Two Example Skill Challenges

[webrunner]

What I absolutely hate about skill challenges, is many of the skill challenges can be overcome without any uses of skills whatsoever.

In the crushing wall trap example, no doubt one of my players would say something like "I cast my wall of iron utility spell to brace the walls and stop their movement."

How would this not be an autosuccess? How would this not be stealing the spotlight away from the other players and the skill challenge in general?

This actually happened in a practice session recently. No less then 2 of my 4 players tried to overcome the skill challenge in a manner that didn't include skills and I was forced to remind them that it was a SKILL challenge and that they should follow along so they can see what a skill challenge is going to be like in 4E.

Guess what? They don't care for skill challenges anymore as they find it too limiting.

Make them roll based on their spell capabilities first, to determine how 'strong' the iron wall will end up being.
Assuming it succeeds in bracing the walls (which probably have a lot of powerful mechanics behind them) Then you can say something like:
"The stone where the brace touches begins to buckle.. occasionally jumping an inch, as the stone cracks. It will hold it for now, but soon the braces will break through leaving the rest of the wall unimpeded.."

Voila, no longer an auto-success. May be worth more 'points' for thinking outside the box, too.

Any time they do something like this, there's some way to fit it in. Wizard mage-handing the keys? Better hope they don't rattle and bring the guards!

 

[Crosswind]

Make them roll based on their spell capabilities first, to determine how 'strong' the iron wall will end up being.
Assuming it succeeds in bracing the walls (which probably have a lot of powerful mechanics behind them) Then you can say something like:
"The stone where the brace touches begins to buckle.. occasionally jumping an inch, as the stone cracks. It will hold it for now, but soon the braces will break through leaving the rest of the wall unimpeded.."

Voila, no longer an auto-success. May be worth more 'points' for thinking outside the box, too.

Any time they do something like this, there's some way to fit it in. Wizard mage-handing the keys? Better hope they don't rattle and bring the guards!

Awesome. This way you can continually thwart your players' good ideas just to adhere to an artificial DMG mechanic? It's like railroading, but with even less point - instead of BSing events so that the players go along with the plot you have created, you're BSing events so that they can keep rolling skill checks until they have X out of Y done. Just fantastic.

In all seriousness, I don't think that anybody involved thinks the above is a good idea.

That said, the ability to resolve skill challenges without using skills is a pretty compelling reason for the skill challenge framework to be discarded as silly. I'm pretty much with Celebrim here - it's acceptable, to help mediocre DMs model abstract situations, but I don't think it's anything that a good DM needs.

-Cross

 

[D'karr]

Awesome. This way you can continually thwart your players' good ideas just to adhere to an artificial DMG mechanic? It's like railroading, but with even less point - instead of BSing events so that the players go along with the plot you have created, you're BSing events so that they can keep rolling skill checks until they have X out of Y done. Just fantastic.

In all seriousness, I don't think that anybody involved thinks the above is a good idea.

That said, the ability to resolve skill challenges without using skills is a pretty compelling reason for the skill challenge framework to be discarded as silly. I'm pretty much with Celebrim here - it's acceptable, to help mediocre DMs model abstract situations, but I don't think it's anything that a good DM needs.

-Cross

If "silly" is the required threshold to get rid of mechanics, we just would not have any version of D&D.

 

[Crosswind]

If "silly" is the required threshold to get rid of mechanics, we just would not have any version of D&D.

Fine. Allow me to rephrase - Do people think that a challenge that can be "won" based on a non-skill ability like a spell is something that shouldn't be phrased as a skill challenge? Or should it just be instantly won, and skill checks discarded if somebody figures out a way to beat it without a skill?

-Cross

 

[Lacyon]

What I absolutely hate about skill challenges, is many of the skill challenges can be overcome without any uses of skills whatsoever.

In the crushing wall trap example, no doubt one of my players would say something like "I cast my wall of iron utility spell to brace the walls and stop their movement."

Congratulations. You just earned X successes, and negated Y future failures. Quick, find a way out of the room before the crushing walls deal enough damage to destroy your wall.

 

[Lacyon]

Fine. Allow me to rephrase - Do people think that a challenge that can be "won" based on a non-skill ability like a spell is something that shouldn't be phrased as a skill challenge? Or should it just be instantly won, and skill checks discarded if somebody figures out a way to beat it without a skill?

You spent what's probably a daily ability in an appropriate way to help overcome the challenge. It should count for something. Depending on the situation, it doesn't necessarily need to count for everything, though it certainly could in some.

 

[D'karr]

Fine. Allow me to rephrase - Do people think that a challenge that can be "won" based on a non-skill ability like a spell is something that shouldn't be phrased as a skill challenge? Or should it just be instantly won, and skill checks discarded if somebody figures out a way to beat it without a skill?

-Cross

That is dependent on the challenge.

The idea behind the skill challenges is to allow everyone to participate, and be creative. If the solution is creative, I see no problem.

I certainly can't anticipate all uses of a given skill or how a player might want to use it, and I wouldn't want to. I want some guidelines that make it easy to create and adjudicate the challenge and MAKE IT FUN. In that respect I think the Skill Challenge framework seems to work pretty well, from the little we have seen.

Since DDXP, people on these boards and elsewhere have been taking the little breadcrumbs that they had and have been building some encounters that have been fun, according to them and to their players. This is with a very minimal understanding of the Skill Challenge Framework. So I would say that the mechanic works rather well. It meets the most necessary requirement, that it be fun.

We can argue till June 6th about the mechanic. But it is fairly obvious from multiple playtest experiences that it does what it is supposed to do (make playing fun) very well.

 

[webrunner]

Awesome. This way you can continually thwart your players' good ideas just to adhere to an artificial DMG mechanic? It's like railroading, but with even less point - instead of BSing events so that the players go along with the plot you have created, you're BSing events so that they can keep rolling skill checks until they have X out of Y done. Just fantastic.

In all seriousness, I don't think that anybody involved thinks the above is a good idea.

That said, the ability to resolve skill challenges without using skills is a pretty compelling reason for the skill challenge framework to be discarded as silly. I'm pretty much with Celebrim here - it's acceptable, to help mediocre DMs model abstract situations, but I don't think it's anything that a good DM needs.

-Cross

Well, right now, as a DM, you have a decision to make:
Do you want one person to "steal all the spotlight" (therefore, you give them enough success to finish the encounter) or do you want the entire party to work together to escape (in which case, stopping the walls temporarily will add victories to the total towards the 'getting out of the pit'.

The Skill Challenge system allows for both. Indeed, choosing instead a system that only allows one or the other should be "disregarded as silly" before that, no?

The important thing you're missing here, is that doing something that nets a victory that doesn't auto-defeat the challenge isn't a failure to beat the challenge. It isn't "thwarting" the party the same way that a player successfully hitting a dragon with a sword that doesn't one-shot it isn't 'thwarting their attempt' to beat the dragon. It's a step towards beating the encounter.

It's a space between "total instant success" and "failure" that D&D sorely needs.

 

[2eBladeSinger]

Well I disagree. I don't see why a skill challenge can't be combined with combat. In my example I could have just made the player do a search/disable. Sure, but instead I wanted to make the scene more dramatic, more edge of the seat. YMMV.

There is no sin in making your game more fun for your players . However, IMO this use of the skill challenge isn't what the designers had in mind. Their goal was not to replace existing methods of combating monsters or traps but rather to build a framework for narratives for the more abstract moments that did not exist in prior editions. For my own group, I would imagine there would be many a confused and frustrated player if I told them "your thievery skill was successful but the door won't open until you make x more successes"

 

[Just Another User]

There are several possible answers to this question. Possibly the most obvious is to ask the player how he uses Thievery to disarm the trap - and using his answer describe how he makes progress towards disarming the trap rather than eliminating the challenge all in one go. I'd do this if someone breaks out the Thievery skill early in the challenge.

And my answer would be, "How could I know? I'm not a thief, my character is, an expert one, too. HE should know what to do."
Actually, I'm not even sure what do you mean with that.

Another possibility is to allow him to successfully disarm the trap, but introduce another complication (the PCs still need to escape from the room, for example), requiring additional successes to overcome. I'd use this option if someone breaks out Thievery when only a couple more successes are needed, and only if there's room for several more failures.

Yet another possibility is to simply allow the PCs to "win" early. I'd only personally only use this one if the PC came up with a particularly clever method of solving the problem, or maybe if the group is just getting bored with the challenge.

And this would mean that the players will *never* use the most logical skill as first thing in any skill challenge.
"OK, the challenge is to open this door so first i'll make a perception, check, followed by an history check and then a knowledge dungeonering check"
"why not a thievery check?"
"What would be the point to do that?"

Extreme and silly example, I know, but do you see the problem? The situation become forced and counter-intuitive, it could be fun the first time, by the third player had developed a routine, first perception check, it is an easy free success (because, come on where perception would not apply?) then it depend on the situation, but history is another good "jolly" skill, or insight, then use the higher skills you have that have a modicum of sense in the situation, then, only as last resort, or to formally conclude the challenge the skill that actually would make sense to use.
These are situations where skill challenges don't work well, skill Challenges are for situations where there are multiple skills that can possibly be used, but with traps or locked doors 99 times out of 100 there is one skill that make sense to use.