Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 5859838" data-attributes="member: 150">Same here.  I'm a big fan of the skill challenge mechanic because the base mechanic gives you a good structure for doing things on the fly, yet you can invest a bunch of time in creating variations on skill challenges to create important scenes. A lot of what you've described is challenges to represent travel of some sort -- either large or small scale travel (travel for days through the desert, travel for hours in the dark tunnel).  For a lot of those situations I use a quick handout I print a bunch of to try to structure a sort of elaborate challenge. The big idea there is that each success in the challenge represents a certain amount of progress towards the destination -- that might be day, or ten minutes, or whatever you need.  With that one skill check, though, you add a bunch of other checks that the other PCs can make while one PC is doing the "navigation" check. I typically look for primary skill checks in two other areas:- Avoid/Overcome hazards- Evade combat/negotiate with the locals, etc. That gives me three skill checks that are required each round, and there's a consequence for each:- Fail the navigation check, and you don't make progress in your travels- Fail on the hazard check, and you suffer some sort of penalty as a result- Fail on the combat check, and you have a minor combat encounter (possibly <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-4th-edition-discussion/319916-fast-abstracted-combat-minor-encounters.html#post5855701" target="_blank">abstracted</a> rather than played out)I set the DCs for those to be appropriate for the region. Navigation when you're following a road might be easy, and the hazards are usually few and far between, but you make it very difficult to avoid encounters with the locals or evade pursuit.  Avoid the roads and you make navigation much more difficult, and the hazards are more challenging, but it might be easier to lose your pursuers, and so on. I flesh things out with assist checks (each of the primary skills can be assisted with another -- if you're using nature to navigate through a desert wilderness, endurance might be a good assist skill, or perception). And I identify some skills that might produce bonuses if the PCs invest in them instead (thievery might allow the PCs to make contact with a local who can give them an important rumor, or heal might allow them to identify a local herb, etc). I've attached a PDF of the form I fill out for each region/path.  I did it so there's a mini-sized circle for each PC to put his mini on for the check he's going to make in that period of time (only one each). The next thing I like to do with these forms in hand is create a bunch of them.  Each period of time can take the PCs through a different region with a different set of challenges/hazards/locals/rewards, etc.  But you can also give them some choices for how they travel -- they could travel using the kingsroad, knowing they risk being identified by the cardinal's agents, or they could take game trails through the hills, which may take longer but you're safer there.  The ticking clock is almost always important, but one thing you can do if you don't have a good reason to force the PCs to rush is to play around with how much/often you allow them to rest. It's possible that, in days of traveling through a desert, the PCs will not be sleeping well, etc.  Maybe there are just one or two oasis villages where the PCs can take an extended rest and get the full result.  Anyway, that's the mess I usually make.  It does take some prep, but if you whip up a sheet or two for each region, the prep goes a long way. -rg</blockquote>

Verification