D&D 5E Skill Challenges in 5E

[Starfox]

I was trying to share that the concept can work, even though RAW was heavy handed in its approach.

Which was basically what the post you commented on was saying too. That is; those who have made skill challenges work are not doing them according to RAW, but have transcended RAW and developed it into something more, something that is quite hard to put on paper.

 

[pemerton]

those who have made skill challenges work are not doing them according to RAW, but have transcended RAW and developed it into something more, something that is quite hard to put on paper.

In my own case I think I've made skill challenges work, and I am following the rules as I read them.

I also don't think it's that hard to put on paper. Robin Laws does a good job in his HeroWars and HeroQuest rulebooks. Luke Crane does a pretty good job in his Burning Wheel rulebooks. The WotC designers just need to follow these leads!

EDIT: I think there's a reason they don't (or didn't) follow those leads - namely, fear. Key to any sort of closed scene resolution is a readiness to metagame consequences, and especially failures. So (as came out upthread) a failed climb check is narrated as a broken rope, or a damage wall for the other PCs, rather than as plunging down into the ravine. (In Burning Wheel, Luke Crane explains it this way: each check is intent + task, and when narrating the consequences of a failure the GM should focus more on intent than on task.)

But some RPGers are resolutely opposed to anything smacking of metagame in this way. So the 4e designers, not wanting to offend, don't spell this out. (Though they are happy to present examples that depend upon it, like the sample skill challenge in the Esssentials books. They just don't explain what is happening in those examples.) Which means you get people trying to run skill challenges as exercises in process simulation - no different from complex skill checks - and then complaining about the sorts of silliness that [MENTION=5143]Majoru Oakheart[/MENTION] gave us upthread.

If you want process simulation, skill challenges - closed scene resolution adjudicated by reference to metagame concerns with ingame causation handled via deft application of genre logic - aren't viable. Unless, perhaps, you find a way to do them with hit points, because D&Ders at least are generally happy to give hp a free pass as a metagame mechanic. (Though for those who are into "hp as meat", hp-based skill challenges still probably won't work in a lot of cases.)

 

[Manbearcat]

@pemerton Not particularly interested in composing a long post on this subject here (and I definitely don't want to do a short one) so I'll just throw my weight behind the above post (can't xp of course). It hits all the marks with brevity and precision. When narrating a consequence (success or failure), a properly done Skill Challenge broadly takes cue from the context of the overarching conflict (not the micro-task at hand); (i) the stakes overall, (ii) what has evolved to this point), (iii) and where the closed scene is with respect to the mechanical framework (x:3) which should generally map to the pacing of Freytag's dramatic structure.

 

[Imaro]

Never claimed I was

There are clearly issues with SCs as written. I didn't give up with the concept and worked with my players to come up with a working ruleset, this was part of the construct.

This was exactly the point both I and Starfox were making...

But the topic was Skill Challenges in 5e, not 4e SCs in 5e

Well seeing as 4e was the only edition to formalize skill challenges... I think it''s pretty hard to discuss "skill challenges" in 5e without bringing up 4e. It's the primary example in D&D of what a skill challenge is, and the base most people are familiar with.

 

[Imaro]

Because @Majoru Oakheart gave the example of a skill challenge in which the objective difficulty of the wall being climbed didn't match up to the DC of the Athletics check that the rogue attempted as part of the skill challenge - hence, narrating the skill failure as a fall creates an incongruence between what we already know the rogue is capable of, and what is happening in the fiction.

What incongruence? Unless the rogue has a skill rank that allows him to auto-succeed then there is no incongruence, he failed the check and @Majoru Oakheart gave a narrative that is just as valid as any other. Again, because I'm not seeing it and you still haven't explained it, what makes falling in a failed attempt to climb as silly as your example of a warrior doing massive damage with a piece of lettuce?? These seem like apples and oranges to me.

@WhatGravitas covered this.

Yes, I'm hoping he addresses some of the points I brought up about the narrative he provided...

4e DMG p 72:

Define the goal of the challenge and what obstacles the characters face to accomplish that goal. The goal has everything to do with the overall story of the adventure. Success at the challenge should be important to the adventure, but not essential. You don’t want a series of bad skill checks to bring the adventure to a grinding halt. At worst, failure at the challenge should send the characters on a long detour, thereby creating a new and interesting part of the adventure.​

Plus there's all the stuff in DMG2 that Robin Laws cut-and-pasted from his HeroQuest Revised rulebook.

Ok, where does that say characters have to actually succeed even when they actually fail a check. In @Majoru Oakheart 's example the adventure did not come to a grinding halt, and falling was a complication (loss of hit points) for the rogue and then a detour in that the player had to take a different path to ascend the wall. So again what exactly is the issue with his narrative of the fall, because honestly (especially when I attended encounters for a while) his example was very similar to how I saw plenty of SC's being run.

EDIT: As to DMG 2... I don't consider it a corebook, it's an add-on and not something all or even most groups playing 4e are going to purchase. That is why I specified core.

 

[Starfox]

The whole point of discussion 4E skill challenges in 4E in a thread about 5E is to give positive and negative examples that can clarify how to (not) write skill challenges fir 4E. I think it is on-topic, as long as we remember the over-reaching goal. But TBH it is very hard not to engage in a bit of edition guerrilla war, on both sides.

EDIT: As to DMG 2... I don't consider it a corebook, it's an add-on and not something all or even most groups playing 4e are going to purchase. That is why I specified core.

One of the adages of 4E was "everything is core". That adds a lot of complications, both in game and in discussions like this one.

 

[Imaro]

One of the adages of 4E was "everything is core". That adds a lot of complications, both in game and in discussions like this one.

I agree. the fact that core for every edition since 1e is defined as the first 3 rule books (and still a limited subset of books for every edition outside of that except 4e), and if it's not in there it's not necessarily applicable to a discussion... but when talking about 4e one is assumed to be including all books + all Dragon magazine articles is kind of... "strange" is the word I'll use.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Yes, I'm hoping he addresses some of the points I brought up about the narrative he provided...

Hey, happy to do so!

Cool. Though it still doesn't address why a competent person can't slip and fall when climbing... or why that happening is inherently "silly"... or why this isn't just as silly... "DOPE!!! (headpalm)that goofball just loosened the brickwork for everyone else... even though he's a "competent" climber...

It's an example of a partial failure - which I used for two reasons:
1) It addresses the dissonance between the skill challenge DC and the climbing DC - i.e. the idea here is: the check was good enough to climb successfully (=> no falling), but not good enough to work towards the end goal of the challenge of the entire party moving across (=> brittle wall means no progress, since it hinders the following PCs) - while giving new material to riff off (=> following PCs could do something about the brittleness, i.e. more skill uses). Has nothing to do with silliness.

So the fiction is being forced to conform to the mechanics... every wall the PC's encounter as part of a skill challenge has something different about it that makes it harder to climb than a regular wall... Uhm, ok... this doesn't seem far fetched, but slipping and falling is considered silly.

Again, nothing about silliness. And fiction is always forced to conform the mechanics, it's part of rolling the dice and "rolling" with the outcomes so to speak. That isn't different from having a fighter deal 9 damage to a level 1 orc (instant kill) or 9 damage to a hill giant (a light flesh wound at worst). The rolls inform how the fiction works out, whether the 9 damage strike is gutting an enemy or barely scratching it. The fiction what "9 damage" mean warps around to fit the mechanical outcome.

You realize in this narrative he didn't fail right? He actually succeeded in traversing the climb... You also realize from a mechanical perspective the chances for anyone else climbing are still the same, not any harder, even though you've decided to change the fiction of the wall (I guess now fiction and mechanics are separate)... if the brickwork has been loosened why is the DC the same?

In the narrative he didn't fail the climb (as according to the DC 15 for a wall), but failed the goal of the skill challenge (making it across the chasm with the entire group). The DC isn't necessarily the same, you can, as DM, rule that Athletics are now a harder DC (in fact, that's a point about repeated skill use!). Plus, the end objective (group crossing chasm) is harder overall, since you have less margin of error now.

Refresh my memory again, where in the 4e core books does it state that "failing forward" is necessary for SC's or even a part of the game proper...

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] had the relevant quote, though to be fair calling that principle of interesting consequences instead of outright failure "fail forward" is terminology I've cribbed from 13th Age.

Skill challenge are a bit of a shift in frame of mind - you need to think of them not as a collection of several skill checks, but a larger challenge - and success/failures aren't focussed on a particular task, but overall progress (hence you can have "successes" that fail to contribute to overall goal and vice versa). Does that make sense? It also means, you need to cast them bigger than "cross a bridge", they need to be large in scope, just like combat encounters.

Additionally, you need to think more in real life terms: skill challenges need the concept of partial failure/success. In D&D, skills are binary, either you ace the check or you fail. Things in reality are less clean-cut, you can have a hard climb, a narrow escape and so on. To run skill challenges successfully, you need to leave the idea of binary yes/no skill checks and have more graduated real life-like outcomes. Shifting that habit of DMing takes some effort, but once you "grok" it, it becomes quite natural.

 

[Imaro]

Hey, happy to do so!

Cool, thanks.

It's an example of a partial failure - which I used for two reasons:
1) It addresses the dissonance between the skill challenge DC and the climbing DC - i.e. the idea here is: the check was good enough to climb successfully (=> no falling), but not good enough to work towards the end goal of the challenge of the entire party moving across (=> brittle wall means no progress, since it hinders the following PCs) - while giving new material to riff off (=> following PCs could do something about the brittleness, i.e. more skill uses). Has nothing to do with silliness.

Ok, admittedly you weren't the one who called it silly pemerton was so I shouldn't have saddled that baggage on you... I apologize. Now as to your other point... the check wasn't good enough to climb the wall... the rogue rolled under the DC. the wall had a higher than normal DC because it was harder to climb (remember this was accounted for by the whole brittle thing) and he failed at it... I'm still not getting why him falling isn't an appropriate narrative... but after failing the DC check, him succeeding in the climb is.

Again, nothing about silliness. And fiction is always forced to conform the mechanics, it's part of rolling the dice and "rolling" with the outcomes so to speak. That isn't different from having a fighter deal 9 damage to a level 1 orc (instant kill) or 9 damage to a hill giant (a light flesh wound at worst). The rolls inform how the fiction works out, whether the 9 damage strike is gutting an enemy or barely scratching it. The fiction what "9 damage" mean warps around to fit the mechanical outcome.

No fiction isn't always forced to conform to mechanics... mechanics can be built and conform to fiction as well. I swing my sword to hit him... I make an attack roll... the fiction informed the mechanics being used.

In the narrative he didn't fail the climb (as according to the DC 15 for a wall), but failed the goal of the skill challenge (making it across the chasm with the entire group). The DC isn't necessarily the same, you can, as DM, rule that Athletics are now a harder DC (in fact, that's a point about repeated skill use!). Plus, the end objective (group crossing chasm) is harder overall, since you have less margin of error now.
@pemerton had the relevant quote, though to be fair calling that principle of interesting consequences instead of outright failure "fail forward" is terminology I've cribbed from 13th Age.

DC 15 is for a normal wall... the increase was attributed to the fact that this wall was more difficult to climb... so yes, he did fail the check. he also didn't fail the SC, because it wasn't the 3rd failure... it was the 1st. And again, him falling didn't stop the adventure from moving forward, did it? He had another path to succeed, right? So how does it violate anything in that paragraph that was quoted? Again this seems to rest on [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's claim of silliness (which I am still trying to understand) as opposed to this outcome being against the advice or rules in the books.

Skill challenge are a bit of a shift in frame of mind - you need to think of them not as a collection of several skill checks, but a larger challenge - and success/failures aren't focussed on a particular task, but overall progress (hence you can have "successes" that fail to contribute to overall goal and vice versa). Does that make sense? It also means, you need to cast them bigger than "cross a bridge", they need to be large in scope, just like combat encounters.

If a particular success or failure isn't focused on a particular task why are we even bothering to describe what we are doing. I've seen pemerton, Balesir and manbearcat (among others) claim that the narrative of a skill challenge should flow from the actions being taken by the participants... but you are claiming successes and failures shouldn't be focused on these actions... no that doesn't make sense. Even when we use your narrative it is still concerned with the specific task being performed by the rogue.

Additionally, you need to think more in real life terms: skill challenges need the concept of partial failure/success. In D&D, skills are binary, either you ace the check or you fail. Things in reality are less clean-cut, you can have a hard climb, a narrow escape and so on. To run skill challenges successfully, you need to leave the idea of binary yes/no skill checks and have more graduated real life-like outcomes. Shifting that habit of DMing takes some effort, but once you "grok" it, it becomes quite natural.

Skill challenges don't have partial failure/success, they are binary. Again this seems like an example where you've adapted SC's to run the way you like.. but there is nothing in the rules about partial successes or partial failures concerning the SC as a whole or it's individual components... they are all binary.

 

[keterys]

One reason the chasm isn't a skill challenge:
DMG p72: "When an obstacle takes one roll to resolve, it's not a challenge." In the example given, if it's possible to make a single Athletics check and get across, then that's not a skill challenge.

The most it should be is a single group check made as part of some larger skill challenge ("Trek across the jungle", or similar). In fact, climbing a cliff is provided as an example group skill check - where it's not a question of each PC making the DC 15 and each person falling in turn, but in guiding the group as a whole over the obstacle. But, again, a single check in a challenge not the whole challenge. You'll find that solves most of the incongruity right there.

Even in that case, using a power to teleport across (if that's an option) should probably grant an automatic success for either the individual, or in the case of a group teleport like Astral Step (if it's that small a chasm) the entire group:
DMG p73: "Characters might have access to utility powers or rituals that can help them. These might allow special use of skills, perhaps with a bonus. Rituals in particular might grant an automatic success or remove failures from the running total."

Alternatively, if it's not defined as a small enough chasm that you can just teleport straight across it, a desire to teleport might open up the use of Arcana, rather than just letting someone make up something entirely fiddly for its use. The SkC rules don't mean that _every_ SkC should allow "I pray for the gods to solve my problems, Religion" to work.

It's also totally fine for skill use to not provide success or failure (p75-76) as appropriate, which can help address some of the confusion around skill weirdness.

Finally, if you've described the challenge as complete - it's complete, or there's an as of yet unrevealed scene. Making a random check after you've described it as done is both ludicrous in description (as noted) but also ludicrous in rules. As the rules describe, the fiction has to follow. So - add another scene to the challenge, add a complication, make something happen, but calling for a skill check to literally do nothing except make a skill check, with no fiction around what the check is doing, logical failure mode, or anything else, makes no sense and doesn't follow the guidelines for SkCs.