Skill Challenges
Mistveil → Rules → Skill Challenges
Skill challenges are an optional rule that let the party overcome obstacles in a cinematic manner, making use of their skills and quick thinking. During these challenges, players are encouraged to take up some of the imaginative responsibilities of the GM 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 and overcome obstacles.
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 knows they are in a skill challenge, follow these steps:
- The GM presents the objective, the number of rounds the players will have to complete their objective, and current obstacles the party is trying to overcome in order to complete that objective (more may reveal themselves as the skill challenge goes on).
- The GM tells the party what the base DC of the challenge will be, so the players have a sense on how likely they are to succeed or fail with their skills.
- In any order, each player (once per round) proposes which of the obstacles you've laid out that they would like to eliminate and pitches how they would use a skill that no one has used yet to do so. Alternatively they can offer to use their turn this round assisting another player instead.
- If they are trying to overcome an obstacle, the GM decides if their proposal is viable or not and if it is they will ask for a roll.
- Based on the result of the roll, the GM describes the outcome and the party accrues one "success" or one "failure".
- Repeat steps 3–5 until the party completes their objective by accumulating a number of successes or fails to do so by accumulating too many failures or running out of time.
Building a Skill Challenge
To create a skill challenge you first decide what objective the party is trying to accomplish then create a number of obstacles they will face, how many failures they can accrue before the entire task is lost, and how many rounds they have to attempt it.
Each skill check has a base DC depending on the difficulty of the challenge. While you can adjust the DC however you like to suit your unique skill challenge, the table below gives some guidance on what the base DC could be, based on desired difficulty and average player level of the party.
| Level Range | Easy | Medium | Hard | Very Hard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 |
| 6-10 | 15 | 20 | 25 | 30 |
| 11-15 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 35 |
| 16-20 | 25 | 30 | 35 | 40 |
A way for the players to gain bonuses on their skill checks could be by using one of their character abilities in conjunction with the check. For example a spell that aids in whatever the player is trying can be used alongside an appropriate skill, like Spellcraft to ensure the spell works as intended. The bonus for using an ability this way can vary depending on how useful the ability is in overcoming the obstacle at hand but generally speaking the more limited the ability is (only usable 1/day is much more limited than 10/day which is much more limited than at-will) the higher the bonus it should give to the player's roll.
Obstacles
All skill challenges come with a number of obstacles that the players must overcome to complete their objective. These are the complications that their skill checks are attempting to eliminate and players can normally tackle them in any order.
When a player proposes how they will overcome an obstacle, remember that they are trying to solve the problem it presents, not just avoid it. For example, if one of the obstacles you present to your players is large pools of acid and a player suggests that they make use of a teleportation ability in conjunction to a skill check like Spellcraft to appear on the other side, you shouldn't approve their pitch as it didn't actually eliminate the obstacle for the party because the rest of them are still stuck having to deal with trying to cross the acid. If that player's teleportation ability also allowed for the teleportation of others, then their pitch can be approved as bringing the entire party to the other side of the acid pools would effectively eliminate that as an obstacle for them (assuming they don't have to come back this way in the same challenge).
Generally speaking skill challenges flow better if the players "fail forward". This means that if a player accrues a failure when trying to eliminate an obstacle, that obstacle should still be removed rather than being a hard wall that now someone else needs to try to overcome. Using the same example as above, say the player had the ability to teleport everyone across but fails the Spellcraft skill check. The party accrues one failure but you should still describe them nearly making it, taking some acid damage as they appear just shy of their target, and removing the obstacle.
When deciding how many obstacles a skill challenge should have, make sure there are at least as many as the successes the party must accrue plus the failure limit (see below) but there can be more because not every obstacle needs to be overcome for all skill challenges.
You can hide certain obstacles until particular conditions are met. For example if you were breaking into a vault as a 2 turn skill challenge, round 1 could be breaking in and the players only see half the total obstacles that are related to that portion, then round 2 could reveal the obstacles related to getting back out once it begins.
Any given obstacle can be individually unique in the challenge if you wish. For example, they could be especially easy or difficult to overcome (applying a modifier to the Base DC for the skill check to overcome it), they could be a mandatory obstacle, meaning no failing forward and no skipping it if there's more obstacles than required successes, and any other traits could be added to an individual obstacle such as being worth 2 successes, risking 2 failures, etc. You could even make one obstacle that needs to be overcome in order to attempt others that are only available after it is removed.
Successes and Failures
Skill challenges require the party to accrue a number of successes, in a limited number of rounds, before accruing too many failures.
During creation of the challenge, you decide on how many successes the party needs and what the max amount of failures they can manage without ultimately failing the challenge is. A medium difficulty challenge would normally require 1.5x the party size (rounded down) successes, with each difficulty stage adding or removing one required success as appropriate. For example, a standard medium difficulty challenge for a party of 4 or 5 players would require 6 successes.
You also decide how many failures the players are able to accrue in their challenge without a complete loss. Like successes each challenge may be different but generally the party can "safely" accrue failures equal to half the party size (rounded down), and any more than that will cause the challenge to end early in failure. Difficulty of the challenge doesn't usually directly impact the number of failures allowed because reducing how many you are able to accrue by difficulty step would suggest that a party of 4 players cannot make any failures on a very hard skill challenge, which may make the scenario feel too luck based. Although something like this could work with a very generous Close Call Threshold (see below) at the GM's discretion.
Finally, you decide how many rounds the players will have to accrue the needed successes. Normally a skill challenge will be done in 2 rounds but remember, each player is only able to accrue 1 success per round (in normal conditions) and that's only if they decide not to assist someone else, so ensure you allow for enough rounds for the challenge to even be possible. For example, a party of 4 players who need to accrue 6 successes will need at least 2 rounds to do so. Giving the party more rounds than is minimally required allows for an easier skill challenge, as they can spend more turns assisting others and it allows high skill point characters, such as rogues, to make more skill checks in general.
Whenever a player successfully makes a skill check they overcome an obstacle and accrue one success for the party and if they fail their skill check they accrue one failure instead. What a failure means exactly is different for each skill challenge and perhaps each obstacle. For example, it could be that failures means nothing as long as you were ultimately able to accrue enough successes to beat the challenge before getting too many of them. Alternatively, perhaps accruing failures has no impact on the end result of the challenge but does have immediate consequences each time they happen such as Hit Point loss or a negative status condition. Or perhaps failures mean nothing during the challenge itself, but how many you accrued impacts what happens after the challenge is finished. An example of that could be if the challenge is to escape a prison, maybe each failure slows down the players and results in there being more guards they have to fight through at the prison gates once the challenge has ended.
This means that when building a skill challenge, you need to prepare what it means to accrue a failure, what the results of the challenge will be (and if that result is modular based on how many failures the players had), and what happens if the party fails entirely.
Success or failure, once a player has attempted to use a skill to overcome an obstacle, no one else in the party may attempt to use it for the remainder of the challenge (unless you decide to refresh skill usage, perhaps per round).
Finally, if a player does not wish to attempt a skill check to overcome an obstacle for that round then they may instead assist another player in their skill check. Doing so counts as Aiding Another for any effects that impact that action (such as the Helpful trait for Halflings) however the assisting player cannot make the exact same skill check as the primary player like a usual aid another action because no skills can be repeated during the challenge. For example, maybe one of the obstacles the players will have to overcome in a challenge is getting through rubble in a hallway and one player with a dexterous character wants to try and use their acrobatics to navigate through the rubble and find a safe path. When you approve the use of that skill, another player who doesn't have any ideas to overcome the other available obstacles asks if they can use their Athletics skill to move aside some of the heavier pieces of rubble to make the way easier for the primary player's acrobatics check. You approve their assist and they make their Athletics skill check versus DC 10 and grant the primary player a +2 bonus on their Acrobatics roll.
Multiple players can use their turns to assist, but they would all have to use different skills and justify how they help. Also players should be warned to make sure they have enough time to allow for such elaborate help, skill challenges do have a time limit.
Close Call Thresholds
If a player fails their skill check but comes very close to making it, you can count that as a "close call", letting them accrue a success and overcome the obstacle as if they had been successful but with a consequence. These consequences are similar to ones that may happen to the players when they accrue failures such as Hit Point loss or negative status effects.
A standard close call threshold would be 2 less than the DC of an obstacle but a more forgiving objective might allow for upwards of 5 less than the base DC and a more difficult situation that requires no slip ups might have a threshold of 0, effectively removing this mechanic from that skill challenge entirely.
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 themselves into nearly any scenario where the GM wants one. These rules are simply guidelines to follow to fit skill challenges best into your game.
Other things, such as allowing a player to use a Hero Point to automatically get a success for their turn or accumulating double successes after an incredibly high skill result are also things you might want to use to adjust and personalize your skill challenges as you see fit.
Example Skill Challenge
The objective is to catch and fight a bomber who's running through a city. The party of 4 must have 4 successes before they accrue 3 failures across 2 rounds (an very easy challenge because it is their first attempt with this system and you want to ease them into it). Once the skill challenge is over and the combat begins, the party will get a bonus action if they had no failures, nothing extra if they had 1 failure, and the bomber will get a bonus action if they had 2 failures. If the party fails entirely, the bomber destroys his main target and gets away for now.
You explain the obstacles the party will face during the chase and hand them a list that reads:
- Crowds in the streets.
- Hard to follow, he knows this town.
- Bombs laid out as traps.
- Guards on high alert.
- Mysterious stranger attempting to interfere.
- The bomber has taken a hostage.
You tell the players that the challenge will have a base DC 15 and for their first time all the obstacles will just use that DC but obstacles 3, 5, and 6 have special failure consequences (but keeps what they are to themselves). If the players fail obstacle 3 they will take damage, if they fail obstacle 5 there will be a pause in the challenge for a few rounds of combat, and if they fail obstacle 6 there will be a narrative consequence as the bomber's hostage is someone the party has been asked to save. Finally you tell the players that if obstacle 6 isn't overcome then the hostage will be present in the combat encounter at the end of the skill challenge (assuming they succeed that is)
The players can go in any order and Player A asks if they can use their Diplomacy skill to call out for the crowds to move aside, trying to overcome obstacle 1. You agree that's reasonable so you ask for a roll and Player A gets a result of 22 so that's one success for the party.
Player B wants to try to overcome obstacle 4 and suggests that they want to get the party through a shortcut that's being blocked by guards by quickly throwing together a disguise as someone the guards answer to and trying to rush past claiming they are up to official business using the disguise skill. You approve the attempt and they make a disguise check but the dice aren't in their favor and they only get an 11, not even high enough to consider it a Close Call unfortunately. You describe the disguise not being up to snuff and the guards being suspicious of the party. They eventually decide they don't care enough to completely pick apart Player B's fake persona and let the party by, eliminating the obstacle but costing more time than the shortcut saved. That's 1 success and 1 failure.
Player C says she has an idea for obstacle 2 and suggests they use a special 1/day Dimension Door item they have to get up onto the rooftops to track the bomber easier through the area and call out to the party where he is going. Player C immediately thought of Use Magic Device to use the item accurately but she's not very good in that skill. Instead she suggests using Knowledge (Engineering) to spot the safest place to land on the rooftops and you allow it, granting her a +4 bonus on her roll for using the limited ability alongside the skill. She rolls poorly but the extra bonus is enough for her to get a total of 14 and you tell her she had a close call success, landing on the roof exactly where she intended...albeit 10 feet too high. Landing hurts her ankle a bit and she will be staggered for the first round of combat at the end of the skill challenge. That's 2 successes and 1 failure.
Player D is ready to participate now and decides they want to try and overcome obstacle 6 and save the hostage. They ask if they can use Handle Animal to get a nearby man's dog riled up and join the chase, grabbing at the Bomber's pant leg and slowing him down, forcing him to drop his hostage if he wants to get away. The player even has the Speak with Animals spell and ask if they could use that in conjunction with their Handle Animal check. You allow it and decide to give the player a +2 on their roll. Player D makes they check and gets a 23. That's 3 successes and 1 failure.
The first round has come to an end and the players are off to a good start, they only need 1 more success and can still manage a second failure without losing the skill challenge. So far they have eliminated obstacles 1, 2, 4, and 6 so only 3 and 5 remain. So far they have used up the Diplomacy, Disguise, Knowledge (Engineering), and Handle Animal skills so they can't be used again in round 2.
The players talk it over and although the mysterious stranger seems like a problem, they have no idea what the special failure state for that obstacle could be. Meanwhile they have a pretty good idea of what failing to handle the bomb traps will do so deciding the devil you know is best, they want to tackle obstacle 3.
Player C says she has great Disable Device so she wants to simple stop the traps from going off by quickly snipping their short fuses before they can explode. Player A also speaks up and asks to use his Perception to help Player C find the traps more quickly, they have a +9 in the skill so there's no chance of them failing. You allow both ideas, Player A assists and Player C rolls with an extra +2. Her total is 18, clearing the DC and giving the party their 4th success, completing the skill challenge.
One of the players asks what happened to the mysterious stranger and you say they followed closely behind you but never got a good enough chance to actually interfere with the chase, you'll have to look into that lead another day.
You narrate the players finally catching up with the Bomber and combat begins!
Skill Challenge Template
You can use this simple template in your session prep notes to make sure you don't miss anything when making a skill challenge.
Skill Challenge
Objective:
Successes:
Failure Limit:
Time Limit:
Base DC:
CC Threshold:
Misc:
Obstacles