Skill Challenge: Travelling
An ostensibly trivial excursion can be a time of tribulation.
You can’t punch the weather:
Combat can be fun, but running into bandits or a pissed-off Owlbear every time you make take a trip out of town is a bit of a bore. Skill challenges are a good way to make use of neglected character abilities. You can pull these out of the air in various forms, as and when required; this is a how I ran a mountain trek.
Objective:
What are the players trying to achieve? In this instance, they’re attempting to navigate an inhospitable mountain range; proposed actions should further this aim.
Character actions:
Going round the group, have each player state their chosen skill, and how it’s being used. Do this once for each player, possibly twice if it’s a small group. A player may not use a skill if it has been used by someone else in the current round, or if it’s the skill they used in the previous round. Difficulty should reflect the appropriateness of the skill, so Survival might be DC12, Climb DC14, or History DC15. One would want to increase the DC in later levels.
GM: The temperature is dropping, the wind is picking up, and the path is getting rather vague beneath the snow. Nelsavious, what skill will you use to traverse the mountain, and how?
Nelsavious: I’m going to use history to recall some old maps of the area, my father was a cartographer in a nearby town.
GM: Sounds good; that’s a DC of 15.
Degrees of success:
There’s no need to have a binary result; I decided on three possible outcomes for this stage.
Resounding success (all/nearly all passed):
As the snowfall thickens, the party make out a faint orange light in the distance – it’s the tent of a travelling merchant. Refuge from the weather, a hot meal, and maybe the opportunity to trade. DC10 Con save in the morning, or 1d6 fatigue damage.
Reasonable success (at least half passed):
Night falls, and the biting wind is relentless. A small cavern could provide the team with partial shelter. DC15 Con save in the morning, or 1d6 fatigue damage.
Poor effort (more than half failed):
It’s going to be a grim night for the group. DC20 Con save in the morning, or 1d6 fatigue damage.
Additional rounds:
On the second day of the journey, the party spot large animal tracks. The group can seek out combat, or try and avoid it with another iteration. I’d consider Stealth or Perception to have low DCs, but Intimidation or Survival are also strong strong skills.
Resounding success (all/nearly all passed):
The party successfully avoid the local wildlife, bandits, liches, dragons, and angry mountain gods. They arrive safe and sound at their destination.
Reasonable success (at least half passed):
The team catch sight of a pack of wolves, prowling around a snowbank; everyone makes a DC5 stealth check to slink past.
Poor effort (more than half failed):
Wolves are sneaky, and hard to spot in the snow; they get the jump on the group with a surprise round. Perhaps one of the party members was wounded and they tracked the scent of blood.
Conclusion:
Skill challenges require no real preparation, but encourage player narrative and provide some variety.
