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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 5841041" data-attributes="member: 150">Travel Skill Challenge (Alternative to Random Encounters)Here's something I've done in my 4e game several times as an alternative to random encounters during travel sequences. My idea for travel challenges like this one is based on the idea of a skill challenge.  Every success on a specific skill in the challenge represents a specific amount of progress traveling towards a destination. It might be a day's travel, or an hour's travel, or ten minutes of spelunking through caverns.  The number of successes needed to complete the challenge is the number of units of time necessary to complete the journey.  There's no need for failures -- failing just means the PCs make no progress ( get lost, etc) and they'll have to try again. That's pretty simple, and it doesn't get into random encounters or anything else.  What I've done, though is taken each unit of time and added a bunch of other skill checks to the challenge.  As an aside: one of the most important things I wanted to do with this whole idea was give the players choices to make.  I want them to have to make decisions about who to spread around the party resource, and to make choices about which path they take. I've created a PDF (attached) that I use for each stage of the journey (multiple stages of the same sort of travel can use the same one, if necessary).  The idea is that the PCs put their mini (or some other token) on the skill check they're going to make in each unit of time (they get one -- if you're dealing with smaller parties, though, you might want to give each PC two checks.There are three sections to the PDF:  Primary Skills, Assist Skills, and Secondary skills. Primary skills are the skills at which the PCs must succeed at.  They MUST make a successful check to navigate on their path (the DC might be very easy -- if they're following a well-traveled road -- and it might be hard, if they're trying to pick their way through a misty maze of swampland). They also need to make a skill check to overcome some sort of hazard -- that might be athletics to get the party up a cliff, or diplomacy to avoid trouble with the locals.  And they need to make a skill check to avoid encounters -- stealth, perhaps, but other skills might used depending upon the setting.  Assist Skills are addition skill checks that can be made to assist the primary skills. So, if the PCs are using stealth to avoid encounters with the local fauna, they might use a Perception check as an assist to make sure they spot the monsters before the monsters have a chance to spot them.  Secondary skills are skills that allow PCs who are not participating in other skill checks during this unit of time to make skill checks to gain some other sort of advantage or resource, depending upon the setting.  So, a nature check might reveal some special mushrooms, a thievery check might lead the PCs to a bandit's supply stash, etc.  So, for each leg of their journey, the PCs decide how they want to distribute their characters for the given day's challenge.  The vast majority of those checks have nothing to do with the progress the party is making towards their goal -- but it does make things interesting by giving the PCs a lot of choices to make. And, here's where you make it even more interesting: Define multiple paths from Point A to Point B, through different settings, populated with different challenges. So, for example, lets say you want to represent a journey through the wilderness. Your PCs could stick to a cart path that cuts through the area, or they might go off-road through the woods.  1. On the Cart Path:-the navigation check is a History check (EASY), assisted by Nature. Fail and you make no progress-the hazard check is an athletics check (moderate) assisted by endurance (fail and lose a healing surge)-the encounter check is a stealth check (hard, because the monsters are watching the roads) assisted by insight (to get a feeling that you're walking into a trap before it's too late) (fail and you have an encounter (optionally, fail by a lot and the party is ambushed)Secondary checks could be: Nature (medium: hunt while traveling to get enough food for a day), Diplomacy (hard: out in the wilderness people are slow to trust, but if you succeed you can learn some rumors), and Religion (Medium: you find a shrine along the road and make an offering: you gain one reroll you can use while you are traveling through this forest). 2. Through the Woods-The navigation check is a Nature check (hard, because it's easy to get lost in these twisty woods) assisted by Endurance (survivalist training)-the hazard check is an endurance check (the PCs must ford an icy stream: fail and everyone loses a healing surge)-The encounter check is a stealth check (medium) assisted by perception. Fail and you have an encounter.Secondary Checks could be: Arcana (hard: sniff out a ley line crossing to gain single use damage boost); Heal (find some herbs you use to brew tea that restores 1 HS to everyone in the party), and Thievery (discover a bandit's cache; gain 3 days food each or some other mundane gear). To make this work, and be interesting, you probably need not allow PCs to take extended rests until they reach specific locations in their journey (traveler's inns, etc -- which might not be at convenient locations).  What I like about this is it encourages you to really look at/develop the terrain the PCs are traveling through, and even if you only spend a few minutes outlining the terrain and what it's going to take for the PCs to travel through it, you give them some of the flavor. And you can represent all kinds of travel situations with it.  For example, if the PCs making the journey above wanted to try taking a sailing ship the long way around (and avoid the dangerous woods), their "navigation" check might be a very easy diplomacy check (just to make sure the Captain of the ship doesn't maroon the PCs), the hazard check might be an endurance check to avoid sea sickness, and the encounter check might be an intimidate check to make sure the sailors on the ship don't get ideas about using the PCs for chum, or dates.  The key, as I said, is choices and variety.  Even if they're traveling on roads, those roads go though different territory. Create variations for stages of the journey (one valley infested with goblins, then a ridge where Manticores nest, etc).  You might determine the potential encounter in each zone ahead of time (your random roll, if you have a table) -- and that might help you set some DCs (stealth check or whatever is used to evade the encounter). With the Sheets printed out, you can hand write in skills and DCs, and a quick description of the setting -- organize them into a series and you've got a quick and dirty journey skill challenge.  -rg</blockquote>

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