Skill encounters are non-combat related challenges for the party that lay out a mechanic for using skills in a role-playing setting that allow for varying degrees of success. These encounters are detailed with several levels of complexity (tiers), each level indicating a number of skill successes that are needed before failing a specified number of times. If the first level of complexity is reached, the next level can be attempted by continuing the role-playing, noting that the successes and challenges from previous tiers count towards the current (and future) tiers. Following the complexities are a list of skills and their difficulty class (DC) needed to succeed, along with other restrictions or information regarding the use of the skill. The DM can allow other skills to be used as s/he sees fit, especially as players present creative suggestions and active role-playing.
These encounters should be used to help en-courage creative and in-character role-playing, and not simply as a mechanism for die rolling skill checks. The DM should feel free to grant advantage (or disadvantage) and inspiration to those players actively representing their character’s personalities and histories.
The complexities (tiers) of these encounters are each assigned an experience point value, these values are not cumulative, e.g., succeeding at a second tier grants the XP assigned for that tier only, not for the first tier as well.