How to Handle a Chase

[Edgewood]

I'm running Pathfinder with my current group but a system to run a chase (I'm talking about a good old fashion foot chase here) could be system neutral. How do you handle chase scenes? Do you go round by round? Do you just narrate the actions with little to no rolling, or do you simply do a bunch a skill rolls? I'm interested to see how other people have handled chases in their games. I know that Paizo is coming out with chase cards which is intriguing to me.

 

[Nebten]

It depends on how involved you want to get. Do you want terrian to be an issue. Are there other enironmental factors at play here? Then to make it more fun, you add bonuses or penalties to those circumstances and add them to certian skill checks. Even with narrating what each other is doing, dice rolling adds to the drama of the outcome.

One of the better chase scene went on for about 4 scenes before coming to a conculsion and the players had a lot of fun with that. If you don't want to get that involved, then by the book (Pathfinder & 3.x) its opposing Dex checks for short chases and opposing Con checks for overland chases. I've done both depending on the importance of the encounter.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

The Gamemastery Guide has some fairly nifty chase rules for Pathfindeer.

The Auld Grump

 

[delericho]

IMO, Pathfinder missed a golden opportunity to marge the Climb, Jump, Swim and Fly skills, and the Run feat into a single Athletics skill. If one of the applications of that skill was to allow characters to increase their speed abovve "double move" (for running), that would automatically provide a simple chase mechanic.

For the most part, I handle chases with a Skill Challenge - each round each character must make a "movement" check (whether it's Athletics, Ride, Drive, or another applicable skill). Any character who fails the check can do nothing in the phase except try to keep up. A character who succeeds on the check can take another action to try to win the chase - find a shortcut (Navigation), get a local to misdirect the opponent (Streetwise), create an obstacle (usually a Str check), etc.

(Obviously, if the party are doing the chasing, then the actions they can take may be modified, but the principle is the same.)

If any of these actions succeed, the party gains a success for the chase. If they all fail, or if the whole party fail their "movement" checks, then they suffer a failure for the chase. And, as usual, they need X successes before 3 failures to 'win'.

 

[Mark Chance]

I've used these chase rules. They required a little extra prep, but worked fine during play.

 

[IronWolf]

The Gamemastery Guide has some fairly nifty chase rules for Pathfinder.

Yeah - check out the GameMastery Guide for some chase rules.

 

[Hand of Evil]

See the DM ADVICE thread.

Now, thing about the flow of the steet and the time of day. Traffic will flow to work places, you also have different people on them at different times of the day; 1st are those going to set up the markets or to work, then those going to buy. They go one direction, then switch. In the evening, people close their shops and go home, orthers will be going out for entertainment.

From this you can create your flow and path of traffic. Some will be high, some low. High traffic areas, greater the number of people to dodge. Also, think of this as difficult ground to cover.

Quick traps - knocking stuff over is a quick trap, it is a simple trap but if a person cannot avoid it, they are delayed.

 

[Celebrim]

Most of the rules referenced in the above posts appear to be stolen from one of the better D20 third party supplements - 'Hot Pursuit - The definitive D20 system guide to chases'.

Worth picking up. Probably still available from your favorite pdf distributer.

 

[James Jacobs]

IMO, Pathfinder missed a golden opportunity to marge the Climb, Jump, Swim and Fly skills, and the Run feat into a single Athletics skill.

We actually considered this, but in the end we decided not to combine all the movement rates into one because that just starts getting kinda weird and silly. Snakes are good climbers, after all, but if we combined the skills, that would make snakes equally good at flying and jumping. Likewise, sharks—it's weird that a shark would be just as good at swimming as it would running or climbing.

Keeping those skills separate not only prevents that, but also helps to keep all of those very different environments feeling different.

As for chases... yeah; we first developed the chase rules that ended up in the GameMastery Guide for a chase encounter in "Edge of Anarchy." We've also got a set of chase cards coming out later next year that you can use to basically build any shape "chase track" you want.

 

[jaerdaph]

Most of the rules referenced in the above posts appear to be stolen from one of the better D20 third party supplements - 'Hot Pursuit - The definitive D20 system guide to chases'.

Worth picking up. Probably still available from your favorite pdf distributer.

I agree - Hot Pursuit from Adamant Entertainment was the best set of chase rules to come out of the d20/OGL era.

They're only available now in Tome of Secrets, updated specifically for Pathfinder.