Maialideth
Explorer
I've been reading the Tales of the Valiant Game Master's Guide, and the section on skill challenges is pretty much spot on to how I've been running skill challenges in my 5e games for the last couple of years, with two rather important differences that I want to share here.
I've run 5 or 6 skill challenges in 5e so far. Not many but they all worked exactly as intended for everyone in the group. I ran complex and simple skill challenges for a group of level 17 characters, then, in our second campaign, I ran a couple of simple skill challenges for the group but with low-level characters (level 4 I think, it's been a while). And I ran a couple of more or less impromptu skill challenges for another group, also with level 4 or so characters. All of this is just to let you know, that I've actually designed and played skill challenges in 5e and they all worked beautifully.
The two things I want to highlight, that in my experience works better than the mechanics in Tales of the Valiant are skill DC and number of successes and failures. The way the book describes the rest of planning and running skill challenges is a great way of describing it for a general audience (my description would probably only make sense to me).
However, I have found that setting the DC for all skill checks in a skill challenge to double the proficiency bonus of the group +10 is spot on, every time. So for a group of 5th level characters the DC would be 16. The idea is that the players are allowed to narratively describe their character's actions in a way that leans towards their strongest skills/tools, and that is perfectly okay, especially if it results in fun and exciting narratives (which is the real goal of a skill challenge).
I would never use a higher or lower DC as a dial for difficulty of the skill challenge. I would however, use the number of successes required to pass it as a dial for difficulty... I will deal with the number of failures afterwards.
The number of successes required in Tales of the Valiant is not a bad recommendation. I recommend basing it on the number of characters in the group instead...
The last thing is the number of failures. And the magic number is..... 3 always.
Of course you can do whatever you like, it's your game
but every skill challenge I've run so far was designed as I've written it here, and every single one of these skill challenges came down to the final nervewrackingly exciting check.
Phew. I think this was the first thread I've started in here. I didn't expect it to be this long. I have had so much fun running skill challenges in 5e, and I was very happy to see that Kobold Press managed to describe them in the same way that I run them, that is focused more on the narrative and creative use of skill and tools rather than how they are used in the more strict sense of the rules (one of my players used proficiency with Weaver's tools to shape a Wall of Thorns spell around their astral skiff, so it became like a bumper car and they could bump the marching modrons away from them without causing harm).
If all of this is too much, then I would recommend at least using the way to calculate the DC... it really really is spot on, also generally as a DC for slightly higher than average difficulty skill checks (PB*2 +10).
I've run 5 or 6 skill challenges in 5e so far. Not many but they all worked exactly as intended for everyone in the group. I ran complex and simple skill challenges for a group of level 17 characters, then, in our second campaign, I ran a couple of simple skill challenges for the group but with low-level characters (level 4 I think, it's been a while). And I ran a couple of more or less impromptu skill challenges for another group, also with level 4 or so characters. All of this is just to let you know, that I've actually designed and played skill challenges in 5e and they all worked beautifully.
The two things I want to highlight, that in my experience works better than the mechanics in Tales of the Valiant are skill DC and number of successes and failures. The way the book describes the rest of planning and running skill challenges is a great way of describing it for a general audience (my description would probably only make sense to me).
However, I have found that setting the DC for all skill checks in a skill challenge to double the proficiency bonus of the group +10 is spot on, every time. So for a group of 5th level characters the DC would be 16. The idea is that the players are allowed to narratively describe their character's actions in a way that leans towards their strongest skills/tools, and that is perfectly okay, especially if it results in fun and exciting narratives (which is the real goal of a skill challenge).
I would never use a higher or lower DC as a dial for difficulty of the skill challenge. I would however, use the number of successes required to pass it as a dial for difficulty... I will deal with the number of failures afterwards.
The number of successes required in Tales of the Valiant is not a bad recommendation. I recommend basing it on the number of characters in the group instead...
- Easy challenge - number of successes required equal to the number of PCs or half the number of PCs (this is probably best for when running a skill challenge as part of a combat encounter).
- Medium challenge - number of successes required equal to the number of PCs +2 (everyone gets a turn and a few gets to be even more creative).
- Hard challenge - number of successes required equal to double the number of PCs +2 (best if the skill challenge is broken up in several parts/scenes with maybe 3-4 checks per scene). This is the big one. It requires the most planning but boy oh boy is it fun. The first skill challenge I ran in 5e was a Hard challenge for 5 PCs of level 17, when they had to lure an astral dreadnought through the Astral plane towards the githyanki city of Tu'unarath.
The last thing is the number of failures. And the magic number is..... 3 always.
Of course you can do whatever you like, it's your game
but every skill challenge I've run so far was designed as I've written it here, and every single one of these skill challenges came down to the final nervewrackingly exciting check.Phew. I think this was the first thread I've started in here. I didn't expect it to be this long. I have had so much fun running skill challenges in 5e, and I was very happy to see that Kobold Press managed to describe them in the same way that I run them, that is focused more on the narrative and creative use of skill and tools rather than how they are used in the more strict sense of the rules (one of my players used proficiency with Weaver's tools to shape a Wall of Thorns spell around their astral skiff, so it became like a bumper car and they could bump the marching modrons away from them without causing harm).
If all of this is too much, then I would recommend at least using the way to calculate the DC... it really really is spot on, also generally as a DC for slightly higher than average difficulty skill checks (PB*2 +10).
Last edited:
