The Running Fight

[kaomera]

So, 4e has a lot of stuff to make movement and movement-related effects interesting. But I'm starting to think that, in some ways, it's actually counterproductive to producing the kinds of movement that I'd like to see in a game. I think of the fiction of a D&D game as being similar to an action movie, and one of the things I'd like to see is the running fight, a chase sequence with combat occurring throughout.

As an example, let's take an encounter that occurs across a series of rooftops in a city (and at night, I would think, although there's no real specific need for that). The objective, from an encounter-design standpoint, would be to both A) get the PCs from point X to point Y, with meaningful consequences based on how well (ie: fast) they make the journey & B) have a good combat encounter at the same time. Now, it would seem to me that, separately, A would be more likely handled as a skill challenge, while B is, well, a combat encounter...

So I could see simply running this as a combat encounter with a skill challenge element thrown in. But it doesn't seem to me that this would reflect the "fictional reality" that the PCs are racing across the rooftops. Specifically, movement is more likely to be governed by tactical considerations that as a race (against the clock or against the opponents, I'm not sure which would work better?). IDK, maybe it's asking too much, but it seems to me there ought to be a way to get that sort of thing worked into an encounter. (And, obviously (I hope?) there would be a lot of room in the rooftop chase example for cool terrain, etc.)

I can think of some things that ought to help - a "floating map" for instance, where the trailing edge of the encounter area gets pulled (this would work well with dungeon tiles) and new sections added in front as the action moves along. But the main consideration, I'd think, would be to encourage (or even force?) the PCs (and their opponents) moving in the right direction... I was thinking that something like giving each character / monster an extra move (say: you get to move up to your base speed at the start of your move) might help to mitigate the fact that, otherwise, certain conditions, etc. (forced movement?) could take someone completely out of the race... But, then again, if everyone gets it it would just even out, wouldn't it?

Possibly you could adjudicate the skill challenge based on distance traveled, who's "in first", or how close any PC is to the target of the chase on a given round, instead of skill checks as normal. I wouldn't be sure exactly how to balance that, though. A couple of particular problems that I see are that certain effects (as noted above) could have an overly-powerful effect on this kind of thing, and some builds are going to just be much better / worse at this kind of encounter, possibly to an unbalancing degree...

Anyone else have any thoughts / suggestions?

 

[Incenjucar]

Isn't there a skill challenge "chase" example in one of the DMGs?

 

[Grabuto138]

You first need to make sure that the party is very motivated to keep moving. I imagine it would be hard for most players to ignore mosters. It is not in their nature. It may be as easy as have artillery minions so far away and hard to hit that it is painfully obvious to the party that stopping to screw around with them is a loser's game.

I would think about everything else in terms of terrain powers from the DMG 2. Present the party with a variety of ways to traverse the rooftops. Climbing up the pile of pallets will give them enough height to make the jump. Clothline tightropes, painter's scaffolds with a nicely placed rope to swing on. Some sort of catapult made of scattered boards to launch the halfling across. I would also include stuff to hinder the monsters. See if you could can include movers carrying a piece of glass and a fruit cart.

It would require some DM finesse and latitude on the part of the players but you could ease up on enforcing the action economy, explaining that it is an encounter cum skill challenge. For example running while slicing the full clothes line to block the pursuer and then jumping and grapping some monkey bars to swing across the room might be a double move with a single athletics check. A player could just move their speed x2 while bull rushing past a monster (kind of a charge attack and move action) without sweating where the charge ended and the move began. Just have them stop at the monster if the rush fails.

What to do when someone falls off? The party will bunker down and try to hold off the monsters while saving the character. Maybe have a list of go-to events that keeps the player in the chase. They land on a canopy and lose a healing surge. They get a trivial check (ideally trivial for the specific player but still hard overall just to keep the party scared) and grap a decorative gargoyle. You could even have some mysterious monsters that fly up and rend them before dropping them, or lurker assassins with garote lassos that catch them in mid-air and fling them in the right direction with much damage.

 

[S'mon]

I definitely wouldn't use the grid combat system for this. I'd probably use narrative description, lots of skill rolls, and a few combat rolls. I wouldn't lock it into the formal 'skill challenge' rules since I think they're an unnecessary straitjacket, but it would look very similar.

I think the combat system works best where the PCs are fighting in a large-ish but defined area; certain sorts of action-movie battles work well with it, eg in "Where Eagles Dare" the gunfight in the dungeons of the castle would work in 4e combat, the final vehicle chase scene would be narrated/skill roll. The closest parrallel would be to superhero comic 'base battles' where the heroes are fighting in the villain's lair or vice versa.

 

[Tony Vargas]

One way to handle this is with 'relative movement.' So, if most of the characters are moving along at 6, a speed 5 character falls a little behind each round, until he uses a standard action to catch up. The scenery sort of 'scrolls' along, rather than moving the minis. Each character, be default, uses his move to keep up with the action (as best he can), so has a standard to use for attacks or other important actions, or to trade in for a move to catch up or pull ahead...

A skill challenge aspect can be built in, with characters rolling Athletics or Endurance or other skills to keep up with the running battle.

 

[kaomera]

Isn't there a skill challenge "chase" example in one of the DMGs?

There is, but I'm hoping to find something other than just a skill challenge. I've played through a few chases this way and found them pretty underwhelming. Mind you - the people I've played 4e with have generally been of the mind to completely hide the mechanics of skill challenges. The big issue, I think, is lack of compelling decision-making - it seems to always end up boiling down to "which skill do I have the highest bonus at".

You first need to make sure that the party is very motivated to keep moving. I imagine it would be hard for most players to ignore mosters. It is not in their nature. It may be as easy as have artillery minions so far away and hard to hit that it is painfully obvious to the party that stopping to screw around with them is a loser's game.

I agree. I ran some "gauntlet" style encounters when I was running 3.5 (in part just because I was able to get 12' of table space and wanted to use all of my dungeon tiles), and the ability of the players to ignore the point of the encounter and just sit and take damage because there was a monster still standing was pretty mind-boggling.

I would think about everything else in terms of terrain powers from the DMG 2. Present the party with a variety of ways to traverse the rooftops. Climbing up the pile of pallets will give them enough height to make the jump. Clothline tightropes, painter's scaffolds with a nicely placed rope to swing on. Some sort of catapult made of scattered boards to launch the halfling across. I would also include stuff to hinder the monsters. See if you could can include movers carrying a piece of glass and a fruit cart.

Yeah, ideally I would have a really big map (in sections, or maybe even just drawn at a larger scale?) with a lot of stuff going on and several ways to get across, each with advantages and disadvantages... One problem, however, is getting all the relevant information to the players. Even if they're willing to be given the mechanical details that's a lot of info to pass out, and if not you're relying on them to guess what's going on. I also think that, personally, I'd be happier describing such stuff without the battlemat and stuff. With it, the best way to get information across in a way that the players will actually remain aware of is by having a 100% accurate representation of everything, and I don't really have the time / space / money to have lots and lots of 3D terrain or even minis for every monster I might want...

It would require some DM finesse and latitude on the part of the players but you could ease up on enforcing the action economy, explaining that it is an encounter cum skill challenge. For example running while slicing the full clothes line to block the pursuer and then jumping and grapping some monkey bars to swing across the room might be a double move with a single athletics check. A player could just move their speed x2 while bull rushing past a monster (kind of a charge attack and move action) without sweating where the charge ended and the move began. Just have them stop at the monster if the rush fails.

What to do when someone falls off? The party will bunker down and try to hold off the monsters while saving the character. Maybe have a list of go-to events that keeps the player in the chase. They land on a canopy and lose a healing surge. They get a trivial check (ideally trivial for the specific player but still hard overall just to keep the party scared) and grap a decorative gargoyle. You could even have some mysterious monsters that fly up and rend them before dropping them, or lurker assassins with garote lassos that catch them in mid-air and fling them in the right direction with much damage.

I definitely agree about the action economy. As for falling off, I'd just not make it an option. Set up obstacles so that they hinder / slow down the PC on a skill check failure, not actually put them out of the fight / race. This is what I've been doing with recent encounters, where it made huge amounts of sense to have lava as a terrain feature, but I didn't want to deal with the mechanics of it.

I definitely wouldn't use the grid combat system for this. I'd probably use narrative description, lots of skill rolls, and a few combat rolls. I wouldn't lock it into the formal 'skill challenge' rules since I think they're an unnecessary straitjacket, but it would look very similar.

I think the combat system works best where the PCs are fighting in a large-ish but defined area; certain sorts of action-movie battles work well with it, eg in "Where Eagles Dare" the gunfight in the dungeons of the castle would work in 4e combat, the final vehicle chase scene would be narrated/skill roll. The closest parrallel would be to superhero comic 'base battles' where the heroes are fighting in the villain's lair or vice versa.

This seems reasonable, if rather disappointing. Part of the issue is that I'm finding that a lot of the area that gets mapped out goes unused. Maneuvering is something that mainly happens before the two sides meet in melee, and with the distances a creature can move (especially with a charge) that segment of the encounter doesn't last long. Once you're engaged movement largely becomes a matter of shifting a square or two. Also, movement in chases is a bit funky - you want to give the guy in front an advantage (so that there's an incentive to try and get out in front), but at the same time anyone who's behind needs a way to catch up... If part of the fight involves stopping a given monster from reaching the artifact / summoning circle / whatever, it would ideally be handled in the form of a skill challenge of some sort: X successes before Y fails. Because the way that movement actually works on the battlemat is too much of an unforgiving, all-or-nothing kind of thing.

 

[Nytmare]

What if you juggled the two of them together? A series of combat map fights interspersed with skill challenges that allowed the characters to influence how the next mini fight would go?

Streetwise > athletics > acrobatics to figure out a shortcut, jump an alley, and thread the needle through a window on the opposite side so that you can cut them off and start the next battle ahead of them.

Dueling athletics and Endurance checks to full out give chase and gauge how close you can start the next combat and whether anyone loses any healing surges.

Streetwise > perception > bluff to corral them to a dead-end edge of a building, choosing map tile placement, or terrain layout.

Insight > perception > streetwise to notice that you're being lead into an ambush, and to take the appropriate precautions.

If the players lose their quarry, a one time series of perception vs stealth rolls to pick up the trail before it goes cold.

 

[kaomera]

What if you juggled the two of them together? A series of combat map fights interspersed with skill challenges that allowed the characters to influence how the next mini fight would go?

That's one way to handle it. I've been thinking of running it as a fight "off the grid", myself, and I think the two have the same big issue for me: Players pick their powers (or feats, etc.) because they want their characters to be able to do the cool stuff that power represents. Powers are written in a very specific way in part because that gives them "truth in advertising"; they work the way they say they work and the players know this.

For example: if a player takes a power that knocks an enemy prone, I expect that to be because the player wants to be able to apply the prone condition, as it is written, to the enemies their character hits. If that power is appropriate to use in a skill challenge, or other situation where it can't be applied as written, you end up with the DM deciding how it's going to be applied. You end up undermining the player's ability to make informed choices about how they spend their character-building resources and you turn the game from players vs. system to players vs. DM.

Also, one of the big reasons why I play 4e is the expectation that it makes the battlemat useful, worthwhile, and fun. The big argument for using the battlemat has always been that it "allows" some people to "visualize things"; unfortunately I find that it pretty much has the opposite effect for me. Once you put the battlemat and minis out in front of me it's much harder for me to view things from the characters' eyes, I have a hard time not just seeing a bunch of plastic figures on some cardboard tiles. 4e makes the position of those figures and what's on the tiles actually matter in a fun way.

Without that benefit I don't feel like a lot of other stuff 4e does to produce structure in the game is actually beneficial to my play. A big example would be skill challenges (and note that the majority of players I have gamed with do not want to deal with SCs in any kind of a mechanical way, and I think that would make a huge difference) - some may like the mechanical structure they provide me for running non-combat encounters, but I feel that it has really only hurt my game. I don't feel that I actually need a count of successes and failures to determine when the scene is over or what the outcome is.

So I think that I could run an encounter like this pretty well if I just relied on describing the scene instead of playing it out on the battlemat, but it would waste some of the advantages of playing 4e in the first place. I think that a good start towards running it "on the grid" would be to make the players aware what the goal & purpose of the encounter is. State plainly that the encounter is not about killing monsters, that they aren't "worth XP" in this case, maybe even make it clear that there is no actual limit to how many monsters will show up - so that taking them out in general isn't useful, although taking out one that's in a bad spot for the PCs still would be...

Then I think you also want to reward the PCs for moving forward. Something like a SC, but with a determination of how far the PCs have advanced in place of actual skill checks. Then set up obstacles in the PCs paths so that they have to choose between different routes... IDK, this is turning into an awful lot of work, and that's been part of the problem for me - making that work pay off enough that it's "worth it". It would be a lot easier if I just set up the situation and then tried to model it within the system, but I also feel like the results would tend to be unsatisfying.