Make Skills Exciting with Skill Challenges
While Dungeons & Dragons is a combat-centric game (if you don’t believe me, count the number of abilities characters get that have nothing to do with combat and then compare to the number of combat abilities they get), that doesn’t mean you can only challenge characters with combat. Unfortunately, the list of challenges provided to Game Masters doesn’t extend much beyond fight this monster, avoid this trap, and make this one skill check.
That’s why I want to talk about skill challenges. Popularized in 4th edition, skill challenges are my bread and butter when it comes to creating interesting challenges for the table. They are a great way to shine a light on skill monkeys and give you a chance to roll your shiny math rocks without constantly resorting to violence.
What is a Skill Challenge?
A skill challenge requires a party to rely on their skills, rather than their raw power or combat abilities. It is more than a simple obstacle to overcome; it requires multiple successful checks utilizing a variety of different skills before a party can succeed. Smart gameplay, unique ideas, and well-rounded party skills are often required to succeed at such a challenge.
Typical skill challenges can be won by using a wide variety of skills, and it is up to the Game Master to determine if the skill a character wants to use has a chance of succeeding. The Game Master either can create a list of approved skills to use in the challenge or the character’s player must explain why they think their skill should work in any situation. If the Game Master is unconvinced, they may decide the player must use a different skill, roll with disadvantage, or against a higher DC (or all three).
What a Skill Challenge Isn’t
This is not a single skill check to overcome an obstacle or disarm a trap. This is not a challenge for a single character. This is not just a series of disconnected skill checks with no danger involved.
A skill challenge requires multiple skill checks, for everyone in the party to roll, and has consequences for failure.
If there are no consequences for failure, stop rolling dice and just let the party do whatever it was you were having them roll. If only one player is rolling checks, stop them and have other players roll checks. If you only have a single check, add more checks and increase the expanse of the challenge.
Of course, this isn’t to say that every time you call for a skill check, it should be a skill challenge. Instead, you should be introducing a skill challenge when it is appropriate. You don’t need one every session, but every couple of sessions wouldn’t go amiss, just like you don’t need a combat every session, but you are probably going to have combat opportunities every couple of sessions.
It’s Combat—But for Skills
Skill challenges are combat. Or, well, they aren’t combat, but they kind of are. Let’s break it down.
When players enter combat, they understand the overall rules and objectives. They are to win the fight, using powers and abilities they have. If they all hit 0 hit points, they lose. Combats should be challenging, they should be interesting, and there isn’t only a single way to win.
Skill challenges are similar. Players, when they enter into one, should know they are in a skill challenge. They should know that they need to use their skills and abilities to succeed. If they fail too many skill checks, they lose the skill challenge. Skill challenges should be challenging, they should be interesting, and there isn’t only a single way to win.
When creating a skill challenge, think about the environment, about the risks, and what you want the players to accomplish in your skill challenge.
Building a Skill Challenge
Skill challenges are easy to create, and can be simple or complex. Some skill challenges may require multiple steps (which can help influence what skills they are allowed to use) or just a single step.
The steps to create a skill challenge are:
What is the party’s goal?
How difficult is the Skill Challenge?
What skills are available? Are there any limitations?
What happens if they fail?
What is the Party’s Goal?
Before you can begin building a skill challenge, you need to figure out what exactly you want the players to do and why it is a skill challenge. If you want the players to chase after someone in a city, that could be a great skill challenge where you can handwave character speeds (though, do recognize that characters with fast speeds, like monks, may be annoyed—In these situations, I either offer them advantage or a bonus to their skill check if their increased speed makes sense in the context).
Once you have determined what the goal of the party is and why you have a skill challenge, you can then determine how difficult it is.
How difficult is the Skill Challenge?
Up next is to determine how difficult you want the skill challenge to be. The difficulty will inform the number of success and failures your challenge requires. The following are just an example taken from 4th edition, you may decide to adjust to further suit your table or the challenge itself.
Difficulty | # of Success | # of Failures | DCs
Very Easy | 4 successes | 2 failures | 8 - 13
Easy | 6 successes | 3 failures | 10 - 15
Moderate | 8 successes | 4 failures | 10 - 18
Hard | 10 successes | 5 failures | 13 - 20
Very Hard | 12 successes | 6 failures | 15 - 25+
In addition, the difficulty of a skill challenge also tells you how much XP you should award the party for overcoming it. In general, I treat a skill challenge the same way I do as a combat. If the party overcome it, they gain XP as if they had fought a monster or monsters of a similar difficulty.
What skills are available? Any limitations?
At this point, you should build a list of available skills. Typically, your list should be a number of skills equal to your party plus 2. This should give everyone at the table a good opportunity to interact and roll skill checks.
While deciding on the skills, think how they might fit in the challenge. If the party are navigating a boat down rapids, religion probably isn’t going to be relevant, but persuasion might if they are trying to lead a rowing crew. Think of different situations and how those skills might inform others.
Then think of limitations. While perception checks are often very useful, you don’t want character after character rolling perception instead of any other skill. Or you don’t want the bard only doing performance because that’s their highest bonus. Add limits to the number of times a single skill check can be used or allow subsequent uses of the same skill, but each time they try to use the same skill, increase the DC by 1 or 2.
The goal isn’t to tell players no, but to challenge them to try new things and to have fun trying unique approaches. Which is also why you should allow players to come up with ways to use their other skills. If you want the party to convince the king to lend them an army, while you may not have Athletics in your approved list of skills for the skill challenge, if a player can make a good argument for it, instead of saying ‘no’, let them roll the check at either a more difficult DC or as a way to lend advantage to someone else who is contributing to the skill challenge.
Lastly, think about how your skill challenge will evolve as the players gain successes. If their goal is to break into a castle, maybe a successful History check gives them information about the construction of the castle and it allows them to roll Arcana checks to dispel magical keystones that are integrated throughout the walls. Or they can make an Investigation check on the stone walls, which grants them a lower DC on future Athletic checks to break through the walls.
These skills can work off of one another, informing how and when it is appropriate for other skills to be used.
What happens if they fail?
The last thing to think about is, what happens if the party fails? The party needs to hit a certain amount of successes before they hit a number of failures, and they may just have a terrible session where no one rolls above a 5.
How does failure look in this skill challenge? While for some challenges, like chasing someone through a city, is obvious, what about other situations, like researching in a library or traveling through a forest? It’s easy to say that they fail, but think about how that failure can continue to push the story forward.
If they get lost in the forest, maybe they stumble upon an ally who can offer some help, but for a favor. If they lose sight of someone in the city they were chasing after, that person shows up later with reinforcements or the guards force the party to pay a fee for ‘crimes committed’ when running through the city. Failure shouldn’t stop your game from moving forward and you shouldn’t be scared if your players do fail.
Running a Skill Challenge
Before we get into examples, let’s talk about how you run a skill challenge. When you begin, make sure to first tell the players that they are entering a skill challenge. This is important, as it reminds them that the situation they are entering into as a success and failure state.
If you worry about immersion in your games, remember that when combat starts, you ask for the players to roll initiative, cluing them into them entering a new state of the game and that the game will be more structured than when they are in ‘free play.’
Next up, while the skill challenge is in progress, make sure you are including everyone in the challenge. Some players are going to have naturally higher skills than others, but that doesn’t mean they hog the limelight of the experience. Every character must take part in a skill challenge.
An easy way to make sure everyone is involved is by having them roll initiative and using that to ensure that every player gets a chance to take part and that no one gets back-to-back-to-back skill checks. Another way is to simply go around the table round-robin style, asking each one what they are doing in the skill challenge.
Typically, I let the players act more free-form in a skill challenge, but I keep note of how many skills each person has rolled and try to call out anyone who is being quiet or not contributing as much. It is much easier to simply use initiative to help you keep track though.
Casting Spells and Special Abilities
The other thing to keep in mind is that players have a long list of abilities and spells they can cast, and you shouldn’t discourage them from using those abilities. Sometimes these powers could feel like an ‘auto-win’ in a skill challenge, like if they are chasing someone and they dimension door to the person with an ally, but in that case, the skill challenge continues going, but now you can grant them an automatic success or advantage on the next check, or anything else that makes sense.
In addition, don’t be afraid to come up with new challenges that impact your current skill challenge. If they catch up and capture the person they were chasing after with a spell, perhaps the person they catch has spells they use to teleport away or they notice that someone else is now running away from them and they have a second person they now need to capture or they simply complete the skill challenge early and you congratulate them on their quick thinking and lucky dice rolls.
You don’t need to force the players to complete a skill challenge based on these rolls, they are merely a framework to help you create exciting challenges for the players.
Example Skill Challenges
An Artic Expedition
The party must make their way across a frozen tundra, braving the dangers that lie beneath thick sheets of ice and heavy snowfalls.
Difficulty: Moderate(8 successes before 4 failures)
Skills: Acrobatics, Animal Handling, Athletics, Nature, Perception, Survival
Acrobatics (DC 13) to balance on ice and along cliff faces
Animal Handling (DC 15) to keep wild animals, like polar bears, from attacking or to find wild game trails hidden in the snow
Athletics (DC 15) to climb up high cliffs or power through thick snow banks
Nature (DC 13) to recall information on surviving the dangers of the artic
Perception (DC 18) to spot trails or paths to take in the surrounding landscape; can only be used once per character
Survival (DC 15) to find tracks in the snow, find food in the tundra, or locate shelter during a terrible snow storm
Success: The party makes it to the other side of the artic tundra.
Failure: The party stumbles upon a random encounter once they reach 4 failures. After completing the random encounter, they continue the skill challenge and suffer a random encounter after every 2 failures.
Getting Information
The party is trying to get key information they need out of an NPC, but they are not being forthcoming with it.
Difficulty: Easy (6 successes before 3 failures); Party only needs 5 successes if they provide suitable protection. Reduce the number of successes needed by 1 for every 250 gp given to the NPC.
Skills: Deception, Intimidation, Investigation, Insight, Persuasion, Sleight of Hand
Deception (DC 13) to lie about how you know a secret about the NPC
Intimidation (DC 13) to coerce the NPC into revealing secrets
Investigation (DC 15) to provide evidence that the NPC is hiding secrets and you know how to blackmail them with those secrets; only unlocked after one in the party succeeds on an Insight check
Insight (DC 13) to determine if the NPC is lying or telling the truth; can only be used once by any character in the party, on a success, Investigation skill can be used going once
Persuasion (DC 13) to convince the NPC that you are friendly and willing to help them in the future
Slight of Hand (DC 15) to steal something off of their person that they will want, or to steal a journal which has some of the information you need
Success: The NPC provides the information that the party needs. Depending on how the party gets the information, the NPC asks for a small favor that the party can easily accomplish.
Failure: The NPC refuses to share the information unless the party does a very difficult task for them which might take a session or two to accomplish.
Perform a Shadowfell Ritual
The party is attempting a ritual to create a portal to the Shadowfell. This is something they have never done before and have only a vague understanding on how to do it. If they gain additional information, it reduces the difficulty of this skill challenge.
Difficulty: Very Hard (12 successes before 6 failures); if the party gains control of a grimoire or hires an expert, reduces the difficulty down to Moderate and they only need 8 successes before 4 failures
Skills: Arcana, History, Nature, Performance, Religion, Sleight of Hand
Arcana (DC 18) to utter words of power that will help breach the boundaries between the Material Plane and the Shadowfell
History (DC 20) to recall information on how others have attempted the ritual and how you can use their experiences to your benefits
Nature (DC 18) to attune yourself to the borders of the Material Plane and recall information on how the Shadowfell functions
Performance (DC 20) to perform steps in the ritual in the correct tone and intonation that ignites the ley lines with magic
Religion (DC 15) to recall how you can summon celestial creatures to your aid, dissecting those rituals, and using pieces of those spells to help you craft a ritual
Sleight of Hand (DC 20) to perform the difficult somatic gestures required to light candles, draw sigils, and tie knots of magic together
Success: You create a one-time use portal that links the Material Plane to the Shadowfell, and you enter in a place of your choise.
Failure: The party suffers damage and exhaustion from magical energies exploding in their face, or they create the portal but it takes them to the wrong plane, or they arrive in a very dangerous place in the Shadowfell and are forced to struggle and survive the hostile landscape before arriving at their destination.
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