Why not make skill challenges more like combat?  (This comes riding directly on the back of my Dual of Wits idea–read part 1 and part 2.)  By this, I mean treating the challenge like a monster.  I will build a skill challenge as an example.  The challenge is for the party to get over a mountain in time to warn the village on the other side of the evil army marching their way.  Total success means they get over the mountain in time to warn the village.  Failure means that the evil army has descended on the village.  The party is composed of 5 characters at level 4.

The first thing we have to establish is the challenge complexity.  Just like a normal skill challenge, the more complex the challenge, the more successes are required to overcome.  To facilitate this our challenge will have a pool of obstacle points.  These work like hit points in that the characters will deal damage to this pool and when it is depleted the challenge will be completed.  As a rule of thumb, a challenge should have a number of obstacle points equal to the number of successes required in a normal skill challenge times 5.  Thus, if our challenge was complexity 2 it would have an obstacle pool of 30 points.  Likewise, the party will share a pool of resolve points.  The resolve pool represents the will, know-how, and daring-do of the party.  The challenge will attack this pool and when it is depleted the party will have lost the challenge.  The resolve pool starts with a number of points equal to the complexity of this skill times fifteen.  (If you are curious where that number came from, it is actions per turn times average damage of five times three turns.)  For the example, that means the party has a resolve of 30.

A challenge has a number of actions per turn equal to its complexity.  In our example the challenge is complexity 2, so it has 2 actions each turn.  These actions will be used to harry to party, cause complications, and otherwise reduce the party’s resolve or make it more difficult to overcome the obstacle.  The actions can be thought of as standard actions that the challenge uses each round to activate powers.

Some powers should be created for the challenge.  A good starting point is one to three at-will powers and a number of encounter powers equal to the number of characters in the party.  Much like a character class, the at-will powers of the challenge will be the most frequently used and thus form the primary way the challenge will interact with the party.  The encounter powers should be particularly tough challenges and nasty surprises.  The at-will powers form the framework and context of interaction, but the encounter powers are what give the challenge its flavor, dynamism, and tension.

Challenge powers do not make attack rolls.  Instead, the power lists a skill and a DC.  If the target (or targets) fail the check, they suffer the result of the power.  You can use the chart in the DMG to set the DC of a power.  Most powers should deal some sort of damage to the party’s resolve pool.  The pools were built with the idea that 1d6 plus a couple additional points would be the average damage thrown about.  At-will powers should have moderate to hard DCs.  Powers that deal a lot of resolve damage or have powerful status effects should have easy to moderate DCs.

The best way to come up with power ideas is to think about the challenge as a monster.  Imagine what that monster could do to the players each turn.  Our example challenge involves climbing a mountain.  The first thing that pops into my mind is the harsh environment.  “Harsh Environment” – At-Will – Target: 1 character; Target makes an Endurance check at DC 17; Failure:  1d4 resolve damage and the target loses a healing surge.  Another common factor to the mountain should be navigating the rough terrain.  “Rough Terrain” – At-Will – Target:  1 character; Target makes an Athletics check at DC 17; Failure:  1d6 + 2 resolve damage.

The encounter powers are a chance to push the characters around and make them worry.  Feel free to crank up the resolve damage, pile on status effects, and otherwise make things miserable.  One major threat the mountain can produce are landslides:  “Landslide” – Encounter – Target:  3 characters;  Targets make Athletics checks at DC 17; Each Failure:  1d6 resolve damage.  All that bad terrain and cold can’t be good for one’s immune system.  “Illness” – Encounter – Target:  1 character; Target makes an Endurance check DC 15; Failure: 2d6+4 resolve damage and target is -2 to all skill checks for the rest of the challenge.  Don’t forget to try and incorporate a lot of skills.  “Snowstorm” – Encounter – Target:  1 character; Target makes a Perception check at DC 18; Failure:  2d6+4 resolve damage and the target can not make an attack against the challenge during its next turn as he tries to get the party’s bearings.  If you like, you can also weave encounters into your powers.  “Wolves on the Hunt” – Encounter – Target:  1 character; Target makes a Stealth check at DC 20; Failure:  1d8 resolve damage and the party encounters 5 mountain wolves.  You can also add role-playing encounters or other skill challenges.  “Evil Army Scouts” – Encounter – The party comes across a scouting party mounted on Wargs; can the party convince the scouts that they are not the heroes they are looking for?  (Maybe a good time to use a Dual of Wits?)

Now that we know what the challenge can do to the party, let us examine what the party can do to the challenge.  First of all, to remain true to the concept of skill challenges, there is only one at-will power the party has against the challenge.  “Skill Check” – At-will – Target:  the challenge;  Make a skill check vs. a DC set by the DM; 1d6 obstacle damage plus additional damage equal to the attribute modifier tied to the skill.  The DCs for this power should be derived in the same way you would normally derive DCs for skill checks during a challenge.  Players can use this power any way they see fit.  If the suggested skill and situation seem way out there, just give it a really large DC.

Again, the spice of the challenge comes from the encounter powers you make available to the party.  One encounter power per party member is the rule of thumb.  In fact, it might be good design to specifically engineer one encounter power for each character.  Start the challenge off with the party only knowing about one or two of the encounter powers, but reserve the other powers for later.  The trick to reserving the powers is to make some sort of timing mechanism for when they should become available.  A power might become available when the challenge uses a specific one of its encounter powers, or when one of the party makes a Perception check, or when X number of turns have passed in the challenge.  The point is to string these powers along to the party so that you avoid the situation of everyone using an encounter power on turn one and blowing the challenge out of the water.

“Old Hermit” – Encounter – Target:  the challenge; Make a Diplomacy check DC 15 to get directions from the hermit; Success:  2d6 + Charisma modifier obstacle damage; Special:  this power is only available on the third round of the challenge.  “Ancient Markers” – Encounter – Target:  the challenge; Make a History check DC 17 to decipher the writing and discover a small, hidden path; Success:  1d6 + Intelligence modifier obstacle damage and the challenge loses one action during its next turn; Special:  this is only available after a party member uses the “Skill Challenge” power with the Perception skill.  “Pick up the pieces” – Encounter – Target:  the challenge; Make an Athletics check DC 17 to help your friends recover; Success:  2d6 + Strength modifier obstacle damage; Special:  this can only be used the turn after the power “Landslide” was used.  “Living from the Land” – Encounter – Target:  the challenge; Make a Nature check at DC 15 to help gather food along the journey; Success:  1d6 + Intelligence modifier obstacle damage and until the end of next turn the party is +2 to all skill checks to resist the challenge’s powers.  “Spirit and Vigor” – Encounter – Target:  the challenge; Make an Endurance roll at DC 18 to resist the bad conditions of the journey; Success: 1d6 + Constitution modifier obstacle damage, you and one other ally may regain a healing surge lost by the “Harsh Environment” power.

I have yet to test any of this, and I’m sure the numbers all need tweaked.  If anyone has any comments or suggestions, I would love to hear them.  If anyone actually ends up using the idea, let me know how it went.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 1st, 2009 at 6:54 am and is filed under D&D 4e, Rules Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.