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2 years ago ::
Nov 01, 2011 - 9:28AM
#1
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Date Joined:
May 26, 2010
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I'm looking to design a skill challenge for a party of 7 PCs most of whom just made level 4.
At level 4 we have a weapon fighter, a brawler fighter, a wizard, a cleric and a theify rouge.
At level 3 we have a ranger and an acrobat rogue.
Everyone has a horse.
I want a skill challenge that will get them from Shadowfell Keep to the hermatage in the Witchlight Fens.
I've collected alot of info so far, and I'm starting to purge and modify an existing outline I found.
One thing I'm not sure about is how to present the situation to my group - they are VERY meta-gamey, but none of them will crack open a book long enough to min/max their characters or power game...
The game is pretty RP lite, so I'm not sure if I can run a challenge as "structured role-play", but to do it as pure roll-play grates my nerves!
Some of my thoughts on skills to use so far are:
History -
Nature - to find alternate paths, safe camp sites, safe food
Endurance - to prevent being down Healing Surges during any fights along the way or at the immediate end of the trip
Insight -
Perception - to spot potential ambushes
Streetwise - to recognize potential hazards
Thievery - to have stolen a map
I'm not really married to any of these as I'm still reading advice stuff...
Do skill challenges come with XP?
Are there guidelines for skill challenges by level?
If there is an ambush that the party stumbles into as part of a failure in the skill challenge, should they get XP for the fight?
Looking for all sorts of advice...
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2 years ago ::
Nov 02, 2011 - 8:24AM
#2
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Date Joined:
May 26, 2010
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I spent a good part of last night reviewing the DMG, DMG 2 and PHB and this is what I have so far: Goal and Context
Travel from Shadowfell Keep to the Halfling hermitage in the Witchlight Fens Level and Complexity
Medium complexity (3), requires 8 DC 12 successes before 4 failures = 700 XP Skills
Acrobatics – not needed
Arcana - not needed
Athletics - not needed
Bluff - not needed
Diplomacy - not needed
Dungeoneering - not needed
Endurance (Group) – failure causes the group to go into the next encounter minus 1 healing Surge
Endurance (Individuals) – each individual to fail goes into the next encounter minus 1 Healing Surge
Heal -
History – remember past camping spots
Insight - not needed
Intimidate – scare away any potential bandits (failure costs ½ day to either avoid or fight bandits)
Nature – find alternate paths of travel, find spare food, find good grazing and water for the horses, handle the horses
Perception – identify potential trouble spots alogn the road, identify potential camping hazards
Religion - not needed
Stealth – sneak around bandits
Streetwise - not needed
Thievery - not needed Other Conditions Consequences
Success – The party travels the 80+ miles in 5 days without injury or delay.
Failure – The party is waylaid during the journey and it takes much longer than planned.
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2 years ago ::
Nov 03, 2011 - 9:53PM
#3
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My question is what is the goal of this skill challenge? Are the players learning about the land? Marking a map with safe routes? Or is this a shot at trying to get the players to think like their characters? What do they gain with sucess? What do they lose with failure? Why should the players care to make it there within 5 days? I like what your trying to do: spice up traveling but I just want to know the purpose, cause players don't want time sinks they want to know they are doing something and why. The purpose of a skill challenge is to enable the players to use non-combat skills in an effective manner. I would propose making a route using a map and have various skill challenges along the way that lead to interesting outcomes, totalling up to Sucess or Failure of reaching the goal (ie, 8 sucesses shortens the route/time to get where they are going, 4 failures delays them longer than necessary). This would take more planning but would possibly end up more likely to draw out your players into more roleplaying than 'roll-play' in a natural way. You might use this map: rathergamey.blogspot.com/2011/07/nentir-... to plan a route, the Hexs are roughly 6 miles a piece. So you could make a route with the sucesses and the failures to the detination. Just my two cents.
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2 years ago ::
Nov 04, 2011 - 5:21AM
#4
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Date Joined:
May 26, 2010
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I'm looking toboth get the players more into the characters and to abbreviate a journey from one location to another without just saying "you arrive at your destination without incident". We had semi role-played through a similar journey in the past and no one seemed too excited about doing that again...
The 5 days was a rough estimate and arbitrary decision I made based on the distance they need to travel and a Google search to see how far a horse can travel in a day with a relitively untrained rider.
I've been focused more on the negative effects of failure than I was the positives of success...
I was thinking that failures would result in delays that would turn into lost healing surges going into the next fight - sort of an effort to simulate the "tired"/"hungry"/"sick"/"angry" results that come with failures in Mouse Guard.
I read an article yesterday that suggested having the players describe their actions and explain how the skills are being used to accomplish the goal and then, after every one has finished explaining, roll the skills and count successes/failures. We were short a player and still have some leveling-up to address last night, so I ran the challenge using this method - it wasn't perfect and afterward we discussed how we can improve it in the future...
I don't want to force my players to role-play if they don't want to, but I like having a bit of logical story behind my game...
Thanks for the advice, I'll give that article a read!
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2 years ago ::
Nov 04, 2011 - 6:26AM
#5
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I'm coming up on a similiar issue with my group going from Fallcrest to Keep on Shadowfell. I plan to describe the journey and throw in some skill checks as they are to be tracking a character, I might toss in some NPCs to add flavor as well, but I won't make them RP out the who trip. Once they arrive closer to Winterhaven I intend to become more descriptive and offer some non-combat RP oppurtunities, examples:
- running into farmers in wagons along the way to Fallcrest with information for the adventure
- encountering a random fellow adventurer (way to embed future NPC)
- tracks and signs along the road of other possible creatures (future adventures)
- wandering people with strange rumors (queues for next adventure)
Just a few things I've come up with, when they get to Winterhaven I'm going to bait them into following some Kobolds, maybe put a twist in the order of events that are to unfold. I would go all out and have full blown encounters generated by failed checks along the way but I'm trying not to blow the EXP curve for the upcoming adventure and have them out level it, making me go in and tweak the content for balance.
Also you can find Travel rates in the Rules Compendium for walking, horse, cart, ship, etc.
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2 years ago ::
Nov 05, 2011 - 9:34AM
#6
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Date Joined:
May 26, 2010
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I have to say...
I bought almost all of the Essentials books, but I haven't even cracked them open. I remember the AD&D 1e DMG had all of that sort of stuff too...
We mostly breezed over the trip from Fallcrest to Winterhaven; it was pretty early in my GMing career... I had them do an overnight along the road and set-up camp and do watches and all... Our cleric rolled a nat 1 on his perception and his story was that he must have fallen asleep and THAT is how the giant ants got into camp and attacked the party.
I found the Shadowfell side-treks pretty useful as filler...
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