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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jbear" data-source="post: 6060653" data-attributes="member: 75065">This hits the nail on the head.When you approach a skill challenge as just a series of rolls that need to go over a certain number then it will suck badly. It will suck even more badly when you are 'forced by the DM' to make those rolls. E.g. You need to get from get across a mountain chasm. Everyone roll athletics 4 successes needed before 3 fails, DC 19. Go! (Eck! Horrible)But what if you approach it like this:The party has to cross the mountain chasm: Stage 1: Get the party across the area where the path has collapsed: 1 successStage 2: Get past the pterosaur nests: 2 successes (1 to calm/neutralise the Bull pterosaur; 1 to physically get past)Stage 3: Cross the Windy Swing Bridge: 1 successThe individual rolls can be successes or failures but not all will necessarily result in an overall failure/success towards the completion of the challenge. The individual rolls  do not decide whether the group is successful. So PCs can achieve the goal anyway they can think of. As long as all the PCs get across or the PCs achieve the goal somehow, they get a success.The catch is that the DM involves everyone (as per permeton's comment). Okay, in this physical challenge it's obvious how. All the PCs have to find a way across the collapsed area of the path. An eladrin might just teleport the 30 ft distance. Bamf. 1 down 4 to go to achieve the success. The Goliath might carry the halfling across on his shoulders. 2 more get across on the Goliath's roll. The dwarven cleric ties himself with the rope that the others have thrown across and makes his way across with a +2 bonus but rolls a 2. A fail ... but not a failure for the challenge. Nevertheless, something happens. So as DM you let the situation and the PCs actions inspire what it is that has gone wrong. In this particular case it's pretty obvious: the wall crumbles and the dwarf starts falling below. Imagine how this might be different if the PCs are sneaking past the pterosaur nests.Now the challenge is halted until our intrepid adventurers resolve the situation. If they do it well, then they pull the dwarf to safety. If they do it badly ... perhaps they provoke an avalanche which does result in an overall failure towards the challenge. Of course this provokes a new dynamic situation that ALL the PCs again must find their own way to resolve.And so on and so forth.Basically: Reaching Goals achieve successes; the amount of rolls or pathways to do that is irrelevant and only limited by the players imagination. Rolls are used to adjudicate player decisions when necessary. When they individually fail their chosen action then the result is likely not a failure towards the challenge but the creation of a new challenging dynamic added to the challenge that the PCs need to resolve before they can advance. An overall failure could arise from dealing with the new challenging dynamic badly. A failure might arise from a bad plan that sees 3 PCs out of 5 fail in their attempts to cross the collapsed path (for example) directly provoking the avalanche as they scrabble for their lives (for example). But I think a failure is best represented by a pressure the PCs face to resolve a situation or reach a goal before something else occurs.  It's all well and good that the party can make their way across the collapsed path, but what if they have to do that before ... Oh I don't know ... without thinking too hard ... before the cannibal scout they spotted racing away earlier reaches the nearby village and returns with a hunting party mounted on dire wolves. Suddenly time is a factor. Being a slow clumsy dwarf now poses a real problem because getting out rope, getting it from one side to the other, securing it at both ends ... that all takes time, and time is your enemy. And voilá, there you have your tension. The dwarf falling is a set back, sure. But the real problem is that he's going to be dangling from a rope like a piece of strung up meat when them darn cannibals arrive if the party don't get their A into G and get him up!You have your frame work. Individual rolls matter and are rightly required. Character weaknesses/flaws are challenged and do create hurdles the party must overcome, and rightly so. But it is not: DM: "Roll athletics" Dwarf: "But I have a -1. Can't I use religion to pray to my god to give me strength or to get the wind to carry me?" DM: "No. Roll. DC 19". Dwarf: "A 6 minus 1 equals 5" DM: "The Dwarf falls. That's your third failure. You lose. Everyone loses a surge getting the dwarf back up who miraculously hung on by his fingers just long enough. Right ... moving on". I have seen that approach. It sucks. It sucks for the DM. It sucks for the players. If you have done skill challenges and they have been similar to what I describe, then I understand why people hate them and say they are crap.My way on the other hand is pure awesome, if I humbly say so myself. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> There is a structure. DCs remain the same. Good ideas lower the difficulty of the DCs. Bad ideas make them harder. Legendary ideas don't require rolls. The XP rewards are set out and clear except you will probably have a number of 'mini-challenges' which should also have their reward (think minions type xp). Failures create a dynamic change in the challenge that the PCs must overcome in order to continue advancing. Things happen to the PCs during a challenge: Action -> Reaction. And then you just roll with it as you do in a good roleplaying game. (Though preparation of things that might happen should things go wrong or the planned introduction of dynamic events is highly recommended)Skill challenges should be engaging, exciting, fun, dangerous, and tense. They should not be about coming up with a bollocks way to use Religion to climb a mountain path because that is your highest skill, or sitting back passively and letting the bard talk because he has high diplomacy. It should not be a purely numbers game. The numbers should just be used as improvisational props to inspire/justify the DMs introduction of new dynamics to the challenge and inspire players in their roleplaying of how their PCs are dealing with the situation.If you are interested you can read a successful skill challenge I ran along these lines for my pbp game: <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?322609-Adventure-A-Call-for-Lovers-(DM-jbear-Judge-Lord-Sessadore)/page4" target="_blank">http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?322609-Adventure-A-Call-for-Lovers-(DM-jbear-Judge-Lord-Sessadore)/page4</a>Initially The PCs did not know they were engaged in a skill challenge during stage 1, which involved them discovering the danger and alerting the ship's captain before it was too late (For obvious reasons this was not overt until they had acted/failed to act). I think this showcases the potential for memorable and exciting skill challenges pretty well.</blockquote>

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