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Success: Teleport out of the area.

Failure: The big zombie destroys a portion of the circle, rendering it unusable.

Skills for Success: Athletics and Acrobatics (dodging), Bluff (taunting the big zombie and his little buddies away from the circle), Arcana (activating the circle), Dungeoneering (dealing with the terrain of a crumbling room), Stealth (hiding from the zombies until you can push them back into the hole), Religion (using divine insight to terrify the undead back into their hole)

I'd mix it up with combat, so your defenders can battle the hunter cadavers while some of the party work to get the portal working, while giving strikers and leaders non-combat duty by taunting off the big zombie.  You may want to give the party a total of 2 rolls a round, so they can decide who's rolling for the skill challenge and who's rolling for battling the zombies.

Decide on how tough you want this to be (depending on if you REALLY want them to leave the lab and have plans for what you'll do if they fail) using the DMG's skill challenge table.

Hope this helps.

I often recommend mixing skill challenges with combat, but must admit to never having tried it myself. That said, here's my advice.

If the foes you have in mind are minions, then you can send in a wave, and replace them a round after they're destroyed, or something. Just make sure they have multiple entry points for them, so that they can't be halted even by multiple zones.

I find the success and failure conditions to be the most important part of any challenge. Succes is obviously "making through the portal." I'd suggest that failure is also "making it through the portal," with the addition of "but..." But the hasty repairs and zombie damage send them to the wrong place, possibly separated from one another. But a handful of zombies are transported with them. But the teleportation is wrenching and weakens them for two milestones.

Consider having only Arcana (as a standard action) generate successes. This might synergize well with hordes of minions if the party relies on a controller for both minion control and arcane skill. It could have him pulled in multiple directions (or at least spending a minor each round to sustain a daily). History and Thievery could be used (again as standard actions) for a +2 bonus (or -2 penalty) to the Arcana checks, and of course Arcana could be used to Aid Another.

I like the idea of Athletics and Acrobatics to dodge blows from the huge zombie, but don't see them adding to getting the portal fixed. How about each character must succeed on an easy Athletic or Acrobatics check every round (as part of any Move action, but they don't actually have to move any distance), or lose a minor action for that turn. This will put more pressure on those trying to sustain zones against the minions AND work on the skill challenge. Aid Another can be used with these skills as normal, but the aiding character should probably have to be adjacent to the aided character at some point during the turn.

Bluff could be used (standard action) to keep one other character from having to make an Acrobatics or Athletics check. Essentially, as suggested above by Pheras above, you're distracting the huge zombie away from one target.

I'd run the combat as normal. No need to penalize the ones working on the portal with anything more than damage if they're attacked. I'd also avoid giving any skills any special combat abilities. Just allow full use of powers as normal. You may find you need to adjust on the fly what kinds of actions each skill takes. You could make two kinds of checks for each skill, one that takes one kind of action at one DC, and one that takes a "shorter" action at a higher DC, and let the players gamble.

By the way, cool name.

Jan 18, 2010 -- 7:25PM, Pheras wrote:

@ Centauri:  I like a lot of your ideas, but I think it's important that non-Arcane characters can contribute to the successes the group needs to succeed at to activate the portal.

Sure. There's no reason why History, Thievery, or even Nature or Religion couldn't contribute. Just be sure to make those options clear as "portal" will generally mean "Arcana" to players.

But it would also work to make Arcana be the only source of successes, given that there would be plenty of other skills to use and rolls to make in a mixed encounter like this.

Also, distracting the zombies (particularly the big one) is arguably more important than any given Arcana check.

I agree that it's important. I was mainly thinking in terms of plausible ways to achieve repair and activation of the portal. You could certainly write it so that the repairing the portal is easy, that only the myriad distractions and dangers of the zombies make it a challenge. It still makes sense for actions to be spent in the process, so at least token rolls should be called for.

Of course, you could limit the number of successes allowed for those skills or limit them to assisting the Arcane checks.  Mainly, my suggestions are to try to involve the whole party and give people who normally just stab stuff something to do other than just stab stuff.

A noble goal, but I would suggest that if combat is mixed in the people who are good at stabbing stuff will naturally resort to that, even if there's another way for them to use their skills. Anyone could be trained in Arcana, so it's entirely possible that a defender or striker might tackle the portal and leave minion duty to the controller.

If the goal is to get everyone using skills, I suggest mixing in another skill challenge, rather than a combat encounter. The combat and monolithic zombie could definitely just involve skills, and if one challenge is neglected in favor of the other, well, interesting things happen.

Anyway, good luck companioncube.

Indeed. Let us know how it goes. And if you want to practice this here, you might have a couple of willing volunteers already....

Jan 20, 2010 -- 9:22PM, companioncube wrote:

I'm not really sure what you mean by "practice this here", Centauri.  I'm kind of new to these forums.

Check out the Danger Rooms that PBN and I have run. They're a way to practice the pacing and "challenge" of a skill challenge.

In any case, the adventure continues this Sunday, so I'll let ya know how the party did.

Good luck.