Creative Skill Use (and other ways to overcome Skill Challenges)

Keeping on par with the discussion of Skill Challenges, it is important to know that even though any given SC would best be overcome with particular skills that are key to the challenge, you don't always have to stick to the norm. An SC dealing with the PC's trying to persuade a wealthy merchant to loan them some gold for whatever reason (ok, yeah -- as if the PC's really need anyone to loan them money... just work with me here) would typically best be solved with Bluff, Diplomacy, perhaps Insight, and Intimidate mostly. But what if you're the guy with 8 Charisma and training in Athletics?

This is when you need to start thinking of creative ways to use the skills that your PC is trained in. In the above example you could assume that the scene takes place in an office or maybe a private booth in an upper-class restaurant. Your PC is not a talker really, he was just supposed to be muscleman competitor who was forced to resign because he always made the rest of the competition look bad. He trained in Intimidate, but he's still not all that good at it. Let's just say that he is trained in Athletics also, and has a nice ability score bonus to go with it. Oh, whatever shall you do? Use Athletics to flip a table or desk (success grants a +2 bonus on the next Bluff, Diplomacy, or Intimidate check made by any PC).

Using one of the SC's presented in the DMG2, I'm going to only highlight on skills that are not mentioned in the text of any given challenge to try to give examples of ways to use skills differently. Of course, I won't be able to cover them all, some just won't work in certain situations, but I'll give you one or two for each example I use. I'm not going to detail the SC, I'll just give its title and you can follow along starting on p. 89 DMG2.

Closing the Portal
Athletics could be used as in physically smashing or kicking the portal to weaken a part of it to give a +2 bonus to the next Thievery check made on it (if the Athletics check fails, the PC should lose a Healing Surge from causing the portal to shoot him with necrotic energy or something).
Insight could be used as a secondary skill to Arcana, possible to notice a pattern or something similar in the energies (possibly after a Perception check as a minor action).

Aside from trying to figure out ways to make skills work that normally wouldn't, you have several other options you can use as well. If the SC occurs as a typical encounter or within a combat encounter (yes to my players who are reading; I do put SC's in some combat encounters. You have been warned) there are several utility powers, including the new Skill Powers that will be introduced to the general public in PHB3, that can be used during an encounter. Not to mention some racial traits as well (half-elves, I'm talking to you). For longer or extended SC's, the use of certain rituals can count for successes or in some cases even bypass the entire thing!

The point is, to get over the mechanical feel to SC's you have to look past just what's on the paper. Think of less-obvious ways to use your skills and powers (given a particular situation, even an appropriately-named attack power could be used if the player can come up with a reason for it) and don't overlook rituals either. Coming up with new actions and descriptions for what you do gets you past the dice rolling because you're able to create a picture depicted by the result of the roll. Failure isn't always the end. If you fail an SC, you'll still be able to find some other way; it'll just be more difficult.

Next time on 1d4+5...
I've got my campaigns to run tomorrow and the following night. I'm sure something interesting will come up. It usually does.