Swordslinger wrote:
But what's the point of the mechanic anyway? Is it really so important that we need to be having everyone roll to activate the golem or load up a ship for supplies? There's no real thought to it, so why not just make it a single skill check if that. Why would you even want to encourage a bunch of tedious dice rolling?
Well, what originally attracted me to the idea of skill challenges was the idea of getting a bunch of people to perform a single task with disparate actions rather than a bunch of people standing in line going 'I Diplomacy It!'
In order to do this, you need to do several things at once:
[*] The skill challenge cannot be reducible to a single skill check. I for example can come up with a way with 'convince the king's court to declare war on the orcs' so that it's not reducible to a skill check but a lot of people can't.
[*] You still need to be time-limited in some fashion. Obviously an arbitrary time limit like 'you have one week to find the temple of doom' is stupid, but 'you have one week to track the Thieves' Guild HQ before they cover their tracks and leave the city'.
[*] You simply have to be prepared to sometimes reduce or increase the time usage for skills. Otherwise the time limits for skill challenges will be too stringent to have a satisfying story and/or there's no real risk of failure because people just spam 'quick' skills and ignore the faster ones. Yes, this also means that if someone is going to take the action of 'try to clear the path of rubble using Athletics' you have to declare that it will take half a day to do so even though it would be faster to do so in discrete time units. Again, you need to make heavy use of Schrodinger's gun to prevent players from losing their WSoD.
[*]
DCs must be objective and not tied to the difficulty of the skill challenge! I cannot stress this enough. If you don't do then then everyone is just going to pick their highest skill and spam it. Even if you implement some kind of anti-spam measure, it'll just reduce to Five Moves of Doom.
[*] You have to be prepared to award successes for knot-cutting. If the skill challenge is 'find the jungle temple' and the Druid Casts a Speak With Plants spell, even though they didn't roll anything you as the DM must be prepared to award the druid a finite number of successes or even declare that the skill challenge is over, the druid 'won'.
[*] You still need some kind of anti-spam measure. Anti-spam measures between individuals (only one person gets to roll diplomacy for this skill challenge) is more vital than individual anti-spam measures (you only get to successfully use diplomacy one and you only have three attempts regardless) but ideally you want both.
[*] If you're going to punish failures, you should only punish spectacular failures. Either they're doing something really high-risk/high-reward or they do something rat-flailing stupid like punching the king in the balls during a diplomatic negotiation. Garden-variety 'failed a skill check' outcomes should not count as a failure unless, again, they were going for a high-risk/high-reward kind of deal.
[*] You have to be prepared to let people fail the skill challenge. By a huge margin if necessary. This means you can't structure skill challenges that will end the game if the party fails unless it's at the climax of the campaign. But skill most skill challenges have less-than-lethal results you have more room for error.
[*] Because the whole idea of a skill challenge is to award creativity, you have to err on the side of the player when deciding to reward someone for something. Unless a proposal is patently ridiculous (I use Pick Pockets on the River!) it should be allowed. Meaning that a History Check to see if someone can judge when the tide of the river is the lowest, a Disable Device check to see if it can be dammed with little effort, and a Speak With Dead ritual + Diplomacy check to see if the river spirits will let them cross should be allowed even if they're dodgy or require excessive use of Schrodinger's Gun.
[*] There's no way to formally code this, but less experienced or less creative players should go first. That way they don't have to strain their creative banks as hard to do something.
So for a quick example as to how this will go, say you initiate a skill challenge of 'Convince the Elf King to aid his Dwarven Allies' for your four-person group. I would only use this skill challenge on a moderately creative group, otherwise they'll just end up flailing after they do the obvious options. It'd go something like this:
[*] You declare that they have one week to successfully complete the skill challenge otherwise the Elven King, regardless of his individual stance on things. They must get X many successes and must not get more than X-many failures. Each person can only try one skill a day.
[*] The paladin, who is played by a new player, declares that she will use Diplomacy on the king. The DM announces that this is not an available option as-is because the king doesn't want to talk to anyone. She kind of hems and haws when it's her 'turn' and passes. The DM agrees to this but says that when everyone has taken their first action if she doesn't come up with anything then she'll 'lose' days until she can come up with something.
[*] The party rogue asks the DM if he or someone else can make a Gather Information check to see who in the king's court opposes the war. The DM says that a successful check will give him the information and doesn't take up enough time to take all of his focus but on a failure a retry can only be made once a day. The paladin has a higher GI check than the rogue so asks if she can do it for him during the time periods in which she's studying peoples' habits. The DM allows this and finds out that the court magician is the most vocal opponent of aiding the dwarves. The rogue then asks if he can use the Forgery and Stealth skills to plant some forged evidence on the court magician that he's on the orc payroll. The other party members object to this 'evil' action but he manages to convince them to let him do this anyway. The DM says that it will take three days to make the Forgery (which the DM will roll in secret) and one day per attempt to try to sneak the forged evidence into the appropriate spot. Because this is a high-risk, high-reward plan the DM says that he will award 12 successes if he succeeds. But if he fails the stealth roll too badly or if the Forgery check at all the skill challenge will automatically end and fail there. The rogue hrms and decides that he will make the Forgery check but will hold off on the Stealth check.
[*] The druid says that he's going to rabble rouse in the treetops to get support for the war. The DM tells him that it'll take four days to rabble rouse enough to see if the elven populace will go for the war and will get four successes + overflow if he succeeds. The druid agrees to this but fails the roll. When the DM comes back to the druid, the druid wonders if he can search the libraries to find out about the history between dwarves and elves and come up with a way to heal the bad blood between the factions. The DM says that this History check will take one day but will add a success + partial overflow is someone makes a successful diplomacy check in the future.
[*] The paladin gets a brainsight is all 'hey, if I convince someone to let me talk to the king first can I combo off of the druid's check?' The DM is all 'sure, if you can find them'. The artificer suggests a Gather Information check to determine which members of the court talk to the king and where they can be Diplomacy-ambushed to convince them to take her to the king. The DM says that it will take one day for the Gather Information and Diplomacy check each just to get someone to take her to the king and an additional day to talk to the king if she can get someone. If she manages to convince the king he will award four successes + overflow, plus the druid's result. But because the king is so crucial to the declaration of this war that not succeeding on his Diplomacy check will count as a failure. If she has time left after that then she can decide on a new course of action. She fails the first Gather Information Roll to find whom the king talks to and where they hang out on (one day), succeeds on the second GI attempt to find someone (two days and it's the court jester) but fails the diplomacy check badly (three days). In fact she fails it so badly that an additional diplomacy check comes at a huge penalty. She decides that she'd be better off finding someone else so makes another GI check and succeeds on that one and locates one of the king's cousins at a tavern (four days). The diplomacy check to convince the noble to take her for an emergency audience with the king successful (five days). The follow-up check with the king, which takes two days, is successful so the DM awards her and the druid with nine successes.
[*] The wizard says that he's going to buy stock in the elven smithies and craftshops and use his newfound business power and individual crafting skill to modernize the forces and lean on the king to declare war. The DM says that doing this task will take the entire seven days and will cost him a pretty penny to just buy the stock. Afterwords he can just make a bureaucracy roll against a set DC to see how many successes he gets. The DM tells him that if he succeeds, he'll get five successes + any overflow. The artificer asks if he can do a separate bureaucracy roll to reduce the cost of his business dealings and is assigned a penalty due to how fast he most move. He fails the roll and has to pay the full price. But the follow-up Bureucracy Roll succeeds and he's awarded seven successes.
[*] After passing for a day, it's the rogue's turn again. The party has enough successes so that the Elves will loan the dwarves money and supplies but will not outright pledge military aid. The rogue wants the elven king to go further than that, so initiates his initial. plan. He announces that he will try to sneak the evidence as originally intended. The first Stealth roll fails but doesn't fail by enough to be discovered. He just can't break into the appropriate wardrobe to sneak the forged evidence onto the court magician on the first attempt (five days).
The second Stealth roll succeeds however. Then the DM reveals that because a natural one was rolled for the Forgery, it gets easily seen through. The court is in an uproar over this and to save face the king immediately withdraws all support. The party has failed.
