Session Report-Back is a feature in which I jot down my after-action thoughts about my weekly D&D session for my Disciples of Dreth'dor campaign.

We last left off with the PCs having plowed through a confidence-boosting battle in the midst of an underground town being bombarded by falling stalactites, only to discover they didn't defeat the villain, but her decoy. With the threat of stalactite-induced doom omnipresent -- in a completely non-"rocks fall, everyone dies" kind of way -- the PCs knew they had to act fast.

A quick interrogation of the decoy revealed that she was just meant to buy the villain time while she completed her ritual to summon "Lolth's Child." The player who runs the only Lawful Good character in the group contemplated torturing the decoy for more information, but dropped the idea when it proved to be a rules hassle and instead ordered the decoy's execution. Luckily for the player, I don't care about alignment in 4e, because it has no mechanical effect on powers like it did in 3e, and "gray" characters are much more interesting than Knights in Shining Armor.

This leads into the session's skill challenge, which began with the interrogation. A good start; an intimidate check to get the information out of the decoy, an insight check to realize she was just a diversion to buy the villain time... I hinted that some characters recalled reading about "Lolth's Child" in an arcane tome, but the players didn't pick up on the clue to make an Arcana check.

From there, the physical part of the challenge began: the race up the steps to the villain's lair. Goons threw barrels down the steps to complicate matters, and falling stalactites produced even more rolling debris. Some characters deftly maneuvered around the obstacles with Acrobatics, others forsook the staircase and took to climbing up cliffs and houses with Athletics, and a Heal and Dungeoneering check even made it into the mix, to deliver some quick first aid to an injured ankle and predict which stalactites were about to fall.

Unfortunately, this skill challenge had one serious design flaw: the rogue progressed through the challenge by exclusively rolling Acrobatics checks. I only had an hour to prepare for this session, which is the least amount of time I've ever put into designing a skill challenge, and it showed. For a 12-success skill challenge, it's unacceptable to have one character be able to use only one skill. His acrobatics modifier was through the roof, so he had no incentive to use any other skill, and I provided no limit or incentive that would make him use something else.

What I found surprising, however, was to learn that the player actually enjoyed the session. He had fun watching his rogue effortlessly dodge debris -- what the challenge lacked in mechanical diversity, I made up for in flavor descriptions of the rogue cockily waiting until the last moment to dodge a stalactite, somersaulting mere inches over rolling barrels, and tumbling up the steps to give the illusion of falling in reverse.

Silver lining, and all. The session wasn't as great as it could be, but it wasn't bad, either, and it ended with the PCs arriving before the open gates to the villain's lair -- and the awaiting guards.

The Good: Finishing in a timely manner; skill challenge flavor descriptions.

The Bad: Skill challenge design lacked diversity.

The Ugly: We got off to a slow start due to technical issues.