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5 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 1:50PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Jan 21, 2012
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I'm not sure I fully grasp the concept of skill challenges, or even how to pull off something similar. After reading up on any thread I could find on the subject, the general concensus was to ignore skill challenges as they had been written and instead present the players with a problem and have them come up with a solution. Well that's fine with me, but I'm having trouble creating a similar scenario. I'll describe what I'm trying to accomplish:
The idea is that the players are trapped in a room that is slowly filling with noxious gas. If the party takes too long to escape, they fall unconscious and wake up captive in the heart of their enemy's encampment. I feel confident that the players can find a way out of the room without me coming up with anything specific for them, but if the idea is that everyone gets to contribute a skill check or idea, how do I organize their attempts? Should I have them roll initiative, or just go around the table clockwise? Or just have them do it freeform?
Moreover, how do I give them a sense of urgency? They only have a limited time to escape the room, but I'm not sure how to manifest that in game mechanics. Should I maybe use an egg timer, or have them take turns and mark off the turns? But then that leads back to question one.
Or maybe all of these are bad ideas. If you were going to put your party in this situation, how would you go about it?
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5 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 1:59PM
#2
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Date Joined:
Jul 21, 2004
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I love skill challenges.
Skill challenges as written ARE "present the players with a problem and have them come up with a solution." I think what you should do is ignore skill challenges as they are commonly understood. Skill challenges are no different than any skill-based obstacle in past editions. For instanct, any skill can potentially work in a skill challenge, but the Primary skills don't require any justification. But that's not really your question.
In the situation you describe, there's no need for initiative order, because even if you used it characters could delay or ready actions. But it's fair to allow only single set of actions for a given character before everyone else has had a chance, and after everyone has had a chance to then mark off a "round." Giving the PCs only a set number of rounds to complete the challenge is fine. I recommend three.
The key to skill challenges (and really any other aspect of the game) is to have plans for both interesting success and interesting failure. Once you have those, you basically can't go wrong. Describe, describe, describe, roll some dice, and go.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
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5 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 2:20PM
#3
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Date Joined:
Jan 21, 2012
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Thanks, that's exactly what I needed. That'll be helpful with not just this skill challenge, but with ALL of them -- I've had such a hard time figuring out how to run them from just the books.
Thank you!
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5 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 2:34PM
#4
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Date Joined:
Jul 21, 2004
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Thanks, that's exactly what I needed. That'll be helpful with not just this skill challenge, but with ALL of them -- I've had such a hard time figuring out how to run them from just the books.
Thank you!
I can understand that. The books give a lot of good advice, but their concrete examples are somewhat lacking. Freeform is the watchword. Skill challenges seem like they're very mechanized, but they're not really. The whole thing about the number of successes and failures is just a pacing mechanism to keep the encounter from being completed in one lucky die roll, or asking for repeated dice rolls and never knowing when to stop. The DM can always decide when to stop, but I find that having those counters helps me craft my descriptions, which are really what the bulk of any skill challenge should be about: descriptions.
Best of luck, and don't hesitate to ask. But be wary of advice telling to to ditch skill challenges entirely, especially since the follow-up advice often turns out to be the same thing skill challenges already do (or at least allow for).
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
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5 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 2:46PM
#5
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Date Joined:
Aug 30, 2007
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I'm not sure I fully grasp the concept of skill challenges, or even how to pull off something similar. After reading up on any thread I could find on the subject, the general concensus was to ignore skill challenges as they had been written and instead present the players with a problem and have them come up with a solution. Well that's fine with me, but I'm having trouble creating a similar scenario. I'll describe what I'm trying to accomplish:
The idea is that the players are trapped in a room that is slowly filling with noxious gas. If the party takes too long to escape, they fall unconscious and wake up captive in the heart of their enemy's encampment. I feel confident that the players can find a way out of the room without me coming up with anything specific for them, but if the idea is that everyone gets to contribute a skill check or idea, how do I organize their attempts? Should I have them roll initiative, or just go around the table clockwise? Or just have them do it freeform?
Moreover, how do I give them a sense of urgency? They only have a limited time to escape the room, but I'm not sure how to manifest that in game mechanics. Should I maybe use an egg timer, or have them take turns and mark off the turns? But then that leads back to question one.
Or maybe all of these are bad ideas. If you were going to put your party in this situation, how would you go about it?
Don't worry about initiative. As far as a sense of urgency, I would require each character to make an Endurance check on their round. A failure causes the character to lose a surge. Other than that, set your number of successes (you don't even need to worry about failures since failure will already be punished by leaving them in the chamber longer losing surges, or you could be really wicked and maybe after 3 failures something goes wrong which eliminates all of their successes and sets them back to square 1), let them come up with solutions, and call for skill checks as appropriate.
Owner and Proprietor of the House of Trolls.
God of ownership and possession.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 2:53PM
#6
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Date Joined:
Jul 21, 2004
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Don't worry about initiative. As far as a sense of urgency, I would require each character to make an Endurance check on their round. A failure causes the character to lose a surge. Other than that, set your number of successes (you don't even need to worry about failures since failure will already be punished by leaving them in the chamber longer losing surges, or you could be really wicked and maybe after 3 failures something goes wrong which eliminates all of their successes and sets them back to square 1), let them come up with solutions, and call for skill checks as appropriate.
What does failure look like in this case? Losing all of one's surges doesn't knock one unconscious. And if it does, it means certain people are left not participating after a while.
In general, err on the side of making skill challenges too hard. I find that this makes it easier to root for the players and puts the focus on allowing cool ideas, rather than blocking them.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
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5 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 5:35PM
#7
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Date Joined:
Jun 19, 2004
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Don't worry about initiative. As far as a sense of urgency, I would require each character to make an Endurance check on their round. A failure causes the character to lose a surge. Other than that, set your number of successes (you don't even need to worry about failures since failure will already be punished by leaving them in the chamber longer losing surges, or you could be really wicked and maybe after 3 failures something goes wrong which eliminates all of their successes and sets them back to square 1), let them come up with solutions, and call for skill checks as appropriate.
What does failure look like in this case? Losing all of one's surges doesn't knock one unconscious. And if it does, it means certain people are left not participating after a while.
In general, err on the side of making skill challenges too hard. I find that this makes it easier to root for the players and puts the focus on allowing cool ideas, rather than blocking them.
I agree with basically all of Centauri's ideas on skill challenges.
I will however add to this that after your players, and you, have gotten used to skill challenges as their own entity putting them into combats opens up a whole new world of dynamic encounters. Being able to mix and match things like this, especially if completing the combat makes the challenge easier of vice versa, gives you a lot of design space to create more full "scenes" rather than just "combats".
Currently working on making a Dex based defender. Check it out hereSpoiler:
Show
Need a few pre-generated characters for a one-shot you are running? Want to get a baseline for what an effective build for a class you aren't familiar with? Check out the Pregen thread here
If ever you are interested what it sounds like to be at my table check out my blog and podcast here
Also, I've recently done an episode on "Refluffing". You can check that out here
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5 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 8:24PM
#8
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Date Joined:
Aug 31, 2009
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All good advice here. The one thing I would add is that I've found it's better not to force everyone to roll something every round if they're not really into it. Some players enjoy skill challenges more, and some PCs are built to do much better in skill challenges than others. A Fighter with Athletics, Endurance, and Heal might get tired of making up weird ways of participating in a skill challenge convincing the duke to share his plan with the party. Nothing wrong with letting that guy sit back or go make a sandwich while the bard does the talking.
That being said, once you feel more comfortable with the traditional skill challenge, I highly recommend Matyr's advice to mix skills into encounters. Sometimes I have little mini-skill challenges within encounters and sometimes I just say, "You can do X with a minor action Religion check (DC 18)." I let them roll a "terrain check" at initiative (streetwise for towns, nature for forest, etc) that gives them at least three of these types of options. Just make sure the options provide viable alternatives to just plain ol' killing - for example, I rarely ask them to give up their standard action unless it's to do something equivalent to an attack.
My current group is very combat focused and would kind of zombie-stare through skill challenges, but they've really responded to using skills in combat beyond my expectations. Do this long enough and your players themselves may begin to come up with ideas of new ways to use their skills, which is just great IMO.
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5 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 8:53PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Jun 19, 2004
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What I typically do for skill checks is use the system built into a lot of LFR modules. The type of action it takes for you to do a lot of checks determines how difficult that check is to do. If they want to attempt it as a minor action its hard DC, as move it is medium, as standard it is easy. Certain things require certain kinds of checks (maybe moving a bit of wall takes at least a move action) but that as a general rule tends to work quite well.
Currently working on making a Dex based defender. Check it out hereSpoiler:
Show
Need a few pre-generated characters for a one-shot you are running? Want to get a baseline for what an effective build for a class you aren't familiar with? Check out the Pregen thread here
If ever you are interested what it sounds like to be at my table check out my blog and podcast here
Also, I've recently done an episode on "Refluffing". You can check that out here
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5 months ago ::
Dec 19, 2012 - 10:31PM
#10
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Date Joined:
Jul 21, 2004
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All good advice here. The one thing I would add is that I've found it's better not to force everyone to roll something every round if they're not really into it. Some players enjoy skill challenges more, and some PCs are built to do much better in skill challenges than others. A Fighter with Athletics, Endurance, and Heal might get tired of making up weird ways of participating in a skill challenge convincing the duke to share his plan with the party. Nothing wrong with letting that guy sit back or go make a sandwich while the bard does the talking.
Yes, this is why skill challenges should not only be interesting to fail, but shouldn't be the only thing going on.
[N]o difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions. - L. Tolstoy
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