Flee the Mad Beholder!
This is a skill challange, rather than a combat encounter. I cribbed the format and some of the basic ideas from Piratecat's 4E campaign notes.
[sblock]
XP Encounter Difficulty: Level 4 (6 level 4 PCs)
Setup The party has a mission to enter the Mournlands, find some sort of artifact and return. Given that it's a dangerous place, I wanted to put them face to face with some really dangerous foes that were well out of their league. Thus I came up with a skill-challenge to escape from a beholder who had spotted them. The party encountered the beholder in the middle of a vast field of ruin, investigating what was reveled to be a petrified victim.
Summary:
I gave each of the players a handout with the following, minus the eye ray section.
[sblock]Flee the Mad beholder!
You must escape from the magic warped creature who's path you've crossed. To make matters worse the land itself seems to be against you, with many hostile arcane barriers in your way and few places to take cover or hide.
Each person must complete a skill challenge: 4 successes before 4 failures. That means you have to make four skill rolls on the Primary Skills list below, before you fail four rolls. The DC starts at DC 12 and increases by +2 every time you use the same skill more than once. A failure on one of these checks causes you to be attacked by the beholder's eye rays. When you succeed you've managed to slip away from the monster, you can still aid your companions (but you can not take the continue on to Thrace action).
If you fail you fall behind and the beholder catches up to you. This is bad.
You can assist others by using the Secondary skills: success gives the person +2, failure gives them -2 on their next Primary roll. Every time you try to use the same skill to help the same person, the DC rises by two.
Skill checks are a standard actions. If for some reason you do not use your move action to flee during your turn you get a -2 penalty to your next primary skill check and MUST use the next attempt to flee or you automatically gain one failure.
Primary skills (start at DC 12): acrobatics, athletics, dungeoneering, endurance, nature, stealth. DC goes up by 2 every time the same skill is used.
Secondary skills (start at DC 12): arcana, insight, nature, history, perception.
Special Actions
Teleport 5 or more squares: 1 automatic success for the teleported party member.
Ranged Attack: Reduce the attack roll of the next eye-ray by 2 on success or grant a single ally member a +2 bonus to their next action on success. On failure you become distracted and wander into an area of magical hazards (can not attack while in a hazardous area).
Continue on to Thrace: While you’re performing the skill challenge, you can try and guide the party towards your final destination of Thrace (if you're not in an area of magical hazards). Make a nature check, DC 17. On success you help redirect the wayward party towards their final destination. If you fail you are attacked by the eye rays or you wander into an area of magical hazards (50/50 chance) as you hesitate to try and pick out your way through the waste. No successes here results in the group being hopelessly lost. One means you know roughly where you are, but loose a day of travel. Two keeps you on course. Three and you find the best path to escape and advance, granting all allies a +2 bonus to any remaining primary checks.
Special: If the beholder acts last everyone starts with one success. If the beholder gets a surprise round everyone unaware starts with one failure, if any players get a surprise round they start with one success.[/sblock]
Eye Rays
[sblock]+19 vs. NAD, 1d8+5 damage + some other effect (depending on the ray).
1) Numbing Cold (cold, fort) - You are slowed (save, endurance or heal[DC 15], others can heal you as well, ends). Your successes do not count until you are no longer slowed.
2) Telekentic Blast (force, reflex, attacks anyone who aided you last turn as well) - you are hurled randomly (1d8)
8: away, you gain 1 success
1-2: backward, you gain 1 failure
3) Fear (psychic/fear, will) - you are shaken (save ends): -2 to defenses and any non-primary skill checks, +1 to primary skill checks.
4) Petrification (fort) - 1 automatic failure, no damage.
5) Venom (poison, fort) - You loose a healing surge.
6) Domination (psychic, will) - You are dominated for 1 round, during which you attempt to hinder an ally with a secondary check and do not flee (success is a -2 to their next check, failure means nothing).
7) Stone to Mud (auto hit, no damage) - You drop neck deep into a pool of sticky mud. You can take no action but try to escape (Athletics DC 12, others can pull you free as well). After you escape you are coated in thick mud, giving you a -2 to all Str/Dex/Con checks and attacks (save ends).
8) Barrage - The beholder makes two ray attacks, against you and one other ally (reroll any 8s)
Anti-Magic Ray (recharge 6): An an interrupt the beholder makes an opposed roll (+10) with the person using the power. On success the power is negated. Utility powers use the most relevant attack bonus, racial powers use your highest stat bonus +1/2 level +2.[/sblock]
Magical Hazards: Random trap, level 1+1d4 (DMG 88), reflavored as a magical hazard. Arcana is an added skill that can be used for most interactions.
Area setup: Abstracted as part of the challenge. I described a success at stealth as ducking behind some rubble and moving silently for a short distance, nature let someone find the clearest path through the broken ground et certera.
Enemies:
I used the stats for a level 15 (solo) Beholder Dethkiss, though just for defenses and HP (the damage was based on the basic deathkiss attack, though the effects weren't).
How it went: We laid the PC's minis out on a large blank sheet of paper in initiative order, and drew a simple set of lines we moved them across to indicate successes, along with the skills used. The warlock opened with otherwind stride (quite gutsy, it's a close burst 1 and he may have had some problems if this failed), and crit. This immobilized the beholder and teleported him far enough for an auto-success. While immobilized I rules that a primary skill failure did not count towards failure (though I wanted them to still eat the eye rays, but forgot), and most people attempted a poor skill. About half of them got it. Near the middle, once everyone at at least one success the memebers with high nature bonuses started making rolls for the secondary objective, we also started to see some failures. The eye rays were rather kind, over the course of the challenge they got 2 fear rays, 1 dominate and a force blast.
The dominate was the most interesting, as I had the PC use bluff to try and convince the rest of the group he needed help after they had escaped. Two others sprinted back (willfully giving up one success) and were prepared to carry him when the compulsion wore off and they all escaped.
Actual Difficulty: Too easy for a number of reasons (not counting the otherwind crit, which was awesome). I would have dropped one of the primary and secondary skills, and made it 5 successes before 3 failures. Having an individual fail isn't the end of the world, the other PCs still would have a chance to save them. The effect I was going for was to put a bit more feat into the PCs, though, so this being harder would have helped. At the end of the skill challenge many people were able to make their last roll on a one, which removed some of the tension I was going for.
How well did it work(on a scale of 1-10): 8. Easily the best skill-challenge I've ever run. Being too easy was partly on account of the Otherwind Stride crit (something I have no problem with), I would have liked some more tension and a better sense of danger to go with the low-level exploration of the Mournlands. But the encounter itself worked really well. I'm going to continue to work on using this format of skill challenge in the future, ones that incorporate combat mechanics (or skill challenges in combat) and include giving the PCs all the information they need up front.[/sblock]
