Skill Challenges
Skill Challenges is a minigame of repeated skill checks against another party to achieve some goal. You might employ a skill challenge as the characters are escaping a collapsing building, conducting a performance, or some other great test of skill.
What is a Skill Challenge?
In a Skill Challenge, characters compete with another creature or the environment in a series of ability checks to determine success or failure. To succeed in a Skill Challenge, a creature or group of creatures must accumulate a specified number of successful rolls, whilst avoiding failing a certain amount of rolls as best they can.
Running a Skill Challenge
At the start of a skill challenge, determine the overall difficulty of the character's task. The difficulty of the task determines how many successful rolls are needed to succeed the skill challenge, and how many fails are required to fail it. The Skill Challenge Difficulty table lists some recommended success / failure requirements for a Skill Challenge.
As the skill challenge progresses, the characters can propose actions they would like to perform to try and succeed, or in reaction to something another party does to contribute to the overall success/failure pool. When they do so, have the player describe how they are attempting to act or react to the situation, and roll an appropriate ability check to add to the group's success/failure pool.
Successes and failures can't be removed from the total pool for the skill challenge until the challenge is complete.
Table - Skill Challenge Difficulty
| Difficulty | Successes Required | Failures Required |
|---|---|---|
| Very Easy | 3 | 6 |
| Easy | 4 | 5 |
| Medium | 5 | 4 |
| Hard | 6 | 4 |
| Very Hard | 7 | 3 |
| Almost Impossible | 10 | 3 |
Sometimes, an action is performed that might just end the skill challenge on the spot. Causing a cave-in might prevent a team of hostile dwarves from mining, failing a performance might get the character kicked off stage, or some other extreme event may end the challenge early, at the DM's discretion.
Creatures Joining and Fleeing the Challenge
When additional creatures join or leave the skill challenge, whether alongside or against the characters, they make the total difficulty of the skill challenge easier or harder to succeed. When a creature joins to assist the characters, they add 1 additional success to the group's total, but if a friendly creature is forced to leave the challenge, the characters gain 1 failure. Hostile creatures are the opposite- when they join the skill challenge, the characters gain 1 failure, and when they are forced to leave the challenge, the characters gain 1 success.
Spells and the Skill Challenge
Creatures might attempt to cast spells to assist them in the skill challenge, such as the Spider Climb spell to ascend a building, the Friends cantrip to make conversation just a little easier, or the Skywrite spell to signal a passing airship. When a friendly creature casts a such spell that would possibly assist them, as determined by the DM, they gain 1 success- however, an enemy casting a spell might set the characters back a failure if they suffer its effects (such as failing a saving throw against the Time Stop or Hold Person spells, for example).