Skill Challenge Help: Dwarves

[Infiniti2000]

I asked why dwarves chop down trees in the plots forum, and this weekend I'm hoping to have the players work through only my second skill challenge of the campaign. (I think I suck at them so bad I'm deathly afraid of them.) The PC's are currently 3rd level, though I artificially whipped them through part of 1st and all of 2nd (we didn't want to spend a huge amount of time at low-levels, so I'm not currently counting XP).

Anyway, for this question, the PC's will encounter some dwarves, which will initially be the dwarven lumberjack group. It would be a tough but winnable fight if it came to that, but that's not my hope and I doubt my players will actively choose it. Instead, the PCs will have to work with the dwarves and try to gain their trust enough to (eventually?) secure a truce with the dwarves and elves. I need to figure out a skill challenge to use in the next session (March 27). Relevant pieces of information:

• The PCs are currently adventuring far away from the Elven settlement with two elves, the Master at Arms and an archer apprentice.
• The PCs are moving to investigate the area where they previously saw dwarves chopping down trees.
• On the way, the elves detoured to have the players fight a beholder gauth for them. This was deceptive on their part and the PCs figured it out before they got there, though the PCs also agreed to do it. One of the three elves accompanying them died in the fight.
• Because of the detour, the party notices a wood fire off their path. They would not have noticed this had they not followed the elves to the beholder. This smoke site will be the lumberjacks burning down a bunch of wood for charcoal before the long journey back to their city.
• The dwarves know of a stone drake lair that constantly gives them trouble to and from their city to the forests. Now that I write this up, maybe this is exactly the best description (the stone drake I guess HELPS the elves...). Anyway, this could be used as leverage. The dwarves cannot take on the stone drakes without significant loss of life and yet the PCs could.
• The PC's have an everful keg. They also have everlasting provisions. I swear I didn't intend these as "plot items" but they're incredibly relevant right now. The players specifically carried the keg on this mission just for the possibilities it would produce in negotations.
• The players races: goliath, elf, half-elf, human, shifter.
• I have all my 3.X books with all that flavor and use it. For example, I'm using the full race descriptions in Races of the Wild (for elves) and Races of Stone (for dwarves and goliaths). Feel free to consider those things in here and I'll update any necessary mechanics to 4th.
• I have several other special things in my campaign. One is a gas I call 'falium' which is produced primarily by a type of sheep. This gas is MUCH lighter than air, or magical, or whatever, but it allows the sheep to float. These sheep are then used to power airships.
• In addition, I have a type of rock called vellenite that is very light and porous, similar to coral (though not alive). Consider it lighter, but not quite as brittle. This rock, however, usually contains natural pockets of falium. Once dug up, it can float and be used to create floating islands of a sort.
• The gas is inflammable! This obviously presents a large amount of war considerations.
• Based on the comments in the linked thread, the dwarves are using wood to build war machines (perhaps enclosing the vellenite or maybe they have a cache of the floating sheep. They might also have finally devised a process to capture the gas within a built enclosure (of wood), which would be EXTREMELY valuable.
• The PCs don't know about any of this and would need to garner an extreme amount of trust by the dwarves. One way to do this, obviously, is to take out the stone drakes for them.

Thanks for any help!

 

[FireLance]

My first question would be: does this really need to be a skill challenge? What you have described sounds to me like it would make a fine roleplaying encounter as it is, without the need to force it into the skill challenge format.

Either way, I think it would be useful to establish the motivations of the parties involved.

The PCs
Do the PCs want to establish a truce between the dwarves and the elves in the first place?
Would the PCs actively seek out information about falium? Is there a specific reason why it would be valuable or important to them? Has its existence even been hinted at in the campaign so far?

The Dwarves
What do the dwarves want? Do they just want to bring the charcoal back to their city?
Would they initiate hostilities with the elves travelling with the PCs?
How eager are they to obtain the PCs' help to fight the stone drake? What would prompt them to raise the issue in conversation with the PCs? What rewards or promises can they offer?
How secretive are the dwarves about falium? Under what circumstances would it be in their interest to tell the PCs about it?
What are some things that the PCs can do to get on the dwarves' good side?

The Elves
Would the elves initiate hostilities against the dwarves?
How much do the elves trust and/or respect the PCs, given that they have just killed a beholder gauth?

If you do want to run this as a skill challenge, I think it would be best if you add some kind of constraint so that the PC with the highest Diplomacy score can't just keep making skill checks until the challenge is over. I would suggest playing up the hostility between the dwarves and the elves, so that unless the PCs can collectively succeed at 10 Moderate DC skill checks (average two per PC) within three rounds (each PC may make one skill check each round, or two if they spend an action point), both sides will attack each other.

Applicable skills might be:
Diplomacy and Intimidate to make the dwarves and elves back down from a fight
Athletics (maximum two successes, one for each elf) to physically restrain the elves from fighting
Insight (maximum two successes); the first successful check reveals that the dwarves are thirsty, the second reveals that despite their heated remarks against the elves, the dwarves are eyeing the PCs appraisingly, as if they want to ask them something
Streetwise (maximum one success) to be aware of rumors that the dwarves are having trouble with a stone drake

Offering the dwarves a drink gets the party one automatic success (if they had not succeeded on the first Insight check, you might increase it to two)
Offering to fight the stone drake gets the party one automatic success (if they had not succeeded on the second Insight check or the Streetwise check, you could increase the award by one for each check not made)

 

[Benlo]

When I thought "lumberjack skill challenge", I immediately thought caber tossing and balancing on spinning logs.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Actually, I initially planned it as pure roleplaying, but figured this would be a golden opportunity, as it were, to introduce a skill challenge. It's hard for me to actually defend the usage of a skill challenge so if no one else out there thinks it's a good idea then I certainly won't do it. As I said, I suck at them (and yes I tried Obsidian) but I think I like the concept and so was gonna try to give them a fair shake.

I have answers to all of your inspirational questions and will use that to drive the RP encounter. If the players gear their actions towards a "natural" skill challenge, though, I'll wing it. I'll take some SC-based notes (as you've thankfully provided) and run with it if I have.

PS. If anyone's actually interested in some of those answers or looking for more details, in case by some bizarre chance you find inspiration from this plot, please feel free to ask here or drop me a PM.

 

[JohnSnow]

Personally, I'm beginning to think Skill Challenges make more sense in more active situations. Using them in a Negotiation, I'm not sure that they really "work" as intended. The concept is great, but often, the skill challenge mechanics kind of get in the way of roleplaying. It would be great if they didn't, and it is possible to keep them in the background, but I think mechanizing it like that frustrates a lot of people. Now, I admit I have limited experience, in that the only one I've used so far is the "Sir Keegan" challenge in KotS, but mechanizing it that way, it felt...finicky, and rushed.

That said, I love the concept of skill challenges, and think they'd work great for an investigation, a chase scene, and numerous other "active" scenarios. It's just that in negotiations, I think it's so easy for them to get in the way of the fun. That said, I really like to let players of Charismatic characters get the benefits of their character's people skills rather than their own. Ergo, I'd like to see the Skill Challenge mechanic (or some other one) work in negotiations. I'm just not sure how well it does.

Just as an aside, it looked to me (on a cursory review) like there are some nifty Skill Challenge rules in the Saga Edition book Galaxy of Intrigue. There might not be anything particularly "new" if you're familiar with them from 4e, but you never know. I do recall a fairly hefty discussion of using them for chase scenes (those are very Star Wars-y challenges). In addition, the chapter on them in DMG2 was certainly helpful (IMO). If you regard Skill Challenges as your personal nemesis, those might be useful resources, if you don't already have them.