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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MonkeezOnFire" data-source="post: 7567381" data-attributes="member: 6784845">I recently had a sequence in my game where the party was on a sand sailing ship and on their way to the City of the Dead their ship was attacked by various undead creatures culminating in them being chased by a giant bone serpent. Because the goal was to break through the blockade and not truly fight it I ran this as a 4e style skill challenge. It was my first time running a skill challenge of any kind so I wasn't sure how it was going to work out but the players really enjoyed it in the end. I don't think it would be too difficult to abstract any kind of ship encounter into a skill challenge. Instead of going back and forth making attack rolls you can direct the scene to be more like an action movie sequence. If you want to go this route I'd really recommend Matt Colville's video on the subject. It's available on Youtube. He does a good job explaining what a skill challenge is, what they're good for and most importantly he gives some good pieces of advice on how to keep them from going stale. I instituted the additional rule that a single character cannot repeat the same kind of roll once they have attempted it, which keeps the character with the highest relevant modifier from soloing the entire thing. Another important thing I did that Matt hints at but doesn't explicitly spell out is to change the situation as it goes on. As my players were succeeding at things I described new dangers to their ship that had to be dealt with. Forcing the players to be reactive to these complications really brought the players into the situation and fostered their creativity instead of just devolving into "roll dice until we either succeed or fail."Examples from my game:The wind blows the ship onto a collision course with a jagged rock, so one character made a vehicle tool roll to make a hard turn to avoid it. An ally ship making the run with them takes a heavy blow and is set to crash into the player's ship. A character made a persuasion check to give the ally captain just the moral boost he needed to correct course. The bone serpent emerges from the dunes and sends boulders into the air heading right for the PCs. A character made an attack roll to destroy them in the air.</blockquote>

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