DnD4 Countdown 28 - Skill Challenges

For today, I have made a couple of attempts on Skill Challenges. Overall I like the idea, and I'm looking forward to see the implementation in more detail.

Skill Challenge 1: The Root of All Evil
Not far from a village there is a small lake. Normally the local shepherds let the sheep and goats drink from it, but lately animals and plantlife around the lake has begun to die.

Setup: The poisoned waters are a side-effect when the deadly Tar Root is dug up and prepared. A foreign spy/assassin intends to use it to kill the commander of a fort. A complete success let's the character realise that something bad is going on.

Complexity: Requires 5 successes before 2 failures

Primary Skills: Nature, Perception, History

Nature (moderate DCs): You realise that this area holds many rare plants. Many of them poisonous.

Perception (hard DCs): You notice that someone has been climbing down into the water at a particulary rough area. Both the plants and the soil is disturbed here.

History (Hard DCs): You know that there are rumours of an ancient cult that used to use this place for sacrificial murders. This skill is only usable once.

Success: The PCs realise that someone has picked and prepared Tar Root. The tracks then lead towards the fort.

Failure: The characters don't get enough clues to realise what's going on. The local commander is murdered, and the stability of the area is threatened.


Skill challenge 2: Chase over Rooftops

You spend the night at a tavern. At around midnight, you are awakened by the sound of someone climbing out of the window. A thief! Quickly you leap after him!

Setup: A thief has stolen some valuables from the PC. He now tries to escape over the rooftops in the city.

Complexity: Requires 8 successes before 4 failures

Primary Skills: Athletics, Endurance

Acrobatics: You manage to take advantage of a tricky short cut. In order to use this skill you must have made a successfull perception check. You can only use this skill once.

Athletics: You are using your speed and agility to try to catch up with the thief

Endurance: You may not be faste than the thief, but as long as you don't tire, you'll catch up with him

Perception: You spot a short cut. After the first success of this skill you cannot use it anymore. The first success of this skill allows one Acrobatics Check.

Success: You catch up with the thief and retrieve you valuables.

Failure: The thief manages to get away with some of your valuables

Related links

• The Wizards excerpt on skill challenges
• A thread about skill challenges
  

DnD4 countdown 29 - Starting settings simple

When I was younger, I had a tendency to try to create elaborate worlds and settings. I preferred starting drawing this big map, and then I added cities and states to these. History was deep and detailed and the relations between the actors in the world where comples.

And 9 times out of 10 one of two things happened:

• Somewhere along the I sidetracked and lost interest
  
• Just a small fraction of my work actually showed up in the campaign when actually playing

Lately, I have approached setting/adventure-design in another way. Basically I have gone from a top-down approach to a bottom-up approach, although I don't think that I'd fit in any of those two categories to a 100%.

Basically what I do nowadays is to find a starting place, define what's around the starting place, add some far-away rumours and finaly some drama/conflict.

From this small framework I add things as the campaign progresses and this growth makes the worldbuilding a lot easier, and many times the result is more intricate and dynamic than what I ever managed to do when trying to map everything out from the beginning.

For my first campaign, my aim is to start with the following basic setting

Simple Setting Sample
The campaign starts in the Village. A small place with 100 or so inhabitants. The village is a part of the Kingdom, and there is a big City up north, where the King lives.

To the south of the village is the Dark Forest, to the east are plains, and then the big mountains. The villagers don't venture that far, but there are rumours of strange people in those mountains.
West of the kingdom there is another kingdom. These two kingdoms are at war.

There is a small farmed area around the village, and outside of that area there is wilderness.

Examples of conflict and drama

• A young couple eloped into the woods to the south to get married. They are not heard of since, but a bag belonging to one of them drifted by on the river that runs from south to north just outside the village
• A spy from the other kingdom comes to the village and pays a lot of money to setup a small, secret base of operations in the village.
• A child that strayed to far found an old amulet in one of the nearby ruins. This awoke the ghost of an old nobleman and he haunts the village to find his heirloom

Even with a simple setting, there are opportunities and openings, and I prefer to keep it like that, and then add more detail as needed and when it feels natural. This maybe doesn't make for a unique campaign that has never been seen before, but it will be a playable game that will include different interesting and exciting situations.

DnD4 Countdown 30 - Modern sources and classes

The classes in DnD4 are based on two things, a power source and a role. For instance, all fightery-types use Martial as a power source, clerics use Devine powers etc. There are four sources confirmed (Martial, Devine, Arcane & Psionic) and some others hinted at.

So, what would similar sources for a modern day/ sci-fi campaign be? And what classes would there be? Well of course we don't know. That, however, won't stop me from making my own list of sources and classes. I'll keep with the established roles though.

Sources for modern/ Sci-fi settings

• Martial
• All kind of fightery types
• Determination
• Modern litterature is filled with characters whose main force is their determination and willpower. Be it a priest that holds steadfast to his faith or a man that lost his family to the mafia.
  
• Occult
• For modern horror campaigns. This is a catch all for modern witches, new agers and dark warlords
• Psionics
• Technology
• Inventors, engineers and demolitionists. At higher levels, these classes could actually use super-science.
  
• Computers/ cybernetics
• This is the hackers and netrunners.
  

Sample classes

• Officer
• Martial Leader
• This is basically a modern day version of the warlord.
• Ninja
• Occult Striker
• This version of the ninja is a trained human that has gotten supernatural abilities through training, witchcraft and deals with otherworldy beings. He strikes from the darkness with swiftness.
  
• Sample powers would be teleportation (only in shadows and when not seen), invisibility, poisonous strikes and shurikens that hit secret energy points at the opponent.
• Streetfighter
• Determined Defender
• This is the guy that grew up on the streets. He learned fighting as a kid, and he is the best at what he does simple because the ones that aren't, don't live anymore. Sometimes he works as a boxer and sometimes as a hitman. It's all the same to him, it's kill or be killed no matter where the money comes from.
• This class can takes loads of punishment. One of his feats lets him pick up any improvised weapon and use it to deal out large amounts of damage.
  

Related Links

• Power sources
• A long thread on what sources are confirmed or hinted at in 4th ed
• D20 Modern 4e
• The possibility of D20 Modern updated to 4th ed is discussed here
  

31 - My first character

After hearing about 4th ed last summer there was a couple of things that did pop up in my mind. One of those things was how flexible the new classes could be. For instance, in 3.5 I find it really hard to make a decent Fighter that uses light weapons, like a swashbuckler or similar. This still holds true even though later books added some classes and feats to go in that direction.

So, I decided to find out as soon as possible how a decent light weapons-wielding, dexterity-based Fighter would look like in 4th ed.

When the early previews of the classes arrived, I was a bit disappointed. With the advent of roles and sources, the classes felt almost more limited than before. Each class seems to have a specific funtion on the battlefield. A fighter, for instance, is a Defender, being able to hold of opponents with great defensive skills and good attacking capability.

Thing is, that is now how I envision my little swashbuckler. I want him to be nimble and quick and to attack with skill and speed rather than brute force.

So maybe I shouldn't hold on to the names of the classes, but rather what their roles and sources are. Since I don't want him to use any supernatural help (at least in the beginning), I'd use the Martial source.
As for the roles, consider this: the swashbuckler controls multiple opponents at once with speed and skill. With that in mind, my first attempt would be to choose a controller class. Unfortunately there isn't a Martial Controller class described yet, so it seems that I'll have to do with Martial Strikers if I want to build my first swashbuckler. I pick striker because I like the idea that the Swashbuckler is someone that lashes out at an opponent, striking vital parts and then quickly withdrawing. That leaves me with either a Rogue or a Ranger. After reading through the descriptions of both, I'd guess that if you want to do a fast, swashbuckley-type character, then a Ranger could very well be the way to go.

Related links

• A thread on swashbucklers
• The thread is about how Swashbucklers could be a class of it's own. The author looks at them as Martial Controllers, which sounds like a good idea to me.
• A short intro on classes
  

DnD4 Countdown

The release of DnD4 is now just a month away. Due to this, I will have a simple DnD4-countdown on the blog. My goal is to publish a short post each day that is related to the game in one way or the other.

Among the upcoming subjects are a look on classes and roles, a small Hall of Fame of 3.5-characters that I wish to update to 4.0, thoughts on roles and classes in a modern setting and much more.

Enjoy!