Last night’s Storm Point game advanced things very little, for a few reasons. First, we got an even later start than our usual late start. Second, one player had to take off early because of an emergency. Third, the single combat encounter went on a loooooong time.
They had found their way to the old eladrin ruin that’s being used as a temple by the shadar-kai who have brought the local humanoid tribes together into an army. The temple itself is a large villa-style manor, covered in ivy. All the plant life around the temple had died, with the life apparently drained out of it.
Not wanting to make a frontal assault on the building*, they snuck around to the back and found a less-used door. The lockpicks failed them, so they applied the dwarf to the problem, smashing the door in**. Inside was a fairly cramped hallway, and a number of wraiths that attacked***.
The fight was tough for the party, both because it was a couple levels above them and because of the environment. The close quarters meant the group was packed tightly together, and the insubstantial, phasing, shift-six-squares-as-a-move-action wraiths were able to dart around and attack out of walls and stuff. There were doors in the hallway, but the party didn’t want to open them, worried about drawing more monsters in to the fight****.
They won, but are now considering holing up some where for a long rest.
They also built themselves another skill challenge this game, with everyone pitching in to sneak around to the back of the temple, using things like Stealth (an obvious choice), Nature (to understand how to move in the environment and hide tracks), Perception (to follow game trails), and Athletics (to lift fallen trees out of the way). Again, I am happy that they’ve adopted this habit for themselves, and are using skill challenges when they want to accomplish things, not just when I drop one in the adventure.
Anyway. As I said, not much advancement of the plot, but some progress made.
*Which surprised me, let me tell you!
**Phew. I was getting worried that they had mellowed.
***2 mad wraiths, 4 wraiths, 1,300 xp, a level 6 encounter for 5 characters.
****”Don’t open the door! Who knows what’s on the other side?” “Well, a couple of wraiths, for certain…”
Heya,
I was trying to find some of your discussions on skill challenges, or particular neat usages of them, and I can’t seem to find where you’ve discussed them, I tried going back with the D&D tag and the skills-challenges tag, but that proved fruitless.
Any way you could suggest a “Best of” so that I could have for my own edification?
Y’know, I never got around to doing up sample skill challenges. The best I can do is point you at this post, but you may have already seen that, and my thinking about skill challenges has evolved since then.
Tell you what. Skill challenges will be my next post topic, either later today or early tomorrow, and I’ll talk about how I’m using them now, and some of the ideas I’ve come up with for implementations of them. Sound good?
Thank you, I appreciate the request line. (I’ve directed a few friends who were contemplating running 4e and having issues visualizing and dealing with skills challenges.)