Skill Challenges

^{Mistveil → Rules → Skill Challenges}

Skill challenges are optional mechanics to allow the party to overcome obstacles in a cinematic manner while making use of their skills and quick thinking. During these cinematic moments, players are encouraged to take up some of the imaginative responsibilities of the GM and feel free to take liberties with the obstacles that are presented in order to justify the skill they would like to use. Anything too outlandish or exploitive can, and should be, shot down by the GM but this is fun opportunity for everyone at the table to flex their storytelling muscles.

Skill challenges begin when the GM presents a situation and announces that the party will attempt to overcome it through a skill challenge. Once everyone is aware that they are in a skill challenge, the following steps are gone through in order.

1. The GM presents the current obstacle the party is trying to overcome.
2. In "passive initiative" order (10 + initiative bonus; ties are decided by the players) each player describes how they would overcome the obstacle using one of their skills that they have not personally used so far in this skill challenge one at a time.
3. The GM approves or denies the plausibility of the proposed attempts and, if approved, asks for a roll.
4. If successful the GM describes the attempt overcoming the obstacle and the player accumulates one "success point". If the roll fails to meet the set DC, the GM describes the failure and the player accumulates one "failure point".
5. Repeat each above step until the party reaches either the "pass state" or the "fail state".
   
   

Building a Skill Challenge

To create a skill challenge a GM comes up with a series of obstacles for the party to overcome. The more obstacles there are the more difficult the skill challenge is. An easy skill challenge might have 3 obstacles where a more difficult one might have 6 or more obstacles.

Each obstacle has a base DC depending on the difficulty of the skill challenge. Very easy skill challenges might have a base DC of 10 where more difficult challenges might have a base DC of 20. If the solution proposed by a player is possible but very unlikely, the DC is increased by between 5 to 10 to reflect that.

Every skill challenge has both a pass state and a fail state. Once one of these states are met, the skill challenge comes to an end. More details on what these states are below.

Success Points and Failure Points

Whenever a player successfully overcomes an obstacle they accumulate a success point, in addition they accumulate a failure point whenever they fail to meet the DC with their skill roll. The amount of success points needed to overcome a skill challenge is laid out in the pass state but a player cannot accumulate more than 3 failure points. The consequences of reaching 3 failure points depend on the individual skill challenge but they likely contribute towards the fail state of the skill challenge.

Pass State and Fail State

A skill challenge is considered complete once either the pass state or the fail state is reached. The pass state is usually reached once a certain number of success points are accumulated by a certain number of players. For example a skill challenge might be finished once any player reaches 3 success points or it could be once all players reach 3 success points each. A fail state usually occurs once 3 failure points are accumulated by a certain number of players. Most skill challenges reach their fail state if all players accumulate 3 failure points before achieving a pass state but more difficult skill challenges might end if only 1 or 2 players accumulate 3 failure points. Once finished, skill challenges might have a binary consequences (pass or fail) or might have something more dynamic such as passing but with certain drawbacks depending on how many failure points the party accumulated before reaching the pass state.

Group Successes

While deciding what they would like to do in order to overcome an obstacle players can attempt to make a skill roll that allows for multiple party members to pass, not just themselves. If the active player proposes to use a skill in this manner in a reasonable way, the DC of the obstacle should increase in a similar fashion to players attempting more difficult solutions. If the player beats the increased DC they are able to overcome the obstacle for themselves as well as any one player who hasn't acted yet for this obstacle plus an additional extra player who hasn't acted yet for every 5 points by which they beat the increased DC. The active player and all of the other players affected accumulate a success point for this obstacle. Should the active player fail to beat the increased DC though, they are the only one to accumulate a failure point.

On it's face this would mean that whatever player has the lowest passive initiative would never be able to attempt a group success. To mitigate this as well as give anyone who needs a little more time to think a window to do so, each player is allowed once per skill challenge to delay their action without consequence. If they do this they are dropped to the bottom of the current turn order for the remainder of the skill challenge. Players can perform this delay more than once in a skill challenge but every time after the first they must take an automatic failure on the current obstacle. This could also be used as a last resort for a player who just cannot think of anything to try and do without causing the entire challenge to come to a halt.

Other Considerations

You may have noticed that a lot of the specifics about skill challenges are left vague. That is because skill challenges are intended to be extremely versatile and able to mold itself into any scenario. These rules are simply guidelines to follow to fit skill challenges best into your game.

Another thing to note is that although it varies from challenge to challenge, but generally speaking players should "fail forward" instead of hitting a wall when accumulating a failure points. So failing their skill roll should still get them past the obstacle just with some kind of consequence, either narrative or mechanical.

Sometimes players will want to use their other abilities to overcome obstacles. This is usually a spellcaster who wants to use a spell they think would work but could be other scenarios such as a gunslinger who wants to shoot down falling rocks before they reach him. It's entirely up to the GM if these would be allowed or not but if they are allowed, they should still require some type of roll (a concentration check to cast the spell in time or an attack roll to hits the rocks, etc) and the DC should be higher than the base DC for the obstacle.

Example Skill Challenge

Here's an example obstacle that could take place in a skill challenge with 4 players. The objective is to catch and fight a bomber who's running through a city. The pass state and fail state is any player accumulate 4 success points before all players accumulate 3 failures. Once the skill challenge is over and the combat begins, players with zero failure points get a bonus action on the first round of combat and any players who accumulate 3 failure points are out of the remaining skill challenge and don't act in combat for the first two rounds as they catch up after falling behind.

The first obstacle the party is presented with is attempting to cross a collapsing bridge that was damaged by an explosive the bomber threw as he ran across. Player 1 attempts to jump across the bridge before it collapses by making an Acrobatics check, but rolls poorly and stumbles their way across the bridge accumulating a failure point. They made it but tweaked their ankle and is slowing down. Player 2 wants to help the rest of the party so they propose finding the most structurally secure route across the bridge using Knowledge (engineering). They succeed on their roll but only enough to aid one of the two remaining players, choosing Player 4 who doesn't think they have a great answer to this obstacle. Both Player 2 and Player 4 accumulate a success point. Finally Player 3 proposes just sprinting across the bridge as fast as they can before it collapses and makes an Athletics check. They succeed and get across the bridge before it falls beneath their feet, accumulating a success point.

From this point the GM would describe the next obstacle and the process would repeat until the pass or fail state is met.