Skill Challenges: Please stop

[KarinsDad]

[sblock] The pcs should be able to hire a boat to take them out on White Lake for a couple of gold pieces, but the island itself is cloaked by a combination of illusions and weather magic (cloaking it in fog). In order to find it, the pcs must defeat this magic by completing a skill challenge.

RUNNING THE SKILL CHALLENGE

Finding the island is a level 11, complexity 3 skill challenge. To successfully complete it, the pcs must achieve 8 successes before 3 failures. Once the pcs get close (after they have achieved 5 successes), see Complications, below.

Since a combination of illusion and weather hide it, the pcs' possible approaches to finding the illusion include the following:

Search Grid: The lake is truly too large to divide and search without immense manpower, but the pcs can spend six hours to eliminate everything within a few miles of the Delphinate proper. Doing this doesn't require any skill checks or gain a success or failure for the party, but gives all further checks in the skill challenge a +2 bonus.

Pierce Illusions: A character that expresses the belief that illusions are involved may attempt to see through them with an Insight check (DC 27). Success means that the character earns a success; though they cannot see through the veils of mist, they can make out which ones are illusory. Failure ensnares the characters further in the misty magic; they gain a failure.

Countermagic or Follow the Flow: A character trained in Arcana may attempt to sense the presence and direction of flow of the magical energy that cloak the island (DC 19); doing this earns one success for the party, while failing earns the party a failure. Once the presence of the magic has been sensed, a trained character may attempt to countermand the cloaking spells here in order to eliminate them, but doing so is very difficult (DC 29). A character that makes this check earns two successes, while failing it gains only a single failure. A character that uses dispel magic against the fog earns an automatic success for the party.

True Navigation: The characters may attempt to simply use their Perception (DC 23) or knowledge of Nature (DC 19) to navigate. Using such a skill earns either a success or failure for the party. Alternatively, a character could make a History check (DC 19) to remember details on the locations of the lake's islands; the party can earn only one success this way (although they could conceivably earn multiple failures!).

Watch the Ghouls: During and after the attack of the sodden ghouls (see Complications), a pc could try to discern the direction of the island by watching their behavior using either Insight (DC 19) or Religion (DC 19). A daring character might also swim in pursuit, using Athletics (DC 20). The characters earn successes or failures for any of these instances.

Rituals: Using a divination or weather control ritual earns the pcs one to three successes, depending on the ritual, its level and how cleverly the party uses it.

Complications: As the pcs get closer to the island, they enter a more active layer of the island's defenses. After their 5th success, the party is ambushed by a trio of sodden ghoul wailers (OG 154; level 9 soldiers), who attack from the water, attempting to pull the boat's pilot into the water before dealing with the pcs themselves. The round after they attack, two more sodden ghoul wailers grab the boat from under the water and attempt to tow the vessel away. Each round until that the ghouls tow the boat, the pcs lose one success.

As soon as the pcs defeat the three sodden ghoul wailers above the water, the other two retreat into the depths unless any pcs are in the water, in which case they attempt to drag them under and slay them. If the pcs want to attack the two ghouls under the water, they must enter the water or hole the deck of the boat.

Each time the pcs achieve a 5th success, they are attacked by another group of ghouls unless they are still dealing with the first group. In practice, this means that they must continue to work on the skill challenge while fighting the ghouls, or they will end up fighting group after group of them without ever making headway.

Success: When the pcs achieve their 8th success, read the following:

In the mist ahead, a rocky island starts to resolve itself. A short pier, inexpertly constructed of wood, bobs above the waves, with three small rowing craft attached. You can see the suggestion of a steep upward slope, but the thick vapor in the air makes it impossible to tell more.

Failure: The pcs become hopelessly lost. It is full dark by the time they finally find shore, and it takes until almost 2 a.m. to return to the Delphinate. The pilot who took the pcs on this journey, if still alive, must be impressively compensated or he swears off the party thereafter.[/sblock]

Wow. What a lot of work putting this skill challenge together.

And then the players miss the rolls, fail, and it all goes to waste and they move on in search of a different adventure.

 

[Barastrondo]

IMO, this is one of the traps that skill challenges lead you into. When that player playing that Cha 8 shaman makes a clever or moving statement that is strongly in character, you want to reward him for it. Immediately. If you, instead, you ask him to roll a Diplomacy check then you're opening the possibility of punishing him instead. Will that same player get into the game as much the next time there's a social encounter? I say no. Instead, he'll just roll his Diplomacy check like everyone else and the scene will die with a whimper...

That seems more like an argument against skill checks as a general rule than the concept of bundling them together into skill challenges. With a challenge, essentially you're providing some buffers against one failure meaning complete failure, and you're also providing ample room for mitigating rolls: for instance, making Insight checks to add to the next Diplomacy roll.

That said, I do understand the worry about picking up the dice, betrayers that they are -- though when I see that kind of anxiety, I see it in regards to everything involving dice, including combat. That's why I tend to frame skill checks like Diplomacy as generally a chance to get something better than roleplay alone would provide, complete with a smaller chance to screw things up worse than your roleplay alone could get you. So, for instance, roleplay may turn a wary and suspicious sheriff into someone willing to look the other way. If you're willing to use the skill set, you might turn him into an outright ally, or alienate him further. Of course, you can also achieve either of those latter goals "the long way" -- if you have time to work on his trust, or the inclination to deliberately offend the fellow.

 

[Stoat]

Are you referring to 4e D&D's treatment of skill challenges or do you also include SWSE's? Galaxy of Intrigue has a treatment of skill challenges far and away better than any I've seen in 4e. I don't know if you had looked into it or not.

I'm talking about 4E only. I wasn't aware of any skill challenge mechanic in SWSE. In what ways is the presentation there better?

 

[NewJeffCT]

I agree that skill challenges can work out really well in the right situations. However, I would prefer to keep most social situations and other areas needing skill checks on an as needed/adhoc basis.

 

[Riastlin]

Wow. What a lot of work putting this skill challenge together.

And then the players miss the rolls, fail, and it all goes to waste and they move on in search of a different adventure.

While I realize that there's a certain degree of sarcasm here, the same goes for combat encounters too. We could spend several hours designing an excellent combat encounter only to have the dice utterly abandon the party, causing them to "fail" and it all goes to waste and they move on in search of a different adventure (or different characters in the event that they tpk). At least with skill challenges, failure shouldn't derail the adventure most of the time, but rather, make the adventure more difficult.

As to the 8 Cha shaman who hasn't trained diplomacy, the way I have always handled it is thus: The Player makes a very eloquent, moving speech/plea/whatever in hopes of gaining something from the NPC. The player then rolls and . . . its low. I then say "You reason it out in your head and it sounds beautiful, unfortunately it comes out 'Grok likes king. King help Grok!'". Have you never been in a situation where you knew what you wanted say, but not how to say it? Have you never actually been misunderstood or misinterpreted? These things happen all the time where we say one thing but perhaps mean another, or the listener thinks we said something else. The low Cha/no Diplomacy character is more likely to have this happen to him or her than the practiced tongue -- though even the bard with the silver tongue can come off arrogant and condescending.

Oh, and if that shaman with the 8 Cha were to make a beautiful and impassioned plea (i.e. the actual statement made by the player is great) I would absolutely give a +2 to the check. Just as I would give a penalty to the player who says his bluff is "I'm here to check your satellite dish" (assuming traditional fantasy setting of course).

If you are going to do away with skill checks, so as to highlight good roleplaying (which is certainly the group's perogative), why not just do away with combat rolls too? Should we not allow the fighter who eloquently describes his strike, or the wizard who gives a wonderful description of his spell, to auto-hit? After all, this is just roleplaying and if we don't allow that, then next time they are just going to grab their die and roll "to hit". Frankly, if that's how a group wants to play things, then by all means, go for it! The point, after all, is to have fun and the rules are only there as a guide to having fun. I would never suggest that somebody else MUST play a certain way as the only "right" way to play is the way that involves the most fun.

 

[delericho]

I really like the concept f Skill Challenges, but Wizards' implementation leaves a great deal to be desired. In particular, the ones that I have seen have been uniformly poor.

I think a large part of the problem is that they tried to capture mechanics for "any kind of non-combat situation" with a single Skill Challenge mechanism. And so, chasing down a bad guy, sweet-talking the baron, and navigating the trackless seas are all shoe-horned into the same pattern of rolls.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I much prefer games that set up situations, and allow the players to decide how to tackle them, than games that set up "combat encounters", "social encounters", etc.

That said, this thread has certainly broadened my view of skill challenges!

 

[NewJeffCT]

Way back when, we used to do dungeon crawls. "The hallway continues for 50' then comes to a T. Do you go left or right?"

There was a lot of exploration, tedious mapping, wandering monster rolls, etc. I've grown to hate all that. So when my PCs are in a cave complex, I turn all that into a skill challenge and break the challenge up at the major decision points, or set piece fights I want to have, or arrival at destination. The entire session is a skill challenge which forms the framework for the adventure. Seems to work pretty well.

PS

How do you turn a dungeon crawl into a skill challenge? Do you mean, make a series of dungeoneering rolls to see if they return the correct way to the surface? And, then a new series to see if they find their way back to the same location? I get the impression that it's more than that, however.

(BTW, I have been DMing for 30+ years and have rarely had players map their way through dungeons.)

 

[amnuxoll]

I feel that saying "skill challenges suck" due to their basic structure is like saying dungeons "suck" because all they are is a bunch of rooms, connected by corridors, with a) monsters, b) traps, c) treasure, or a combination of these. Sure, that's the basic structure of dungeon (adventure) design, but it's going to take a little work and creativity on the DM's part to make it into something great.

Skill challenges are the same: you get what you put into them. A DM should in no way feel constrained by their basic structure.

I agree with "you get what you put into them." My beef is with the structure itself. Dungeons have rooms, monsters, etc. because that is a helpful paradigm. My contention is that the _structure_ of skill challenges do more harm than good to the game. A lot more.

 

[amnuxoll]

I never tell my players "this is a skill challenge" (and advise other DMs to do the same); it is always simply a way for me to eyeball the difficulty of a challenge and to structure the forces arrayed against the players, and they are awesome for that.

If everyone ran their skill challenges this way, then I'd be ok with it. But the format of skill challenges discourages this style of play.