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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rel" data-source="post: 4634656" data-attributes="member: 99">Heck yes!  I've not been all that keen on skill challenges in general since getting 4e but this is what really sold me on the idea.  Our group has way to much tendency at getting stuck in the planning stages for too long.  In some ways I don't blame them because I'm a real RBDM and they want to make sure that they can gain whatever advantages they can by good planning.  But it drags on too much sometimes.When this happens what I really want to do as the DM is to give them hint.  But that feels like cheating somehow because they haven't "earned" the hint by doing something (by way of a successful skill check).  With the skill challenge format I can put them in a dialog with me rather than them planning endlessly among themselves.  I get them moving in some direction and then things gain some momentum.I one time saw somebody here at ENW (I wish I could remember who) explain skill challenges very simply to the players:  "Skill Challenges are where you (the players) trick me (the GM) into letting you use the skills you are best at by creatively describing how they apply to the problem at hand."  That's the philosopy I've adopted.  I'm very loose about letting them determine what skills to use, provided that they can give a good justification for them.  But I keep this in check by assigning DC's on the fly as well as determining if a particularly brilliant idea or execution brings them much closer to resolving the challenge (in other words I am pretty fluid about assigning the required successes too).Finally, I'm seriously considering going to a "exploding d6" base for skill rolls as described in this post: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/246377-skills-get-sead.html" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/246377-skills-get-sead.html</a></blockquote>

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