D&D 5E Skill Challenges in 5E

[Li Shenron]

That is, IMO, exactly what skill challenges are meant to avoid. One check, if you roll bad, oh well, you lose. If you have a series of rolls, you can figure out something to help you and give you a bonus if they are not going your way. That is, IMO, the single biggest reason why 3.5's skill system sucked. Combat would be a multi-round, multi-roll affair, but all skill checks were a one and done. If you failed, sucks to be you.

This is exactly my point: if the series of roll gives you the chance to figure out something to change the course of the encounter if you think it's going badly, then the method is cool. If it doesn't, if it's only a series of the same check one after the other, then it adds nothing to the game.

But in general, I don't think we need a codified system for that. In 3e we didn't have skill challenges, but I've always seen non-combat encounters being run with series of sparse checks within roleplay or narrative descriptions. That's pretty much DM-dependent, because I have also seen social encounters be solved by a single Diplomacy check or exploration tasks being solved by a single Climb check or Search check. It all depends on the context, e.g. bartering with a seller for a lower price is totally fine as a single Diplomacy check because it's the kind of encounter where going into the details can be annoying for a lot of people rather than fun, while the discussion with your Lord M. would be disappointing if solved by one check alone, but it doesn't improve if instead of one dice you're just there rolling the same dice 7-8 times, merely counting successes and failures until the skill challenge is over. It totally depends on whether the group likes skipping over these types of encounter, while another group wants more details, and yet another group wants roleplay only. In the Lord M. case if you want it more interesting you need to make it more dynamic; in 3e we would have just mixed RP with a free series of checks, some of which were dictated by the DM and others were proactively requested by the players, there was no need for skill challenges as a rule.

Bottom line, IMO skill challenges are not so much needed as a codified rule. Instead what we really need is that adventures offer enough material to handle those non-combat encounters tactically, and good guidelines in the DMG. But not something that reads like "you need 5 successes at Diplomacy to get result A, you get B if you do 3 failures" because if that's all, that's not really different from one roll. Rather something more complex and free-form that suggests what the players can try.

 

[billd91]

BUT it may not be necessary to make such a big deal of presenting the system to players -- a good, detailed chapter in a DMG about building complex, interesting, playable non-combat encounters might include ideas that were developed in the creation of skill challenges could be a huge help to young DMs. I'd love to see some patterns described that include X successes before Y failures, X successes before Y rounds, Flow charts with a variety of checks and actions required to move from one point to another, and so on.

For my money, I'd rather see the race condition structure (X successes before Y failures) to achieve what is essentially a binary outcome fade into extinction. That structure mostly serves to make the likelihood of overall success lower for any significant difficulties. If the chances of failure are greater than success, then trying to rack up more successes than failures even becomes difficult. I'd rather see a more fixed number of successes or number of checks that need to be made and then gauge a level of overall success based on the number of successes compared to number of failures.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

For my money, I'd rather see the race condition structure (X successes before Y failures) to achieve what is essentially a binary outcome fade into extinction. That structure mostly serves to make the likelihood of overall success lower for any significant difficulties. If the chances of failure are greater than success, then trying to rack up more successes than failures even becomes difficult. I'd rather see a more fixed number of successes or number of checks that need to be made and then gauge a level of overall success based on the number of successes compared to number of failures.

I think there are places where it makes sense, but it's far from universal. When I was trying to stick closer to the core SC rules as DM, I was really struggling with some applications of it.

An example: The players were in a town, and one of the things that was going on was that a house had caught fire. I wanted to make fighting the fire into a skill challenge.

The trick was that, in my mind, the race condition mechanic didn't work very well for the entire act of fighting a fire -- because, like a lot of things, the really hard, challenging part of fighting a fire is the early part of the fight -- not the end. Like a game of Risk, the deciding turns are in the first third of the game, and the rest is all the practically inevitable march to victory of the player who managed to get ahead in the early part of the game.

So, the skill challenge needed to be framed differently -- the challenge was not to fight the fire, but just that early part of the fight when it's a tossup as to whether the fire will go out of control or if the villagers can get it under control and be on the way to putting the fire out.

Once I framed the skill challenge in that way -- getting the fire under control -- then the race condition mechanic made more sense to me. And, really, the exercise of thinking about it in those terms made me really think about what was the most exciting part of the situation, and helped me focus the encounter on that.

So, now I'm of the opinion that a firefighting encounter is probably BEST handled with a race condition mechanic. It seems more satisfying to me than, say, a mechanic in which the players have three rounds to get the fire under control by scoring X successes. Of course, the ticking clock mechanic could work just as well -- and some DMs would go that way, and it would work just fine.

So, anyway.... I don't want race conditions to go away, I just think they need to be one tool in a big toolbox.

-rg

 

[Jester David]

I've often used this method, and it worked quite well. I also used Skill Challenges for travel/exploration, with lots of "secondary" checks to do things like avoid or overcome hazards, etc.

The thing that really helped me with 4e Skill challenges was when I really embraced the idea that the core SC structure -- X successes before Y failures, etc -- that was just a starting point, and that each skill challenge could be wildly different, depending upon what I was trying to simulate.

I created macro challenges that used the same basic mechanic, but instead of skill checks each success or failure was a minor quest or deed the party needed to complete.

One thing I liked doing was layered Skill Challenges: mostly for overland travel but sometimes not. Every successful Skill Challenge awarded a single success in a greater Skill Challenge. So you essentially had to succeed at four Skill Challenges before failing three. And that was spread out over the entire session.

 

[Warbringer]

One thing I liked doing was layered Skill Challenges: mostly for overland travel but sometimes not. Every successful Skill Challenge awarded a single success in a greater Skill Challenge. So you essentially had to succeed at four Skill Challenges before failing three. And that was spread out over the entire session.

Yeah I like this a approach and have done this also, where combat outcomes where even part of contributing successes to the overall skill challenge (such as in a mass combat challenge).

I think layering/nesting skill challenges is a great apporach to increasing the players interaction with the narrative

 

[pemerton]

The actual 4E combat mechanics introduce much more state: the positions of each creature, the HP of each creature, and the current conditions afflicting each creature. It introduces unique actions for each creature, as well as some setting-specific terrain actions. I don't think you can define states and actions for the general case of non-combat challenges.

what is the difference between different checks? What decisions can the players/characters take?

<snip>

the only advantage I can see of skill challenges over a single roll, is the ability to change something at every round/step, just like you can change your tactic or try something different at every round in combat.

The parameters that shape D&D combat - hit points, position, method of attack, etc - are first and foremost mechanical. While they do have meaning in the fiction ("Hey, I'm over here!" "Whoa, did you see how hard that thing hits?"), in combat resolution that is generally subordinate to their mechanical significance.

In a skill challenge, as presented in 4e and modelled on comparable mechanics from other RPGs, the decisions that the players take are not primarily mechanical. They are primarily decisions that change the fiction. These changes in the fiction then open up new options. So, for instance, if I say something polite to the duke, and he accepts my compliment, then I can now ask for an alliance. Whereas if I say something fierce to the duke, and he is shaken by that, then I can now demand his aid. Resolving a skill challenge is about the interplay between the GM's narration of new fictional circumstances in response to successful or failed checks, and the players leveraging those new fictional circumstances in the directions that they want. The logic is that of story and genre, not mechanics and tactics.

That's also how a GM stops spamming (if s/he is so inclined): you frame the fiction so that the player can only get what s/he wants by having his/her PC try something different.

This is exactly my point: if the series of roll gives you the chance to figure out something to change the course of the encounter if you think it's going badly, then the method is cool.

That's exactly what a skill challenge is. But the change isn't (generally) a change in mechanical circumstances like it would be in combat - for instance, "I'm now two squares away and so the ogre won't get OAs when I use a ranged attack against it - cool, I draw my bow").

Rather, it's a change in narrative/fictional circumstances, which then allows use of a different option. For instance, "Cool - you've got the duke to agree that he's a man of action, not just a man of words. I'm going to show him that I'm a man of action, too - I thump my mug on the table and leap to my feet, flexing my muscles and yelling "Now is the time to sally forth!". That's the sort of play in a skill challenge that lets the fighter use Athletics to succeed in persuading the duke to support the party in its fight against the goblins.

I have seen skill challenges run strictly as presented in the book, and they're the most boring thing you can imagine. People just pick their best applicable skills and roll dice till the DM says it's over.

I don't think those skill challenges are being run strictly as presented in the 4e DMG. They don't seem to be adhering to the instructions on p 74:

You describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results.​

In paticular, the narration of the results to feed into subsequent checks seems to have been missed out.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think we need a codified system for that. In 3e we didn't have skill challenges, but I've always seen non-combat encounters being run with series of sparse checks within roleplay or narrative descriptions. That's pretty much DM-dependent, because I have also seen social encounters be solved by a single Diplomacy check or exploration tasks being solved by a single Climb check or Search check. It all depends on the context

<snip>

in 3e we would have just mixed RP with a free series of checks, some of which were dictated by the DM and others were proactively requested by the players, there was no need for skill challenges as a rule.

The point of the structure is to impose a rules limitation other than GM fiat.

An analogy is hp in combat. A GM doesn't adjudicate who wins or loses a combat based on some "gut feel" as to which side got more hits in after a few d20 have been rolled. Rather, there are rules for the ablation of hit points, and once a creature's hp reach 0 then the GM (and other players too) are obliged by the rules of the game to agree that that combatant is no longer active in the fight.

Likewise the "N before 3" structure: once the players have reached N successes, the GM is obliged to narrate the PCs having succeeded at whatever it was they were attempting to achieve (which will have been established in the framing of the challenge, perhaps as modified by its evolution; but known before the final die is rolled).

In both cases the mechanics impose finality rather than GM fiat. Some people don't like it, obviously. (They might be the same people who fudge hit point totals in combat "in the interests of the story".) But like it or not, the logic of the technique I hope is fairly clear.

EDIT: Of course the "N before 3" structure is not the only model. In HeroQuest revised each side in the challenge accumulates "points" based on degree of success, and the first to reach a specified number wins, with other consequences for each side determined by the ratio of winners' to losers' points. In a Burning Wheel Duel of Wits each side has a "body of argument" (effectively a hp pool established as part of the challenge) which are ablated in the course of the challenge. The fact that skill challenges don't have mechanically active opposition, and rely entirely on the GM reframing the scene in response to each skill check to drive the resolution forward, is a distinctive feature. In my view it has both strengths and weaknesses as a method compared to some of these other ones.

 

[Starfox]

For my money, I'd rather see the race condition structure (X successes before Y failures) to achieve what is essentially a binary outcome fade into extinction. That structure mostly serves to make the likelihood of overall success lower for any significant difficulties. If the chances of failure are greater than success, then trying to rack up more successes than failures even becomes difficult. I'd rather see a more fixed number of successes or number of checks that need to be made and then gauge a level of overall success based on the number of successes compared to number of failures.

Oneof the issues I had with skill challenges was this: If it was to be even possible to rack up X successes before 3 failures (where X >> 3), difficulties had to be low. Which turned the skill roll from "Yay, I made it" to "Shucks, why am I the one to fail?". High difficulties make successes exceptional, low difficulties make failures exceptional. On top of this, it encouraged players to simply not be present if they lacked the right skills, as to try and fail was disastrous. The mechanically best option if the DM allowed it was for everyone but the most skilled player to use "aid other", which was spectacularly boring.

My solution to this was to reverse the process; High DC, a number of rounds to the challenge, at least one skill roll had to succeed each round, failed rolls counted as assistance. This gave everyone an incentive to try. It was still far from perfect; the people with the highest interest in the skill challenge would usually want to take their rolls first, which meant that they didn't get any assistance bonus, which meant their rolls quite often failed. At this point in the skill challenge development process here, my players had had enough of skill challenges and I didn't try to improve them any further.

A skill challenge system for 5E would have to solve all these issues before I would see it as in any way positive.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

One of the issues I had with skill challenges was this: If it was to be even possible to rack up X successes before 3 failures (where X >> 3), difficulties had to be low. Which turned the skill roll from "Yay, I made it" to "Shucks, why am I the one to fail?". High difficulties make successes exceptional, low difficulties make failures exceptional. On top of this, it encouraged players to simply not be present if they lacked the right skills, as to try and fail was disastrous. The mechanically best option if the DM allowed it was for everyone but the most skilled player to use "aid other", which was spectacularly boring.

My solution to this was to reverse the process; High DC, a number of rounds to the challenge, at least one skill roll had to succeed each round, failed rolls counted as assistance. This gave everyone an incentive to try. It was still far from perfect; the people with the highest interest in the skill challenge would usually want to take their rolls first, which meant that they didn't get any assistance bonus, which meant their rolls quite often failed. At this point in the skill challenge development process here, my players had had enough of skill challenges and I didn't try to improve them any further.

A skill challenge system for 5E would have to solve all these issues before I would see it as in any way positive.

I think this is where some of the presentation of skill challenges has been mishandled, actually.

Here's the idea: The challenge, when you're in combat, is NOT REALLY who can roll better, but who can make the best tactical decisions -- maximizing chances to hit, using unexpected powers, taking advantage of the environment, and so on.

The same should be true of skill challenges. The challenge for the players should *not* be rolling high enough (or consistently medium enough, when you need a lot of low DC rolls), but to come up with ideas for how best to handle the situation.

But when, as DMs (or adventure writers) we define skills applicable to a skill challenge -- and then explain exactly which skills can be used to the players as we describe the situation -- we really kill that potential for creative fun in the skill challenge, and it becomes just an exercise in rolling dice.

AND this is where I think 4e -- as an edition of the game very much dedicated to spelling out rules and options very clearly -- hurts itself by applying the same method to skill challenges.

Which means that D&D next, which has ratcheted back that explicitness and detail in the rules and presentation, is actually in a much better philosophical place to handle those sorts of challenges than 4e was. It's going to be much easier to define a challenge (get into the Barracks to release a prisoner) and leave the players to come up with a plan. Once they've come up with a plan on their own, the idea that the skill checks are not incredibly difficult doesn't matter, because the fun of playing out the scene was coming up with the plan, not rolling the dice.

-rg

 

[D'karr]

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

I wholeheartedly agree with [MENTION=607]Klaus[/MENTION] assessment of them as an organizational tool.

IMO, skill challenges simply provide a "framework" for organizing non-combat encounters and actually provide rewards. In the past you had to make up the rewards ad-hoc with no real good guidance. The DM was left to guesstimate. If you look at them that way then skill challenges can merge into the background and simply become a way to give xp rewards for goal oriented roleplay that can't be accomplished with a single roll. They become easy to run, design, and devise if you look at them in that manner.

In the past we would do "skill challenges" though we didn't call them that, and at the end I had to try to determine how to reward the players XP. With skill challenges I have a basis that gives XP on a scaling table, and I simply mount the ad-hoc play as it goes.

Works well for me and my group.

I think the example [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] used where every situation leads to another situation until the goal is resolved is the best way to approach them. The "successes" in a situation lead to better leaned situations for the players (opportunities). The "failures" lead to situations that lean against the players (complications). Too many complications and you are not able to fully accomplish the goal (fail), which may open up more opportunities in the future (no shutdown), but also closes some doors (skill challenge ends in failure).