Help me Tweak a Chase Skill Challenge (my players stay out!)

Hey ENWorlders,

I’ve been mulling over a skill challenge for my group the past few days and I’m not entirely sure how I want to run it. Your help and input is greatly appreciated.

If you play in my game, GTHO of this thread.

My last session ended with an almost-bungled plan by the PCs going off more or less successfully. They’ve successfully used the abilities of our changeling artificer to impersonate a “lieutenant” in a crime ring that they killed week before last. The guy’s a ranger named Lander who takes stolen goods delievered to him in a halfling town, and teleports them to a secure location for the big boss in this crime ring. Trying to get to the bottom of all of this, the PCs are impersonating Lander to figure out where more of the bandits are setting up shop and preying on people. To make a long story short, they met up with some nervous, new bandits back in the halfling town, lured one of them away from the other, and now the changeling is impersonating bumbling bandit #1, (we'll call him Mark) and together, they’re heading back home.

The rest of the group wants to tail them.

I’ve more or less decided that the best way to handle it is to run two simultaneous challenges, one for Jacobius the changeling as he tries to keep his cover and build his traveling companion’s trust, while perhaps choosing to help the group trailing him—at the risk of revealing himself. The other of course would be for the remaining PCs as they try to follow the two bandits.

These are the rough outlines I have of the challenges so far. Feel free to scrap them if you think you’ve got something better, or just comment and tweak where necessary. Apologies for random grammar styles--it's quick brainstorming!

Skill Challenge:

Jacobius has to keep up his disguise and build his traveling companion’s trust.
Primary Skills
*Bluff: How well can you convince Grim that you’re Mark? Each failure on these checks give every skill check other than Insight a cumulative −2 penalty.
*Diplomacy? Not sure how to describe this as being different from Bluff
*???: What else could I use here?
Secondary Skills
*Insight: You’re getting to know Grim by traveling with him, and have a much better sense of. Success on a check gives you a +2 to your next Bluff check, but you can’t make another check until you’ve made another successful Primary check

Helping your friends Track you (should this be a separate challenge?)
*Stealth? More bluff?
*Failures for any of these skills should make Grim more suspicious of Jacobius.

Part II: Keeping up with the Bandits
I’m not sure if this should be a series of group checks or a more abstract challenge where each person is making different checks to somehow help the overall goal of keeping pace with the bandits without being noticed. I’m thinking it’ll be complixity 5 (12 successes before 3 failures)
Primary
*Stealth: Help the group stay hidden from your quarry
*Endurance: The weather outside is cold, and it’s starting to snow—is that going to slow you down? Failure here could result in penalties to other skill checks, or loss of a healing surge?
*Athletics: Move fast and deftly over rough terrain, muscling over hills, jumping streams, etc.
*Nature: Use knowledge of the terrain to help you stay hidden and keep pace with the bandits
*History: (could be used like nature???)

Can't say I care for Bandit #1s name!

Anyways, I'd allow Jacobius to use Intimidate as a Primary Skill as he cows people who questions him. With Diplomacy, perhaps he is able to use info garnered from the real Mark to further his disguise. You could also use Thievery as he performs sleight of hand tricks while talking/travelling his companions keeping up the appearance of him being rogueish - or if that doesn't fit, he could use Athletics to impress him comanions with his muscles in whatever manner makes sense.

Alternatively, you could link the Jacobius challenge with the friend tracking challenge. The secondary skills by Jacobius could provide +2/-2 bonuses in the tracking challenge to help his friends stay on him. Its kind of a risk/reward sort of thing that might make a unique dynamic for the two linked challenges.

Thanks for the quick reply!

FWIW, "Mark" is the fake name he gave the PCs at first (though he neglected to give Grim a fake name when introducing themselves, much to Grim's chagrin). I was too lazy while typing to scan through my audio recording of the session to remember what real name I gave the guy.

I was thinking about including Intimidate, but wasn't sure it would work with people that are supposedly frequent travelling companions...but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. So I think Intimidate will be a skill for that.

The two challenges will definitely be linked--I was, however, unsure about whether or not to separate the "help friends track you" from the "convince Grim you're really Mark" challenge.

The bigger question is what skill checks can Jacobius make that will help his friends track them.

Thievery to drop a marker for them to follow. Nature to bend branches, etc that is also a marker for them to follow. Stealth to sneak away for a few minutes to leave a clue. if the bandits travel through a place where people are, perhpas a streetwise to make contact with a local to watch for companions so that person could make contact with them giving more directions.

I'd also run the challenges simultaneously to heighten the suspense. Since only 1 person is in 1 challenge and the rest is in the other, I'd make the single guy do a 4 success/3 failure challenge which he can lengthen by doing secondary skills to help the party which don't help with his successes. Then the other one, I'd expand to 8 , 10 or 12 successes since there are so many more people and that should make the challenges end at roughly the same time.

Hope that helps.

Definitely planned on running them at the same time.

Here's my revised challenge for Jacobius:
Skill Challenge Thoughts

Jacobius makes a 4/3 challenge to build up trust. Maybe 6/3?

Primary: each check here is towards making Grim trust you. Each success in this challenge makes your secondary skills, which help your friends , easier.

Bluff: Convincingly keep up your deception

Intimidate: Bully away any questions about who you are. Each use of this skill beyond the first are at +2 DC. (You can only be a #%?! so much before your friends get tired of your crap)

Diplomacy: ????

Insight: (special, to help his bluffs)

Secondary: Generally helping your friends find you. Each failure here makes your next primary check at +2 DC. Failure after you've gained Grim's trust will require an immediate Bluff check. DCs for these checks start at hard difficulty, are moderate DCs at 2 and 3 successes towards trust, and easy DCs at 4 successes (when Grim trusts you)

Thievery: Sleight of hand and distraction to drop clues for party following (+2 to their next check). Failure: You've been noticed, make an immediate bluff check to CYA. Substantial bonuses for something convincingly Rped.

Stealth: Sneak away during a quiet moment to leave a more substantial clue

Nature: Leave some sort of semi-permanent marker to help your friends track you.

That's a neat idea -

That said, I don't think it yet catches the spirit of the changeling needing to decide whether he wants to convince the goons, or help his party follow - you need to make some mechanism where whevever he helps his party, he hurts his own chances. Maybe a -2 on all further attempts to convince the goons.

Another way to do it is make it something like an 10/6 challenge, where the changeling generates a failure every "round" UNLESS he makes a successful "convince" test. Therefore, he has the choice of either working on convincing the goons, or helping his friends find him - helping his friends might give them ALL a +x on their next check, to make it worth the automatic failure.

Additionally, streetwise could be a skill for him to his to help his bluff's, either by knowing how a criminal might act, or by having heard rumours about the guy he's impersonating/the other criminals, or just generally showing that he knows the surrounding area like Lander would.

Dr,

I tried to model a bit of a choice in the matter by allowing for the secondary skills, but at a hard DC when still building trust/maintaining cover, and making the DCs easier as the successes along that track build. I had thought about imposing a penalty like you describe, but thought that having such a double negative consequence might make the player do nothing BUT play it safe.

Perhaps what I need is to come up with a limiting mechanism for both of the challenges--whether it's a time limit of days travelled (it's gonna be a roughly 9 day journey in good weather...which it might not be), or something else--that would encourage a bit more risk in order to ensure that the party doesn't lose their quarry.

I'm not sure if you saw my own reply with more musings on the matter above, or if you were commenting on the initial post of the thread.

I had been searching for a way to include more skills--that's a great way of looking at Streetwise that I hadn't thought of before. I think it'll have to become part of the challenge!

One last bump prior to the game tomorrow evening. If you've got anything cool or noteworthy to add and haven't seen it here, please chime in!

I'll try to remember and post my thoughts on this after it happens.

I've got another challenge coming up, probably this week.

My players, please avoid reading this thread for a bit. I'll put my in-development challenge in a spoiler block to help keep it reasonably surprising.

Everyone else? Help me liven up this challenge a bit. This is cross-posted from CM.

[SBLOCK]Another Chase? YEP.

Piratecat mentioned a while back an alternate way of running a chase that I'm keen to try.

The PCs are chasing a baddie through town--he's got the lady of the town held captive, and if they don't catch up to him, they'll have to figure out how to get her back before she's turned into a ritual sacrifice that makes BBEG of this story arc significantly tougher. If they do, they save her, and have a leg up on the BBEG.

chase through town: first side to reach 200 (by adding up the results of their skill checks) wins the challenge. Baddie has a +50 (head start by the time they hear the lady scream.

Primary Skills:
athletics
acrobatics
streetwise
endurance

Secondary Skills:
perception (hard DC, will give next ally a +10 to their roll)
Fight off bad guys. (see below)
intimidate (moderate DC; keep bad guys focused on you, let others keep chasing)

Every 50 points, a wave of minions comes out, tries to slow the party down (2d4 roguish types?)

• set up a brief combat area in the streets of town
• run in same initiative order as the challenge
• want to ignore the bad guys? really trying to avoid them halves your next roll as you look for an escape, avoid attacks, etc.
• can taunt bad guys off, while others run ahead
• fighting means that you can’t contribute to the total, but you’re letting others conceivably get ahead while you hold off the clowns trying to slow you down—a plus 5 to whoever’s still running? (make it +10???)

Part of the group staying to fight while others continue to run after the bad guy means that the party is being split. This could get tricky to keep track of, but I think it makes for an interesting few tactical decisions. When parts of the group get separated, they could make a hard primary skill check to try and catch up. (DC 20?).

So there's the challenge as its written right now. Any thoughts on how to improve it? I could introduce different complications at every step rather than a random insertion of minions, I suppose.

I'm also not completely sold on the amount of head start I'm giving the villain. I want this challenge to actually be a challenge--my past few have been absolute cakewalks for the PCs.[/SBLOCK]

Hey, players, shoo! Shoo!

[sblock]
This is pretty good, and 50 should be a significant challenge. A few things to consider:

- Even if the PCs lose, have a cool climax so that the bad guy gets away but they have something memorable happen - maybe a tough lieutenant who guards a locked door, or what have you.

- The PCs may be using aid another. That's cool. Also be ready to give ad hoc bonuses when they do something really cool, like steal a horse.

- Keep a visible running total for everyone, or announce the total each round.

- This relies desperately on DM narration. Describe everything they run past, as noted by their rolls - so if they roll horribly, perhaps a cart pulled in front of them or they passed the market square.

- Other skill checks (like history for an old historical shortcut or Insight to guess which way the bad guy might run) may be appropriate.

- If someone has a movement of 5, penalize them -2 on their check. If they move 7, give them a +2 bonus. If they're running, give them another +2 but they're -5 to hit any minions.

Let us know how it goes!
[/sblock]