat that is say level +4 or something. Then there is a real downside to losing the challenge).

The quality of a design depends on the goal of the design. if your players' goal is to maximize the amount of XP earned per adventure, then I would agree the design is poor. My players seem to measure progress by XP earned per session, and in this case failing the challenge means they earned no XP for the time they spent playing out the challenge. (In the case you described, failure also determines what combat encounter the party faces next, but both encounters likely yield a similar ratio of XP to real time spent.) If the players optimize for plot progress per session (or quests completed per session), then failing the skill challenge is a big loss, since it puts the quest objective another combat encounter away.

If the players just want to have fun (or their goals coincide precisely with their characters' goals), then failing the challenge is just a failure followed by more adventure. They probably don't care that they'll wind up with more XP (after finishing the adventure as a whole) because of the failure.

 

[FireLance]

The way I see it, as long as the players are not railroaded into taking up the skill challenge, i.e. they can always decide to fight, I have no problems with the combat encounter providing more rewards than the skill challenge. I think that would be the best of both worlds: parties who enjoy combat encounters or who are willing to take on more risk for more rewards can decide to fight instead of attempting the skill challenge, and the more risk averse parties can attempt the skill challenge to avoid the fight.

 

[bert1000]

The quality of a design depends on the goal of the design. if your players' goal is to maximize the amount of XP earned per adventure, then I would agree the design is poor. My players seem to measure progress by XP earned per session, and in this case failing the challenge means they earned no XP for the time they spent playing out the challenge. (In the case you described, failure also determines what combat encounter the party faces next, but both encounters likely yield a similar ratio of XP to real time spent.) If the players optimize for plot progress per session (or quests completed per session), then failing the skill challenge is a big loss, since it puts the quest objective another combat encounter away.

If the players just want to have fun (or their goals coincide precisely with their characters' goals), then failing the challenge is just a failure followed by more adventure. They probably don't care that they'll wind up with more XP (after finishing the adventure as a whole) because of the failure.

In my mind the design goal for a skill challenge should be to present a complicated, mostly non-combat scene where
1) success get you closer to your goal within the story and rewards you within the "game"
2) failure gets you farther from your goal within the story and penalizes you within the "game"

As you point out, rewarding and penalizing within the game is tricky. Because rpgs are open ended, what is player success / success within the game? It could be to gain as much xp per session, to limit character death, to be the best player at modeling the PCs actions, etc.

As you and Zerakon have implied, in the end as long as the players and DM agree to keep playing, the story and xp gaining go on forever (maybe with different PCs if they get killed)...

Even so, something still doesn't sit right with me. The "within the game" penalty for failing a skill challenge shouldn't be a relatively easy fight that yields more xp and treasure than a success.

Again, I think it comes back to that fact that combat as failure for a skill challenge is just not good design. In my mind, it cheapens the skill challenge.

 

[bert1000]

The way I see it, as long as the players are not railroaded into taking up the skill challenge, i.e. they can always decide to fight, I have no problems with the combat encounter providing more rewards than the skill challenge. I think that would be the best of both worlds: parties who enjoy combat encounters or who are willing to take on more risk for more rewards can decide to fight instead of attempting the skill challenge, and the more risk averse parties can attempt the skill challenge to avoid the fight.

Why should the combat provide more rewards? The above scenerio would be:

Players: We head to the castle to save the princess
DM: You arrive at the entrance and there are 4 guards outside.
Players choice A: We charge and attack! [Combat encounter, followed by 8 other combat encounters]
or
Players choice B: We sneak around the side and try to scale the north tower and enter in the window. [DM decides this is a good opportunity for a skill challenge]

A: straightforward "dungeon crawl" with xp awarded for the 9 combats. End result if successful, princess is saved
B: I could see several skill challenges linked together to get to the princess, a combat outside and in the room the princess is found, followed by another skill challenge to escape undetected. End result if successful, princess is saved

In my opinion A and B should result in the same XP.

But this is not really the P1 scenerio. The P1 scenerio is:

Players: We want to find our way through the swamp to locate the evil lair
DM: Ok, we'll resolve your success or failure with a skill challenge.
Success: Great, you find the evil lair! 1000xp
Failure: Easy combat. 3000xp, 1500gp. You find the evil lair!

Hmm. All this is leading me to stick to plot xp awards only. That would take care of the "game" reward element.

 

[Hawke]

I know stealth rules were errata'd into the latest pdfs... were there any official skill challenge updates? I feel it is in need of a similar rework.

I'd also like to see a "skill challenge tool" that was similar to the encounter builder. Scale things, give you some DCs and some suggestions on skill choices for primary skills with some suggestions on some common challenges.

I feel like the system is SO CLOSE and I'm using it tons in my games, yet I feel like there's some final touches left.

 

[FireLance]

Why should the combat provide more rewards?

The short answer is that combat is presumably riskier and would thus net more rewards.

The above scenerio would be:

Players: We head to the castle to save the princess
DM: You arrive at the entrance and there are 4 guards outside.
Players choice A: We charge and attack! [Combat encounter, followed by 8 other combat encounters]
or
Players choice B: We sneak around the side and try to scale the north tower and enter in the window. [DM decides this is a good opportunity for a skill challenge]

A: straightforward "dungeon crawl" with xp awarded for the 9 combats. End result if successful, princess is saved
B: I could see several skill challenges linked together to get to the princess, a combat outside and in the room the princess is found, followed by another skill challenge to escape undetected. End result if successful, princess is saved

In my opinion A and B should result in the same XP.

My basic metric would be: is A harder than B? If it is harder, then it should net more rewards. Of course, if A is as hard as B, and the rewards should be similar if not identical.

But this is not really the P1 scenerio. The P1 scenerio is:

Players: We want to find our way through the swamp to locate the evil lair
DM: Ok, we'll resolve your success or failure with a skill challenge.
Success: Great, you find the evil lair! 1000xp
Failure: Easy combat. 3000xp, 1500gp. You find the evil lair!

If I was writing the module, I would have done something like:

Success: Great, you find the evil lair! 1000xp, and you spot the combat encounter. Do you want to fight them, or do you proceed straight to the lair?

In this way, succeeding at the skill challenge gives the PCs an XP reward and the option of fighting the combat encounter to earn additional gold and XP if they want to.

 

[bert1000]

I know stealth rules were errata'd into the latest pdfs... were there any official skill challenge updates? I feel it is in need of a similar rework.

I'd also like to see a "skill challenge tool" that was similar to the encounter builder. Scale things, give you some DCs and some suggestions on skill choices for primary skills with some suggestions on some common challenges.

I feel like the system is SO CLOSE and I'm using it tons in my games, yet I feel like there's some final touches left.

I'd actually reccomend Stalker0's Obsidian system (see his sig). I find it is a great mechanical solution. It doesn't resolve the skill challenge design problems discussed in this thread (which are tied to adventure design in general).