[3.5] Adjudicating a chase

[Human Paragon 3]

I am thinking of starting off my next session with a chase. A large-ish scouting party breaks off from a main army and goes after the party who have a good head start. However, the scouting party has tracking and wolves. Ultimately, I'd like it to break into tense mini combats, as the scouting party splits into smaller teams and the party gets separated as they try to run.

The DMG suggests adjudicating a chase with a dex or con check, but I'd rather handles this in a sort of round-to-round style where each round the pursuers get a chance to close in on the party, or the party gets a chance to break away. Tactics, survival skills, and physical conditioning would be a factor.

Has anyone done anything like this? How did you do it? If not, what would you suggest?

[Quietus]

There's always the option of using the DMG's advice; Have it be a set of dex checks, but make it so they need to reach a set number of wins - say, five. Each side gets a roll every round to bypass some obstacle - a group of people, a trash can the individual running away overturned, whatever - and whoever reaches 5 successes first wins.

[Human Paragon 3]

Hm, true, I could just run it like a 4e skill challenge...

[Lev]

Skill challenges are only fun if the players feel like rolling dice to win. Handle it like One Piece and get each member of the party to handle it in their own way, thats the real point of being a player anyway.

[Human Paragon 3]

I'm intrigued... go on...

[FelixG]

Skill challenges are only fun if the players feel like rolling dice to win. Handle it like One Piece and get each member of the party to handle it in their own way, thats the real point of being a player anyway.

This interests me as well, please elaborate?

[Gan The Grey]

I recommend giving the players chances to throw the pursuers off the trail. Choose 5 or 6 different scenes as they run off and pause to describe them in detail. If the players choose to interact with the scene in such a way that you believe it would make the pursuers harder to follow, give them a victory point. If they have enough victory points after all the scenes, they get away. If they don't, they think they have, but the scouts catch them later.

You could spice each scene up with skill checks to combine character build capability with player ingenuity.

[Lev]

Give the fighters time to fight, the rogues time to sneak, the mages time to cast.

Battles like these should not be decided by rolls, they should be decided by ingenuity and challenging the mental resourcefulness of your players-- if a player does not choose a high int high wis build that means they want others to come up with the plans-- do not leave these man-child characters unattended.

It's pretty simple, have each split designed to be countered for each of the characters, they'll see pretty fast that splitting is a good idea.

Also, have the characters turn the tables somehow, if they keep running have a random good luck happen like a man with a pot walks by and stumbles to get out of the way of the escaping character, and have the pot and him fall comically to the ground emulating a Grease spell.

If a character does something too effective have the chasing party split off and rejoin another group, ect.

Leave the locations vague, so you can rejoin 2 of the players immediately if one starts to get cornered, this makes for some interesting moments and a "got your back" kind of trust forming that strengthens the characters emotional ties-- which is a GREAT thing to build and should be focused on.