Help me Tweak a Chase Skill Challenge (my players stay out!)

[FireLance]

Some initial questions and thoughts:
[SBLOCK]First off, how do the basic numbers add up? How much is the BBEG adding to his score and how much are the players expected to add to their score each "round"? If the BBEG only gets to add the result of a single skill check while the PCs get to add the results of each skill check they make, they are likely to quickly catch up to him. For example, if there are 5 PCs, you will get an average of +52 from the die rolls alone (5d20). Even the waves of minions may not be enough to slow down the PCs if they are focused on pursuing.

If I might suggest an alternate approach, consider the following six-stage challenge:

Startup: Each PC starts with a Delay of 0. The Delay affects when the PC arrives at the final encounter.

Stage One: Generic chase - each PC must make a Moderate Athletics, Acrobatics or Endurance check (player's choice).
Any PC who fails the check may spend an action point to negate the failure. Otherwise, increase his Delay by 1.
If any characters are delayed, the other characters must choose to wait or press on. If they wait, every PC's Delay is increased by 1.

Stage Two: A maze of twisty streets, all alike - Prompt each player for an idea on how they will get through the maze instead of calling for specific skill checks. Depending on the solutions proposed, you may call for a Hard skill check (the specific skill will depend on what the player proposes, e.g. Perception if he is looking for a way out, Streetwise if he is using his knowledge of the city, or Diplomacy or Intimidate if he is asking a passer-by) or award an automatic success (say, if one of the PCs has a map).
If none of the PCs achieve a success, increase all the PCs' Delay by 1. Optionally, if all the PCs with lower Delay scores failed the check, but a PC with a higher Delay score passed the check, you may increase the lower Delay scores to that of the PC who passed the check to simulate the other PCs needing to wait until he caught up to them.

Stage Three: Generic chase - a repeat of Stage One.

Stage Four: Crowded Square - Again, prompt each player for an idea on how they will get through the crowd instead of calling for specific skill checks.
Categorize proposed solutions into ideas that can help the entire party (e.g. clearing a path through the crowd with Intimidate, Diplomacy or Athletics, spotting a path through the crowd with Perception) or will only help the PC (e.g. dodging through the crowd with Acrobatics or running fast with Endurance) and ask the PCs to make their skill checks.
A PC who does not succeed on an individual skill check and cannot benefit from a skill check that helps the entire party by a PC with equal or lower Delay has his Delay increased by 1.

Stage Five: Generic chase - a repeat of Stage One.

Stage Six: Guards - The PCs encounter the BBEG's minions outside his lair. From this point, the PCs arrive in batches, starting with those with the lowest Delay scores, followed 1 round later by those with Delay scores 1 point higher, and so on. The PCs may fight the guards, run past them (provoking opportunity attacks and pursuit by the guards) or try to get by them with another Hard skill check (depending on their ideas, Stealth, Bluff, Intimidate, etc. may be appropriate).
Each round that the PCs spend dealing with the guards increases their respective Delay scores by 1.

Consequences: While it is tempting to make it all or nothing, how about making the consequences more graduated? If one or more PCs manage to make it to the BBEG with a Delay of 3 or less, the ritual is completely disrupted, and the BBEG gains no benefit. If the first PCs make it there with a Delay of 4 or 5, the BBEG has got some power from the ritual, but it is still incomplete. The lady is still alive, although perhaps badly and permanently hurt. If the first PCs only make it there with a Delay of 6 or more, the lady is dead and the BBEG is at full power. The PCs have failed and will have to pick up the pieces.[/SBLOCK]

 

[Amaroq]

My comments below:

[SBLOCK]I really like FireLance's structured idea. Our party had a similar running skill challenge: BBEG fleeing, party giving chase, other bad guys pursuing us. Our DM essentially called it a starting Delay of 2 or so for all characters, and made both the BBEG and his henchmen run through the same skill checks we did. In fact, he'd describe the BBEG dodging through the obstacle, whatever, as his means of describing the obstacle - then it was our turn.

The final battle worked out really well for this, with the characters arriving in "waves" just enough to cause some significant tactical challenges for the party - partly 'cause the Defender was in the last wave. It certainly kept the "final fight" well away from predictable .. note also that you may suck a couple of Encounter powers along the way, e.g., from bad guys and/or minions along the way: this is essentially one long encounter, so the players aren't likely to get a 5-minute-rest to recuperate. That added to the tactical intrigue.

An alternate mechanic I've used as a DM for a skill challenge was simply "keep track of the 'gap', as expressed by "Skill challenges succeeded when the opposition failed". If the fleeing party succeeds while the chasers fail, add one to the gap; if the pursuing party succeeds while the chasee fails, subtract one from the gap.

If the gap was 0, combat ensued. If the gap was 1 or 2, the parties where in visual range. If the gap was 3 or 4, the parties were out of visual range, allowing the pursued to hide, attempt unexpected movement, etc, and requiring the pursuers to make Perception, Tracking, Diplomacy, etc, to find out which way he's gone. If the gap was 5 or more, the pursuers had lost the target. When we ran this method, it felt almost interminable for a little bit as the parties bumped back and forth from 2 to 3 to 2 to 3, in and out of sight .. it was very edge-of-the-seat stuff, though the players, not knowing precisely how I was running the challenge, felt like it was "unwinnable" for a little while; in retrospect, I might have explained the mechanic ahead of time.[/SBLOCK]

 

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

GARGH! How did I miss such amazing replies! I think my subscribe button failed. Next time, I just keep this on my daily rotation of web surfing. Thank you all for such amazing help.

I finally ran this challenge this past week, (after a few sessions of unexpected twists, turns, and then a week off due to illness) and I wish I had had time to look over these things. I'm stealing these suggestions for a future game though so they will NOT go to waste--probably my next gameday event.

Overall, I'm not happy with the outcome for a few reasons. Not the first of which was overall pacing of the evening which got slightly sidetracked by those tricky players. (Basically, they got invited to a big party by a lord they've been suspicious of for a while, and have been increasingly--with good reason, mind you--suspicious of him, so they decided to split themselves up, and case his mansion while the party was going on. It was the best by the seat of my pants DMing I've ever done, if I do say so myself. Still, by the time the chase happened, we were running short on time, and I still wanted to sort of resolve the plotline by that evening, so I was rushing, and it definitely suffered)

I modified what I had listed above slightly, and I think the challenge suffered for that as well. Instead of having waves of minions come out after every 50, I had something different happen after every 50:

After 50 points, Kelson drops a smoke grenade that makes it very hard to see: roll a perception, DC 20 or halve your next roll
After 100 points, a wave of minions comes out, tries to slow the party down (2d4 roguish types?)
ignore the bad guys? really trying to avoid them halves your next roll as you look for an escape, avoid attacks, etc.
can taunt bad guys off, while others run ahead
fighting means that you can’t contribute to the total, but you’re letting others conceivably get ahead while you hold off the clowns trying to slow you down—a plus 10 to whoever’s still running
when parts of the group get separated, they can make a hard primary skill check to try and catch up. (DC 20)
After 150, Kelson breaks into the graveyard: acrobatics or halve next roll
you’ve stumbled into the outskirts of the old graveyard, the ground is covered in half-hidden tombstones, rubble and ruined crypts: acrobatics or halve your next roll

This made the challenge incredibly easy for the group, who have since added a new player, and still have their "hireling" Having minions continue to come out would've made the chase much more interesting, because the choices the players all made would've had a lot more weight to them.

I kept track of things on our big whiteboard, which worked well, and had plenty of improvised checks going on, as I didn't hand out anything to the players. I could've narrated it a lot better, but it wasn't too dead--I tried to describe everything as much as I could.

PCat, how did you handle chases like this? It seemed like my baddie would've had a very very hard time, even with waves of minions, to compete with the players getting on average 50 points a round. (especially as most of his rolls were below 10....)

FireLance: Your ideas are delightful and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter I really dig that idea of delay--I was trying to sort of incorporate that into the challenge in its initial planning, but some of it got lost once we actually played it out (as we handwaved the ending combat of the chase to move onto the BBEG fight....hugely regretting that decision, as both things suffered.)

Thanks all for the fantastic replies! I hope this thread is helpful for others as well!