Last time I talked a little about how I design skill challenges for 4E, and this time I’d like to go through some things I do when running them. As a short summary from the last post I’d always consider what failure brings, and what a partial victory would bring. This partial victory is a step below a fully overcoming the challenge. Lastly I’d have 2-3 ideal skills that would grant a bonus or an easier DC to checks, but not have a hard list of skills required for the challenge.

Use markers for success and failure – I have a stack of black and white baduk (Go) game pieces handy. During a challenge while I describe the results of the PC’s actions, I also hand out either a white (success) or black (failure) bead. It’s a small hint to the players they are on the right track for completing a challenge, and they can quickly determine the relative amount of successes and failures they have.

This is also a decent way to keep track of a longer skill challenge. If you have a challenge that is interspersed with encounters and other events, it’s a nice means to record their progress. You can always keep this information hidden and simply give them some feedback for the task. However having this simple prop relays how poorly or how close they are to succeeding.

Don’t give out the hard numbers – Like in a combat with offering HP totals and AC values, I don’t tell players they need X amount of successes before Y number of failures. I also don’t give the players target DC values. I will offer players some description how difficult a potential action might be, especially for high DC checks (ex. ‘You could possibly make a running jump across the bridge, but it will be exceedingly difficult’).

If you approach challenges with hard numbers and set DC values relayed to the players they’ll pick up on this. Keeping things to a narrative curbs the metagaming. I don’t mind offering a tally of failures and successes, but the unknown variables of how to tackle the challenge should avoid set values given to the players. This way the group has to make that choice of going all in or deciding to cut their losses if things go sour.

Everyone participates – The PCs can’t sit idly by and let one player do all the heavy lifting. They all have to try and contribute to tackling the problem, even just by using the assist another action. Most challenges I run go through rounds. At the end of each round players either win (including a partial victory) or they fail. Note that time can stretch out for hours to days if needed between each ‘round’ but the important thing is (like a combat) that everyone has an opportunity to do something.

Say, then do – I get all the players to first tell me what they are doing, or trying to do, in the challenge. Once I get it all in my head I figure out applicable skills and checks needed. Then everyone rolls. I determine successes and failures, line up the action for the next round and repeat the process. Get your players to narrate what they want to do first. Frequently you’ll have one player initiate the action with other PCs sort of metagaming to see the outcome, and then adjust their plans. I like everyone talking about what they want to do first, and then see if things work out.

Be flexible – If a player thinks of a really clever way to use Athletics during a negotiation challenge, I’ll let them do it at least once. Be accommodating to cool ideas. You want to encourage players to think of creative solutions to the challenge and pigeonholing them to specific skills won’t help. As mentioned though, I usually will let them make a check with an oddly applied skill once, then rein in any repeats (or bump up the DC to a horrendous amount). Still if your PCs pull out a fantastic idea for using a skill in a way you haven’t thought of, at least allow them to try for a check.

Don’t be a slave to the challenge structure – Ideally there should be a certain number of successes or failures before the challenge resolves. If things progress to a closure earlier, don’t force more checks to be made. There may come a point where your players make some sound arguments to influence some NPC. If they nailed it, don’t drag out the challenge, just award them a victory and move on (partial victories work wonders in this case).

Sometimes you might have PCs do something amazing (or pull a bone-head move). If so, consider awarding more successes or failures to them for that check. Alternately you can think about giving the player a huge bonus (or a penalty if needed) for the next check. As mentioned in the previous post, consider skill challenge rules as guidelines. It’s applicable to both designing and running them.

I hope these tips help DMs run skill challenges. While clunky at times, with enough under your belt you get a feel for how flexible they can be. All the while skill challenges provide a framework for resolving and rewarding great roleplaying. Don’t be intimidated with them and try to use them in your game.

I’ve always been a fan of the concept of skill challenges. I like the idea of having some means of awarding XP for roleplaying and not just saddling it to some interpretive standard. Skill challenges in 4E really offered a DM some decent guidelines for doing that. Better yet, skill challenges laid out a way to offer XP to players for great roleplaying aside from your typical hacking up monsters and completing quests.

Skill challenges were far from perfect however. I think what stood out for me the most was how they were more a framework of rules when running them. In the past few years I began to tweak with designing skill challenges and altering how I ran them. After a while I sort of fell into a groove running them by getting input from all the players and keeping the challenge structure fluid.

It’s been awhile since I visited skill challenges, so I figured on posting a bit on some approaches I use with designing and running them. It can be tricky, but once you get some concepts down regarding them, they are a snap to make up and run. Onto some tips:

Rules are a framework, not set in stone – I think something important to remember at the onset is that skill challenges work best approaching their structure as a guideline rather than a hard set of rules. It’s easy to stick to difficulty labels and outcomes based on X successes before Y failures. It’s far better to be flexible with running them. You may get a stellar idea from a player. Why not offer them 2 successes (or even pass it immediately)? If you adhere to a set format unerringly, challenges can feel artificial and constrained.

Start with failure – When first thinking up a skill challenge, start with thinking about what happens when the PCs fail it. Do you have something interesting happen? Is there a way to keep the story moving? If the answer is no, then don’t make it a skill challenge. Failure should always be a possibility.

Say you decide players have to progress in some underground tomb by opening a sealed door. Sounds perfect for a skill challenge, right? If they open the door great! If not, then what happens? If the answer is the players turn around and go back to town, the adventure is over, rethink making it a skill challenge. In some cases you have situations that give the story a hard stop and moves everything off into another direction, but if that’s the case a skill challenge likely isn’t appropriate (you’ve got a major story branch instead). You should always consider what happens if the players fail a skill challenge and have an alternate plan.

In the above example failure might mean the players do bypass the door but one of the PCs gets severely injured. Maybe the door suddenly closes and the group is split up. Maybe they can’t open the door and instead have to go some other route that is longer or more dangerous. In each case the group can continue on with exploring the tomb, but have varying penalties and unfortunate circumstances due to failing the challenge. Make sure that failing the challenge doesn’t halt the adventure.

Have gradations of success – A partial success for a skill challenge should allow the players to squeak out a win. I typically set this as 1-2 less successes needed from the total to win the challenge. If they do this they are successful for the challenge but get ½ the experience reward. Think of this as a victory with some complications, or no clear advantage despite overcoming the challenge.

The alternate is a complete victory with the challenge. The players push themselves to get the required number of wins. Not only do they complete the challenge and get the full XP awarded but they will get some kind of advantage or benefit.

With the above door opening example, let’s say a failure means the party has to take a more difficult route. A complete victory means the players open the door and possibly can skip a potential encounter. A partial victory would then be in the middle of the two. Yes, the players get through the door but maybe they trigger the attention of some monsters. Maybe it’s a very difficult and taxing physically, so all the players lose a healing surge. While they complete the challenge, it’s not without some additional hardship.

Use preferred skills, not absolute ones – I think another trap to avoid is having a list of skills that are absolutely needed for the challenge. Instead you might want a short list of skills (2-3) that have an easier DC, or confer a small +1 bonus when utilized for the challenge. Additionally, I’d consider these as skills other players can utilize to assist another player. I’ll get a bit more into this with part 2, however giving a laundry list of checks for the players to select from is boring. Instead, you should be flexible with what skills can be used.

If players have to convince a Duke to release garrisoned troops to prevent a warband of orcs from heading through a pass, diplomacy might be a key skill for such a challenge. I’d figure that trying to reason with the Duke is a likely course of action and grant a +1 to using this skill for the challenge. But let’s say a player wants to use intimidation? If it’s not on the list of needed skills could it be used? Would intimidation be an automatic failure (after all I am seeing diplomacy as a key tactic)?

How about that player wanting to intimidate the Duke states they dig through a sack and produce the head of a slain orc. They throw it at the feet of the Duke and state this is what’s coming for the village. The orcs will likely do the same to him, his family, and all the common folk, hack off their heads and keep them as trophies. Locking yourself into a set list of skills required for a challenge will very likely also mean being inflexible when players give you a surprise like this. Give them some freedom to use different skills, and that starts by not demanding specific checks be made.

That’s it for now. In my next post I’ll go with some nuts and bolts with how I run challenges.

A big adjustment I had DMing 4E was to rethink how fights worked compared to AD&D. I used to throw down a lot of fights back then. Usually my dungeons were chock full of monsters and fights were fast and furious.

With 4E I find combats are a lot more dynamic and almost have a cinematic feel. They’re a lot more tactical and everyone is constantly maneuvering around for a better position. Even in an open room, in 4E you have a real engagement, where in AD&D it would be a glossed over fight (maybe some excitement if a person rolled a 20). It took me a while to wrap my head around how combats played out in 4E, and what works well (or doesn’t).

I found out one important thing with 4E fights, if you are fighting just to have some combat, it’ll make for a boring affair. In older versions this was never a big deal. If my group got jumped by a monster wandering the woods, I’d just play it out. 4E combats work better as staged set pieces. If you used an old approach of just dumping out monsters to fight on a grid, things get old pretty fast. So I learned to ask myself constantly, ‘why should this be a fight?’

I found this was critical in designing encounters and more importantly, stringing them together to make an enjoyable session. So when I’m planning out a dungeon, I try to think of a few reasons why I should be having a fight and what is the purpose of the combat encounter.

Moving the story along – Likely the number one reason players are trading blows with creatures. The group is in combat with a main villain, or some key encounter, because of the story. It is an event central to the plot. Not every fight has to hold a critical element to the campaign arc, but it’s something you should be striving for.

I try to avoid having a fight simply to give a clue. If I go this route, I try to limit to a few rounds, usually having the opposition run, surrender, or offer some other quick resolution to get the players moving on.

As an example, my players landed on a dock where a local crime lord had control over the longshoremen. A few burly dockworkers with cudgels badgered their ship captain into getting more coin to unload some cargo. They turned their ire towards the players, clearly itching for a fight (the non-lethal thumping of heads kind). Combat went for about two rounds before the town guards came in and broke it up, siding with the longshoremen on who started it.

It was a short fight, but it helped established a few key points that some dockworkers were more thugs than laborers, and that local authority were either corrupt or inept. I didn’t want to drag the fight out to a bloody conclusion. But at the same time I thought it useful to have the players exchanging a few blows, before getting some key information about the town they were in.

Drain the resources of the players – This is an effective way of ramping up the difficulty of later encounters. A straight up engagement against a group of guards may not have a tremendous story purpose. But if it is an encounter before the group moves further in a bandit camp to fight against the main bad guy, you’ve definitely have a reason to have the fight. While the party is expected to win, they will take a little damage. This results in healing surges being used, and may result in use of some magic item powers, all of which drains the resources of the party for future combats.

It’s a decent ploy to make that later combat against the main villain a little tougher, without having to ramp up the encounter level. If players have used most of their healing surges, a few magic items, possibly even a daily, you’ve got players working a much tougher fight. The main trick is to keep the group moving and not have them head back to town for an extended rest. This does not necessarily have to be a battle either. Traps make for great ways to drain the group resources also. Don’t forget that you don’t have to almost kill the players, you just need to dig into the HP a little and in turn, whittle away at their healing surge total.

A combat for the sake of combat – This is something I try to avoid. Yet sometimes after several nights of talking around problems and clever use of skills to overcome obstacles, it’s nice to have a throw down with some monsters and hack away at things. However I think for these type of encounters to work, you should have one rule. Keep things interesting.

Pull out the stops and have a fight on a collapsing bridge over a chasm. Dig through the monster manuals and pull out some wild planar creature. Whether it’s the location or the type of creatures they fight, make the combat exciting and memorable. A bar fight with some surly dwarves may have nothing to do with the campaign, but can make for a grand time. You won’t get the same player reaction from another nameless wilderness encounter in a wood clearing.

Don’t hesitate to hand wave a fight – Don’t worry about having an actual combat for every encounter also. If the players have to infiltrate a fortress and fight through waves of opposition, you don’t have to play out every combat. Hand wave a bit and resolve it through narration. Maybe have that first fight against a few initial guards and don’t worry about the rest. Save the encounter combat for the main boss at the end.

This is where healing surges work wonders. Tell the players they made their way through an orc enclave, slaying a few groups, then have each player lose a healing surge. If you want to be tricky, also roll a basic attack against each player and have them dock off another surge if you hit. It’s a nice way to represent some scrapes and bruises from a fight, without having to actually play out a combat.

In my past campaign, I had my players clear out a kruthik nest. The original layout was an optional encounter if they failed a skill challenge, followed by a tough fight, with a final fight against the nest queen. While my group succeeded at the skill challenge, they opted to take on the optional encounter. After that happened I looked hard an long at the second encounter.

Did I have to have this fight? Would it really push the story along? I wanted a series of progressive fights, ramping up the difficulty to emphasize the group was going deeper and coming closer to the nest queen. But that optional encounter took off a few healing surges, so did I really have to have another full battle to do the same? Nope. So I just narrated to the players they ran across more kruthik and killed them as they explored further the tunnels. I moved them on to the final fight, just handwaving the middle combat and sticking to the more meaningful final encounter against the nest queen.

These are a few things I keep in mind when I design a string of encounters. I still (as the kruthik example above) flub things. While it may look good in preparation, actual play can change things. You might get a really bad string of rolls from the players (and some awesome rolls for the monsters), so a simple fight on paper may end up being much more difficult. I try to keep things fluid with my plans and read the players’ moods at the table to keep things interesting.

So with 4E, I’ve had to shift my thinking about combats compared to previous editions and shed that idea of a throwaway combat. Seems DnDNext has let this creep back in somewhat. I’m sort of on the fence with that but by recognizing this difference in how combats fit into the story, it’s made my 4E game better.