Mountain Climbing Challange:

[Evilhalfling]

Does anyone have a good mountain climbing skill challange?
or remeber one from a dungeon adventure?

The Goliath in my group is being sent to the summit of a mountain, as a tribal coming of age quest. He has to carry a rock with him, to make the mountain taller.

You would think I could draw on personal experiance, because I hiked up to 14,270 ft. summit on monday. However I'm drawing a blank.
Actually hiking up mountain consisted of: Packing, starting early enough to avoid afternoon lighting storms (nature), breathing at altitude (endurance) and putting one foot in front of the other, without falling over, hurting ankles/knees etc. (athletics/endurance)

 

[Daemonicious]

How about these?

Taking the ancestral path up the mountain (History), Finding a better hidden path up the side (Perception), taking herbs and rubbing salves that increase blood flow and oxygen (Heal).

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Navigation to pick the right path, there may be no marked trails and the area may be subject to low cloud and other navigation hazzards - nature/preception.
The correct rituals to placate the stream/forest/other prominent terrain feature or your choice spirits - Religion

 

[Storminator]

Sounds like you hiked up a mountain instead of climbing one. If we're talking occasional stretches of cliff climbing, there's a lot more involved.

Athletics - obvious.
Acrobatics - walking a ledge or ridge or rigged rope.
Dungeoneering - figuring out a climbing route, hammering pitons, etc.
Thievery - rigging ropes, a harness for the rock (so you can climb up then haul the rock)

In addition to overcoming the climb, there should be something in opposition. Perhaps air or water elementals/spirits are trying to wear down the mountain, and therefore want to steal the goliath's rock, or at least push it down the mountain.

I like to put in climbing route options - you see a difficult climb, a moderate climb, and an easy one. Which do you try? Perhaps the easy one doesn't give a success and the hard one gives two.

Third idea - all the previous rocks are precariously stacked at the summit - it's a challenge just to set the new rock on top. Perhaps bonus points for a placement that allows the next climber an easier time stacking.

Finally, as a coming of age rite, each success should be a chance to add some character growth. The PC should come down the mountain a new man. This would be an awesome character building session. Start with no trained skills, no feats, and no powers. Pick those as you go thru the challenge - either in response to a success or failure, or just to help get thru the challenge.

Done right, this could be a fantastic challenge.

PS

 

[Klaus]

Does anyone have a good mountain climbing skill challange?
or remeber one from a dungeon adventure?

The Goliath in my group is being sent to the summit of a mountain, as a tribal coming of age quest. He has to carry a rock with him, to make the mountain taller.

You would think I could draw on personal experiance, because I hiked up to 14,270 ft. summit on monday. However I'm drawing a blank.
Actually hiking up mountain consisted of: Packing, starting early enough to avoid afternoon lighting storms (nature), breathing at altitude (endurance) and putting one foot in front of the other, without falling over, hurting ankles/knees etc. (athletics/endurance)

There's a good one in the Dungeon adventure "Remains of the Empire": Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Remains of the Empire)

 

[LostSoul]

One of the things I picked up from all the advice written about skill challenges:

A skill challenge must involve interactive decision making.

The Player will need to make decisions for his PC like "Should I head to the Cliffs of Doom and try to scale them, or sneak past the Lair of the Wyrm?"

Both of those will call for skill checks, and, as the DMG2 says:

Each skill check in a challenge should do one of the following:
* Introduce a new option that the PCs can pursue, a path to success they didn't know existed.
* Change the situation, such as by sending the PCs to a new location, introducing a new NPC, or adding a complication.
* Grant the players a tangible repercussion for the check's success or failure (as appropriate), one that influences their subsequent decisions.​

The player chooses to sneak by the Wyrm's lair, rolls a check of some kind, and Fails! The PC wakes the Wyrm and the Wyrm says, "There is a stair at the back of my cave that you can take - but you won't be able to carry the stone up. Don't worry, who will tell?"

The stair will have its own issues, like mold and slime, and it's a challenge for the player to figure out how to get the stone up as well. Or maybe the PC will start talking to the Wyrm and get its help somehow.

That's how I would do it - introduce different options for the player to choose from by creating an interesting setting.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Well, my first question in analyzing this is how does it fit into the overall structure of the adventure? Is it a framework in which other events are embedded? Is it an obstacle to overcome with the least resources (surges etc) used up with something else happening afterwards (other encounters)?

I would say as an 'adventure' in and of itself with nothing but SC mechanics involved it is probably a bit mechanically thin. That is the whole thing will consist of at most 14 skill checks (or other points where player input happens at least). That may be OK if it is say a bit of a sidelight or background building exercise. Otherwise it probably needs some more 'meat' than JUST a single SC can give you. Even a sequence of SCs might not be all that exciting without a bit of combat or something like that involved somewhere, though with a good enough story I think you can pull it off OK.

You'll want to think about the consequences of success and failure too. That will be mostly determined by the purpose. So for instance the SC might determine what the relationship of the character is to his tribe. Do they now consider him an adult or not, that would depend on success or failure. If it is mostly a "how much resources do I burn up getting there" then success and failure overall may not even matter too much, he gets to the top one way or the other so the adventure can continue, just in better or worse shape. If the challenge is a framework for other encounters that happen on the way up then again chances are success and failure are of low import and the key part is which choices he made and thus which other things happened along the way (in which case actually using an SC for this may not even really be that important).

I find that the "framing" of the challenge within the large context is all important with SCs. You can't really talk about what mechanics to use until the context is established. I might recommend entirely different mechanics for the same journey depending on the answers.

 

[Squire James]

One thing to consider is spotlight issues. If the goliath is climbing alone, you'd probably better make it pretty short or the other players will start looking for taverns and asking where the Cheetos are! This sounds like a low-level climb, so a flat-out Athletics challenge with descriptive elements should work. You can make the DC's a little tough due to that whole "roll twice" thing Goliaths get. Ideally, it should be made clear that only goliaths could do something this insane as a coming-of-age ritual!

I ran something like this as a sort of "entrance test" for entering the Stoneblessed paragon path. I ran it as 2 skill challenges, with 2 encounters with difficulty determined by the success of the test. There was no real doubt our level 10 goliath could climb the darn thing, but could he survive the guardians on the way? I put a really scary-looking monster on top that was the "stone that blesses" - and be a potent adversary if the goliath decided it was an enemy...

 

[Evilhalfling]

Theres alot of good ideas here...

Im goint to break the challange into 2 parts:
the first part is preperation, (nature, history, religion, or heal) Ill let the players descriptions tell me which skill they are using. The check will be hard, but if sucessful will reduce all DCs by 1.
(if failed i will add descriptions of where PCs run out of water/food/hit dead ends/hike through the afternoon storms)

For the actual climbing they can take the short, hard path or the longer safer path. Each PC must make an athletics or endurance check based on choice.
(moderate DC) - other skills (as above) can be used to aid, but you can only aid someone on your path.

Each failure costs a surge. A botch means that PC is overcome with altitude sickness, and cannot continue.
This check/choice will probably be repeated at least once.

The test can't be failed, as someone speaking to the Mountain Spirit at the peak is crucial to the plot. The size of the stones will determine the degree of success - each PC can chose their own penalty to athletics & endurance checks (range 0-4) and the total number will affect the boon the spirit provides.
The tribe wants people to carry thier own stones, the mt spirit could care less, it would be happy with rocks carried by Tenser's disc (which the PC wizard has, and may want to use.)

The party has some tough fights with kobolds and an earthquake dragon coming up, and the loss of surges should have an impact.

I would love to see more takes on this challange, if you guys have other ideas.

 

[Storminator]

What about adding in something to the beginning where the negotiate with the tribe? If it's the goliath's rite of passage, there could be traditions about who can help him, what they can do to help, getting another NPC to carry some rocks, etc. Then you can work in the CHA skills too.

Is there the possibility that another goliath has failed this rite previously, and the players can either redeem him by bringing him along, or finding his stones and adding them to the peak? Hmmm, what if you have to prepare the stones properly (religion check, ritual, etc), and that marks them in a special way - carving, arcane mark, etc - and the PCs can find other marked stones on the mountain. What if preparing the stones themselves is part of the preparation, so if it's done especially well it adds to the boon at the end.

PS