Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 AndrewH Jun 04, 2010 21:31:09	So I have problems making the default Skill Challenge mechanism interesting. Perhaps the most egregious example of this was "Crossing the Thornwaste", from Dungeon 159. It requires 8 succeses, and has the Primary Skills: Endurance, Perception and Nature, and the Secondary Skills: Perception and Nature. So the characters had to make at least 8 rolls, across only 3 skills, and the challenge only listed four uses of the skills. It was very hard to try and find new and interesting applications for the skills, and was really just a roll-fest. That said, I'm trying a new technique for my latest campaign, and was looking for feedback on viability and difficulty. The basic premise is that each Skill Challenge is divided into Problems. Each Problem has a list of Skills that may be used to overcome it. When one Problem is overcome, you procede to the next one. The Skill Challenge is failed if the characters have exhausted all possible ways of overcoming it. Each Skill used in a challenge can also have a Group value. This defines the maximum number of people able to join forces to attempt the check. So a Group 2 check would allow the main participant, plus one character using Aid Another. As an example, I drew up the example of getting inside a magically-defended Wizard's tower to speak to the Wizard himself. The characters arrive at wizard Manarus' tower. It's not really a tower, only three stories tall, with the ground floor being used as a shopfront. It's also surrounded by a blazing wall of fire.   Penetrating the wall of fire: Arcana (DC 15, Group 4): You unravel the spell and bring the wall down Perception (DC 15): You determine the wall is an illusion and can be safely by-passed Endurance (DC 15): You force your way through the scorching heat, discovering it to be illusory Once they are through the fire, they encounter a solidly locked door: Strength (DC 15, Group 2): You smash down the door Thievery (DC 15): You pick the lock Acrobatics (DC 20, Group 4): You climb the wall, enter through a window, then unlock the door Inside the tower, they are assaulted by images of themselves on every angle, unable to tell which way is forward or back Perception (DC 15): You find tiny flaw in the illusion, revealing the true exit Dungeoneering (DC 15): You close your eyes, and feel your way instinctively through the hallway Arcana (DC 15, Group 4): You force your mind into the illusion and shatter it The wizard's voice thunders around you, warning you to begone Diplomacy (DC 15, Group 2): You talk the mage around to your way of seeing things Bluff (DC 15, Group 2): You fool the mage into seeing you with a clever lie Intimidate (DC 20, Group 2): You scare the mage into letting you through Insight (DC 15): You sense the mages fear of what is happening outside, and play on it to convince him to see you My evaluation of the difficulty of this Skill Challenge works like this: The party is assumed to have someone with either skill training, or a high attribute value in every skill (this is a conservative estimate - in practice, they will likely have both). This means, for a level 1 character, they will have a 50% chance of succeeding on a DC 15 skill check with no Aid Another. Only one Skill Check needs to succeed for every problem. Therefore, the chances of failing a Problem are 0.5 raised to the power of the number of Skills listed. For a 3-Skill Problem, this is 12.5%. Assuming 3 skills per problem, the chances of succeeding on a Skill Challenge are 87.5% to the power of the number of Problems. A four-Problem skill challenge like the one above would have an approximate success rate of 59%. Difficulty can be adjusted by changing the number of Skills in a Problem, the number of Problems in a Challenge, and the DC/Group value of each skill. The advantage to this approach is that it gives more structure, and it allows the characters to feel as if they are progressing through a challenge, rather than just making arbitrary rolls. It also allows a greater number of skills to be integrated into the challenge, allowing more characters to be involved. What to people think? (And is my maths right)
#2 diggles Jun 04, 2010 23:12:27	so what happens when they repeatidly fail on one of the challenges? do they go home? less exp?
#3 AndrewH Jun 04, 2010 23:45:45	so what happens when they repeatidly fail on one of the challenges? do they go home? less exp? Same thing that happens when you fail a normal Skill Challenge - which varies depending on the Campaign. In the "Crossing the Thornwaste" scenario, they lost healing surges. In my Wizard's Tower one, they need to go somewhere else for the information they're looking for.