Skill Challenges that KILL

[Subtlepanic]

I was wondering:

According to the book, a skill challenge is treated almost as a combat encounter. Complexity roughly equates to amount of enemies, and DC to level. Many skill challenges even ignore the "three strikes" rule, allowing for multiple degrees of failure.

But even so, (as far as I'm aware), skill challenges don't kill. Instead, failure results in swapping them out for a combat encounter, or draining a resource such as healing surges.

So my question is this:

Could a skill challenge exist where the cost of failure is character death? And if so, how would you go about creating one?

 

[jbear]

I don't have time right at the moment to go into what I think is a very interesting topic, but I will say that I think skill challenges can and should be potentially lethal.

In short i follow this rule of thumb when I'm resolving a Skill Challenge:

Any minor or major failure causes a potentially dangerous or lethal change in the situation that must be immeadiately resolved before the party can continue working on the challenge.

For example: In a particularly lethal challenge I made when the party were crossing a notoriously dangerous and deadly swamp at one point in the challenge the PCs were crossing trees above an army of red ants they had stumbled upon.

For me, in this situation it's no good that only one PC should face this challenge because they are good at climbing; everyone is climbing so everyone faces the challenge. So a group roll is required where the overall tallies determines the degree of success.

Initially I allow one PC to lead the challenge: the best climber sets the path showing the others where and how to climb. This I make a hard DC. If achieved depending on the degree of success, either provide a +2 bonus to the rest of the group or entirely lower the difficulty of the challenge for the others. If a leader fails, depending on the degree of failure he can either cause a penalty or make the rest of the party face a hard DC.

But even if the group achieves an overall success, what about the one PC that fluffed it? Saying 'It doesn't matter 4/5 is good enough for me, one overall success'. 4/5 will be an overall success if and when the group rescues their mate who just fell down amongst the swarming Red Ants.

That situation gets run in a descriptive fashion, the players expected to use their nouse to resolve it, but the fallen player will be being attacked by the Army of Ants and taking real damage like a PC would from any hazard in a combat situation, so death is a possibility.

As situation after situation like this occurs, and as the entire challenge is considered an 'encounter' healing resources dwindle fast and it can get gritty.

My group's dwarven cleric got through bloodied and out of surges with no resources left to heal. it was tense, but exciting and fun. Which in my opinion was the goal. The players respect 'The Bog'!

 

[Dice4Hire]

Death to the NPCS, sure. Death to PCs, that would be more iffy. I do not think I would do it.

 

[Vael]

I'd consider using skill challenge mechanics for some environmental traps. So a room flooding with water could be modeled with a skill challenge, and that definitely has a price for failure ... unless the party is all watersoul genasi and warforged.

 

[babinro]

To be playing a campaign and having been thrown into a skill challenge suddenly after 10 levels where the consequence is death would be terrible design without any lead in.

The reason being simply that characters don't focus on skill based powers or feats as a whole. Unless they know going into a campaign that these things will have equal weighing on their success in the game design to combat...they will be ill prepared to deal with that skill challenge unless the DC's themselves are very easy to achieve.

I would sooner have the failure of a skill challenge lead to an encounter in which there is a very high possibility of death should the party refuse to flee. Likewise the comment that something grave is at stake like the life of an important NPC.

I've personally run a skill challenge where the walls of a room were closing in such that they would TPK a party. The first time I did this was as a skill challenge where I incorporated combat mechanics for those who could not assist as well. The door to exit the room could be bashed open with enough damage. In epic tier, I took this concept one step further with the flooded room where monsters were distracting the combat focused party members while the appropriate skill based characters handled the skill challenge. I should note that in both cases, this 'challenge' was more of an illusion than a reality. Mechincally the walls would compress every round pass or fail. But the rounds to crush the party was something like 10...where the possibility to pass the challenge by round 5 was very likely. Statistically, it would have been a very low chance of actual death..but because the players didn't know that information, the experience remained fun and tense.

 

[delericho]

Could a skill challenge exist where the cost of failure is character death? And if so, how would you go about creating one?

Yes, but tread very carefully, and be sure to throw out the "3 strikes" rule.

A good example would be a "wilderness travel" encounter for an inherently dangerous region, such as the deserts of Athas.

Each 'cycle' of rolls could therefore represent 1 day of travel. Each cycle, everyone has to make an Endurance check; those who fail are too drained to do anything other than keep pace. Those who succeed can make rolls working towards success in the Challenge (the usual 'wilderness' skills - Navigation, Nature, Survival (for foraging...)).

Each 'cycle' of rolls represents a day, so of course characters use up a day's rations (food and water). Any character who does not consume rations for a day loses a Healing Surge. Once the character runs out of Surges, he starts losing hit points - each day spent he loses hit points equal to his Surge value.

To succeed, the party must attain 10 successes (or whatever). They only really fail if/when they die, or abandon the challenge and flee home. (Of course, a really vicious DM might have them roll to retrace their steps... )

That would be a potentially deadly challenge, but it's also not entirely unreasonable. That said, I would definitely advocate building in one or two "outs" for the party who need them - an easy way to retreat, or the option of "casting themselves at the mercy of passing Elves", or whatever...

 

[Kinneus]

The problem is that PCs aren't always balanced, skill-wise. Compare the Rogue to, say, literally any other class.

I'm pretty sure I've made Hybrids that only ended up with a piddly 3 trained skills. They'd be dead meat in such a skill challenge.

Also, skill challenges are generally less complex than combat challenges, which means players have less control over what happens to them. In combat, players have the option of fleeing if things go wrong, attempting diplomacy or intimidation midway through combat, using resources like Dailies, APs, potions and other consumables, or magic item powers to give them an edge...

In skill challenges, they roll a d20 and pray.

Tread carefully. The DMG2 advises specifically against this sort of thing for a reason.

 

[Mengu]

The way I might make skill challenges lethal, is by its consequences leading to a lethally difficult combat encounter. Maybe each failure costs time, and I keep adding more and more monsters and/or traps to the next encounter. Maybe they come out of the skill challenge with damage (not just healing surge losses), so they are not starting fresh. Maybe they come out of the skill challenge in a positionally difficult place so they start with a big tactical disadvantage.

I probably wouldn't have a skill challenge out right kill a PC, though they may be knocked unconscious, captured, enslaved, tortured, etc.

 

[DracoSuave]

Another way to handle skill challenges 'that kill' is not through a singular skill challenge, but in an encounter with traps that have skill challenges as a countermeasure.

This ensures that one single skill challenge doesn't make or break the party, but all of them together can lead to heavy damage or death.

Traps galore!

 

[DEFCON 1]

The only way I would have a skill challenge potential kill someone is during one where the roleplaying going on around said challenge was so good, so deep, and so immersive that we have ratcheted the tension up so high that it would almost feel like a cheat if someone didn't die as a result of it.

But even then, in this scenario... it probably wouldn't be just from that third failure of SC that causes the death... the third failure would instead put one or more characters (depending most likely entirely on where they each stood during the roleplaying portions and which characters failed which rolls) in a position where death was imminent. And then I'd probably allow a bit more rping and a few more rolls to occur in an attempt to extricate themselves.

At that point, if the players still make rather poor decisions and/or horrible rolls on top of it... by all means a death could/should occur in my game. Story-wise... it was time.

But I also wouldn't feel too bad about it, because my games tend to be story-driven enough that just dying isn't the end of a character necessarily. If I've run a white water canoe chase skill challenge down a massive mountain river that eventually ended up with a character falling overboard (probably the third SC failure) and then drowning (several bad Endurance rolls from the drowning player and failed Perception/Athletics checks from the would-be rescuers post-skill challenge failure)... a good portion of the game following this part could be the other players rescuing the body, taking it to a village or city in hopes of resurrection, and then doing whatever would be asked of them to pay for the resurrection if it went through. The story can always continue, even through death.