Hunting Tournament

[Afgncaap5]

I'm running the Alabaster Cup (from Complete Warrior) in an Eberron game, and the next encounter is the Hunting tournament. I'm not sure what the best way is to go about it, and was wondering if anyone has good suggestions.

Currently, my thinking is that I'll go through the players, one after the other, and make them roll a combination of Knowledge (Nature) (or general knowledge if they don't have it) and Survival checks to see if they know the best places to look for animals and the best ways to hunt for them (along with players making other suggestions, like Craft (Trapmaking) if someone wants to go that route.) And then based on the check, roll a percentile to see what sort of animal they can catch and how big it'll be.

That seems like a lot of potential prep-work, though, and I'm all about finding simpler ways to do things if anyone has better plans. :smalltongue:

[ATHATH]

Maybe have them automatically (perhaps make some fake die rolls behind the screen to make it look like they had a chance of failure) find a good animal that will win them the challenge, then add some complications.

For example (feel free to come up with more stuff):
The animal/the forest is under the "protection" of a Shadow Druid, who attacks the players because they were the first to enter the forest.
A competitor (or group of competitors) cheats by secretly bringing in their own trained or caged super-animal and "catching" it.
A competitor (or group of competitors) cheats by sending summoned monsters (so that his identity is protected) to try to kill the other competitors' animals (not all of them, just the best ones) just a few minutes before the end of the competition.
A competitor (or group of competitors) cheats by replacing one or more judges with Doppelgangers and/or Wizards that have cast Disguise Self or Consume Likeness (and maybe with Absorb Mind layered on top as well).
A competitor (or group of competitors) is a sore loser, to put it lightly.

[Gildedragon]

Kn Nature tells them where the best hunting grounds are. The check determines what sort of critters they can find tracks for.
0-5 use SNA I
6-10 SNA II
11-15 SNA III
16-20 SNA IV
21-25 SNA V
26-30 SNA VI
30-35 SNA VII
You can lower the DCs by some... For animals not in the SNA lists, eyeball it.

Survival check to follow the tracks:
Standard DC modified by relevant weather.
Set it at... 15 as base?

PC is always "successful"
For every 5 they fail to meet the DC, use a SNA list 1 lower, for every 5 they exceed the track DC, give them 1 more of the animal they end up tracking.

A d% tells them what they find
Set up a list for each of the seven SNAs

1-15 lowest point animal for that tier
16-30 2nd lowest
31-45 3rd lowest
46-60 middle range
61-75 3rd highest
75-80 2nd highest
81-90 highest point animal for that list
90-99 roll again add 1 template
100 roll again, add 2 templates

Space out the checks a bit. Allow se role-playing etc. Doing stuff can add circumstance bonuses to the next roll.
Like if the party makes an effort to move silently (and roll well enough) they may get a +2 bonus to their tracking check
Or if they set up traps they get a +Trap DC to the percentile roll

Also throw in a couple random encounters

[Afgncaap5]

Using Summon Nature's Ally as a list is a great idea! Thanks. The DMG's "forest random encounters" page wasn't quite right, either in tone or in level.