Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 5970336" data-attributes="member: 22424">I feel your pain. I really like the concept of Skill Challenges, but have found the practice to fall flat, pretty much without fail. The only solution I've come up with is to use the toolkit for inspiration, but pretty much bin the rules as written.Okay, I'm going to go against the grain in this thread a bit. I say: tell them up front some things that will work. Can they sneak through? Tell them! Can they perform a ritual to turn them invisible to the undead? Tell them! Are the sewers passable? The rooftops? Tell them!But don't tell them the solution, and don't tell them one solution. Provide them with options, give them some idea of the pros and cons, and let them decide what to do.And that should eliminate those blank looks.Okay, what you do here is change the parameters of the challenge. Yeah, Stealth will work... twice. After that, your cover is blown and you have to do something else.Or add complications and choices. If they use Athletics, then successes count triple because they're moving really fast... but each check counts as an automatic failure as well. Or perhaps they can use Religion to discover a way to bypass an entire section of the city, but only if they're looking. Or something.Basically, make it clear that the original solution no longer works, so they can't just spam one ability.Okay, now I'm going to look at your specific example in some detail, to give a closer view of what I mean...Okay, right at the outset I don't like this challenge. Specifically, IMO the challenge should be "make it through the city", not "sneak through the city".If the PC's are like Han Solo, and prefer a straight fight to all this sneaking around, then that's their prerogative, even if it means a TPK. Hell, even if it means an inescapable TPK (though you should probably hint very firmly that that's the case!).If the PCs decide they want to bypass the city entirely with some sort of teleport effect, and they can figure out a way to make it happen, that should be fine. If they want to disguise themselves as ghouls and saunter through, that should be an option. Hell, if they decide to just make a run for it, trading speed for stealth, that's their call.But declaring that they must sneak through? That's railroading, and it's denying the players the right to make interesting choices for their PCs.Now, the first thing I'd do with this Challenge is not treat it as an encounter - I would use something like this as the framework for an entire session. So, there are going to be several smaller bits to this one, including sub-combats and such. In particular, you'll want to grab yourself a few likely streetmaps, to act as settings for those battles.To that end, I would also set a pretty high number of successes for the Challenge - something like 15 successes to get through. And here's my first complication: no, the PCs can't take an Extended Rest partway through, and if they turn back then they have to count back to 0 successes before they get free! (Oh, in case you're wondering - there's no need to count failures here.)Now, try to think how the PCs might go about solving the puzzle, and think of as many possible solutions as you can. Do they just sneak through? Do they make a run for it? Do they use the sewers or rooftops to bypass the danger? At the moment, don't think about skills to use for each of these, just get a handle on what you think they might try.Now, what I'm going to do is break the Challenge up into phases. Each phase will represent an hour of travel, and will represent "once round the table, plus one group check". Thus, in each phase, each member of the party will be able to declare one thing his character is doing to help progress, and make a suitable skill roll for one success. Additionally, at the end of the phase, everyone in the group will need to make a roll depending on the basic nature of their travel. Success here will give the group a success; failure will result in limited discovery.And so, now I start getting into the specific skills to use. I don't really have time to outline every possibility, so assuming sneaking, for the individual efforts, here are a few options:Stealth (hard DC): The obvious one. The Rogue acts as a scout, enabling the group to travel that much faster by choosing less dangerous routes.Religion (hard DC): The Cleric detects fluxes in the necrotic energies of the place, avoiding nests of ghouls.Streetwise (hard DC): A section of the sewers is open here, and appears passable...and so on.For the group check, there are several options, depending on what they do:If they try to sneak through, make a Stealth group check (Easy or Average DC). Group success counts as 1 success; group failure results in an encounter.If they try to disguise themselves as ghouls, make an appropriate check (Streetwise? Perform? Disguise? Pick something suitable. Anyway, Easy or Average DC). Group success counts as 1 success; group failure results in an encounter.If they decide to just make a run for it, have everyone make Athletics checks (Average DC). Each individual who succeeds contributes one success to the total, but moving in this manner automatically results in an encounter.EncountersWhen the group fails a group check (or otherwise attracts notice), they are discovered by some ghouls, and will face an encounter. You'll want to put together some quick encounters here for use: the first one should be at level -2, then level -1, then level-appropriate, level+1, and so on. For each encounter, use one of your pre-chosen battlemats. I'm sure you get the idea!Changing the SituationIdeally, the situation should change as time passes. Maybe once the PCs accumulate 5 successes the sewer system becomes derelict and unusable. Perhaps after 8 successes they discover that there are two distinct factions of ghouls, allowing them to set one on another. Or whatever. The idea here should be that the situation is fluid, and changes in a sensible manner.And again, when new options become available, tell the players. That way they get to choose to take a new option, or to just stick with what works. Either way, it's an interesting choice, and that's good.And that's more or less it.Yep, that sounds really good.But that's not. It's entirely reasonable not to have a map. However, it's not really reasonable to expect the players to make sensible decisions without information their PCs should reasonably have. (And, indeed, getting more information can and should be part of the Challenge!)So, when they ask questions like that, think of what response best fits with the tone you're going for. Do you want to emphasise that it's a deadly hive, packed with ghouls? Then the streets should be narrow, and clogged with wagons, boxes and barrels. Do you want this to be a grand old city, tragically fallen to ruin? Then it's wide streets, magestically paved, and clean despite the necrotic infestation.There's no "right" answer, but you do need to give an answer, so the players can make the appropriate choices.Ultimately, if your players just don't like non-combat encounters, then don't use them. It really is that simple. In a previous group, I found they were just useless at investigation scenarios; once I realised that, "investigations" became almost trivially easy for them, rather than bog down the game.However, in a situation like this, I do always come back to my "interesting decisions" guideline. In combat, there are all manner of decisions to make, and they're inevitably rendered interesting by the life-or-death nature of the situation. But in a non-combat situation, it's important to provide the interest yourself.So, give your players interesting decisions to make. Make sure they represent a genuine choice (with several obvious answers, but no answer that's obviously "right" or "wrong"), with genuine context (so the players have some basis for making the decision), and with genuine consequences (so that their choices matter). Provide that, see if it improves the situation. And if not, then just drop Skill Challenges as something that's not working for you.I've gone on too long. I hope this was at least somewhat helpful. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification