One of the things I enjoyed about 4th Edition was Skill Challenges. I ran a city based campaign in which skill challenges accounted for 2/3rds of the encounters the party experienced and we had a great time.
I did not run Skill Challenges exactly as described in the 4th edition DMG or DMG 2. I allowed any skill that could be reasonably applied to the challenge to be used and I allowed it as many times as a new check seemed reasonable (instead of a limited number of times for "secondary" skills). I gave automatic successes for a good idea (or removed failures in some cases if the good idea was how to recover from a blunder). Each skill check in the challenge was accompanied by a specific description of how that check affected the outcome and this description often led the players to suggest the next skill they would like to attempt. They were awarded XP based on overcoming the challenge even if they didn't use skills to overcome it.
So with that said I'd like to find a way to incorporate skill challenges into a high level (14+) Pathfinder campaign that I'm considering running in the near future.
I tried skill challenges in a previous 3.5 campaign and what I found was that the skill variances between party members was too wide to allow group effort on most things. A trained party member with a skill boosting magic item often had a bonus 20 points higher than an untrained skill member of the same level. Setting a DC to challenge the trained party members made success impossible for an untrained party member. In some cases it was perfectly reasonable to expect skill checks by all party members (stealth scenarios, long term wilderness survival, a physical chase, climbing a mountain, etc) but to make it even mildly challenging for the trained party members made it impossible for the untrained members.
So here's what I propose as a Skill Challenge House Rule:
Skill Challenges: In a skill challenge cooperation is expected. As such the Aid Another action is not possible as it is already assumed. Every participant gains advantages toward completing the challenge. Participants in a skill challenge may use a bonus based on the highest skill bonus in the party.
Player has no ranks in skill: They may use the highest skill modifier in the party at a -10 penalty.
Player has some ranks in skill: They may use the highest skill modifier in the party at a -5 penalty.
Participants in a skill challenge may always use their own skill modifier if it is better than the teamwork bonus described here.
A player still cannot make checks with skills that cannot be used untrained unless they have ranks in the skill.
The person granting the bonus must have ranks in the skill to assist his fellow party members (a highly dexterous halfling with a cloak of elvenkind, but no ranks in Stealth, cannot grant his bonus to Stealth to the rest of the party).
Additionally the most skilled party member must be present and in contact for this to take place. If they depart, lose consciousness, or refuse to help, then the party’s scores are based on the player with the next highest modifier in that skill.
This allows me to set all of the skill DCs within 10 of each other for purposes of the challenge (using an Easy, Medium, and Hard DC for different skills).
The one downside to this scenario is that in 4E I quickly learned that skill challenges were more fun if you never told the players that they were in one. You just presented them with a series of checks that they used their skills to solve. Only I, as DM, was acutely aware of the framework in which the skill checks were taking place. That would be harder to do in this instance. But I might be able to get around this by always calling for a check from the best person first and then doing the math myself for the bonus the others use.
I also recognize that, under normal circumstances, this system would encourage people to always max out skills and to have minor overlap (1 rank in many skills) among party members to cover the most possible skills, this isn't really a concern for me because my players wouldn't do that. So while it's a valid criticism in general in my specific case it's a non-issue.
Please let me know your thoughts on this system, but I must request that people refrain from simply commenting on how they feel about skill challenges. I've had great success with them and my players enjoy them very much. I would simply like to find a way to use them in Pathfinder. So please no Skill Challenge bashing.
Many thanks to anyone who chooses to contribute!
Sorry, but this is a shameless bump before it falls off the front page.