Escape from the hungry Troll - A small chase scene

[Guilberwood]

Hi guys,

I’ve designed a small chase scene for the first session of my next campaign, which is about to start in a few weeks, and I would really appreciate your feedback.

If by any chance one of my players is reading this PLEASE STOP NOW!

In this scene, the players are going to be in a forest exploring a recently abandoned camp site that has been attacked by an angry bear. During the investigation of the site, a Troll comes by smelling the food left in the camp and find an even tastier meal in the form of 5 1st level PCs.

The chase goes like this:

1 – Woods – Troll’s starting point.
No obstacle

2 – Camp site – Players’ starting point.
Troll only: Feast on scraps – The troll spends one round eating the remaining food in the camp

3 – Thick woods:
a) Move away from the brambles – Escape artist DC 18
b) “Coming Through!” – Str check DC 14

4 – Field of thorns
a) Identify the hazard – Knowledge (nature) DC 16
b) Avoid the hazard – Survival DC 15

5 – Hill of rocks
a) Climb to the top – Climb DC 14
b) Secret shortcut – Perception DC 18

6 – Low hanging branch
a) Dodge it – Save Reflex DC 11
b) Jump it – Acrobatics DC 16

7 – Swift river
a) Swim across – Swim DC 14
b) Use a fallen log as a bridge – Acrobatics DC 16

8 – Finish line

So, what do you guys think? Any suggestion or feedback is deeply appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
guilberwood

 

[Noumenon]

My DM had us chase a pickpocket this way. One of your characters is going to get stuck somewhere -- they won't have either of the skills trained, and they won't be able to roll to save their life. Versus a pickpocket, this just meant I was left behind and frustrated (My demon bloodline sorceress ended up eviscerating a horse because I just couldn't make it past the wagon in the middle of the street). I guess the answer is that if they don't make the skill roll, they still move the next round without a roll -- it just slows them down.

If any PC or the whole group gets caught, they'll die, right? That seems bad. Might work better if the group has something the troll wants that they can toss to the leader so that the troll will just pick up stragglers, shake them, and throw them aside. Edit: or perhaps the troll is searching for something they don't know about and none of them has. What is it? Plot hook!

You could put the different locations on different index cards and shuffle them. This allows you to reuse them for other chase scenes. And it lets you put down two index cards side by side to give the PCs a choice of which way to go. Which would allow the fleeter party members to lead the troll away.

Speaking of which, I've heard that chase scenes are better structured to make the PCs the active participants. Instead of "you spy an obstacle, you must avoid", they suggested making it "choose what kind of obstacle you want to create for your pursuer." Stretch a tripwire, climb a tree, duck behind a rock, swim a river.

 

[Guilberwood]

These are good points. From my previous experience running this kind of encounter, players will indeed get stuck somewhere, even though most DCs are easy enough even for a character not trained in those skills. Allowing them to automatically move through an obstacle on the second attempt is a good way to avoid them being stuck forever in one place.
I don’t think that the Troll catching up with a PC means instant death. Sure the Troll will roll an attack (not a full-attack, according to the chase rules) against the PC, but it can miss and, even if it hits, it probably won’t one-shot the player, unless it’s a critical hit. After that the PC have another chance to run. I completely trust my players to come up with another solution to the problem in case it’s necessary. Besides, if someone actually dies, so be it: life is though and the world does not pity you just because you’re 1st level.
I loved your suggestion about making the players more active on the chase, I’ll sure totally incorporate it.
Thanks!

 

[Kaisoku]

Some thoughts...

- In this deadly of a situation, yes, I think making the chase checks simply a "going through the space quicker" a better option. Getting stuck on a square can mean death, and quick with this kind of level disparity.
Failing a square one round making it so you auto-pass the next round (basically failure = 2 rounds to move instead of 1) sounds good.
Note that this applies to the Troll too, so no lollygagging.

- An idea might be to have a special "floating" stage that kicks in when someone falls back enough to get caught by the Troll.
This gives that one extra "chase scene" type of option before being smacked by the Troll. Maybe have a larger list of options on this one, allowing many kinds of options to get back to a step ahead of the thing (attack roll to swipe at a grasping claw, sneak check to create a diversion, feint or escape artist to make the Troll run into a tree, spot a root to lure the Troll into tripping itself, etc). More likely a player has an appropriate bonus to a check.
Basically, a Troll's attack roll will nearly never miss a 1st level PC's AC, so this gives a better level appropriate "avoidance" check than a straight up attack roll. It also better represents the situation... this isn't combat, the PCs are trying to avoid combat, so their defense would be to distract and get away.

- Aid Another should be allowed to be more easily done here. Chase scenes let you run 3 squares if you spend a full round action. If instead you spend a full round action performing your check on a single square, it'd be nice to let a person grant a bonus to others attempting that same square this round.
This lets someone who's good at the check give a bonus to someone who might not be, without forcing them to waste the round completely (normally Aid Another is a standard action that would use up your turn to pass a check).
It's thematic too... the good climber makes it to the top of the hill first, and reaches back down to pull up a comrade or two.

- Remember that higher speed gives a bonus to checks (+2 per 10 feet higher than the baseline), and lower speed gives a penalty (-2 per 10 feet lower).
In this case, the Troll has 30' movement, so I'd use that as a the baseline. Sucks for any gnomes, halflings or dwarves.. but nice for Barbarians.

 

[N'raac]

I don’t think that the Troll catching up with a PC means instant death. Sure the Troll will roll an attack (not a full-attack, according to the chase rules) against the PC, but it can miss and, even if it hits, it probably won’t one-shot the player, unless it’s a critical hit. After that the PC have another chance to run. I completely trust my players to come up with another solution to the problem in case it’s necessary. Besides, if someone actually dies, so be it: life is though and the world does not pity you just because you’re 1st level.

Well, the Troll's got a +9 attack bonus (+4 BAB and +5 STR), so I suspect he'll typically hit.

When he catches up, he should only get one attack (he had to move to catch up, so he doesn't have a full round action left). Will he attack as soon as possible, or will the target need to take an AoO when he runs away, since the Troll has Reach? If he (foolishly - but trolls aren't all that bright!) attacks ASAP, that will reduce its opportunities to hit a lagging PC.

One attack does 1d6 + 5 (claw), so most characters should weather one average hit (8.5 damage). An average critical will do 17 damage. What does the Troll do if a character drops? If he keeps chasing the rest, then the dropped character at least has an opportunity to stabilize before he bleeds to death.

A full round attack? 26.5 average damage for three hits with no rend seems pretty likely to mean instant death. Will the Troll take a full round attack, or will he stop after one attack if he hits and use his move action to take up the chase?

If he stops on a character death, the rest get another round to put more distance between themselves and the troll.

Where do they run TO that stops the Troll coming after them? I don't see the typical villager running any slower than the PC's!

 

[tylermalan]

I don't really have a lot of advice to offer other than a suggestion, which is that you might just want to abstract the chase scene. Chase scenes just aren't really covered very well by the rules, in my opinion, and the more rules you try to use to adjudicate the scene, the worse it gets.

 

[Kaisoku]

The way he had it set up there, I assumed he was using the Chases rules found in the Game Mastery Guide. You can catch them on paizo's PRD site, here.