4E - Multiple Concurrent Skill Challenges

[Ignatius]

Has anyone ever done this?

And what about each member of the party completing their own personal skill challenge with their own difficulties, goals and failures at the same time all around the table.

So, roll initiative, round 1 starts, player 1 explains his actions, scores 1 success for his individual skill challenge. Player 2 has his turn, role plays his actions to get to his end goal which is different from player 1, rolls and fails one of his 3.

Can this be done in such a way by the DM that the players dont realise they are participating in individual skill challenges but feel like it is still a group skill challenge?

[TheEmerged]

Last session, in fact. I essentially had 7 skill challenges going at once, one for each of the major NPC's players and one for the 'crowd' that was on the verge of becoming a mob at the point it began.

It was primarily a roleplayed scenario (so no initiative etc). I essentially rolled skill checks against each list whenever it naturally came up during the encounter.

For example, one of the NPC's is an oni that was disguised as a male drow. The oni is a "nemesis" (permanently 3 levels higher than the party) they've already fought twice during heroic levels (they're level 12 right now). He had two purposes here: to cause problems for the party, and to gather allies/support amongst the drow for his plans. A large part of what the party needed to do with him was to discredit him and break his illusion/disguise.

One of the things I had on his list has an intimidate check that counted as a success against the skill check for him. However, it would count as a failure on the list for another NPC because it would make her fear the party. If that NPC got to 3 failures (she got to 2, for the record), it would count as a failure to another list but a success to a third.

My advice would be to not run individual challenges for the players (the so-called Netrunner syndrome). Just run the scenario as if it were a series of skill rolls and keep track of the successes/failures.

[Ignatius]

So you are saying just let the players role play as they would and let it go wherever it gets taken, but tick off successes or failures for each skill challenge as they naturally come up in that session?

Sounds like a good plan to me!

I will be using this for my grand finale for the current campaign - 7 concurrent skill challenges taking place by each player and the BBEG while in the midst of a war between three nations surrounding a palace under siege!

[Kurald Galain]

Can this be done in such a way by the DM that the players dont realise they are participating in individual skill challenges but feel like it is still a group skill challenge?

Wait, what? You want people to not realize they're in a skill challenge while still feeling they're in a skill challenge?

[Ignatius]

Wait, what? You want people to not realize they're in a skill challenge while still feeling they're in a skill challenge?

Sort of... I want 'the party' to be involved in skill challenge A, while at the same time Player 1 is involved in skill challenge B, Player 2 is involved in skill challenge C etc. so depending on the actions and rolls of other players, one players skill challenge might get harder or easier all the while the party is in on a big encounter where there are 3rd party influencers influencing all skill challenges...


And while the party will know the requirements for the party's skill challenge, each player will not know the skill challenge that the other players are participating in