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Skill Challenges (Patreon)

Published:
2025-04-10 13:00:11
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

Last year I wrote a bunch of posts about skills and DCs. I've been mulling those ideas over in my head and have come around to what I hope is a usable model for skill challenges in 5e. You can use this as written in Odyssey, and you can adapt it to Shadowdark by using SD's standard DCs instead of this document's use of 5e ones.

Comments

Marquis

So I worry that the two round thing feels a little bit too simple for every kind of skill challenge. I think another lever -- such as your dice clock ideas or a adding potential additional rounds -- would really take this somewhere nice for me. But I'd have to play it out to see. Currently for my challenges, I have a Countdown of 100. ABility checks OR damage (depending on what the countdown represents) deducts it. At certain thresholds -- 75, 50, 20 -- something happens like a twist or a new danger or an attack, etc. Every round that ends where the Countdown is not 0 means that the DC goes up by 1 as things get harder. Levers include: forcing the players to get the countdown to 0 in 1 or 2 rounds, making it so it can only be reduced by certain abilities or damage types, and nesting countdowns and setting them at 50 so that when one ends a new stage begins. These three ideas let me add a surprising amount of diversity to countdowns, which I now call Objectives, and has really leveled up the encounter in my games by adding something CONSISTENT, FLEXIBLE, ENGAGING, and that uses the mechanics of the game to achive its end result.

Marquis
>>170698225

Sent early! But, anyway, your ideas here match a lot of this. I just want another lever to add to the game side that also creates emergent narrative. But like I said, maybe if I test this out and like it in combination with the Dick CLock it'll work perfectly!

Charles Gabel

This is great! It reminds me of the Dramatic Task, Quick Encounter, and Social Conflict rules from Savage Worlds (which I like quite a bit and sort of steal for 5e games), but the addition of Twists is very exciting. One thing I notice when I do "skill challenge" type things at the table, though, is that players find it a little artificial in exploration and social contexts. I've found it works better if I mark their successes and failures behind the screen, but only describe the situation narratively to players, calling for rolls when necessary, and giving auto-successes and advantage on rolls to reward good/cool ideas. I think what I'm getting (and I'm articulating it here for the first time, so please forgive the disorganized nature) at is that when I don't reveal to the players what's going on "under the hood" of the encounter, so use of mechanics is diegetic to the narrative. When I'm like, "you need three successes on skill checks," they tend to zone out of the narrative and just look for a post-hoc explanation of the use of their best skill. Players still do that (think how to use their character's best mechanics in a situation), but when I don't reveal the mechanical architecture and just describe the challenge narratively, I've found my players to be a lot more engaged and creative w/ the world.