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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saagael" data-source="post: 5466506" data-attributes="member: 84839">I'm probably coming into this a little late, but I figure I'd my take on making interesting skill challenges. First off, in the two and a half years I've run my 4e campaign, I think I've only had one skill challenge that was solely a social encounter. Aside from that one, the social aspect to the skill challenge was only part of it. For example, probably the most memorable skill challenge I've ever done (taking three 3-hour session to resolve) was a siege skill challenge. It started with the players convincing a dwarf king that there was a legitimate threat (skill challenge number 1). Success resulted in the players having a faster response time to incoming forces, failure meant the players couldn't get to work until the enemy was on their doorstep. Part two involved 3 skill challenges occuring at the same time. Each player chose which challenge they wanted to do based on skills, and not every player had appropriate skills. This forced them to try skills they weren't so good at. Then the siege started. Every round the players who were acting generals commanded the troops, and their result affected the players commanding artillery, and their result affected the players defending the gate. This was also mixed in with combats. At 2 successes, 4 sucesses, and 6 successes a "milestone" in the combat was reached and something would change, and the players were forced to adjust their tactics to accomodate. Probably my favorite skill challenge, however, started as a really simple social encounter with a brown dragon. Now, I wanted to throw the players a curve ball since they were used to fighting dragons and had done it before, so the social encounter turned into a skill challenge whereby the players tried to get the dragon's trust by cooking it a meal. This was more straight-forward. Players would look around the oasis they were in and decide what they wanted to do to aid in the cooking process, be it gathering herbs, hunting wild behemoths, slaving over a firepit, or fishing. My next task is making a skill challenge to represent the players leading an army cross-country and attacking a well-fortified city. Can't wait to see how it turns out. TL;DR: Skill challenges are meant to model complex non-combat encounters. You can't expect good results unless you put some work into making the SC more complex as well, otherwise it turns into "I attack with my sword", but with skills.</blockquote>

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