A Brand New Nail-Biter: Skill Challenges

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?