D&D 5E Skill Challenges in 5E

[dmccoy1693]

One thing I have not seen much talk on is potential of skill challenges in D&D 5e. I really liked the idea of skill challenges in 4E , even if the execution needed some work. Click here to read why I think skill challenges would be good in 5e and one that I designed for the current version of the playtest rules (it is also reposted below if you would rather read it here). Tell us what you think either in the post comments or in this thread.

Skill Challenges in 5E

One of the things I have really liked about D&D 4e was skills challenges. It was nice to not have everything be a combat encounter or simply have a one and done skills roll. I am really hoping they make a return in Dungeons and Dragons 5e. IMO, they may even work much better in 5e then they did in 4e because of the flatter math of the whole system. I mean with a skill challenge written for a 1st level group would be only slightly easier for a 10th level group to succeed at.

So I'm writing up a quick skill challenge for 5e and you tell me what you think:

Requesting Additional Help
Scenario: Orc raiding parties have been hitting villages throughout the local area. There are to many for you to handle alone so the villages ask you to ask the Lord Mumblename to send a full squad of troops to help intercept them. When you are granted an audiance, you are informed that no spell may be cast in the lord's presence except by the court wizard who will be standing nearby. The standing punishment for breaking such that rule is death. Lord Mumblename does not like spellcasters and only trusts a select handful.

Complexity: 5 successes before 3 failures

Abilities: The primary ability used in this will be Charisma, used primarily to impress the urgency of the situation or to scare the lord into acting. Intelligence can also be used if attempting to reason about the lost revenue due the damage the orcs are causing. DC 10 for all checks.

Bonuses: Bringing some kind of physical evidence or a trusted village elder to speak to the lord grants a +2 bonus for the whole challenge. Attempting to intimidate or insult the will fluster him and order the PC to spend the night in the stockades, but it will grant a +4 bonus for the rest of the challenge.

Success: Five successes means Lord Mumblename sends the requested troops. The orcs raiding parties are tracked down and defeated with minimum additional damage.

Failure: Three failures means only an extra scouting party is sent. The orcs are eventually defeated but not before four more villages are either burned to the ground or otherwise heavily plundered.

Would you like to see skills challenges in the new edition? If so, what kind of challenges would you like to see?

Sign up for my newsletter where we talk about Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition, our hopes for the new edition and where we discuss ideas for potential releases while we are waiting on licensing details. And be sure to follow us at JonBrazer.com.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

I'd be perfectly ok with skill challenges disappearing in 5E when it comes to role-playing aspects of the game.

 

[thundershot]

I'd be perfectly ok with skill challenges disappearing in 5E when it comes to role-playing aspects of the game.

This.

 

[Kinak]

I actually use something like Skill Challenges in Pathfinder, but I think the 4e implementation is poor. Even setting aside the obvious issues with math early on, the X successes before 3 failures model has a lot of problems.

When I use them, it's almost always timed somehow. The horde will get here in three days, how will you use them? The king has granted a short audience, can you convince him that there's really a dragon in the hills?

So, instead of 5 successes before 3 failures, I use 5 successes in 3 rounds.

Everyone gets to act, nobody wants to sit out for the good of the group (unless they blow up diplomacy the old-fashioned way) and people who do sit out for RP reasons don't have to be forced back in by the DM. And there's a ticking clock rather than this abstract threshold of screwing up too much.

In practice, the pacing works more like combat, especially in challenges that allow "healing" (delaying the end of the encounter) or have multiple ongoing threats that can be handled separately.

That said, I think 4e skill challenges and the kind I use will both work fine in 5e. As you said, they might even be better because of the flat math.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[Plaguescarred]

I like the premise that some complex tasks may require multiple successful checks to complete with possible failure outcomes and i am sure there's ways to refine what 4E did with skill challenge.

 

[Klaus]

Skill Challenges are more of an organizational tool than anything, even in 4e, so it's not particularly hard to port them over to DDN.

 

[Weather Report]

Skill Challenges are more of an organizational tool than anything, even in 4e, so it's not particularly hard to port them over to DDN.

Exactly, even though I despise them, and everything they represent, Skill Challenges are easy to convert to 5th Ed.

As are most things in 5th Ed, that's the big sell for me: ease of conversion.

 

[Warbringer]

Skill Challenges are more of an organizational tool than anything, even in 4e, so it's not particularly hard to port them over to DDN.

I haven't heard anyone refer to skill challenges that way before. Could you explain a little further?

 

[Pseudopsyche]

I was a big fan of skill challenges at first, but now I would not be sorry to see them omitted from the D&D Next core. Too often, especially in organized play, I have seen skill challenges devolve into players just wanting to spam the skill button with the highest number on their character sheets. Later class designs such as the Thief granted mechanical benefits for skill challenges, so I felt obligated to disclose when the players could enter this mindset. I worked to find ways to make skill challenges feel more natural, and then I realized that all of these attempts boiled down to hiding or removing the skill-challenge mechanics. In combat, the rules give structure to what would otherwise be cowboys-and-indians chaos ("I shot you first!" "No I shot you first!"), but outside of combat, the skill challenge rules don't have enough meat to be intrinsically interesting but have enough weight to get in the way. IMHO. IME. YMMV.

I would prefer that D&D Next focus on other ways of achieving the goals of skill challenges. Give DMs suggestions for awarding XP for overcoming non-combat challenges, possibly a mechanical framework, but one that doesn't overtly affect play at the table. Remind DMs to fail forward instead of halting the adventure when PCs keep failing their ability checks.

I think that bounded accuracy (and removing skills from the core) have already helped encourage players just to role-play their characters (instead of scanning a list of skills), and the new exploration rules are a good start in providing a more grounded mechanical framework for non-combat play.

 

[Klaus]

I haven't heard anyone refer to skill challenges that way before. Could you explain a little further?

Skill Challenges are a way to present a non-combat encounter in a clear way: the initial situation, how difficult it is to be transposed, the most relevant skills applicable (although none are excluded), how some skills might be interpreted, and the possible outcomes for success or failure. It provides a clear framework for the DM to tinker with to his liking (for instance, ignoring the number of required successes, or allowing for different skill uses). It's an easy, at-a-glance presentation for a "task requiring multiple skill checks".