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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 6566091" data-attributes="member: 20323">[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] It is fine if we disagree, and it's likely we do. I believe that "one size fits all" skill challenge rules don't work. Or, more precisely, that they only work for groups willing to accept a high level of abstraction.Anyhow here's why I described the skill challenge system as "marginally useful": IME the abstract nature of the rules made designing skill challenges in advance require lots of work from the DM. Compare that to, say, designing a combat encounter in 4e (which is fairly easy and doesn't take a lot of time), and designing a skill challenge with enough interesting twists, choices, and consequences takes far more prep time. What I would like is something like the skill challenge templates [MENTION=23049]Abdul Alhazred[/MENTION] mentioned to require less work.Now, I and many others also use skill challenges spontaneously following player-generated ideas. In the case of using the skill challenge rules as an improv tool I'd say that it can do the job marginally well, but always it felt like a crude instrument to me. For example, I recall a Chase scene that I ran spontaneously as a skill challenge with almost no prep, and there were many questions that came up in play which the skill challenge rules did not address: How far is the fleeing enemy now? Do I have a clear line of sight for a shot? At what point can the enemy make a Stealth check to hide? While the spontaneous Chase turned out ok, I ended up discarding the strict "X successes before 3 failures" model because the logic of the PCs' actions dictated that they caught the fleeing villain before their target number of successes. Interestingly, I later ran a Chase which I had done solid preparation for and it was much smoother since I had designed rules to address common player questions. Those sorts of questions, while outside the purview of the abstracted skill challenge rules, are things that matter to D&D players. Which is why 5e includes specifically designed chase rules in the DMG.</blockquote>

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