That actually doesn’t sound as crazy as it might at first glance. I thought out about it a bit and posted a response. Now I’m going to think out loud a bit more here about it. Note what follows hasn’t had any real testing and is more musing in text if you will, a free stream of thought kind of thing.
What sets this a little apart is it can makes more narrative sense, as each person participates they shift the mood of the challenge back and forth. With the way I’ve thought it through below, although the final person can decide the success or failure, with the use of Action Points and/or Inertia the worse they can do is drop a total success to a partial success.
The sliding track that this will use negates that, as they gain successes and failures it’s easier to narrate what’s happening from the DM’s perspective.  It provides, quite easily, for partial successes and failures, as many as you want.  It allows for a player to sit the challenge out and another to use a secondary skill to assist another player.
YASCS would work out like this:
The DM determines the ‘question’ that will be solved by the Skill Challenge. It might be what happens whtn the players try to escape from combat, or how can they persuade the king to give them support in their attempt to prove the prince is part of the rebellion, or what are the results of their research toward finding a ritual that will close the gateway to the 8 and a half hells?
Each of these Skill Challenges will have a total failure and a total success answer and can also include ranked partial success and failure.
Participation is determined by the design of the specific Skill Challenge but recommended is no more than one player can ’sit out’ the challenge and no more than one player can use Aid Other using Secondary Skills if the Challenge allows it.
The length of the challenge can range from 2 rounds to an open ended challenge that only ends on success or failure or the players elect to refuse the challenge.
The skill checks will result in Critical Failure, Failure, Sustain, Success, Major Success, Critical Success which more a ’slider’ up or down the possible outcomes of the Challenge a varied amount. At the end of the challenge the outcome the slider is on determines the resolution of the challenge.
It is possible to ’snatch victory from the jaws of defeat’ with better than normal successes and once per round one player may spend an action point to turn upgrade a failure result one step higher. Turning a critical failure to a failure, a failure to a sustain.
At the end of the Skill Challenge it may be allowed for one player to extend the challenge by one round by spending an action point.
This should allow for varied outcomes when desired and have a definite time limit that can be set in advance. By adjusting the DC’s for the checks and adjusting the length of the ’slider’ to the left and right the difficulty can be adjusted in to fairly granular degree.
The mechanics:
To use this version of Skill Challenges the DM will answer the following questions:
- What is the purpose of the Skill Challenge?
- What are the possible results of success and failure including partial success and failure?
- Is it primarily a Mental, Physical or Social Skill Challenge?
- If it has Secondary skills are those Physical, Mental or Social?
- What is the DC for success for the Primary Skills and the DC for success for the Secondary Skills?
- What is the maximum time limit in rounds the Challenge can take and how long in game time are the rounds?
- How many players may use Secondary Skills per round? How many players may elect to not participate per round?
Details -
What is the purpose of the Challenge and the possible outcomes: These are the various success and failure results that will occur at the end of the challenge. These can cover virtually an infinite array of possibilities from eluding pursuit to solving an intricate puzzle to resolving a dispute between nations. Some examples will be listed at the end of the article.
These values are referred to as the Challenge Track. The Track will typically have 9 positions on it arrayed like so:
Total Failure, Partial Failures, Neutral, Partial Successes, Total Success
The Partial’s might be broken down into three or more different possible outcomes of a lesser or greater partial success or failure like so where some failure or success positions are duplicates:
Total Failure, Partial Failure 2, Partial Failure 1, Partial Failure 1, Neutral and so on.
Primary and Secondary Skills: Determine the Primary set and Secondary set of skills for the challenge from the lists below. For some challenges a secondary set of skills may not be desired or valid and not all skills associated with the three types of challenges may be desired or valid for a particular challenge.
- Mental Skills: Arcana, Dungeoneering, History, Insight, Nature, Perception, Religion
- Physical Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Endurance, Stealth, Thievery
- Social Skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Streetwise
Difficulty Class values: You can determine the DC of the challenge by using the formula below:
Success Result = Moderate Difficulty: 20+((Level-1/2)
Subtract 1to 5 to make it Easier, add 1 to 5 to make it Harder.
After determining the Success Difficulty Class of the skill checks for the challenge compute the Sustain and Major Success values by taking DC – 5 and DC +5 respectively. Typically if Secondary Skills are being used they will use Primary DC -5 if they’re closely related or helpful and DC if they’re not considered as useful to the challenge.
Example 1: A party of 7th level with a Moderate challenge. The DC = 20+((7-1)/2) or 23. That gives us a Sustain of 18 or higher, Success of 23 or higher and a Major Success of 28 or higher.
Example 2: A party of 14th level with a Easy Challenge. The DC = 20+((14-1)/2) -5 or 26 for an Easy challenge. Sustain would be a 21 and Major Success would be a 31.
Skill Challenge length: Typically 1 to 3 rounds should be sufficient for a challenge. For some challenges it can be set to open ended and are only resolved on a result of Total Success or Total Failure.
Participation: Players involved in the challenge will fall into three categories. For a typical skill challenge there will generally be no more than one Observer and one Supporter, the rest will be Primary participants in the challenge.
- Observers do not participate and do not contribute to the success or failure of the challenge.
- Supporters roll skill checks using the secondary set of skills associated with the challenge and will generate bonuses to other players.
- Primaries roll skill checks using the primary set of skills associated with the challenge and directly affect the success or failure of the challenge.
Process:
Skill Checks: The party will determine the order in which roles and order the characters will participate in the skill Challenge. This can change after each players roll but no player may go twice in one round. Observers are simply passive participants and do not make rolls. Secondary participants must go before a Primary participant in each round, they are not allowed to be last in the order and are not allowed to go successively if more than one Secondary is allowed by the specific Challenge.
Each Secondary will pick an appropriate skill from the secondary list and roll a d20 and add their skill level and compare that to the secondary DCs (which may be the same as the primary) to determine if they generated a Critical Failure, Success, Critical Success. Note that Assistance will generally not hurt a Primary character barring a natural 1 being rolled. These will have the following results:
- Critical Failure: next primary skill check will be at -4
- Success: next primary skill check will be at +2
- Critical Success: next primary skill check will be at +4
Each Primary participant will pick an appropriate skill from the primary list and roll a d20 and add their skill level and compare that to the primary DCs to determine if they generated a Failure, Sustain, Success or Major Success.  A roll of a 1 is a Critical Failure and a roll of a natural 20 is a Critical Success. A Major Success is determined by rolling 5 over the required Success roll. Each of these results, Critical Failure, Failure, Sustain, Success, Major Success, Critical Success will adjust the current Challenge Result up or down the challenge track as determined by the values below:
- Critical Failure: two positions left
- Failure: one position left
- Sustain: no change
- Success: one position right
- Major Success: two positions right
- Critical Success: two positions right
Failure Recovery: It is typically allowed, but not always, that one player per round can spend an Action point to upgrade a Failure by one position. In other words, they can turn a Critical Failure into a Failure and a Failure into a Sustain result.  This must be done at the time of the failed skill check. They can optionally spend an Action point to allow one player per round to re-roll their check at a -5 penalty and the second roll must be used. This is to allow a minimum of tactical decisions for the players to help influence the results.
Challenge End: The Skill Challenge ends when the track hits either Total Failure or Total Success or the given time limit for the challenge has run out. In the event of Total Failure the DM may have designed the Challenge so that the players can be allowed a single Sudden Death round to try and avert total failure.
Sudden Death: It is typically allowed, but not always, that one player per Challenge can spend an Action Point to extend a skill challenge by one round as a last ditch effort to turn Total Failure into another result. This can only occur as long as the challenge has resulted in Total Failure and one player still has an Action Point renaming. All successes only count toward moving the track one position.
Example 1 – The Big Chase:
1. The party needs to escape from a combat that they’re disastrously over-matched in. The results of this challenge will determine their levels of success and failure.
2. The Challenge Track has the following possible results:
- Total Failure: The escape attempt is a complete failure and in attempting it the party grants all hostile forces one surprise round with automatic combat advantage.
- Partial Failure 1: The party manages to shift the fight by some distance but is caught up with by the hostiles and both sides roll for surprise.
- Neutral: The escape attempt merely changes the location of the current combat and it must now be resolved normally.
- Partial Success: The party’s escape has broken the hostiles up into smaller groups and they can now fight them in a series of waves rather than all at once. The party gains automatic surprise on the first wave. Each of the next waves will show up within 1d4+3 rounds after the last one.
- Total Success: The party has escaped and eluded all pursuit. They have either fled the area or found a place of hiding that won’t be found for at least 24 hours at the player’s discretion.
3-4. The skill is Physical based with some Mental skills as secondaries. The players may choose from the following primary and secondary skills:
- Primary: Acrobatics, Athletics, Endurance, Stealth
- Secondary: Dungeoneering, History, Insight, Nature, Perception
5. The skill is rated as a Moderate difficulty and as the party is level 2 that results in:
Sustain – 16+, Success- 21+, Major Success 26+
6. The challenge will take course over a maximum of 3 rounds each round will occupy 10-20 minutes of game time.
7. One player may elect take the role of Observer and one player may act as a Supporter.
The reality:
Over the next 3 rounds the party will determine the order of the remaining participants per round. One player bow out and not make any rolls. One player will roll using one of the mental skills listed to add bonuses to another player.
Lets say our party consists of Alma, Bever, Cartir, Deedra, Elma. The players discuss it and Bever for whatever reason is not trained in any of the primary or secondary skills so he takes the role of Observer. Elma has high skill levels for one of the secondary skills but her abilities in the primary skills are low so she assumes role of Supporter.
Round 1:
Example removed due to changes in the way the skill system works. Will replace with other examples to reflect the changes.
Like
Recent Comments