Survivor Skill Challenge: Try To Make It To Round Three

[Noumenon]

Rob Donoghue offered an interesting alternative to skill challenges in a recent footnote:

I'm more inclined to just run what I call a "Table Check". Everyone at the table rolls once, total impact is shaped by the proportion of outcomes. It can be simple majority, or it can be that some number of successes (as low as one) are needed. This can be a much faster way to handle transitory skill challenges in a way that lets the experts strut their stuff without needing to pretend that every endurance roll on your journey across the steppes is actually a thrilling event.

All I want to add to this idea is this: What about a three-stage table check, where only those who succeed get to advance to the next round, and the mix of successes and failures determines the next round's narrative?

What I liked about the table check is that with only one roll per player, it's worth the trouble to think of a unique application for one of your skills. "My elf hunts the orcs carrying the captive hobbits by simple Endurance, running across the plains. My ranger uses Nature to spot bent blades of grass without breaking stride. My dwarf uses Diplomacy to ask nomads on the plains for horses and directions."

But four's not quite enough rolls for an interesting challenge. Reminds me of 3.5's "Everybody roll a Spot check to avoid the surprise round." How about this? Whichever players make their rolls, that decides whose approaches work -- the narration adjusts to match, and only those players advance to the next round.

In our chasing orcs example, if the ranger's Nature check and the elf's Endurance check succeed, but the dwarf fails his Diplomacy check with the Riders of Rohan, there's your narrative hook for the next round. "You make good enough time to keep the trail from going cold. Gimli, you insult the horse-master, Eomer, who tells you he would cut off your head if it were a little higher from the ground. Also, he's already slaughtered the orcs and didn't find the hobbits."

This eliminates that pass-fail feel that skill challenges have, where that third failure basically means you achieved nothing. Now you have partial success and failure with every round. Also, it lets players try different approaches that shape the narration and not just garner successes or failures.

For the next round the dwarf is out, and Nature and Endurance aren't the right skills any more. (No more orcs to track down. Notice how this eliminates the boredom of the one guy trained in Nature rolling the same check every round of the challenge.) Now the ranger makes a Perception check to see if the hobbits got away before the slaughter (success) and the elf tries a Diplomacy check to get the Riders to mount a broader search (failure). The narration follows the check results: "You find the hobbits' belts and tracks, but the riders won't help search for them because the tracks lead into the haunted forest of Fangorn."

With this survival-based skill challenge, the mechanics aren't forcing Gimli's player to participate-but-not-really with Aid Another just because he's not trained in Nature. (Rob goes into the problems with the Aid action in his post.) The spotlight stays firmly on the Nature expert, though using an action point will let Gimli back in for the next round.

In the third and final round, Aragorn makes one History check, which fails because it's Legolas who has the relevant training, and they fail to find the hobbits. But the narration has brought us to the point where it makes sense for the failure to represent finding a strange white-robed wizard instead. If they had all failed their checks in the first round, that might have forced them to give up and follow the other hobbits down the river. So you get many varied degrees of failure from this approach.

The complexity of the skill challenge becomes how many rounds you have to get successes in to win. This fulfills Rob's requirement for complexity in his post:

[Complexity] should really be considered is a measure of how interesting a skill challenge is going to be. A skill challenge that uses few skills and is basically just doing the same task over and over again should be a low complexity challenge.

If the interesting part of your adventure plan for the day is the chase, do the complexity three challenge. If the interesting part is a setpiece battle with Grishnakh, then do a complexity one skill challenge. The difficulty can be just the same, with the right DC, but the effect on pacing is much different: it's a much shorter chase, one round of rolling and right to the action.

What do you think of this approach? Too difficult to do on the fly? Too likely to leave players out of the action? Someone else's idea and I didn't know about it? I really like how it lets one player chase the criminal through the streets with Streetwise, and the other try to Intimidate bystanders to ask "Which way did he go?", and it really matters which of them rolls high and low. Not just "one success, one failure, both try again four more times."

 

[Blackbrrd]

It sounds like a good idea in many ways, but I don't get why the Elf doesn't get to roll the History skill check instead of the Human.

My twist on this is as follows:
Round 1 - the basis of the challenge is to track the orc/hobbits, so the whole party rolls whatever skill that is deemed appropriate. In this example: Endurance, Nature, Diplomacy. The PARTY gets two successes

Round 2 - the basis of this challenge is to see where if the hobbits got out and try to get horses. The skills deemed apporpriate are: Perception and Diplomacy. Since they had two successes in the initial round two characters can roll on this challenge. It doesn't have to be the same two characters that had the successes in round 1.

 

[Noumenon]

It sounds like a good idea in many ways, but I don't get why the Elf doesn't get to roll the History skill check instead of the Human.

That makes very good sense in the game. The elf is right there! Knowing stuff! It also makes sense from a design perspective. Now the elf isn't bored for the rest of the challenge if he failed in round 1. And when the ranger passes a check, he helps the team get more rolls in the next round -- not just advancing himself. That's a good thing.

This does mess with approaches that split the party, but only the time-sensitive ones. If the wizard is failing to research the zombie plague in the library with Arcana, and the rogue is successfully watching for zombies to arise in the graveyard with Stealth, you can just say he goes to get the wizard or sends him a carrier pigeon so he can come make a Dungeoneering check in the catacombs.

How do you decide who gets to make the check in round two, though? Maybe the one who actually passed the check gets dibs, and can cede it to someone who failed if he chooses to.

the basis of the challenge is to track the orc/hobbits, the whole party rolls whatever skill that is deemed appropriate.

This seems like the equivalent of saying "The basis of this combat is to attack the ogre, everybody roll a Ranged Basic attack." I want to give the party freedom to choose their approach to the challenge. I don't love having to go down the list of skills and pick which ones are appropriate, either -- I'm thinking about choosing the Easy, Medium, Hard DC based on how plausible or cool the player's description sounds.

 

[Blackbrrd]

The whole party rolls whatever skill that is deemed appropriate.

What I am trying to say here is more like this:

The whole party rolls whatever skill the DM deems appropriate.

Your idea of using Easy/Medium/Hard DC's in combination with this sounds good.

If I had planned a skill challenge like this, I would probably have thought of skills/DCs to start with to be used as guidelines for myself. If the player's have problems coming up with things I can give hints of what to do. If somebody comes up with a good reason for a skill to be used, sure go ahead and use it. This can be exploited so a good DM should manage to say no at the appropriate time.

Regarding who gets to roll the two checks I agree, the character managing the previous roll has dibs. They can give their info to another player or just sit on it and try to interpret it themselves.

A high complexity skill challenge is a bit like a difficult fight - you have to use action points to stay on top. Before each round a player should declare that he is using an action point to get an extra roll.

What I like about this method is that you are probably giving out information along the way, so even if they get stuck, they might just GUESS what they should do next, fight the fight without all the support they could have gotten, etc.