Battle skill challenge, ideas plz.

[styker]

Hello everybody,

One of my pcs will need 16 hours to learn and use a ritual, the problem is that the adventurers are in a extreme dangerous place. I would like to get this opportunity to present a kind of "hold the line" challenge with enemy hordes geting near while the pc learn the ritual and the others confront the enemy. Someone has a idea how can i setup this challenge?

 

[DanmarLOK]

Off hand I can see what might be a big issue, one player doesn't get to do anything while the rest of them are for the duration of this experience. So you're probably not going to want to take a lot of real time to do this.

Do you want the ritual to complete successfully?

You might want to try something like what I came up with to abstract combat out.

Key Our Cars » Blog Archive » Trivial Combat Drain System

 

[styker]

Off hand I can see what might be a big issue, one player doesn't get to do anything while the rest of them are for the duration of this experience. So you're probably not going to want to take a lot of real time to do this.

Do you want the ritual to complete successfully?

You might want to try something like what I came up with to abstract combat out.

Key Our Cars » Blog Archive » Trivial Combat Drain System

I want that the task to complete the ritual became a challenge with one pc having to study while the others cover it.

 

[Turtlejay]

Hmmm.... my DM has run a few skill challenges with secondary goals. He says they are stolen from Pcat's campaign. The idea is, the skill challenge may be to survive for x number of hours by making a number of checks, but the secondary goal is to complete the study of this ritual.

So the primary challenge will have some number of skills (endurance, nature, perception, insight) that need to be completed to survive. You may allow someone to make an attack instead of a check, but instead of a success maybe it grants a bonus to the next check (or a penalty). Since this is a long endurance battle, you can get away with a fairly large number of successes required.

As a secondary challenge, the PC's can forgo their normal check or attack to do research or assist (arcana, heal?, endurance?, im not sure what else?) the PC doing research. The PC's only succeed if they can finish this challenge before the other one runs out.

If you wanted to be a bastard DM, you could set a time limit. Each round around the table represents two hours, and the PC's must complete the needed checks in 8 rounds or they fail.

As for specifics? I'm no good at those. I'm just an idea man.

Jay

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Hmmm...interesting idea, and I'm not sure how you'd implement it, but I can give some suggestions on what skills might be good to use and how they would be used.

Intimidate could be used to force the enemy to flee, which might either negate a failure, or count as a success.

Nature and Perception could be used to gain an advantage against the enemy, assuming they're out in the wilderness. Basically, a successful check would allow the party to ambush some of the enemy, or perhaps find some advantageous terrain.

Heal could be used to negate a failure, since you'll probably want failures to cost a healing surge. Or perhaps each "round" of the fight costs a surge, in addition to each failure costing another one. In this way, it will approximate a real fight because the party loses a resource (healing surges) over time. The Heal skill could prevent that loss, or negate a failure and the additional surge loss that would incur.

Endurance is another useful skill, since this would be a long battle. Endurance means your PC's keep their fighting spirits up and their wits about them through the long fight.

Athletics and Acrobatics could also be used since they would signify great feats of strength and agility during the fight, thus giving the party the upper hand.

Stealth could also play a role similar to that of a Perception or Nature check, in that it would allow the PC's to gain an advantage and ambush the enemy.

Oh, and last but not least, you could allow some Thievery checks (I think that's the skill that governs traps) to account for the party improvising traps in the area to help deal with the onrushing enemies.

Now, this is just a listing of what I think could be some of the applicable skills and the reasons why they'd be in use. As for the actual mechanics of the challenge and what complexity? I have no idea... I would, however, recommend going with some sort of challenge where healing surges are lost, as this will approximate an actual battle.

You might also want to end the challenge and go into an actual combat encounter to cap things off. Allow the player working the ritual to participate in the fight though, otherwise he'll feel left out. Basically, it would be a fight where they just have to buy another 5 minutes or so for the ritual to finish, and that's why he's able to participate.

Edit: Oh, and one possible mechanism for your challenge that will involve the player doing the ritual is to base it around his ability to complete it. Basically, have him perform some of a check as part of the ritual every hour or two. Success means that the ritual continues apace, while failure adds an extra hour or two to the time it will take to complete it. In this way, he can participate in the challenge, and he will actually act as the mechanism to determine how long the challenge lasts.

This might require adjusting the time it takes to perform the ritual, say, to 8 hours. Every two hours the party loses a surge, and every failure for the ritual check adds two hours to the ritual time. Or you could scale up to 4 hour chunks. This way, they're guaranteed to lose two surges, with a possible 4 surges, just from time. Then, any failures in the "battle" portion of the challenge cost an additional surge or two, perhaps from particular party members (instead of everyone).

 

[Piratecat]

Hmmm.... my DM has run a few skill challenges with secondary goals. He says they are stolen from Pcat's campaign.

No kidding? I'm flattered.

If I were going to do this, I'd set it up something like this. I'm just pulling this out of my butt; it needs refining. Fast version:

Part 1 - you camouflage the camp. At the end of Part 1, a quick combat occurs.
Part 2 - you reinforce the camp tactically. Succeed and part 3 gets way easier.
Part 3 - the ritual casters try to finish the ritual, while everyone else works to keep the bad guys away from the casters.

------------------

Hold The Line

You have sixteen hours to learn and cast the ritual, but your enemies are closing in. Can you do so in time?

Part One: Enemy Intelligence

Keep the camp hidden, one way or another. It's only a 6/3 challenge, but the DCs are set relatively high. Success means a +1 bonus on all skill checks in parts 2 and 3. Failure means a -1 penalty on all checks, as the enemy has seen you and maneuvered its forces to more effectively harass you.

Primary skills: Nature and Stealth (to camouflage the camp), perception (to spot enemy scouts in time to get people out of sight)

Secondary skills: Aid another can help another person's roll. Insight, figuring out which way the enemy will come, can also grant +2 but can only be used once.

Special: the ritual caster can contribute with one arcana or religion check, whichever is appropriate, as they prep their ritual.

After Part One is completed, a few enemy scouts stray close to the camp; if Part One was successful, they don't see it and can be ambushed by the PCs. If Part One was a failure, they turn and flee to report back. they can still be attacked, but they start at long range and would rather flee than engage.

Part Two: Reinforce the Camp

This is a 8/3 challenge, but the DCs are a little lower. The goal is to dig ditches, set up traps, and so forth to reinforce the campsite. Success means an additional +1 on checks in part 3, as well as the ability to impose a free one-round Slow effect on any two enemies per round in the Part 3 fighting. That simulates your traps and defenses slowing the enemy down. Failure means you've left your site exposed, and two enemies per round attacking you in Part 3 gain +2 to their speed. [Note: that's just arbitrary, really - I want it to feel like you're being swarmed by the bad guys if you screw up part 2.]

Primary abilities: Athletics, Endurance, Insight, Intimidation, Nature, History (you know about good historical battle tactics), Thievery, Stealth (camouflaging pits), stuff like that.

Special: the ritual caster can contribute with one arcana or religion check, whichever is appropriate, as they prep their ritual.

Part two simulates the build up. Enemies start appearing and harassing you with long distance arrow fire while you're working, but staying far enough away that they are more a nuisance than anything else. Their presence is worse if Part 1 was failed.

Part Three: The Ritual

The ritual nears completion as the camp is swarmed. 6/3 challenge for the ritual casters only.

The ritual caster(s) make skill checks while everyone else keeps them safe. The camp is swarmed, mostly by minions, and everyone has to keep the enemy out of the area near the ritual casters. That means you run a combat (with the PCs gaining +2 to -2 to hit, depending on how Parts 1 and 2 went) with foes closing in on the camp site. At the same time, each round you have the ritual caster (s) make Endurance, arcana or religion checks each round to keep focused on what they're doing; they're also at +2 to -2, depending on how the previous challenges went. Each attack that hits them in a round penalizes their next skill check by 1 per successful attack. Any round a caster chooses not to make a skill check counts as a failure (they could spend an action point to get off an attack, though, so long as they spend a standard action casting.)

Success means that the other PCs kept the foe away long enough for the ritualists to finish the ritual. Failure means the ritual is ruined, probably because the camp site got overrun.

If you have NPC allies, feel free to let your ritual-casting players run them during the fight; that way they get to engage in combat too.

Thoughts, comments, improvements?

 

[Elric]

Part Three: The Ritual

The ritual nears completion as the camp is swarmed. 6/3 challenge for the ritual casters only.

The ritual caster(s) make skill checks while everyone else keeps them safe. The camp is swarmed, mostly by minions, and everyone has to keep the enemy out of the area near the ritual casters. That means you run a combat (with the PCs gaining +2 to -2 to hit, depending on how Parts 1 and 2 went) with foes closing in on the camp site. At the same time, each round you have the ritual caster (s) make Endurance, arcana or religion checks each round to keep focused on what they're doing; they're also at +2 to -2, depending on how the previous challenges went. Each attack that hits them in a round penalizes their next skill check by 1 per successful attack. Any round a caster chooses not to make a skill check counts as a failure (they could spend an action point to get off an attack, though, so long as they spend a standard action casting.)

Success means that the other PCs kept the foe away long enough for the ritualists to finish the ritual. Failure means the ritual is ruined, probably because the camp site got overrun.

If you have NPC allies, feel free to let your ritual-casting players run them during the fight; that way they get to engage in combat too.

Thoughts, comments, improvements?

The original post indicates that there's only one PC casting the ritual. If so, 6/3 is a long challenge to coincide with a combat. The PC might fail the ritual in a short number of rounds, but chances are that the PC can't succeed on the ritual before the combat ends. In this case, the skill challenge might feel superfluous. To avoid this, maybe add a second wave of enemies after, say, 5 rounds. This way the DM can use enough enemies to keep the fight going a long time without overwhelming the PCs with their full numbers in the early rounds.

Also, if this isn't heroic tier, using tons of minions might not work well (too many area and auto damage powers at higher levels).

 

[Piratecat]

The original post indicates that there's only one PC casting the ritual. If so, 6/3 is a long challenge to coincide with a combat. The PC might fail the ritual in a short number of rounds, but chances are that the PC can't succeed on the ritual before the combat ends. In this case, the skill challenge might feel superfluous. To avoid this, maybe add a second wave of enemies after, say, 5 rounds. This way the DM can use enough enemies to keep the fight going a long time without overwhelming the PCs with their full numbers in the early rounds.

Also, if this isn't heroic tier, using tons of minions might not work well (too many area and auto damage powers at higher levels).

Alternatively, just drop it to a 4/3 with higher DCs. I like the idea of waves of opponents a whole lot, though, so either would work well.

I think you'd want to tweak your minions so that they're mostly melee and have to actually reach the person performing the ritual. Either that or put the ritual out of line of sight from the battlefield, such as in a hollow or shielded by bushes.

 

[the Jester]

Nice work, PCat! You seem to have both a very good grasp of the skill challenge mechanics and a good head for changing them.

I have to say- I'd love to play in a 4e game under you some time. You're definitely one of the finest dms I have had the pleasure of gaming with.

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

What do you think the best way to present this challenge would be?

I know PC has said that he's rather fond of giving out skill challenges explicitly (even to the point of giving players a handout basically saying what he said above). Could you do this implicitly? Does it make more sense to have a handout for each part of the challenge, or is having the entire thing laid out in front of the party fine?