Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 corlanrandal Jan 30, 2009 18:02:20	I'm about to start running a Dark Sun campaign using the 3.5 ruleset. One of the main items I'm trying to hammer down is how the PCs are going to find water. I was thinking an survival check with the DC based around how many people's worth of water (or equal) was being sought out. The main issue I have with this idea is the "aid another" and it becomes easier to hit higher DCs with a larger group of people. Anyone else running DS in 3.5 have a suggestion? What has worked for your games?
#2 Kamelion Jan 31, 2009 4:07:08	I'm about to start running a Dark Sun campaign using the 3.5 ruleset. One of the main items I'm trying to hammer down is how the PCs are going to find water. I was thinking an survival check with the DC based around how many people's worth of water (or equal) was being sought out. The main issue I have with this idea is the "aid another" and it becomes easier to hit higher DCs with a larger group of people. Anyone else running DS in 3.5 have a suggestion? What has worked for your games? The standard Survival skill allows a character to forage for water with a DC 10 check: With this check, a character can move up to one-half his overland speed while hunting and foraging (no food or water supplies needed). He can provide food and water for one other person for every 2 points by which his check result exceeds 10. For my own games, I alter this base DC, depending on the terrain. Infertile terrain raises the base DC to 15 and barren terrain raises the base DC to 20. Abundant and lush terrain both lower the base DC to 5. So far I have found that if you strictly enforce this, including the half-move aspect of the rule, it ensures that the PCs need to spend a fair amount of time concentrating on these resources. I want the earch for water to be an significant issue, not a game-halting obstacle. You could try raising the DC even further (make the standard base DC 15, for example, topping out at 25 for barren terrain), or add a further penalty based on the temperature (make it standard at hot temperatures, and then add a further +2 or +5 or whatever to the DC for each category above that). When you are playing at lower levels, these adjustments should help to make finding water something that the PCs can't just gloss over. Another approach is to limit the power of the create element spell. In DS2e, this spell could produce far less water than the standard PHB version of the spell. If you apply the same adjustments to the 3e version of the spell, it will only make 1/4 gallon of water per caster level. This helps recapture an important setting aspect from DS2e. Players of water clerics might grumble about game balance and all that silliness, but you can just wave your hand at them dismissively and sneer until they go away. Works all the time ;)
#3 divisionbyzer0 Jan 31, 2009 15:46:36	I like Kamelions ideas. I've been think about this myself as I just started running a game. However it's not a problem because currently they are in the crescent forest on their way to Gulg. I don't think aiding another is really a problem -- I mean having a group of people searching for something is always better than having 1 person searching for something. Don't see why this should be different with finding water. You could restrict the aid anothers for finding water in unfamiliar terrain (that which isnt the terrain they grew up or spend most time in) to those trained only in survival, thus forcing players who want a better chance of surviving in numerous terrains to actually take a rank in the survival skill. I think I might impliment this myself. Otherwise they can use the whole caravan and beat any DC I may set.
#4 greyorm Feb 01, 2009 6:28:36	One thing that should always be kept in mind for rules like this is that they should only ever come up when their outcome is important to the situation at hand, and not based simply on simulationist logic (it should/would happen, therefore it does -- ie: where the mechanics are like a sort of physics for the game world, beyond just being a probability resolution mechanism). This is a game quality issue: success and failure should be interesting to the current situation, beyond just "Ok, I made it and have water, now the next day I roll again" and beyond them being "the situation" by themself. Interestingly, D&D 4E's skill challenges are set-up to help with scenarios like this by providing a structure in the form of asking for a certain number of skill checks that must be made, with a goal result dependent upon those checks, and a failure result if they are not made -- and importantly, as I understand it, the results do not allow re-rolling the series. The result is a fail/win thing that alters the situation upon resolution. You win or lose, period, and something meaningful happens. For example, if you win, you make it across the desert, and if you fail, when you get out your ability scores, etc, have all suffered because you spent a week lost and low on supplies. But there's an art to developing skill challenges so that you aren't completely hosing the party by having them fail at them nor derailing the forward momentum of a situation, which is why I didn't suggest above: "if they succeed, they make it across; if they fail, they are lost" as the conditions. Part of the art is dependent on knowing what's going on in play, what the context is the action is taking place in, and what's the most interesting outcome of a success or failure to the situation at hand (to the adventure) -- not as a thing by itself, but in the context of the situation. Hence my suggesting "ability score loss" as the result rather than "being lost". As in that case they end up still confronting the challenge they were crossing the desert to meet with a reduced capacity, rather than not at all and perhaps running off in some unrelated, purposeless direction. Note that I could have also chosen something different, depending on the surrounding situation of play: I could have chosen a desert-crossing challenge that resulted in a delay rather than ability score loss. Example: let's say the adventure situation involves uncovering and preventing an assassination attempt against a prominent member of a city's templarate, and the desert-crossing challenge takes place. If the party succeeds, they make it across the desert in time to try and foil the attempt, but if they fail the challenge, they are delayed and when they finally reach the city, discover it is in an uproar and the high templar was already assassinated (move on to uncovering the culprits, or etc). You can even have branching paths with skill challenges: if all the rolls are made, you arrive in time and healthy. If certain rolls are lost, you arrive in time, but weakened; or if other rolls are lost, you arrive healthy, but not in time. A complete failure, you arrive weakened and not in time. Situation becomes primary to determining the nature of the challenge, rather than the nature of the challenge becoming the situation (as would be the case if "lost in desert, find your way out" were the failure mode). Figuring out how to blend these--situation/challenge result--without railroading play or creating schizophrenic adventures, is part of the art as well. One of the most important skills, and another part of the art of making challenges, is not derailing the interesting things with a failure, or making success...boring (or unrelated to the situation at hand), but that you've changed the options in some significant/meaningful way. (If you're used to thinking in a very simulationist way (ie: well, they HAVE to make these checks BECAUSE they're in the desert so it's just what would logically happen), then I realize the above may be confusing or difficult to conceptualize and set-up at first, but it gets much easier with practice and makes more sense once you shift gears in your head.)
#5 Kamelion Feb 01, 2009 7:18:18	One thing that should always be kept in mind for rules like this is that they should only ever come up when their outcome is important to the situation at hand, and not based simply on simulationist logic (it should/would happen, therefore it does -- ie: where the mechanics are like a sort of physics for the game world, beyond just being a probability resolution mechanism). Agreed In some situations you want to focus in on the nitty-gritty of finding water. In others you want the focus of the narrative to be elsewhere. To a certain degree, it's the concept of "say yes or roll the dice". But more importantly, as you outline further in your post, it's about catering the challenges to the demands of the session, rather than to the demands of the rulebook.
#6 Pennarin Feb 01, 2009 11:16:05	In the adventure I'm (slowly) writing the PCs are midway between civilization and their wasteland destination when they are successfuly surprise-attacked by a whole field of needle-shooting cacti* that puncture their waterskins. At that point finding water for survival becomes important and relevant. * Unfortunatly Lord Doomspike is not involved in the blitz.
#7 greyorm Feb 01, 2009 18:24:52	In the adventure I'm (slowly) writing the PCs are midway between civilization and their wasteland destination when they are successfuly surprise-attacked by a whole field of needle-shooting cacti* that puncture their waterskins. At that point finding water for survival becomes important and relevant. Ah, but important to the situation, or important as its own situation? How does it affect the resolution of the goal (get to the wasteland destination)? If you're playing situation "get to the wasteland destination" you need to take that goal into account in terms of how those checks are important and relevant, not as things by themselves (OMG! We must survive!), but as things important and relevant to the "get there" situation and not the little, current event (our waterskins are empty!). If you make the rolls relevant only to the little situation, the little situation becomes the Big Situation and you risk creating adventure schizophrenia ("Ok, we made it through the desert. What were we doing, now?" or "Hey, an elf tribe! Let's raid them!..We were doing what before? Whatever! Elfs ahoy!"). So make the rolls count towards the big situation, which depends on whether the situation is "getting there" or "trying to get there". There's an example on the Catch Your Hare blog of some characters lost at sea in a boat, and needing to make rowing checks. Everyone at the table knows that they'll just keep making rowing checks until they make it to shore... ...Boooring. If they fail, something interesting should happen. The situation should change in regards to their attempt to make it to shore, or what happens when they do get there. ...dice are dull when their result doesn’t matter: when you’ve preplanned what will eventually happen. In the example, above, it was clear that the boat would get rowed: so the individual rolls against our Rowing skills were tedious. Hopefully that clarifies how this is a different kind of "important and relevant" than what I think you are talking about. Yes, finding water is important to surviving. But HOW is that important to the adventure overall? That is, how will it affect and interlock into that situation in an interesting and situational context-affecting manner? Rather than JUST "find water or die". See what I'm getting at?
#8 Pennarin Feb 01, 2009 20:30:39	How would you make the survival skill challenge relevant (i.e. matter) to the ultimate goal of reaching the wasteland destination, Northern Minnesota Man? If they don't succeed, it could mean they fail and die (boring and unfair to everyone), and if they succeed then they are no longer in danger but nothing special happened besides lots of dice rolling (again, boring). So in this case I imagine failure could impart detrimental effects that, when mixed with encounters along the way, stack the dices against the PCs (i.e. you are so dehydrated that you take this penalty when facing the monster, or you cannot use your daily powers, etc, and fail again and it becomes worst, etc).
#9 spectralphoenix Feb 02, 2009 2:06:02	If you want to counter Aid Another, perhaps you could increase the DC mod for additional people? If it was +3/person instead of +2, finding water for large groups would require a more skilled primary character even if everyone helps out (since even if they can all take 10 and make the DC to aid, the total DC increases faster than the Aid Another bonuses.)
#10 greyorm Feb 02, 2009 19:03:45	How would you make the survival skill challenge relevant (i.e. matter) to the ultimate goal of reaching the wasteland destination, Northern Minnesota Man? Heh! Did you know that you can become dehydrated in the middle of the woods during any season of the year? As to how I would make it relevant, that's a hard question for me to answer knowing nothing about the overall situation you're looking at in-game. So in this case I imagine failure could impart detrimental effects that, when mixed with encounters along the way, stack the dices against the PCs (i.e. you are so dehydrated that you take this penalty when facing the monster, or you cannot use your daily powers, etc, and fail again and it becomes worst, etc). I think you answered your own question? Remember, though, if reaching it is the foregone conclusion, this works. It makes success and failure interesting/matter to the situation at-large. If that isn't the foregone conclusion, if they can fail reaching the destination, then you can use that as your failure point instead. Maybe this might help: think in terms of scenes in a movie. Every scene has a "point" in relation to the story, a reason for being that is bigger than itself. If the scene doesn't make a difference to the story, if it doesn't say something about what's happening or reveal some clue or foreshadow/affect the next scene or scenes on down the road, you don't see it. (You don't ever see the crew of the Enterprise having dinner and talking about the starboard nacel acting up, because it doesn't matter (and if you do see that scene, you can bet it matters). You don't see the scene where the protagonist walks all the way to his girlfriend's apartment after the phone call where she hangs up on him...the phone call ends, and next scene, he's THERE at her door. Because those are the important bits.) Now, games aren't movies--movies have plots and know how they're going to end up, games shouldn't (at least of the "listen to my cool story and roll some dice while I tell you what happens" type 'plot'), but central conflict/desired goal/situation source (the over-arching situation only the GM knows about so far) are fine--but they have situations instead of "scenes". Every situation in a game should have a point in relation to the goal, a reason for being related to that big over-arching situation. If the desert crossing is just to beat them up a bit and make them sweat, maybe foreshadow something they'll find at the destination, then have the desert crossing do that. Don't make it it's own unrelated thing (ala that discussion on SquareMans about 4E dungeons and how they affected the game they were running up until that point). Also, I'm not sure how to relate precisely how this technique differs from railroading except in that this technique should not guarantee or expect particular outcomes, which is how railroading works. Railroading is "No matter what you do, the following outcome occurs." As long as you aren't saying "You HAVE TO do this" or "This MUST happen", it isn't railroading. As long as the options for response and outcome are open, even if those options are no longer ideal, such as situations of "You CAN, but there's a penalty" you're safe.