Re: Skill Challenges - WTF?

Bryan Derksen wrote:
Jasin Zujovic wrote:
Isn't this supposing a flawed design of the skill challenge, where the DM didn't designate as appropriate those skills which are, in fact, most appropriate?

This is entirely possible, of course, but I'm not convinced that "it doesn't work well if the DM makes a bad judgement" is a valid critique of the system.

I think it's unrealistic to expect the DM to be able to think up everything that a group of intelligent players might come up with ahead of time. It's been my experience that our party will do one weird off-the-wall thing that the DM didn't explicitly account for but that nevertheless makes perfect sense in context around once per adventure. When something like that comes up, I think the best approach is to try to evaluate the new approach's DC in an objective manner to determine how easy it "really" is, even if that turns out to be much easier than the DM originally intended.

Categorically stating "the DC of the alternate approach will be harder" makes no sense internally and appears to be simply a way of punishing players for going off the rails.

If the rule works in 90% of cases, which will be when your party does weird off-the-wall things that make no sense in the context of the adventure, then it has done its job.
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