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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4649388" data-attributes="member: 710">Nah, average guys like me and my players are sufficient. I am currently running Thunderspire Labyrinth. The party has made an attack on a Duergar outpost, but had to retreat. This gave the Duergar time to reorganize their defenses, and they placed some Crossbow Constructs, two Spikefiends (or whats-their-name) and a Duergar mage to defend their entrance - with the benefit of there being a 100 ft wide chasm of undeterminite depth between them and the "road" to the now barred entrance. The PCs fought a little bit with them, but decided to retreat back to cover. Since the Duergar troops didn't follow them, they were stuck, and decided to check if there was an alternative entrance. (I expected as much - I basically had two outcomes in mind. Either they'd try to fight themselves through there and try to break through the barrend entrance, or would try to find an alternative route. But I didn't prepare the skill challenge in detail).It was a Complexity One challenge (4 successes before 3 failures). Skills used in the challenge where Perception (trying to find tracks), Dungeoneering (making sense of the maze), Intimidate (interrogating a Duergar from town) and Insight (only got the part a bonus, not a success, for checking the Duergars reaction). It started with the Elven Cleric Perception check - he tried to find a possible route. He found some candidates, but eventually he got stuck, so they went back to town and the Barbarian grabbed a Duergar in town, intimidating him to spill out some information. The Duergar didn't know the exact route, but the information he knew helped them, so that going back to where they stuck, they went on. The Dwarf used Dungeoneering to make sense of the Duergars description, allowing him to find a tight passageway. From there, the Cleric searched for more tracks and nearly got stuck again (the Perception roll barely failed), but thanks to the Paladins previous Insights during the Duergar interrogation (I kept the +2 bonus "around" until they needed it), he remembered a detail that helped them to find the alternate passage. I remember that they also had one failure (I think it might have been Perception), but don't know when exactly.---During Keep on the Shadowfell, I ran a very mechanical challenge, that I added to the encounter to give a small benefit to the PCs (there were only 4 PCs instead of 5)In the final encounter versus Kalarel, I added the opportunity to make a skill challenge to close the portal. I don't remember the details of how it went during combat, but I used Arcana and Religion as primary skills, as well as Bluff and Intimidate. I assumed that Kalarels rituals had already an effect on the Shadowfell portal, but as long as the ritual remained unfinished, it was also a liability.With Arcana and Religion, the rituals energies could be diverted. On a successful check with these skills (with was a Hard DC), they could divert some of the energies both to close the portal as well as to hurt Kalarel. (it dealt low damage from DMG p.42). If they failed, the Arcana/Religion user would take the damage himself, unless someone had also made an Endurance check to channel the rituals energy to himself it was required (a great defender job). Bluff and Intimidate where intended (but not actually used in play) to confuse Kalarel and weaken his hold over the portal. "Interesting. I think there is a small but critical flaw in your spell to control the ritual." A failed initial Arcana/Religion check would have given the "Bluff" option ("uh-oh, I have no idea what he's doing there, but let's pretend otherwise), while a successful check would have given the "Intimidate" option ("Hah, he's using Symbuls Magical Sequencer, but that causes a negative feedback in conjunction with shadow energies!")If the challenge was successful, the portal was closed and the "Thing from the Portal" was rendered ineffective.If the challenge failed, the party would have taken some extra damage and the Thing would have lasted (and if they'd still manage to beat Kalarel, his corpse and all his belongings would have been sucked into the portal.)</blockquote>

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