D&D 5E (2014) skill challenges?

[Kyle Ropp]

I've been running skill challenges like 4e however now that attributes are skills too I'm finding the skill challenges are really boring and even disallowing back to back skill uses are not helping I'm. Not sure what to do

 

[Astrosicebear]

I never really liked skill challenges in 4e. They were more like roll challenges. In 5e there are now group checks. So if the group is doing something like attending a ball trying to gather info. Instead of having everyone roll again and again, have them each make 1 appropriate check and then if the group has more successes than failures, they succeed.

 

[Paraxis]

For a very long time through multiple systems and editions, I have used different types of extended skill checks/challenges.

Things like winning a court case, piloting a ship through a storm, finding someones hideout in a city, these things take more than just a single skill check to overcome. The trick is to understand what consequences for failure are there along the way, so it's not get 8 success of some sorta related skills before 3 failures, it is more like this scene you guys are doing this explain to me what you are doing. Then tell them what to roll and understand how the story gets more complicated without stopping if they fail.

 

[Will Doyle]

In 5e there are now group checks.

Group checks were in 4th too. They're useful, but they don't cover what a good skill challenge needs, which is progression of events.

For 5th, I predict we're going to see a lot of skill challenges in adventures, without them ever being referred to as such (Hoard of the Dragon Queen already has a couple). Removing the formal rules from skill challenges is a good thing. In 4th, you always lost at 3 failures, always had to include X amount of advantages per successes required, etc, which I think ended up being a straitjacket.

For any edition, my advice is to keep shaking up the situation - and skills needed - as players progress through the challenge. If you can't, you probably shouldn't be asking for multiple rolls in the first place. As Paraxis says, there also needs to be a consequence for failure, otherwise you may as well just roleplay the situation instead of rolling dice.

 

[MarkB]

Aside from their rather straitjacketed nature (which can be compensated for to some extent) the thing I always disliked about 4e skill challenges was the pass/fail nature of most of them.

If you're in a combat encounter, then unless you're up against something really nasty, you're generally not going to actually lose outright - it's a matter of what it costs you to win, and whether you can pick yourselves up afterwards. With skill challenges, all too often the only choices were either to succeed completely or to fail completely.

What skill-based encounters could do with is elements of the resource expenditure seen in combat. Make it harder to fail outright, but make it possible to succeed at a painfully high cost.

 

[billd91]

Skill challenges had some serious problems as originally implemented. Making them a race condition X successes before Y (where Y < X) failures really hosed their mathematics. However, I think they are useful for gauging degrees of success and getting players to think of creative ways use a variety of skills to contribute to a situation that the DM may not have foreseen. SWSE's Galaxy of Intrigue's treatment of skill challenges is better than 4e's in most ways, including use of the extended example. I would argue they still retain too much of the race condition for basic challenges and are, perhaps, a bit too mechanic-oriented, but the example is highly illuminating of what skill challenges could be.

 

[Joe Liker]

Skill challenges were always boring and awful because the whole process usually degenerated to its bare mechanical bones of repetitively rolling dice and tabulating the results. No one wins at that game. You're letting the dice run the show when the story is supposed to be the focus.

To make skill use interesting, the DM needs to give a good explanation of the situation and setting, and then the player needs to give a creative description of how he's using his skill to achieve the goal. If he comes up with a brilliant (or hilarious) idea, the DM can lower the DC or give him advantage on the roll.

If you're not doing this back-and-forth conversation, if you're not engaging in creative storytelling, your game is going to be boring, plain and simple. In D&D, the dice are not the game; they are one small tool used to determine random outcomes within the narrative. The narrative is the game. Reward fun; discourage tedium.

 

[Psikerlord#]

I've been running skill challenges like 4e however now that attributes are skills too I'm finding the skill challenges are really boring and even disallowing back to back skill uses are not helping I'm. Not sure what to do

skill challenges were always boring. I thank the gods they be gone. Just roleplay the scene and ask for a check (or more than one) if you need them. And/or group checks are another option, as another poster indicated earlier.

 

[D'karr]

Skill challenges were always boring and awful because the whole process usually degenerated to its bare mechanical bones of repetitively rolling dice and tabulating the results.

Which was never their intent or their rules explanation. When play devolves to that, when the guidelines clearly stipulate that it should be done differently, then the DM and players need to look at what they are doing and modify it to taste.

What you described as "interesting skill use" is exactly what the guidelines were asking the DM to do.

 

[MarkB]

Which was never their intent or their rules explanation. When play devolves to that, when the guidelines clearly stipulate that it should be done differently, then the DM and players need to look at what they are doing and modify it to taste.

What you described as "interesting skill use" is exactly what the guidelines were asking the DM to do.

If only more adventures had kept those guidelines in mind. In all the many 4e games I played, including LFR and WotC-published scenarios, I can recall maybe half-a-dozen instances of DMs who ran skill challenges really organically and creatively, and perhaps three or four which were decently written-up to be run that way.

Even the climactic battle in the final epic-level scenario of WotC's first set of 4e adventures features a rigidly-defined, straitjacketing, pass/fail skill challenge which leaves little room for creative solutions.