An Assassination as a Skill Challenge

[UniversalMonster]

In my Tuesday night game (which is one group playing through the Drow Campaign), the PCs have intercepted and decoded a treacherous message from a drow priestess of their own household (selling them out to a rival drow house on the verge of a crucial vote to take part in a major sacrifice). It was being delivered to a male drow slaver from the rival house, House Veltran.

The PCs decided to forge a new note (advising the enemy drow to walk into an ambush) and deliver it. Then they turned over the original to the house Matron.

Now I'm writing out the follow up adventure, because last time it ended with this situation that seemed kind of crucial.

I want the matron to give them this assassination mission, not of the offending priestess from their own house (that I am going to save until later), but rather the target will be the drow priestess in the other house that is coordinating the treachery in a spy vs spy mode.


Rather than have it be combat, it's actually just a skill challenge. (A combat wouldn't work- she's going to be a level 10 controler, and the pcs are low level- so they'll be hard pressed to take her down with open combat).

What I am looking for here is ideas to flesh out the situation. This is what I have so far:

Challenge Part 1:
The initial note was delivered to a male drow slaver who is one of the love/rivals of one of the PCs. The initial part of the skill challenge (maybe a scene or two) involves investigating to see who pulls his strings.

In this case they could find out by streetwise, with maybe insight to understand that Veltran would never allow a lowly male to coordinate this kind of activity alone.

2nd Part: once they figure out that the real villian is another drow priestess named Oriana T'zaud, they should also get some background information on her: (I am going to pass out different advice on streetwise or history checks)

1. She is frequently seen at an expensive drow drug den in the city- situated in a soaring tower.

1a. She is addicted to ________. (some kind of Faerun based drug). (maybe a sub-skill challenge series of scenes here where the PCs have to descend into the Underdark Underworld... )

2. She is related to her own house matron by blood. (this would be history)

3. She frequently makes use of the lower ranking male drow for her own transient purposes.. and then drops them when they are no longer useful.
(This is also a setup for having the initial contact possibly turn up dead somewhere and getting the PCs blamed for it..)

4. I was going to have some information here about a heresy that ties her back to another villian in the campaign.

5. Something about Yochlols.. maybe a false rumor that she is one or is related to one, or has the protection of one. I dunno. Yochlol's are cool, and it might be cool to get that bit of Drow-lore out in the campaign early.


Just these first two parts might be their own skill challenge.

Ok, Part III is surveillance of possible vectors to the assassination.

They could try to infiltrate House Veltran itself (which might be suicidal, but I don't want to leave it off the table). I will definitely have a couple of combat encounters with Veltran guards prepared in any case.
If that's the case, I had a thought about the PCs surprising T'Zaud in her own boudoir (perhaps with a pair of half-orc guards). Or poisoning her. Or something.

I was also considering Tzaud's "public" appearances early in the evening- carousing and dancing at a decadent drow wine-lounge. In this case, she'd be with a retinue of guards. Assassination in public might be a good option.. or a very bad one. I was thinking of having a meeting take place at one of these that if the players chose to, might be able to overhear new information at.

And then finally- at night, she's at the drug den (isolated and private) where she indulges her addictions. You can tell I've kind of set up a best possible place, but I'd like players to have a choice.

But I am thinking the players might come up with anything. They might try poisoning her, killing her outright.. catching her incapacitated or whatever else.

This is the part where I am thinking of other pieces. For example, an Athletics check might be required to scale the outer walls of the drug-den's tower in order to catch her incapacitated. Or stealth might be used to sneak past guards.. but there has to be a bigger picture for things.

In the end, I'm just going to wing it, I guess. It's all going down on Tuesday.
So I am looking for possibilities. Any thoughts?

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I had a wonderfully detailed and long post full of clever ideas. But then for some arcane reason I was logged out of enworld, and I lost the post data. After spending a few minutes trying to recover that data and then inventing new profanities, I have decided to walk away from my computer before I start hurling parts of it at passers by.

I will recreate my intended post later, and place it here.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Piratecat]

It occurs to me that you could try something else fun that ties in nicely. Actually allow them to fight her - but every two success they gain reflects her degree of incapacitation. Thus, she may be level 10 and they're level two, but with eight successes she's -4 to hit, -4 on all defenses, and down a mess of hit points. It'd still be a tough fight, especially if you make her an elite, but imagine how cool it'd be to describe her stumbling around the room poisoned and reeling but still trying to fight.

 

[Krensky]

I'm in agreement with PirateCat. Let the skill challenge weaken her, give the PC several turns of combat advantage, favorable terrain, surprise rounds, the works. With proper preparation, they should get an challenging but very winnable fight.

Heck, proper planning and skill challenge successes might even let them catch her helpless, coup de gras her (4e still has that, right?) and the fight is their exfiltration.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

My detailed suggestion

I think that you could conceivably build at least one entire game around this with the vast majority of the game consisting of undertaking the skill challenges. There are a few elements you will need to break this down into. The critical part is that each skill challenge should have a means of resolution, a penalty for failure, and a worthwhile reward for success. One key point to make is that the players should be able to use straight up role playing and rituals to gain some successes.

Identify the Assassination Target

This element is the most obvious. They need to identify the preistess who they are to kill. Ordinarily this type of challeng would be dependant on a handfull of skill rolls. But I suggest the following.

Resolution Mechanic: Use what I call the '3 Key Skills'. Break this down into 3 specific tasks which require a skill DC well beyond your players best possible roll. Then allow the players to make any number of checks aimed at granting a +2 to the Key Skill. Allow the players a generous amount of failures for the support rolls, and to retry the key skills.

Success: The players discover the identity of the target.
Great Success: If the players never fail a key skill roll, and if the players do not fail too many support rolls, they should get +2 to all successive rolls for the next challenge. They may also obtain either a ritual or magic item free of charge that should help with the later skill checks. (If you do this, you may want to also give them a chance to buy it if they do not get it as treasure).
Failure: The players tip off the Priestess and are attacked if they fail too many support rolls or 1 key skill check.
Failure at key Skills: If the players fail key skills, they should suffer a -1 Penalty to later skill checks for the remaining Assassination based skill checks.
Grand Bastard Failure: Lets say you like the idea of messing with your players and consider yourself a Grand Bastard DM. If the players fail at the key skills, you could decide they end up identifying the wrong person as the target. In this case, when the players do succeed, run the rest of the adventure / plot as normal, except they find out they hit the wrong person later, as in after they make the attempt.

Planning how to Assassinate the Target

At this point, things will become much more open ended. the players need to make the Priestess dead, but how they do it should matter. This part may also blend into the actual assassination. I would suggest you pick a maximum xp and treasure reward, and then award it in full or in part depending on how successful the players are.

Resolution Mechanic: Most of this part will be the players deciding to go fishing for hints and clues that might allow them to determine how to go about killing the Priestess. I expect that the players will say 'Ok, we want to figure out X / do task Y', then you will do either a single skill check or a very short skill challenge (ie: 2 or 3 successes to complete the task at hand). So with that in mind, I suggest the following; First determine a number of potentially useful facts about the target, and assign a success value (single skill check, or 2 or 3 successes). Then put a time cap in place, lets say 2 or 3 days. Allow each player to perform 6 tasks in each day. If time runs out before the players make their attempt, the players fail. If the players fail, mostly they lose time. If they fail alot, throw in a penalty. Allow yourself a great deal of redundancy, and provide 2 to 5 possible means of performing the task.

Success: The players choose a means of assassination and complete preparations before the deadline. They gain a bonus based on how much time they have left over.
Great success: Give them some treasure and / or a bonus to the checks to actually kill the target.
Alt Success: You might find a way for the players to get more time to make their plan.
Basic Failure: Players lose time and waste a check.
Bad Failure: Wasting too much time might cause all players suffer a penalty to the checks, including the actuall checks to try to kill the target.
Severe Failure: If the players tip their hand, then the players are forced into a fight without either their Encounter powers or without some daily powers. Or with fewer healing surges.
Epic Failure: If your players do something monumentally stupid, they may take a penalty to later checks, be forced into a fight with very few healing surges and no encounter powers. They may also be captured / arrested.

Suggested Facts:
- The priestess has a drug habit. Players may figure out who and where her supplier is.
- The priestess home may have secret tunnels.
- The priestess is having an affair with a member of a rival house (ooh, the scandal!).
- The priestess is looking to buy slaves, giving the players a means to get close or infiltrate her home.
- The priestess has a rival in her house who is willing to help kill her.
- The priestess has been stealing from her clan or the church
- The priestess has a particular favorite food, or likes jewelry.
- The priestess may owe money around town

Misc: You need to avoid making all of these gather information checks. The limit of X checks per player in a day should prevent a single player from trying to do all the work solo.

The Assassination

This is pretty straightforward. Whatever means the players select to kill the priestess, the basic metric for success is if she ends up dead or not. I would allow for the following levels of success.

Killed by 3rd party: This is basically paying an 18th level character to kill a 10th level character. Target is dead, but it lacks style. I would grant 1 / 7th of final XP reward and treasure.

Killed indirectly by players: Lets say the poison her, or lead her into a trap, or hand her a cursed item that does the deed. This should get 3 / 7ths of final reward.

Killed directly by players: This is a full frontal attack. I would grant full XP for this if they hit her at her peak. I would go up to 5 / 7ths if they need to significantly weaken her first (poison, cannon fodder, etc).

Personal Public Humiliation: If the players ruin her reputation and standing in her clan and the town, they get 2 / 7ths of the final reward.

Humiliation of Clan: If they manage to embarass the entire clan in a public fashion, they should get 3 / 7ths of the final reward.

Blackmailed into subservience: If they can coerce or blackmail the Priestess effectively enough to turn her into a pawn of their clan, they should get 4 / 7ths.

Selfish Betrayal: If they can get the priestess to betray her clan for selfish reasons, they should get 5 / 7ths of the total reward.

Betrayed by Clan: If the PC's can create a situation where members of the priestesses own clan decide to kill her, the players should get 6 / 7ths of total experience

Unselfish Betrayal: If they can trick the priestess into betraying her own clan while convinced she is acting to help her clan, the players should get full XP.

Formal Sacrifice to Lolth: If they can arrange to have the priestess sacrificed to Loth for the honor of their house, they should get full experience.

Epic Win: If the Pc's can convince the priestess to betray her own clan while she thinks she is helping her own clan, and then approach the priestesses clan and get them to ask the players clan to kill her quietly as a favor before she embarasses them further, and do so by sacrificing the priestess to Loth, the players should get 8 / 7ths of Max reward.

Resolution Mechanic: Whatever the players do, you should probably go with a 'Key Skill Check' type resolution for the final checks, but put a hard limit on the number of possible support checks. There should be no retry for the Key Skill check.

Failure: If the players botch this, they need to cut and run. A fight will probably ensue.

Escape

If the players screw up at some point, they may be thown in a personal dungeon. Or if they succeed in the murder but need to get away, they will need to escape.

Resolution Mechanic: As a baseline, I would go with each player needing 5 successes to escape, and 3 strikes with a penalty of capture or combat leading to death. I would permit players to use their own checks to help someone else. I would try to limit the players from spamming a single skill though. To that end, I would start tacking on a cumulative -2 penalty for repeated checks until it succeeds and have repeated successes count only fractionally in the following matter.

1st: A success is a Success.

2nd: -2 penalty, counts as 0.5 success. (player now has 1.5 total successes out of 5).
3rd: -4 penalty, counts as 0.5 success. (player now has 2 total successes out of 5).

4th: -6 penalty, counts as 0.25 success. (player now has 2.25 total successes out of 5).
5th: -8 penalty, counts as 0.25 success. (player now has 2.5 total successes out of 5).
6th: -10 penalty, counts as 0.25 success. (player now has 2.75 total successes out of 5).
7th: -12 penalty, counts as 0.25 success. (player now has 3 total successes out of 5).

ie: If you fail the 3rd repeated check, you can make it again. But you did just gain a failure.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[UniversalMonster]

These are great suggestions! Thank you so much. I especially love the idea of her possibly stumbling around while intoxicated.. Hopefully on the high, wide-windowed open air tower. I may have to give her some kind of push power as well.

I wrote a more concise description of what I wanted to do on my blog (see sig) which breaks it down into 4 phases: gathering info, surveillance, the infiltration and assassination itself.. and then covering up tracks. That also posted to Facebook... and one of my friends suggested this:

"Even when she is incapacitated, her snake-headed whip could still be cognizant and talkative, so there's a chance you could work some more social into the encounter even during the assassination phase.."

 

[Piratecat]

She should definitely try to bribe them into turning on the person who hired them.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

She should definitely try to bribe them into turning on the person who hired them.

And once more Piratecat validates the reputation he has earned on these boards.

The idea is pretty damn fun. It can be played straight, or as a setup for the Priestess to screw the players over. The only downside is that you will either have a great many things to do on the fly if the players take the deal, or you will have to allow for a non trivial amount of contingency planning for something that might not happen.

Still, the entertainment value alone might make it worth dealing with.

END COMMUNICATION