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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Caliber" data-source="post: 4922022" data-attributes="member: 1310">The new Skill Challenge mechanic introduced in 4E is a great idea, IMO, but I've had some trouble translating it to the table during play. I've had some pretty dismal failures, and also some quite excellent successes in play. That said, my best Skill Challenges have involved investigations, tracking down and discovering important pieces of info. Converse-wise, my worst failures have been in the travel Skill Challenges, which often seem included when the party treks over some distance of wilderness. I have another one of these coming up next Thursday for my game night and I wanted to know if anyone had some tips for these types of challenges? If you want to see the specific one I'll be running, it is the one at the beginning of The Lost Mines of Karak [spoiler]Navigating the Thornwaste[/spoiler].My problems mainly seem to revolve around a few issues:1) success/failure doesn't seem very delineated. Lose a healing surge? Unless combat directly follows the Challenge, how does this have any affect? I mean, won't they simply regain the surge after a night's rest? Moreover, one surge has little affect unless a full day's battle lies ahead, and even then I'm not sure how much effect it would have. 2) narration is difficult. If they are flubbing rolls in an investigatory Skill Challenge I can have witnesses clamming up, claiming they can't remember. I can feed them bad clues, cause distractions, whatever. How do I depict their failures in this type of Challenge? How do I depict their successes? 3) the goal is nebulous. This is related to point 2 above, but in an investigatory Challenge, they keep looking until they find the info they need, or at least they find some info they think they need. While it would seem that travel Challenges would work similarly (keep trying until you get where you're going) my group often seems more reluctant to attempt any actions to get where they're going. I lay this mostly on problems in narrating the Challenge though. So ... any advice?</blockquote>

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