Spells that can ruin adventures

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Have you ever had an adventure spoiled by a spell? Through the history of Dungeons & Dragons, a variety of spells carried the potential to short circuit or spoil whole categories of adventures—at least without significant planning to avoid the spells’ potential.

Spells like Detect Lie (later Discern Lies) and Zone of Truth threaten to eliminate intrigue. They would turn A Song and Ice and Fire into short story.

When spells like Commune and Speak with Dead in the game, you can forget whodunits.

The Prince of Murder’s army of assassins cannot keep him safe in his mountain aerie if the characters can scry and fry.

Many of the adventure spoiling spells existed in the early days, but given the play styles of the times, they posed few problems.

Once upon a time D&D games took place in huge sprawling dungeons like the one under Castle Greyhawk, where monsters wandered and players balanced their own encounters by deciding how deep they dared to go.

Adventures never featured intrigue. You never needed to find the real killer from among a group of suspects. As the Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures advertised, “NPCs were there to be killed.”

Detect Lie probably started as a way to determine if the captive Kobold was lying about the treasure behind the “untrapped” door ahead. It also deterred the thief from stealing your stuff. Know Alignment simply existed so the cleric could tell the paladin who to kill first.

A few troublesome spells existed in the early days, but Gary built in solutions for the DM. The description of Commune says, “It is probably that the referee will limit the use of Commune to one per adventure, one per week, or even one per month, for the gods dislike frequent interruption.” Strangely, when you want to know who betrayed the party, the gods always prove too busy. The Contact other Plane spell could potentially gather lies or drive the caster insane. How bad do you want to know? In practice, these spells typically provided the Dungeon Master with a way to give hints to stuck players.

In the early days, information spells couldn’t ruin adventures, but travel and movement spells could.

As long as the players stayed indoors, Fly wasn’t a big deal. Outside, it let players fly past obstacle and enemies or just bomb and strafe them from out of reach. Every DM who fails to plan for flying will see mid-level encounters ruined, but you learn fast.

Ethereal travel can threaten to take dungeons right of the game. Any cleric with the 5th level Plane Shift spell could take seven friends ethereal, allowing them to waft through the dangerous dungeon stuff and go straight for the treasure. AD&D attempted to limit the problem by populating the ethereal with tough wandering monsters and the random Ether Cyclone. Apparently that failed to deter enough adventurers because Tomb of Horrors includes this note: “Character who become astral or ethereal in the Tomb will attract a type I-IV demon 1 in 6, with a check made each round.”

The Manual of the Planes finally gave Acererak and other dungeon makers options other than contracting with the Abyss for ethereal security. Now you could overlap your stronghold with barriers such as ethereal stone, or you could mix gorgon blood into your mortar. Inexplicably, third edition made the gorgon-blood trick an optional rule. Thanks guys. Who’s side are you on?

By the time 3E came around, some designers had become so immersed in the story slant of D&D that they forgot how broken ethereal travel could be. How else can we explain Ghostform–just add invisibility to Ghostform and you can phase through any dungeon. Ghostform appeared at 4th level and rose to 8th in errata! The four level revision must be a record.

Eventually, even in the early days, the mega-dungeon seemed a little tired to a lot of folks. Dave Arneson started mocking the routine in his Blackmoor campaign, where the dungeon entrance featured turnstiles and holy water dispensers.

In the mid 70s, at a kitchen table somewhere, for the first time ever, a DM told his players that their characters met a cloaked stranger in the back of the inn with a special job. The plotted adventure was born. Suddenly the DM needed to plan adventures around a class of spells that could ruin everything.

You might suppose the new interest in plot would lead the second edition designers to reconsider all the spells that stand as an obstacle to fun plot elements like mystery, double-dealing, and skulduggery. Mostly, the designers doubled down by adding spells like Zone of Truth. At least they added a saving throw to Detect Lie, giving any DMs willing to fudge die rolls the power to save their adventures. (Unless the players just rely on Detect Evil to determine who to kill.)

I cannot imagine situations where the truth and alignment-determining spells add to the game. They only stand as an obstacle to certain types of adventures.

Next: Scry and fry

Before miniature sculptors used computer-aided design

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Is it just me, or did Dungeons & Dragons miniatures grow over time?

Ghoul (Harbinger 2003) and Ravenous Ghoul (Desert of Desolation 2007)

Troll (Harbinger 2003), Troll Slasher (Angelfire 2005), Bladerager Troll (Dangerous Delves 2009), and War Troll (Legendary Evils 2009)

Sometimes I run across miniatures that do not fit the scale.

Yuan-Ti Champion of Zahir (large), Gargoyle (medium), Magma Hurler (medium), and Flesh Golem (large)

Next: Spells that can ruin adventures

Update on elemental miniatures and 3D battle maps

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In the 11 Most Useful Types of Miniatures, I lamented the lack of translucent miniatures for fire, water, and air elementals. I have discovered that the early Dungeons & Dragons miniatures sculpts for the medium-sized elementals reappeared in a HeroScape set called Fury of the Primordials.  Unlike the original, opaque versions of these figures, the new versions come in translucent plastic. This makes the fire and water elementals look terrific, and the air elemental now looks like an air elemental rather than an angry, melting fish. 

In addition to the three, translucent figures, the set includes an earth elemental figure, and a Wyvern figure, which once appeared in the Aberrations set in a form that now costs about $16 when purchased individually.

For D&D players, the HeroScape miniatures suffer from oddly-sized bases. The medium bases span a bit more than an inch, making them a bit too big for the squares on the battle map. Large figures like the Wyvern have peanut-shaped bases unsuited to D&D. The Heroscape to DDM re-base guide describes a simple procedure to re-base the figures.

Unfortunately, Hasbro dropped the HeroScape line in 2010 and the Fury of Primordials set is long out of print. Most online vendors sell the packs at well above the original retail price, but I managed to find a few still offering the set at a good price. As of this post, some bargains remain available.

Also in that my top 11 list, I called out the Lurking Wraith as the best D&D miniature ever, and hoped a painted version would reappear in the Dungeon Command Curse of Undeath set. The set has arrived and, rather than including another version of Lurking Wraith, the set includes a translucent version of the Cursed Spirit renamed the Hypnotic Spirit. I’m happy to have the new figure, but it cannot unseat the Lurking Wraith as my favorite. I prefer the original Lurking Wraith’s shadow gray over the ectoplasmic blue of the Hypnotic Spirit. Plus the enigmatic Lurking Wraith works as a neutral ghostly figure, while the Hypnotic Spirit’s malevolence limits it to being a threat. Nonetheless, if you want to plunder Dungeon Command sets for figures to use in D&D play, the Curse of Undeath set ranks as the best assortment yet.

In solving the limitations of battle maps, I looked for better methods of presenting 3D battles. When I posted my question to the EN World and to Wizards’ D&D forums, I received a number of interesting suggestions. The Combat Tiers system from Tinkered Tactics ranks as my favorite.

Next: Before miniature sculptors used computer-aided design

Living Forgotten Realms Battle Interactive

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I received my judge assignments for the upcoming Winter Fantasy convention. I’ll be running CORE5-3 Lost in Wonder during all the afternoon and evening slots on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday. On Saturday, I’ll run a table for the Living Forgotten Realms Battle Interactive event.

Battle Interactive events unite a ballroom full of Dungeons & Dragons players into a single, shared conflict.  A year ago, I had no interest in running or playing in such an event. I envisioned an nine-hour slog through a giant combat encounter, further dragged down by the need to administer the movement of characters around the battlefield, and with a taxing suspension of disbelief required to account for the high-paragon superheroes running with the 1st-level mooks. (I wrote about the dissonance that occurs when you compare fourth-edition characters of widely different levels in Two problems that provoked bounded accuracy.)

Last spring, when I volunteered to judge at Origins, I must have selected the ADCP series along with the other events I would judge. I failed to realize that event ADCP4-2 Lost City of Suldolphor was a Battle Interactive. I’m happy I made the error, because I had a blast running a table. Actually, if I hadn’t “volunteered,” I certainly would have found myself among the many judges drafted minutes before the event. I still would have had fun, but I prefer to be prepared.War In EuropeAs it happens, the Battle Interactive does not use a single giant map, like a D&D version of War In Europe. The BI plays as a series of timed challenges, shared by the entire room, with the combined results from each table contributing to the final outcome. At the individual tables, the players tackle an instance of an encounter scaled to level. These encounters represent a segment of a larger challenge faced by everyone. The encounters include non-combat objectives, making them more dynamic and interesting than a simple slug-fest. The time limits imposed on the encounters maintains a breakneck pace as players race to complete their objectives in the allotted time. This was no slog. For each encounter, each table has the option of sending one player to contribute to sort of skill challenge involving other volunteers from across the room.

Much of the fun comes from the chance to play D&D with a large number of enthusiasts in a single, grand experience. Everyone at my table became passionate about contributing to the shared success of hundreds of players. Dan Anderson, the adventure’s author, and Sean Molley turned in great performances as the WeavePasha and Ala’Ammar. They set the scene and objectives for each encounter in character. For my part, I loved the excitement, the brisk pacing and, since I ran a level 18 table, the chance to bust out my purple worm and titan minis.

Next: Update on elemental miniatures and 3D battle maps

The next skill challenge

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(This concludes a series, which begins with Evolution of the skill challenge.)

How would a game activity like the skill challenge appear in D&D Next?

First of all, D&D Next no longer attempts to center game play around the encounter as a core activity of the game, so the rules no longer need to package a bunch of skill checks into something with the scale and formality of combat encounter. As ever, players may still need to infiltrate enemy camps or coax the duke into supporting their cause, and those challenges may require a series of skill rolls, but the checks can come as needed. Under the surface, do the tallies of successes and failures make the game more fun?

If D&D Next never includes anything like a skill challenge, I will be perfectly content. However, including rules for something like the skill challenge could yield two benefits:

  • They give a formal mechanism for awarding experience points to characters who overcome non-combat obstacles in the game.
  • They provide a tool for dungeon masters as they work to structure non-combat obstacles into exciting adventures, which involve every character and feature a sense of jeopardy that rises even as the characters near success.

As I have suggested throughout this series of posts, the design flaws of the skill challenge begin with the “skill” in the name. Putting the focus on skills creates the wrong approach. A good alternative would place the emphasis where it belongs, on the obstacles the players must overcome.

So I present my alternative to the skill challenge: the obstacle course. The name is memorable, puts the focus where it belongs, and yes, it’s silly. I admit it.

Combat encounters feature creatures to overcome. The obstacle course features obstacles to overcome. Combat encounters deliver experience based on the number and difficulty of enemies; obstacle courses deliver experience based on the number and difficulty of challenges. Obstacle courses can be overcome by player problem solving, skill successes, or a combination of both. Just as setbacks in a combat encounter threaten the characters, setbacks in a well-designed obstacle course bring the characters closer to some catastrophe. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

So let’s bury the skill challenge. Long live the obstacle course.

Next: Living Forgotten Realms Battle Interactive

Example: Finding the hidden chambers from Halaster’s Last Apprentice

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(Part 6 of a series, which begins with Evolution of the skill challenge.)

The first D&D Encounters season, Halaster’s Last Apprentice, included a skill challenge that works perfectly within the original conception of the skill challenge rules. “You make a perilous search through the upper levels of Undermountain, seeking the hidden chamber. Each of you contributes in some way….”

For that encounter season, I served as DM to a table full of players who were resampling D&D after many years away from the game. They wanted to return to the Undermountain crawls that they enjoyed in the past. I worried that playing an abstract challenge would convince them that 4E was no longer the game they had loved.  “But some of us like dungeon stuff.” Unfortunately, the skill challenge posed some problems for the more vivid style that I wanted. The challenge’s description included a huge array of applicable skills, but only hinted at a few tangible obstacles that the players might face.

Drawing on the challenge’s description, I created a list of obstacles that suited the challenge. Each invited a number of solutions based on the different skills listed in the challenge.

Obstacle Potential solutions
Locked door Pick lock using thievery
Break door using athletics
Search, possibly locating a hidden key or secret catch
Huge, obviously unbeatable, carrion crawler in a chamber ahead Sneak past (failure forces retreat)
Use nature to lure the giant rats from a nearby niche into the chamber, distracting the beast
Use bluff to create a distraction
Flooded tunnels block passage Use endurance to swim frigid water and find an easy route or, in combination with dungeoneering, a way to drain the tunnels

As I ran the skill challenge, I presented specific obstacles and unveiled new complications as needed. (Sometimes I feel like Grommet laying track as he rolls along.) I kept the complications coming until the characters reach the required number of successes.

The challenge’s description limits the number of available successes for skills like thievery, so once thievery is no longer an option, the players stop encountering doors with locks. Instead, the door is barred from the other side, or perhaps a collapsed stone block closes the passage. A strong character might wrench it out of the way, or you could brave that flooded passage you just passed…

In Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 remakes the skill challenge, I criticized this challenge for lacking any tangible, game-world reason that three failures results in a failed challenge. Because the adventure suggests that rival groups sought the chamber, when my players failed checks, I explained how the failures delayed the party, and then had them find signs that another group had recently passed this way.

If the players do amass three strikes, the challenge taxes everyone a healing surge due to the “constant fighting,” you know, dungeon stuff. Also, the players get penalized with a fight. Some penalty. I ran the fight anyway because some folks at my table clearly would have been disappointed without one.

Next: The next skill challenge

Spinning a narrative around a skill challenge

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(Part 5 of a series, which begins with Evolution of the skill challenge.)

The Dungeon Master’s Guide 2’s example skill challenge shows the Dungeon Master responding to each success or failure in the traditional DM role─by telling the players what happens in the game world as a result of their actions.

On page 83, the DMG2 advises dungeon masters that each success or failure should do the following:

  • Introduce a new option that the PCs can pursue.
  • Change the situation, such as sending the PCs to a new location, introducing new NPCs, or adding a complication.
  • Grant the players a tangible congruence for the check’s success or failure (as appropriate), one that influences their subsequent decisions.

This puts the DM back in the DM’s role, but it puts a burden on the DM running the challenge. Before, I just had to determine if a player’s justification for applying a skill made sense. Now I have to respond to each success or failure with an ongoing narrative. That’s okay; that’s the job I signed up for as a DM. But the format for a written skill challenge description remains focused on the skills available to the players and the possible justifications for using them. The format never evolves to give the DM more help spinning a narrative around the challenge.

Just as every failed check leads closer to failure, every successful check overcomes some barrier to success, but reveals a new, tangible obstacle or complication.

So in a well-run skill challenge, the DM faces his own challenge of inventing new complications to thwart the players even as they earn each success. (Sometimes I’m reminded of the infamous babelfish puzzle in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy computer game, where your countless attempts to get the fish each result in it slipping into yet another inaccessible spot.) Written skill challenges sometimes help by suggesting the sorts of obstacles that each skill might overcome, but the written format is far, far from optimal for the task.

Skill challenges also limit the number of successes players can earn with each skill. That guideline remains good. No one wants a boring and repetitive challenge where one character chips away at a problem with the same skill.  But this guideline adds another hurdle for you, as the DM. As you narrate the challenge and pose new complications to meet every success, you must craft situations that invite the skills which remain available, while closing off the avenues that are now blocked. You get extra credit for creating complications that force the characters on the sidelines to participate.

Now we have a challenge for the DM as well as the players. Ironically, while the skill challenge mechanic initially tried to sideline the DM to a secondary role, running a good skill challenge now becomes one of the DM’s most thorny tasks.

I approach the task with a little extra preparation.

When I prepare to run a ready-made skill challenge in a published adventure, I am less interested in the list of recommended skills than in the obstacles and complications that the author says the skills might overcome. With a particularly sketchy challenge, I may list a few obstacles of my own, so I am prepared to present new situations as the players advanced through the challenge. I want specific obstacles that invite more than one solution. You can pick the lock or break down the door.  Obviously, most obstacles are not simple barriers like a locked door. For example, in an investigation skill challenge, a success might reveal a new lead that carries the characters across town to a new obstacle─anything from a cryptic note hidden under a floorboard to a reluctant witness who won’t talk until you eliminate the source of her fear.

Of course, tangible obstacles also invite creative solutions, so be prepared to welcome the players’ ideas, and to mark off successes without any rolls. For more, see my post on player skill without player frustration.

In my preparation, I also consider the setbacks the players might encounter with a failed check. With each failed roll, I want to tell the players exactly how the failure draws their characters closer to a catastrophe.

Despite my preparation, when I run for organized play, I respect the skill challenge the author presents. When my players compare notes with players from the next table, I want my players to say, “Your skill challenge sounds just like ours, but ours seemed like more fun.” (Actually, I want every skill challenge to be more fun. That’s why I’m writing all this.)

Next: an example

The Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 remakes the skill challenge

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(Part 4 of a series, which begins with Evolution of the skill challenge.)

Just a year after fourth edition’s debut, the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 upended the original skill challenge. The new material makes just one specific revision to the original rules:  It provides new numbers for challenge complexity and difficulty class to address serious problems with skill challenge math.

Beyond the numbers, I suspect the designers sought to remake the skill challenge as much as possible without scrapping the existing rules. The big changes come from original rules that are now ignored, and from advice and examples that completely remake how challenges run at the table.

The Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 strips away the formal game-within-a-game implied by the original skill challenge: The structure of rolling for initiative and taking turns is gone; the new summary contains no mention of it. In the example skill challenge, the players jump in to act as they wish.

I disliked the original, story-game style implied by the original skill challenge rules, and welcomed the new advice. But the core of the original skill challenge rules remained, and some friction existed between those original rules and the recast skill challenge. In this post, I will explore some points of friction, and discuss some ways to overcome them.

Scoring with failed checks discourages broad participation

The 4E designers tried the match the formulas for constructing a combat encounter with similar formulas for a skill challenge. So a skill challenge’s complexity stems from the number and difficulty of successes required─an odd choice in a way. You don’t grant experience in a combat encounter by counting how many attacks score hits.

This scorekeeping works fine when you run a skill challenge as a collaborative storytelling game within a game

In the original skill challenge, every character had a turn, and no one could pass. This forced every player to participate. The new challenge drops the formal structure, leaving the DM with the job of getting everyone involved. The DMG2 helps with advice for involving every character. However, the players know three failed skill checks add up to a failed challenge, so now some players will fight against making any checks for fear of adding to an arbitrary count of failures and contributing to a failed challenge. This stands in total opposition to the original ideal where everyone contributes.

Obviously, some failed skill checks will bring the players closer to a disaster, by alerting the guards, collapsing the tunnel, or whatever. On the other hand, the foreseeable, game-world consequences of some failures do not lead to disaster, yet players worry about attempting, say, an innocuous knowledge check because they metagame the skill challenge.

Hint: You can encourage more players to participate in a skill challenge by forcing the characters to tackle separate tasks simultaneously. For instance, if the characters only need to gain the support of the head of the merchant council, then typically one player makes all the diplomacy rolls. If the characters must split up to convince every member of the merchant council before their vote, then every player must contribute. Just give the players enough information to know which methods of persuasion will work best on which members of the council.

Scorekeeping may not match game world

In the story-game style of the original skill challenge, the players’ score can exist as a naked artifice of the game, just like the turns the rules forced them to take. I suspect that the original vision of the skill challenge assumed the DM would tell players their score of successes and failures. After all, the players could even keep accurate score themselves. This avoided the need to provide game-world signs of success or failure as the players advanced through the challenge. After the skill challenge finished, you could always concoct a game-world explanation for the challenge’s outcome.

Now on page 83, the DMG2 tells you to “grant the players a tangible congruence for the check’s success or failure (as appropriate), one that influences their subsequent decisions.” (In word choices like “tangible congruence,” Gary’s spirit lives!)

This works best if the challenge’s cause of failure is different from the players’ success. For example, if the players must infiltrate the center of the enemy camp without raising an alarm, then their successes can bring them closer to their goal even as their failures raise suspicion and take them closer to failure. These sorts of challenges create a nice tension as the players draw closer to both victory and defeat.

If moving toward success necessarily moves the players away from failure, then running the challenge poses a problem.

The first Dungeon Masters Guide introduced the skill challenge mechanic with an example where the players attempt to persuade the duke before the duke grows too annoyed to listen.  Good luck role playing the duke’s demeanor as he is poised one success away from helping while also one failure away from banishing the players.

Even worse, if a skill challenge lacks any clear marker of failure, running the challenge presents a problem. The first D&D Encounters season, Halaster’s Last Apprentice, included a challenge where the players seek to find hidden chambers in the Undermountain before they amass the three failures allowed by the rules. Why do three failures end this challenge? Is it because the players grow restless and are now all on their smart phones? The adventure suggests that rival groups might be seeking the lost chambers, but it fails to capitalize on this. The adventure follows the conventional advice by taxing each player a healing surge, and then saying that they found the crypt anyway.

“Why do we lose a healing surge?”

“Well, you know, dungeon stuff.”

Why is the game turning the dungeon stuff into a die-rolling abstraction? I thought some of us liked dungeon stuff.

Hint: You can fix a lot of bad skill challenges by adding time pressure. Every failed attempt wastes time. Too many failures and time runs out. Convince the duke before he is called to the wedding that will cement his alliance with the enemy. Find the hidden crypt before the sun sets and the dead rise.

Next: Spinning a narrative around a skill challenge

Speed factor, weapon armor class adjustments, and skill challenges

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(Part 3 of a series, which begins with Evolution of the skill challenge.)

The first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons included lots of rules that no one uses: weapon speed factor, weapon armor class adjustments. A little of that tradition lived on in the first year of fourth edition. No one played skill challenges exactly as written in the first fourth edition Dungeon Master’s Guide. At the very least, you did not start skill challenges by rolling for initiative.

According to the book, the Dungeon Master announces a skill challenge, the players roll initiative, and then take turns deciding on a skill to use and inventing a reason why that skill might apply to the situation. No one may pass a turn.

In short, everyone interrupts the D&D game and starts playing a storytelling game.

At Gen Con 2012, Robin D. Laws, one of the authors of the 4E Dungeon Master’s Guide 2, held a panel discussion on story advice. The Tome Show podcast recorded this panel as episode 201. When giving advice on running skill challenges, Robin Laws gives a succinct description of the original skill challenge.

“What I found myself doing when I was running 4E was putting a lot more onus on the players to describe what they were doing and make it much more of a narrative world-building than just here’s these particular obstacles that you have to overcome.
“‘You go on an arduous journey. Each of you contributes in a significant way as you’re going through the desert, and some of you wind up in a disadvantageous position. So tell me what it is you do to contribute to the survival of the party.’ And then I go around the table round-robin style and everyone would have to think of something cool and defining that they might have done.”

This flips the normal play style of D&D. Normally players encounter obstacles, and then find ways to overcome them. Now the players participate in the world building, inventing complications that their skills can overcome. I’m not saying this is wrong for a game. The market is full of storytelling games where players cooperate to tell stories, a process that can include taking turns inventing complications. This sort of collaborate storytelling may even be the preferred style of play for some D&D groups, though I have to wonder why those groups would choose to play D&D over a game that better suits their interests. I argue that for a lot of D&D players, this style did not feel like D&D very much anymore, and that is why skill challenges evolved over the course of fourth edition.

Robin’s description of the players’ role in the skill challenge is particularly interesting. He says players search for “cool and defining” things they could do. That could be fun, but challenges never play out that way. Most players just search their sheets for their best skills and try to imagine ways to justify using them. I suppose under Robin’s coaching, or with a game that encourages that play style, players might seek out cool and defining things. Unlike D&D, story games can encourage that play style mechanically. For example, story games often have mechanics where you define you characters by simply listing their unique and interesting aspects. This might be as simple as coming up with as list of adjectives or keywords describing your character.

Neither D&D’s tradition nor the skill challenge mechanic encourages players to overcome the challenge by inventing cool and defining actions for their character. D&D’s mechanics encourage players to look for their highest skill bonus, and then concoct an excuse to use it. I am certain that both Robin Laws and I both agree that this strategy makes D&D less fun than it can be.

He prefers a game where players share more of the narration, world-building role. Many fun games support that that style of play, but D&D is not one of those games. (Robin mentions that his HeroQuest game inspires the way he runs skill challenges.)

When I play D&D, I want to immerse myself in the game world and think of ways to overcome obstacles. My actions might involve skill checks, by they often do not.

Less then three months after the 4E release, Mike Mearls began his Ruling Skill Challenges column. He writes, “In many ways, the R&D department at Wizards of the Coast has undergone the same growing pains and learning experiences with skill challenges, much as DMs all over the world have.” The column starts a  process of recasting the skill challenge, making it fit better with the usual D&D play style.

Next: The Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 remakes the skill challenge

The skill challenge: good intentions, half baked

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(Part 2 of a series, which begins with Evolution of the skill challenge.)

The forth edition rules make the encounter the central activity of the Dungeons & Dragons game. The Dungeon Master’s Guide says, “Encounters are the exciting part of the D&D game,” (p.22) and encourages dungeon masters to shorten the intervals between encounters. “Move the PCs quickly from encounter to encounter, and on to the fun!” (p.105)

Page 105 includes more revealing advice. “As much as possible, fast-forward through the parts of an adventure that aren’t fun.  An encounter with two guards at the city gate isn’t fun.  Tell the players they get through the gate without much trouble and move on to the fun.  Niggling details about food supplies and encumbrance usually aren’t fun, so don’t sweat them, and let the players get to the adventure and on to the fun.  Long treks through endless corridors in the ancient dwarven stronghold beneath the mountains aren’t fun.”

Personally, I think that two of those activities do seem fun—especially the trek through the dwarven stronghold. I think the passage reveals something about how the 4E designers disastrously misread some of the audience for the fourth edition game, but that’s a topic for another post.

More to the point, the passage lists the sorts of interaction and exploration that skill challenges try to turn into encounters.

The 4E designers recognized that D&D includes more than combat, so they needed a game activity that gave players an opportunity to use skills and that held the same weight as the game’s core activity, the encounter. I imagine the 4E designers filling a white board with goals like these:

  • Skill challenges should be worth experience points to give them importance equal to a combat encounter.
  • Skill challenges need a difficulty and mechanical rigor similar to a combat encounter.
  • Skill challenge mechanic should enable every player to participate, not just the players with obvious skills.

The last goal reverses the early class balance of the game, in a good way. Through most of D&D history, some characters fared poorly in combat, but got a chance to shine in exploration and role playing. In the original game, thieves were not particularly useful in a fight, but fights were short and the players spent most of their time exploring, so the thief enjoyed plenty of time in the spotlight. In 4E, the rogue ranks as one of the most effective classes in combat, but every other class gets an equal chance to shine outside of combat.

The original skill challenge rules have players rolling initiative and taking turns. To make sure that everyone has a chance to contribute on their turn, players take the role of inventing circumstances where their characters can contribute. The turn structure ensures that everyone must contribute. You cannot pass a turn. “Characters must make a check on their turns using one of the identified, primary skills or they must use a different skill, if they can come up with a way to use it to contribute to the challenge.” (p.74)  This often leads to strained justifications for skill checks.

“Does the chieftain like acrobatics?  By using acrobats and interpretive dance, perhaps I can convince him not to attack the village.”

As the name suggests, skill challenges focus on skills, not on the players’ problem-solving abilities. As I wrote in Player skill without player frustration, 4E attempted to eliminate frustration by emphasizing skill checks and skill challenges over concrete obstacles and over players’ problem solving skills. When every obstacle has a DC and multiple skills, then no one gets frustrated. If you find a locked door, you can pick the lock with thievery, or break the door with strength.

The designers saw another benefit of focusing on skills. Social skills such as diplomacy, bluff, and intimidate allow players who feel uncomfortable with play-acting to contribute without stepping out of their comfort zone. As a DM, I’ve encountered plenty of players who freeze up when I encourage them to speak as their character. I think they miss a fun aspect of the game, but I don’t force it. Nonetheless, I insist players say more than, “I diplomacize the king and I roll….”

Next: Speed factor, weapon armor class adjustments, and skill challenges