What makes a skill challenge a good one. What makes then enjoyable and fun? What ways can we make them memorable?
[RPG] What makes a skill challenge great
dnd-4eskill-challenge
Related Solutions
I had success doing the following while refereeing anything involving skills or abilities.
- Player(s) describe what they are doing as if they are there as the character.
- Think about how to use the mechanics to resolve it, in this case the Skill Challenge system.
- Tell the players how it going to be resolved.
- Listen to any feedback
- Have the players roll.
In short describe, make a ruling, and roll.
I personally don't mind feedback from the players. Often they think of things I don't. So after I tell them how it going to be resolved I will listen to what they have to say and make any changes I feel is warranted. But in the end the final decision is up to me.
Specifically 4e Skill Challenges often involve multiple steps and rolls, so you may want to make it more interesting by doing the roleplaying for the few rolls and if there is impending failure have the players figure out an alternative to the remaining rolls. Again the same describe, make a ruling, roll steps apply.
I can't stress enough how always making sure that the players describe things as if they were there before rolling is important for roleplaying. For me as well as the players. Often it leads to interesting details being revealed and enhances the encounter.
The Table in the Rules Compendium, in DDI and in the table on the article you linked to are the official 4e DCs for skill checks and challenges.
Yes some of the numbers went down, some of them went up. However, overall they are now normalized with more sense and math behind them.
The confusion in your second paragraph is that there is differentiation between an ability check and a skill check. This is (and should be) irrelevant most of the time. The original DC table assumed that you would make ability checks often, however, in practice this was not the case and the table had to be revised to account for skill training being accessed regularly. The instructions to increase the DC by 5 for the DMG table are to provide an advantage to having training in a skill.
In general, the revised DC table, while the value are higher, made skill checks easier because you no longer regularly add 5, and since the increase was rarely 5 (and as you point out, sometimes a decrease), skill checks with the revised DCs are actually easier. That's by design.
Best Answer
Making it engaging, and definitely unique, is a way to make it memorable. I'm afraid I can't be more specific; usually it's how the players handle them that make them unique. Even the most mundane of challenges are exciting and rewarding if something off-the-wall or otherwise impressive happens - especially if they roll a 1 or a 20 and you use critical successes for skillchecks.
To give an example, my current game had a player try to chat up an NPC for information, using a simple Diplomacy check. The party eventually succeeded, but the initiating character had rolled a 1, and ended up falling off his bar stool. Considering the fact that he was trying to impress the NPC - an attractive woman - it made for weeks worth of teasing for the entire party.
Alternately, you could throw in skill challenges during combat. An example is from the Tomb of Horrors supplement, where a skill challenge involves trying to disable a magical ward/device while defending yourself from an onslaught. The goal is to disable the ward and escape, not to defeat the enemies, and the experience is all the more harrowing for it.
The only other advice I could give is to make the challenge open-ended, which allows for more creativity from the players in overcoming the challenge. If they come up with off-the-wall solutions for their rolls - like using Acrobatics to wall-jump up a narrow hallway to disable a fire alarm at the top, or something equally impressive - they will remember the challenge for years.