Let me begin with a story. I was watching a certain, recently released, vampire movie recently (no, not the one with the glittering vamps), and it came to a scene where two characters were at a standoff with a more powerful adversary. They circled the creature as it hissed, claws ready. Everyone, characters and audience alike, were wondering who was going to strike first. Having D&D on my mind at the time (as it often is), I pondered, ‘You know, you can’t really get that kind of tension in-game’ No-one is going to waste time ‘circling’, they’ll just be hacking, or at least trying to’. The more I thought more about it however, I realised that I was, as usual, incorrect.
The answer, I believe, lies in skill challenges. I’m sure many have used these neat portions of play to set up mad chases through packed bazaars, interactions with long dead informants or navigating treacherous rapids etc, but the idea that came upon me whilst bathed in the flickering luminescence of the screen before me was using one as a combat encounter.
…perhaps an example will help illustrate my idea.
Five bold adventurers have tracked a red dragon to her volcanic lair. They’ve fought through throngs of her followers and navigated the naturally formed maze that has left many lesser groups trekking off for a date with the Raven Queen. The ancient red stands defiant before them; it’s pride means that they will battle, as it would rather be dead than shown mercy.
In game terms, this means the beginning of combat against a solo creature. This can be tricky for a DM to make exciting – to keep the battle from becoming a grind. Staged battles are an option, giving the solo monster more than one turn per round is another, and there are various other tricks to keep things spicy. Here is mine.
Throw away the minis and the map (or, at least, put them somewhere close by for reference if you like). The DM has described the cavernous space to the players and gets them to roll initiative. The DM doesn’t roll for the dragon. The battle begins. Instead of the first player working out how far she is from the dragon and whether she’ll be able to charge over what may or may not be difficult terrain, she describes her epic idea to the DM:
“Alright, I’m gonna charge out there, screaming my goliath head off. I’m sure that big, red bugger is gonna try and take a swipe at me, and I’m gonna be ready. When it does so, I’m gonna chop it with my battle-axe!”
The DM agrees that that sounds awesome, commenting that it seems like an insight check to him, to read the dragon’s posture and predict it’s move. Not the goliath’s best skill, but she rolls and the Gods of the Dice smile on her: the DM describes the dragon lashing out fiercely with it’s tail, there’s the sound of a massive whip-crack before the roar of a dragon in pain fills the chamber. The goliath has, indeed, sunk it’s weapon into the dragon’s flesh. These humanoids aren’t going to be a pushover after all! That’s one rather cool success to the players.
Next up, it’s the gnome rogue’s turn. He’s decided that he’s gonna try a similar tactic; only instead, he’s gonna slide under the dragon’s tail, kicking up dust and debris before leaping high (well, as high as a gnome can leap), and jamming his dagger in the stomach of the monster, leaving him hanging from the wound. Pretty straight forward acrobatics check. Unfortunately, despite his training, he’s not fast enough. Perhaps he dodges the tail, as hoped, but is swatted by a massive talon he wasn’t prepared for. He is knocked across the rocky floor, coming to rest near a pile of bones left from previous dragon-meals.
The wizard isn’t exactly going to charge in, wand waving. She’s more clever than that – this fight isn’t going to be won on brute strength alone. She puts all of her effort into a blinding light which she hopes will erupt right next to the dragon’s eyeballs. One arcana check later and she’s successful! The dragon’s retinas are seared by the sudden influx of illumination. Mechanically, this means that the next physical attack on the dragon get’s a +2 bonus.
And so on. Hopefully, something like this could keep big fights moving, and allow characters to do some pretty interesting things. Characters aren’t restricted by what powers they have not spent, doing things that they’ve not usually been able to do. Also, if prepared correctly, it means that every character will be just as useful to the combat. It also means that, since no actual HP is being lost, that all players are in the game until they’re victorious, or until they accumulate enough failures that the dragon has the upper hand… and devours them all.
Here’s another example, this one trying to simulate the tension from the film I watched: Two PCs armed only with
daggers are circling a snarling displacer beast. The DM has decided the DC to hit the creature is 20, but each character only has a +5 in strength or acrobatics of whatever they’ve decided to use for successes. They can, however, boost their chances by making numerous insight, perception, intimidate, bluff, religion (for spiritual resolve and/or guidance), nature (for knowledge of animalistic movements), dungeoneering (for knowledge relating to the attacking habits of the particular creature) etc checks. Be wary, however, the displacer beast isn’t just going to crouch there growling, allowing the players to rack up bonuses, it’s going to force a success attempt every 1d4+1 rounds, and these failures count as two! Can the PCs survive?
Obviously these sorts of challenges are not ideal for all battles, but for the sake of variety at least, I think it’s worth a shot. Druids can call on their nature skill in a whole new way, commanding vines to restrict his opponent, even if that’s not a power they have. Fighters endure endless barrages behind their shield with an endurance check, diplomacy can be used for… ok, I haven’t thought of a use for diplomacy in combat yet, but I’m sure there is one! Maybe encouraging your allies? The power, as captain planet says, is yours!
Thanks for putting this idea out there.
I’ve used a skill challenge for a small-scale battle – a duel in fact. One of the characters was a duelist and challenged an NPC. However, no matter how I constructed the NPC, running the duel with the straight combat rules would have been dead boring. As a skill challenge, it was very exciting because I could simply state that the NPC was the PC’s match in a duel, and make it about who was able to get the upper hand with the audience. Intimidate was the main skill, with other skills to buy time and think up insults. The duelist PC was the only one who could garner successes, but the others could roll to provide bonuses.
Another DM ran us through an epic battlefield scenario, in which our PCs were on flying mounts high above the ground troops. The relevant skills were any we could make relevant, from Bluffing the enemy into ambushes, to Athletically knocking leaders off mounts, to Diplomatically coordinating the ground troops. If we’d had to worry about exact positioning, or making checks to stay on our mounts, or things like that, I doubt it would have been as fun.
What you describe is something different from both of those, a “solo” fight against a main bad guy. I think this could really work too and might get around the (somewhat contradictory) problems of a battle that is supposed to be climactic turning into either a slow grind or a fast win for the PCs via stun and daze effects. The PCs can get in there and describe what they do, but there won’t be any quick solution (unless you want there to be) and there’s definite limit to how long the encounter can go.
There are some possible downsides, though. If the players aren’t expecting it, they might wonder why they bothered acquiring all the fancy gear, and honing their powers and tactics, if none of it (or little of it) is going to matter in the challenge. In the duel I ran, I gave the PC duelist a bonus to his Intimidate checks to reflect the fact that he took Sure Strike, so one could give similar bonuses for things like enhancement bonuses, or powers that improve attack or damage rolls.
A common complaint about the theory of skill challenges is that players will just find their best skill and spam it over and over, with the other PCs using Aid Another. I have been lucky enough not to see this occur in practice for some reason, but it’s something of a risk. Many recent skill challenges limit the number of successes you can get with a skill, which could reflect an enemy not falling for a trick more than a few times. That’s one approach, or you could require certain skills to be “unlocked” with other skills (say, Perception to find the weak spot in the dragon’s armor), or make the “solo” actually involve several different skill challenges, each focused on different skills. A “solo” monster could be represented by one complexity 5 challenge, or a complexity 2 and a complexity 3, or five complexity 1s, each with a different set of primary skills.
Another concern this prompts is that the fighter will always use Athletics, the wizard will always use Arcana, the cleric will always use Religion, the druid will always use Nature and so on. Not only are those likely to be the best skills for those characters, but, well, what else does a wizard use but Arcana? History? Arcana and a few other skills are vague enough to lend themselves to any sort of activity, from simple knowledge to an attack, and so will become tiresome defaults. Again, limiting what skills can be used, or requiring a broad range of approaches might deal with this.
How are the enemy’s attacks simulated? Certainly skill failures are obvious points for, say, a dragon to exhale on the party, costing them hit points (rather than surges in this case, I think). In the duel I ran, it wasn’t about the physical damage so much as the stinging insults, but the NPC got a “hit” in every round, so maybe a monster could do that, injuring them as a group every round, such that three big hits (i.e. skill failures) mean that there’s no way to win.
And what if they do lose? Death? Boring, and counter to the skill challenge guidelines. This would take some careful though. Perhaps the monster is still defeated, but at some cost, or not fast enough, or only trapped but not destroyed. Or it escapes altogether.
Anyway, great stuff to think about and, I hope, try. I’m going to re-post the link over in the 4E Skill Challenges group on the Wizards of the Coast board (http://community.wizards.com/skill_challenges_4e).
All very good points, and thanks for posting them! Let’s take a look at some of the concerns (many of which I also share):
The gear issue, ie: “What’s the point of having my +5 dragonslaying sword if it ain’t gonna help?” A fair point it is. The easiest and fairest way around, perhaps, would be what you have done – give appropriate bonuses to certain skills that match the item. These bonuses could be good only a certain number of times, or their bonus could be good throughout the encounter. Perhaps, instead of just a bonus, they allow you a certain number of re-rolls for a given skill?
Spamming certain skills. We have both been lucky in not encountering this in-game as of yet, but I’m certain it’s come up for many other games. The idea of limiting certain skills, or allowing them only after being unlocked it a great one. Perhaps a rogue can only use her acrobatics check after a successful insight check, reading the dragon’s movements? A cleric can only call on their deity so often before the battle is left in their mortal hands. This can get a little complicated, but it set up and clear enough (maybe even with the use of a chart), it could be a lot of fun.
On to enemy attacks. I like the idea of a ‘time limit’ being in place, as it were, such as in the displacer beast example. Costing healing surges is another. One of the bonuses of this endeavor however, is having the party finish (for better or worse) as one, and therefore meaning that no-one sits out. Costing healing surges (and afterwards straight HP) will, eventually, mean someone is taken off the field of battle – though this isn’t always a bad thing, and will make things more tense for the remaining players.
Lastly, PC failure. What if they fail the challenge? I’d say this is very dependant on what form the skill challenge takes. In the dragon example, they’re overwhelmed. They realise that they can’t defeat the beastie and have to make a break for it! Back into the twisting caverns they run, only now the dragon is in hot pursuit, clawing, gnashing and breathing bursts of fire through cracks and openings. Another skill challenge, perhaps? Total party wipe should be a very last resort, but I would not be against individual characters dying in this instance. When facing such an awesome adversary, death should be a very real possibility, whether combat or skill challenge.
Once again, I appreciate your input!
Hmm. I love the idea, but it certainly needs some work to act it out properly. Maybe not the whole combat exchanged for skill challenge, but some kind of prep for it? Kinda circling around.
Some ideas right on the spot:
1)Start it as a fight and show the PCs they don’t stand a chance (BBEG throws them around, kicks someone unconscious and so on)
2)The combat stops and turns to skill challenge, when PCs are desperately looking for a way to have the fight go their way (somehow I have an image of WoW Arthas go for the fleeing party in my head)
3)Something happens and they start fighting again. This time they have a chance.
Maybe something like this?