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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 4968620" data-attributes="member: 3424">I'm not sure how feasible it is to do the following in an online environment like VTT, but at the table, I try to ensure that the dice are rolled one at a time, and I describe the results of each to ensure that the players get feedback about what is happening, in particular, whether they are getting closer to their objective or getting further away from it. This way, I don't have to explicitly tell players, &quot;This is a skill challenge,&quot; but they get cues from me when they need to be more careful.I will say it again: if you are running a &quot;Three Failures&quot; model skill challenge, and you don't want to explicitly tell the players, &quot;This is a skill challenge,&quot; giving feedback to the players after each skill check is vitally important.The next bit you might want to consider is whether every skill ought to result in a &quot;Failure&quot; for the purposes of the skill challenge if the skill check is failed. This is where you might want to do some advance planning. If you go through the list of skills and find some skills for which you can't think of a plausible way to narrate to the players why using that skill would make things worse for them, hinder their ability to reach their goal, or prevent them from achieving their objective, don't make failing a skill check using that skill a &quot;Failure&quot; for the purpose of the skill challenge. To balance that, limit the usefulness of that skill towards achieving successes as well, e.g. a successful skill check only grants a bonus to another skill check, or the characters can only score a maximum number of successes using that skill.Alternatively, you could even consider changing the &quot;Three Failures&quot; model. One possibility is a timed skill challenge, in which the PCs have to score a certain number of success within a certain number of rounds instead of before three failures. Narrating failures in skill challenges of this nature is easy because the PCs simply run out of time. Or instead of a hard time limit, perhaps the PCs suffer some other penalty while the skill challenge has not been overcome, e.g. the loss of hit points or healing surges. Many traps can be considered skill challenges of this nature (the party gets attacked until the trap is overcome).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 4968620, member: 3424"] I'm not sure how feasible it is to do the following in an online environment like VTT, but at the table, I try to ensure that the dice are rolled one at a time, and I describe the results of each to ensure that the players get feedback about what is happening, in particular, whether they are getting closer to their objective or getting further away from it. This way, I don't have to explicitly tell players, "This is a skill challenge," but they get cues from me when they need to be more careful. I will say it again: if you are running a "Three Failures" model skill challenge, and you don't want to explicitly tell the players, "This is a skill challenge," giving feedback to the players after each skill check is vitally important. The next bit you might want to consider is whether every skill ought to result in a "Failure" for the purposes of the skill challenge if the skill check is failed. This is where you might want to do some advance planning. If you go through the list of skills and find some skills for which you can't think of a plausible way to narrate to the players why using that skill would make things worse for them, hinder their ability to reach their goal, or prevent them from achieving their objective, don't make failing a skill check using that skill a "Failure" for the purpose of the skill challenge. To balance that, limit the usefulness of that skill towards achieving successes as well, e.g. a successful skill check only grants a bonus to another skill check, or the characters can only score a maximum number of successes using that skill. Alternatively, you could even consider changing the "Three Failures" model. One possibility is a timed skill challenge, in which the PCs have to score a certain number of success within a certain number of rounds instead of before three failures. Narrating failures in skill challenges of this nature is easy because the PCs simply run out of time. Or instead of a hard time limit, perhaps the PCs suffer some other penalty while the skill challenge has not been overcome, e.g. the loss of hit points or healing surges. Many traps can be considered skill challenges of this nature (the party gets attacked until the trap is overcome). [/QUOTE]

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