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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doctor Proctor" data-source="post: 5037401" data-attributes="member: 78547">Hmmm...interesting idea, and I'm not sure how you'd implement it, but I can give some suggestions on what skills might be good to use and how they would be used.Intimidate could be used to force the enemy to flee, which might either negate a failure, or count as a success.Nature and Perception could be used to gain an advantage against the enemy, assuming they're out in the wilderness.  Basically, a successful check would allow the party to ambush some of the enemy, or perhaps find some advantageous terrain.Heal could be used to negate a failure, since you'll probably want failures to cost a healing surge.  Or perhaps each "round" of the fight costs a surge, in addition to each failure costing another one.  In this way, it will approximate a real fight because the party loses a resource (healing surges) over time.  The Heal skill could prevent that loss, or negate a failure and the additional surge loss that would incur.Endurance is another useful skill, since this would be a long battle.  Endurance means your PC's keep their fighting spirits up and their wits about them through the long fight.Athletics and Acrobatics could also be used since they would signify great feats of strength and agility during the fight, thus giving the party the upper hand.Stealth could also play a role similar to that of a Perception or Nature check, in that it would allow the PC's to gain an advantage and ambush the enemy.Oh, and last but not least, you could allow some Thievery checks (I think that's the skill that governs traps) to account for the party improvising traps in the area to help deal with the onrushing enemies.Now, this is just a listing of what I think could be some of the applicable skills and the reasons why they'd be in use.  As for the actual mechanics of the challenge and what complexity?  I have no idea...  I would, however, recommend going with some sort of challenge where healing surges are lost, as this will approximate an actual battle.You might also want to end the challenge and go into an actual combat encounter to cap things off.  Allow the player working the ritual to participate in the fight though, otherwise he'll feel left out.  Basically, it would be a fight where they just have to buy another 5 minutes or so for the ritual to finish, and that's why he's able to participate.Edit:  Oh, and one possible mechanism for your challenge that will involve the player doing the ritual is to base it around his ability to complete it.  Basically, have him perform some of a check as part of the ritual every hour or two.  Success means that the ritual continues apace, while failure adds an extra hour or two to the time it will take to complete it.  In this way, he can participate in the challenge, and he will actually act as the mechanism to determine how long the challenge lasts. This might require adjusting the time it takes to perform the ritual, say, to 8 hours. Every two hours the party loses a surge, and every failure for the ritual check adds two hours to the ritual time.  Or you could scale up to 4 hour chunks.  This way, they're guaranteed to lose two surges, with a possible 4 surges, just from time.  Then, any failures in the "battle" portion of the challenge cost an additional surge or two, perhaps from particular party members (instead of everyone).</blockquote>

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