For instance, I know you addressed the second example being half-formed, but I think it was half-formed because there was no implied intent. The way it was, it should have been hand-waved. The third example had the implied intent of “We want to navigate to the temple quickly in order to catch them off-guard.” The failure reflects the intent.

Tommi’s options (comment #6) were great and could have been opened up even more. The book is just plain gone. Now it’s a short investigation to find out who has it or where it’s been placed. Maybe the book was simply removed by a senior scholar because he recently discovered it contained special, dark, tempting or restricted information. It’s now in the library’s vault along with other treasured and/or dangerous tomes. Sneak in, or approach the senior librarian about it?

The point is, find out why and how they want to accomplish something (their intent) and, if they fail, mess with the intent in a way that doesn’t stop play.

To keep it quick, I make sure to define the terms of the check, at least in my head. If she succeeds, she gets this, if she fails, she gets that. Now roll.

I tend to reward really high results as well. In a d20 based system, a natural 20 might result in more information, a +2 to your next lockpicking attempt, or a +2 to your backstab.

And of course, I also punish really low results, usually with slapstick comedy.

@Omnus– Re: the Rouge, I fully agree. That is a class focused on skills, so if anything the GM owes it to the Rogue to make for some really good skill checks, since that is going to be one of the Rogue’s main roles in the game.

Just because the character has a lot of skills does not mean that you should have a lot of needless checks in the game to make them feel good. The Rogue will enjoy making 3 critical skill checks, under high drama, then 100 skill checks when nothing is on the line.

The challenge for the GM with a class like the Rogue, is that you need to create situations over the course of several adventures that challenges the array of skills for the Rogue, and not just a handful week after week.

As for the Skill Challenge I think it is a mechanic that really has not been explored well. I think that the concept, that is a non-combat mechanical challenge is great, but the mechanics are somewhat hard to use, and many times fails to give the same feeling that combat gives. But I would look past what is written in the DMG and make your own challenges.

As an example, I did for an Iron Heroes game, a skill challenge, where the players had to cross this unstable mine tunnel. I made up a list of skills that would apply, and crafted a set of outcomes for each success and failure. I capped it off with a number of successes and failures that would lead to the conclusion of the challenge. It worked great, and gave the players to use all sorts of skills they often don’t get a chance to use.

So don’t give up on the Skill Challenge, rather take the spirit of the rules, and not the letter, and make something that your players will find interesting.

I’d also argue that the skill challenge system in 4th Edition, which is still kind of broken, tries to make those skills checks interesting by making them part of the narrative of the adventure. My players fought the system tooth and nail, however, and I’ve found myself shelving it pretty quickly. They rarely have a hard time calling for skill checks themselves as they figure out good ways to use their abilities, and I find they do a good job at keeping the skills of their characters in focus.

So sayeth Omnus.

It made me rethink knowledge checks.

In many games (ex: Dark Heresy), knowledge skills come into play fairly often. “Roll your Forbidden Lore, Heresy or Chaos, to see if you know anything about this Brotherhood of the Horned Darkness.”

As written in many systems, the players either know something or not. Some (Dark Heresy again) give the GM great help for how much information to give based on the degree of success.

But what of failure? If a character is trained in a school of knowledge, say Forbidden Lore (Chaos), they should at least know how to find our more information.

Player: “Damn, missed it by that much.”

Instead of: “From the name, you think they are bad guys.”

You can give them a pointer to deeper knowledge: “You know they are a chaos cult, but don’t know much about them. However, if you had access to a library with forbidden books on chaos, or could get a message back to your old mentor Flavious Textacus, you should be able to find out more.”

The degree of failure could indicate how hard it would be to come up with the information.

1) If the rules are sufficient, allow for some clever additional skill use from the players. If they have more than one skill that might help, give them a little bonus for for the other applicable skill. In Bastian’s case, it throws the onus back on the players and makes them feel better about the other skills they have used.

2) Allow the dice to influence the description. In your description, if they easily make the roll, maybe it takes only 45 minutes to find the book. If they seriously screw it up, they find the wrong book and think iot is th right one, and have to go back in the morning. Players love this.

I’d say that simply finding the book but taking longer time at it is hardly interesting unless one is in hurry; in which case, sure, though making the threat come through might also be interesting.

I’d prefer: Find the book versus find the book just as someone else has picked it up and is on his way to loan or read it. Violence, persuasion, thievery, bribery: Players have lots of options, which is always good.

I would also place more emphasis on the difference between task and intent. With successful roll, player achieves the intent as character completes the task. With failed roll, the task fails, creating complications, while the intent might or might not come true.

When players pick stuff for their characters they’re deciding what they want to be doing in the game, and what matters to their character, so I prefer to give those characters a chance to shine and to use their skills in the situations they find themselves in.

With some creativity, player skill can really be brought to the front of the excitement and not just used for combat-centric purposes. Memories that come to mind are the group’s ranger using his Nature skill to extract venom from a giant snake and keep its eggs alive on the way to find a buyer, and the time said ranger used Athletics to lift up and support a wagon full of goods so that the Dwarves in need could repair it and fit a new wheel.

I think it’s important to understand what matters to characters and find ways to involve those things significantly in play.

As an example, in my Corporation game, one of the players took his highest skill in Business. Now Corporation is a fairly combat heavy game. But since this player wanted to take his highest skill in Business rather than combat, I created an adventure, where the goal of the mission was to buy out a small company. After some investigation and a little combat, the crux of the game balanced on the characters ability to negotiate the deal for the sale of the company. The better his rolls were, the lower the cost of the buy out would be.

Also, just asking for rolls to make players nervous is sometimes also a good thing.

Skill checks are vastly superior when they aren’t stop signs on a DM railroad but instead bring fun and interesting consequences to player actions in the game.

In my opinion, it’s a bit sad that D&D 4th says so little about skill checks. I remember the first time my wife’s ranger fails a roll to spot tracks in the woods and ends up standing there like a buffoon. They’ve got a bunch of rules for calculating DCs for finding tracks but not one about how to make skill checks fun and interesting (that I can remember).

These days on that failed roll I’d probably do something like have her lose the track in places, possibly stumbling into other hazards like enemies or having to make an athletics check to jump/ford a raging river or something silly like that. At the very least, add time onto the tracking efforts with a neat description such as “you find the goblins’ trail after covering a lot of ground and leaving many tracks of your own.” That then introduces the possibility of someone following her, and then she’s more involved in the game because she’s concerned about what might happen.

Skill checks really should make things more fun and heighten player involvement rather than being a stop sign on the DM railroad. I know that now :p