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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pseudopsyche" data-source="post: 6178080" data-attributes="member: 54600">Your characterization of skill challenges sounds great in theory, but in my experience, too many skill challenges devolve into, for example, a player asking, "Can I use Athletics?" Yes, I know, I must be a horrible DM who's doing it all wrong. Maybe it's just because most of my experience lately has been with organized play.But I'd like to point out that every skill challenge I've seen in an adventure published by WotC (or in LFR) has simply listed skills, their DCs, and some narrative justification. The DCs almost never depend on the "narrative state" of the encounter. Once in a while you'll be able to use Insight or Perception to "unlock" some other skill or grant some bonus, and often there's a maximum number of successes possible for a given skill. The main issue is that these published skill challenges are always organized by skill (game mechanic), not by narrative elements (the duke's personality, goals, motivations, weaknesses).I certainly believe that others have had better experiences with skill challenges. But I wonder how much value the skill challenge mechanics added, and how much was due to your personal skill as a DM? How much of the value of 4E skill challenges could be replaced simply by the following pieces of DM advice: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Don't let the outcome of an entire scene hinge on a single skill check.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Give players some sense of their progress toward their goal in the scene.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Grant some XP based on the number of successful skill checks in a scene.</li> </ul></blockquote>

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