Close Encounters of the Essential Kind! Week 4

And finally, we come to the end of the chapter. The final encounter was technically harder than the last. There were four lizardfolk, another Dragonborn, and a recurring enemy*.

-Or so I gathered, I hadn't played in the previous chapter, so I had no real idea who this guy was.

The session opened with a skills challenge. Like most published skills challenges, it ended up being “everyone roll dice for a few minutes before we get to the next encounter.

Others have ranted about the way skills challenges are handled, and have more experience with them than I do, and I have very little to add. They always feel to me, however, like you're being punished somehow for decisions you made in character generation that have very little bearing on the game.

Consider this, in a month of Encounters, I've slogged through 4 fights, and one skills challenge. While you can build your character to be more well-rounded, taking points out of your combat attributes to buff up your skill checks, this is a small part of the game, and it really feels like you should focus on fulfilling the obligations of your role first, and worrying about skills second.