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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wlmartin" data-source="post: 5661953" data-attributes="member: 6679380">How do you run Skill Challenges?I know that some people like to announce the Challenge and tell the group how many Success/Fails they need.Some DMs like to tell the group what the Key Skills areSome DMs like to tell the group if they fail or succeedI am unsure the best way to approach it.With announcing progress to the players (What the goal is, what the key skills are, if they fail or succeed) you can still do this within the game and make it sound plausible (ie. instead of "You need 4 fails before 2 successes" you say "After attempting to figure it out with your Arcana abilities, you know that you were unsuccesful and you can only suffer one more fail with this or any other skill before dire things may happen"On the one side you don't want the challenge to feel so robotic and forced that the players dont feel immersed in the game however on the other side you don't want them to start rolling every skill on their sheet... ... lets start with Athletics, can i try and run around in a circle to impress the Duke? (DM says NO!)... OK, Acrobatics --- I do a summersault in mid air, how about that does that impress him? (DM says NO!)... Fine, what about Endurance, I hold my breath for 5 minutes and the... (DM says NO!)You want your players to be smart and try to come up with ways to handle the situation but you dont want them to just sit back and think "I am lost, what do I do" - I suppose at those situations you can then prompt them with clues as to what skills to use and how well they are doing.Also, one of the hardest things to do is try and find a skill that many people can contribute with. Since most skill challenges can revolve around Arcana, History, Religion (knowledge based) Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate (conversation based) Dungeoneering, Nature, Perception (Enviroment based) Endurance, Athletics, Acrobatics (Physical based) it means that if your challenge is one of these it is hard to incorporate the others (ie a chat with the duke involves little or no enviroment or physical but would be knowledge and conversation) so what do you do with players who lack these abilities...??2 tactics I have seen that may work well are1 : You have the group roll a group check (say Endurance or Perception) and at least 50% need to succeed. A success can contribute to further progress or a failure can result in a penalty2 : You have a couple of backup skills (insight, thievery, perception) where things happen to bolster the challenge but dont contribute to successes(ie use of the skill opens up a new skill, you can give a bonus to anyone else making use of a primary skill, you can substitute that skill result for the next failure from your party member)I just dont want to build a challenge where the Wizard is disabling the Portal (arcana), the thief is helping by finding rare wizard components from around town to bolster his checks (streetwise) but everyone else is sat on their hands forced to either sit it out or make an Arcana check with a -2 hoping to aid them.Part of me thinks that this is natural, after all a locked door isnt something anyone can aid with - its for a thief to do, so a skill challenge naturally would involve some of the group members but not all. The balance in accepting that this is a fair way to keep the game "REAL" but you would need a number of skill challenges in the adventure so if some people need to sit out, they get to act in the next one.So.. how do you guys play them?</blockquote>

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