How would you do a chase scene?

[Alexander Atoz]

Anybody have any interesting ideas for how you would do a chase scene?
To clarify, the players are the ones getting chased by a monster that is too powerful for them to defeat at their current level.
I'm looking for ideas as to how you would go about making this work, rule suggestions (I can also read the DMG, I mean homerules or suggestions beyond the obvious about how to make the best use of official rules.
In addition, if you've ever been at a game where this was done successfully, what do you think did and didn't work?

Asking for possible use on my blog, dragonencounters.com

[Slipjig]

Give the players opportunities to slow it down (crates to knock over, spaces too small for it to fit through easily, doors it has to smash through). I wouldn't suggest this to the players, but if the players come up with it, allow faster characters (Wood Elves, Monks, or Hasted characters) can distract it while maintaining their distance (but they have to stay just out of reach, or else it will turn back to the slower characters).

Also, give them challenges other than outrunning it. Maybe there's treasure they could scoop up, but it will slow them down (maybe it's heavy enough that it needs a wheelbarrow (gold is HEAVY)). Maybe there's other people in the path, and if they stopped and fought the monster for a round, those people might be able to get away.

[kieza]

Set up an initiative order, but no map. Decide much distance the pursuers need to catch up and how far behind they can fall, measured in successes: 3 and 5, respectively, makes a good moderate challenge.

Each character, on their turn, declares how they try to evade pursuit or close the distance: they must describe what they are doing, and specify at least one skill that the other side can use to counteract them. ("I find a group of people with similar clothing to mine, and dash through them. Everyone else can roll Perception to keep track of me." Or "I find a straightaway and just start sprinting. Everyone else can roll Athletics or Endurance to stay ahead.") Each time a given skill gets selected, it gets harder to use, increasing the Difficulty of future checks using it.

Once they've declared what they're doing, every character on the other side must make a check using an appropriate skill. They can use more than the skill that was suggested, if it makes sense, but the GM decides the Difficulty of using each skill. If any character on the pursuing side fails a check, they must either all drop out of the contest or let the gap widen by one success. If any character on the evading side fails a check, the gap closes by 1 success.

If the gap closes to 1 success, the pursuers can initiate combat, although the evaders can "win" the encounter by fleeing: the pursuers can try to incapacitate, immobilize, and/or subdue one of the evading creatures but probably won't get them all. If the gap closes to 0 successes, combat automatically starts and the evaders are too exhausted to flee, instead turning and fighting. If the gap widens too far, the evaders get away.

If characters have spells, etc. that would aid in a pursuit, the GM can rule that they grant an automatic success on certain skill checks, or even close/open the gap if they would speed up the entire party.

[Duff]

The D&D skill challenge is not a bad mechanic for this. But your narration is key to making that work
Decide how may rolls they need to pass in order to break contact
Decide how many failures mean the monster catches them

Let the players tell you want skills etc they want to roll.
They want to roll acrobatics to get past an obstacle quickly? Sure, even if you didn't know there was an obstacle, now it was always there
Bluff to send the monster down the wrong path? Sure
Accounting to make the monster think they have tax issues? Probably that's a "no"

[KorvinStarmast]

Not sure what game you are playing, but, if you are playing D&D 5e there is a fun chase scene tool in the DMG.

I have used it about a half a dozen times. It's useful.

[NichG]

Figuring out the stakes would be the important thing. Is it a TPK if the monster catches them? That's not really going to work. Instead maybe something like have a fixed number of intervals after which the party escapes, and each interval that a given party member fails to maintain a lead then they're in range for the monster to take a single action against (one of) them, which in turn returns gives them enough time to make distance again. Similarly, if a party member wants to take an action against the monster or otherwise, they're risking their lead for that round meaning that they might be the one under attack. That way rather than a sudden failure mode or sudden success mode, its more of an endurance thing, and if different characters are failing the chase progression in different intervals it'd spread out the damage or consequences.

So for example, in a kind of system neutral way:

- There are three positions for the Runners: Behind, Neck-and-Neck, and Leading. Characters in the Behind position can be as close as melee range to the Chasers. Runners who are Neck-and-Neck are considered to be 200ft away (and in a busy environment have cover/etc benefits as well), and those who are Leading are 400ft away from the Chasers.

- Each interval characters (and the monster) decide if they're going to 'all out run', 'run while acting', or 'stop and act' at the start of the interval.
-- 'All out run' gives a bonus to the chase roll that ends the interval but that's all you do. If there's some emergency, you don't get to try to clear it.
-- 'Run while acting' means no modifier to the roll, but you can only take relatively quick actions on things which are in front of you or in parallel with you during the interval. So you could knock down boxes to be cleared, blow open a wall to make a shortcut, etc. This means that Runners who are Behind can be attacked in melee until they re-establish distance or even potentially more severe outcomes such as being grappled.
-- 'Stop and act' basically lets you do whatever you would do in a combat round. So maybe you can stop and fire long-ranged attacks back at the monster directly, or a Chaser can grapple someone who fell behind. But you automatically lose the chase roll this round, and if a Chaser does this twice in a row then they leave the chase (mostly relevant if they grapple someone - this basically means that person is captured).

- The environment is established for the next section of the chase (if there are environmental hazards or chaos or obstacles or whatever that are on the route). This might establish something that the fleeing group has to clear or take a penalty to their rolls, etc.

- Those who chose some form of action take those actions in initiative order. This can introduce or resolve obstacles to the segment currently under way. A forgiving version of the rules would be that the obstacles you create can be timed to be 'after others in your group have passed' even if they move after you in initiative. A harsher version would be that you have to drop your initiative if you want to let your friends past, and that gives a penalty to your chase roll. Other good actions to have would be something like 'help a friend keep up' or things like that - this would let you take a penalty to your chase roll in order to give someone else a bonus. You might also choose to 'split up' with your action if a detour is available or can be created - this basically forces the chasing group to either split up (in which case you run two chases) or pick one group to go after (in which case the other group either automatically escapes, or just automatically wins the chase roll this round and also gains Lead on top of that).

- After all of the shenanigans are resolved, sum them up into a modifier for each person running, in addition to personal factors like movement modalities, movement rate, stamina or constitution or the like if its an extended chase, relevant skills or attributes, etc. The Chasers pick one of their rolls to set the pace (if there are multiple) - Chasers who fall below this roll can only All Out Run next round and don't get to roll. If a Runner has a roll less than this pace, they fall back one step - from Leading to Neck-and-Neck, from Neck-and-Neck to Behind (but they can't be worse than Behind). If a Runner beats this pace, they advance to Neck-and-Neck or sustain the Leading condition. If a Runner beats the Pace by 5 (assuming a d20 roll), they advance to Leading.

After a certain number of intervals pass, the Runners who haven't been knocked out or grappled or whatever have managed to get away. Alternately (or in addition), there are special 'escape opportunities' along the way where one or more Runners can immediately successfully exit the chase if they manage to take advantage of those opportunities while running.

Something like that anyhow...

[Eldan]

Is this for D&D specifically?

I'd set it up relatively simply. Use a clock, as we call it in other games, or a counter. The players have to gain 10 let's call them "lead points" to loose the monster. They can gain a lead point for either avoiding an obstacle or creating an obstacle for the monster, but they have to be able to do it while running, so no standing still and casting a spell, if you do that, the monster eats you. Depending on your D&D edition, there's feat to run while casting, shoot arrows while casting etc.

Then, just give your players options. They can create an obstacle to kick over something heavy while running (strength check), or or gain a lead on the monster by for example sliding through a narrow gap (dexterity check) or leaping across a gap (acrobatics) or feint that they are running in a different direction than they actually are (deception). If they have certain items (say, Feather Token: Tree, or a Tanglefoot Bag, or a net), they can spend those as an obstacle too.

Failing a check means they lose a Lead instead of gaining one.

So, basically a skill challenge.

[Buufreak]

Quoting myself from discord:

So the method I was introduced to years ago for chase/race situations is get a packet of note cards. On each of them, put some event or happenstance. Rock in the road. Merchant cart moving by. Toppled stack of crates. Overturned barrel. etc, etc. If you need more ideas, watch literally any chase scene in any move or tv show. The idiot in The Last of Us throwing his gun when out of ammo before running is always a classic bit of comedy. Who in their right mind throws a gun? They're expensive, and it isn't going to do anything!

For events with randomness, shuffle them, and overturn about 6 cards. Any more than that and it gets tedious and kinda drags on. For something like a race course, you probably want less randomness so you would pick out a few of the cards ahead of time, making sure they fit the theme.

Now, here is the real trick. For every obstacle that you create a card for, impose variable skill checks. There is a set value that is for failure. Anything below that, you start to fall behind, because the obstacle slowed you down. Somewhere in the middle, about a range of 5 values, you got past the obstacle without much issue, and so you stay in "place." Values above that, you greatly succeed at overcoming the obstacle, so much so that you gain ground.

Finally, you want to apply this to all racers, including the NPCs. And don't fudge the numbers. Don't just let the party win. Equally, don't absolutely bury them. You want it to be fair, and sometimes failure at a challenge is part of life and part of the game.

Hope that helps!

[stoutstien]

Same for any action or action series assuming the system isn't bad and if so I would change it.

-set the outline of what is at conflict (I don't want to be near X but X want me near it because it's hungry).

-give players the info the PC would have and the environment if needed.

-As it's a question of pursuit or avoidance then some form of turn order is needed.would reroll each round.

-as I want to limit "playing to dice" I will make sure the players decision are weighted accordingly. 60% action(or more) 40% feature/dice

-proceed until the conflict is resolved

[Telok]

Define a couple actions: go faster, distraction, obstacle, hide, attack while running, big jump, etc. And of course the required "other". Set who is in front, how far apart, etc.

Reroll initative each round. Everyone gets one action and you're assumed to be running full out. Everyone chooses something to do in order and sets their own DC. For every so much they exceed the DC by there's a bonus to initative & movement (exact amounts depend on system). Everyone in the chase line after them has to make the same, opposite, or similar check at that DC to keep up. Only update distances at the end of the round. Every round after the first, if it makes sense, roll a die and if it makes you happy throw in some low DC thing everyone has to deal with on the way through.

This lets you off the hook of having to detail every exact thing in the chase. Lets the players get creative stuff. And doesn't lock you into automatically screwing over characters that aren't expert athletes.

[Vahnavoi]

For a tabletop game? Lamentations of the Flame Princess module God that Crawls gives two different ways to do it and both can be extrapolated to other material:

Method 1: you know how fast the pursuer moves and where they are, you know where the pursued are and how fast they move. Each game turn, you update their locations. To make things interesting, the terrain needs to have features that force non-linear movement: forks in the road, loops, dead ends, obstacles that might slow one party but not the other, etc.. You could also add features that tempt the pursued to slow down, such as treasure caches, prisoners to save, etc..

Method 2: you don't know where the pursuer is or how fast they're going. Instead, when the pursued do something that could draw attention (such as make noise), slows them down (hoarding equipment) or stops them for a moment (breaking out prisoners, running into a dead end), you add points to a counter. When the counter is full, the monster catches up to them. You can use points on the counter as modifier on a random roll if you like.

These both exists in context of basic rules for fleeing an encounter: both the pursuer and the pursued roll dice and add a number based on their movement rate as a modifier. Higher roll wins - if the pursuer wins, the encounter continues. If the pursued wins, they have opportunity to break contact and hide, etc.. It's worth noting that when fleeing, players aren't allowed to draw a map nor ask for more details - they're only given minimal description to make decisions of where to go.

Additionally, to keep a chase from being just a series of die rolls, it's worth considering to add simultaneous decisions to the mix. For simple example: if there's a fork in the road, the pursuer and the pursued make their decisions independently and reveal theiäm at the same time. The game master, playing the pursuer, writes down which fork they pick in secret, and the players playing the pursued do the same - then, when it becomes relevant, both decisions are revealed. To add sense of urgency, you can add a real time limit for the decision - use a minute sandglass from Alias, etc.

[Beelzebub1111]

Call of cthulhu has really good chase rules that I recommend adapting to every system.

[Vogie]

I use a quantum encounter setup which maximizes the number of things my players can do. The overall structure is a lot like the average skill challenge or the Pathfinder 2e "chase points", with some caveats.

• First, the location of the chase is relatively blank - you have some supporting structures, a general concept, but not a ton of detail. When the encounter begins, it'll look like the characters are running against a green screen that you'll be fixing in post.
• Secondly, you have to keep doing something different. It's not just going to be a series of athletics checks (or equivalent), but rather a giant tapestry of skills flying around.

Essentially, your chase is a series of "Yes, And" with each of your players' rolls, which fill in the details as they make their checks or d20 tests.

Start with initiative, rolled with advantage. Every player should be running with the highest amount of initiative possible. The thing you all are being chased by moves at zero. You want to set a DC that makes sense for the system, and aim for most players to succeed about 50-60% of the time. If you have low level players or a single person rolls absurdly low, maybe set them at initiative 10.

• Your players start doing things in order, as expected. Any type of roll that would normally happen are essentially good to go. This includes weapon attacks, spell attacks, and saving throws.
• However, each person takes a note of what ability they use. Once that PC uses it, they can't use it again for the next 6 rolls.
• Each player announces what they want to do, and you give them 2 options on how to do that. Once they get into the groove and have a list of actions they can't do, the players have a tendency to start announcing the action they're going to straight up.

Each time they do an actions, they are also describing how their actions is impacting the environment. Especially at the beginning, they're building out the quantum encounter.
By quantum encounter, I mean that there are things that may or may not appear depending on how the player rolls. "Is there a carriage going the right way I can hop onto with Acrobatics?" rolls "You succeed, so yes - there is".

• Once one player creates people or things to interact with and succeeds, that's now a fact of the encounter. It might be relatively empty streets (presumably), but if a PC wants to use survival to find a path through a crowd, for example, now there's a crowd. The party is collectively painting a cinematic scene.
• The rest of the PCs have to yes/and their way through all of the random things their fellow party members have interacted with. If a different player attempts to get on the above-created carriage (with nature or animal handling, for example), but fails the roll, the carriage is now messed up. If they do a reflex save to get through that crowd, they might dive over a cabbage merchant's cart on a success or smash through a window being moved by workmen on a fail.
• Failures decrease their initiative by 5. Critical failures cause the PC's initiative to decrease by 10. Ideally, it'll take 3 or more failures to slide back to 0, which will create an appropriate fail-state for that PC.
• Success increases your initiative by 5. Critical successes increase their initiative by 10... or, if you're using a skill to assist your ally, it increases both yours and theirs by 5. This incentivizes the players to use their checks to help each other.
• When they use their attack rolls, they can do all the things that the weapons and heroes theoretically could do, but normally wouldn't. Slicing through a tapestry to keep running, shooting a support beam to slow down your pursuer, and the like. Spell attack rolls have equal latitude, trying to blast things and the like. If they want to use a non-attack spell effect, use the corresponding knowledge check (Arcana for Flying, for example, or Religion to heal yourself as a way to increase stamina, and so on).

When the end state of the encounter happens depends on the type of encounter and the number of players - a 4 round escape might be perfect for a group of 5-6, but might feel short if there are only 2 players. You may want your players to reach a certain amount of initiative. If they are being chased by those who are trying to capture/eat them, a single PC getting to initiative 0 could be the end of the chase. If there is a possibility of immediately saving the player, the chase encounter could slide into a combat encounter.

If you flip this around (the players are chasing something), everything would work the same way, but if anyone hits 0, the party loses the trail.

[King of Nowhere]

Anybody have any interesting ideas for how you would do a chase scene?
To clarify, the players are the ones getting chased by a monster that is too powerful for them to defeat at their current level.
I'm looking for ideas as to how you would go about making this work, rule suggestions (I can also read the DMG, I mean homerules or suggestions beyond the obvious about how to make the best use of official rules.
In addition, if you've ever been at a game where this was done successfully, what do you think did and didn't work?

Asking for possible use on my blog, dragonencounters.com

first thing first: make sure the players know they are supposed to run. most players will try to engage by default. some players won't try to flee until too late, if ever.
and some players will manage to kill that monster that was supposedly too powerful for them.

second thing: make sure there is a chase in the first place. is this a race on foot? depending on your game, there can be a plethora of effects, from flight to teleportation to vehicles, that would end such a chase immediately. the players having one of those may invalidate your whole setup. in my experience, it's always extremely hard to create a constrained scene like this, and it gets exponentially harder with power level and player skill. like, don't you even think of trying something like that on high level experienced d&d players, else they'll laugh at your scenario and they'd just have to pick one of a dozen ways to trivialize it. at low level it may work, but paranoid players may have invested in a potion or scroll.


once those conditions are met, i don't have anything to add to what others said

[gbaji]

Honestly? I don't generally play out (well, roll out) chase scenes. IME, they usually just devolve into a series of die rolls and are far less "fun and exciting" as the same scenes when played out on a TV show or film. This is doubly so if the base setup is "this is something too powerful for the party and they have no choice but to flee". It kinda goes to game setup and balance, and into GM/party trust issues. The players have to trust that the GM isn't going to force them into encountering something that they cannot possibly survive or defeat, so if you put something like that into the scenario, and the players (intelligently) choose to run, there's an expectation that the PCs should escape.

I guess if your game does include "save or die!" type stuff in it, then you can put this sort of thing in there as well, but that's basically the game mechanic you are putting your players into, so realize this right off the bat. So if you don't actually like or want "save or die" stuff in your game, you more or less have to ensure that the PCs do get away, as long as the players have made the decision to do so.

Having said that, there are some interesting/fun things you can still do with this. You make it less about whether they get away (cause you've already decided they do), but how they do it, and what other effects those choices have. That's where different skill choices come into play.

Do they just keep running away faster than the huge monster can keep up with? Maybe you have them roll endurance type rolls, to see how well they do. Failure isn't "you got caught", but affects how long the monster is able to keep chasing them before losing sight of them, which in turn might affect how far it travels out into other areas, rampages around, kills other folks/things/whatever. Feel free to have those who rolled poorly maybe get a more direct exposure to the horrors that the monster inflicts on the area, once it stops chasing them and starts doing something else.

Do they run a short distance and hide? Different rolls here, but again poor rolls maybe mean that the monster spend more time in the area looking for them, and tearing things up nearby rather than running off in the wrong direction perhaps. Hiding well may result in the monster leaving the area, and allow for the PCs to loop back around into its lair (maybe they needed to do this to rescue someone held captive inside, or recover some macguffin?). Lots of variations on this, and let your players come up with exactly where/how they are doing this sort of thing (and what their objectives are).

Similar with "lead it away" or "distract it" tactics. These may specifically be done to intentionall lead the beast off in a specific direction, into an enemy camp maybe, or off a cliff? Who knows? Again though, the key is that the die rolls affect how well they achieve some secondary objective related to running away (can we get away while not leading it right into the peaceful village nearby, or maybe we want to lead it somewhere?).

And you can absolutely put in terrain and obstacles as well. Again though, for me at least, barring actual really poor (or really intentional) decisions by the players, an actual result of "the monster catches up and eats you" should not be on the table here (again, unless you are actually playing that kind of game). Those things should serve to affect the choices players make in terms of what sort of methods they use, and what those other objectives are beyond just "escape being eaten".


That's just me though. I find the whole "the moster is X feet away, what do you do this round?", followed by new "futher/closer" mechanics based on die rolls, to just be boring no matter how much extra stuff you put in there. And yeah, if the only consequence is that if X ever reaches 0 you get eaten, it's just more die rolling on the way to a "save or die" result. Which I also don't find to be very fun or interesting either. I tend to focus much more on players making decisions and the decisiosn themselves having consequences and effects. So if they decide to run away, they do that, but there are effects as a result. I don't focus on the action of "running away", but on the effects that action results in (the monster chases you to X location, then decides to so Y). I prefer to keep the practical player choice/outcome cycle moving.

[earthseawizard]

I can't remember the last time my group needed to play one out, but lately I've been thinking about having another look at 4e's skill challenges. I haven't seen the 5e chase rules from the DMG or the Pathfinder approach, going to check those out now.

[gatorized]