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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 6365024" data-attributes="member: 19857">Yes - this is something that I think DMs with experience in either skill-based (vs. class based) or narrative RPGs grokked, but that wasn't communicated in the 4e rules as effectively as it could have been.  Especially when the early examples of skill challenges that were given out in adventures were very much structured like "if the PC tries this skill, here's how it works" which too often read as "here are the things that the PCs can try and here's how they work".You have to prepare for your PCs to do something that will short-circuit your skill challenge because the PCs are creative.  If I have a skill challenge that I initially plan for as "5 successes before 3 failures" difficulty and the third PC comes up with a clever use of a ritual or a magic item or an ability that I hadn't considered that would solve the whole challenge then just let it work.  Congratulations - my players are smart!   Or if the player has a bit of backstory or a contact or other story element that they've come up with outside of the "rules" that would help them then again it works and they've met the challenge.  Or maybe it gives them an automatic success.  Or maybe it just gives them a bonus to their roll.  Whatever fits with what they propose you go with.(I love skill challenges but my god the initial rules were opaquely written.  I'd had experience with other games where player-directed choices for multi-success skill checks were a thing, so I could figure out the intent but I didn't envy folks who hadn't ever played in or run a game like that before.  Add to that the level-based sliding scales of DCs in 4e and the fact that the DCs by level numbers kept getting "errattad" - making it hard to get an intuitive handle on where DCs need to be set - and I can understand why some people cringe when they hear the words "skill challenge" no matter how much I enjoy using them myself.)</blockquote>

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