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<blockquote data-quote="Ajar" data-source="post: 5391702" data-attributes="member: 85901">My last 4E group was all newbies, so when the first skill challenge came up, I explained the mechanics to them explicitly. Other than that, I generally don't announce them, although if someone asks, I'm certainly open about it. On their way back from routing the hapless Skull Kicker kobolds of Kobold Hall at the behest of the shadowy Bloodghost Syndicate, my PCs realized that they were being followed. They suspected a setup, since the Skull Kicker leader was in possession of ciphered correspondence bearing the Bloodghost seal, although as it turned out there was actually an internal power struggle going on within the syndicate. In any case, through a combination of athletics, endurance, nature, perception, and bluff checks, they managed to lure their pursuers into an ambush. With the successes, they could have simply outrun or otherwise lost their pursuers, of course, but this was a fairly mercenary party that later named themselves the Organ Grinders. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The reward for succeeding on the skill challenge was that I let them draw the battle map. If they had failed, their pursuers (dragonborn from the Red Hand of Tiamat who had been sent to make contact with the Skull Kickers) would have caught up with them sooner and I would have drawn a much less favourable battle map. They all got a big kick out of designing their ambush location, so I think it worked out pretty well. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ajar, post: 5391702, member: 85901"] My last 4E group was all newbies, so when the first skill challenge came up, I explained the mechanics to them explicitly. Other than that, I generally don't announce them, although if someone asks, I'm certainly open about it. On their way back from routing the hapless Skull Kicker kobolds of Kobold Hall at the behest of the shadowy Bloodghost Syndicate, my PCs realized that they were being followed. They suspected a setup, since the Skull Kicker leader was in possession of ciphered correspondence bearing the Bloodghost seal, although as it turned out there was actually an internal power struggle going on within the syndicate. In any case, through a combination of athletics, endurance, nature, perception, and bluff checks, they managed to lure their pursuers into an ambush. With the successes, they could have simply outrun or otherwise lost their pursuers, of course, but this was a fairly mercenary party that later named themselves the Organ Grinders. ;) The reward for succeeding on the skill challenge was that I let them draw the battle map. If they had failed, their pursuers (dragonborn from the Red Hand of Tiamat who had been sent to make contact with the Skull Kickers) would have caught up with them sooner and I would have drawn a much less favourable battle map. They all got a big kick out of designing their ambush location, so I think it worked out pretty well. :) [/QUOTE]

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