Are D&D Skill Challenges a TERRIBLE Idea? Not if Done Properly!
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- Опубліковано 13 жов 2024
- Skill challenges have been around for a while, and not just in D&D. They can be a great tool to help you run roleplaying encounters. Unfortunately, they have a bad reputation and they are not always presented in a very helpful manner. But they are not as terrible as you have heard.
Let's take a look at skill challenges, what is wrong with them, and how you can run them better in your adventures.
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#dnd4e #ttrpg #dnd5e #dnd #ttrpgfamily #dungeonmaster #dungeonsanddragons #gamemaster #dndrules #dungeonmastersguide #dragons #ttrpgfamily #skillchallenge - Розваги
Finally started my 4e campaign last Monday, and there's an excellent chance that session 2 will be our first skill challenge! I used both DMGs while writing it, and have leaned toward the DMG's idea of "Puzzle as a Skill Challenge". I've written some example skills and DC's that can be used, but would love to see if the PCs come up with something beyond them. The players will be inside an allied witch's cottage and have the chance to figure out how to make it walk. My wife's really wanted puzzles in D&D, so I really hope this one goes well!
I get the argument and agree that skill challenges that straight up tell you exactly what skills to use can feel constraining for experienced players, but I've found that newer players usually appreciate having a clear idea of what they can and can't do to overcome a skill challenge. When you're just starting out the game and have no idea what all your skills can do, it's helpful to get reminded of things like "If you want to convince the guy nicely, use Diplomacy. If you want to try to threaten him, you can use Intimidate. If you want to figure out whether he's being honest, you can use Insight... etc."
As the players get more experienced, I try to mix things up a bit by trying to reward creative ideas and encourage each player to use different skills instead of just one guy rolling for the same skill over and over.
For example, instead of trying to disable a magical taser trap with Thievery or Arcana, I had a barbarian player who wanted to try to drain the trap's "battery" by just grabbing it and letting it shock him until it ran out of power. I didn't plan for it to work that way, but I ended up offering him a Endurance check: it would count as an automatic success on the skill challenge and could be used multiple times, but the DC would keep going up and every time he failed he'd be twitchy and paralyzed (-1 movement in combat) until the next time he took a short rest.
He ended up shocking himself over and over again because every time another player failed their Arcana or Thievery check he'd step in and grab the thing like "You too slow. Me show you how real warrior do it." I really wasn't expecting them to get through the trap that way, but it turned out a lot better than expected because even though he got shocked the barbarian felt that he was actually doing his part and contributing to the party's success instead of just sitting around and twiddling his thumbs while the rogue and warlock did all the work.
That is a great point that I wish I mentioned in the video. 4e is filled with examples for practically every rule that can help new players who are not really sure what to do. The skill challenges are a perfect example of that. They can help guide those newer players through the roleplaying parts of the game until they get a better feel for it.
Thanks
So I’m slowly digesting 4e stuff for the first time, and it struck me that the 4e phb doesn’t tell the players exactly HOW skill challenges work; it only tells the players that the rules are in the DMG.
This reminded me of The Alexandrian’s essays on “player-unknown structures”; in his examples, he didn’t want his party thinking of his hexcrawl campaign as a system to be meta-min-maxed with, but a world to poke and prod and explore. So he designed a hexcrawl system that kept an eye and ear out for what the players wanted to do in their casual language, he ran the hexcrawl behind the screen WITHOUT TELLING THE PLAYERS THEYRE IN A HEXCRAWL, and then interpreted the mechanical data into narration which would prompt the players next actions.
I often wonder if skill challenges weren’t supposed to work the same way.
That is a great point. I've heard skill challenges run both ways. In some cases, like in the slaying stone adventure I recently reviewed, there is a skill challenge that runs the length of the adventure behind the scenes without the players needing to even know (until they fail). In other cases, I've heard of DMs that ramp up the tension by fully announcing that a skill challenge has begun.
Both good approaches. All depends on the table's play style.
The reason I love skill challenges is that it defines what a challenge actually is:
If I say “ok you can use perception to try keep track of the thief, athletics to push through crowds, or agility to rooftop run”
And then add “but other choices can be made and I’ll tell you how that helps”
What’s hard about that?
It’s always confused me as to why non-combat encounters getting coding mechanically is that big a deal?
That is the key. The way they are presented, it can seem like the rules are telling you that these are the ONLY skills that can be used. It is merely providing some guidance on how CERTAIN skills might be used. But it is still completely up to the players and the DM to just run with it and have fun.
Another piece of advice: if you are going to use a skill challenge, make sure you know what failure looks like. Both what individual low rolls might mean (the setbacks before you fail the whole thing) and what happens if the skill challenge is failed entirely. Sometimes its obvious like failing to sneak past enemy forces means a combat starts or failure to navigate at sea may cause you to end up in the wrong place. But if the players are negotiating for a map relevant to the plot, then you need s plan for what happens if they don't get it. Perhaps the Baron says they need to prove themselves first by helping with a problem (sidequest) while winning the challenge means the Baron is already impressed with their abilities.
I agree- a good skill challenge can make for a fast-paced cinematic episode. I once did a mcdm inspired roof top chase challenge that my players loved. Thanks Greybeard! ❤️
I forget where I found this rule, but when running a skill challenge you do it in rounds. IE each player takes one turn in each round of the skill challenge. Players choose what order they use their skills. They choose what skill they want to use, and the DM sets the DC of that skill on how they want to implement it. The restriction is two players cannot use the same skill in the same round of the skill challenge. I do run into some meta problems with this approach, is that players try to figure out who has the highest skill bonus on each skill and then they try to figure out how to use their skills in the skill challenge. But it does prevent players from doing the same thing everyround. Skill challenge operate catapult, athletics check pick up rock, athletics check rotate the catapult to aim, athletics check turn the winch to ready to fire. Athletics check cut the rope to release. ect... With these rules, you get the barbarian using athletics to pick up rock, the ranger using perception to aim, the artificer using tinkerers tools to calculate trajectory, and the paladin using intimidate to motivate the catapult crew.
I added skill challenges to 5e and the players loved it. Typically I do the 4 successes to 3 failures. Depending on what the action is or what the players are trying to do will determine which skills they use. And of course they are encouraged to use skills that I may not call for if they can tell me how they are using that skill. Now 5E has way less skills than 4E. But we found a way to make it work.
And yeah when reading about them in the 4e DMG I always thought what was listed were examples and not absolute. Then again to me all rulebooks are just guidelines and suggestions. Lol.
Glad you're keeping the 4e train rolling! Check out Orcus RPG- it's a recently released 4e retroclone, and the adventures made for it have some of the most straighforward and sensible skill challenges I've seen in modules for 4e. I think you'll really like the whole thing!
I love Skill Challenges.
I agree you don’t want to lock in exactly what skills the players need to use during a skill challenge or then it’s just a series of skill checks. But you should know what skills your players are trained in or have bonuses in and build the challenge around some of those skills. If the rogue can’t pick the noblemen pocket then maybe the dragon borne can just intimidate him to give them the map. Then they go on to next part of the challenge where another player has something they can do.
You don’t want to leave the cleric out of the challenge because you didn’t bother to include Religion or History that he might be able to succeed at. Maybe his skill check somehow unlocks a secret on the map or whatever.
If everyone in the party succeeds at a couple checks the challenge should be complete and they get any rewards & experience and they have advanced the game through roll playing! Yes. Even in 4e. 😊
What I remember being frustrating about skill challenges back when we played 4e was that everyone was expected to participate, but quite often part of the characters had little (obvious) to do. What does the guy with 8 charisma do in a social encounter? What does the guy with only social skills do in a chase?
This often led to inexperienced players freezing up, or to them just rolling skills even though they were terrible at them because they couldn't think of a way to put the ones they did have to good use in that situation. That, or they just rolled whatever the DM or more experienced players told them to use.
At the same time, other players would really start to stretch the definition of skills to make them fit. "I want to use Deception to make it look like I'm driving this coach left but then really go right." "I roll History for information on the way this city was build to figure out the best route." "I'm gonna butter this guy up by talking about his favorite sports team, and I want to roll Athletics for that." Which then led to either awkward conversations as the DM didn't allow that, or to the DM begrudgingly letting them get away with it because the alternative was spelling out what you were and weren't allowed to do.
D&D sets all characters up to have something to do in combat (even if it's just "run up and hit a baddie"), but out of combat encounters can be so varied not every character has something to add to every situation. And if you're that character, there should be no shame in just hanging back for a bit and letting the people who are trained in the relevant stuff have their moment in the spotlight. Skill challenges (or at least, the way my DM's ran them back in the day) worked against that.
I never thought of the listing of skills and DCs there as absolute rules, but more as guidelines. Thus I never understood the issues people have. It is similar to the skill issue people had in 3E, The Alexandrian talked about that yesterday in a video on Dungeon Masterpiece's channel. The problem is that people can grasp that how to use them are suggestions, but not a limit or the only way to do a certain skill challenge,since then it would indeed remove all the liberty from the experience. So, the people who complain the most are exactly the people who failed see there more tha a game mechanism.
And yes, it is something that has been around and still is, just not under that name. Most games about investigation had such a thing, or systems that employed some crafting mechanism too. And it looks like the game that MCDM is developing will have that for social encounters also. And people nver had any issue with those. Thus I can only assume that how 4E formalised it is not really the issue, but only people who already disliked the edition tried to use that as further argument against it.
Spot on with your last point. People were already looking for every excuse to say 4e was bad. Even if the thing in question had been around forever.
And one of the great things about 4e is that it took some chances. It tried something new. That was a point that MC made a while back. So much of D&D is there in every edition just because it has always been there. 4e tried to redefine a lot of things and some didn't like it.
People complain that D&D doesn't do this or that and at the same time complain that 4e deviated too much from 'pure' D&D. Just can't win. :-)
DID YOU LOOK AT THE MCDM RPG? Are you going to cover more Tales of the Valiant/ Kobold Press material?
I don't 100% agree with the video because from the start, the skill challenges weren't a closed box with limited options for the rolls.
Like every tool of the 4th edition, the skill challenge was a sandbox too, rather than a closed box.
What in the video is a hint, indeed, was how they worked: a preconstructed skill challenge had a list of possible actions and outcomes, but it was an open list, not an exhaustive one.
I used the SC for minor combats too or for long journeys (checking with rolls exploration, resting, studying, and so on).
I love the Skill Challenge - as long as the GM let's the players be creative - it's just a great interlude between encounters.
Hey where you been haven't seen you in awhile
Comments for the algorithm!!
You seem to love 4E, and that’s awesome!
Why was it made? I’ve heard that 3.5’s sales were dwindling, so they rolled out 4E, but I can’t verify that.
Do you know why they decided to kill 3E, for 4E?
They are doing the same with One D&D after 5e: there are only a limited number of themes (therefore books) they can do before repeating themselves.
Besides, new core books are a sales booster.
🥳❤️👍🏿
Did Greybeard die?