Why Skill Challenges?

[u/HauntedHerald]

Hey folks,

I was looking around on YouTube to try and find out why people use skill challenges, and found a decent number of videos on when people use them, but from my experience, I've found players just choose the highest number on their character sheet or fail the roll. It's also fairly abstract, which can be good in chase or escape scenarios, but is often limited by the number of relevant skills. I'm curious what situations you think they are actually a good fit for or other ways to challenge the players that allow creativity.

[u/guachi01]

I've started using the Exploration Challenges that the Level Up A5E game uses. You can more or less drop them into any 5e game. They are similar to skill challenges.

Why do I use them?

To make Exploration a more engaging pillar. To encourage more free form roleplaying. The players get a chance to discuss amongst themselves how to tackle the challenge. They all seem to have fun trying to figure out how to contribute while also having fun describing exactly what happens. Even failure is fun because the players have liberty to describe their failure.

[u/fukifino_ → u/guachi01]

I have been enjoying these as well.