D&D 4E 4e conversion of White Plume's hot mud room

[kobold]

I'm selectivly pulling pieces of White Plume out for an adventure and am curious how others would run area 7 the hot mud room?
Thanks,
Andy

 

[Nytmare]

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?

 

[Mercutio01]

It would simply be a skill challenge.

 

[Nytmare]

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.

 

[Mercutio01]

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.

 

[kobold]

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

 

[Saeviomagy]

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.

 

[kobold]

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

 

[Saeviomagy]

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.

 

[kaomera]

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.