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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6483866" data-attributes="member: 4937">Since I happen to know that some of my player's have discovered my secret identity, I'd ask them to please stay out of this thread.   Spoiler warning................So, I want to run an event challenge for my PC's.   While I don't want to structure the challenge according to the formal rules of a 4e skill challenge, the challenge structure lends itself to the general pattern of comparing the number of success to the number of failures.  I've ran this sort of structure as a means of resolving contests as far back as 1e, but never in this particular context and not on the past 5 years or so.  The closet I've come in the current campaign was the very first session, but that particular scenario was very much 'every man for himself' performing their own challenge and this one lends itself to a more cooperative structure.   And since I imagine that this particular scenario is one that the 4e crowd has been leveraging quite a lot, I wouldn't mind having some advice regarding how to run it.The general gist of the challenge is that the players are on a large ship at sea which is passing through a sub-tropical region during hurricane season.  Even under normal circumstances and even ignoring the obvious fact that you can't go on a literary voyage without having a storm assail the ship, this makes it likely that they'll have to face at least one hurricane.  But since one of the PC's has Nauti the Storm Lord as a personally enemy, likely (as in random weather checks might result in one) moves to certain.  I've already decided that the overall difficulty of the challenge depends on how they handle certain smaller challenges leading up to this big one.  For example, in the last session, the entire senior crew suffered blowfish poisoning.  The players, handled that pretty well - successfully preserving the lives of most of the petty officers.  If the party doesn't protect a sufficient number of petty officers and at least a minimum number of crew during the voyage, then the DC of all the individual tests during the hurricane goes up.  Likewise, if they don't protect the officers, then they'll lose the ability to substitute the officer's skill at handling the ship, navigation, and the like for their own - and this is a problem, because the PC with the best Boating and Navigation skill died in an earlier session.  There are various other problems that the have to deal with that likewise could given them penalties or bonuses on all the checks that I don't need to go into because I've got that part of the design well handled.What I need is advice on pacing and color.  Assume you are running a storm in 4e, describe to me the events you'd expect to have that would trigger each particular attempt by the PC's to handle the situation.  What sort of skill challenge framework would you use (number of rolls, etc.) and how would you go about making sure that the whole kept the interest of the players?  Even if I don't exactly utilize your rules or mechanics, just seeing how you'd write this for 4e would be helpful for helping me structure things.Also rather than simple 'pass/fail', I plan on using 'degree of success' to determine resolution, where I compare the number of successes to the number failures to determine how the PC's do.  Various outcomes I anticipate:Almost no failures; ship comes through storm basically intactShip comes through storm with minimal damage and small loss of crew.Ship comes though storm with moderate damage and small loss of crew..Ship comes through storm with major damage and small loss of crew, is largely crippled, and must seek a harbor to effect expedient repairs.As above, but also blown off course.As above, but also badly blown off course and finds itself in a (fantasy) Sargasso which the players must extricate themselves from.Almost no successes; ship capsizes, most crew killed, survivors are confined to boats and blown off course.</blockquote>

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