I just sent out my weekly announcement to my players about gaming on Wednesday evening, and that reminded me that the PCs had captured a hobgoblin archer and are likely to interrogate and/or question him to try to find out why the archer’s (still unseen) cyclops boss took over the centaur village in the first place.
I sat down with the skill challenge tiles in front of me and in about two minutes had the skill challenge all planned out. No flipping through rulebooks for skills lists or DCs, no writing down actions the PCs could take — just moving a few tiles around, and a couple markers.
Here’s how you’d read these skill challenge tiles:
- This is a Complexity 2 challenge, because the green die — for number of successes needed — reads “6″ as per the chart on the central tile.
- You can use Intimidate against the guy, and it’ll be easy — you already shot up all his friends last week — but it’ll only give one success (the blue token). You can’t really get the guy any more scared of you than he already is.
- Diplomacy and Bluff will both work to get information out of the hobgoblin.
- If you make an Insight check, albeit a hard one, you’ll unlock an easy Streetwise roll. This guy would really just like it if you’d be nice to him and offer him a drink.
- Also, he was just in a fight and took some damage. If you Heal him, it’ll actually make the Diplomacy checks easier — a green (easy) tile instead of yellow (moderate).
- Religion, History, and Arcana are secondary skills that will tell you about the area you’re in and help you figure out the right questions to ask the hobgoblin; they’ll give +2 on the next check (or -2 on a failed knowledge check).
- A successful Arcana check will also unlock an easy (green) Nature check. Ooh, mysterious! What could it mean?
- The DCs for the skill checks don’t need to be calculated out — they’re already on the center tile. The players are level 2, so easy is DC 5, moderate is DC 10, and hard is DC 15.
For more example of how I’m using skill challenge tiles, see this blog post. You can download and print your own copies to use in your game also.
Tags: 4e, Skill Challenge Tiles