A Brand New Nail-Biter: Skill Challenge
Holy crap. Skill challenges.
I encountered my first one in our last 4th Edition game session, and I wish I would’ve brought a change of underpants. The system is absolutely awesome, one of the most welcome rules-additions in my opinion.
I play dwarven twins in game, a male dwarf paladin, and a female dwarf cleric. We walk into the room, and there’s a giant cage with a dire boar inside, arrows sticking out of its belly, and a pack of hyenas cackling and circling the cage. There were no people with bows in the room though, strangely enough.
My male dwarf normally gets decent initiative; however, my female is cursed to having initative rolls of less than 10. So my dwarf waded into combat with the hideous dogs and I thought to myself, ‘I wonder if we could improve the attitude of that boar and have it help us out…we don’t have Handle Animal anymore…but hell, maybe the DM will think of something suitable’.
So my turn came around, and I explain to the DM that I want to undergo a skill challenge to improve the attitude of the boar, and what do you know, the skill challenge “Taming The Beast” was listed in the rules for the adventure. Sweet.
This was turning out to be no easy task though. 4 successes before 2 failures? This thing was just built for failure. Fortunately for me though, I was allowed to use the better of my Heal or Nature checks. Asking a cleric to make a Heal check is like asking a clown to make a balloon giraffe, so I was pretty excited. Much to my chagrin, my clerics +11 Heal modifier does very little when you roll a 2 on a d20. One failure already. Not good.
The next two rounds, a 15 and 16 consecutively, making 26 and 27 Heal checks, and successful ones at that. The next turn, two have a bit of a safety net, her brother, the paladin, came over and aided her on her checks, giving her a +2. She made the next check with a roll of 10, and spent an action point for her last skill check, rolling a 10 once again. The boar was calm, and finallly, so was I.
I was definitely put more on the edge of my seat by this skill challenge than I have in combat thus far in the adventure. What are some of your experiences with skill challenges? And what are your opinions on them?
[...] A Brand New Nail-Biter: Skill Challenge « Dice Monkey [...]
A lot of people seem to hate them. I’ve found in my experience that they tend to actually take away from the experience. The game gets a little more caught up in rolling than it does in role’ing. The characters have a tendency to focus on the numbers they’re rolling and forget to roleplay what’s going on in the actual game.
I have had a DM that was able to stop everyone after each attempt to play out the results of the rolls and in that case it was actually kind of cool, but most of the DM’s that I’ve played with that chose to use it ended in failure.
I haven’t brought them into my own games yet, but I probably will here before too long if I can find one that really fits in with the current storyline.
Harsh criticism of yours truly aside, I think everyone should take a look at the article that quotes me above. It projects a view that is a striking polar opposite to mine, and though I strongly disagree with most of the points he makes, it is still a well-written post that readers may agree with.
I like them. For one thing, it beats DC inflation. Rather than have one roll of DC40 to try and beat an impossible trap, you can have a DC 20 trap and write a skill challenge. Besides, it allows for multiple aid anothers, to get the group involved. And it increases tension as you mention in your article.
As for putting roll ahead of role, I agree, but not more so than “We try to tame the boar, I roll a 16 on my Handle Animal check.” single roll determination. I like to have the person using the skill describing to me how they’re trying to accomplish the task, and if the description is good, I’ll give a +2 bonus or perhaps knock off a success requirement.