Best and most Creative Skill Challenges?

[Broken Zenith]

Hola all,

I'm prepping to run a campaign, and I'd like skill challenges to be as important as combat. Furthermore, I'm going to try and find a place for all of those bottom tier skills that rarely get used, such as Appraise, Linguistics, and many of the Knowledge skills.

So GMs and Players, what are the best and most creative skill challenges that you have played in or can come up with?

[mysterycellist]

Are you familiar with the chase mechanic? You can do some very interesting things like "Run Through a Jeweler's Shop: Acrobatics DC 20 to hop the counter. Appraise DC 15 to only break the inexpensive stuff. "

[Duna the Explorer of Indol]

Well in my experience with previous campaigns you can try something like this:
(Not in the context of my game though, just try to work it in).

We had to get a red dragon's scale. It's Chaotic Evil and here were the rules, we had to get him to give it to us willingly only problem was we can't fight or give him anything in return. This is where the Bluff and Diplomacy checks come in use.(It took us a whole 2 hours to do this).

Well good luck.
-Dunali(Now in my new game Amber)

[Broken Zenith]

I like what I am hearing so far. What else?

[Goak]

I usually use Survival and Knowledge(Nature) for when the party needs to travel in the wilderness. The situation works like;
Party going from A to B.
They need 3 successes (or 3 out of 5, or 2, any kind of threshold and cut off works).
DC15 (or whatever)
Every failure is an encounter. You can choose if it is a natural hazard (quicksand), debuff (fatigue), or a fight. Often I'll use Survival or Perception to determine how bad the situation they get into is.

You can use similar checks in dungeons (Dungeoneering) or other environments (Profession Miner if they are lost in mines, Sailor for boat/naval checks, etc.....)

[Broken Zenith]

Bump