Making Skill Checks Interesting

[Kobold Catgirl]

Everybody wants skills to be interesting. Sadly, they kind of aren't. Instead of being "noncombat combats", they're simple "I win/I lose" buttons. This can lead some GMs to try to artificially inflate DCs to prevent Taking Ten and keep things "dramatic". Obviously, this tends to fall flat.

I believe that skills can be quite fun in a game, though. It just requires a bit of effort. For one thing, requiring multiple checks is a much better way to challenge players than just making the DCs "15+highest skill bonus in party", since it still rewards people who have lots of ranks. For another, mixing "skill encounters" with combat both offers a source of intensity and prevents the other players from getting bored while Nimbly McAcRobatics does his thing.

I'm going to examine some simple ways to produce skill encounters in here. I don't expect any of them to be groundbreaking, but I thought a collection of tips would help me (and therefore might help someone else).

Acrobatics:

There are two major sides to making Acrobatics challenging: Jumping and balancing. Tumbling, after all, is already a tricky business without our help.

"Jumping puzzle"-style sets of platforms are always a good idea, obviously. By forcing the players to roll multiple times, you add a risk of failure while still rewarding those who are good at Acrobatics. Just don't put in too many. A few DC 20 Acrobatics checks is fine for someone with a +15, but failure starts to get inevitable around 3-5. That said, buffs and aids exist, so keep that in mind when determining number. +15 can turn into +18 pretty easily.

Aside from platforms, putting things up in the air that need to be caught (like a swarm of flying keys, if you want to go Harry Potter on your players) can work, or you can make a room where the goal is to stay out of melee reach of the monster so you can either shoot it down or move past.

For balancing, combats on very narrow, slanted or slick surfaces are a natural choice.

Turn Up The Heat: Put a pressure plate on the first or second platform (if you choose the second, it has the added bonus of catching the players off-guard in what they thought would be a routine series of Take Tens). An old staple is something rising from below, forcing faster. Lava! Swarms! Wind! Meenlocks!

Alternatively, you could have something up above that will soon be out of reach, like a closing door, or a monster up above that's shooting down—or throwing down flasks of oil, making the jumps even harder. Or you could have the platforms themselves fall away in one or two rounds. Or they themselves animate and either start moving, attacking, or both.

Appraise:

This is one of the most ordinary skills in the game, really. The DC never changes. DC 20. If at least 20, you know the value. If at least 16, you're close. If less, you're way off. Wheeee!

But there are some ways to make Appraise interesting, particularly in the secondary function: Finding the most valuable item in a hoard. Consider an encounter where you have limited time to loot before the Big Scary wakes up/gets home. You know you can't beat it in a fight. Or, in a more realistic scenario (haha adventurers think they can beat everything in a fight) you need to get a certain special item to allow you to bring the Big Scary down when it arrives.

Alternatively, maybe there is no Big Scary. You just need to recover a item, or a small number of items, from...let's say the corrupt mayor's office. He's hoarding the only potion of remove disease in the whole town, and you need it to cure a PC's dying sister—but the mayor has a lot of potions, and you don't have time to test them all (if you don't want them just using Perception, make it a wondrous item that casts remove disease once per month). Or they're stealing a bunch of priceless works of art. Doesn't matter.

Turn Up The Heat: The thing is, they don't want to kill the mayor (haha just kidding adventurers kill all things), they just don't want to be found out. So when they hear him (or a guard, or a trained attack orangutan) coming, or they hear the Big Scary waking up, they know they need to grab the item and get out, fast. They only have a round or two. GO.

More to come. Please feel free to pitch in with your own advice.

[PaleDim]

Apologies to resurrect an old thread, but I was thinking about ways to do this as well and went googling.

I found several interesting blog posts with narrative around making various skills more interesting to use, but I also came across this comprehensive list called "skill challenges".

Have you (or anybody else reading) seen this and tried to incorporate these into your games? I'm definitely going to be drawing from it soon.

http://dungeonsmaster.com/skill-challenges/

[Mark Hoover 330]

I've seen many suggestions for making skill challenges or making them interesting. There's a couple issues with these:

1. Some players are mechanics: they built their character around the RAW of Pathfinder. Said RAW for example says that an Average lock carries a DC of 25 so, by pumping all their resources into Dex, Disable Device, magical lockpicks and taking feats and traits to help them, the level 5 rogue with the +22 Disable Device has an expectation that by rolling a 3 or higher on a D20 most Average or lesser door locks will yield to her will.

2. Combat encounters already eat up time: once you get to a point where the players of full casters saunter up to a fight scene and pull out a separate binder to figure which of their many spells would be the most effective in this particular battle, these events in your game can soak much of the time you have to play in this game session and players may not want to devote an equal amount of time to non-combat encounters.

3. The Aid Another and Take 10 mechanics: these can be vague and unsatisfying to more rules-oriented players. In a nutshell take 10 says the PC can't be in immediate danger or distracted to use it and Aid Another suggests you use the same kind of skill check that another person uses and that such aid is useless when a skill restricts who can achieve success. These can not only lead to GM fiat overriding player agency in skill use but it also serves to reinforce the narrative that skills are binary.

4. Spells: finally the age old argument - a well-prepared full caster can eliminate the need for many skills in a situation. Fabricate, Fly, Knock, or Monkey Fish immediately spring to mind, but I'm sure there are many others. With a scroll of some of these utilities or even having them prepared for the day means that a given skill challenge may be instantly passed in the snap of a finger.

Now I can't change player attitudes and I'm not willing to re-write the rules on spells. I have however houseruled a slight modification to the Aid Another rules. I allow players to suggest ways in which they offer aid to their fellows.

Take opening a lock. This is a binary function featuring the Disable Device person making a check; if they succeed the door opens, otherwise the brute of the group smashes it down. In my games players are encouraged to add whatever aid they want to try in order to at least participate in the event.

So consider the generic Cleric/Fighter/Rogue/Wizard party, APL 3. The PCs have decided they'd like to open a door quietly without alerting the gnolls nearby to their presence. The rogue inspects the lock however and realizes that it is much older and more sophisticated than gnoll technology.

The fighter, with Knowledge: Dungeoneering makes a check and adds some handy info about how a cold, dank dungeon affects lock mechanisms over time; +2. The wizard recognizes the handiwork of dwarven construction on the device and expounds on their use of false tumblers from Knowledge: Local; +2. The cleric with Profession: Blacksmith notes metal fatigue and other construction data from her own skillset; +2.

This may not make the skill check any more exciting, but suddenly instead of three players sitting around staring at the person running the rogue they're all involved.