I revisited my past approach to design Skill Challenges.
My goals for Skill Challenge Design:
- Create an easy to use Guide
- As less housrules as possible.
- Involve multiple players in the skill challenge in a way it makes sense.
- Encourage the players to use various skills.
- Allow for the flexibility to design the skill challenge based on the setting, not the other way round.
So.. the following isn't a rewrite of the rules how to run skill challenges. It is a structured guide how (i would recommend) to design them.
Guidelines for Skill Challenges
I humbly request you to have a look at it and leave a comment.
No comment at all?
Maybe at least say why you didn't comment
No comment at all?
Maybe at least say why you didn't comment
I am reading it now. I will comment when I am done.
I am reading it now. I will comment when I am done.
Alright, I've read through it. I like what I've read. Skill challenges in the DMG sounded good, but I never got them to work as intended. I like all the conditions and examples you used.
I'll probably write some challenges using your guide and see how it goes. :D
though i will ask why do you have critical success as only +2 when the variant rule in the book says +5 on a skill roll of natural 20? with a 5% chance of success, and the very nature of a skill challenge provides plenty of extra pressure to succeed, why reduce the glory of everyone's favorite number?
i also think that rahter than what you have, allowing someone to use an action point to reroll their die (before the result is known if you want to be mean) rather than just an additional action. either that, or if they do know its a failure, to attempt a different action. you can either decide to have a success negate the failure or simply replace it (or have those options be under a positive or negative condition that the DM must choose when he sets up the skill challenge)
i love the time challenge, and i think it's far better than the standard skill challenge. i think it would encourage players to be more creative with what they do than worry about not having a good score in a particular skill.
I don't think that the mandatory challenge makes too much sense on the level of its inequality. let's say hold up the ceiling... fine for the fighter or paladin trained in athletics, but why would the rogue wish to help hold up the ceiling when he should be picking the lock?
it can make sense in the example of all the PCs are standing on a ledge during the challenge and need to make balance checks, but this is where it becomes a gray area, for what if a PC has a climbing rivet that he already nailed into the wall? also, does your text mean they must use one of those skills and don't get to come up with an idea on their own? isn't that then just telling the players what they need to do in order to succeed? or worse, you don't tell them and penalize them for not thinking of it as you had invisioned (and perhaps didn't explain or emphasis enough)
i think that the mandatory challenge is an animal of its own, and is a little too situational/complicated to have a general three sentance rule on... in my opinion. i think the variety condition uphold makes much more sense, one character needs to atleast do [blank]. boring for him, but sensible in most situations.
i like the compulsion challenge, keep players into it, but sometimes a person simply runs out of things to do, other than rinse and repeat, and that's not much fun either. i don't think there's much of a way around that though, and better to have a player engaged in repitious actions than sitting by the sidelines.
i like repeatable as a way to erase a failure, DMs will have to use their descrition as for when it should be applicable.
i don't like unpretentious... i dont even understand the flavor text as to how it applies to your game text. i'd say give a +5 bonus at the most, but a +2 is more apt in most situations.
the partial victory i feel is not something you should have as a ease condition but rather a follow up variant on failure. if the players nearly succeded and the situation was not a zero sum game, a dm should award a partial victory.
the required hint... it's a shame you actually need to type it out in the rule, but probably a good idea knowing some GMs
i like exhausting, as it encourages players to change their tactics rather than relying on a single skill and action throughout the challenge. doubly so on its beefier version, Limit. it's cousin, Halting, is another fine example of your thinking.
precarious is fine, but ditch enter combat, that's totally a condition that is based on having people to fight, and surprise should only occur if the PCs are unaware of enemies, not because someone failed a roll. other options should be an ally (or allies) suffer a -2 penalty to their skill rolls because of the action, he suffers a -2 penalty, or something else.
expensive... HUH? the fee of a scholar? what situation requires someone to shell out 50 gp in the middle of an encounter? i don't feel that's appropriate at all.
i think specialist is fine, (though i'm not wild about the namem more like Complicated, Intricate, or something to that effect). impossible makes complete sense, though rather than a failure a good roll simply nets you nothing. and automatic failure on what a player thought should be a slam dunk isn't just a slap in the face, its a kick in the junk as well.
i love all the positive conditions save rewarding. get rid of early treasure, keep information on the nature of the skill challenge where it is, that's all you need.
you could actually split up provocation into two calls, one positive, one negative. the positive is that the player earns a success if he succeeds, no failure if he failes, the negative is if he makes the DC nothing happens, but if he fails a failure is added.
group check doesn't make much sense, it sounds like the floor is dropping out from underneath them all of a sudden, and if everyone but one person succeeds in their athletics check they all fall down.
sudden end, okay, the flavor text does suck for what youre trying to do, but that's not the end of the world. but it also is just the same as planning out to have that negative condition limit, not sure if its necessary to have that there. if the fear is that the players are making an easy time of it, you gotta be careful, because deciding to throw that out there without planning it out methodically could spell certain failure to a group (maybe thats what you wanted anyway?)
- critical success as only +2
There are several reasons why i choose +2 over +5. Each of them may be personal taste. A player receives a +1 every other level and about every 3 levels the difficulty of the DC increase by 2.
So a +2 means that the player was succesfull at achieving a score which he normaly only would have reached with about + 3-4 Levels.
A +5 means that he succeded at achieving a score which he normaly only would have reached with about + 9-10 Levels.
The increase by about 10 Levels seems too much to me. I kept in mind that a natural 20 will win a check usually anyways.
Further i use the epic DC's. To reach a epic Success a player needs a natural 20 and a skill modifier of +6. I assume a player gets at least a +1 by ability. The choice of a +2 for critical success means that an untrained character usually isn't able to achieve an epic success, while a trained character usually achieves an epic success on a natural 20.
I choose the +2 so that an epic success can be reached with something below a natural 20 given training and skill-focus and still a natural 20 won't be an auto-epic-success for an untrained one. So i choose +2 over +5 to make the skill training meaningfull even in a lucky roll.
- The mandatory Challenge
I see it is worded poorly. What i meant was just that, it is enough that one players devotes himself to holding up the ceiling, the other paricipate as usual and may come up with whatever skill they imagine. I didn't mean for all players to do the same checks over and over (just for 1-2 of them).
- Unpretentious
Poorly worded flavor text, noted. What this condition means is that a player can score a success or nothing in a skill-check, no failure. This should work out ok, if it isn't used isolated. For example in a Pressure challenge or when given another drawback like losing a healing surge or make it expensiv to try.
- Entering combat during the skill challenge
To enter combat during a skill challenge didn't worked out in my games yet as well. However there are floating examples around of skill challenges in which this seemed to work just fine. Those skill challenges don't work in short terms, but rather over the length of days or weeks.
An example was a skill challenge to find a bandit camp in a wood, rolls were done only once a day, and instead of a failure on a stealth skill the players were suprised by bandits. Still you've got a point it certainly is a special enough situation to not to try and cover it in general guidelines.
- Expensive
Funny, that condition is exactly taken from the example of a skill challenge from the DMG, "Gathering Information". Here as well, the duration of the skill challenge is hours or days, rather then a few minutes.
- Specialist
I'm no native english speaker, so i have to work with what the dictionary knows. Intricate seems to be a better name.
- Provocation
Hmm, good call. I think I'll add the positive Split as "opportunity".
- Group Check
Basicly everybody scores his own success or failure, but to prevent the group check from overshadowing the rest of the skill challenge not more then one failure/success can be scored.
Well, the last time i used the group check, the players were working in a storm on a ship. I told them of the heavy rain, the cold wind and asked them to make an endurance Check each. Assume that 3 of them would have failed the endurance check, that would have made the skill challenge from flawless to failed, i do not want that.
But maybe there is a better way to do it.
- Sudden End
Hmm, i did not throw it in there to make certain failure. I usually assume that players still have plenty of options, like other primary skills.
I did throw it in there based on a skill challenge in which players were following a BBEG down a river and had different options, like running, swimming or sailing. The players did the easiest check over and over again(sailing) till the DM placed a waterfall in front of them.
Indeed, maybe i should cut it out. Making the challenge varied and more interesting from start on is certainly the better way to do it.
My Players seem to prefer(we aren't used to die rolling diplomacy et al at all) discussing their actions/words, making a roll (with relevant mods based on description/words) and succeeding or failing. Multiple rolls, especially after they have "convinced or discussed something 2-3 times"(bluff, diplomacy, intimidate esp.) seems unnecessary to them.
A skill challenge tries to do the same for skill based encounters.
This doesn't yet help you in your specific problem. What may at least could be a little helpful are the "epic" DC's. Basicly rewarding a extremly good check with 2 successes.
If you feel ike the players just "won" the challenge through awesome..so be it. They deserved their victory. But if every skill challenge ends this way either all your players are awesome all the time or you are taking the challenge away.
Perhaps make the next skill challenges not diplomatic ones, but a chase or another more physical challenge. It may work for your groups to ignore skill challenges in diplomacy encounters and to still use them for other types of skill based encounters.