NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4584254" data-attributes="member: 42582">Apoptosis, thanks for the reply (and the other replies!).I think D&D has not traditionally been good at this.In 4e you could handle it this way: covering one's trail against the assassins is a skill challenge, completion of which contributes towards a milestone, which in turn gives an action point that can be used to wail on the assassins. But this isn't perfect (for one thing, it's not clear whether "completing an encounter" in the milestone rules means "successfully completing" or merely "undertaking"; for another, only every second encounter grants the action point).You could also set it up so that succeeding at the skill challenge gives some sort of tactical benefit against the assassins (eg surprise, or terrain advantage). This is a benefit that doesn't negate the challenge of the combat, because the player still has to work out how best to exploit the benefit. Unfortunately, the DMG doesn't give very much advice on how to use skill challenges in this sort of way.I agree with most of this. Merely cosmetic theme/flavour probably isn't meaningful for many players. But to make it meaningful I don't think requires giving it mechanical expression in the narrow sense. It can be enough that the gameworld - and hence the parameters of future choices open to the PCs - changes in response to it.As to BBEG fights, I also think they can be very railroady - hence my dislike of most WoTC modules, because the players don't get to choose their moral/political orientation.But if the players have chosen who to oppose, then I don't object to a climactic battle, and I do like it to be tactically challenging for the players. (And my players like to be tactically challenged.)</blockquote>

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