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Message: <blockquote data-quote="LowSpine" data-source="post: 4310845" data-attributes="member: 60239">The way it should be designed is to have a progression bar of severity.The more successes you accomplish the less severe the threat becomes (you move the threat down one.) The more failures you accrue the worse the threat becomes.If you hit the top threat the challenge is over and the threat is stuck at its worst state. If you hit the bottom threat the challenge is over and the threat is totally overcome.Just as a very simple example of what I mean. A trap with a flame spewing nozzle. It pumps out a blast each round. You try to disarm it by closing off the nozzle or flow of oil. As you succeed in closing it off the damage die goes down.6. 1d20 Blast 5 - Goes Ape S**t and is stuck open - the valve breaks open.5. 1d12 Blast 44. 1d10 Blast 33. 1d8 Blast 22. 1d6 Blast 11. 1d4 Single square0. Disarmed - the nozzle is bunged, closed or a pipe is bent etc.When the trap is triggered it starts in position 4. You can keep trying until position 6 or 0 is met.EDIT: Each stage could have its own DC. You could have a list, just like skill challenges, of different skills and what they do. In this case you could have Athletics to bend a feed pipe or turn a rusty valve. Arcana to dispel the magic that conjures the flame. Thievery to disarm the triggering mechanism. Acrobatics to get in a position where the flame will not harm the disarmer. Each skill might have a penalty or bonus depending on the nature of the challenge. - Perhaps the pipes are tough as hell and give a -2 to Athletics checks.You might actually change the difficulty of each check depending on where you are on the list. As the threat goes up it may become really hard to pull it back. As you get closer to disarming the threat it might get a little easier - it is the kind of thing that could be tailored into each challenge.Unlike skill challenges this method actually makes sense and can be constructed in any number of ways and level of complexity.This is only very simple based on damage and range but other challenges could be made.A social challenge would involve getting someone around to your way of thinking. They would start off at 4 - not trusting you. If they get to 0 you have convinced them of your argument - if they get to 6 they might throw you out of their castle, city or kingdom. They even attack.When skill challenges were hinted at this kind of very simple challenge structure is what I was hoping for. You can give up at any time if you think things are falling apart so you do not have to automatically fail completely. The challenge can go backwards and forwards instead of some stupid idea that a couple of fails automatically stuffs everything up (though this might be appropriate in an individual challenge it is a bit duff making it manditory to all of them.)Skill challenges IMO are an underdeveloped vague idea and not much more at the moment. Most of the explainations of how it works are just very slightly less vague ideas of how they work.Oh and another thing. In this system you don't have to stupidly say "we are starting a skill challenge." If you have to say something like that at the beginning then IMO it is a bit of a duff concept to begin with.</blockquote>

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