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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tervin" data-source="post: 4284842" data-attributes="member: 66491">First of all, if the chance of success is around 50% for a single attempt, the chances for success for the whole challenge are very low. That is actually exactly where the other thread started.But if I instead consider that we have a more useful example where there are significant differences between the PCs' usable skills, your question is more relevant. And I think I should confess one thing - I think running a skill challenge through initiative and every player needing to choose a skill and try for a success in turn feels very construed. I cannot see myself forcing people to use skills just because it is their turn. Is that really roleplaying? To keep a skill challenge interesting I plan instead to use the following rules: 1. A player cannot make two success attempts in a row - another player must make an attempt in between.2. If one player keeps using the same skill, it will be increasingly harder to get bonuses for good ideas.I might try out using initiative, but then people who feel that they have little chance to contribute can instead choose the Aid Another action on their turns.Talking about my houserules is not how to answer the question, so I will ignore my own feelings about it and look at the system as written. It is true that one or two people having a lot lower chance of success will change the probabilities quite a bit. In fact, if you run the system as written it is extra important to keep the DCs low, so that the PCs have a chance for success even if they have party members with no really good skill to choose. It can also be a good idea to give the players a hint that they should make sure to have more than one skill that they are optimized in, just like it is a good idea to make sure they have something useful to offer in a combat.Having a quick look at what a diverse party's chances would be at different complexities it seems to me that the problems will be the same whichever complexity you use. Initiative will matter slightly more for low complexity attempts, but the general feel is that it will be even harder to get the right DCs, considering that the rolls need to be reasonable for the weaker skill users (never getting lower than 50%) and still not laughably easy for the skill experts.As I don't plan to play like that I don't feel motivated to set up the math for it - but I think it might be a good thing to use oen of the simulation tools for.</blockquote>

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