The Elements of Grit

[Palanan]

This is a DM-only thread, so my players should leave now.



--And when I say "grit," I don't mean anything to do with the Gunslinger, but rather the tenacity of a determined PC.

In one of my recent sessions I ran a climbing encounter, in which the party had to scale a cliff-wall the hard way--pitons and ropes, with a careful attention to the route. Owing to the circumstances they had very little magic to help them, so they had to make the climb through hard work and sheer grit.

...At least, that was the idea, but unfortunately I ended up enjoying it more than my players. This is partly because I've done a lot more real-world climbing than they have, and also because they felt it was "just a series of skill rolls." (I was going for something more involving than that, but clearly fell short.)

So, I could use suggestions for encounters to really challenge the party, requiring creativity and ingenuity to solve. I'm open to just about anything; my goal is for the players to be deeply engaged in the encounter and enjoying the experience--while sweating for their characters' lives, of course. What can I throw at them?

:smallbiggrin:

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[questionmark693]

Offhand, the first thing that comes to mind is complex skill checks in Unearthed Arcana, which I am completely unfamiliar with, might be what you're looking for.

[Palanan]

I'm looking for scenarios and encounter ideas which might well involve skill checks, but which ultimately need a spark of cleverness from the players to resolve.

It's hard to define it more precisely, but I'm looking for creative, off-the-wall encounter ideas to challenge a sixth-level party.

[W3bDragon]

How about an aquatic encounter?

This encounter assumes that your PCs don't have access to Water Breathing or Freedom of Movement. Its still worth trying if the have freedom of movement, but won't be as challenging.

They need to explore a ship wreck or some other random deep underwater locale. All they have to help them is a Bottle of Air, which they need to pass around to keep breathing. Under normal circumstances, judicious timing and staying close together can make surviving under water trivial with a Bottle of Air, but then, you throw in an encounter with an aquatic creature or creatures with some kind of repeatable aoe attack.

All of a sudden, since they're now in combat, the time they can hold their breath for is halved. They need to concentrate on fighting the enemies, dealing with all the penalties of being underwater, spreading out to avoid the aoe, but not so far that they can't pass around the bottle of air, which will be needed more often since they can hold their breath of a shorter period while fighting.

Beware of it turning into a TPK though.

[Berenger]

They hire a "tour guide" (tracker, ferryman, sherpa) that attempts to lead them into some kind of ambush (slavers, bandits, dragon, angry winter god of doomglacier, you name it). This can be averted by roleplay (listening to conversations, picking up bits of trivia about the guides trade, recognizing suspicious behaviour in the fluff text) and appropriate social skill checks with different outcomes (characters led into ambush, characters stranded in the wilderness with dead guide, characters convince guide to switch sides and turn the table against the ambushers). Works best when the guide is a tough guy on equal footing with the party, not some 0-level commoner easily intimidated or killed.

[ImaginaryDragon]

Seconding the underwater deal. An underwater castle might be cool, there could be pockets of air trapped in it.

Or a giant turtle or something.

[Phelix-Mu]

Underwater can be cool. For slightly less exotic, try coastal caves. They have a tendency to flood VERY quickly, and obviously can have naturally occurring air pockets.

I find that a good way to give players a concept of just what they achieve when they try difficult stuff is to give very dramatic descriptions of the results of a check. I also don't stick to the RAW for skill checks, either, allowing innovative or heroic uses as appropriate. The best way to add drama is to have multiple problems for the players to confront at one time. For instance, if they were climbing, that can be tense (especially with some description of animal skulls and bones at the base of the cliff, the mangled remains of falling victims). But it's much more tense if you mix in, say, some green slime! Or some other CR appropriate threat.

I'm gonna have to use green slime on climbing players now. Slight complication in that direct sunlight kills it, but maybe it was hidden in shade or under a rock. It falls on a player (in the face?!!), or maybe eats partway through the rope. DRAMA!

Force players to do problem-solving in addition to die-rolling for skill checks. It should be more memorable than just a climb.

[BRC]

The trick is to think about Decisions vs Rolls. Generally speaking, Decisions are fun and engaging, Rolls are boring, especially if it's the same type of roll over and over again.

people keep talking about underwater fights, that could work, but I would caution against it. Most characters lose a lot of their functionality while in the water, so you're just limiting your PC's toolbox.

What you want is a Dynamic battle, one where there are circumstances beyond the monsters to handle, one where the situation changes every round, and one with lots of Decisions that must be made.


What you really want is a Guerilla encounter. I've run these before and it's been lots of fun. The trick is to, as much as possible, break up the "I stand there and attack" nonsense.

First, you design a map. Something with lots of twists and turns and passages, plus a few environmental hazards. Make sure there are lots of broken sightlines. A crowded marketplace, or a ruined temple or something.
Next you send them up against something they cannot beat in a straight fight. Preferably multiple somethings that collectively are too tough for the Party. Enough that if the PC's tried a slugfest they would get squashed.

Then you give them the map and some prep time. The PC's need to split up the Baddies and wear them down one-by-one. They can't afford to be bogged down in a slugfest, doing so will just get them killed. Hit-and-Run is going to be the key.

Alternatively, have the goal of the encounter be NOT to defeat the Baddies, but to escape, or snag the Macguffin, or do something else. Perhaps more mooks arrive each round, or the bad guy is Just That Strong, where the best the party can do is keep him occupied.


Don't even think in terms of presenting the PC's with options. Present them with an open-ended scenario, and make them devise their own plans. One idea would be to have the baddies adapt to the PC's tactics, forcing the PC's to come up with a variety of tricks for taking down the enemy. Let no trick work more than once.

[Fibinachi]

BRC's idea is very, very good. With a bit of prep time or story set up (I don't know your plot, so no ideas), it can be very interesting to force them to choose between multiple options. If you make decisions between when to do something and what to do rather than how to do it the force of an encounter, it makes things flow dynamically. What a grammatically confusing sentence. I'll explain with a troll.
--

Trolls need to be hit with fire damage. So the "How to" is "How to acquire the fire to hit the troll with". Sometimes, the DM gets tricky, and the troll is covered in an environmental hazmat suit or has poncho on, and then it becomes "How do we get rid of the fire dampening, so we can hit it with fire", but it's still basically the same.

Give them a troll and plenty of fire bombs. Then set the encounter in a room full of oil slicks. Then the question is "When do we hit the troll" and "What part of the room do we *not* aim at"? You give them a really simple task that they've done many times before, and you remove the mystery of solving the task ("What will overcome creature X's damage reduction?" is no longer the main question), but change the way they do their decisions.
--

Have them participate in a high speed chase on the back of appropriate vehicles (sand sleighs, chariots, carriages, small boats) and give them a set movement speed that is not dependent on skill checks. Then map out the downriver / downroad and add plenty of random blocks, rocks and turns. They need to:

Fend of enemies
Navigate
Avoid collisions
And stay on the moving vehicles


So their choices start being "Should we attempt to ram", "can we make them hit the roadblock", "should we jump on their raft", "the sail just caught fire because the bard is a really bad shot with alchemist fire and we have some problems".
--

Have them climb up a mountain side, and tell them they won't need to do climb checks to do basic movement upwards as long as they're careful and try nothing insane. The complication will not be the actual climbing, that's just vertical movement, the complication will be the occasional rock tumbling down from above and the Cliff Spiders. So they need to:

Predict where stones will come tumbling down and not be in that "lane"
avoid getting stuck in spider web (because stones might come tumbling down)
Maybe they even need to avoid making too much noise, or the people further up the cliff will notice they're climbing?

--

Do an underwater like scenario. :smalltongue:

[Spuddles]

Let them know a game week to a game month in advance that they are about to face overwhelming odds- an army of orcs & its giant allies, a marauding wyrm, a portal to the abyss, the white plague.

Then let them go about researching it/scouting it/spying on it. They identify weaknesses, come up with novel ways of using their resources. Give them little side quests. "oh man, if we could only get our hands on a portable hole & a bag of holding, we could annihilate their leadership!" Queue them raising funds via guile, diplomacy, theft, force, or fire.

[Palanan]

Thanks to everyone for the ideas so far. Very interesting that several people have suggested an underwater scenario--and I haven't even mentioned I'm running a seafaring campaign. :smallbiggrin:

So, I could use input on two kinds of encounter:

Underwater Encounter

The PCs are just reaching sixth level, mainly a martial hack-and-slash party. They don't have access to any sort of water breathing, and definitely not Freedom of Movement.

However, one of the PCs is a homebrewed half-aventi/half-aquatic orc, and he's essentially an underwater character, with pearlsteel armor and a water-adapted greatsword. So far the other PCs are limited to holding their breath.

Since this is a seafaring campaign, it's about time I dunk them under the surface. The half-aquatic orc is a melee grinder, and unfortunately he tends to trivialize combat encounters, so I'd love suggestions for an underwater, non-combat encounter that both the aquatic orc and the other party members could be caught up in--and seriously threatened by.

Something Else

I'd also really like to add an encounter that's dashing, fun and heroic; just no idea how to work this. Again, something other than combat, or at least not focused on combat--something crazy-memorable and way out of the box. Preferably involving heights.

The PCs' ship is far out in the open ocean, so I'm limited in the terrain involved, but I'm open to any and all suggestions.

Keep those ideas a-comin', they'll all find a home somewhere.

:smalltongue:

[Preaplanes]

I made a light beam puzzle once.

Basically, it was a maze of shadows filled with a Vashta Nerada proxy and patches of magical light.

In addition to the maze, there was a puzzle.

They had a cart, which was able to hold 6 mirrors, and the party of 4 had a mirror each. Each mirror could be held in a light square and directed in LOS at the shadows, driving a 5-foot square of them away.

There were two real puzzle-y bits. One of them was a patch of shadows 9 long. Another had an angle that went out of line of sight. For the latter the Barbarian tried to "jump it".

He passed his check and landed successfully on the other side as an inanimate skeleton.

[Fibinachi]

Mind telling me what the technology level of your world is (what'd they find in derelict other ships) and party composition?

And how do you feel about exotic islands full of dangerous beasts?

[BRC]

You're on the open ocean? Fight during a big storm.

Make a "Storm Table", every round there is a chance of waves washing over the deck, or the ship heeling to one side causing everybody to make Balance checks, or an especially heavy burst of rain, or a gust of wind, or maybe even a bolt of lightning.

The PC's need to split their focus between repelling the borders and keeping the ship afloat.

DnD is based around Combat, plus it's a cheap and easy way to make things memorable.

Remember, a Check is boring unless it's paired with a Decision. Simply having a storm hit them and saying "Roll Profession: Sailor checks" is boring.

[Fyermind]

Hit an run tactics by the players are hard to encourage. Hit and run tactics against the players are fun. There is a type of troll in MM3 called the Forest troll. It has fast healing, and is medium sized. They work great for hit and run tactics. Against a high power party, four of them are good for a straight up fight, but if you have two of them taking advantage of swinging vines, narrow walk ways, close jumps, and climbable trees, you can get an interesting movement challenge to get the melee's involved. The problem is, most interesting combat ideas cease to be interesting when you introduce magic.

[Person_Man]

To the largest extent possible, encounters should have meaningful choices built into them. The results of the encounter should hinge on the choices that the players make.

An encounter should not just be a strait line; Here is a wall, use Climb or a spell to get over the wall. Here is an NPC, convince him to follow the predetermined outcome. Here is an enemy, kill the enemy. Instead, there needs to be a series of decision trees, with different choices leading to different outcomes.

You can create meaningful choices by creating meaningful and distinct consequences. The immediate consequences should be transparent to the players, and the long term consequences should require foresight by the players.

Consider an example where a BBEG shoots a fireball into a large orphanage to cover his escape. Some orphans are already killed, and the rest are now trapped in a burning building. Since the orphans have almost no hit points, moving into any area of fire will kill them, and they are spread out on the main floor, basement, and on the second floor (with a few cowing in closets or in furniture). But the BBEG has already started to run away into the city, where the PCs could quickly loose track of him.

The players can:
Chase the BBEG (Con checks for running, Spot/Listen checks to locate, Survival or Knowledge Local checks to track down, attacks to try and stop him) and let the remaining children burn.
Rescue the orphans (Diplo/Intimidate/Bluff checks to convince them to follow you, Spot/Listen checks to find all of the hiding orphans, Climb to rescue orphans on the second floor) and let the BBEG get away.
Split up, which will kill some of the orphans who are cowering in the many rooms of the orphanage, and possibly kill some of the PCs who are now fighting a high CR enemy in smaller numbers.
Use some sort of ingenuity to stop, kill, delay, or track the BBEG while saving the orphans. (Rally the town guard to save the orphans while you chase the BBEG, have your Familiar surreptitiously follow the BBEG while you save the orphans, etc)


What the PC's may not immediately realize (but could figure out if they think through it) is that if the BBEG is not stopped, he kills again the next day. And/or if the orphans are not rescued, the PCs may be blamed by the church/city/etc for their deaths, which may lead them to becoming ostracized or outlaws.


Set up a danger or mystery. Introduce a series of choices, each of which require ingenuity, Skills, fighting, etc to overcome. Make the immediate consequences transparent, so that the results of each choice is meaningful (and doesn't feel arbitrary or forced on the PCs). Make the long term consequences intuitive but not transparent, so that the PCs need to think ahead to get their desired results.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Fibinachi
Mind telling me what the technology level of your world is (what'd they find in derelict other ships) and party composition?

The campaign is set in the Forgotten Realms, although they're sailing far, far away from everything they know. For the most part it's bog-standard Realms technology, although I've advanced the seafaring aspects to bring them in line with the Napoleonic era, since that's the timeframe I'm most familiar with.

As for the party, here's the rundown:


halfling bard/swashbuckler, about to take a level in warblade;
half-orc barbarian/warblade;
wild elf fighter-archer;
human cleric/druid (support NPC);
star elf sorcerer/cleric (new PC about to join, very low-op).



Originally Posted by Fibinachi
And how do you feel about exotic islands full of dangerous beasts?

Heh. That's the next chapter of the campaign. :smallbiggrin:


Originally Posted by BRC
You're on the open ocean? Fight during a big storm. ...The PC's need to split their focus between repelling the bo[a]rders and keeping the ship afloat.

Well, it's possible, although they're not the only people aboard. The PCs are "specialists" hired by the trading company that owns and operates the ship, and there's a 90-man crew which is capable of handling most crises in a seamanlike fashion. Worth considering, although I'm not sure how I'd carry it out.


Originally Posted by Fyermind
...if you have two of them taking advantage of swinging vines, narrow walk ways, close jumps, and climbable trees, you can get an interesting movement challenge to get the melee's involved.

In fact, I've been trying to come up with something exactly like this, where they'd need to maneuver on walkways, rope bridges, something high and tricky.

Not sure where to take the idea, and it would be a real bear to design, but it's something I'd love to do.


Originally Posted by Person_Man
Set up a danger or mystery. Introduce a series of choices, each of which require ingenuity, Skills, fighting, etc to overcome. Make the immediate consequences transparent, so that the results of each choice is meaningful (and doesn't feel arbitrary or forced on the PCs). Make the long term consequences intuitive but not transparent, so that the PCs need to think ahead to get their desired results.

Thanks for the concentrated good advice there; I'd love to do all that and more. If only I were better at encounter design.

:smallfrown:

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[TuggyNE]

Thanks to everyone for the ideas so far. Very interesting that several people have suggested an underwater scenario--and I haven't even mentioned I'm running a seafaring campaign. :smallbiggrin:

Maybe they've read your previous threads? I know I have.

[ImaginaryDragon]

I've been following along as well.

[Palanan]

I have a fan club! I should get you guys t-shirts or something. :smalltongue:



So, for the encounters, I have a couple of ideas--but I still need design advice:

Underwater Creepiness

Inspired by this (http://news.yahoo.com/antarctics-first-ever-whale-skeleton-found-211259247.html) popular news story...well, you can guess the scene of the encounter: the cavernous skeleton of some immense sea-creature, half-buried on a shallow undersea bank.

That's the good news. Alas, I have no idea what to do with it. I'd like this to be an encounter that requires sharp thinking and character involvement to resolve. Being underwater will be an additional challenge--and a tough one--but not the challenge. Any ideas?

Rickety Heights

I really like the idea of a scenario on walkways and rope bridges, maybe in some sort of suspended settlement. This would be a combination of combat and skill checks...somehow.

In fact, I could see this as a scene straight out of Indiana Jones, which would fit perfectly with the freewheeling mood I'd like to create. One of the PCs even has a whip. :smallbiggrin:

And I certainly take to heart the advice from BRC and Person_Man, that choices should be meaningful and not arbitrary, and that skill checks should represent decisions the players make for their characters.

I'm completely on board with this. I just need to figure how to translate the theory into a compelling encounter design.