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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 4885835" data-attributes="member: 60965">In my session Saturday night, I ran an Obsidian Skill Challenge for the 4 level 5 players that were there at the session.  Obsidian has a set DC (20 for level 4), three rounds in which each player makes a roll, and requires x amount of successes for a success, y-z for a partial success, otherwise it's a failure.  7, 5-6, 4- in this case.When I run it as follows:Each player must describe what they are attempting to do before they make a roll.After the description, they can suggest a skill or I give them a choice or two that seems appropriate.They roll the check and at the end of the round, I narrate to the group the net results of their actions for the round.My general rule is to find a way to say yes to whatever they want to do, figuring out what skill makes the most sense and imposing penalties on far-fetched or largely irrelevant rolls.Here is a partial transcript from our session recording of how the skill challenge went:Setup: The party was on the walking hut they'd just been gifted from a wandering Kenku Village, heading west through the Western Elder Wyld when the hours-long nuclear explosion of a Godstorm ignited a huge fire 100 miles to the south of them.  As the forest in the far distance became a massive wall of fire, they turned the hut north to try to flee the flames, but as they ran the fire started catching up to them.After two days of trying to outrun the fire, the Swordmage's player figured out they could make a backfire ahead of them, firebreaks, and the like to get safe from the fire.  His character rolled a Nature check, succeeded, and so the player could use the idea.  He announced his plan to the party and they stopped the hut at which point this <edited for coherence and relevance> transcript begins.---DM(me): "So the next morning after you've been pretty much fleeing from this slowly growing wall of fire, discussing the plan that the Hadarai spent the night figuring out, we're going to initiate a Skill Challenge with you guys figuring out a way to outwit this fire, creating a firebreak or whatever else you guys figure out.  First round of the skill challenge..."Vincent(Barbarian): "Um... let's see here.  We have to make a backfire?"DM: "Well, you can do anything you can think of to try to prepare for the fire reaching you."<bad jokes about peeing on a fire being Sustain: Standard>Vincent: "I'll do something with Endurance..."DM: "Well you could also wait until somebody else does something and make your check to tag along with them."Vincent: "My Endurance check will be to gather supplies needed to start the back fire.  That's a 14."DM: "Ok."Hadarai(Swordmage): "Can I make an Arcana to just create the fire?"DM: "Like, using your magical fire to start the fires?"Hadarai: "Yeah."DM: "Sure.  I'll call it a -2, but go ahead."Hadarai: "*Grunt* that's only a 14"DM: "Ok, what are the rest of you doing?"           Vincent: "What is the underbrush and stuff like around here?"DM: "You find that it's all really dry.  It's the middle of summer here and looks like it hasn't rained since it rained on you guys a week ago."Kanatash(Cleric): "I'm gonna pray this plan works."DM: "So a Religion check?  Ok -5 on this one."Kanatash: "Uh, ok, I'll roll Nature instead, helping Vincent.  That's going to be a 20."DM: "Ok, what about Galentra?"Galentra(Sorceress): "I know what I want to do, but it's hard to describe.  Fire burns the underbrush, but also burns from treetop to treetop.  I want to use my powers to knock down trees so it in the area so the fire doesn't jump over us.  I don't know what skill that is..."DM: "Well, since you're using your powers, we'll call in Arcana.  -2 on this one too."Galentra: "Ok, that's a 26."DM(to Vincent): "You go around and gather up tinder and the like but you find that in spite of it being pretty dry here, alot of the underbrush you can reach is green and so you have slow progress chopping it down with your handaxe."DM(to Hadarai): "You use your powers to try and start fires at strategic points, but you're having problems getting it going, maybe it's too green or something, but Galentra starts blasting trees down left and right to keep the fire from jumping."DM(to Kanatash): "Kanatash goes around and actually finds some nice sources of dry tinder."DM(to all): "So that took about half the day.  Now you can look to the south and even when you're not on the hut you can see the fire over the tree tops.  You guess the fire is going to reach you around midnight.  Round two..."---We continued on for the second and third rounds.  Here's the checks, brief descriptions, and final results.-Round 2-Vincent: Athletics check to knock down trees with his Stonebreaker Power(granting him a +2 on the check) and his Mordenkrad.  Result: Natural 20(2 successes).Hadarai: Athletics to stack/drag the trees Vincent is knocking down.  Result: 26(success).Kanatash: Nature again(-2 penalty for repeating skill in two sequential rounds) looking for a source of water.  Result: 17(failure).Galentra: Nature to start little fires in the gathered tinder.  Result: 21(success).-Round 3-"By the time you're done, you can feel the hot wind blowing on you.  You can see the wall of fire, close enough that it's hazy and raining ash as the sun sets."Hadarai: Arcana to ignite sword and get the fire going.  Result: 18(failure)Vincent: Endurance to dig a big trench around the hut. Result: 22(success)Kanatash: Heal to help others deal with heat, soak rags in water and get them ready for everyone(desperate gambit, -5 to check, 2 successes on success).  Result: 19(failure).Galentra: Arcana to try to convert the food rations given by their bag of endless provisions into water to douse the hut with(desperate gambit, -5).  Result: Natural 20(3 successes).End Result: 10 successes(7 needed for skill challenge success with 4 players).  They huddled in their hut, soaked down, as the fire raged around them.  Aside from having to make some Endurance checks to suffer through the heat, they were unaffected by the fire (well, unaffected except for the smattering of fire-based creatures that attacked them from out of the storm).</blockquote>

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