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How to make an encounter with falling great distances interesting and dangerous, but not deadly?
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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 7532499" data-attributes="member: 7006"><p>Another idea would be to treat the ascent kind of like a combat. Only rather than hit points, you use some other measurements that the PCs take "damage" from as they make checks or checks are made against them.</p><p></p><p>For instance (and I'm just spitballing)... maybe have each PC have Strength "hit points", Dexterity "hit points", and Constitution "hit points" equal to their individual stats in each of those abilities. As they ascend, they "attack" each individual obstacle, making STR, DEX, or CON checks against set DCs (the "hit points" of that obstacle) and which ability you check depending on what the obstacles are. So balancing obstacles you'd make DEX checks, climbing or jumping might use STR, hanging/swinging obstacles over distance use CON.</p><p></p><p>An obstacle has the "hit points" equal to its DC. If you make the check on your first go, you get across safely. If you miss the DC, you take off the number of "hit points" your check got to, and the obstacle then gets to "damage" you-- maybe a loss of like 1d4+1 "hit points" worth of the ability score used. You then make another "attack" against the obstacle, trying to take off the rest of its "hit points". If you make it, you get across; if you still don't make it, you receive another set of "damage" to the stat.</p><p></p><p>Note that this "damage" to a stat's "hit points" is not actually dropping the stat in question-- that's a downward spiral you don't want to deal with. Instead, we can think of these "hit points" as the "energy" you might have in that stat... and as soon as one of those stats reaches 0... you fall. And if you fall... you are going to take the actual hit point damage when you land.</p><p></p><p>The trick for you then is to design your... "course"... that the players have to ascend. Quite frankly, I'd probably just go onto YouTube and watch a whole bunch of <em>American Ninja Warrior</em> videos to get ideas of the kind of obstacles you might put in this ascent and which you narrate to the players (deciding which obstacles are STR ones, which are DEX ones, and which are CON ones.) Maybe even having several to choose from at any one point in the course so that the PCs can see what is ahead of them and find the path they wish to take up the mountain (especially if any one obstacle doesn't lead to every other one and instead there are different "paths" to choose from.) That way if they have taken several hits to DEX they can figure out "Okay, that obstacle looks like it requires climbing, that's probably going to use STR, and I still have STR points remaining. Let me tackle that one!"</p><p></p><p>Obviously this would require a bit of work... but it might be cool to allow yourself to narrate things to your players like the series of teeter-totter mushrooms you have to hip hop across or the "hanging underneath a staircase and climbing up the stairs using your arms" obstacle. But if you draw out a map of the various ones and the paths that lead to them, plus also figuring out how to narrate them as natural objects to overcome... it might make for an interesting "encounter".</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 7532499, member: 7006"] Another idea would be to treat the ascent kind of like a combat. Only rather than hit points, you use some other measurements that the PCs take "damage" from as they make checks or checks are made against them. For instance (and I'm just spitballing)... maybe have each PC have Strength "hit points", Dexterity "hit points", and Constitution "hit points" equal to their individual stats in each of those abilities. As they ascend, they "attack" each individual obstacle, making STR, DEX, or CON checks against set DCs (the "hit points" of that obstacle) and which ability you check depending on what the obstacles are. So balancing obstacles you'd make DEX checks, climbing or jumping might use STR, hanging/swinging obstacles over distance use CON. An obstacle has the "hit points" equal to its DC. If you make the check on your first go, you get across safely. If you miss the DC, you take off the number of "hit points" your check got to, and the obstacle then gets to "damage" you-- maybe a loss of like 1d4+1 "hit points" worth of the ability score used. You then make another "attack" against the obstacle, trying to take off the rest of its "hit points". If you make it, you get across; if you still don't make it, you receive another set of "damage" to the stat. Note that this "damage" to a stat's "hit points" is not actually dropping the stat in question-- that's a downward spiral you don't want to deal with. Instead, we can think of these "hit points" as the "energy" you might have in that stat... and as soon as one of those stats reaches 0... you fall. And if you fall... you are going to take the actual hit point damage when you land. The trick for you then is to design your... "course"... that the players have to ascend. Quite frankly, I'd probably just go onto YouTube and watch a whole bunch of [I]American Ninja Warrior[/I] videos to get ideas of the kind of obstacles you might put in this ascent and which you narrate to the players (deciding which obstacles are STR ones, which are DEX ones, and which are CON ones.) Maybe even having several to choose from at any one point in the course so that the PCs can see what is ahead of them and find the path they wish to take up the mountain (especially if any one obstacle doesn't lead to every other one and instead there are different "paths" to choose from.) That way if they have taken several hits to DEX they can figure out "Okay, that obstacle looks like it requires climbing, that's probably going to use STR, and I still have STR points remaining. Let me tackle that one!" Obviously this would require a bit of work... but it might be cool to allow yourself to narrate things to your players like the series of teeter-totter mushrooms you have to hip hop across or the "hanging underneath a staircase and climbing up the stairs using your arms" obstacle. But if you draw out a map of the various ones and the paths that lead to them, plus also figuring out how to narrate them as natural objects to overcome... it might make for an interesting "encounter". [/QUOTE]
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How to make an encounter with falling great distances interesting and dangerous, but not deadly?
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