Skill Challenge Generator

Generate structured non-combat skill challenges with staged DCs, failure cascades, party spotlight hooks, and a built-in live play cockpit — giving every player a meaningful role when swords aren't the answer.

Quick Start

1. Navigate to Generate → Skill Challenge Generator
2. Select a Challenge Type (Social, Chase, Heist, Exploration, etc.)
3. Set Complexity, Party Level, Party Size, and Difficulty
4. Optionally link a Campaign for party-aware spotlight hooks
5. Add a Challenge Name and Setting for context
6. Click Generate Skill Challenge
7. Review the output, then click Start Live Play to run the cockpit tracker at the table

The Wizard

The generator uses a five-stage accordion wizard. Complete each stage to unlock the next. You can go back and edit any completed stage.

Stage 1: Challenge Type

Choose the category that describes what the party is trying to accomplish.

Stage 2: Parameters

Complexity (0-5)

The single most important setting. Complexity controls how many successes the party needs, how many stages the challenge has, and roughly how long it will take.

Failures Allowed is calculated automatically from party size: floor(partySize / 2), minimum 2. A party of 4 gets 2 failures before the challenge collapses.

Party Level (1-20) sets the baseline for DC calculations. Lower-level parties get gentler DCs; higher-level parties face steeper checks that still make success feel earned.

Party Size (1-8) sets the failure threshold and influences how many spotlight hooks the generator creates.

Difficulty

• Easy — Low DCs, forgiving failure consequences; good for low-stakes scenes or introducing new players to the system
• Medium — Standard challenge with meaningful tension
• Hard — High DCs with punishing cascades; plan to spend real attention here
• Desperate — Maximum difficulty; characters may fail even on strong rolls

Stage 3: Party (Optional)

Link one of your campaigns to load the party roster. When linked, the generator creates spotlight hooks — specific prompts for each character class or background to contribute meaningfully to the challenge. Without a campaign, the generator produces generic hooks that any character could attempt.

You can skip this stage if you prefer to improvise spotlight moments at the table.

Stage 4: Story Context (Optional)

Challenge Name — A title for the challenge. Appears in the cockpit and in your library. Example: "The Grand Heist of Ironhold".

Setting — One sentence describing the location or situation. Example: "A merchant guild's fortified vault, two guards on rotation". This shapes the read-aloud text and environmental details the generator produces.

GM Notes — Free-form field for special requirements: NPCs involved, things that must not happen, constraints from your campaign. Up to 1000 characters.

Tone — Choose Serious, Lighthearted, Tense, or Mysterious. Affects the language of stage descriptions and read-aloud text.

Storytelling Framework (under Customize Details) — Optional structural scaffolding for how the challenge escalates.

• None — Stages escalate naturally based on category and difficulty
• Three-Act Structure — Setup, confrontation, resolution; reliable pacing
• Hero's Journey — Ordeal-and-reward arc; works well for character-defining moments
• Save the Cat — Character sympathy established early, then tested; good for social challenges
• Narrative Hooks — Each stage plants a thread for later in the session

Stage 5: Generate

A summary of all your choices appears here before you commit. Review it, then click Generate Skill Challenge. The generator typically takes 15-20 seconds.

What Gets Generated

Challenge Overview

• Title and description — A one-paragraph summary of what the challenge is and why it matters
• Setup narration — Read-aloud text for the moment the challenge begins
• Win condition — Exactly what "success" means for this challenge
• Failure condition — What happens if the party exhausts their failure count

Stages

Each stage of the challenge includes:

• Stage name and description — What is happening in this moment of the challenge
• Read-aloud text — What the players perceive as the stage begins
• Available skill checks — Three to five specific checks the party can attempt, each with a DC and a description of what success looks like
• Success narrative — How the scene shifts when the stage is cleared
• Cascade triggers — What happens on failure: Minor cascades raise the DC for the next check; Major cascades add mechanical consequences (lost resources, new obstacles, NPC attitude shift)

Spotlight Hooks

If you linked a campaign, each character gets a moment: a specific check tied to their abilities that gives them a clear way to contribute. This prevents the challenge from being dominated by whoever has the highest skill modifiers.

Outcome Table

Four outcomes with full narration:

• Full Success — Party clears the success threshold without triggering a major cascade
• Success at Cost — Party succeeds but a major cascade consequence carries forward into the next scene
• Failure — Party exhausts failures; the win condition is no longer achievable this way
• Critical Failure — Party fails with a major cascade on the final failure; the situation actively worsens

Live Play Cockpit

After reviewing the generated challenge, click Start Live Play to open the cockpit — a real-time tracker designed for use at the table.

The cockpit shows:

• The current stage and its read-aloud text
• A success counter (filled circles = successes earned) and failure counter
• Each available skill check with its DC, ready to log with one click
• The current cascade status and any active consequences
• A quick reference for the win/failure condition

Log successes and failures as they happen. The cockpit advances the stage automatically when the threshold is met, displays cascade text when a failure triggers one, and shows the appropriate outcome narrative when the challenge resolves.

Click Start New to reset and generate another challenge.

Tips & Best Practices

Complexity 2 is the right default. It runs 15-20 minutes, gives every party member one or two meaningful moments, and doesn't drag. Reserve Complexity 4-5 for set-piece scenes you've planned around.

Set difficulty to match narrative stakes, not challenge rating. A Desperate difficulty heist feels hopeless if the party is already depleted. Reserve Hard and Desperate for scenes where losing is dramatically interesting, not just punishing.

Let the cascade text do the work. When a failure triggers a cascade, read the cascade text aloud. Players respond to narrated consequences far more than to a GM saying "the DC goes up by 2."

Spotlight hooks prevent skill-check monopolies. Without them, the party's highest-Persuasion character rolls for everything in a social challenge. With a spotlight hook, the fighter's Intimidation and the druid's Nature check each have a clear moment.

You don't have to use every stage. If the challenge feels resolved before the last stage — the party has built momentum and it would be anticlimactic to drag it out — call it a success at cost and move on. The cockpit is a tool, not a script.

The cockpit works on mobile. If you're running from a phone or tablet, the cockpit layout is readable at arm's length across a table. You don't need a laptop open during play.

Save challenges to your library. Even if you generate a challenge and don't use it that session, it's available later. Skill challenges are reusable across different parties and settings with minor narration adjustments.