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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 5142809" data-attributes="member: 15470">[sblock]Ewwww! Cockroaches! I hate cockroaches![/sblock]I like #3 as well.I'd also describe each "Failure", especially the "Failure to act" failures as "some nameless NPC falls to the vermin and dies"...  putting just enough character (description) into the NPC and the manner of his/her death to make the players feel bad about it. You might want to write your skill challenge skills more along the lines of "How does this skill help the helpless NPCs move?".That might give you:[sblock]Athletics: using your shield, sword, staff, at-will-fire-power, etc, to "clear a path": difficulty: easy in rounds 1, 2, medium in rounds 3, 4, hard thereafter. Gives a fairly large plus to anybody trying to convince the NPCs to move along the path ...Acrobatics: carrying an NPC past the bad guys: difficulty easy for children, medium for some NPCs, hard for the largest ..Bluff: convinving the scared NPC's that there's a worse uprising of bugs coming their way, run, run now!  ... etc. Almost every skill might be applicable to this challenge .. and you don't know the characters, so what you really want to set up is a "some skills work in some situations, other skills work in other situations" challenge.For example, Intimidate might be easy against the children, but have negative repercussions if used against the adults.Nature may not get you a success .. but it may give you some clues: they hate fire, they're stronger over that way, they can flatten under things, etc. Ideally those clues point to other skills to use, possibly even giving a +2 "Aid Another" bonus to the person that tries them ...Just, creative, creative, creative.[/sblock]I do, by the way, absolutely love the "Skill Challenge in the middle of a Combat" sequence: its an absolutely fantastic way to add a sense of time-pressure to a battle sequence, as well as to prevent the combat from becoming a routine "kill 'em all" battle.In fact ... you might go with a "Add 2 swarms per round of combat" mechanic to *really* drive home the fact that you can't win this one by sheer force of arms. Or even ... four minion swarms plus one real swarm, giving the minion-swarms the possibility of overrunning the battlefield, getting in the way of the rescue attempts, etc ..</blockquote>

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