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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5936961" data-attributes="member: 87792">I've seen this but it's never happened when I've been running.  Let's repeat what the actual guidance says:Begin by describing the situation and defining the challenge. (DMG p 74) More so than perhaps any other kind of encounter, a skill challenge is defined by its context in an adventure… Define the goal of the challenge and what obstacles the characters face to accomplish that goal… You describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results. (DMG pp 72, 73) When a player’s turn comes up in a skill challenge, let that player’s character use any skill the player wants. As long as the player or you can come up with a way to let this secondary skill play a part in the challenge, go for it… In skill challenges, players will come up with uses for skills that you didn’t expect to play a role. Try not to say no… This encourages players to think about the challenge in more depth… However, it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation… you should ask what exactly the character might be doing … Don’t say no too often, but don’t say yes if it doesn’t make sense in the context of the challenge. (DMG pp 73, 75) So what I've done is that I've begun by describing the scenario and listened to the player's responses and their plans.  I've gone round the table asking each in turn what they are doing to contribute to the plan. When they describe their actions I tell them what skill to use (I never let someone just say "I roll bluff") and I work out whether it's core or assistance and the difficulty.  This is IMO in line with the skill challenge guidance out of the book ("you should ask what exactly the character might be doing")  Sometimes they are playing to their character's strengths, knowing that if they can find a creative use of animal handling that will help I'll let them use nature.  I then see if they passed or failed and make a check on a piece of paper, and describe the outcome of their action in narrative terms. If they failed by a little I probably introduce a narrative complication.  (If they failed by a lot and they know it, I normally just smirk and they know there's a complication there). On the third complication the plan fails.  Unless they've been smart enough to not just engage with but subvert the complications (engaging with them is just an extra success).  If the PCs reach enough successes, and I'm handling the narrative at all well, the plan succeeds. What I never do is tell the players they are in a skill challenge (although some of my players are smart enough to guess).  Give the players the skill challenge table and the whole thing falls apart.  Give the players the fiction, and the skill challenge as DMs tool becomes an excellent non-arbitrary way of setting the difficulty for resolving an insane PC plan.</blockquote>

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