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Apr 1, 2010 -- 2:16AM, Kurald_Galain wrote:

[For example? Suppose it's a social skill challenge and the primaries are bluff, diplomacy, and insight. If I'm a fighter, I could easily have +5 to +6 in those three skills, and +14 in athletics. So using athletics at DC 21 is much better for me than using a social skill at DC 16, in every social challenge. The SC rules encourage such things.

And for good reason...

If you're a melee character and it is a ranged combat, you can't actually choose (generally) to not participate. You have to help out somehow. No one likes the combat where the guy who had no ranged options whatsoever sits there and sulks about how bad the combat is because there's no option for him to participate. No one complains about how using a thrown weapon to have a ranged attack power is somehow unfair to those who specialized in ranged powers. They're still not as effective.

Skill Challenges are no different. What generally happens in Skill Challenges is that some characters won't be able to roll well on any of the listed skill checks. Sometimes, perhaps half the table. If the DM doesn't give any leeway, they don't participate.

So take a look at what you just said - assuming there's a face in the party, he probably needs a 3 or better to succeed on the skill rolls. You still require a 7 or better. You rolling isn't actually making your overall chance of success better. You're not as good as a specialized face at the task. You're just able to participate without feeling like you're going to torpedo the party's chance of success.
 

I like a variety. It is nice to have some SCs, particularly ones with higher complexity (more successes needed) to have a breadth of skills. This is especially true if the skill challenge is more informative than challenging (the level is low and the author's intention is for this to be a mild challenge).

It is nice from time to time to have skill challenges with a small set of applicable skills, so as to let specific talents shine. This is especially true of low complexity skill challenges. If an author is trying to make things challenging, this can also be a way to escalate difficulty - fewer options means less capability for the average party to optimize. That can work well as a mix, such as one scene that is very specific and another that is very broad, so you add in some difficulty in certain scenes but give chances for more participation in others. Swapping skill areas between skills, such as physical and charismatic, can work well.

But, regardless, there is a fine line between a DM allowing a player to use a non-mentioned skill to do something creative and the party cheesing every challenge with whatever skill they want. The former is clever, the later boring and detracts from the intention of the game. Many players can't help but metagame, so I feel it would be very bad for the game to have a consistent rule of allowing all skills for all challenges.

I don't personally blame anyone if a skill challenge is narrow in focus. I prefer not to see a very complex SC have a narrow focus. A lot of it depends on the exact situation and the premise of the adventure, as well as the desired challenge level. There are a lot of ways the encounter can be off because of so many variables to skill challenge design. There is, to me, no mantra of a narrowly focused SC being a problem.

This may be a little off-topic, but I think the problem with narrow or limited skill choices in skill challenges come from the skill challenges' goal being too narrow.  Broader skill challenges are both more inclusive and, IMO, more interesting.

For example, a skill challenge goal of "get into the castle without starting a fight" is sufficiently broad to allow physical, intellectual, and interpersonal skills to be used without mandidating the use of any set of skills.  In constrast, a goal of "sneak over the castle wall without getting caught" is more narrow and less interesting.  If the party lacks physical skills then this skill challenge is pretty much a failure.

Broader goals increase the burden on the writer and the GM but they make the game more interesting.  Don't tell me how to accomplish something -- tell me what you want accomplished and let me accomplish it my way.

edit -- spelling is gud

Apr 1, 2010 -- 1:54PM, bgibbons wrote:

I have done a MyRealms where, aside from a two-minion combat where the goal was to get surprise and finish the combat in the surprise round, the entire adventure was composed of skill challenges.  I had a blast and will probably do it again some time.

That sounds like a great idea.  May have to swipe it.

Apr 1, 2010 -- 12:26PM, amysrevenge wrote:

Perhaps something that might be a compromise would be a single paragraph copy-pasted into every skill challenge (not just in the boilerplate at the start of the module - nobody EVER reads those, not even first-time DMs - but included in the actual SC) encouraging DMs to allow creative uses of other skills if appropriate.  I know a lot of folks, especially folks with less experience DMing LFR, stick pretty rigidly to the provided skill list, to the detriment of genuine innovation.

I absolutely know where you are coming from, but I disagree. Just as some combats might be heavy on artillery and another on leaders, and both still work if done right, some SCs should be tough with few options allowed and some should cover tons of skill options. I really think that what we should shoot for is for authors (and their editors) to think through the skill challenge and how best to achieve the results they are aiming for in a fun way.

This post I wrote for D&D Encounters may be worthwhile (though I'm sure misses plenty and reflects my bias). A lot of this thread influenced what I wrote there, because I think there is a need for DMs to interpret the intentions of the author. Conversely, the author should try to explain their intent. For all the time that has passed, we are all still trying to learn how to do SCs right. Just as an author probably should say "this is a hard fight but try some of the following to keep it fun and doable", an author should probably say "this is supposed to be a difficult skill challenge where failure is a real possibility. If a PC wants to use a skill not mentioned, you may only want to allow it with a very difficult DC of..." (and, in reverse, state when options should be encouraged, etc.).

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