I happened on this during a Cyber-Monday sale and honestly even at full price this little diddy is well worth the price of admission. This small 27 page PDF carries with it a nice punch as it offers some great Skill Challenges, a small section on how to make them more challenging for the player, and some new example on how to use the very "small" list of skills in the 4e game.

If you are a DM who wants to add a bit of RP flavor in your game, you should not be without this book.

If any feedback I would have to give... you could take out the rituals and add more ways in which to use skills.

THE GOOD: The skill challenges presented run the full gamut of heroic through epic tier, and some of them offer interesting and inventive situations. Even the typical or predictable ones would save a harried DM time designing them for himself or herself. The supplement's concluding section suggests new uses for old skills, some of which are worthwhile.

THE BAD: Author David Caffee ignores the errata on skill challenges, even though they were among the first errata issued for 4e. This hit me full force when I got to the second skill challenge, which was marked as "Complexity: 1 (requires 4 successes before 2 failures)." But that's not right. Per the errata, a complexity 1 skill challenge requires four successes before three failures. Per the errata, all skill challenges require N successes before three failures. At first, I wanted to believe the typist had simply struck the wrong key—but all of the skill challenges (except, inexplicably, "High Crimes," p. 6) are written with the failure threshold as 1/2 the success threshold, following the printed, pre-errata table in the 2008 Player's Handbook. This rules misstep so colored my perceptions that I found it hard to like anything else about the product.

Several of the skill challenges presented are bland or even predictable. A few might as well be combat encounters instead of skill challenges (Pit Fight, Tavern Brawl, and The Gauntlet--I'm looking at you). Some (Arcane Door, Puzzle Trap) substitute skill checks for players' own wits. Arcane Some of the new uses for old skills make warp the rules (one describes an "opposed check" of "Acrobatics vs. Reflex," but by definition an opposed check is check vs. check, and there is no such thing as a Reflex check) or lack all verisimilitude (for example, one suggests that you can dig a five-foot-long tunnel with an Athletics check as a standard action, that is, within six seconds).

THE UGLY: The pages lack numbers, and the writing exhibits noticeable grammatical errors. Artwork is scarce, stock, and cartoonish.

Overall, this is a very disappointing supplement, below the level of quality that I've come to expect from Adamant.