PDA

View Full Version : Skill Challenge Help 4th ed.



HMS Invincible
2009-09-02, 01:12 PM
I'm confused as to how skill challenges are suppose to work. Can someone provide an example of how they personally went about one?

I read the DMG example of skill challenges and some premade campaign versions but they seemed different in execution from how people do them.

valadil
2009-09-02, 01:22 PM
I've played through several. Generally you have some task you want to accomplish and for some odd reason violence won't help. The task is broken down into a number of pieces, each of which requires a skill check. The party must succeed on a certain number of those checks in order to pass the challenge. If they fail a number of checks (I think it's half the number that are required to succeed) then the skill challenge is lost.

What the tasks are varies depending on the skill challenge. Sometimes the players will know them in advance, sometimes not. Usually I see two types: social and physical.

A phsyical challenge would be following someone through the woods. You might use knowledge history to see if anyone has seen a map of these woods, insight to try and follow the person, athletics to scramble down a steep slope, perception to see the path left behind, and intimidate to chase away a bear. Some of these checks will have consequences later on. IE, if you lose the challenge with the bear everyone would lose a healing surge. Alternatively some checks will give bonuses on the next check.

Social challenges are usually a little more open ended. You'll have someone to talk to and can bluff, diplomacy, or intimidate your way through the challenge. I enjoy the challenge of coming up with suitable dialog for any of these social skills. A little insight may be needed to see if someone is lying.

Depending on the GM you can sometimes find other skills to beat a challenge. I've seen athletics and acrobatics used interchangeably. You just have to come up with a description for what you're doing and why your skill makes sense instead of the standard one.

Kurald Galain
2009-09-02, 01:30 PM
I'm confused as to how skill challenges are suppose to work.

That is not an uncommon reaction. This blog post (http://www.thealexandrian.net/archive/archive2008-05b.html) may be helpful (just scroll down until the big header about skill challenges).

kc0bbq
2009-09-02, 01:31 PM
I'm confused as to how skill challenges are suppose to work. Can someone provide an example of how they personally went about one?

I read the DMG example of skill challenges and some premade campaign versions but they seemed different in execution from how people do them.That's because they are about as broad in execution as combat encounters are.

My last one involved a barrier in a false dungeon concealing the true dungeon. The false area was split into two areas, a really contrived "laboratory", and an area that was basicly a nightclub for evil monsters to be attracted to and fill out. Scattered through the two halves were concealed keyholes, 4 in total. Finding and unlocking these were a guaranteed sucess. The skill challenge revolved around access to the third part, the actual lab and mid-boss they needed to deal with. Success gave them the lieutenant without a fight and no head start, failure gave them an extra encounter and the lieutenant a massive head start in an escape tunnel that didn't allow much for line of sight. The false dungeon had a few things to figure out that lead to knowledge about just who they were looking for. The keyholes were part of a system to turn off a barrier blocking access, and there were a few more checks involved to completely disable it. A few discoveries allowed for erasing a failure, even though the knowledge didn't actually mean anything for the party until they got to the lieutenant.

This was a high complexity (lots of successes needed), moderate duration challenge. They can have an extremely long duration (such as the DMG example of trying to cross a nation), or short (interrogation of an important prisoner).

You use them when there are important enough complex actions warranting an encounter when failure has consequences. (All skill challenges should have consequences on a fail.) Simple things don't warrant them. It's more of a official way to reward plot xp than anything. The players don't always know that they're in a skill challenge.

Sipex
2009-09-02, 01:32 PM
I'll take a street chase scene I ran:

Ony of my PCs, a rogue is chasing a thief through the streets, they need 4 successes to catch him, 2 failures to lose him.

First, the thief runs down a crowded street, the rogue used perception to keep track of the thief as he chased him through the crowd but failed.
(Perception vs Stealth)

Since it was only 1 failure the rogue was able to keep the thief in sight at the very least and the thief ran down a back ally. The rogue used athletics (DC 15) to sprint and help catch up.

Next the thief headed around a market, the Rogue used insight (his choice) to successfully predict where the thief would go to try and head him off and the rogue cut through the market.

A second alley, the rogue has almost caught the thief so he uses athletics to sprint again (DC 15) but I also make him roll endurance (DC 15) beforehand to see if he gets a penalty to his check. He passes and keeps the thief in chase.

Finally, they reach a street which provides stairs going down, the thief jumps down the stairs while the rogue uses acrobatics to slide down the railing on his blade and tackles the thief at the bottom.


Usually when designing a skill challenge you set up a basic premise and things you expect the PCs to do (ie: sprint, climb, jump, diplomacy) and then you add in secondary things (ie: Streetwise check gives you a bonus to your next roll or History gives a bonus to diplomacy rolls for the negotiation). Finally, your PCs will always try the unexpected, so they say "I roll...Arcana" you first ask how they see it working, then ballpark the DC depending on the complexity and state how it would help them (ie: This'll give you a bonus to the roll or This counts as a success). The Dungeon Masters Guide has easy, moderate and hard DCs for level ranges.

DarknessLord
2009-09-02, 01:41 PM
Yeah, while the base idea of skill challenges is good the way the DMG phrases them is not quite so good.

As an example I recently ran one where my players had to impress and ancient Dwarven ghost with an awesome Roller Disco routine. I basically said, "Justify how this skill works, and I'll let you try it." And from there I just gave DCs to how easy what they were trying was (and I let them know too "Okay, that'll be hard", "Sure, that is pretty easy") generally based off the table. I think as long as your players can justify it, letting them roll the skill is a good way for them to have fun, I would encourage them to mix up the skills they used, but don't get in the way of their creative solutions, feel free to give it a hard DC if it takes a lot of skill to do, but not because you didn't think of it.