While trying to think of a way to speed up combat challenges I was trying to figure out how to run them as skill challenges, which the system does not lend itself well to. So, really what I needed was something in between. Basically, an attrition based skill challenge system. Now, I am not saying that you should run all combats this way, but quite frankly most of the combats in D&D are just filler and are not a worthy use of an hour of gameplay. So, I figure if we can figure out a way to get in these essential, but uninteresting battles into the game without being a major time sink its a plus.

This got me thinking about the disconnect between between skill challenges and combat challenges. Skill challenges seem to be rather all or nothing, and over rather abruptly. Whereas combat challenges are very tactical and time consuming. The crux of the issue seems to be that skill challenges present you with an artificial floor and ceiling for accomplishing a goal using a narrow set of skills, and applying the success/failure template to most situations feels unnatural. On the other hand combat challenges introduce a wild array of tactical options in order to reduce opponents to 0 hp. While the later is a well polished system, it generally does not contribute meaningfully to fiction on a round by round basis.

Therefore, my proposal is a sort of middle ground a skill challenge of attrition. The system would work fundamentally the same for combats and non-combats. The encounter would be organized into a set of threats. Each of these threats would have a specific DC, harm threshold, and static damage output that would be used to generate aggregates for the challenge. The challenge would start with a stakes negotiation to reinforce why its happening, followed by volleys between players and the threats. The threats would function on a reactive basis depending on the actions of the party. Depending upon the success of the party they may have additional options, such as dealing additional damage, or taking no damage from the threats. At the end of each volley, depending on the outcome of the rolls the group would collaboratively describe the events based on powers used, etc…

While this is fairly straightforward for combat it poses an interesting question about dealing harm other than physical. The system only tracks physical harm via hit points and healing surges. Therefore, alternative forms of attrition are necessary. The most obvious answer would be resource attrition. For example, a nature challenge may deal damage in the form of adventuring supplies. A city based investigation may deal damage in the form of monetary expense to represent characters expenditure to pay bribes, etc… A trickier issue would be determine how to deal harm in a social conflict. For example, if the player are arguing a defense for a criminal in a public trial, they may receive damage to their reputation. How would you track that within the base boundaries of 4e?

While this is mostly a brain storming session I do intend to write a follow up with actual rules to use in a “combat skill challenge.”

ManBearPig wishes you a good day!

Tonight was the second session of D&D Encounters: Undermountain at the local hobby shop.

Things went a bit more smoothly this week, so that was a nice improvement. There were enough people for two tables to be run although they had very different results. Our table managed to get through the encounter nearly effortlessly. We finished up towards the end of the fourth round. The second group experienced a total party kill off in fairly short order, so they decided to scrap that attempt and start over. I did not stick around to see if they made it through their second attempt.

Photoed on the right is the chimera that is ManBearPig. Last night Jason and I hacked apart a bunch of old MageKnight figures and carefully glued them together to create that “thing.” Off the top of my head I know that it has parts from a war bear, a zombie, a mutant berserker, a centaur, and the tail of a of something. It is a pretty sweet figure, and turned out quite well. Most of the people at the table liked it.You can check out several more photos in the flickr set for it.

On the both good, and bad side of things there were no major events memorable events in this session. Since I only got three actions I can easily recall them now:

1. Cast Cloud of Daggers in the group of human guards and scorpion. There was no need for any control spells since there was a nice meat wall holding them at bay.
2. Cast Healing Word to revived the dying rogue.
3. Attempted to cast Astral Seal, and failed miserably. But, not wanting my turn to go wasted I used Mage Hand to grab one of the carrion fish from the pools and dropped it into the hair of the last human guard, much to his dismay.

The sorcerer nuked the guard and fried the fish, which he consumed after the battle. Since the guard was obliterated after I “marked” him, I now consider the fish my lucky charm so I picked up a few and stuck them in one of my robe pockets. Hopefully they survive the dungeon!

Our loosely organized crew all arrived at different times. Next time we should probably coordinate better so that I can get more sleep! Jason and I first arrived at 12:20, followed by Bunny at about 1, and vanlandw finally stumbled in some time afterward. Originally I assumed this was going to be a quick 1-2 encounter adventure to show off the new PHB3 rules. We were all surprised to discover that it was a 5+ encounter adventure. Unfortunately, since we did not start early we did not have enough time to finish the game. We did manage to defeat the scourge and close the rift, but did not fight our way back out of the dungeon. Regardless it was a pretty good time.

One of the early highlights was Bunny getting his Seeker ambushed. All the tanks were engaged on the other side of the cavern, I teleported to safety leaving Bunny to solo two giant creatures. Good times. Once Bunny became diseased and incapacitated vanlandw charged in to save the day, using his encounter power to switch places with Bunny, and then blasted one of the creatures back into a puddle while Bunny recovered in relative safety. Not bad for his first time playing an RPG ever.

This moment of greatness was counter balanced by the infamous rolling of a “0″ on a d10 with the exclamation, “I rolled a ZERO!” I merely pointed out that it was actually a 10, just not labelled as such. The rest of the party got a pretty good laugh out of it. I can honestly say in all my years of gaming that situation has never come up before.

Other highlights of the game included:

• Encountering a magical portal we knew nothing about, tying a rope to the tank and sending him through
• Me getting swarmed by worms only to teleport away behind a meat wall much to the frustration of the DM
• The group trying to convince Bunny to jump in the pool of acid to put out his fire since the fire was doing 10 damage and the acid would only do 5.

The actual game itself was something of a blunder for me. I began by playing the counterpart to my Living Forogotten Realms character. Unfortunately, despite being very similiar characters the experience could not have been more different.

While in LFR my character was essentially a meat grinder scredding enemies like they were nothing. In DDE my character was all but utterly ineffectual. Sure, I laid in some status effects, and got a few guys with passive damage, but the minor advancements were surpassed by my plethera of misses, negating my damage roll by enlarging my spell, and the crowning achivement of the night.

During the last turn of the encounter I wanted to do something memorable, but ultimately pointless. So, I was going to attempt to do a double move and cast light on the last remaining enemy. Unfortunately, the result did not go quite as planned. I needed to cross a bridge to get close enough to cast the spell, almost the entire party crossed the bridge without a problem. Hell, one of them just jumped across the ditch. I on the other hand failed my acrobatics checked, and then failed my saving throwing landing my poor character head first into a river of sewage. Oh well, at least everyone got a laugh out of it. Before we entered the dungeon the party did a vote and determined that my character needed a bath first.

As per vanlandw’s request I am posting the details of this event. Jason and I are planning on going. We’ll probably get there after I roll out of bed and shower. Wes will probably claim to be exhausted from his fun run and not show up.

I should also note that something called “Weekend in the Realms” will be going on as well, and I have no idea what that is. I suspect it is what they call their weekly RPGA event, however I do not know if they will be running a module, or a my realms adventure.

Anyone who is interested is encountered to come. the Game Day adventure will run 1-2 hours, and you shouldn’t need to bring anything if you’re new. Players will be provided with PHB3 pregenerated characters (I assumed level 1 characters made with DDI character builder will also be valid). No experience is required, but you might want to pick up a set of dice if for no other reason that its cool to have a d4.

We ran the events on low, since it was our first game. Luckily for me that meant that there were minions a plenty. It worked out pretty well, because I played as a wizard that was specifically built to deal with minions. The character was built by Jason based on his struggles with kobold minions in our early combat encounter tests at home. Therefore, I was able to sweep the field quickly, or at the very least bottle neck minions so they effectively were non-factors in the game.

Of course not all battles were heavy with minions so I did get an opportunity to use wizard’s fury and just unleash a storm of magic missiles, which was rather amusing. The idea of kicking ass as a wizard just felt wrong. But, I guess I did something right, because we finished the entire adventure in two hours, and the group awarded me the player award, which was ironically a DM screen.

Now that I’ve cut my teeth, I’m looking forward to the first D&D Encounters adventure this Wednesday. Wish me luck!

First, let me say to those that are curious, the figures we’re using for player characters are old Mage Knight pieces that we liberated from their bases and then mounted on glass tokens.

Jason played the two PC’s (premade from the quick start rules): Fighty the fighter and Clericy the cleric, and I DM’d the kobold attackers. After the fact, I think its pretty obvious this battle was designed for 4-5 PC’s because I gave Jason a serious run for his money, and killed Clericy.

The highlight of the battle was the kobold slinger urinating on the unconscious Clericy while Fighty was engaged by other kobolds.

Ultimately, Jason emerged successful with Fighty surviving the battle with 4 hit points. Clericy, you will be missed.

Bunny’s new interest in D&D has sparked my interest in the hobby once again. I was already considering getting back into it for a similar reason (I rarely leave the house). My brother and I have been slowly picking up the 4e rules by bumming around on the D&D Insider account I setup a couple of months ago. I got to the point where I actually needed to read the rules in a coherent way so I finally opened the Dungeons and Dragons Core Rulebook Gift Set, 4th Edition that I preordered before the release of 4e. I’ve nearly finished the players handbook, so today Jason and I began constructing some materials for our initial encounter attempt.

The first Frankenstein of the evening was my new GM screen. This is something that I should have done long ago back when I actually played on a regular basis. Back in the AD&D days I just used to prop up some paper folders that I brought the adventure in. Not a very good solution, but it worked and I was a broke high school student. When 3rd edition came out I actually bought an official DM screen, which I used for pretty much everything I ran, regardless of the fact not all those games were D&D 3.0. My new solution is inspired by the Savage Worlds customizable GM screen. It is basically a binder with three panes you can just slide print outs into. However, I wanted a more flexible solution that would not require constantly swapping out reference sheets for different games. So, what I ended up doing was getting two three ring binders which I clip together with a binder clip. Inside the binders I have some document sleeves that I put the reference sheets in, and use binder clips to hold them open to the relevant pages for the game I’m playing. And, yes I did make these 4e reference sheets myself, and yes it took forever. I basically whipped it up in indesign while Jason was drawing grid lines on the poster board for the other project. Total cost for this project was under $7, which is a little less than the 4e Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Screen, which is $10.

The second creation was more of a creature of necessity. Unfortunately, since there are not many gaming places in the area you cannot really get a chessex role playing mat
so you can either order one online, or come up with a more creative solution. We chose to do the later. Basically, our solution was to draw a grid on some pieces of poster board, and them mount them to a sheet of Plexiglas. The total cost was under $20 for a 28″ x 36″ grid, the cost for a comparable chessex mat would be around $25 online (plus shipping).