I need some ideas for a skill challenge

[Lord Zardoz]

Background:
My players have just been manipulated into killing an ambassador (and brother of the ruler) from a neutral kingdom. My players were under the impression that they were instead killing enemies of the kingdom they have been working for. The people who tricked the players have already sent one of their men out to the neutral kingdom who is posing as a survivor of the 'terrible treachery'. The goal of the villians is to kick off a multi-front war and also to set up the players as being wanted criminals in both kingdoms (they already have an agent within the kingdom the players work for that sent them on this mission).

My players have decided to try to intercept the runner before it reports on the attack to the Neutral kingdom in an effort to clear their name. Here are the factors that are in play.

1) The hostile group has access to magic and a small number of agents in the area.
2) The runner has a head start.
3) There is significant hobgoblin activity in the area.
4) The kingdom the players work for has a earned reputation for wanting to conquer their neighbors, so any soldiers of the Neutral Kingdom the players are chasing the runner into will be inclined to attack them.

I have a rough idea of what I want to do already. I want to keep all players involved rather than having one player make most checks. I want early failures to either make future rolls more difficult, or consume healing surges and other resources that the players probably do not want to lose. I want to put a clock on the players limiting to total number of checks they can make. I expect to allow the players a chance to redeem a failure if they can make a follow up check (at the cost of a check they might have wanted to use for something else). I also want to break the challenge down into sub parts.

What I am trying to work out is what kind of sub parts I can break the challenge into. In general, I want a failure at a sub part of the challenge to result in a combat.

I will post in this thread once I have laid out what I have in mind.

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[Gilladian]

I have a few questions, either to help you think and plot, or maybe you already know, and it will help us understand:

1) is this actually a physical chase, and how long will it last? How many miles does the runner have to travel?

2) Will it all be "running" or will he be able to get transport? A carriage? horseback? river transport?

3) what sort of terrain and climate/weather conditions? If it is all on good roads, in the summer, with no bad weather, that's very different than middle of winter during a blizzard, or at night during a thunderstorm, or over a mountain pass.

4) are there any fun obstacles? Ie a major city with crowded streets, traffic and people; a parade or religious procession (either in a city or moving down a major road); a bridge with tolls and guards; the border crossing station between the two countries; the mountain pass mentioned above, perhaps with a guard fortress...

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Well, I probably should have checked this thread earlier, but I did run the challenge. Things went alright with what I chose to do, but not as well as I had hoped in terms of keeping things interesting.

Situation:
It was 4 players chasing down one guy who had a bit of a head start. Players were all level 4.

Distance between runner and players was abstracted to a point system with 10 points of lead for the runner. They needed to close the gap to zero before the runner reached the destination.

Chase was to start with the palyers finding the path for the runner.

There was 18 hours of travel for the runner to get to his destination, + 9 hours of resting for the runner.

Players would each make one atheltics check per hour opposed by the runners athletics check. If the players got 3 wins, they gained on the runner. If they got 3 losses, the runner gained ground. 2 successes maintained a stalemate.

Players also were able to make one additional check each hour. They could either try to create an advantage to generate bonuses for the athletics checks, or use the checks to evade patrols (6 successes needed every 3 hours to avoid patrols), or they could look for food (see below). Checks used to create an advantage would apply to all players, and would add 1.5 each, rounding down. The players could gain either +1, +3, +4, or +6 to their checks.

Each hour beyond the 10th without an extended rest for the players, they would start to accumulate a penalty for each check they made.

Other:
Players encountered a large hobgoblin patrol and were only spared a TPK by a Dm not inclined to torpedo the adventure. They had all their money taken, were branded with a 'Mark of Shame' by a Hobgoblin Warcaster (-5 penalty to Intimidate checks until a remove curse ritual is performed). They also had all their food taken away.

I rolled the runners check in the open but never told the players his atheltics check bonus. If the players thought they had 3 successes, one of the players could apply the check to something other than athletics.

Once their food was gone, the players were required to find new supplies if they wanted to have an extended rest. Food checks were dc 12, and presumed nature and perception.

Every 3 hours I would make a d20 check. If I beat a 5, the players would run into a small patrol. Each anti-patrol check (Nature, Stealth, or Perception at DC 17) would increase the patrol DC by 2. at 6 successes, no patrol would find them.

There was a 4 hour stretch of intensely bad weather. The players and the runner would take -4 penalties to all checks unless they passed a DC 20 endurance check to negate the weather penalty.

There was a detour when the players came onto land owned by a large militant church. The players needed to pass several diplomacy checks to avoid a detour that would cost them 2 distance points.

Near the very end, there was a Decoy runner (the bad guys behind the 'Evil Conspiracy' used Sending rituals to arrange for the decoy) which the players very nearly fell for.

When I was in doubt about something, I would use opposed checks based on the runners stats. This did not come into play, but here is the skill checks I had for the runner.

Acrobatics +6
Arcana +3
#Athletics +9
#Bluff +11
Diplomacy +6
Dungeoneering +4
#Endurance +8
Heal +4
History +3
Insight +4
Intimidate +6
Nature +4
#Perception +9
#Religion +8
#Stealth +11
Streetwise +6
Thievery +6


Results:
The players manged to win. Barely, catching up to the runner just as the runner would have made it. It really came down to the last possible roll. however, the decoy was in play, and the players almost fell for that too, when the runner and decoy managed to win a buff vs passive insight check vs the party. But when trying to interrogate the runner, they caught him in a lie / bad bluff check and caught onto the fact that the guy they caught was not the one they were chasing for hte past 18 hours.

The Good: The players managed to fit in a few unexpected checks to create an advantage:
History: used to create advantage by remembering old maps.
Endurance: used to justify just pushing harder than the runner. Was also used for food checks justified as "I just wont eat'.
Nature: Finding a better path.
Heal: Keeping the players from suffering blisters and the like.

The players used an alarm ritual and gained the benefit of an extended rest in less time due to no one needing to stand guard. They gained 3 points on the runner this way.

The hard time limit and need to accomplish many things with limited number of checks per hour was engaging due to the decisions that needed to be made.

The Bad:
I eased up a bit on the anti patrol check requirement after it became apparent that the runner was going to win too many atheltics checks unless the players were able to get more advantage checks in.

After the extended rest, each player ended up spamming their best check to generate a check bonus. The sameness kind of killed the fun of it for the last few rolls, as there were no more real decisions to make with what to use a given check for.

There were 19 hours where checks were made, each player making 2 checks. Even broken up with some encounters, the challenge was too monotonus in the end.

As a planning flaw on my part, I built the 'large hobgoblin patrol' encounter without accounting for how damaged the players were from the previous game.

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[Lord Zardoz]

Since chase challenges are something that are easy to understand, I will probably want to continue this thread and use any ideas generated at a later date.

I have a few questions, either to help you think and plot, or maybe you already know, and it will help us understand:

1) is this actually a physical chase, and how long will it last? How many miles does the runner have to travel?

Physical chase, all parties on foot with identical overland movement speed. Chase took 18 hours of travel + an extended rest for players and runner.

2) Will it all be "running" or will he be able to get transport? A carriage? horseback? river transport?

All travel was on foot.

3) what sort of terrain and climate/weather conditions? If it is all on good roads, in the summer, with no bad weather, that's very different than middle of winter during a blizzard, or at night during a thunderstorm, or over a mountain pass.

Chase took place on open farmland in an area adjacent to a massive forest inhabited by psychotic goblins ruled by an immortal goblinoid spider creature during some border incursions by the goblins. There was a very severe 4 hour storm, an armed group of crusading templar soldiers insisting on a detour around their land, and a last gasp decoy. There were also human patrols the players wanted to avoid due to working for a hostile kingdom to the region the chase took place in, but those patrols were avoided.

4) are there any fun obstacles? Ie a major city with crowded streets, traffic and people; a parade or religious procession (either in a city or moving down a major road); a bridge with tolls and guards; the border crossing station between the two countries; the mountain pass mentioned above, perhaps with a guard fortress...

There was no towns along the path chosen by the runner. If there was, the players would have been screwed by a plot that would have had the runner turn all local patrols onto the players.

The chase started in a diplomatic border outpost in which the players ended up killing an ambassador without realizing what they were doing (they were tricked).

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[Gilladian]

It sounds pretty fun, really! I would have tried to vary things a bit myself by adding some more features to the run; either physical barriers such as the river crossing, or tricks like the runner trying to double back and take a secondary route.

I ran a short chase once, using the rules in the "Hot Pursuit" book - have you ever seen it? It gives a way of running a fairly abstract pursuit in a meaty and descriptive way. I think it would have given you some good ideas, if you could find a copy.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

An effective chase mechanic is the one thing I wish that D&D had. Using skill challenges seems to be the best way to work with it.

I think I had enough obstacles in terms of quantity, between dodging patrols and needing to replace lost food. However, I do think a wider variety of obstacles would be a good thing if your going to try to run an entire damn session built around a prolonged overland chase.

Meh, these are the kind of things you end up learning as you try stuff.

Most obstacles that would have made sense would have involved people, but I was trapped a bit within the narrative. Anyone the players would meet the runner would probably meet first. But if he met anyone who could help him contact the authorities, the players would have lost the challenge as the chase was to prevent the runner from doing that.

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[Quartz]

With regard to the patrols did you check for the runner? There's always a patrol that hasn't got the message or doesn't believe his bona fides or whatever.