Skill Challenges for 5th Edition

[Grod_The_Giant]

Dungeons and Dragons thrives on its combat mechanics. Determining the outcome of even a minor battle requires lots of rolling. There are choices to make, dangers to confront, dramatic tension and unexpected swings of fortune. Ability checks, on the other hand, are over in a flash. One roll, succeed or fail, move on.

For the most part, that’s what we want—no-one wants to bog the game down for an hour determining if the Rogue can pick a lock or the party can successfully scale the cliff. The problem comes when we want drama that doesn’t involve combat. Think about the actions movies you’ve watched, the fantasy books you’ve read. How many of them had dramatic scenes of the main characters running through an exploding hideout, caught in terrible storms, or being chased through the streets by a more powerful villain?

Trying to include scenes like that in your Dungeons and Dragons game, though, and things will start to stick. The only tool you really have is the ability check—one roll, succeed or fail, subject more to the whim of fate than any choices the player might have made. There’s really no existing framework that lets you break an action-packed scene into smaller chunks, nothing to bring the kind of excitement—and more importantly, choices—away from the battlefield.
That’s where Skill Challenges come in. They exist to make exciting conflict out of dull ability checks, to expand what would be a single roll into an extended, dramatic scene during which all the players have an opportunity to participate.

Turn Order
While less critical than it is in combat, it’s still important to keep track of who gets to go when during a Skill Challenge. Players should roll Initiative at the beginning of a Challenge, and act accordingly. Each turn, they may use their action to attempt one ability check towards completing the Challenge.

(As a small bonus, this means that Skill Challenges are fully compatible with normal combat-- feel free to throw a few monsters into the mix to really push your group to the limit.)

Goals
Skill Challenges break scenes down into smaller objectives called Goals, just as a combat scene uses multiple independent monsters. A simple challenge might only have a single Goal, such as “escape the fire.” A more complex challenge, on the other hand, can have many: patch the holes in the side of the boat, rig the sails for a storm, rescue the sailors swept overboard, and steer around the reefs. Think of Goals as monsters in a combat scene—you have to defeat them all to succeed, or there will be consequences.

Reaching a Goal probably requires more than a single check, just as monsters usually take more than one attack roll to defeat. Instead, the whole party will need to work together, with each successful attempt making steady progress at achieving the Goal.

Each Goal has an associated DC, just like a normal ability check. When a player attempts to reach it, they must make an ability check— if they fail, they make no progress. Ultimately reaching a Goal requires a certain number of successful checks be made, a value referred to as the Goal’s target.

There should be multiple paths to achieving a goal. Dungeon Masters should allow players to use any sort of ability or skill that makes sense in context, rather than specifying that, say, “only Charisma (Persuasion) checks will work here.”

Spoiler: Sidebar: How Long Will It Take?

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When designing Skill Challenges, DMs might want to know how exactly hard things will be. Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer—it depends heavily on what types of characters are in the party and where they have invested their resources. The best we can do is give you a rough estimate of how many rolls it will take to complete a Goal of a given DC.

Goal DC	Level 1-4	Level 5-10	Level 11-16	Level 17+
5	1 roll	1 roll	1 roll	1 roll
10	2 rolls	1 roll	1 roll	1 roll
15	2 rolls	2 rolls	2 rolls	1 roll
20	4 rolls	3 rolls	2 rolls	2 rolls
25	--*	6 rolls	5 rolls	4 rolls
30	--	--*	--*	--*

*It’s possible that some of your players will be able to reach these DCs on a very lucky roll, but you shouldn’t count on it.

Dangers
Skill Challenges exist to bring excitement and tension to the game; without some sort of risk, the whole thing ultimately devolves to “roll this die until I say you’re done.” And so, each Goal has an associated Danger—a consequence that triggers every round it remains unresolved. Possible Dangers include…

• Damage. There are plenty of situations where failing to act results in direct harm to the players, such as lost hit points, negative conditions, or even a level of exhaustion, if the situation is truly dire. Players should be allowed to make a defensive ability check, with success resulting in half damage or a less serious condition. The DC of such a check is the same as the goal’s normal DC.
• Disadvantage. Failing to resist a danger such as high winds or choking smoke might result in a character suffering disadvantage on their checks in the next round, or even losing their chance to interact with the hazard altogether. As with Damage, players should get a chance to resist the effect.
• Forced Movement. Not every challenge will take place in an arena where physical position matters, but in those
• Ticking Clocks. Many challenges have a time limit—rescue the sailors before they drown, escape the building before the roof caves in, reach civilization before you run out of rations, and so on. In cases like this, the Danger merely advances the countdown by one. They’re a useful too, but be cautious. In isolation, time limits are boring. There’s no back-and-forth, no twists, no strategy, just “roll the same check five times and hope for the best.” Always pair clocks with at least one active danger.

Goals “act” in turn order, just like characters do, as though they had rolled Initiative results equal to their DC. On their “turn,” their associated Danger triggers, and players will have to deal with falling debris, storm-tossed lightning, or another tick of an inexorable countdown.

Example Skill Challenge
A villain has set the Stuttering Pony Inn ablaze to cover their tracks, and several customers are still trapped inside!

Goal	DC	Target	Danger
Rescue the Three Trapped Victims	15	3	Roll a d6. On a roll of 5 or 6, one of the victims dies from smoke and fire. Reduce the target by 1.
Pull down the burning thatch	10	1	All characters within 30ft of the inn, or on the top floor, take 1d6 fire damage.
Seal the cellar before the liquor ignites	10	2	Clock—in six rounds, fire will reach the booze
Extinguish the Flames	10	5	All characters inside the inn take 2d6 fire damage

Skill Challenges and Class Features
At this point, you might be wondering how spells play into things. And since there’s no reason that spellcasters should have all the fun, what about class features? Surely a Monk’s ability to dash up walls or a Wizard’s divination spell should have some sort of bonus?
Indeed they should—relevant spells and abilities can certainly be used to justify adding your proficiency bonus to an ability check that you might not have otherwise been proficient in. More importantly, they can provide a bonus to an ability check. When using a relevant feature, you gain a bonus on your d20 roll as shown on the chart below.

Ability Type	Bonus
Abilities useable an unlimited number of times	+1
Abilities usable more than two times per short rest	+1d4
Abilities usable two times or less per short rest	+1d6
Abilities usable more than two times per long rest	+1d6
Abilities usable two times or less per long rest	+1d8
Cantrips	+1
Spells of 1st and 2nd level	+1d4
Spells of 3rd through 5th level	+1d6
Spells of 6th level or higher	+1d8

[rel]

I like it. Clean and simple, it looks very usable.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I like it. Clean and simple, it looks very usable.

Thanks! The idea of Dangers came through cleanly?

[rel]

I think so?
I read it as, every round, every undefeated skill challenge element uses its danger against the party.

If I use this I'll probably add elements that only appear after a certain amount of time or after something else was defeated to give the whole challenge a sort of progression.

[Droppeddead]

I like this. It might not be something to use all the time but it's a handy tool for certain situations. You could easily change around the Dangers as it suits the situation.

Well done!

[Guy Lombard-O]

It looks like its logical and fairly simple to implement, and hopefully fun to use. Have you been able to playtest it much? How did it work (any examples)?

BTW, in the Dangers section, the Forced Movement subsection seems oddly truncated. Might need a fix.