Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 jp596 May 05, 2010 19:05:29	I ran this skill challenge in a recent game and got pretty good reviews from my players. Skill Challenge: Gambler's Anonymous Complexity: 1(4/3 Variable Results) Applicable Skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, Stealth, Perception, Insight...plus any other you can make a legitimate argument for. Skill DCS: Moderate/Hard...with the wide selection of applicable skills I tend to run most skill challenges as Hard(DC 20 @ Lvl 1). If you have a party with very poor skill selections, then running moderate would be fine aswell. Results(Variable): 7-Successes +200% Stake  + XP 6-Successes +150% Stake + XP 5-Successes +100% Stake + XP 4-Successes +50% Stake + XP 3-Successes -25% Stake 2-Successes -50% Stake 1-Success -75% Stake 0-Successes -100% Stake(and ENC Lvl +2) My players staked 20 gold between the 2 active players while the other 3 party members watched and participated in the challenge through skills outside of the challenge(Stealth, Bluff, Perception). And hit 5 Successes and got 40 Gold back between them. Tell me what you think, if it can be improved upon or what not. Its likely I'll not run this challenge again, but you never know. Ofcourse the roleplaying of the situations is whats important, and sometimes the dice don't support that, so I error on the side of good roleplaying as opposed to bad die rolling.
#2 rongermany May 06, 2010 16:29:49	I like your skill challenge and I think I might actually use it in one of my campaigns somewhere. But I'm a big fan of evolving and branching skill challenges so I would probably put in some triggers; e.g. when they score three successes in a row, someone could call them cheaters and the skill challenge would take a new direction from there.
#3 sfurtwangler May 10, 2010 12:09:31	This looks fine if the PCs are wagering small amounts of money. The major problem I see is that if they are able to gamble, say, a parcel's worth of treasure, or more, then it begins to mess with the whole parcel system. For that one encounter worth of XP, they will have gotten two or more parcels worth of treasure, meaning you *should* probably remove a parcel later down the road. But this is only a problem if you're sticking to the parcel-system, and only if you mind if your players get ahead fo the curve. Certainly, once they see this rule, they can pretty easily make sure that they have the skills necessary to make a profit, on average given enough of these skill challenges - so some suggestions like RonGermany's above (being TOO good makes you look bad) sound like a good idea to me.