D&D 4E First time DMing 4E - Help with encounters

[AnthonyRoberson]

Make sure to check out Mike Shea's Skill Challenge worksheet too. It;s pretty nifty. The Skill Challenge Worksheet | Sly Flourish

 

[tajhan]

Wow thank you all for the great response this is all very helpful, in particular jbear for doing my work for me

Unfortunately the game has been postponed till next week but I suppose that gives me more time to polish off this encounter nicely and make it into something special which I am now sure I can. Thank you all again for your help, I'm all the more excited to run this and I will try to post here to let you all know how it turned out.

 

[Mercurius]

Lots of good advice on skill challenges already, so I'll offer something about the overall encounter itself. I am a proponent of "make the rules fit the story, not the other way around." So if you want a dragon to attack the 1st-level characters, then so be it! They don't actually have to kill the thing, just survive. You can also throw in a touch of railroading and make sure they survive. Have the dragon destroy the ship, they're drowning, but wake up marooned on an island. The key is to make the characters believe that they could die and that they are actually fighting the dragon, when in actuality it is just a set-up for a larger adventure.

Because they aren't actually going to really fight the dragon, don't make it a young dragon - bring on a real beastie! I'd personally recommend a dragon turtle or some other kind of sea creature. Nothing scarier than danger from the deeps!

Release the Kraken!

 

[NewJeffCT]

Because they aren't actually going to really fight the dragon, don't make it a young dragon - bring on a real beastie! I'd personally recommend a dragon turtle or some other kind of sea creature. Nothing scarier than danger from the deeps!

The best DM I ever played for did something like that to open a campaign - had an encounter with a huge red dragon to open the game...

For each PC, we had a quick mini encounter that he called our "James Bond" opening - a tough individual encounter that ran quickly. At the end of each mini encounter, he ended with something like, "as the last bandit runs off (or, after you finish off the orc, etc), the forest grows quiet and suddenly it gets dark out. You look up and see a huge dragon has temporarily eclipsed the sun as it heads due west towards Little Town." He filled it out with much better flavor text than that...but, each PC saw it flying towards the town from a different direction.

Of course, each person followed the dragon, where it had just finished annihilating the home of the party wizard's mentor, mentor inside.

The mostly unrelated PCs - all first level - now have a gargantuan red dragon where they meet for the first time.

For some unknown reason (at the time), the dragon then gave the party a strange look, snarled something like, "it's not possible" and then left. At that stage, it likely could have killed us while blindfolded and with both claws tied behind its back...but, it made for what I thought was a unique opening scenario that got the party together in an unusual manner.

(it's been like 10 years since that adventure, so my memory is hazy...)

 

[tajhan]

I like the idea of having the dragon be a reoccurring villain. I was toying with the idea of having ghost pirates involved but they quickly got moved to the second part of the adventure where the party have to scavenge for parts.

Thinking about it perhaps an out and out dragon may not be the best idea, though the idea of a dragon controlling ocean trade because of the draconic prophecy is interesting. The problem I see is the players not taking it seriously or out right balking at being pitted against such a high level foe at the first level.

I'm toying with a faction Attempting to serupticiously Control travel to xen'drik by manipulating elementals. I was thinking of having the party on a wind galleon or airship and the attacking creature could tear the elemental bindings from the ship. I should check my books when I get a chance I seem to remember something about a questionable house lyrander member in stormreach who worships with one of the dark cults who would be perfect for that. Perhaps an alliance with the emerald claw to create a fleet of ghost ships...

So a dragon turtle or some kind of elemental might be better than a dragon which while it would be cool I can imagine the complaints already; we have t really used skill challenges yet, I think they heard them as being used to direct social I interactions and dismissed them as unnecessary minimisation of rp. But obviously the rules have far better implementations. I'm all for anything that encourages the pcs to do cool things.

 

[S'mon]

The general idea is; while the ship is doomed to run aground, depending on how well the party handle the ship there will be more or less damage to repair.

I would definitely start this game with the ship already shipwrecked. THEN you can do a flashback skill challenge which determines how badly damaged the ship is. That way you avoid railroading and consequent player resentment.

 

[tajhan]

I don't think there's too much of a problem. making it a flashback wouldn't be any different and it restricts me having anything before and is really just doing it backwards.