Vhoroth grabs his small friend and heaves her up onto a low hanging balcony so that she can gain ground on their prey out away from the crowded street. Nix jumps to the next balcony and manages to barely catch the edge of the railing - all the while attempting to keeping the thief in her sights. She hauls herself onto the platform, and immediately dashes across it and flings herself into the air again desperately trying to gain ground on the coward. This jump is much farther than the last one, and requires all her concentration to land correctly, when she looks up and scans the rooftops for her prey he is nowhere to be found. Then from the ground, she hears her companion Osric shout, "There! Two buildings down! He went into the window with the green curtains!" With a quick glance at her companions on the ground, pushing their way through the mid-day crowds, Nix sees where he is pointing and sets off to catch this vagabond and return their rightfully earned treasure.
-- Part of a skill challenge consisting of one athletics check, one acrobatics check, and one group perception check.
Okay, so as we all know there are some issues as far as the Skill Challenge system is concerned, otherwise there wouldn't be about 8 million blog posts out there on how each individual DM runs skill challenges. Well, I'm gonna add my drop to that bucket.
The way I approach a skill challenge is that they should have elements of combat, but in the end not at all feel like combat, otherwise your players will naturally gravitate toward wanting to use combat rules. Of course this is not a new way of thinking about skill challenges, but I think that that distinction is very important to make right here at the beginning of the article. In fact, to me combat is a slow methodical process of analysis and logical/tactical thinking. In contrast, skill challenges should be high action, high intensity in character actions and reactions. Now that doesn't mean that each skill challenge needs to be all explosion and chase sequences, but they should have an edge of intensity to them.
Moving on from that, I think it best to detail how I go about achieving this goal is to detail our actual play process.
First, I announce that we are entering a skill challenge. There are many DM's that would disagree with this - and I get where they are coming from. I myself dont actually say "We are entering a skill challenge" every time the PC's enter a skill challenge, but the times that I dont specifically say it are usually the times that the PC's have decided to do something on the fly and I have to come up with a quick complexity 1 skill challenge to accommodate. I think that announcing the skill challenge puts the players into "game mode" -- I'll post more about game mode in a while -- but basically this means that the players go to the same place they go in their head when combat is joined. Suddenly, they know that that wrong move or the wrong roll may cost them something.
Next, I actually have all participating players roll for initiative. This was a bit tough to decide on, but in the end having an initiative count really helps both solidify "game mode" and also stops one or two characters from dominating the scene.
Also, it is important to note that I said "all participating players." A "participating player" is anyone who is both present at the game table with a character present in the scene. Talking to the duke? Sorry not even Trogdoth, the socially inept Barbarian gets to sit this one out. If Trogdoth doesn't want to actively speak for the party, he still has to appear to be both interested, and to fit with what the party IS saying to the duke. So when his turn comes up and his player says "I do nothing" I may call for an insight check so that he can keep his mind on the long winded debate, or perhaps an intimidate check - roll low for success we are not trying to scare the duke... yet. Basically, Trogdoth's simply being in the room will have an impact on the situation as it unfolds. Everyone makes a check, in this way those that are good at this sort of thing can really shine and those that are not get to feel some of their characters flaws.
So, now that we know everyone is doing something how do we know what to roll? When planning the session I lay out 3-4 skills that are the primary skills. Continuing the example above with Trogdoth, the primary skills would be Arcana, History, and one other knowledge skill such as Nature. Wait? What? Not Diplomacy? Thats right. I hate funneling the PC's negotiation skills into the one skill I think would work. Does that mean the Diplomacy is not a useful skill? Actually no. It could still be the one skill that is required to complete this skill challenge, I detail this skill challenge a bit more below so see that for more info on what I mean. Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Bluff go into my secondary skills section for this one. Basically, primary skills to me are the skills that will always garner a success, no matter the situation. So in this situation seeming knowledgeable in your argument will always be a viable way to get you a success, but you may have to pick the proper time to try the considerably harder persuasive skills. Without completely detailing this skill challenge, I would say simply that primary skills will always work, and secondary skills will usually work but with some pretty heavy restrictions or additional rules attached. All other skills become viable options after getting my primary and secondary skills together. In my "Other skills" section of the planning I put down how any other skill, in general, will interact with the skill challenge, usually the count as a fractional success - say 1/3 of a success so it takes a whole lot longer to use them to succeed the challenge, and usually they count as a full failure to discourage using them too often. Or they will add a +2 or -2 to another type of roll. For instance, while Athletics could be used to subtly flex your muscles in a negotiation while your friends use intimidate (a +2, or perhaps every three successes gains one full success) just standing around a flexing wont get you anywhere very fast.
So during play on their initiative count I will ask each player what his character does - they need to explain it narratively to me. I do not accept "I use bluff to convince the guard to let us pass." Instead I ask for "I approach the guard and tell him we are the traveling entertainers that the lord requested." This not only helps the players to know how the story is unfolding but it also helps me adjust the DC's of the skill checks to suit the situation. After the players have described what they are going to do, I assign it a skill check. In this way, the players get the free range of motion instead of being constricted to just the 3-4 skills that "will work" in the challenge. Also, during this step I may give advise on things around the characters that they can interact with. Or as a rule, I let my players know that during these sequences they are fully allowed to add things to the surrounding atmosphere. If they are in a marketplace, they can decide that they are standing next to a chicken vendor and use that as part of the scene, as long as they dont create something that would totally compromise the scene in play (Creating a chicken stand in a marketplace is one thing, saying that a huge black hole to the Abyss opens up in the middle of that same marketplace is quite another).
Then after the check is made, I cross reference it with my list of primary and secondary skills. If the check is one of those skills (and fit the requirements for that skill to be used in the case of secondary skills) and it matched or exceeded the DC for that skill, I mark down a success for the skill. Otherwise, I follow the failure condition for that skill - usually accumulating a failure for the challenge.
Then after the check is made, I revise the characters description to fit with the rolled total. So lets say that the player from above had rolled a 1 on their bluff roll and missed the DC by quite a bit. I would revise the action as "Your character approaches the guard and attempts to pass your heavily armored crew of battle scarred veterans off as an entertainment group being expected by the local lord. The guard looks you all over, and responds skeptically, 'You guys are the Elven Troupe of Happy Sunshine Entertainment?'" Then I would leave that action unresolved and ask the next player what they are doing. If all the other players happen to say "I try to look more like an entertainer" then after all their rolls it comes back around to the original player and only a second of narrative time has passed before they try their next plan of social attack.
In this way, a skill challenge becomes more of a situation where the players are feeding me a string of descriptions along with a check result and I spit back the full narrative of the unfolding challenge. I try to make my re-rendering of the scene as interesting and flavorful as possible so that the scene can be painted in the characters minds. They may not realize that the check they just did gained them a success - but my descriptions should show it.
The players know when they have succeeded or failed on a challenge when I continue to describe the situation and stop asking for initiative order. I do not tell them if they succeeded or failed - they will have to decide that for themselves in the upcoming scenes, but usually they know how they faired...
One last thing I do for skill challenges is to have "group checks" at the end of the round. This is a specific skill that is central to the challenge. So for instance, a long overland hike would use Endurance as its group check. Usually, this check is a group effort - if more than half the players succeed something good happens (a success toward the challenge or an overall bonus next round) or on the other side, a more than half failure will result in something bad (rarely a failure on the challenge, mostly its loss of a healing surge or actual hp damage - which equates to a healing surge loss in the end but feels more deadly). These group checks both reinforce the idea of a group challenge, and allow the challenges as I have them set up to require a certain type of check each round to fill out the flavor without eating up a characters turn to get that check done. Most of the time these are more passive type of checks - Endurance, Insight, and sometimes even Stealth can fall into that category.
That is a basic outline of how I run skill challenges and some of the back end stuff I do to make sure it functions properly. I will leave off with a quick example of how my notes turn out on these skill challenges, and I'm gonna exclude the DC's. Next time I'll try to talk a bit more about how all this comes together to make an interesting and exciting skill challenge!
Example Skill Challenge: Negotiations with the Duke
Complexity 2 [6 successes before 3 failures]
Overall rules: The players are attempting to persuade the local duke into hiring them as the foremost defense for his town. To do so they must show not only that they are powerful combatants, but also that they are knowledgeable in the art of war and in the defense of a city. To do this they must gain at least 3 of their successes from a primary skill and at least 2 successes from the secondary skills. The players as a group must make an Insight check to watch each others actions carefully and react accordingly and to gauge the reactions of the Duke.
Primary skills:
- History [DC ___]
- Arcana [DC ___]
- Dungeoneering [DC ___]
Secondary Skills:
- Intimidate [DC ___] : Once this skill is used the DC's for the other secondary skills increases by 4.
- Diplomacy [DC ___]
- Bluff [DC ___] : This skill may garner only one success for the skill challenge. After that its DC increases by 2 and can be used to mitigate a failure, or to aid another primary or secondary skill.
Other Skills:
- DC ___
- All other skills can be used (creatively) to aid in a primary or secondary skill. Or if they are really creative, to gain a single success to the challenge.
Group Skill:- Insight [DC ___] : A group failure here results in all DC increasing by 2 until two more successes are gained. Additional failures are cumulative. A group success will gain 1/2 a success toward the skill challenge. (this way the skill challenge will speed up a little if all the characters are "working together" well)
