@Jake: I agree, and in fact, that’s what I’ve used when designing similar challenges for other scenarios. The flowchart works well as a reference, but I find trying to pack all the descriptive text and options into the chart tends to make it too busy. You can use this to build a “rule of three” when dealing with clues– each clue or scene really contains three pointers: one to itself, two others which direct the characters to other scenes. This doesn’t work for all scenarios, but definitely adds a lot of flexibility to investigations.

-Ben.

I understand your idea of making the two encounters an equal combined total, or the concern that groups might fail simply to grab the additional xp, but I think a story reward should usually accompany success. That, combined with the RP benefits of success (in this case, the positive relationship, the fact that no NPCs die, the possible relationships established with those troops who assist the PCs) should outweigh the pure numerical benefit of a few more brutes on the battlemat… Perhaps that ought to be the subject of the next article.

I don’t require everyone to participate, but I do solicit everyone to keep them involved– the choice to do nothing is still a choice, and sometimes it’s the best choice a character can make. I don’t think someone should be penalized for playing a particular character, especially if they’re savvy enough to realize when an action for the sake of acting is inappropriate. I’m not saying you suggest this, I have seen it happen many times, though and I think it’s the source of a lot of irritation players can have with SCs. Of course someone needs to act unless the group decides they would rather not participate, but then that’s also an active choice.

@tedronai I’m not sure how I feel about xp for a failed SC, but yes, given we’re looking at partial success, then partial xp is probably a reasonable consideration. I think I probably considered the additional difficulty in the following combat the “partial” xp. However if you look at the combined total slightly differently, then, yes partial xp makes sense. a big part of this comes down to how you structure you xp awards, if you use them.

-Ben.

I recommend giving a set amount of experience points for the skill challenge and subsequent encounter(s) combined. In this way if the skill challenge lets you get a level+1 encounter instead of level+4, the difference in those two amounts is the experience for success at the skill challenge.

One question I have is whether you would expect all players to take an action in every scene. That would be the expectation of most folks in my group, but does yield a lot of results to parse and describe. We don’t have a lot of ‘aid another’ actions in my groups.

For a skill challenge it is vital to describe.
Describe the NPC, environment, …
Describe the result of each skill check.

Your idea of presenting scenes is tried and true.
These scenes give in a natural way additional describable detail.

@Rob & Tedronai: I am used to getting full XP for a successful skill challenge and 1/2 XP for a failed skill challenge. I also encountered failed skill challenges where the XP not gained in the skill challenge manifested in additional foes in the harder combat encounter (failing the scouting.) Such that the total XP from both was equal no matter the outcome of the skill challenge.