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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5471023" data-attributes="member: 2067">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.</blockquote>

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