Skill challenges are a great addition to Dungeons & Dragons.\u00a0 They take those non-combat obstacles that players face and turn them into legitimate encounters with clear criteria and consequences for success and failure.\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps more importantly for the players they also provide\u00a0experience point rewards for overcoming the challenges.<\/p>\n
However, I have found that when I’m DMing the structure presented in the DMG for skill challenges doesn’t always make a lot of sense for the encounter I’m presenting the players.\u00a0 Sometimes I present a challenge that requires a single skill check – one success or failure right there and the challenge is over – like climbing over a wall or jumping a chasm.\u00a0 Other times the skill challenges I present have a clear chain of skill checks that need to be performed in the correct order, and the traditional skill challenge structure doesn’t make sense for those challenges.\u00a0 For example, if the players fail their Perception skill check to notice the scrap of parchment in the top branches of a tree, there’s no reason for them to make Athletics checks to climb up there.\u00a0 Some puzzles and trap skill challenges\u00a0benefit from this structure as well.<\/p>\n
Because of these structural differences in how skill challenges can be played, I came up with two new structures for skill challenges that I run: minion skill challenges<\/strong> and chain skill challenges<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Minion Skill Challenges<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Structure<\/strong><\/p>\n As mentioned above, some skill challenges are a simple yes or no, success of failure on one skill check.\u00a0 Can the party sneak past the napping guard dog?\u00a0 Can they bribe the watchman?\u00a0 Can they swing on the rope across the chasm?\u00a0 One skill check is all it takes, and if they succeed, they pass the challenge and move on to the next one.\u00a0 If they fail, there are consequences.\u00a0 The watchman rejects their bribe and shouts the alarm.\u00a0 The guard dog wakes up and begins barking.\u00a0 They lose their grip on the rope and plunge into the chasm.<\/p>\n The minion skill challenge is also useful when playing in a more free-form fashion.\u00a0 The players may be at court on a diplomatic mission, trying to win over allies to their side.\u00a0 I may be presenting the players with NPCs that they meet, but I don’t have any specific goals in mind for most of them.\u00a0 But I know that they players are going to find some hook about some NPCs interesting and try to win them over as allies, or stymie their plans if they become enemies.\u00a0 So I let them make skill checks as they want, treating each as a minion skill challenge: if they succeed they impress the NPC, if they fail they make a bad impression and likely an enemy.\u00a0 The minion skill challenge structure lets me DM this scene in a nice free-form fashion, awarding XP for success and consequences for failure as I go.<\/p>\n As mentioned in the DMG, every skill check does not qualify as a minion skill challenge.\u00a0 Only when there are consequences for failure should a skill check be considered a minion skill challenge.<\/p>\n Skill challenge DCs for minion skill challenges should be set by level, using the DCs by level chart in the DMG.<\/p>\n Experience<\/strong><\/p>\n For each successful minion skill challenge, award experience points for a minion of the level used to set\u00a0the skill challenge’s DC.<\/p>\n Chain Skill Challenges<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Structure<\/strong><\/p>\n Chain skill challenges are designed for situations where skills have to be used in a certain order in order to successfully complete the whole challenge.\u00a0 Often, these skill challenges might be part of overcoming a trap or a hazard.<\/p>\n An example of this might be a magically protected, hidden wall safe.\u00a0 Step one of the skill challenge would be a Perception skill check to determine if any of the party members notices the hidden safe.\u00a0 If no one makes that check the challenge can’t proceed and ends.\u00a0 If someone notices the safe, they then must overcome the magical ward protecting it.\u00a0 This might be an arcana check to disable the Glyph of Warding, or a Strength or Thievery check to bypass the Arcane Lock placed on the safe.\u00a0 If they can open the safe they get experience and whatever valuables are in the safe.\u00a0 If not they might get blasted, or else are just unable to open the safe.\u00a0 If they spend a lot of time retrying their Thievery checks, a monster is likely to come to investigate the noise.\u00a0 Either way the skill challenge fails and there are consequences.<\/p>\n Skill challenge DCs for chain skill challenges should be set by level, using the DCs by level chart in the DMG.<\/p>\n Experience<\/strong><\/p>\n To award experience points for a chain skill challenge, count up the total number of successful skill checks needed to complete the challenge and compare them to the following chart:<\/p>\n Complexity Successes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 XP Award XP for successfully completed chain skill challenges by handing out XP for a number of monsters of the skill challenge’s level equal to the complexity of the challenge. For example, if a 10th level chain skill challange requires 7 sucessful skill checks to complete, award 1000 XP for the challange upon success.<\/p>\n If the chain skill challenge requires less than 4 successes, award experience for a number of minion monsters equal to the number of successes\u00a0required.<\/p>\n Other Thoughts on Running Skill Challanges<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n For more on different ways to handle skill challanges in your game, check out this post<\/a> at At-Will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Skill challenges are a great addition to Dungeons & Dragons.\u00a0 They take those non-combat obstacles that players face and turn them into legitimate encounters with clear criteria and consequences for success and failure.\u00a0\u00a0Perhaps more importantly for the players they also provide\u00a0experience point rewards for overcoming the challenges. However, I have found that when I’m DMing the structure presented in the DMG for skill challenges doesn’t always make a lot of sense for the encounter I’m presenting the players.\u00a0 Sometimes I present a challenge that requires a single skill check – one success or failure right there and the challenge is over – like climbing over a wall or jumping a chasm.\u00a0 Other times the skill challenges I present have a clear chain of skill checks that need to be performed in the correct order, and the traditional skill challenge structure doesn’t make sense for those challenges.\u00a0 For example, if the players fail their Perception skill check to notice the scrap of parchment in the top branches of a tree, there’s no reason for them to make Athletics checks to climb up there.\u00a0 Some puzzles and trap skill challenges\u00a0benefit from this structure as well. Because of these structural differences in how skill challenges can be played, I came up with two new structures for skill challenges that I run: minion skill challenges and chain skill challenges. Minion Skill Challenges Structure As mentioned above, some skill challenges are a simple yes or no, success of failure on one skill check.\u00a0 Can the Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[510,511],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-encounter-skill-challange","tag-variant-rules-skill-challanges"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/unicornrampant.com\/newccb\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/unicornrampant.com\/newccb\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/unicornrampant.com\/newccb\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unicornrampant.com\/newccb\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unicornrampant.com\/newccb\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/unicornrampant.com\/newccb\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1282,"href":"http:\/\/unicornrampant.com\/newccb\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions\/1282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/unicornrampant.com\/newccb\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unicornrampant.com\/newccb\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unicornrampant.com\/newccb\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 4-5\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 1 monster worth
\n2\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 6-7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a02 monsters worth
\n3\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 8-9\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 3 monsters worth
\n4\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 10-11 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a04 monsters worth
\n5\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 12-13\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a05 monsters worth<\/p>\n