Yet another Skill Challenge Variant

[Mysterious Hu]

Very long example

Oh, well , it was a very long example; however it contained a lot of bullet points and I can't work out how to import it properly from Word into this post (it retains the bullet point letters and numbers, but dumps all of the indenting; making it unreadable).

Is there some button I can click to maintain the Word indenting or will I have to pdf it and post it elsewhere with a link?

 

[Mysterious Hu]

Long Example

I've posted an example of my idea of how Skill Challenges might be handled. It started off as a short, single encounter, example and grew into a frame work for an entire adventure. Because I had trouple with my formatting, I've published it elsewhere and have attached a link below (the first paragraph is a response to Frostmarrow's point about Fatigue lasting until the end of the current Major Quest (I'm guessing I could make all this a lot clearer on my next revision).

https://www.infodump.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/3.html

As I worked on my example, so the whole thing became clearer to me; intergrating Skill Challenges into the body of the adventure and using them to spin off combat encounters. The final thing ended up like a "programmed adventure". I wouldn't be surprised if folk read it and said, "But, duh, that's how its supposed to work".

 

[Mysterious Hu]

If you look at the DMG errata for generic skill difficulties, WotC has upped the progression to about +2 DC per 3 levels rather than +1 DC per 2 levels.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/updates

Based on my number crunching, that's a better fit to the actual progression, once you figure in Ability bonuses and random boosts for items, feats and powers. Since your rules encourage the best-skilled member in the party to be the leader, you will have to at least factor in the maximum attribute bonus increases that person will likely have (roughly +1 per 8 levels). 1/2 + 1/8 is not quite 2/3, but if you figure there will be a few other bonuses, it's about right.

In practice, you should set your DCs appropriate to your party. Your system should make figuring out the "right" DC a lot easier, since you have a single lead challenger to look at.

Oh, boy! I've just checked out the errata! Bwhahahahaha! That table on pack 42 of the DMG has got to one of the central planks of 4e and... they got it wrong. Not just a little bit either; but by 5 whole points. Thanks for restoring my faith in the human ability to work really hard at messing things up Makes me feel better about my own attempts.

On the point of balancing skill tests based on your party's abilties, I was thinking about knocking up a Skill DC Table and work out the average Skill Modifier for each of the Party's Skills. Then I could add these to 5, 10 and 15 to determine the Easy, Moderate and Hard DCs. I'm thinking of ignoring the characters' Armour Modifiers when determining the DCs as they can always strip off if they need to succeed at an Athletics Skill Test or whatever.