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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6576353" data-attributes="member: 42582">Thanks for the post.In 4e, "flogging your horses to death" would be an element in a skill challenge (eg sacrifice money = to 10% of the value of a magic item of your level to gain +2 to a check). So the only way horses could be flogged to death would be in that sort of context. But as I posted upthread, the timing in this case wasn't being resolved as a skill challenge (as best I can recall): the players declare that their PCs are chasing down the gnolls, and their arrival is narrated. I can't remember all the details, to be honest, but I can be confident that the timing wasn't in issue, because if it was I wouldn't have handled it the way I did!I'm not even sure that the players (or PCs) knew that the prisoners were slated for sacrifice until they entered the ruined temple and interrogated a (different, less sympathetic) prisoner.I can understand that it's anathema, but the illusionist bit still puzzles me. It's illusory because the game world's not real? But no one's game world is real!I can see why someone might be attracted to the idea of a pre-written timeline from which the GM doesn't vary, though as I posted upthread I think D&D doesn't have very good rules for managing timelines once you get beyond a few basics. But it puzzles me to describe the alternative as illusory! The pre-written timeline isn't any more real or objective!In the abstract, I don't really see how to answer this. What is going on, and why make the item?Even in the GM's pre-written timeline version, what time is the sacrifice going to take place? Midnight? Measured how (the cultists don't have wrist-watches, presumably)? And what time, exactly, did the PCs start making their item - and did stopping for lunch, to avoid fatigue/hunger penalties, cost them 10 minutes or 30? How long was the queue at the tavern? These are the sorts of things I have in mind when I say that D&D doesn't really have the resources to handle time outside of a fairly narrow range of contexts.Outside of some way of putting the whole thing on a meaningful clock, I don't see the point of turning time into part of the stakes - it's just an invitation to GM fiat. As I've said, in 4e the way you put it onto a clock is via a skill challenge. Until the place of the magic item creation within such a skill challenge is known, I can't really answer the question. Maybe if the skill challenge fails, and the PCs stopped to make an item, you narrate a head rolling down the mountainside as they arrive at the temple - "If only you'd got here quicker, you might have saved the prisoner!" - in other words, the expenditure of a notable block of time adds material to use in narrating the failure.</blockquote>

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