D&D 5E Skill Challenges in 5e

[Stalker0]

Having wrote my Obsidian System for 4e and trying out a lot of skill challenges, what I generally found was the "group" aspect of them was the main detraction.

Over time I found that the full out skill challenge was generally too long and unwieldy most of the time...and the super freeform ones just never provided the narrative oomph that I really wanted.

Instead, I found the 3 roll "personal" challenge to be the ideal. For example, one player wants to research something. They give me 3 knowledge checks (or maybe 2 knowledge and one persuasion or something, the DM sets the skills its not freeform). Quick, clean, with some math to back up what I want to set my DCs to be for a reasonable success chance. sometimes you would have maybe two players doing it, but very rarely was it the whole group.

Also I would use 2 roll "combat challenges" a fair amount. Within combat, a character could try to activate a "gizmo" over 2 rounds, one check a round, no action required (part of the "use an object" ability). That way they could still participate in the main combat, but had the ability to do some extra as well.

For a chase, its not "okay 7 rolls from the entire group" its "ok each person make 3 X rolls". Based on who succeeds, I set a new scene, its the quarry and the successful PCs, and then I run the scene as a combat....if a PC is super successful maybe I start the combat with the quarry grappled and then we go from there.

I have found that players don't treat these kinds of challenges the same, they aren't "big involved things", its just "make a few rolls and see what happens". Players don't disengage like I saw with full challenges, so I have had a decent amount of success.

 

[cbwjm]

I used a skill challenge in my game when I wasn't prepared for the PCs running away. Ended up taking death saves and asking for skill checks, but only for those skills the PCs were proficient in and they had to explain how they used the skill to get away. It was easier than trying to figure out the chase rules on the fly.

Afterwards I codified my skill challenge rules a little more, setting the base DC to 15 and allowing any skill to be used even if the PC doesn't have proficiency. If using the challenge for the chase I mentioned earlier, I think I'd set levels of escape: 0-1 failure they escape completely, 2 failures they lose some of those chasing them making the battle easier (perhaps with a timer to determine when other enemies catch up), 3 failures means they didn't escape and the battle begins.

 

[billd91]

Honestly, I thought skill challenges, as presented initially in 4e, weren't very good. I think they work best (and really well) to measure degrees of success where multiple degrees actually make sense. The group progresses toward a goal that requires a certain number of successful checks - each failure in those tasks or associated tasks pulls back from the rewards of complete success. As presented in 4e, X successes before Y failures success/failure of a (largely binary success/fail) task with PCs throwing any random skills they don't suck at it is just a recipe for pain because it ultimately makes that success much harder to achieve. That's way too much dice rolling and checks to generate nothing much. If the result is binary - why bother using such a complex tool for checks?

Star Wars Saga Edition's Galaxy of Intrigue had a really good example of a skill challenge that generated degrees of success - escaping from Kessel. The PCs are trying to escape and bring along as many other enslaved prisoners as they can. Each failure along the way means some of the prisoners they're try to help are recaptured. If everything goes according to plan, they have a comparatively easy encounter at the end to effect their escape with a lot of prisoners freed. If everything goes to hell in a hand basket, it's just them vs a much tougher encounter (that they could still win - just with no other prisoners in tow and the gnawing feeling that those recaptured prisoners are going to pay a high price in retribution).

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I tried out skill challenges on my players, who were coming straight from 3.5. They hated the fact that everyone had to roll, even those who might not be suited for a particular situation. They felt that if one person in the party could solve the problem single-handedly, that should be rewarded. I eventually gave up on trying them.

Skill challenges didn’t require everyone to roll, or at least that is not how our DM ran them!

 

[jayoungr]

Skill challenges didn’t require everyone to roll, or at least that is not how our DM ran them!

I was adapting a challenge from a 4E adventure that did require everyone to roll. It also had limits on how many times certain skills could be used. The players said it made them feel like they were playing a board game.

 

[Charlaquin]

I was adapting a challenge from a 4E adventure that did require everyone to roll. It also had limits on how many times certain skills could be used. The players said it made them feel like they were playing a board game.

Yeah... While the Skill Challenge rules themselves weren’t exactly the best-written, the skill challenges in modules were downright abysmal. Of course, modules being poor examples of how to run the game is nothing new.

 

[cbwjm]

I recall Mearls writing articles in dragon or dungeon that went over skill challenges to provide ideas and guidance on them. Been a while but I think they were quite good.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I was adapting a challenge from a 4E adventure that did require everyone to roll. It also had limits on how many times certain skills could be used. The players said it made them feel like they were playing a board game.

We don’t use official adventures, but I checked with my DM and he said that you could run them with group skill checks but that was not the assumption in the DMG. He said it was basically a “side bar” option to do that. I can’t verify that, just what he said.

 

[dave2008]

I was adapting a challenge from a 4E adventure that did require everyone to roll. It also had limits on how many times certain skills could be used. The players said it made them feel like they were playing a board game.

I will jump in to verify that the DMG did not require group skill checks and it was not even the standard.

There is a play example and 6 more example skill challenges in the DMG v1 and none of them used group checks. I haven't checked the DMG v2 though. Maybe they changed course in the 2nd DMG.

 

[jayoungr]

I'm not talking about group skill checks, if by that you mean the entire party rolls the same skill. I mean that my players hated the requirement that no player could make a second skill roll until everyone had rolled some skill or another, even though each player got to choose which skill to roll for.