D&D 3E/3.5 Skill Challenges in 3.5

[Kid Charlemagne]

Very good points, Elder-Basilisk. I think designing a skill challenge so that it is fair to all who participate is going to be (for whichever system) a real art.

As for the screwy math - thats one of the reason I asked the question "how often are the PC's expected to succeed?" Without knowing that answer for 4E, its tough to determine how well they succeeded.

For 3E, the "bad skill" issue is one that I've thought of. For myself, one thing I want to do is give the 2 skill point PC's some more points to play with (4/level), so they can diversify a little. I'm going to have to use this in play to see how it works out; I've got a few 3.5 skill challenges thought out in my game coming up, and I'll report back as to how they go.

 

[Sylrae]

here's a though. make the minimum amount one can have be a fraction of their level. maybe 50%.

that means the wizard with 0 jump who is level 10 stil gets a +5 as a faked out skill rank, and the fighter who bought max ranks in jump gets a +13.

I'm not saying use that exactly, but some system similar to that may make skill dcs a bit more reasonable to balance.

then you just need a way to compensate the people whose ranks are less than half their level.maybe every 2 ranks they have adds 1? (until they have more their level in ranks then you just use ranks).

so the wiz10 with 3 in jump.
+6

fighter10 with 8 in jump
5+4=9

barbarian10 with 6 in jump
5+3=8

rogue10 with 10 in jump
5 (half level) + 5(half skill numbers) = 10 = skill numbers

this system would give a bigger bonus to anyone with less skill ranks than levels. it would even out at level=ranks.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

A lot will depend upon whether you think the "Every 20th level hero has some skill where he will be shown up by a 1st level commoner" is a bug or a feature.

For my part, I like the fact that a high level fighter is not necessarily a skilled tracker and wouldn't necessarily know which way to turn a plow or whether or not the Castellan is cheating him. Likewise, one may partially account for the paranoia of your typical high level wizard with the fact that a relatively low level assassin could still lie their way past them. I wouldn't want to lose that part of the game.

I do agree, however, that the 2 skill classes should get more skill points. Also, I wonder if eliminating the concept of class skills entirely wouldn't be a good idea. Want to take Spot? Put ranks in it. (The time is past when class skills and ranks actually placed significant limits on prestige classes anyway--if we're rewriting the rules prestige class prereqs that were balanced through cross class skill requirements, etc should be rewritten). You might have to eliminate Tumble but it could well work.

Between that and defaulting to complex skill checks, you might be able to accomplish a lot of what the skill challenge concept tries to accomplish but without eliminating the skill system.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

here's a though. make the minimum amount one can have be a fraction of their level. maybe 50%.

That would essentially be the same as the 4E cross-class skill system; you get 1/2 level + stat boost for your untrained skills. I think I'm going the 4E skill system with my 3.5 NPC's to speed creation, and I'll probably float it past my players, but I think they like the granularity of skill ranks.

 

[Sylrae]

That would essentially be the same as the 4E cross-class skill system; you get 1/2 level + stat boost for your untrained skills. I think I'm going the 4E skill system with my 3.5 NPC's to speed creation, and I'll probably float it past my players, but I think they like the granularity of skill ranks.

the numbers would be the same at the lowest end, but they would increase to more of a difference than in 4e.

there just would not anymore be areas where you're "TOTALLY INCOMPETENT", even though you dont have much practice in it you could still muddle throgh it with some chance of success.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Looks like WoTC errata'd the Skill Challenge system - lowered all DC's by 5 and made it so that it's now X success before 3 failures rather than X successes before 1/2 X failures. I'll have to process the new rules and see what others have to say before modifying it for 3.5...

 

[Urbannen]

I was just thinking today that if you use the Skill Challenge system in 3.5, you should get rid of synergy bonuses. For instance, it would be overkill to give a +2 synergy bonus to Diplomacy for having five ranks in Bluff since you probably would have Bluff be one of the skills you check during the diplomatic skill challenge.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I see where you're coming from with that, but it seems like too much work to redo your skill points for those thing just to use them in Skill Challenges. Instead, I'd try to focus on approaching the problem from a different angle - perhaps using Bluff is an Easy check while Diplomacy is Normal or Hard.

I do think that I would limit aid another, however. I want to push the PC's to use their own skills, not try to give others +2 bonuses.

BTW, I'm going to start up a thread to build a Skill Challenge for my PC's - I thought it might be interesting to do this here as an exercise.