I am a new DM and am working on a skill challenge for 4 2nd or 3rd level characters. I'd really appreciate some feedback and ideas.
The setting is Stormreach in Eberron, a gritty, tough city where there is no law--even the city guard is corrupt. The PCs are members of a minor gang, a faction of which has split off and gone independent. The leaders of the gang are not happy about this, so have sent the PCs to eliminate the newly independent gang (The Cutters).
If you are one of my players, you probably shouldn't read the following unless you want to ruin your fun! :D
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Skill Challenge 1: Find an informant on the Cutters
Primary: Diplomacy, Intimidate (DC 17)
Secondary: insight, streetwise, thievery (DC 15)
PCs go to their contact, Sulman at Beehive Pastries in Saltire, to ask for info on where to find the Cutters
Success: Sulman gives them name and location of a former Cutter who has gone straight (Jovess, in Summerfield)
Failure: Sulman gives just the name—They have to find his location
(They go to Summerfield and ask random people on the street? Go to an Inn and ask around? Depends on what they decide to do)
SC2: Talk the informant into giving info
Primary: Intimidate, Streetwise (DC 17) (diplomacy gets a -5 as he doesn’t want to share info)
Secondary: Insight, bluff, (DC 15)
Succeed: the informant tells them a Cutter safe house. They can go there to attack the members inside and get information on the Cutters’ collection route, allowing them to set up an ambush in the street. If they let one Cutter live (with strong intimidation), he will give the secret location as well as the password to enter the house (“Gold and Glass”)
Fail: The informant gives them false info; the PCs go to a house that was formerly a safe house; now it’s filled with Dire Rats and insect swarms. With a search they will notice that they can hear a neighbor through the grate; they can surmise that the neighbor might know the new location. (Neighbor has the info; same skills needed for success)
SC: Case the Cutter Home Base
Primary: Perception, Thievery (DC 15)
Secondary: Streetwise, Insight (DC 15)
Succeed: They find and open a secret door to the cellar.
Failure: They have to go through the front door
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Some concerns:
The reason the social skill DCs are so high is because there is a bard in the group with a bonus of +13 in diplomacy at first level. What do you think of this? I don't want them to be automatic successes, but I also want to reward the player for optimizing social skills. Do you think they should be higher still? I want to get the right balance between fun and challenge.
Any feedback or ideas you might have are welcome.
Of course, you don't want autosuccess on the skill challenge, which is where restrictions on what skills can be used comes in. On a given skill challenge, maybe Diplomacy just doesn't work. You can also rule that some skills can only gain a certain number of successes. The PCs can't badger someone with the same argument over and over again and expect to get somewhere. Maybe a max of 1 or 2 successes for any given skill. They can get their autosuccess or two, then the party has to try bluffing or using insight instead.
Also, I'd recommend not giving a penalty to a skill. Just use a Hard DC rather than the Moderate DC you use for the other skills. Same net effect without it feeling like you're punishing the player for making a character really good at something.
One thing though: if I give diplomacy the hard dc, at second level that is a 15, and the pc in mind will only fail with a 1 (because of the auto fail, not because the roll is too low.) I think I should maybe just not allow diplomacy for the third roll. The thing is, all his social skill bonuses are so high! He'll have a +11 to intimidate at second level, which means he'll only fail with a roll of 1-3.
I think the PC is just going to roll through these challenges like they were nothing. I suppose that is not necessarily a bad thing; there is a fighter in the group who has no social skills at all, so that player should be happy that the bard has come along.
This brings up another question: does anyone have any suggestions on how to bring more physical skills into this challenge?
One thing though: if I give diplomacy the hard dc, at second level that is a 15, and the pc in mind will only fail with a 1 (because of the auto fail, not because the roll is too low.) I think I should maybe just not allow diplomacy for the third roll. The thing is, all his social skill bonuses are so high! He'll have a +11 to intimidate at second level, which means he'll only fail with a roll of 1-3.
Ok, so on the few things he's good at, he'll get near-automatic successes. He's really good at a limited social skill challenge. How about other challenges? He's probably not nearly as good. Work in a few of the Knowledge skills and you'll have some areas he's not as certain to succeed at.
If you're using the errata DCs, be aware that if every skill in the SC is possessed by a PC who is trained in that skill and uses his primary or secondary ability score for it, the party is probably going to blow through the SC with almost no chance of failure. If you want more of a challenge, you need to mix up the skills used and split up the PCs. Maybe the meeting with the informant turns into two challenges--one social and one chase, for instance (the informant runs away, or someone kills him and runs away, or you have to chase him down before you can talk to him). Meanwhile the fighter and another PC or two are busy roughing up gang members for info, so they can't participate.
This brings up another question: does anyone have any suggestions on how to bring more physical skills into this challenge?
This is one of the things that happens when a PC picks only one kind of skill. In this case, we're looking at physical skills. The fighter certainly had the option to be trained in Streetwise or Intimidate, but did not choose either. It's the player's choice, and it will make the character suboptimal in some skill challenges. I agree with mellored. Sometimes you can't include everybody.
One thing I think I've picked up (though some may argue against it) is to base the skill list for your skill challenges on what skills the challenge would actually need, rather than just focusing on what skills the PCs have trained in. If you can work in 2+ more skills than the number of successes needed, you can limit each check to a max of 1 success (or even just 1 attempt). That forces the participants to mix things up a bit, which makes things a lot more fun if they really get into narrating their participation in the skill challenge.
So far, I've found that skill challenges are not that challenging to a full, cooperative party. They are good opportunities to let the players take over some of the narrative and show off what their characters are good at. When the PCs are split, SCs are also good for highlighting what an individual PC can't do well and normally relies on his teammates for.
I see what you mean about how skill challenges are not very challenging for full, balanced, cooperative parties. To tell you the truth, this is starting to make me have second thoughts about the usefulness of skill challenges.
OK, so the bard, with the huge charisma modifier, needs to role a 3 to succeed at a difficult skill check at level 1. Most likely the player who built this bard wants to role play social situations, and in 3.5 would have built him to be pretty much the same, at least in terms of abilities. In 3.5 we would have roleplayed the the social situation; in 4e, we will roleplay the situation and throw some dice. Because of the way he made his character, the 4e bard has very little chance of failing; it is still possible but not really that much different from the 3.5 character whose player just roleplayed.
What you are saying is that the most interesting skill challenges will be those that test skills that the players have not optimized for. That is, those that they might actually fail. Or is that just more fun for the DM? Most likely the player will enjoy succeeding easily in the skills that he's optimized for.
What you are saying is that the most interesting skill challenges will be those that test skills that the players have not optimized for. That is, those that they might actually fail. Or is that just more fun for the DM? Most likely the player will enjoy succeeding easily in the skills that he's optimized for.
That depends on the player. I've had some players who love a challenge, and the win-by-the-skin-of-your-teeth feel of some of 4E's combats (especially level + 1 and higher, it seems) have been great for them. It's harder to pull that off with skill challenges, though.
Other players are there to win, and would rather succeed than be challenged. I don't always agree with them, but I can see where they're coming from. Even the folks who like challenges still appreciate the occasional chance to completely own an encounter.
I have run one skill challenge in which the PCs failed (which worked out really well for me, actually). The first thing I did was set the difficulty higher. I believe the recommendation is that, if you use the next higher set of DCs, you should consider the skill challenge's level to be in the middle of the level range for those DCs. In other words, using the second row of DCs, for level 4-6, gives you a level 5 encounter and should be worth an appropriate amount of experience.
The second thing that happened was that I gave some of the characters personal roleplaying goals in the encounter. Depending on the types of players you have, some of them might prefer to deal with their own issues than to do what the rest of the party is doing. I wouldn't recommend doing it with the same PC every time, or the other players could see that PC as separate from the team. I also wouldn't always distract the PC who is best at the current skill challenge, or the players will feel like you're trying to keep their characters from doing what they're good at.
I find them to be stronger as a narrative tool than as a challenge, personally. I think the lesson I'm going to take from this is to stop trying to shoehorn skill challenges into adventures. Sometimes a social encounter can be covered by a single check (perhaps as part of a larger skill challenge). More often, it can be a purely roleplaying experience with no real need for a check. As a guideline, I'm going to say that if I can't have each success mean something by itself (like getting one of multiple pieces of information out of a contact), I'm going to stop trying to run it as a skill challenge. YMMV.