Help designing a skill challenge

[msherman]

One of the PCs in my game had as their character background that they were an elven ranger bounty hunter hired by the court of an elven lord to track down a poacher hunting stag in the sacred woods. 5 levels later, the party has identified the poacher as the black sheep brother of a nearby human baron, and foiled his poaching scheme; they haven't yet captured him, though (he's a long running enemy for the campaign, at least through the heroic tier). The PCs are currently on the run from the baron's troops, having escaped from his gaol after the brother had them arrested on trumped up charges.

They're back in the elven woods now, and their next stop is to report in to the elven court. I'd like to run a skill challenge for this, does anyone have any suggestions for how to structure it?

If it makes a difference, we use the obsidian system for skill challenges, but I can easily modify any suggestions based on the dmg system.

 

[Mesh Hong]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but this doesn't sound like a skill challange type situation to me.

....and their next stop is to report in to the elven court. I'd like to run a skill challenge for this, does anyone have any suggestions for how to structure it?

This looks like a clear cut case of roleplaying situation, with the occasional roll as you see fit.

The first question you have to ask yourself when designing a skill challange is: "What are the PCs trying to achieve". In this case "report to the eleven court" is more than a little vague.

In my opinion Skill Challanges are good or even great for action style cut scenes or tasks, but poor or even a hinderance for social situations.

I will still try and help you design a skill challange if you can provide more information on the situation, the characters and the goal of the challange.

 

[DanmarLOK]

I'd agree, based on what you have now, it's just a RP session to do the report. If there are riders to the situation like -

They need to convince someone of something - perhaps who the poacher is
They need to garner support or sway opinions - one faction of elves wants to go to war for the poaching, another wants to ignore it, yet another wants reparations up to and including items of value or the poachers head.
They need to elicit materials or goods from someone(thing) - perhaps a 'aura compass' when a piece of dna material is placed into it will let them once a day get a direct line to the poachers current position. Do that enough and you can triangulate where he is.
They need to explain their actions up to this point to avoid bad things - Mayhap an innocent party was wronged, hurt or killed during their assignment and they need to avoid repercussions of their own while continuing the chase.

Then yes that could very well be a skill challenge

 

[Van der Hoorn]

When you develop a skill challenge, it shouldn't be a roll-the-dice challenge. This also means that developing a good skill challenge takes probably more time than developing a good dungeon battle. Things that I consider present in good skill challenges:
- Punishment and pleasure. Every action that a character takes should either result in punishment or in pleasure. Pleasure in the sense that something is accomplished; punishment in the sense that they don't get any gold or get hurt (i.e. damage) in the process.
- Avoid the 'convincing' or 'following' syndrome. Somehow many skill challenges I've come across involve either following someone or convincing someone. Other skill challenges are almost always a better choice, because they are original.
- Let the players use their creativity. Also let them use skills they probably wouldn't use in a situation. Actually you could/should make up something they can do with every skill; this is exactly why it takes a long time to develop a good skill challenge. The outcome of the challenge should really depend on what the players want to reach or want to do.

Example: Maybe they receive gold for naming the poacher. The Elven court has a clerk who writes down the amount. You could elaborate on the situation in the court and let someone use Thievery (DC 25) to write a sneaky 1 before the amount, so it reads 1100 GP instead of 100 GP. If it succeeds, hurray. But if it fails the players don't get anything and the court doesn't like you so much anymore (-2 on diplomacy and bluff checks).
He could also distract the clerk (some Arcana niceness; DC 20) and then additionally write down the 1 (Thievery DC 15). If the Arcana fails he burns his hands (1d4 +1 damage), -2 to diplomacy checks and +2 to bluff checks (they think you are insane, but honest). If the Thievery fails, use the punishment as before.
This also doesn't mean the player has to wait a full round to continue. You can just let one player do two checks in one turn (if the first one succeeds); it doesn't really matter. Forcing players to go in order makes it more roll-the-dice.

The example shows how I would develop a skill challenge. I just used Thievery and Arcana, leaving about 15 skills to develop Players like to use (trained) skills they don't use often. Also failing the Arcana check results in both punishment as well as some pleasure; players like surprises in the results.

At the end it could lead to the following (combination of) results:
- Players get (more) gold
- Players get a guard to go along as protection
- Players have to flee from the elven council, because they stole gold
- Players killed the clerk, because he finds out they took more gold than they should have
- etc.

Still, they leave the council one way or the other (if that is your goal of course) and it shouldn't really matter for the rest of the campaign what the actual results of this skill challenge were (except for some bonuses or penalties to future checks maybe)

Cheers,
R.

 

[msherman]

Yeah, thanks, I should have provided more detail. So, in my mind, the "challenging" parts of this scenario are:

- Getting an audience in the first place: The PC was first given this assignment as a level 1 character, which implies that he was not personally hired by the court, but probably one of many bounty hunters who responded to a public call. So the PC may need to convince some gate keepers to let them in.

- That could be exacerbated by the fact that the PC is travelling with a Dragonborn. We haven't yet explored how the Elves feel about Dragonborn in this campaign, but we've already established that the human population is rather racist towards them. So this could go either way. The third PC is a half elf, so he shouldn't be a problem.

- Avoiding arrest. The elven court is currently an ally of the human baron's, and there was an emissary from the elven court in the room at the Baron's keep when the party was arrested. News of the party's arrest (and subsequent escape) may have reached the court by now, and the elves may want to arrest them and turn them over to the humans to keep the peace.

- Trying to claim the advertised reward (a magic bow crafted by a renowned bowyer), without bringing in the poacher. While this won't happen, I would give them a cash reward for the information they already have (on success in the challenge, if that's what I end up doing)

- Keeping the commission for the bounty, despite the fact that the party has already met the poacher in combat twice and failed to bring him down. The elven lord needs to be convinced that the party is up to the task, and shouldn't just be replaced by more competent forces at this point.

- Manipulating the delicate political situation: I could see this situation causing a war between the elves and humans, or being diffused, depending on what the PCs want to do, and any suggestions I get in this thread for what might be interesting. The baron doesn't really get along well with his brother the poacher, and would be loathe to go to war for him, but the poacher has a lot of loyal support within the baron's court (including the captain of the baron's guard). An important point here is that the Baron is not currently aware of his brother's crimes (and the PCs don't currently have any hard proof, though they might find some by the time they get to the elven court).

 

[Piratecat]

I'd probably structure this as several 4/3 skill challenges strung together, instead of one large one. I try to decide this based on "what's the ultimate goal"? If it's more than one thing, I tend to use several smaller challenges instead of one big one.

 

[keterys]

I actually think you could probably get away with it as a larger skill challenge with many sub-scenes or goals, where you typically only need 1 or 2 successes to satisfy a smaller goal, and a similar number of failures to lose it, but the overall success or failure is based on the total.

Convincing, Sneaking, or Arranging their way in - 2 successes to get in, failures don't block entirely unless 3 but steadily make the next parts more difficult

Wading the murky political waters, figuring out who to trust and what isn't safe to ask for - 2 to 4 successes as desired with steadily greater information, 1 or 2 failures to trigger subscene of escalated agitation or arrest

Impressing the Court and/or otherwise inspiring competence - Possibly even just an overall group check to explain/show something special, success based on overall performance - amount of reward or whether the court dismisses them and seeks someone else to assist based on amount of failure

If I recall Obsidian, this should work well as a 3-phase skill challenge with that progression of scene rather than as 3 separate skill challenges, but whatever works best for your group.