Skill challenges are mysterious business. While D&D 4th edition gives us the most refined combat system in over thirty years, the skill challenge system clearly has room for improvement. Unlike the combat system, skill challenges leave many dungeon master’s scratching their heads.
Numerous articles, posts, and podcasts have discussed skill challenges in detail. Today, we will look at four quick tips for making your skill challenges better at your table. Many of these tips were discussed between Jeff Greiner and myself on The Tome Show episode 105.
And now, the tips:
Keep Skill Challenges Short
Like most creative works, skill challenges often work best when they’re short and to the point. In a recent D&D Podcast, lead designer Mike Mearls said that multiple tiers of 3/3 challenges work better than one large 12/3 challenge. Keeping the number of steps short and stacking a few challenges together moves the story along better than a single large challenge.
Keeping the plot of the challenge simple and direct will also help your players understand their own goals.
Keep Challenges Specific
The more specific and direct your challenge is, the better your players will understand it. Instead of having one large skill challenge for traveling across a barren wasteland, break it up into some specific challenges like crossing a deep gorge, avoiding a cloud of man-eating flies, and tracking the Man in Black. In the description of your challenge, explain the important parts in detail. Make it clear what your players are able to do with this challenge. Are there knobs and levers or arcane sigils? Give your players clues for what they might be able to do.
Make Rewards and Penalties Known
Skill challenges can quickly become boring if players don’t know what they are going to gain. If they know that failing a trap will make a fine treasure inaccessible, they will work harder to do it right. After describing the challenge, describe what the party might lose or gain should they succeed or fail. Give them a reason to accomplish the challenge.
One note – leading into combat on a failed challenge is a poor penalty. In many cases, your players would like more combat, not less, and it will further reduce the time you spend on the encounters you planned.
Reinforce Storytelling
First off, don’t tell your group it’s a skill challenge. The best challenges are undetectable by your players as a skill challenge, they are just an interactive part of the story. Embedding them into roleplay scenes or combat can hide the mechanics and give players a richer and more interactive world. Second, describe what players are able to do in story, not in mechanics. Don’t tell them a strength check can open the door. Tell them a good swift kick or bash might break it down. Have your players do the same. Don’t let them get away with saying “I roll a 22 strength check”. Correct them by saying “what exactly did you do?”. They’ll get the point.
No doubt in months to come we will see further improvements and refinements to this new system. In the mean time, however, these quick tips might help bring the mechanics of skill challenges into a living part of your campaign.
Thanks for the tips, now let the bashing of skill challenges begin!
Well, hopefully not, but I know there’s a lot of hate for them. I’ve had mostly good experiences with them. I find that the most important part of the guidelines in the DMG is that defeat should be as interesting as victory. It’s tricky, but it can negate the problem of the “swinginess” of skill challenges. If you pick the wrong combo of level, complexity, and skills, and they’re going to automatically win or automatically lose, well, describe the results of the skill rolls and carry on with the story, which should have just taken an interesting turn.
There won’t be any bashing here – I have the power to prevent that. However, I think it is accurate to say that skill challenges aren’t yet nearly as well defined as other aspects of the game. My hope is that we can get together and turn them into a useful and fun aspect of our game. The potential is there. I’m guessing Wizards themselves will address a lot of it in the DMG2.
Good Tips.
I think skill challenges get a lot of hate because they’re new and different. It didn’t help much that the rules as presented in the DMG were flawed to the point where they were nearly useless. The tips you give here go a long way to making skill challenges playable and fun.
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about making rewards and penalties known at the outset of a skill challenge. Part of me feels like those elements should develop organically during play. Sometimes rewards and penalties are obvious – last session our group had to go through a skill challenge to prepare a fort before an orc army got there. We knew that if we failed the challenge, the fort wasn’t going to be secure.
Thanks for the tips. I have also listened to the tome show in which skill challenges were discussed. I have ran into one of them in the Icy Spire adventure. This is the only one I had ran. It felt rather awkward and clunky. I will have to read that chapter again, but do you feel that they are being forced, or genuinely allow more fun in the game?
They’re forced only if you force them. I suppose RPGA judges could be forced but any of the rest of us can do whatever we want with them. If you know the group, you can tailor a challenge to fit their playstyle. Feel free to experiment and make them in a way that fits your group the best. Remember the key rule: fun.
This is gonna seem like a major noob question, but: How specific should a DM be regarding which skills are going to be used in a challenge? I’ve tried just listing them off at the beginning, I’ve tried being totally vague… I’m sure there’s a simple answer to this, I’ll just be damned if I can discover it.
That’s another good question. I think it can depend. I try to come up with some flashy storytelling way to signify the skills:
Those light of feet might avoid the beams of energy. Those strong of arm might succeed in crushing the gem from which the beams fire. Perhaps one knowledgeable in the arcane magics might decipher the powers held within.
I’m not clear about how you make the rewards and penalties known when you are trying to take the storytelling approach. In the last tip, you suggest just wrapping the skill challenge into the story. Can you clarify how you would do that and still include the mechanics and make the penalties/rewards known?
I think the challenge in creating workable skill challenges lies in the reward/penalty to the PCs in either case of success or failure. It’s been stated in other places, but you can’t block the story if PC’s accrue failure, but a penalty must be given. For example, in my latest campaign, the PCs were in a skill challenge while trying to descend a cliff and their number of successes determined where they started on the map in the following encounter. Total success put them at the cliff bottom, but failures put them higher up and they’d have to climb down while a manticore took cheap shots at them.
Another idea would be not to think of the outcome as failure/success, but success/even greater success. In other words, don’t penalize players for failing skill challenges, just proceed with the game as intended, but give them a bonus they wouldn’t have had otherwise – maybe an NPC helps out with the next fight, or permanent bonuses to knowledge checks in a certain town or part of town.
Okay I’m a bit confused.
“Make Rewards and Penalties Known
Skill challenges can quickly become boring if players don’t know what they are going to gain. ”
…
“First off, don’t tell your group it’s a skill challenge.”
Those two things seem pretty much opposites. How can you explain it’s a challenge w/rewards/penalties w/o telling them it’s a skill challenge.
Not that hard. “He’s getting away with the jewels. If you can’t catch him before he goes to ground he’ll be much harder to catch later and your reputation as troubleshooters is going to take a major hit.”
“Is this a skill challenge?”
“A what now? He’s getting away. What are you doing about it?”