Radiating Gnome
Adventurer
I love playing rogues, and as a DM that influences my decisions -- I want this to be a reasonable thing to do.
I find it interesting, though, that 4e has both given us a good tool to use to manage the scouting mission (the skill challenge) and made them largely unnecessary (balanced encounters & no serious pre-combat buffing).
Anyway, I think you need to find a way to include a few ingredients:
1 - Risk -- the scouting mission needs to involve some (probably low) level of risk.
2 - Reward -- there needs to be a good reason to put in the effort to scout ahead -- otherwise there's no point in taking the risk.
You can make this fairly quick, though, to avoid boring the snot out of your other players. A series of stealth checks, probably followed with another check based on what the scout is observing -- perception, insight, dungeoneering, etc. Success on that check brings back information and maybe a mechanical reward. Fail on enough stealth checks and you get spotted/caught/etc. Fail on the observation check and you don't manage to bring back much usable information.
Rewards -- some ideas:
Information rewards: Telling the party what they'll be facing may give them an opportunity to prepare tactics.
Position Rewards: Allow the scout to take an ambush position near the encounter area -- and give him a surprise round. Anyone else who wants to try to join can make a stealth check as well, but if one PC fails all surprise is lost.
Mechanical Rewards: We can use little "bumps" to represent some of the tactical/informational/whatever the PCs have for the encounter. Thinks like:
- Double Roll - use it as a free action when you're making a D20 roll to roll two dice and use the better roll.
- Reroll - use it as a free action after rolling a d20 roll to reroll.
- Bump - use it as a free action after rolling a d20 to add +2 to the roll
- Defensive Bump - use as a free action after an enemy makes an attack roll on you. Add +2 to the targeted defense and use the new value to determine if the attack hits.
- Minionize - (this is very powerful) - use it as a free action after hitting a standard target (not solo or elite) with an attack: the target is reduced to 0 hp by the attack.
and so on. The idea here is to create a handful of standard rewards you can give to PCs because they've been given intel on an upcoming encounter. These standard rewards can be customized like crazy.
For example, in one game where the PCs had the opportunity to study the fighting style of a particular order of knights, I gave each PC a consumable card that would allow the PC to reroll an attack against a member of that order -- or force a member of that order to reroll an attack they had just made. The fluff around this card described how the PC had had time to study the way the knights attack, where they leave themselves open, the way they always follow one type of stroke with another, and so on.
Once you've got this basic idea in mind -- these sorts of consumable benefits tied to specific encounters, locations, opponents, etc -- lots of other ideas can start to occur to you. For example, if you have a situation where the players have the opportunity to prepare a location for an upcoming battle, why not give them each a reroll and call it "home field advantage". Require that, when the PC uses the consumable buff, he or she describe the advantage that creates the reroll.
For example, the PCs have prepared to fight marauding orcs in a burned out farmhouse they've prepared. The orcs are swarming over the place, and the party wizard is backing away from an axe-wielding terror. The orc rolls and hits, but the wizard's player plays his consumable "home field advantage" and says "he would have hit me, but he didn't know about the rake sitting tines up under the hay -- he steps on the tines as he swings and the handle bashes into the side of his head" which would force the reroll.
-rg
I find it interesting, though, that 4e has both given us a good tool to use to manage the scouting mission (the skill challenge) and made them largely unnecessary (balanced encounters & no serious pre-combat buffing).
Anyway, I think you need to find a way to include a few ingredients:
1 - Risk -- the scouting mission needs to involve some (probably low) level of risk.
2 - Reward -- there needs to be a good reason to put in the effort to scout ahead -- otherwise there's no point in taking the risk.
You can make this fairly quick, though, to avoid boring the snot out of your other players. A series of stealth checks, probably followed with another check based on what the scout is observing -- perception, insight, dungeoneering, etc. Success on that check brings back information and maybe a mechanical reward. Fail on enough stealth checks and you get spotted/caught/etc. Fail on the observation check and you don't manage to bring back much usable information.
Rewards -- some ideas:
Information rewards: Telling the party what they'll be facing may give them an opportunity to prepare tactics.
Position Rewards: Allow the scout to take an ambush position near the encounter area -- and give him a surprise round. Anyone else who wants to try to join can make a stealth check as well, but if one PC fails all surprise is lost.
Mechanical Rewards: We can use little "bumps" to represent some of the tactical/informational/whatever the PCs have for the encounter. Thinks like:
- Double Roll - use it as a free action when you're making a D20 roll to roll two dice and use the better roll.
- Reroll - use it as a free action after rolling a d20 roll to reroll.
- Bump - use it as a free action after rolling a d20 to add +2 to the roll
- Defensive Bump - use as a free action after an enemy makes an attack roll on you. Add +2 to the targeted defense and use the new value to determine if the attack hits.
- Minionize - (this is very powerful) - use it as a free action after hitting a standard target (not solo or elite) with an attack: the target is reduced to 0 hp by the attack.
and so on. The idea here is to create a handful of standard rewards you can give to PCs because they've been given intel on an upcoming encounter. These standard rewards can be customized like crazy.
For example, in one game where the PCs had the opportunity to study the fighting style of a particular order of knights, I gave each PC a consumable card that would allow the PC to reroll an attack against a member of that order -- or force a member of that order to reroll an attack they had just made. The fluff around this card described how the PC had had time to study the way the knights attack, where they leave themselves open, the way they always follow one type of stroke with another, and so on.
Once you've got this basic idea in mind -- these sorts of consumable benefits tied to specific encounters, locations, opponents, etc -- lots of other ideas can start to occur to you. For example, if you have a situation where the players have the opportunity to prepare a location for an upcoming battle, why not give them each a reroll and call it "home field advantage". Require that, when the PC uses the consumable buff, he or she describe the advantage that creates the reroll.
For example, the PCs have prepared to fight marauding orcs in a burned out farmhouse they've prepared. The orcs are swarming over the place, and the party wizard is backing away from an axe-wielding terror. The orc rolls and hits, but the wizard's player plays his consumable "home field advantage" and says "he would have hit me, but he didn't know about the rake sitting tines up under the hay -- he steps on the tines as he swings and the handle bashes into the side of his head" which would force the reroll.
-rg
