False Prophet Encounter

Is your party located in Candlekeep and you’re lacking ideas on how to shake things up? Search no more! Throw this mystery at them and watch the characters go through this engaging skill challenge.

Wait, what? Skill Challenge? What’s that?

It’s a way to solve complex problems through the usage of a wide range of skills. It was introduced in D&D 4e and dropped in 5e, though many creators still use it as it was a very powerful—though not perfect—tool.

Running a Skill Challenge

To run a skill challenge, have all the players roll initiative. On their turn, an character chooses a skill, then justifies its usefulness in the current situation. If its usefulness cannot be justified (i.e. trying to use Animal Handling to deal with Aluando), veto it. If no DC is given, the DM sets a DC based on the likelihood of that skill helping. The character then makes the check. The DM marks down whether the check succeeded or failed, and describes the result of the action. Characters cannot use the same skill more than once in the same skill challenge, and each challenge requires the characters to succeed on a certain number of checks before they fail a certain number of checks to succeed in the overall skill challenge.

Here’s an example. The characters are attempting to help a ball go well. On Kay’s turn, she proposes using Persuasion to make small chat and joke with people at the ball. The DM agrees and sets the skill check at DC 10, because this seems quite straightforward and low risk. Kay gets a 13, and the DM marks one success! It’s then Kai’s turn, and he suggests using Athletics to do a show of strength. The DM could reject this as out of place, but decides to allow it with a high difficulty as it’s unlikely to go over well with the fancy crowd, and sets the skill check at DC20. Kai gets a 17 and the DM marks one failure.

Hope you like this encounter and stay tuned for more stuff!