Comments on: Reusing Skills in Skill Challenges

By: Forget Training Skills; Let’s Go Back to a Skill Point System — Dungeon's Master

Forget Training Skills; Let’s Go Back to a Skill Point System — Dungeon's Master — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:32:17 +0000

[...] Reusing Skills in Skill Challenges [...]

By: How to not split the party « Mike's D&D Blog

How to not split the party « Mike's D&D Blog — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:08:59 +0000

[...] because it’s silly for everyone to do the talking. Dungeon’s Master did a great job describing this problem earlier this [...]

By: Zamrod

Zamrod — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:06:18 +0000

It’s not a great idea to allow Aid Another in a skill challenge. The rules don’t specifically prohibit it, but the people at WOTC have said in some of their articles that the DCs listed in the book are assuming no one is allowed to Aid Another. This is the reason the errata’d numbers are so low. This allows someone who in untrained in a skill to have a reasonable chance of succeeding without any Aides.

Unfortunately, the Skill Challenge system kind of requires constant adjusting on the fly. It works much better in home games than it does in something like Living Forgotten Realms. A recently Skill Challenge article in Dungeon was discussing the problem of specialists, where one guy can succeed in a certain skill without even rolling. They suggested specifically avoiding using that skill in your skill challenges, limiting that skill to one use, and purposefully putting in a new “extremely hard” DC just for that character and giving out XP in exchange for passing it.

It’s the one part of the rules that needs the most fixing.

By: Ameron

Ameron — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:19:52 +0000

@Mike Katz
You and definitely on the same wavelength here. I agree with everything you said.

I think you’d hate playing at my FLGS. The DMs have little control over the game table and people are always rolling whenever they feel like it during skill challenges. Usually we’re so pressed for time the DM doesn’t even ask for an explanation of what the PC does. Three guys yell out “I make a Diplomacy check” and roll. If they roll high then we’ve earned three successes. It’s this kind of free-for-all that turns people off of skill challenges.

I think your exception of when multiple checks are acceptable is bang on. During combat situations some checks just need to be fast and dirty (like Thievery).

By: Mike Katz

Mike Katz — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:43:18 +0000

I’ve always played under the assumption that each “success” has to be unique. That is two characters can use diplomacy but they should imploring different NPCs, or they should at least be two separate conversations, where the second PC comes with new information, or the situation has otherwise changed. It doesn’t make sense to do the same thing twice. Let’s say instead of diplomacy the check was a Nature roll to calm a wild animal. Once the animal is calmed, it doesn’t make sense to recalm it.

In the diplomacy situation, it makes more sense for the second PC to instead “aid another” and grant a +2 to the first’s check. Instead of making the pleading speech, he pipes up with an additional argument or evidence.

If the second player is having trouble coming up with something to say on the spot or has duplicate skills, that is a different problem.

One exception would be an in-combat situation, where a trap might need three sucessful Arcana checks to be disabled. Then you could have multiple players all do separate arcana checks to count for successes, but I bet that might already be written into the challenge.
.-= Mike Katz´s last blog ..Reputation as a matter of system =-.