Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 drconfoundo Mar 29, 2010 17:21:18	I played the Battle Interaction at a convention last month, and I'm considering using one of the skill challenges for an upcoming adventure in my campaign. Can anyone give me a hand with remembering how it worked? Exact mechanics would be awesome, but even just some corrections to what I've included below would be helpful. Show It was the one where the PCs were protecting the ritual casters from the motes of energy. I remember that a certain number of motes were spawned every round, based on the class make-up of the table (1/ per striker or leader, .5/per defender, 2/per controller, or something like that). Then, each player could either make attacks to destroy the motes, or use skill checks to defend/help the ritualist. I vaguely remember using powers during the skill challenge, and being able to hit one add'l mote for each +1 area on the power? I don't remember much about the victory conditions, other than that the ritual needed to be completed before the caster was killed.
#2 Ore Mar 30, 2010 8:05:29	[SPOILER] Area range +1 motes killed with the area attacks. So a power with blast/close burst 3 would kill 4 motes. Skill Challenge starts at 10 rounds I believe. Each assist on the ritual reduces that time frame by a certain amount. A bit of a warning, my party had two wizards and one other character who could hit multiple targets every round. Mathematically, we could not fail the skill challenge. The only way we could fail is if one of them decided NOT to act during a round. We realized this during the first round while getting a feel for the strategy of the skill challenge and we mentioned it to the DM. Going into the second round he realized what we were saying and said, "Okay, you win. No need to go through every round when there is 0% chance of failure, no matter what." We looked at the wording and he was doing everything right, we just had a party configuration that negated the skill challenge completely. So you may want to tweak the Skill Challenge a bit to provide for a chance of failure if you have one of those groups. Not every group can do this but any group with two serious area attack characters will CAKE WALK through the encounter. A group with three or more area attackers reduce the chance of failure to nil.
#3 tirianmal Mar 30, 2010 8:22:32	Show There is supposed to be a mechanic such that what you can do in round 1 gets harder in rounds 2+ so I don't see how you were able to make it with just three players acting all the time. By Round 5 or so, all your PCs should have had to have been making much more than simple at-will attacks. But, perhaps your organizers took it easy on you.
#4 Thanlis Mar 30, 2010 9:11:28	Show There is supposed to be a mechanic such that what you can do in round 1 gets harder in rounds 2+ so I don't see how you were able to make it with just three players acting all the time. By Round 5 or so, all your PCs should have had to have been making much more than simple at-will attacks. But, perhaps your organizers took it easy on you.
#5 Uthrac Mar 30, 2010 9:39:45	Show (1) Your group should still have needed attack rolls to hit. There's no auto-success. (2) Escalation is a DME suggestion to keep the encounter challenging. (3) If so easy, table should request reinforcements. (4) Most importantly - - as far as I know, the only "Part 2" available is an early draft version. Many mechanics were explained to DDXP judges and will likely appear in the final version when it is released.
#6 Alphastream Mar 30, 2010 11:46:29	I think the escalation feature is dicey, but ok. Show The biggest problem is with a party that has very little in the way of AoE. If they stretch early and use the few AoE powers you have (dailies, encounters, items), and the DM escalates, you can end up with a situation in later rounds where they can't keep up. I had this happen when I ran it recently. Only ritual casters can help speed up the ritual (and only 1 was at the table) so it was a very dicey thing. I let them heal the caster back from unconscious as a way of mitigating this, but the mechanic is still a bit swingy. I'm overall ok with it.
#7 Thanlis Mar 30, 2010 11:54:37	I think the escalation feature is dicey, but ok. Show The biggest problem is with a party that has very little in the way of AoE. If they stretch early and use the few AoE powers you have (dailies, encounters, items), and the DM escalates, you can end up with a situation in later rounds where they can't keep up. I had this happen when I ran it recently. Only ritual casters can help speed up the ritual (and only 1 was at the table) so it was a very dicey thing. I let them heal the caster back from unconscious as a way of mitigating this, but the mechanic is still a bit swingy. I'm overall ok with it.
#8 chadley Mar 30, 2010 14:36:41	Show Making assistance checks as a move action means that many groups will be able to reel off four assists per round. My interpretation of the skill challenge was that each assist reduced the number of rounds needed by 1. I might have been getting that wrong, but if so the language could use clarification. A maximum of two assists on the ritual per round might work; that means they're going to have to get through at least four rounds.
#9 Thanlis Mar 30, 2010 14:46:15	This seems a little unlikely. It's completely unlikely. I missed the key sentence in the encounter writeup and cheated my PCs of a challenging experience. I am bummed.
#10 chadley Mar 30, 2010 14:56:03	This seems a little unlikely. It's completely unlikely. I missed the key sentence in the encounter writeup and cheated my PCs of a challenging experience. I am bummed. Ah, very likely they had a challenging interactive experience over all, so it's not such a big deal that one encounter was easier than it would have been otherwise...
#11 Ore Mar 30, 2010 17:43:25	To clarify a couple points... I have never DMed the module, only played it once at Who's Yer Con so I admit what I experienced might not have been right. Having never seen the text myself I can only relay what happened to us.   That said, Chadley is correct. While this particular encounter was easy for my group (which may or may not have something to do with how it was run) the overall BI was very challenging and a lot of fun. I even thought this particular encounter was very cool as well. We just had the kind of group that made it extremely easy based on how it was presented. I can see how the challenge of the encounter could swing both ways based on the group composition. All in all, I thought it was a very creative use of the skill challenge system. And the BI kicked butt in all aspects. Honestly, it was one of the best D&D experiences I have ever had and I encourage anyone who has the opportunity to play one to do so.
#12 drconfoundo Mar 30, 2010 18:25:05	Thanks all for the input. Still a few things that I need in order to recreate this. Show How many motes were generated per round? IIRC, the motes were minions, so any successful attack killed them. How much damage did they do to a PC on a successful deflection action (Athletics/Endurance/Etc)? I played it at 1st level, and that's what my PCs will be as well. Also, how much damage do they do to the ritualist if they get through the PC screen?
#13 frupton Mar 30, 2010 21:51:17	Show In the version I have, the initial # of motes per round is # of PC's + 0.5 per defender/leader + 1.0 per striker + 2.0 per controller Yes, they are minions. You may or may not want to increase the # of motes in later rounds. Damage is 4 hp at H1 low.  Same damage whether to a pc that intercepts them or to the ritual caster.  The ritual caster can take about 8 hits.