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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saagael" data-source="post: 4985861" data-attributes="member: 84839">Thanks for the input. I'll definitely add in some food related encounters before hand.Right now I'm thinking of doing three separate skill challenges for the entire encounter, each complexity 2 (6 successes before 3 failures) and succeeding each individual challenge will give bonuses to the others, or certain aspects of the other challenges. Depending on whether the players succeed at all 3, 2, 1 or none of the challenges, the dragon will act appropriately pleased or displeased. I'm really trying to play up a dragon who has lost any reverence for Tiamat and her greedy ways, and lives by dealing with traders and merchants, buying (perhaps sometimes raiding) from caravans to try new foods. The players have had enough with all the bloodthirsty villains, it's time for some minor comic relief before I ratchet up the tension for their journey to paragon (this encounter will be 2 or 3 encounters before they level up to 11).The three skill challenges will be: Diplomatic Measures, Foraging and Hunting, Preparing the Meal.Diplomatic Measures:The players enter the cave and must convince the dragon not to eat them. The players will attempt to get the dragon to let them see the item their looking for. Diplomacy, and Bluff can be used here to sweet-talk and downplay their strength to seem less threatening. A clever player can use insight or history to learn that brown dragons have a certain fondness for food, while perception will allow a player to smell spices wafting from the treasure horde. At the end the dragon will challenge the players to prepare him a meal. Success with this challenge means the players are trusted and get a +2 to all checks when presenting the food.Foraging and Hunting:The players begin their meal preparation. Perception, Nature and Insight will reveal different options to find food and will open up various other skills: Athletics to subdue a macetail behemoth from a herd nearby, Endurance to find water plants and shellfish at the bottom of the oasis spring, Acrobatics to  climb trees and pick citrus fruits, Stealth to ambush small burrowing critters and any other creative ideas the players might have. A success in this challenge confers a +2 bonus to all cooking related skills in the Preparing the Meal challenge.Preparing the Meal:The players can start off by using insight or history to either recall or guess what the dragon might like specifically (in this case, gratuitous use of spices and wine). Obviously nature will be used to cook the food, though dungeoneering can be used at a higher DC (they're essentially the same knowledge base but for different environments, and cooking is universal, so I don't see why not). Any creative ideas like adding personal stores of alcohol or potions to the recipe will be an auto-success. Once the cooking is done, the players can use diplomacy or bluff to play up the food as it is presented.That's it for now; the area the PCs are in is pretty isolated (forgotten ruins) so there's not a lot of chance to interact with other people. And there will be a time frame, so the players can't just go through skills as they please, or they'll not complete the challenge in time. I'm thinking of each skill taking a half hour and there being a 4-5 hour time limit so the players are forced to pick and chose their skills and not just aiding another the whole time.Does this look interesting, manageable and complete?</blockquote>

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