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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9293185" data-attributes="member: 6790260">I do think skill challenge rules could have though. Because, as I said, it creates tension and removes the loosey-goosey ambiguity.Let me put it this way: you said yourself that the players had no idea how many successes they needed nor how close they might be to failure. If that's true, why would the players not simply keep throwing solutions at the problem until they inevitably succeed? There's no actual tension or concern visible to them, because all they have are a fey lord they know they can ply, and some vague descriptions from you. They've no idea if the third roll or the tenth roll or the hundredth roll will be the one that ends it. I'm absolutely certain they had fun doing this; this is not at all saying that they didn't. Instead, I'm saying that having both the adjudication and the metaphorical "finish line" invisible to them cuts down pretty heavily the tension and danger of the situation.You can be as descriptive as you like, but I doubt your descriptions would put the fear of God in your players the same way "you have 1 hit point left, your allies are too far away, and only one enemy is still standing" does. That's the power of having visible finish lines and failure points. It's objective, inarguable, and inexorable, since every skill check must be either a success or a fail, pushing the overall situation to a climax.In this case, I would structure the SC like this:[SPOILER="Feylord's Secret"]Learn the Feylord's SecretThe Feylord is hiding something from his wife, our ally, that is harming the war against the corruption. We have to find out what it is.Obviously useful skills include Insight, Deception, Persuasion, Stealth, and Streetwise. History, Nature, Medicine/Healing, and Intimidate all seem plausible, but unlikely to have repeatable use without a solid plan of action (e.g. using Medicine to tailor the dose of a drug to act as a "truth serum" for someone as powerful as a lord of the fey.) However, the fey can be real weird, so any skill may work if the players have a clever trick.The Feylord does not want the party (or anyone) to know of his secret shame. Hence, failures will make him suspicious and disinclined to share at all; after two fails, the party may only get half the secret even if they ultimately succeed. If, however, they succeed with no fails at all, the Feylord will come clean to his new wife, begging her forgiveness, possibly repairing their marriage.Possible complications (note, not an exhaustive list):A drugged lord is an erratic and dangerous lord. How will he respond to court events unfolding while he's intoxicated?The party may not be the only ones listening in. One failed roll may not catch the lord's attention, but may (if appropriate) reveal that someone is listening in, trying to get dirt on him so they can usurp his position.Some of the things ordinary humans think of as just socialization may have other meanings to the fey. Given his (current) wife is helping, will the Feylord think she wants to set him up with a concubine or lover?If the players get desperate, they might turn to other forces for aid. What kinds of beings would know the secrets of fey lords? What kind of price would they expect for their help?[/SPOILER]Note, for example, you don't have to use an initiative order. You can instead use (effectively) "popcorn" initiative, except the players don't know that they're doing that. Just ask for an idea, and then whoever goes first picks who follows after them, possibly after some OOC discussion. Also, although it's "traditional" to be "N successes before 3 failures," you can alter the number of failures too if it makes sense. (Hard to call it a tradition from only one edition, but eh, we do that with Fighters and Barbarians being idiots from 3e, so whatever.) For example, with a really extensive skill challenge covering a lot of ground (say, more than 6 successes), it might be wise to do "7 successes before 4 failures," but make actually hitting 4 failures especially bad, while 3 is still bad in the "pyrrhic victory" kind of way....skill challenge rules are also light and flexible. That's the whole point. You should be able to come up with an interesting skill challenge in minutes. Just like how you would if the party got into a fight you weren't prepared for and had to draft up opponents quickly.[HR][/HR]Now, to turn things around: You've basically been arguing "I didn't need them in the game I run, therefore no one would benefit from adding them." That line of argument does not hold; just because your gameplay style doesn't have such situations very often doesn't mean they're generally useless. Instead, as I have said more than once, it means these things are tools, and not every tool needs to be useful to every user. A person might go years without needing a specific tool IRL (say, a socket wrench), and many cases might exist where you can get equivalent results with or without it (e.g. bolts that also have a screwdriver head), but that doesn't mean socket wrenches are generally useless.As I said before, these things are "sometimes foods." They've got a place, they aren't for everyone, and that's okay. They don't need to be, any more than Druids need to be for everyone or Dragonborn need to be for everyone.You've said you think situations that would call for this are rare. I disagree. Consider the following:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Legal proceedings, court cases, etc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Complex negotiations (e.g. a trade treaty)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Persuading a powerful figure to give military or financial aid</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Trying to break a cult (or other org) by revealing how the rank and file members have been lied to</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Sleuthing while attending a social function (e.g. a masquerade ball)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">An academic debate</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Impressing someone with a stage performance of some kind</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Working through intermediaries and proxies to request a face-to-face meeting</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Leveraging the corruption of a political establishment against itself</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fomenting a revolution, starting a mutiny, or rallying a town to defend itself</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Convincing an enemy force to switch sides and support your cause instead</li> </ul>All of these are at least partially social events that would make sense to be more than just one single action (groups and organizations are rarely so easily persuaded), but which would be far less exciting if run just as "keep rolling until the DM decides you've failed or succeeded." They are not weird or obscure events, but rather perfectly reasonable things that could happen to almost any adventuring party exposed to relevant social groups (cults, high society, rulers, villages, ship crews, law enforcement, etc., etc.) Places where both failure and success can be exciting, where degrees between those two extremes are plausible, where the situation can (and really should) change dynamically as the players take action and engage with it.Just as there are various rules that many groups never make use of and couldn't care less about, I imagine you would be one of the people who looks at these examples and thinks "nah, I don't need any rules for that, I can just decide when the players succeed (or don't)." But it simply does not follow that that means nobody gets value from it, nor that nothing whatsoever is gained from using some degree of more formalized structure.Hence why others have pushed so hard on the "well why have all these rules for combat then? They get in the way of the conversation." There are systems out there that work like that, where nothing, not even combat, has complex rules. But most of us see how there is value added by the extra rules of combat. Nothing prevents there being some cases—not every case, not all the time—where a bit more structure to how social challenges play out can be very, very useful and beneficial.I intend to reply to others as well, but I'm in dire need of sustenance, so I will do that after.</blockquote>

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