The Skill Challenge Paradox
Part 3 Examines the Uneasy Clash of Mechanics vs Immersion
As I explored why some players dislike skill challenges, I kept running into a common complaint—they feel like a game within the game. That got me thinking about D&D as a whole. Combat. Exploration. Puzzles. Traps. Aren’t most parts of D&D games with a game? Is there something special about skill challenges that make them stand out?
What I found is that Dungeons and Dragons is built on a paradox. We want to lose ourselves in a world of dragon-slaying and spell casting and daring heists, but we also want the fairness of a game with well-defined rules. We want immersion, but also attack rolls. We want roleplaying, but also stat blocks.
Every player carries a sheet containing all the abilities their character possesses. The player will regularly reference this sheet when deciding on a course of action. Conversations will routinely turn to things like modifiers and bonuses and advantages and other mechanical references. Games will sometimes come to a complete stop to look up the nuances of a specific rule. We accept all of this as just part of the game.
But where do we draw the line? At what point is it too much a game vs an experience? And what is it about skill challenges that goes too far?
Let’s take a look…
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Combat: The Mini-Game That Works
The combat framework for D&D has been basically the same for nearly its entire existence. There have been changes in the types of actions and effects and conditions, but it has always followed the structure of rolling initiative and each player taking turns with their character while the DM runs the monsters.
“Roll for initiative” is the standard announcement that a combat encounter is starting. The very first thing we do when running combat is step out of the fantasy world to complete a game mechanic to determine who goes first. And most of us find this very exciting. It is the indicator that we are about to do something really cool.
During the encounter, the players will strategize with each other and leverage all their abilities to give themselves the best chance of succeeding. The character with the big axe is who you want at the front of the attack. Each player continuously references their stat sheet to try and find the right ability, power, feat, spell, bonus, or item for that situation.
When they swing their battleaxe, the player uses dice and modifiers to calculate if they hit and then more dice to assess damage. The players track their progress in the combat encounter by counting the number of enemies remaining and keeping tabs on how much damage they have to inflict to bring a monster down.
It is not uncommon for players to ask if they are out of combat once the last monster falls so that they know if they can use healing surges and other mechanics to prepare for whatever comes next. These are the mechanics of the game and we have long accepted this mixture of in-game immersion and real-world mechanics as part of the experience.
In essence, combat is inherently mechanical. No matter what edition you play, combat is ‘gamey’ and we love it.
Non-Combat Is Basically the Same, Right?
Many Dungeon Masters will follow a similar structure to skill challenges. As the party approaches the castle door, the Dungeon Master will announce that a skill challenge is beginning. Instead of looking at their weapon stats, the players will look through their skills to consider their best path forward.
As players come up with ideas for gaining entry to the castle, they will be asked to roll checks in much the same way that they would roll attacks against a monster. If they succeed, then good things happen. If they fail then, well, other things happen.
The players strategize about how they want to approach the situation and acknowledge which characters are better at different tasks that can help them achieve the goal. A character trained in Theivery would be the best choice to try and steal the key from the guard.
After a number of checks, the party will have either won the challenge or not. Just as they were able to keep track of the combat encounter by visualizing the enemies and doing some metagaming, with the skill challenge the players can assess how they are doing by counting the successes and failures they have received.
On paper, this encounter should be just as exciting as the combat encounter. But this is where that paradox comes into play.
For some reason, playing out a combat encounter while fully referencing the game mechanics to drive your every action is perfectly acceptable, but running a non-combat encounter the same way often feels out of place.
Why Does It Feel Different?
I have a theory.
Combat is all about mechanics. Sure, a player could embellish a little by providing a great description of what their character is doing as they swing their axe, but this is just flavor. It does not, usually, change anything about the results. They can spend five minutes describing every step they take and how the sweat flies through the air as they swing the sword toward their foe, but when they are done with the prose, they will still roll the same dice that they would roll if they had just said, I swing my sword.
Combat is also very restrictive. You have a couple weapons and some powers. Every round, you are basically choosing what you want to do from a list of about 5-10 options. That is not to say it is boring, but your options are mostly limited to what you have on your sheet.
Combat is 80% players using the mechanics of the game and 20% flavor.2
The mechanic is what drives the results during combat encounters. This is what we signed up for and it is great.
But non-combat encounters are different.
Unlike powers, skills are not specific things. Skills represent potential. That potential must be unlocked by the creativity of the player. The options available to the player are limited only by their imagination. The mechanic is only used to allow the uncertainty of the world to influence the outcomes. As a result, the distribution of mechanics vs creativity is flipped from combat encounters.
Non-combat encounters are 80% player creativity and only 20% game mechanics.
Many see skill challenges as trying to artificially force mechanics into playing a larger role during non-combat encounters. This is not really true, but I can see why this perception exists.
As with most things, you have to understand your table and how your players like to play the game.
There are tables that love a structured approach to skill challenges. If done well, running a mechanics-heavy non-combat encounter could really ramp up the tension as the players know they have a finite number of opportunities to solve this problem.
Lean into the paradox. If your table likes mechanics, use the mechanics. If they prefer anarch…er…freedom, then focus on encouraging creativity. If everyone is having fun, then you made the right choice.
In my next post in this series, I am going to…well…I am not sure yet, but I will let you know.
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Personally I felt the whole skill challenges thing to be one of the more amazing things to come out of the 4e DMs guide, its a great way to actually give all those skills purpose and actually use what you have. I especially liked the idea of different characters using different skills for the same skill challenge, I thought that was fracking great and am going to way start using it in my games, and i'm not just meaning in 4e D&D
Near the end of a combat encounter with some nasty troglodytes & their cave bear and after all the trogs were dead and the bear was on it’s last legs my sister out of the blue suggests someone could make a nature check to see if they could tame this mangy bear and have it as a pet. This wasn’t a skill challenge of course I had one of those planned for after their return to the keep they’ve been protecting but it seemed like a good idea so on her turn I said her Dragonborn Paladin would do better to intimidate it since it was bloodied & would be forced to surrender. She rolled a 1 so I said Nope reroll that no botches on this one. She rolled another 1. I repeated no botches roll again. She rolled a 2 it was no meant to be and her magical warhorse of Xarn ended up finishing the bear off later that round. Skill checks can turn a combat encounter into a non combat encounter for a few minutes even though the attempt was a fail it was a good idea & added to the session.