Skill Challenges: Please stop

[pemerton]

This sounds interesting, but I have some questions on it:

1) When were the 4 primary skills rolled and by whom? At set locations? By the best PC with the skill?

2) What happened if 3 failures occurred before 6 successes.

(1) I can't remember all the details now. I know that it actually started with an Arcana check, which I hadn't anticipated - the PCs had just stopped a demonic ritual in a temple on top of a mountain, and were fleeing the temple as it collapsed behind them. The wizard PC used Arcana to stop the arcane energey spreading any further out of the temple and collapsing the mountain-side, because he didn't want the pursuing gnolls to be alerted by such a dramatic event.

I think there was probably a group Endurance check in there somewhere - the rationale may have been that no one used Athletics to facilitate the climb down the mountain. I can't remember if Stealth was used.

In between checks, I was describing events for the players - the descent down the mountain, the travel to the river. I had predetermined that after a certain number of success they would find themselves in the river valley, with a heavy fog, and stumble into the gnoll funerary grounds, where they would have to deal with the gnoll shaman and followers. Because there had already been a failure at this point (can't remember what it was), the manticore-mounted gnoll joined this fight with the benefit of surprise.

After the fight, which was a fairly tough one, I remember multiple checks were made to cross the river - again, I think this may have a group check, with overall success (3 out of 5 PCs) meaning that they all made it across, but some sort of minor penalty (maybe a HS, or a piece of equipment lost - I can't remember now) for each individual failure.

After that the ranger PC rolled Nature to try to find a suitable sleeping place, and failed. The wizard then rolled Nature and succeeded - but (given that I had decided that failure meant no extended rest) I described the result as being one of finding a clearing where they could tie there horses, but that the night was a restless one, with noises, swamp insects, rain etc meaning that they failed to get the benefit of an extended rest.

Another success took them to the next predetermined encounter - a ruined manorhouse occupied by witches - and at this point things branched off in a different direction, and several sessions later the final check of the travel challenge hasn't been resolved yet.

To try and answer your question more succinctly - in this sort of SC, I am fairly relaxed about who makes what checks - which means that the players tend to organise that (for example) Nature checks are made only by those with good Nature bonuses. But once a check has been made in a given situation and failed, I don't generally let the same PC make another check. So once the ranger has failed to find somewhere to sleep, the onus falls onto another party member.

Also, as the above description indicates, when the course of action that the party describes means the whole group is involved - "we're all climbing down the mountain path" or "we're crossing the river using techniques XYZ" - then I will generally require a DMG2-style group check.

And the other thing that I think is important is to narrate the consequences of each successful or failed check in such a way as to set up the next complication. I also fit the narration to the checks - so if the players had chosen Stealth rather than Nature after they'd crossed the river, then rather than empahsising the difficulty in finding a place to rest, I would have linked the outcome to finding a hiding place - "you eventually find somewhere concealed - but it's too cramped/swampy etc for you to get a good rest overnight".

The reason I do this sort of travel via a skill challenge rather than more freeform is that it sets some parameters around the number of checks required, as one aspect of that reduces check-mongering by either GM or players, and also gives me a simple structure in which to locate the consequences of failure.

(2) A final failure means that, when they get to where they are going, they are so exhausted that they are surprised by the attacking humanoids (the encounter I have in mind combines two encounters - "Fire on the Water" and "Village Showdown" - from the 2008 Dungeon module "Heathen").

There must be consequences for failure.

<snip>

To me, it means that if you're doing an overland journey SC, there has to be a real chance that you might not ever make it.

I agree that there have to be consequences. As to whether or not this includes not making it, I think that depends. In the case of the challenge I've described above, the PCs are following a river on their left with foothills on their right. So they can't get lost. And I'm not interested in a situation in which they find terrain - a cliff or waterfall or something - that they can't successfully cross.

I think exhaustion upon arrival such that the next encounter is more challenging can be sufficient. The skill challenge has produced a story that the players are engaged in - of a difficult rather than an easy trip - and the players can see from the narration in response to their skill checks how their successes and failures led to this result.

In some skill challenges the consequences of failure could be more drastic, I agree, but I tend to think of travel SCs as means to an end rather than ends in themselves.

 

[Fox Lee]

Loooongass overdue response. Excuse me if I reiterate anything that has already been thoroughly trod.

We've had lots of interesting Skill Challenge examples in our games so far - interesting in particular because they have been so very, very varied.

Our first GM ran the Keep on the Shadowfell module, but because he wasn't comfortable with speaking in-character yet (he's fully aware that this is his one big GM flaw) the encounter with Sir Keegan went over a bit flat. As the module advised, he targeted each check toward the PC with the highest modifiers, but in more than one case this meant they went to the party Warlock, who also was totally not comfortable role-playing yet. What should have been some of the most poignant moments in the story were reduced to matter-of-fact explanations, and the two characters who were actually being roleplayed (my fighter and the party shaman, who were trying for a sort of tough-love "man up and earn your redemption already!" approach) were mostly ignored.

Our second GM ran a fantastic skill challenge, which involved getting us to re-activate what was essentially a giant magitech gun to shoot down an undead dragon. With the group's girl-genius Artificer in the lead, all the characters came up with cool, relevant ideas on how we could use our skills to help the situation - even the Warlock from the previous game, who is still very hard to interest in skill challenges, actually thought of her own actions and used them well. In the final round, my Paladin taunted the dragon with an intimidate check and jumped on its back; the party's Avenger used his high perception to act as a spotter targeting her shiny plate armour, and the Artificer blew that sucker out of the sky. It was EPIC.

However, the first skill challenge of that same game was a chore for everyone involved. The PCs had to get over the walls of a city wall that was beseiged by an undead army - you know, without actually fighting our way through - and it just all went wrong. The players didn't really understand what was required, and nobody had any creative ideas, and a couple of the players were very short-tempered with the idea of something getting between us and combat... one player just made her own Athletics check and assumed she was over, leaving the rest of us to whatever. The exasperated GM eventually just informed us that it was a skill challenge, we needed to roll X, X or X, and let's just get it over with. Definitely a low point of the game, especially for the first session :\

Anyway, I guess the point I'm coming around to is that there are a lot of factors at work here (at least that one player is getting far better at thinking creatively) the "Duck Hunt" encounter (as the GM named it) went over so well in part because it had way more options. We had a big area to work - a sort of forge tower with lava at the bottom - and plenty of jobs to be done. The core of the challenge was the engineering aspect, but the more physically-inclined party members also had options, like climbing the tower to reach particular items/areas or enduring the tremendous heat in the forge area. I think the key to making a decent skill challenge may be "trying to say yes" - thinking of as many potential skill uses as you can, and working with the players if they have other ideas.

That's not the same as being unnecessary or a bad idea. I want the players to succeed in combat, too - I've no interest in a story where the heroes die to bad rolls and the bad guy wins. The use of characters' bonuses and the randomness of die rolling are valuable to both of these scenarios because that's what D&D is; it's a game where you try to make your character good at what they do, but you still roll a dice so there's an element of chance. Just saying that those fundamental rules shouldn't apply to anything outside of combat is as detrimental to the game as a purely flavourless skill challenge is, IMO.

Of course roleplay has value, and I do agree that skill challenges are hard to grasp, and require work in presentation. But a skill challenge doesn't get in the way of roleplay unless the group approaches it that way. Approached correctly, they encourage creativity (you need to think about what your character will do, and how) and add that aspect of challenge (just saying it isn't enough - you have to get a good enough result to pull it off) that makes us play D&D rather than freeform.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think exhaustion upon arrival such that the next encounter is more challenging can be sufficient. The skill challenge has produced a story that the players are engaged in - of a difficult rather than an easy trip - and the players can see from the narration in response to their skill checks how their successes and failures led to this result.

In some skill challenges the consequences of failure could be more drastic, I agree, but I tend to think of travel SCs as means to an end rather than ends in themselves.

But, you see, the exhaustion has no meaning in and of itself.

Now, if the DM rules that failure means that you have no healing surges left when you have the next combat encounter, that's effectively the same as a "YOU DIE" consequence, but with one extra step. Which is fine. Dying as a consequence sucks, and rolling to avoid that fate is good.

But if the DM just rules that you're "exhausted," the players just go "I take an extended rest," and it doesn't matter.

The consequences need to be drastic -- TPK drastic -- or else the skill challenge risks just being a speedbump, or the equivalent of rolling Perception to notice that the room has four walls.

I think it's better when the consequence comes directly from the SC itself (since then you don't need an extra moving bit to inject in there), but as long as that consequence is possible, that's a suitable risk.

One thing I like doing for overland journey SC's is saying that in order to make a skill check, you need to spend a healing surge. Getting from point A to point B is exhausting, even if you do it right. An especially good role might give you a healing surge (or more) back, and an especially lousy role might cost you more healing surges in addition to not making progress.

The risk can be more or less solely narrative, too. "Complete this SC successfully or hundreds of innocents die," or "If you don't succeed on this SC, the town guard finds your hideout and arrests all your allies," or "If you don't persuade the nobles at this dinner with this SC, you cannot gain the army needed to defend the town, and hundreds of untrained peasants will die when the red dragon comes calling," or something similar. But they do need to be solid, dire, problematic consequences, not just the equivalent of rolling dice to fill time. If there's no chance of failure, there's no point on rolling, since the game is railed from Point A to Point B anyway.

SC's without any teeth are fairly meaningless, just as a combat of 30th level demigods vs. a solitary level 1 kobold minion is meaningless. If there's no risk, there's no purpose, and it certainly makes no one feel heroic.

I don't think we're really disagreeing, but I really want to make the point strongly, since I don't think the RAW makes the point very well at all: if the SC has no consequences, the SC might as well not exist. Combat has consequences by the very nature of healing and risk of death. SC's need to have consequences (which can include death) injected into them more strongly by the DM. DMs cannot be afraid to f*ck their players' stuff up. DMs develop affection for the characters like a writer develops affection for their characters, but you must go Joss Whedon on them, you must break the cutie, you must try and crush them, fairly, because if you don't, it's just not any fun.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I agree SCs should have a chance of failure and consequences. The examples above are very good.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I'm not sure ANYONE is disagreeing with SCs need consequences. The degree of the consequences is negotiable and we can argue about what a consequence IS, but fundamental agreement seems to exist. After all a trivial combat encounter by itself has few consequences. In some situations even a fairly stiff fight might have no real measurable consequences. Those really don't generally need to exist either.

 

[pemerton]

I don't think we're really disagreeing, but I really want to make the point strongly

Agreed. There's a point I want to make too, which is different from what you've said but adds to it and doesn't (as far as I can tell) really contradict it.

But, you see, the exhaustion has no meaning in and of itself.

Now, if the DM rules that failure means that you have no healing surges left when you have the next combat encounter, that's effectively the same as a "YOU DIE" consequence, but with one extra step. Which is fine. Dying as a consequence sucks, and rolling to avoid that fate is good.

But if the DM just rules that you're "exhausted," the players just go "I take an extended rest," and it doesn't matter.

In the example I gave upthread, I gave examples of what "exhausted means" - in one case, failure to get an extended rest; in another case, being so tired that the attacking monsters get the benefits of surprise. I also use healing surge attrition as a fairly standard consequence for failed skill checks, both in and out of skill challenges.

The risk can be more or less solely narrative, too.

<snip>

But they do need to be solid, dire, problematic consequences, not just the equivalent of rolling dice to fill time. If there's no chance of failure, there's no point on rolling, since the game is railed from Point A to Point B anyway.

<snip>

if the SC has no consequences, the SC might as well not exist.

I just wanted to add - sometimes, even if success is guaranteed, the skill challenge can still have consequences - particularly narrative consequences - as a result of the way that it unfolds.

Suppose, for example, a social skill challenge in which success is guaranteed, but only because one of the PCs is prepared to go all out and intimidate the NPC in question. Running the skill challenge isn't a waste of time, because (i) it forces the player of the PC in question to confront the question - "Do I want my PC to be this sort of person?" - and (ii) because the narrative consequences of the intimidation might be important and/or interesting in themselves - at a minimum, they might affect the reputation of the PC.

I don't think the RAW makes the point very well at all

I agree with you. And I don't think they make my point very well, either, namely that the stuff that happens in the course of resolving the challenge can sometimes be just as important as the result at the end.

 

[KarinsDad]

In the example I gave upthread, I gave examples of what "exhausted means" - in one case, failure to get an extended rest; in another case, being so tired that the attacking monsters get the benefits of surprise.

Unless the PCs are having multiple combat encounters, failing to get an extended rest means little.

As does surprise. PCs in the games I play in get surprised fairly regularly and it rarely means that the encounter is more threatening.

Also, say that I have a highly skilled perception PC. By surprising the PCs because they are exhausted, you are penalizing that player. What you should do is give a reasonable penalty to the perception roll, like -2 to -5 at most depending on severity, so that some PCs are more likely to be surprised whereas others may or may not be.

I also use healing surge attrition as a fairly standard consequence for failed skill checks, both in and out of skill challenges.

Yeah, I'm not too keen on this idea. I've seen it mentioned before. It's the "Well, I have nothing else I can penalized PCs with, so I'll penalize them this way".

This can become a healing surge arms race when the DM targets healing surges. The players instead of taking interesting feats and bumping up ability scores that they want to bump up start taking Durable and bumping up CON because the DM is targeting their healing surges out of combat.


I prefer consequences to be scenario affecting, not resource affecting.

For example, the PCs do not arrive in time. Or the NPCs are distrustful of the PCs. Or some other in character situational disadvantage, not a game resource mechanics penalty.

As for exhaustion, something as simple as stating that all PCs are at -1 for all D20 rolls if tired, -2 if exhausted, is better than wiping out healing surges. This makes serious fatigue similar to a disease or poison.

Losing a healing surge because I didn't convince the Duke to protect the gates with more guards just seems inherently wrong and backwards. I have unaligned PCs that would say "Oh well, the Duke's an idiot. No skin off my nose if his kingdom gets invaded.".

 

[Retreater]

In last night's session we had 2 skill challenges (though one of the skill challenges was presented in 3 stages, so it probably felt more like 4 skill challenges) as well as 4 combat encounters.

The session started off with a short, almost comical skill challenge (we're playing Gamma World). Even though this wasn't our first skill challenge ever, everyone looked around, confused. No one suggested skills they could try; when I made suggestions, no one wanted to take the initiative and do anything. My wife wrote me a sign (literally) that said "I want to kill monsters. Where are they?"

I took this as a hint to get the ball rolling quickly, and sped through that skill challenge. After about five minutes of narrative description (and pausing to get refills on snacks and beverages), the group was facing down a combat and having a blast.

After that I started the staged skill challenge. The first was a roleplaying encounter. The group again didn't know what to do. To make matters worse (my fault), I made Interaction a primary skill - and none of the characters had Interaction [but cut me a break, some people brought in new characters that night]. The group did okay with it, but it seemed more subdued than the combat encounter.

Since that skill challenge was successful, they bypassed a combat encounter and went on into the second stage of the skill challenge... Crossing difficult terrain. The group explained that (for different reasons) the terrain could be crossed without skill checks. One character was immune to the radiation damage, another couldn't take damage from falling, another could climb on vertical surfaces, etc. It was obvious that the group didn't want to do this skill challenge, so I let their reasoning skills count as automatic successes.

This led into another combat encounter, which they seemed to enjoy. They were trying all kinds of interesting manuevers, including jumping off balconies to squash opponents, pushing creatures off ledges, etc. They saved two NPCs and seemed to have a pretty good time RPing with them without the framework of a skill challenge (or any skill checks). Since they had no ranks in Interaction, I let the characters bribe them with treasure to count as successes to be able to enter their HQ for the evening (not to mention having just saved them from monsters).

Once at the group HQ, the party volunteered for a side quest and ended up fighting a white dragon in a cyrogenics lab. The fight was fun, but over really quickly. (It's funny that 3rd level PCs in Gamma World can easily dish out 100 hp of damage in one round.)

The final leg of the skill challenge was over with two die rolls, and I sped through it.

Another combat encounter and another roleplaying encounter (though no skill challenge) and some exploration throughout a village (though no skill challenge) and the session ended.

Here's what I discovered from my last session, as far as my group is concerned.

- The players think skill challenges are boring.
- They prefer reasoning things out and roleplaying without the skill challenge framework.
- If I include them, perhaps I should put them in a combat with a complexity 2 and make them entirely optional.
- The consequences of a failed skill challenge (in the case of Gamma World, there's no point in taking away Healing Surges because they're infinte) are not usually severe enough to add any gravity to the encounter (such as granted a surprise round in a combat in the future) to warrant spending time on them.

I still like the idea of skill challenges. I just think my group doesn't care for them. Therefore, I will limit how many (and what kinds) I run.

Retreater

 

[KarinsDad]

Here's what I discovered from my last session, as far as my group is concerned.

- The players think skill challenges are boring.
- They prefer reasoning things out and roleplaying without the skill challenge framework.
- If I include them, perhaps I should put them in a combat with a complexity 2 and make them entirely optional.
- The consequences of a failed skill challenge (in the case of Gamma World, there's no point in taking away Healing Surges because they're infinte) are not usually severe enough to add any gravity to the encounter (such as granted a surprise round in a combat in the future) to warrant spending time on them.

I still like the idea of skill challenges. I just think my group doesn't care for them. Therefore, I will limit how many (and what kinds) I run.

I think this is true for many groups. The groups I play in at home games are a lot less receptive to skill challenges than the players who play in LEB PBP.

I do know that my home groups prefer things like puzzles (e.g. we once had a magical colored gem sudoku puzzle that controlled a magical force wall where the players had to both find the colored gems and put them in the proper slots) to skill challenges (and prefer combat to puzzles), but that may be because some skill challenges tend to focus on very few skills where some players are left out (e.g. the skill challenge to get the magical portal to open tends to be mostly mental skills like Arcana, Religion, and History, so the brawn over brains PCs feel a bit left out) and some skill challenges have too many successes until total success. Some skill challenges also don't make sense. For example, Nature and Perception rolls in Hammerfast (IIRC) to walk 100 feet through a non-threatening set of woods was just awful.

 

[surfarcher]

Well the last two posts simply confirm my belief that SCs where the mechanic is out in front of everyone are rarely enjoyable.

Use it as an accounting mechanic... The player's don't know it's there... It doesn't force anything... RP is more important... Bingo! Winner!