4e Fan Creations and House RulesWorking on variant powers? Statting up a PC race or your version of a monster? Creating or converting an adventure? Put it here!
It's been a while since I looked at this one. Is that the room with the string of platforms suspended over geysers by single chains? This was the room where you had to pay attention to things like balancing people properly on the disks before the geysers went off, killing everyone in the room?
__________________ Life's a die and then you bitch.
I don't know. I think that, given the set pieces, things sound more interesting as a pitched battle as the players are trying to cross the room. There doesn't seem to be enough to make for a very interesting puzzle, and a bunch of chandelier-swings over a mud pit feels kind of empty as a skill challenge.
Kobold, in your version of things, what's on the other side of the room, and why did the person who built it decide on such an interesting design choice to get from one side to the other?
If I were to do a bit of a revisionist history of things, I'd probably make it that the original room had a series of suspended rope bridges linking one end with the other, prior to it also becoming home to the geysers. Now, to get across (somewhat) safely, players need to do a lot of swinging and jumping from one shattered remnant of the bridge to the next, all while dodging erupting geysers and poorly aimed projectiles slung by a bunch of obnoxious muddy elementals.
__________________ Life's a die and then you bitch.
If I were to do a bit of a revisionist history of things, I'd probably make it that the original room had a series of suspended rope bridges linking one end with the other, prior to it also becoming home to the geysers. Now, to get across (somewhat) safely, players need to do a lot of swinging and jumping from one shattered remnant of the bridge to the next, all while dodging erupting geysers and poorly aimed projectiles slung by a bunch of obnoxious muddy elementals.
That's essentially a skill challenge with one added bit-the elementals. Swinging, jumping, and dodging geysers are exactly what I envision skill challenges as representing. Indeed, when I ran WPM in 3rd edition, it was very much like the 4E skill challenges, with multiple rolls, penalties for too many failures, and circumstantial bonuses.
So the adventure is for 11 and 12 year olds, so it’s ok if a lot of the adventure doesn’t make sense. It makes more sense then any adventure I put together at their age, and I’m only slightly more mature when we play.
An Ogre Mage (sorry Oni Mage) and his minions attacked a village and stole important documents form a merchant there. While at it he killed 2 party members and made off with their bodies. The purpose of the adventure is two-fold recover the fallen comrades if they haven’t been eaten yet – mainly for their magic items, and recover the documents which hold information on the manufacture of superior weapons which will be needed to arm to forces of good since an evil army is approaching,
As I was designing the Oni Mages lair full of geysers and water filled corridors I realized many of the encounters where similar to White Plume Mountain and decided to just rip off whole sale many of the more exciting locales from there.
I’ve never designed a skill challenge before so please feel free to point out bad spots;
Hot Mud Room
A large cavern with boiling hot mud, and ledges at either end hold the entry and exit, between are large wooden disks suspended by thick chain. Occasionally large bubbles of mud spew steam and slim into the air, coating various areas in slippery goo.
Primary Skills; Athletics, Acrobatics, Dungeoneering, and Endurance
Skill Challenge Complexity 2 Difficulty Check 20 Successes 6 (5 disks between ledges) Failures 3
Each Success advances a character one stage toward the opposite side, and the succeeding character can do things to ease the challenge for those who follow to a Difficulty Check of 15
Each failure produces dramatic story elements like almost slipping off to a final on of actually falling or being hit directly by a mud blast causing a D8, D10, 2D10 in succession and increasing each following difficulty check by 2.
Not sure about including some kind of battle as well, its 5th level characters and meant to be an exciting but easy challenge. Perhaps some giant steam breathing giant bats, as 2nd lvl minoins.
Thanks for your time and input,
Andy
Primary Skills; Athletics, Acrobatics, Dungeoneering, and Endurance
Skill Challenge Complexity 2 Difficulty Check 20 Successes 6 (5 disks between ledges) Failures 3
Each Success advances a character one stage toward the opposite side, and the succeeding character can do things to ease the challenge for those who follow to a Difficulty Check of 15
Each failure produces dramatic story elements like almost slipping off to a final on of actually falling or being hit directly by a mud blast causing a D8, D10, 2D10 in succession and increasing each following difficulty check by 2.
The problem with skill challenges is that everyone wants to use them for everything.
In this case: what happens when the players rack up 3 failures? They become unable to complete the adventure??
Just present the scenario and play through it: each character is going to have to come up with some way to cross the room, and when they fail they take some damage. Either way they'll get across.
Alternately, to make it more interesting, draw up a map for the room, assign acrobatics DCs to move quickly on the bridge fragments, athletics DCs for swinging on chains, and then stage a combat in there.
Wow a weird gaming a-ha moment just happened. It never occurred to me that failure actually meant failure! Maybe it’s the last 6 or 7 years of gaming Herowars/ Heroquest where failure never meant failure.
I just figured at the end of the skill challenge no matter how the dice fell the characters made it to the other side, either with all their hit-points (all successes) or not (some degree of failures) and damage taken.
It raises some interesting ideas based on you comments that most people don’t understand Skill Challenges and how to apply them to story telling vs Simulation
Thanks,
Andy
Wow a weird gaming a-ha moment just happened. It never occurred to me that failure actually meant failure! Maybe it’s the last 6 or 7 years of gaming Herowars/ Heroquest where failure never meant failure.
Well, technically if you fail a skill challenge, you're supposed to lose something. The problem here is that you're already charging hitpoints for each failure, so that's covered.
I suppose you could just make them lose MORE hitpoints for the final failure... but what happens after that?
The problem is that the room cannot really be resolved: it will still be there later, whether they succeed or fail at the skill challenge.
That's why I suggest merely treating the room as a hazard and moving on. I suppose you could set up an option skill challenge of "make this room safe to cross from now on" where success means they create or mend a rope bridge, and failure means they need to make a bunch of skill checks each time they cross it.
kobold has a point, but IMO the encounter as written isn't fun as a Skill Challenge or not. It really needs to be jazzed up; chasing an escaping enemy across the platforms would not only make it more exciting, but give a reasonable "fail" result. As written, tho, it's pretty much just wandering damage.
In this case: what happens when the players rack up 3 failures?
Successes and failures are reset to 0 and they start the challenge over from the beginning, much like many published challenges involving wilderness travel.
__________________ The Pbartender
"I don't believe it. There she goes again! She's tidied up, and I can't find anything! All my tubes and wires and careful notes and antiquated notions..." - Thomas Dolby
Successes and failures are reset to 0 and they start the challenge over from the beginning, much like many published challenges involving wilderness travel.
Wow... seriously? Doesn't that defeat the major benefit of a skill challenge over "just roll some skill checks" ie - there's a limited amount of skill rolling before the thing is guaranteed to be over?
The problem with skill challenges is that everyone wants to use them for everything.
I can identify with this. In my experience as soon as the players are informed that they are in a Skill Challange Situation they have the tendancy to switch mentality and start looking for ways to either use their primary skill, or only perform actions that cannot result in a fail result (e.g. assisting another character or even worse doing nothing).
Amazingly though I have learnt that if you don't announce a Skill Challange Situation and instead continue as normal (player anounces what they are going to do, or roleplays conversation), then just ask for the most appropriate skill checks (at each appropriate point) then they act as normal and are prepared to accept a much broader scope of risk (i.e. they do not mind attempting skills they are not specialised in, or even have trained).
I suppose the ideal Skill Challange is the Secret Skill Challange, but then in reality this is no different to the way actions have always been resolved.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Saeviomagy
Alternately, to make it more interesting, draw up a map for the room, assign acrobatics DCs to move quickly on the bridge fragments, athletics DCs for swinging on chains, and then stage a combat in there.
This is absolutely the best way of handling the situation. If you create an interesting and exciting map, filled with different elements that boththe PCs and the Enemies can interact with then you will get an excellent combat encounter.
When the players see that the creatures they are fighting are having to make the same skill checks as they are to get into the best position they will become a lot more involved.
Another thing I have learnt is that players love to see creatures fail. There is nothing they love more than to see a creature get pushed down it's own pit trap then have a hard time trying to climb out.
Wow... seriously? Doesn't that defeat the major benefit of a skill challenge over "just roll some skill checks" ie - there's a limited amount of skill rolling before the thing is guaranteed to be over?
Nope... There's a lot of examples of open-ended skill challenges out there now. In this situation, it can even make sense: Keep trying until you succeed or until you die by slipping and falling into the boiling hot mud.
In fact, in this challenge, I wouldn't even bother keeping track of failures... Hit point loss (and possible death) is failure enough. Let the players keep trying until they succeed, or until they lose enough hit points to convince them to give up.
I honestly never saw "finite number of skill checks" as a benefit of skill challenges. Quite the opposite, in fact... Before skill challenges it was usually "roll one skill check to bypass an entire encounter". Skill challenges were developed to string that situation out more than a bit.
__________________ The Pbartender
"I don't believe it. There she goes again! She's tidied up, and I can't find anything! All my tubes and wires and careful notes and antiquated notions..." - Thomas Dolby
Nope... There's a lot of examples of open-ended skill challenges out there now. In this situation, it can even make sense: Keep trying until you succeed or until you die by slipping and falling into the boiling hot mud.
It might make sense, but IMO it doesn't seem like it would be a lot of fun.
Quote:
In fact, in this challenge, I wouldn't even bother keeping track of failures... Hit point loss (and possible death) is failure enough. Let the players keep trying until they succeed, or until they lose enough hit points to convince them to give up.
And this just seems to me like another way of saying "don't run it as a Skill Challenge".
Skill challenges seem (to me) meant to expand on what would be otherwise be a single skill check because a single skill check isn't much fun. They also seem to be intended to avoid simply rolling until you make it (and in the above example, with the players I'm used to dealing with, they would try until they got low-ish on hps, and then take an extended rest before restarting the cycle...), limiting you to a certain number of checks; again because it's supposed to be more fun that way. Where they succeed or fail is in making the tactical choices within those checks fun / interesting / meaningful. Personally I don't think that this encounter manages that, at least as written. Both the choices and the consequences are simply too limited for my tastes.
Skill challenges seem (to me) meant to expand on what would be otherwise be a single skill check because a single skill check isn't much fun.
Absolutely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kaomera
They also seem to be intended to avoid simply rolling until you make it (and in the above example, with the players I'm used to dealing with, they would try until they got low-ish on hps, and then take an extended rest before restarting the cycle...), limiting you to a certain number of checks; again because it's supposed to be more fun that way. Where they succeed or fail is in making the tactical choices within those checks fun / interesting / meaningful. Personally I don't think that this encounter manages that, at least as written. Both the choices and the consequences are simply too limited for my tastes.
You're probably right...
But my underlying point is that one need not be slavishly devoted to the basic structure of a skill challenge. It's the variations on the theme that keep it interesting.
In all honesty, I probably wouldn't treat this room as a skill challenge either. I'd probably run the geysers as one set of hazards (Caustic Geysers on DMG p91 would be an excellent start), and the slippery, dangling platforms as a second set of hazards (probably using a slightly modified Treacherous Ice Sheet from DMG p89). Keep the PCs in initiative throughout and run it like a combat encounter without enemies (with the exception of the hazards).
People really underestimate the usefulness of running "combat" encounters that only feature traps and hazards
__________________ The Pbartender
"I don't believe it. There she goes again! She's tidied up, and I can't find anything! All my tubes and wires and careful notes and antiquated notions..." - Thomas Dolby
But my underlying point is that one need not be slavishly devoted to the basic structure of a skill challenge. It's the variations on the theme that keep it interesting.
I think you're right - and unfortunately it kind of bugs me. I really like what Skill Challenges seem to have to offer, but a lot of the suggestions that seem to "click" best for me boil down to "Run something that isn't a Skill Challenge". What you've described is pretty much how I would have expected to see the room handled in 3e: a series of individual skill checks with separate pass & fail results for each...
Quote:
People really underestimate the usefulness of running "combat" encounters that only feature traps and hazards
To each his own, but I've played through three such encounters in 4e, and numerous in 3e, and I've not usually found them much fun. What's usually missing is tension, well that and "take some damage" isn't much fun as a consequence (although here you run up against "Why kill characters if character death isn't fun?" ~ "Because the whole game is less fun if characters can never die.").
You're supposed to be able to create a failure result that's still fun; ideally the players shouldn't particularly care OOCly if the characters succeed or fail - the story is cool either way. But D&D rarely works that way, the wish-fulfillment is usually a vital part of the fun. BUT - triumphing over adversity is usually more fun than simply blowing though tissue-paper obstacles...
So what I think this kind of encounter needs is 1) some kind of pressure forcing the players onward, and 2) an "out" where the PCs don't get dropped straight into the lava or die via hp attrition... Actually, I think the entire opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark is a great prototype for a fun (and failed) Skill Challenge...
(Ah, sorry, I think I've drifted way off topic... =/ )
To each his own, but I've played through three such encounters in 4e, and numerous in 3e, and I've not usually found them much fun.
Right, but much of that can be in the presentation and implementation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kaomera
What's usually missing is tension, well that and "take some damage" isn't much fun as a consequence... ...You're supposed to be able to create a failure result that's still fun; ideally the players shouldn't particularly care OOCly if the characters succeed or fail - the story is cool either way. But D&D rarely works that way, the wish-fulfillment is usually a vital part of the fun. BUT - triumphing over adversity is usually more fun than simply blowing though tissue-paper obstacles...
Here's a secret little trick, though...
The appearance of danger can provide just as much dramatic tension in the game even if the actual danger is minimal. In other words, the actual difficulty of the challenge, numbers-wise, may be minimal, but if the players think that their characters are in danger, they'll act accordingly. And there's never any dissappointment, if they never actually realize how easily they blew through that paper obstacle.
Behind the screen, the DM knows it's a paper obstacle. Fromthe other side, the players think they triumphed over adversity. It's not alwasy easy to pull off and many people think it's a dirty trick, but it sure does work well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kaomera
So what I think this kind of encounter needs is 1) some kind of pressure forcing the players onward, and 2) an "out" where the PCs don't get dropped straight into the lava or die via hp attrition... Actually, I think the entire opening sequence of Raiders of the Lost Ark is a great prototype for a fun (and failed) Skill Challenge...
Sure, but we could do that here, with the apprpriate types of hazard/traps.
Consider this:
We've got geyers that peroidically blast nearby squares with boiling hot acid (or whatever). If the characters stay too long in one place, they get hit. But, gives each of the geysers a different pattern of eruption. The PCs will have to time their jumps just right to get across without getting hit.
On top of that, the platforms they need to leapfrog across are wobbly and slippery. If they aren't careful, they may end up falling prone or sliding toward the edge of the platform on a failed Athletics or Acrobatics check.
How do you get everyone across, when in all likelyhood not everyone is good at Atheletics or Acrobatics? Time for some critical thinking on the part of the players.
So, once they've entered the room, the geysers provide all the impetus you need to keep the PCs moving through, and slips on the disks will provide all the tension you need.
The only other thing you need is a way to keep from going back the way they came.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kaomera
(Ah, sorry, I think I've drifted way off topic... =/ )
It's all a means to an end, eh?
__________________ The Pbartender
"I don't believe it. There she goes again! She's tidied up, and I can't find anything! All my tubes and wires and careful notes and antiquated notions..." - Thomas Dolby
I've just taken into consideration Pbartender's words, and I think I've come to this brilliant conclusion.
A trap is something that can damage you. (actual hurt points)
A skill challenge is something that might exhaust or tire you. (potential healing surge)
An obstacle is something that simply hinders you. (blocks, restricts, slows movement)
A hazard is something that adds conditions to the field. (movement penalties, complex actions)
In this case, then, the concept that this is a Skill Challenge might be the wrong presentation format for something that is more like a Trap or Hazard. Since it poses a threat of injury and a condition on movement -- penalties for failing to avoid the trap, and a skill check to avoid the trap's effect. Likely: countermeasures might disable it, but it would have to be difficult to handle, unless a rogue wanted to rush through first and risk getting himself blasted by the trap. If he makes it through, he runs the challenge, and then has to do a disable device / thievery check (a little extra die-rolling). Each character then can avoid the trap challenge -- or if there isn't a party rogue, then you can have every character play the game of "help your ally" and apply your +2 to +5 aid bonus to helping another ally across. Failure could result in "blasted by steam, pushed 2 into mud; take hot mud (fire) damage, must swim to next block; slowed for next jump, penalty to next jump check".
Below is the raw write-up I had for a gameday I ran a 4E conversion of White Plume Mountain for about a year ago. It's pretty rough, so take it for what it's worth, or possible ideas.
As for Skill Challenges, I've never thought that skill challenges should be written so as to break the adventure -- in fact, they say something similar to that in the DMG. Instead, if they fail the challenge, as said they should lose something, or make it harder for them to complete a task, not make it impossible. Some of the things from white plume mountain already assume that some magics are negated (like the "frictionless room" thing) and those same magics don't exist in 4E, or are harder to come by, so it's easier to write for them; on the other hand, they also use save or die liberally too in some older modules, and those should be at least written to a "two strikes and you're out" mindset.
Quote:
Manmade stone platform opens out to lake of boiling mud; two geysers of boiling mud pop every few seconds. Southeast across the chamber, 50 feet away, is another stone platform, and a wooden door. Suspended across the room from the ceiling 35 feet up are a set of immense iron chains, with a wooden disk stapled to each one by a metal ring. All of it looks slippery. Every 30 seconds (5 rounds), geyser A erupts, stretching to the ceiling; every 20 seconds, geyser B erupts. The two platforms closest to the geysers are coated in boiling mud when this happens, and PCs on them must make a saving throw or be coated in boiling mud, taking 1d10 points of fire damage.
PCs wanting to move from disc to disc must make an Acrobatics OR Athletics check (DC 15) to jump or time a swing from chain to chain. If they wait 1 round, they can get a +2 to the check for each round they wait, to a max of +6. If they fail, they don’t make the jump, clinging to current chain for dear life. If they fail by more than 5, they must make a saving throw or fall into the mud below. They take 1d10 fire damage per round until rescued. If they can get at least one across safely, they can string some ropes to make it easier to cross.
__________________ "Conversely, I'm amazed at the number of people queueing up to tell people that don't like 4e that they are wrong. Why can't people just agree to disagree, and get on with actually playing the game?" --Delericho
If there's one dragon, it's a solo monster.
If there's five dragons, they're standard monsters.
If there's a dozen dragons, either most of them are minions or your DM is tired of the campaign.
--Lizard
Linear Mode
And yet another word from our sponsors
