Skill Challenge Overkill (mearls stuff)

[Cadfan]

TerraDave- First, skill challenges were never a "fall back" thing. They were a framework for handling the completion of complex tasks that involve the use of multiple skills. Second, the level on which Mearls is talking right now is essentially entire game sessions or overarching campaign issues presented through the framework of a skill challenge. Of course they require prepwork. He's talking about series of events that might involve the entirety of a game session, or more.

 

[LostSoul]

The biggest help I've had in running skill challenges has been playing other games with similar mechanics - Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, Sorcerer, In a Wicked Age...

Techniques I've learned from running and playing those games has helped me use Skill Challenges. The main one is "focus on conflict."

 

[TerraDave]

OK, first, they were promised (there is that word again) as absolutely, 100%, a fall back thing. Something that would make DMs lives easier. The famous example was "what if the pcs decide to go deal with the mayor" and the DM hasn't thought this through at all. That is still they way they are presented in the DMG. Here are some examples, these skills work, these don't...run as is.

Second, regarding scale and time...the idea of using skills in an ongoing investigation across the adventure, is just an example of using skills across the adventure. There is nothing new there. I guess my problem with the answers above like is: what is the point? Why a "skill challenge"? I can easily come up with lots of skill uses over several sessions, and the pcs will come with more. This comes from having skills. What does a "skill challenge" add? (and, if this is about a sequance of challenges, ok, but mearls doesn't actually put it like that, and again, where are the specific "challenges").

 

[Mallus]

My group is having a blast with Skill Challenges, wonky maths and all. So far we use them exclusively as a framework to help resolve the hare-brained, I mean daring plans the PC's come up with during the course of play. The best part about the way we run them is that no matter what the stakes are, or if we succeed or fail, the actions taken in the challenge have consequences, frequently unintended and daft.

For example, in one Skill Challenge the party attempted to get their giant, feral pig blessed by the local dog god (don't ask), which involved safely navigating a crowded slum with said feral pig and negotiating with the dog god's priesthood. We succeeded. We also started a new religion, having convinced a sizable mob full of the slum's inhabitants of the pig's divinity.

Along the way we put on a improv passion play using ersatz puppets; ie party members with ropes tied to them gamboling about in a supposedly religious fashion.

 

[Cadfan]

It adds a framework for determining whether the PCs have achieved success or failure in a large task, other than the general framework of "the DM decides when enough is enough."

Bad 3e version: The PCs want to convince the mayor of something. They talk to the mayor and make a diplomacy check. If it works, they succeed.

Good 3e version: The PCs want to convince the mayor of something. They talk to the mayor, maybe using multiple conversational gambits, maybe do him a favor, maybe try to get in good with his advisor. Skills are involved in deciding individual sub-tasks, and the DM decides whether their efforts on the whole brought about success in the main task.

Skill challenge version: The PCs want to convince the mayor of something. They talk to the mayor, maybe using multiple conversational gambits, maybe do him a favor, maybe try to get in good with his advisor. Skills are involved. The skill challenge framework determines whether enough of their efforts succeed that, overall, they are successful.

I'm not in the camp that views skill challenges as revolutionary. I do feel like they gave me a nice insight into making non combat scenarios more interested and multi faceted. I use them, and I do think I'm a better DM for what I've learned in the process. Even when I don't feel that a task is complex enough to use a full skill challenge, I think that the general guidelines and stylistic moves that 4e skill challenges use have taught me a good bit about how to make skills more entertaining.

 

[Joshua Randall]

I guess my problem with the answers above like is: what is the point? Why a "skill challenge"? [...] What does a "skill challenge" add?

It adds a method for determining success or failure in other than a binary fashion.

A single skill check either succeeds, or fails. (I am ignoring corner cases of people using degrees of success or failure based on how high or low you roll compared to the DC -- that is another discussion.)

A skill challenge requires multiple successful skill checks, and allows for multiple failures, before it ultimately concludes in an overall success or failure for the party as a whole.

I think Cadfan put it well:

It adds a framework for determining whether the PCs have achieved success or failure in a large task, other than the general framework of "the DM decides when enough is enough."

But as with every rule in D&D, if you don't like skill challenges, don't use 'em.

 

[LostSoul]

What does a "skill challenge" add?

A defined conflict. A start and end point. XP rewards.

How many Diplomacy or Bluff checks do I need to make before the Mayor is convinced to give us the key to the sewers? Will he even do it at all? Do we even need to make a roll? When we succeed, are we rewarded for our effforts in mechanical terms? When we fail, what will be the fallout?

Skill Challenges help answer all those questions.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Skill challenges are nothing new to D&D. I was using them all through 3.5. It is just being touted now as a new shiny for the newest incarnation.

OK, point me to the place in the 3.5 PHB or DMG which explains how to use them and how to keep score? You can't.

You could point to Unearthed Arcana, which presented some optional rules for 'complex skill checks' which touch on some of the same principles, but basically Skill Challenges (4e style) ARE new to D&D.

You personally may have used some rules for x successes before y failures using disparate skills to accomplish a task either well or poorly (not succeed or fail at the task, note), but you didn't find them in the 3e or 3.5e core books.

Regards,

 

[Spatula]

I'm not sure more playtesting would really help - the core rules for them are very solid, save for one small footnote on the table.

No, they are not. The entire structure of the non-errata'd skill challenges is very flawed, which is why the errata was so extensive. Needing two successes for every failure makes low-complexity challenges (which are worth less XP) more difficult than high-complexity challenges.

 

[Gort]

I like the concept of skill challenges, as I feel skills are often neglected by players because they're very rarely life-or-death compared to something like your AC, your attack bonus, or your hitpoints.

Skill challenges seem like a way that could be changed. However, the mechanics for them don't seem to add up correctly as written.