Anatomy of Failed Design: Skill Challenges

[Titanium Dragon]

1) Every character MUST act on their turn.

Um, why?

This doesn't eliminate the core problem of skill challenges. All it means now is that when the bard goes to talk to the Ice Queen is that the other adventurers hang out at the bar. Or he sneaks out in the middle of the night to go talk to her.

This is precisely why. It should be such that doing that isn't an option. In the given example, the Ice Queen is insulted because the whole group was not willing to speak with her, or is suspicious because she heard there was a big fighter, a guy in a cloak who looked like he was carrying like twenty daggers, ect. and who is showing up is some guy who claims to be speaking for them.

I think it's really, really shitty game design to force that poor fighter bastard who has nothing but Athletics, Heal, and Endurance to not only have to participate in a social skill challenge but also force them to fail. It's not even like a combat encounter; if you're a level 1 redshirt in a party full of epic-level fighters fighting a dragon, at least your contribution to the fight will be neutral.

What's with the extra screwjob for skill challenges?

Because D&D isn't about being a redshirt, its about being a group of heroes.

You know what is bad design? Having people sit out for an entire encounter. Now that is shitty design, and that is precisely what skill challenges need to avoid.

[Lago PARANOIA]

This is precisely why. It should be such that doing that isn't an option. In the given example, the Ice Queen is insulted because the whole group was not willing to speak with her, or is suspicious because she heard there was a big fighter, a guy in a cloak who looked like he was carrying like twenty daggers, ect. and who is showing up is some guy who claims to be speaking for them.

And you'll have to keep introducing contrivances. As long as it's mechanically optimal for people to keep as many people home as possible people will try to find ways to do it.

Because D&D isn't about being a redshirt, its about being a group of heroes.

You know what is bad design? Having people sit out for an entire encounter. Now that is shitty design, and that is precisely what skill challenges need to avoid.

'Do we HAVE to bring our asthmatic Starlock with us on the infiltrate the baron's manor mission? Can't they just stay in the bar until we sound the alarm?'

'Yes, you have to bring Peter along even though he'll certainly cause you to fail the mission.'

'I really don't want to come along. All I'll do is make you guys fail.'

'Sorry, this is a game about heroes, not redshirts. That's why you have to participate in a plot where your contributions will be actively harmful.'

[Roog]

You know what is bad design? Having people sit out for an entire encounter. Now that is shitty design, and that is precisely what skill challenges need to avoid.

Having rules that make players want to sit out encounters, and then arbitarily telling them that they can't, is at least as bad.

A good solution needs to make players want to be involved in as many of the party's encounters as possible.

[MGuy]

I think a better example to use would be Clunky Beard the heavily armored dwarf fighter with no ranks in stealth. An asthmatic sort of hops back on the red shirt bus...

In either case I think that the option to join or sit out of it should be there. Nothing should be forcing everyone to participate if they don't want to. In saying that I don't know whether its true that you HAVE to participate as I have never asked not to.

[Titanium Dragon]

This is precisely why. It should be such that doing that isn't an option. In the given example, the Ice Queen is insulted because the whole group was not willing to speak with her, or is suspicious because she heard there was a big fighter, a guy in a cloak who looked like he was carrying like twenty daggers, ect. and who is showing up is some guy who claims to be speaking for them.

And you'll have to keep introducing contrivances. As long as it's mechanically optimal for people to keep as many people home as possible people will try to find ways to do it.

...

I think you don't really understand. At all.

Let's take a party of five characters and throw them against five mindflayers. Would you be better off with just one character, the one with a high athletics (good at escaping their tentacles) and high Will/psychic resistance (so their mental attacks are less useful against them)?

Well, according to you, the answer is yes.

However, the answer is actually no because there will still be five mindflayers and you'll be overwhelmed.

Now, when I say that you can't leave people out of skill challenges, this is precisely what I'm talking about. There's no difference between not taking a turn in combat and thus hurting the team because you have one fewer person with which to overcome the challenge and automatically failing on a skill check because you aren't contributing.

You are looking at it from the wrong perspective.

Now, one can argue that it should instead be based on the number of turns rather than the number of failures, but in that case, you're looking at the exact same situation where leaving bob out screws you because you have one fewer person who can succeed. It may not be as obvious to you that Bob is screwing you, but he's still screwing you either way.

Because D&D isn't about being a redshirt, its about being a group of heroes.

You know what is bad design? Having people sit out for an entire encounter. Now that is shitty design, and that is precisely what skill challenges need to avoid.

'Do we HAVE to bring our asthmatic Starlock with us on the infiltrate the baron's manor mission? Can't they just stay in the bar until we sound the alarm?'

'Yes, you have to bring Peter along even though he'll certainly cause you to fail the mission.'

'I really don't want to come along. All I'll do is make you guys fail.'

'Sorry, this is a game about heroes, not redshirts. That's why you have to participate in a plot where your contributions will be actively harmful.'

Yes, actually, having him sit out of the incursion into the castle is a horrible idea, because you're having one of the players sit out of the adventure. That's fucking shitty design, and is exactly what I'm talking about.

[Morzas]

Let's take a party of five characters and throw them against five mindflayers. Would you be better off with just one character, the one with a high athletics (good at escaping their tentacles) and high Will/psychic resistance (so their mental attacks are less useful against them)?

Well, according to you, the answer is yes.

However, the answer is actually no because there will still be five mindflayers and you'll be overwhelmed.

It's a shame that your straw man doesn't work here. This is what actually happens, using the same analogy:

Let's take a party of five characters and throw them against five mindflayers. Would you be better off with a party of five, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, or five clones of one character, the one with a high athletics (good at escaping their tentacles) and high Will/psychic resistance (so their mental attacks are less useful against them)?

In a skill challenge, the most optimal thing to do is to have the player with the highest bonus act for the entire party while the rest sit around. It's as if that character created four clones of himself and those clones do everything rather than the entire party interacting with the challenge. This behavior is not fun, therefore, skill challenges suck balls.

[IGTN]

Sitting out a skill challenge != automatic failure.

Sitting out a skill challenge is exactly that. You don't roll, don't succeed, don't fail, and the challenge just proceeds.

Alternately, depending on which version of the Skill Challenge rules you're using, you Aid Another.

Skill Challenges are not analogous to combat, since failing a skill check is not the same as missing an attack, since it actively makes you worse.

It would be akin to, in a game where characters can be Warriors or Diplomats, bringing noncombatant Diplomats into a combat that you need to get through without casualties to win, when they could instead be somewhere else.

If you're doing a negotiation, and negotiating abilities are optional, then having your negotiator do the talking while everyone else either twiddles their thumbs or cheerleads is the way to do it, and the system makes everyone else into dead weight, although it doesn't have to (but the 4e system does in every incarnation except the abominably bad one that allowed Aid Another). On a stealthy infiltration, anyone who can't sneak is dead weight who gives you away by getting caught, so you leave them at home.

With the 4e system, everyone who participates (present at the encounter to accumulate failures) except the specialist makes the team get closer to failure. House rules are outside the subject of a discussion of how the rules were written wrong, and house rules to enforce participation just make the dead weight drag you down.

[Titanium Dragon]

In a skill challenge, the most optimal thing to do is to have the player with the highest bonus act for the entire party while the rest sit around. It's as if that character created four clones of himself and those clones do everything rather than the entire party interacting with the challenge. This behavior is not fun, therefore, skill challenges suck balls.

I'm sorry, maybe if you had read my post, you'd have written a response which made sense. Unfortunately, you clearly did not, so you wrote a very stupid response which had nothing to do with what I had to say.

I'm not talking about the current structure of skill challenges in 4e, but rather, what they should look like. Which was what the OP was talking about, which is why I quoted it.

The skill challenge system as it stands has real issues, and I was addressing those issues.

"House rules are outside the subject of a discussion of how the rules were written wrong"? Uh, what?

Part of talking about how rules are written wrong is how to make them work properly. In fact, I rather had assumed that was what the thread was talking about, given the structure of the OP. Was I in error about this, and is it just bitching about skill challenges having problems? If so, it seems awfully long for something so stupid.

[Thymos]

I'm sorry, maybe if you had read my post, you'd have written a response which made sense. Unfortunately, you clearly did not, so you wrote a very stupid response which had nothing to do with what I had to say.

I'm not talking about the current structure of skill challenges in 4e, but rather, what they should look like. Which was what the OP was talking about, which is why I quoted it.

Oh, you completely came across as defending skill challenges as written to me.

I'd say your house rules have a few problems.

1) Every character MUST act on their turn.
2) They cannot spend their turn on aid another.

Remember, the goal here is to have fun, be creative, and create a team experience.

1) Isn't fun for the people who fail the skill check because everyone had to act. I'm not making this scenario up here either, in fact due to a varied party being encouraged it's entirely likely to happen.

2) Does not contribute towards creating a team experience, in fact it does the opposite because everyone may give mean looks towards the barbarian when he causes them to fail the diplomacy challenge (if they're a bunch of dicks, otherwise the DM will get the mean looks for making the barbarian participate).

The reason people are saying that contributions have to at least be neutral is because if the barbarian intelligently tries to help he shouldn't hurt their chances of succeeding. The concept of at worst being neutral seems pretty necessary at the moment.

[Titanium Dragon]

I'm sorry, maybe if you had read my post, you'd have written a response which made sense. Unfortunately, you clearly did not, so you wrote a very stupid response which had nothing to do with what I had to say.

I'm not talking about the current structure of skill challenges in 4e, but rather, what they should look like. Which was what the OP was talking about, which is why I quoted it.

Oh, you completely came across as defending skill challenges as written to me.

I'd say your house rules have a few problems.

1) Every character MUST act on their turn.
2) They cannot spend their turn on aid another.

Remember, the goal here is to have fun, be creative, and create a team experience.

1) Isn't fun for the people who fail the skill check because everyone had to act. I'm not making this scenario up here either, in fact due to a varied party being encouraged it's entirely likely to happen.

2) Does not contribute towards creating a team experience, in fact it does the opposite because everyone may give mean looks towards the barbarian when he causes them to fail the diplomacy challenge (if they're a bunch of dicks, otherwise the DM will get the mean looks for making the barbarian participate).

The reason people are saying that contributions have to at least be neutral is because if the barbarian intelligently tries to help he shouldn't hurt their chances of succeeding. The concept of at worst being neutral seems pretty necessary at the moment.

Here's the thing, though.

Let's say the characters get surprised and the wizard gets swarmed by the monsters and beaten down to about a third of their hit point total. At this point, you've put the party in a bind; the wizard, who has added to the xp total of the encounter, is probably going to go down in three or four rounds no matter what the party does, because even if they do heal him, he'll go down the moment they run out of healing, which will be before they manage to prise all the monsters off him. If they don't spend healing on him, they have to face these monsters a party member down, but they will have the healing for people who won't be as easily beaten down. They are faced with two bad choices, but one is better than the other - they need to suck it up, spend the healing on the wizard to preserve action advantage, and kill enough monsters with the full party that the party minus the wizard can take out the rest without needing granted healing.

I think this is analogous to having someone who isn't terribly useful in a specific skill challenge - they may be able to do a thing or two, but they are something of a liability because their very existence serves to make the encounter more difficult.

The key is that they DO need to be able to do a thing or two before they start being a liability. Right now, they can do one thing (a finagled skill check) before they will start failing. If you have a party of five characters, and you have only two who have an appropriate skill and you need 12 successes before three failures, you probably are going to fail the skill challenge. Which is why you need to design them such that you always have three characters who are trained and two who are not - in that way, you have two characters who have to finagle then become something of a liability, and then three characters who can help pull them through.

Now, this is not to say that the current system is GREAT - even if you do design the challenge properly, you still end up with problems.

My current hodgepodged solution also includes three skill challenge levels - easy, medium, and hard. Easy is 1 success, medium is 2, and hard is 3 - and doubled the number of successes necessary. This means that, even if you are bad at a skill check, you can still succeed sometimes, whereas the people who are good at it can do hard checks and make up for your failures. It is imperfect though, mathematically speaking, which is why I'm trying to work on something more sophisticated with sort of side quest type things (like I spoke about above) where you break up the challenge into smaller sub-challenges and if you succeed on X many of them you succeed at the challenge, which allows for a broader variety of skills to be useful while simultaneously rewarding people more for having a variety of skills trained. However, I have yet to arrive at something using this which I consider acceptable.

[Username17]

I think this is analogous to having someone who isn't terribly useful in a specific skill challenge - they may be able to do a thing or two, but they are something of a liability because their very existence serves to make the encounter more difficult.

No. The analogy is shooting into melee. If your chances of hurting a party member to the point where it makes you lose are higher than your chances of hurting the enemy to the point where it makes you win, should you take that shot?

Of course not.

And the mere idea of having all the players share the same failure caps by definition puts everyone into that position. The guy with the best skill bonus is in melee, and everyone else has a crossbow and no Precise Shot. Having them fire is actively baleful to the team, and they aren't going to do it unless they are assholes.

Alternately, you can look at it as a cannon firing team. There are a limited number of shots. You can have each shot directed by any member of the team. Why the fuck would you allow any of the shots to be directed by anyone other than the artillery chief? I mean seriously, in 4e there is a cap to the number of attempts at "stuff" you are allowed, and every time anyone other then the specialist takes a turn, that uses up a turn that could literally and specifically have been taken by the specialist instead.

It's a really blatantly obvious problem. And the solution is to change the rules so that taking actions is not analogous to shooting your friends in the back or wasting the team's precious cannon balls. Guilt tripping the PCs into stabbing their friends in the back is retarded. It makes people think you're retarded that you suggested it.

-Username17

[Titanium Dragon]

And the mere idea of having all the players share the same failure caps by definition puts everyone into that position. The guy with the best skill bonus is in melee, and everyone else has a crossbow and no Precise Shot. Having them fire is actively baleful to the team, and they aren't going to do it unless they are assholes.

There's little difference between "Everyone must take a turn, you must achieve 12 successes before 3 failures" and "You must achieve 12 successes within 3 turns".

And honestly, the rest of your post doesn't seem to be talking about what I'm talking about, but rather whining about the current skill challenges system in a completely unproductive manner. Yes, it has problems, I think its clear that I agree with that statement. I'm talking about fixing it.

If everyone is not forced to actually make an attempt at a useful skill roll, of course the intelligent thing to do is to only have one person make all the rolls. Which is why you need to shoot that idea in the face.

[Kaelik]

Except that your combat example is still wrong.

If your wizard could somehow teleport out of the combat (an ability which destroys every story worth telling let me tell you) and he did that, you would be worse off than if he stayed. And that's the point, every round the Wizard attacks and misses, and the monsters ignore him and only attack the party is a round in which he has had no impact whatsoever, every round in which a single monster attacks him, he has diverted damage away from another player, and thus aided the team. Every round he hits something, he helps the team. There is no possible situation in which him acting in a given round is worse than him not acting.

In a skill challenge, every single time the Barbarian opens his damn mouth is a -1 to your score. Every single time he doesn't is a +0, and every time the bard does is a +1.

Skill challenges are like a combat in which you enter combat with 5 players. Some of those players are minions, some of them are not. After the fight, you are scored based on the number of dead players. If 2 or more die, your entire party spontaneously explodes. If 1 or fewer, the dead is raised and you succeed the day.

Now, if you have 3 minions, the correct response is to leave them all outside the combat or have them run and hide and not attack at all, because if they actually take part in the combat, you are more likely to lose than if you keep them in a portable hole the entire time.

[Titanium Dragon]

I feel like we're talking past each other.

Here's what I'm saying:

Let's say we changed it from "You must succeed at this skill challenge within X many rounds of the table, otherwise you fail the challenge, and as you are all busy working on succeeding, you cannot use Aid Another - you already are assumed to be helping each other out to the degree you can".

There isn't really a difference between this and "You must succeed Y many times, before accruing Z many failures, and everyone must participate".

Now, in the latter case, people might feel more frustrated by the presence of the people who are failing than they would in the first case, despite the fact that if X * N - Z = Y (where N is the number of players) the two cases are actually exactly the same.

Now, this isn't to say that the former phrasing ISN'T better than the latter phrasing. But the latter phrasing will call off a skill challenge once the party has accrued a sufficient number of failures, and will save you time on rolling after you've already lost the challenge.

[Kaelik]

Actually it's the difference between leaving the Barbarian at the Tavern and hiring forty people to come with you.

[RandomCasualty2]

The whole aid another thing isn't even the worst part about skill challenges. That would be marginally acceptable if they had any redeeming qualities. But they don't.

There's just no real point to skill challenges beyond mindlessly tossing dice.

You pick the applicable skill with the best bonus and you roll it. Seriously that's the only strategy to it. It's not about roleplaying or tactics. A skill challenge is just a very simple algorithm where you run from best to worst of your skills and find whichever one your DM will let you use.

That's it. No roleplaying, no tactics... just roll a die.

[Starmaker]

Let's say we changed it from "You must succeed at this skill challenge within X many rounds of the table, otherwise you fail the challenge, and as you are all busy working on succeeding, you cannot use Aid Another - you already are assumed to be helping each other out to the degree you can".

There isn't really a difference between this and "You must succeed Y many times, before accruing Z many failures, and everyone must participate". emph. mine --SM

Yes there is. Like, a world of difference. Skill challenges as written suck all sorts of ass. Your fixed example actually encourages people to participate and doesn't punish failed rolls. (Also, it has been previously suggested as a means of making skill challenges less retarded.*) The fact that you don't see it suggests you don't understand basic math.

*Of course, it does nothing to reduce blandness or actually justify the existence of varied skills, prompting players to find a means to roll their highest skill instead. So you'd be seriously better off replacing skills with level, Black Forest style.

[Username17]

There's little difference between "Everyone must take a turn, you must achieve 12 successes before 3 failures" and "You must achieve 12 successes within 3 turns".

As Starmaker has pointed out, these two are completely different. So totally different from one another as to be wholly unrecognizable.

In one of them it is to your advantage to hit the uncouth wizard in the back of the head before you start talking so that he isn't forced to accumulate failures for the team. In the other you are not.

12 successes within 3 turns is a workable mechanic. It means that people who only succeed a small amount of the time are still rewarded for their participation. The worst thing they can add to the proceedings is nothing. So there is no reason to stab them in the throat before they open their mouth.

12 successes before 3 dice rolls that aren't successes is not a workable mechanic. It means that player participation is actively disincentivized. The winning move is to not play. And if that means sending the player out of the room or knocking their character unconscious A-Team style, so be it.

I am mildly disappointed in your pathetic offering. That you can't see that these wholly different cases are indeed distinct from one another as night is to day is contemptible. I hold you in contempt because you are either so bad at basic iterative probability that you can't see the difference between A and ~A or you're such a lying liar that you're actually trying to convince people that 2 + 2 == 5. Either way you're stupid and you should feel stupid.

-Username17

[Fuchs]

Maybe math scares him... let me put it like this:

In one case, the king challenges the party to serve him six drinks he enjoys until the evening. He'll drink as many as you make, and everyone can mix one. Even if he dislikes a drink he'll not hold it against you.

In the other case the king says you have to serve him four drinks he enjoys, but if he tastes just one he does not like you all go to the dungeon as the new prisoners.

Those situations are not the same, not by far. In one situation, all are encouraged to mix drinks, and try things out. In the other, the master bartender is doing the drinks, the rest better not attempt some amateur mixing.

[Thymos]

I think what he's trying to say is that if you break it down like this it looks the same.

12 rolls divided by 5 dudes is 2.4. 2 people have to go 3 times, 3 people have to go twice. This is where he get's the 3 rounds from.

Let's say that everyone has 3-5 skills they are all equally good at. Of the people participating it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect that 2 of them have related primary skills, so the others can use the "use a secondary skill once" thing to keep up for the 2 rounds the have to participate.

In this scenario no one is a liability.

I find there are two fairly large problems with this.

the 12 turns is a best case succeeding immediately, more likely there will be some failures and the failure point is 17 rolls. So 17 divided by 5 gives us 3.2, and everyone has to make 3 rolls except for the one guy who rolls 4 times. This means that if a single person starts failing those 3 without the applicable skills will probably start rolling their non contributor skills meaning that the group is more likely to fail some more, etc...

The other large problem is that this needs everyone's skills trained skills to be all not meaningfully different from each other. I don't really think this is likely either.

[Red_Rob]

There's just no real point to skill challenges beyond mindlessly tossing dice.

You pick the applicable skill with the best bonus and you roll it. Seriously that's the only strategy to it. It's not about roleplaying or tactics. A skill challenge is just a very simple algorithm where you run from best to worst of your skills and find whichever one your DM will let you use.

That's it. No roleplaying, no tactics... just roll a die.

This hits the nail on the head. Until this is fixed there is no point getting into the math, because if its not fun it literally doesn't matter if the math is fixed, it'll just be no fun because the premise is boring rather than no fun because the math is borked.

There needs to be strategy in skill challenges like there is in combat. Combat is fun because there are lots of options at any one time and each has positives and negatives. Skill challenges in their current form do not have this, just an excuse to roleplay and then roll a dice. If you're going to keep the current system you might as well just say Teaparty it.

[Fuchs]

I think skill challenges would have been better if they were just some examples how to present non-combat challenges that involve the whole party, encouraging the DM to focus on logical solutions to a problem and consequences for failed attempts, not "sucess/failure" ratios.

[Username17]

I think skill challenges would have been better if they were just some examples how to present non-combat challenges that involve the whole party, encouraging the DM to focus on logical solutions to a problem and consequences for failed attempts, not "sucess/failure" ratios.

That would be an example of something that shares absolutely nothing in common with skill challenges except (optionally) a name. Skill challenges don't provide anything. There's nothing to "fix", because there's no advantage to their inclusion in the first place. There is literally no salvageable concept in that entire piece of crap.

As RC pointed out, it's just die rolling. You roll a d20 14 times instead of only once, and yet for some reason your result is completely binary instead of allowing degrees of success or failure. You have the option of splitting the die rolls between players, but there is no presented incentive for you to do so.

Is it a good idea to present party wide challenges and then have every party member announce how they are going to contribute, have every party member roll dice, and then collectively achieve a result? Possibly. That does indeed sound like a good thing for some situations. But that has nothing whatever to do with 4e skill challenges. Nothing mechanically. And frankly nothing conceptually either. Mearles and Slavicsek failed their "do basic game design" test and their result was a total failure. At all levels. There is no quick fix because there's no part of it that's good. Making a good system would involve dumping everything and starting over with a new set of design goals.

Even if you fix the structure so that people participate, the structure is still devoid of meaningful choices. Even if you put in resource management, character synergy, and RPS matchups to add strategically meaningful choices, the system is still boring and binary. Even if you speed it up three-fold and put in a mechanic to allow for some sort degrees of success, the math is still so fucked up that the results are never in doubt no matter which of the many versions of the system you are attempting to use (they pendulum from "always fail" to "always succeed"). Because Slavicsek and Mearles cannot write anything compelling or mathematically stable. Every plank in that platform, every single one, is either termite infested or illusory.

If you make a mechanic to handle non-combat cooperative interaction, there is no reason to even call it a "Skill Challenge." You'd just be associating your creation with abject failure.

-Username17

[RiotGearEpsilon]

Tell us how you REALLY feel, Frank!

[Titanium Dragon]

Maybe math scares him... let me put it like this:

In one case, the king challenges the party to serve him six drinks he enjoys until the evening. He'll drink as many as you make, and everyone can mix one. Even if he dislikes a drink he'll not hold it against you.

In the other case the king says you have to serve him four drinks he enjoys, but if he tastes just one he does not like you all go to the dungeon as the new prisoners.

Those situations are not the same, not by far. In one situation, all are encouraged to mix drinks, and try things out. In the other, the master bartender is doing the drinks, the rest better not attempt some amateur mixing.

I screwed up a little in my phrasing, because as previously worded, one will require fewer failures than the other.

Let's take the two reworded situations so that they are identical.

"Everyone must take a turn, you must achieve 12 successes before 4 failures."

"You must achieve 12 successes within 3 turns."

So let's look at these situations.

In case 1, everyone MUST take a turn. This is essential. Without this condition, they are not the same, obviously. Assume that if someone sits out a challenge, their contribution is an automatic failure every round.

With this condition, they are identical (well, extremely similar). Here's why:

You will take no more than 15 turns, or 3 rounds times 5 players, to complete the challenge. In the first case, this is because either you will achieve 4 failures (maximum 11 successes + 4 failures = 15 checks) or 12 successes (maximum 12 successes + 3 failures = 15 checks). In the second case, you make 15 checks no matter what (3 rounds x 5 characters = 15 checks).

Thing is, the first is more efficient. In the first case, you will take between 4 and 15 rolls to determine success or failure, whereas in the second case you will always roll 15 times, even though after the first 4 rolls the outcome is determined - if you fail four rolls, in either case, you will fail, even though it isn't explicitly stated in the second.

This is not to say the second doesn't feel better, but in reality, if you failed the fourth roll, you failed the fourth roll, and people will quickly figure this out and simply cut it off at that point.

Is it a good idea to present party wide challenges and then have every party member announce how they are going to contribute, have every party member roll dice, and then collectively achieve a result? Possibly. That does indeed sound like a good thing for some situations. But that has nothing whatever to do with 4e skill challenges. Nothing mechanically. And frankly nothing conceptually either. Mearles and Slavicsek failed their "do basic game design" test and their result was a total failure. At all levels. There is no quick fix because there's no part of it that's good. Making a good system would involve dumping everything and starting over with a new set of design goals.

That was their design goal. Saying that because they didn't achieve the design goal means that it wasn't their design goal, however, is wrong.