Modified Skill Challenge System - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Modified Skill Challenge System

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
bastard_dm
Nov 11, 2008 21:42:27 I have spent the past few months testing out a heavily-modified skill challenge system in my ongoing 4e campaign. I finally got around to getting all the rules together in a single document, and thought I would post it here so people could check it out:

Download it here!

It is a long document, but half of it is example challenges- most of which I have used in my game thus far. I have also included a lot of my thoughts on the system along with ideas I have had for further modification.

Although I changed some of the DCs from those provided in the DMG errata (don't worry- my numbers should be mathematically sound), that was not the primary focus of the modification. The goal of this system has been to provide a framework for deciding what sort of checks should be included in a skill challenge. This includes Support checks to grant other characters bonuses, Advance checks to provide one-time successes, Challenge checks that can be repeated over and over again, and Expert checks that provide unique and interesting benefits- but tend to be difficult to pull off.

The end result has been a system that allows for simple yet engaging challenges to be designed on-the-fly (as easy as picking a few skills and looking up DCs on the provided chart) while simultaneously allowing for more interesting and memorable challenges to be designed with a bit of creativity and prep work.

My players have gotten a great deal of enjoyment from this system, and it appears to be doing exactly what I wanted skill challenges to do in the first place- get the players to work together and think tactically to solve a wide variety of complex non-combat encounters, with a minimum amount of work on my part and only 5-20 minutes of game time required for a challenge.

Let me know what you think.
#2
derelictman
Nov 12, 2008 8:32:08 Wow, nice work! These examples are priceless. I, like lots of people, am still trying to wrap my brain around skill challenges. I will definitely give your system a try and use those examples as inspiration in my upcoming games. Thanks for posting! :D
#3
big_j_money
Nov 12, 2008 12:57:52 Agh, I replied to you in another thread. The gist is that this is an awesome piece of work, but I'm stumped about something. What do failures do? The PDF says multiple times that in certain cases you "remove a failure" or "add two failures". From what I read the only think you are keeping track of are successes and rounds.

-- John M.
#4
bastard_dm
Nov 12, 2008 16:18:25 Good point- I did neglect to explicitly state the issue with failures- at the end of any round in which the party has accumulated a total of three or more failures, the challenge is lost. This means that an Expert check can often be performed after the third failure is rolled as a last-ditch effort to save the challenge (since they often remove a failure), provided it is done so before the end of a given round.

I'll edit the document- the lack of explicit win/lose conditions is a bit of a glaring omission on my part...
#5
big_j_money
Nov 12, 2008 21:09:27 At the end of a round? Ok, that makes total sense now. As I said before, great jaeghrb. I'm trying to tackle skill challenges from different angle, but I like how you've refined the system WotC provided; yours is much more comprehensive. I recommend everyone take a look at it, and I will definitely test it out for ya in my game.

Cheers,

-- John M.
#6
dayzdark
Nov 14, 2008 2:12:22 This is definitely encouraging. These numbers make more sense to me. Also, it actually rewards cleverness and introduces a tactical element to approaching skill challenges that just doesn't seem to exist in the RAW. Thank you.

I'm noticing a lot of skill challenge homebrew systems impose hard deadlines to prevent aid another abuse and similar efforts to let the strongest link of the chain do all the work in every skill challenge. I understand why this makes mathematical sense, but I feel it can feel artificial and kill some of the drama. However, my inclination is, rather than shutting down the challenge when the PCs reach the time limit, punish the delay or make failure more likely if the skill challenge lasts longer than the allotted time.

The longer a combat lasts, the more it drains PC resources. Four of the five PCs aren't going to hover around a striker to use aid another to maximize the fifth character's chances of hitting the monsters. Rather, everyone is going to pitch in to do something every round - even if their contribution during a particular round might be less than the contribution an ally makes that turn. Combat ends when it ends, but PCs have a good reason to end it as quickly as they can without sacrificing resources they believe they will need later on. This is a model that I think is also useful when thinking of skill challenges.

Here is some brainstorming about how to do this:

1) The easiest way is to impose a gradually penalty to all skill checks for every round beyond the normal time limit - +2 DC for every round the skill challenge goes beyond the time limit. This is the s*** or get off the pot method. Eventually the Duke is going to get tired of the audience, the characters are going to run out of strength for the physical challenge, or the PCs are going to hit a brick wall in their research into a subject. The longer the PCs take, the more likely it becomes that they'll fail the challenge.

2) Another possibility is to reduce the scale of the victory as the PCs continue past the time limit. In short, if they dawdle, they'll only achieve a partial victory. If the skill challenge is worth 500 XP, for example, every round of delay beyond a set point may reduce the reward by, say, 100 XP. There is plenty of precedent for the idea that failure at a skill challenge means the PCs earn that XP later in the adventure because their failure makes another encounter or skill challenge harder.

To pick a mechanical example, let's say the PCs are sneaking into the castle. Success means they elude the guards completely, and complete failure might mean you have a really nasty fight with the guards, but a partial failure means the number of guards you have to fight depends on how much time it took you to complete the skill challenge.

To pick a more narrative example, let's say the PCs are chasing someone across the wilderness. If they succeed before the deadline, they catch up during the day and have little trouble taking him into custody. If they fail (3 failure results), his allies get to him first, and the PCs have to fight them to capture him. If they succeed after the time limit elapses, they catch don't catch up to him until after sunset, and the PCs must succeed at a new skill challenge to find him in the dark (likely at a higher DC).

3) For physical challenges, it's pretty easy to start sucking away those healing surges - maybe 1 per character per round beyond the time limit. Despite arguments I've seen to the contrary, I'm not convinced this makes sense in a lot of knowledge or social skill challenges. Sure, the Duke might get mad at you and have his soldiers rough you up and kick you out (the more of his time you waste, the less gentle they are when they expel you), but how does that work when you're trying to convince the ghost to share her knowledge?

On a completely unrelated note, it might be useful to allow PCs to benefit in some way from some of their feats and powers in skill challenges - including a few that are ordinarily associated with combat. For example, perhaps elves and halflings can use their racial powers (elven accuracy and second chance) to reroll one skill check per skill challenge. And maybe clerics and warlords can use healing word and inspiring word to prevent a character from losing a healing surge during a skill challenge or to grant a bonus on another character's next skill check. I don't think it's realistic to define a way in which every power or feat could be applied to a skill challenge, but a few instructive examples might get players and DMs thinking about the possibilities. One of the fun things about playing spellcasters in previous editions was a lot of spells that were useful in combat could also be applied to non-combat problems, and I'd like to see a skill challenge system with some of that vibe.
#7
bastard_dm
Nov 14, 2008 12:27:26 I really like the idea for increasing the difficulty of skill challenges past a certain threshold- that can add a more "organic" limitation on the challenge while still forcing a conclusion. It doesn't take much of an increase (+1 or +2 to the DC per round beyond the limit) to make the odds of failure increase dramatically.

Losing healing surges works well as a mechanic for physical challenges, too- I have done something similar by penalizing failure with the loss of a healing surge and requiring the party to try again (or think of an alternative strategy). For a couple of the example challenges I included, there was no specific time limit - the challenge ended in failure when the group gave up or ran out of healing surges.

I think narrative penalties for taking too long can work well, too- if the party is tracking a group of orcs that captured the local inkeeper and they fail the challenge, they might find the orcs but not before they killed him. Or, if the party failed spectacularly (before getting half the needed successes, perhaps), they might find his body but never found the orcs responsible for his death.

As for XP penalties, though- I would be hesitant to go down that road. In a combat encounter, the amount of XP the party receives is based on the content of the encounter, and generally isn't modified by their luck or strategy. If they win the encounter in 3 combat rounds and 30 minutes of game time or if it takes 12 rounds and half the night, they should generally get the same reward.

Those were some great ideas for not having to impose arbitrary time limits for encounters. Thanks for the feedback!
#8
dayzdark
Nov 14, 2008 23:50:48 No problem. I just want to see the skill challenge system fixed to my satisfaction, and making yours better is a whole lot easier than coming up with my own from scratch.

I don't have another skill challenge scheduled for the current dungeon, so it'll be at least 3 sessions before I run another one, but I'm planning to use your system with some cosmetic modifications for at least one skill challenge in the next level's adventure.

My players are encouraging me to open the system up a bit so they roll the skill that is most appropriate to the tactics they are using to solve the problems that make up the skill challenge. Rather than requiring them to use the solution I came up with ahead of time, I'll give them the problem, and finding a solution to it (and any complications I introduce along the way) is their problem. I'll call for whatever skill checks seem appropriate at the moment, and when they achieve the number of successes/failures, the challenge ends appropriately.

My players aren't prone to dawdling, so it isn't likely I'll be able to test out my suggestions for discouraging delays, but if an opportunity arises, I'll likely use a combination of increasing DCs (+2 per round) and narrative penalties to keep them on track. I'd encourage other DMs to try out my suggestions if they want to see if that smooths out the hard edges of a time limit for skill challenges.

One way or the other, I'll let you know what the result is.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 bastard_dm Nov 11, 2008 21:42:27	I have spent the past few months testing out a heavily-modified skill challenge system in my ongoing 4e campaign. I finally got around to getting all the rules together in a single document, and thought I would post it here so people could check it out: Download it here! It is a long document, but half of it is example challenges- most of which I have used in my game thus far. I have also included a lot of my thoughts on the system along with ideas I have had for further modification. Although I changed some of the DCs from those provided in the DMG errata (don't worry- my numbers should be mathematically sound), that was not the primary focus of the modification. The goal of this system has been to provide a framework for deciding what sort of checks should be included in a skill challenge. This includes Support checks to grant other characters bonuses, Advance checks to provide one-time successes, Challenge checks that can be repeated over and over again, and Expert checks that provide unique and interesting benefits- but tend to be difficult to pull off. The end result has been a system that allows for simple yet engaging challenges to be designed on-the-fly (as easy as picking a few skills and looking up DCs on the provided chart) while simultaneously allowing for more interesting and memorable challenges to be designed with a bit of creativity and prep work. My players have gotten a great deal of enjoyment from this system, and it appears to be doing exactly what I wanted skill challenges to do in the first place- get the players to work together and think tactically to solve a wide variety of complex non-combat encounters, with a minimum amount of work on my part and only 5-20 minutes of game time required for a challenge. Let me know what you think.
#2 derelictman Nov 12, 2008 8:32:08	Wow, nice work! These examples are priceless. I, like lots of people, am still trying to wrap my brain around skill challenges. I will definitely give your system a try and use those examples as inspiration in my upcoming games. Thanks for posting! :D
#3 big_j_money Nov 12, 2008 12:57:52	Agh, I replied to you in another thread. The gist is that this is an awesome piece of work, but I'm stumped about something. What do failures do? The PDF says multiple times that in certain cases you "remove a failure" or "add two failures". From what I read the only think you are keeping track of are successes and rounds. -- John M.
#4 bastard_dm Nov 12, 2008 16:18:25	Good point- I did neglect to explicitly state the issue with failures- at the end of any round in which the party has accumulated a total of three or more failures, the challenge is lost. This means that an Expert check can often be performed after the third failure is rolled as a last-ditch effort to save the challenge (since they often remove a failure), provided it is done so before the end of a given round. I'll edit the document- the lack of explicit win/lose conditions is a bit of a glaring omission on my part...
#5 big_j_money Nov 12, 2008 21:09:27	At the end of a round? Ok, that makes total sense now. As I said before, great jaeghrb. I'm trying to tackle skill challenges from different angle, but I like how you've refined the system WotC provided; yours is much more comprehensive. I recommend everyone take a look at it, and I will definitely test it out for ya in my game. Cheers, -- John M.
#6 dayzdark Nov 14, 2008 2:12:22	This is definitely encouraging. These numbers make more sense to me. Also, it actually rewards cleverness and introduces a tactical element to approaching skill challenges that just doesn't seem to exist in the RAW. Thank you. I'm noticing a lot of skill challenge homebrew systems impose hard deadlines to prevent aid another abuse and similar efforts to let the strongest link of the chain do all the work in every skill challenge. I understand why this makes mathematical sense, but I feel it can feel artificial and kill some of the drama. However, my inclination is, rather than shutting down the challenge when the PCs reach the time limit, punish the delay or make failure more likely if the skill challenge lasts longer than the allotted time. The longer a combat lasts, the more it drains PC resources. Four of the five PCs aren't going to hover around a striker to use aid another to maximize the fifth character's chances of hitting the monsters. Rather, everyone is going to pitch in to do something every round - even if their contribution during a particular round might be less than the contribution an ally makes that turn. Combat ends when it ends, but PCs have a good reason to end it as quickly as they can without sacrificing resources they believe they will need later on. This is a model that I think is also useful when thinking of skill challenges. Here is some brainstorming about how to do this: 1) The easiest way is to impose a gradually penalty to all skill checks for every round beyond the normal time limit - +2 DC for every round the skill challenge goes beyond the time limit. This is the s*** or get off the pot method. Eventually the Duke is going to get tired of the audience, the characters are going to run out of strength for the physical challenge, or the PCs are going to hit a brick wall in their research into a subject. The longer the PCs take, the more likely it becomes that they'll fail the challenge. 2) Another possibility is to reduce the scale of the victory as the PCs continue past the time limit. In short, if they dawdle, they'll only achieve a partial victory. If the skill challenge is worth 500 XP, for example, every round of delay beyond a set point may reduce the reward by, say, 100 XP. There is plenty of precedent for the idea that failure at a skill challenge means the PCs earn that XP later in the adventure because their failure makes another encounter or skill challenge harder. To pick a mechanical example, let's say the PCs are sneaking into the castle. Success means they elude the guards completely, and complete failure might mean you have a really nasty fight with the guards, but a partial failure means the number of guards you have to fight depends on how much time it took you to complete the skill challenge. To pick a more narrative example, let's say the PCs are chasing someone across the wilderness. If they succeed before the deadline, they catch up during the day and have little trouble taking him into custody. If they fail (3 failure results), his allies get to him first, and the PCs have to fight them to capture him. If they succeed after the time limit elapses, they catch don't catch up to him until after sunset, and the PCs must succeed at a new skill challenge to find him in the dark (likely at a higher DC). 3) For physical challenges, it's pretty easy to start sucking away those healing surges - maybe 1 per character per round beyond the time limit. Despite arguments I've seen to the contrary, I'm not convinced this makes sense in a lot of knowledge or social skill challenges. Sure, the Duke might get mad at you and have his soldiers rough you up and kick you out (the more of his time you waste, the less gentle they are when they expel you), but how does that work when you're trying to convince the ghost to share her knowledge? On a completely unrelated note, it might be useful to allow PCs to benefit in some way from some of their feats and powers in skill challenges - including a few that are ordinarily associated with combat. For example, perhaps elves and halflings can use their racial powers (elven accuracy and second chance) to reroll one skill check per skill challenge. And maybe clerics and warlords can use healing word and inspiring word to prevent a character from losing a healing surge during a skill challenge or to grant a bonus on another character's next skill check. I don't think it's realistic to define a way in which every power or feat could be applied to a skill challenge, but a few instructive examples might get players and DMs thinking about the possibilities. One of the fun things about playing spellcasters in previous editions was a lot of spells that were useful in combat could also be applied to non-combat problems, and I'd like to see a skill challenge system with some of that vibe.
#7 bastard_dm Nov 14, 2008 12:27:26	I really like the idea for increasing the difficulty of skill challenges past a certain threshold- that can add a more "organic" limitation on the challenge while still forcing a conclusion. It doesn't take much of an increase (+1 or +2 to the DC per round beyond the limit) to make the odds of failure increase dramatically. Losing healing surges works well as a mechanic for physical challenges, too- I have done something similar by penalizing failure with the loss of a healing surge and requiring the party to try again (or think of an alternative strategy). For a couple of the example challenges I included, there was no specific time limit - the challenge ended in failure when the group gave up or ran out of healing surges. I think narrative penalties for taking too long can work well, too- if the party is tracking a group of orcs that captured the local inkeeper and they fail the challenge, they might find the orcs but not before they killed him. Or, if the party failed spectacularly (before getting half the needed successes, perhaps), they might find his body but never found the orcs responsible for his death. As for XP penalties, though- I would be hesitant to go down that road. In a combat encounter, the amount of XP the party receives is based on the content of the encounter, and generally isn't modified by their luck or strategy. If they win the encounter in 3 combat rounds and 30 minutes of game time or if it takes 12 rounds and half the night, they should generally get the same reward. Those were some great ideas for not having to impose arbitrary time limits for encounters. Thanks for the feedback!
#8 dayzdark Nov 14, 2008 23:50:48	No problem. I just want to see the skill challenge system fixed to my satisfaction, and making yours better is a whole lot easier than coming up with my own from scratch. I don't have another skill challenge scheduled for the current dungeon, so it'll be at least 3 sessions before I run another one, but I'm planning to use your system with some cosmetic modifications for at least one skill challenge in the next level's adventure. My players are encouraging me to open the system up a bit so they roll the skill that is most appropriate to the tactics they are using to solve the problems that make up the skill challenge. Rather than requiring them to use the solution I came up with ahead of time, I'll give them the problem, and finding a solution to it (and any complications I introduce along the way) is their problem. I'll call for whatever skill checks seem appropriate at the moment, and when they achieve the number of successes/failures, the challenge ends appropriately. My players aren't prone to dawdling, so it isn't likely I'll be able to test out my suggestions for discouraging delays, but if an opportunity arises, I'll likely use a combination of increasing DCs (+2 per round) and narrative penalties to keep them on track. I'd encourage other DMs to try out my suggestions if they want to see if that smooths out the hard edges of a time limit for skill challenges. One way or the other, I'll let you know what the result is.