D&D 5E Skill Challenges in 5e

[Oofta]

I see that as poor framing of a challenge. If the challenge is something you can overcome with just, say, convincing a single person, it probably shouldn't even be a skill challenge. Not all skill checks are supposed to be part of a skill challenge, and Rules Compendium has examples of skills in play where skill challenges are not involved. I do know what you're talking about, and the issue is using a skill challenge where one doesn't need to be added. Or sometimes players come up with a very creative solution and you just bypass the skill challenge, the same way you would let them bypass a fight thanks to a particularly creative idea. If the skill challenge was intended to be long, like 8 or more successes, and the players still came up with something that bypasses the entire thing, then that would just be bad framing (like requiring 8 successes to get through the gates of a city).

According to the rules in the 4E DMG, you had to have anywhere from 4 successes before 2 failures to 12 successes before 6 failures based on difficulty. Throw in initiative and explicitly telling people they were in a skill challenge. Once you were in the challenge the numbers were set.

Maybe you didn't run it that way and I certainly wouldn't run skill challenges that way any more. It's not like I didn't try to make skill challenges interesting but if you ran them as described by the rules they were a sequence of die rolls with boxed text that made little difference. I liked the concept, the implementation didn't work for me. I think it was another example of the original books being pushed out too soon, the compendium had more of what it could have been if given time but it was too little too late.

So now in 5E I may use a similar structure occasionally but what the people say and do matters. It may be a situation where I want the players to use a variety of skills but I never have a set number in mind. Instead, I advance the scenario as it make sense based on what they do and the successes or failures along the way.

 

[Teemu]

According to the rules in the 4E DMG, you had to have anywhere from 4 successes before 2 failures to 12 successes before 6 failures based on difficulty. Throw in initiative and explicitly telling people they were in a skill challenge. Once you were in the challenge the numbers were set.

Maybe you didn't run it that way and I certainly wouldn't run skill challenges that way any more. It's not like I didn't try to make skill challenges interesting but if you ran them as described by the rules they were a sequence of die rolls with boxed text that made little difference. I liked the concept, the implementation didn't work for me. I think it was another example of the original books being pushed out too soon, the compendium had more of what it could have been if given time but it was too little too late.

So now in 5E I may use a similar structure occasionally but what the people say and do matters. It may be a situation where I want the players to use a variety of skills but I never have a set number in mind. Instead, I advance the scenario as it make sense based on what they do and the successes or failures along the way.

The skill challenge rules were iterated on in 2009 and 2010, so the DMG1 version was outdated one year into the edition, much like static racial bonuses, some of the monster math, the flying rules, magic item crafting, and so on. WotC was very aggressive in updating the game back then.

 

[Oofta]

The skill challenge rules were iterated on in 2009 and 2010, so the DMG1 version was outdated one year into the edition, much like static racial bonuses, some of the monster math, the flying rules, magic item crafting, and so on. WotC was very aggressive in updating the game back then.

The original rules were what most people used in my experience. I think in many ways 4E was a missed opportunity that was simply pushed out too quickly, by the time essentials came around it was too late.

 

[Alzrius]

I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard good things about The Fail-Pick Challenge: A Skill Challenge Hack for 5e (affiliate link).

 

[Charlaquin]

The original rules were what most people used in my experience. I think in many ways 4E was a missed opportunity that was simply pushed out too quickly, by the time essentials came around it was too late.

Yeah, one chance to make a first impression and all that. The changes certainly improved the 4e rules, but only people who liked the initial version of the rules enough to stick around actually saw the changes.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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.

Yeah, but what I found was that using your 'Obsidian' rules didn't really fix the classic SC problems. Those were a matter of presentation of technique, and at least in the very early DMG1 presentation a problem of strange math and clunky rules.

If you go with the most updated 4e SC rules, which are presented in the Essentials Rules Companion, they work QUITE well. The main purpose is to produce some predictability. The players understand what the process is for determining success of their endeavor, so they can judge what the cost/benefit equation is for any given action, and thus will be able to take exciting risks.

The classic way to handle 'stuff' in D&D failed, because it was basically "keep rolling skill checks until the DM has had enough." You had no idea what the salience of a single check was, so why expend resources on turning it into a success? The narrative might help you some here, and you can hope your DM appreciates all this and has something in mind, but this is not at all guaranteed.

Obviously Obsidian functioned to give salience, just like RC-grade 4e SC does, so I have no great criticism of it. However, I just didn't find it was BETTER. The real main things that need to happen to make a good SC, in any system, is PLOT. The situation depicted needs to evolve and move forward, with elements of tension and resolution at various points, like any drama. The original DMG examples were frankly just all terrible. They were largely static situations. Your presentation, way back in the day, definitely pointed out the need for 'flow'. I've always emphasized that as well, and to insure that the 'framing' of the challenge was correct (IE it encompassed within it the right 'chunk' of the story). I think framing flexibility can be an issue with Obsidian, because it already has a specific structure, which puts some limits on how it naturally 'fits' with the rest of the story.

Another option that I am not so familiar with is to adopt techniques from something like BitD's 'clocks', which are basically a generalization of SC rules. With those techniques you can implement something that handles things like Obsidian, like classic 4e SC, RC grade 4e SC, as well as various other patterns.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

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

It depends on what version of SC rules you used. The VERY FIRST version, printed in the unerrataed 4e DMG1, has variable numbers of both success and failures depending on the complexity, and its procedure has all the players make an initiative check to decide who goes when. After that it states flat out that every character must make checks. So, if you go by those rules, then checks are required.

If you go look at the Rules Compendium SC rules, and example, none of that exists, it was all eliminated in the first big DMG1 errata, which pretty much rewrote the SC rules almost from the ground up. There are no 'turns' or 'initiative', and nothing is ever stated about anyone being mandated to make a check.

Now, a GM and players might end up with an SC situation where it is essentially impossible for a PC to avoid a check, for narrative reasons, but that's not a rule of SCs. Technically if the player says "nope, no roll" then perhaps the GM has options like imposing a failure, and/or just describing the consequent narrative and letting the players figure out how to deal with whatever the new situation is. In a few cases the GM might even decree that the objective is no longer feasible and the SC is simply over. Players CAN opt to abandon an SC, just as they can opt to retreat from combat.

So, you are right, current SC rules don't mandate checks, explicitly at least. A good GM will probably elicit them with 'carrots' (IE advantages).

 

[iserith]

It depends on what version of SC rules you used. The VERY FIRST version, printed in the unerrataed 4e DMG1, has variable numbers of both success and failures depending on the complexity, and its procedure has all the players make an initiative check to decide who goes when. After that it states flat out that every character must make checks. So, if you go by those rules, then checks are required.

If you go look at the Rules Compendium SC rules, and example, none of that exists, it was all eliminated in the first big DMG1 errata, which pretty much rewrote the SC rules almost from the ground up. There are no 'turns' or 'initiative', and nothing is ever stated about anyone being mandated to make a check.

Now, a GM and players might end up with an SC situation where it is essentially impossible for a PC to avoid a check, for narrative reasons, but that's not a rule of SCs. Technically if the player says "nope, no roll" then perhaps the GM has options like imposing a failure, and/or just describing the consequent narrative and letting the players figure out how to deal with whatever the new situation is. In a few cases the GM might even decree that the objective is no longer feasible and the SC is simply over. Players CAN opt to abandon an SC, just as they can opt to retreat from combat.

So, you are right, current SC rules don't mandate checks, explicitly at least. A good GM will probably elicit them with 'carrots' (IE advantages).

Just to clarify one point, the Rules Compendium skill challenge design lets the DM decide if it will be handled in initiative order or some other order of their choice. I found it worked better in initiative.

 

[Teemu]

The original rules were what most people used in my experience. I think in many ways 4E was a missed opportunity that was simply pushed out too quickly, by the time essentials came around it was too late.

Sure, but that's not very relevant when discussing the addition of 4e skill challenge rules into 5e. We should probably reference the final version that came out a whole decade ago.

The basic structure of the skill challenge can imported without any issues since both editions use an extremely similar skill system. But because skill challenges at their core are simply an encounter calculator for social and exploration encounters (or those added into combat), we can't import the DCs.

Imagine if the 5e encounter calculation didn't mention CR or take into consideration the impact of enemies beyond one. Imagine if the only thing provided was a table, telling us that Easy = 200 XP; Moderate = 1,800 XP; Hard = 5,900 XP; and Very Hard = 13,000 XP. Now go build encounters!

Is Easy easy for what level? What is moderate for my level 8 party? No idea. That's how 5e skill DCs work currently, meaning that the rules offer 0 guidance on the difficulty of several checks combined, of different DCs. That's why it's basically impossible to use reliable skill challenges in 5e.

 

[Charlaquin]

The thing is, I don’t think there would be much need to mandate each character to roll, if the skill challenge was tied to an evolving narrative. You describe the scene including an obstacle or source of conflict, and ask the first player in the order (be it initiative, or just going around the table or whatever) what they do. You resolve that action, narrate it’s consequences, leading a new decision point, so you ask the next player in the order what they do. This is just a slightly more formalized version of the fundamental pattern of play. Sure, if a player says they don’t want to do anything, you can let them, but if the scenario has meaningful stakes and dynamic conflict, it’s as unlikely a player won’t want to try anything as it is a player will want to use their turn in combat doing nothing.