Skill Challenge to (temporarily) replace Combat

[Dr. Confoundo]

Wandering deep into the fog-filled marsh on their way to the ruined city of Westerbrook, the players come upon a row of sharpened tree-trunks looming out of the mists, apparently forming the rough walls of a fairly large circular palisade. Their wizard detects magical emanations coming from within the enclosure, and they move forward to investigate, approaching slowly and cautiously through the thick mud. Suddenly and with much croaking, man-sized forms leap forward through the fog and attack - Bullywugs!

The party dispatches the frog-faced guards, and send their scout ahead to find out what is inside the palisades. He comes back with some info - two apparent sites of interest (a larger structure and a guarded crater), along with a couple dozen more Bullywugs guarding the perimeter. If the players are quiet, they can probably make their way into the center, and investigate one of the interesting locations within.

The GM leans forward in his chair, and asks "What next?".

The players look at each other, and look at the map, and then come up with a plan: They are going to make a circuit of the palisades, quietly pulling each group of Bullywug guards one by one, so that none of them will be available to act as reinforcements later when they tackle the structure and the crater.

The GM sputters "But that means we'll have five or six more combats exactly like the one we just had! At the pace we play, that'll be 3 more sessions of just clearing out the guards."

The players look at each other, and look at the map, and then say, "Do you have a better idea?"

The GM thinks for a moment, and with a gleam in his eye, says to them, "Well, I could turn this into a skill challenge..."

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Not wanting to waste too much time with a series of similar combats, I've been thinking of how to successfully do this as a skill challenge (or more accurately, a sort of a mini game). I've come up with some basic parameters, but I'd love to hear some feedback on how I can expand this.

Name: Kroaker Krackdown
Goal: PCs defeat guards without raising alarm or spending too much of their own resources (Healing Surges, Daily Powers, Action Points, etc)

Each group of guards will have a Challenge Rating (CR): this number represents the total number of Healing Surges that the party will spend in defeating that particular group. However, this number will be able to be reduced by skill tests... if all tests are successful, it should be possible for the Challenge Rating to be reduced to zero, meaning no damage in that particular combat.

After each player has acted once, determine the current CR. This is the target number of successes for a group Stealth Check. If the check has enough successes, the players get by relatively unscathed; for every point of CR they miss, one player must lose a Healing Surge. Action Points count as two Healing Surges, Daily Powers count as three.

Some skills will be able to reduce the CR - Bluff to draw off guards from the main group, Thievery to set up physical traps/snares, Arcana to create magical countermeasures, etc. Other skills might be used to give bonuses for the Group Stealth check - Stealth and Perception, among others... this bonus potentially may affect multiple players if the roll is high enough.

Example: The five Players are attempting to defeat the first group of guards, which have a CR of 6. The wizard succeeds on his Arcana check to use a distracting illusion, while the cleric's prayers for guidance are answered with a successful Religion check; the CR is now 4. The fighter and sorcerer's skill checks were failures. The ranger uses his Stealth check to give a +2 to Group Stealth checks to two of the other players. With this bonus, there are a total of three successes on the Group Stealth check, meaning that only Healing Surge is spent for this combat.

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So that's the basic mechanics, but they can be made more difficult by adding additional complications to each group of guards - for example, the group of guards with watchdogs require at least one successful Nature check during the round - otherwise, the CR cannot be reduced. Similarly, guards with undead or extra-planar members can require Religion or Arcana checks.

 

[Ajar]

I love this idea. I'll be a lot more comfortable using larger enemy settlements or even army detachments in my games now.

 

[Dausuul]

The players look at each other, and look at the map, and then come up with a plan: They are going to make a circuit of the palisades, quietly pulling each group of Bullywug guards one by one, so that none of them will be available to act as reinforcements later when they tackle the structure and the crater.

Pulling groups of bullywugs? If my players proposed this, I'd cover up a smirk and say, "Okay." Then the first group they tried it on would call out a warning to the rest of the camp, like any good sentry. Now the bullywugs are assembling a hunting party, while the guards on the structure and the crater are on high alert. Oops.

I'm not normally a rider on the "4E is WoW!" bandwagon, but this particular idea is straight out of MMOs and should get shipped right back there. You can't just wave at a monster and cause it to dumbly and silently home in on you*; the whole point of sentries is to raise the alarm when intruders are spotted. The PCs could try ambushing the sentries, of course... but the sentries are presumably posted close enough to the main camp that the bullywugs in camp will notice if a fight starts. (If they're posted out of sight and hearing of the main camp, why are the PCs even bothering?)

The skill challenge approach is not a bad way to resolve a series of near-identical fights, but I can't think of very many circumstances where you'd need it.

[size=-2]*Unless you're playing a beguiler.[/size]

 

[Dr. Confoundo]

Pulling groups of bullywugs?

Well, maybe 'pulling' was the wrong word to use... built into the skill challenge is the assumption that they are trying to do this stealthily, so more Metal Gear than WoW.

(If they're posted out of sight and hearing of the main camp, why are the PCs even bothering?)

That's exactly what I asked them... they were worried that although the bullywugs were disorganized enough that they don't make particularly good sentries (not to mention the thick fog that blankets the area), there might be something in the main camp that can bring them running as reinforcements for the climactic fight at the end... which is kinda what I had in mind.

But your general point is taken - failure at the skill challenge should mean that the camp is on alert, rather than just causing the loss of resources. I may need more of a failure mechanic in place.

 

[RigaMortus2]

An idea might be, have the group make a series of survival checks against hard or moderate DCs. If they succeed, they bypass an encounter (give them XP as if they beat the encounter). If they fail a moderate DC, everyone looses 1 healign surge, losing a hard DC they all lose 2 healing surges, and award XP as if they defeated an encounter. This would represent them fighting an encounter, and using up a healing surge or two during that combat.

 

[KarinsDad]

Sounds like a solution looking for a problem.

If the sentries are minions, then yes, a stealthy take down of each would be fine cinema. If they are not minions, the game already has a combat mechanism.

The problem with this approach is that, for the most part, the NPCs don't get to react to it. There is no "there was a sentry sitting behind a pillar that the PCs did not know about who runs for help". There is no "the first sentry runs and yells its head off when the PCs first attack".

The plan, by definition, works flawlessly as long as most skill rolls are successful. The way skill challenges work (which itself is a bit flawed), a few failures are ok. In this scenario with normal combat rules, just a single failure could be disasterous and the skill challenge approach doesn't take that into account.

Typically, the first casualty of any battle is the plan. Unless the PCs roll extremely poorly, the first casualty of this plan is the sentries.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I agree that this kind of thing could easily be a skill challenge, and that there's nothing wrong with running it that way. And I would disagree Darsuul and Karins Dad that these are encounters where the guards should be warning the rest of the camp more often than not. In actuality... these "guard post" encounters (in my mind) are ones which are more interesting because of the possibility/attempt to eliminate them without putting the entire camp on alert. This encounter is meant to replicate the action movie trope of the heroes popping up from behind guards, killing them instantly and then dragging the bodies away into the night. So you don't want there to be like a 50/50 chance of the group being discovered or an alarm being sounded.

So I actually think a skill challenge makes the most sense here. Set the Complexity to start with at 1 (4 successes before 3 failures), which represents one "guard post" of bullywugs. If they complete that, they can choose to keep going for more and more successes, with each complexity level they reach equaling a guard post that gets taken out. So if they can reach a Complexity 5 (12 successes before 3 failures) then they have eliminated all 5 guard posts surrounding the camp.

What it good about this, is that the party can choose to stop the challenge at any point, like for instance if they've hit 2 failures and are afraid of getting that 3rd (thereby getting spotted by the guards and setting the whole camp on alert). But by leaving some guard posts alone... those guards are now available to enter the "inside the camp" combats within a couple rounds as needed. So the party has to make some hard choices whether or not to risk continuing and trying to take out the guards silently rather than leave some of them alone only to have them join the open combat later.

Now because in this format the compound is not alerted to the party unless all 3 failures occur... you'll probably want to put in some smaller penalties upon the first failure and the second. Losing healing surges always works, but I'm sure there are other fun and interesting penalties you can come up with too.

So all in all... for an encounter like this, where the whole raison d'etre of the "guards on the perimeter" is to have a "non-combat" combat encounter... the skill challenge I think would work wonders.

 

[KarinsDad]

I agree that this kind of thing could easily be a skill challenge, and that there's nothing wrong with running it that way. And I would disagree Darsuul and Karins Dad that these are encounters where the guards should be warning the rest of the camp more often than not. In actuality... these "guard post" encounters (in my mind) are ones which are more interesting because of the possibility/attempt to eliminate them without putting the entire camp on alert. This encounter is meant to replicate the action movie trope of the heroes popping up from behind guards, killing them instantly and then dragging the bodies away into the night. So you don't want there to be like a 50/50 chance of the group being discovered or an alarm being sounded.

That movie trope is already handled by one where the guards are minions.

Easy to take out. Easy to take out quietly. There's nothing wrong with the trope and there is already a way in the game system to handle the trope.


But if they are normal guards who can actually challenge the PCs, than a skill challenge is merely a way for the PCs to get an insta-gib practically for free with low risk. There are powers and paragon paths explicitly designed for this type of challenge as well, but the PCs get those abilities because it is set up as a skill challenge, abilities that they wouldn't get for free if it were a combat encounter.

But with a skill challenge, somehow the PC Rogue makes his Stealth check, so the PC Fighter gets all of the way up and helps, even though his clanking Plate Mail and Shield and Weapon should be a dead giveaway from 50 feet away. Huh?

And on his turn, the Fighter says: I Aid Another the Rogue on his Stealth check. Skill challenges are not the way to go for combat. They really don't make sense (there are a lot of problems with normal skill challenges, let alone creating more creative ways to misuse them).


Outdoor guard posts without walls between encounters and with normal capability guards should by definition be a difficult nut to crack, not an easy one to crack.


We'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[DEFCON 1]

That movie trope is already handled by one where the guards are minions.

Easy to take out. Easy to take out quietly. There's nothing wrong with the trope and there is already a way in the game system to handle the trope.

I would counter this statement in that I don't think it actually is easy to take these guards out, because although they are minions, you still have to roll to hit. And if you miss once... which is quite likely given the fact that there are probably six to ten individual minion guards spread out around the camp, which means six to ten separate combat rolls... that one guard who isn't one-shotted from behind is now suddenly in combat and is able to break out the alarm.

At least if you produce a failure during the skill challenge... the description of the failure isn't automatically that you jumped the guard and he defended himself and he now knows you are there (so he's now free to shout for help). You can find any other number of explanations for what occurred on that failed skill attempt that doesn't necessarily tip the guards off that you are coming (since the assumption in the skill challenge is you need to roll the 3 failures and actually fail the challenge to alert the guards to your presence.)

In the end it really comes down to what percentage chance the DM wants these extra guards to be a part of any combat encounter. Speaking personally... I see the reason for using these guards in this fashion is to be more like a trap or puzzle encounter for the party to have to get around, rather than a combat encounter to fight. And since I'd prefer them to not be combat encounters unless the party really screws things up... I wouldn't want to use combat to solve it.

You think of the encounter differently obviously, and that's cool. But it's good that we both can throw up the options and let the readers decide what would work best for them.

 

[LostSoul]

But with a skill challenge, somehow the PC Rogue makes his Stealth check, so the PC Fighter gets all of the way up and helps, even though his clanking Plate Mail and Shield and Weapon should be a dead giveaway from 50 feet away. Huh?

Yeah, exactly: huh? Why has the DM decided that the Fighter is moving quietly because the Rogue made a Stealth check?