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I also am doubtful that having the bad guys do all the rolling in the chase will make for a compelling story. If I'm a player and come up with something clever, but it doesn't work out because I roll poorly that is understandable and I move on. If I come up with something clever, but it doesn't work out because someone else rolls well that is a little more difficult to accept.

Also that where possible, players should roll the dice.

The reason I am going the route I am is because if I tell my players that they're are doing a skill challenge, then it will lose ALL elements of story or creativity, and just become an argument with me about why they're highest ranked skill should work. After that, it will just devolve into naming skills and making rolls without much explanation, all elements of story or thought removed from the process.

I have done chases in that manner before with this group, along with other skill encounters, and it's not only boring, but it kills the flavor of the chase. Whether or not that's a failing of skill encounters themselves, my group, or me as a DM, I don't know, but it's something I'm trying to avoid.

Not to mention, half the time my players will end up making attacks, using items, and casting spells as part of a "skill encounter" anyway.

And on top of that, those players don't have skills or abilities that would help the party escape will just end up aiding another and contributing as little as possible.

The way I'm trying, I'm hoping to encourage them to be more creative and not rely on what's got the highest ranks, and then put the boring "roll dice, compare to DC" on the NPC's. And since I'm not restricting the players to just skills or abilities, then those players who aren't necessarily able to contribute in terms of game mechanics can come up with other ideas, like evasive patterns, tricks to fool their pursuers, or even doubling back to take out the dogs or the trackers guiding their enemies.

I will look through the article about running more encounters at lower ECL. I will also add a more consumables to the crawl to help them keep hit points up and maybe give those who suffer more from low resources (like a wand or two for spell casters). And as Dave Justus said, perhaps the fatigue mechanic is an unnecessary element, especially given there won't be a chance to rest and regain abilities before the chase.

The multiple encounters are all mostly in the crawl itself, before the chase. The Chase will only have encounters if the heroes get overrun, and even then they have the chance to break free and get away.

And ultimately, as I said earlier, if they DO get caught, it's not party death. They'll just be captured, taken to a new location, and the campaign will have a slight detour on the way to the garrison.

Thanks everyone for the thoughts and tips, it is much appreciated!

Generally fatigue itself doesn't have much of an effect on combat. It's -1 to attack, damage, AC, initiative, and a few miscellaneous items. Getting pushed into exhaustion is a bigger problem - it's easy when fatigued and the penalties triple.

So fatigue's not too much of a concern, then. For low resources, i could plan an ECL 2 encounter for if they get caught, and that would reduce the strain on remaining resources and reduce the resources of the enemy. Then I could reward as though the encounter was ECL 3 to account for the total challenge they had to overcome.

Exhaustion would be the greater risk, but from my understanding, even normal combat doesn't cause fatigue in and of itself, so really the concern would come down to an individual character, such as a barbarian, using an ability that would cause fatigue. That would be on an individual basis, however, so the whole party wouldn't be under those kinds of penalties.

Like I said, the chase is not in and of itself difficult.

And if they do get overrun and overpowered, it's not the end of the game; they'll just get taken back to their starting point and enter an escape scenario instead of a chase scenario (with the garrison remaining the closest place of safety).

Reviewing the crawl, I can eliminate a couple of the combats and reduce ECL of the some of the others in order to give the players more resources to use in the chase.

The chase is actually like a skill challenge, except for the pursuers and not the players. I have it structured so that every round the pursuers will make a single roll vs a DC. If they get X successes before getting Y failures (where Y is less than X), they catch up to the players and a fight ensues. Each round, before the pursuit roll, the players will each get to take an action they think will reduce the likelihood of their pursuers succeeding, imposing penalties on the pursuit roll. If that's a skill check of their own, the use of an ability or an item, casting a spell, or something less structured in game mechanics, that's up to them.

The chase is quite literally the least of my concerns.

What I need to figure out is how to build, given low resources and fatigue, an encounter that is not guaranteed to overpower the players if they get caught.

1) Yes, "fatigued" as in the game condition.

2) And yes, I will announce at the start of the scenario that this is the case (I don't hate them THAT much, lol)

3) Forced march doesn't really apply, as they'll have fresh mounts available (stolen from the area they're fleeing from). This also takes care of the issue of not being able to run away due to fatigue.

4) The PC's will be level 3 at this point.

As for the chase itself, I'm trying to get away from it simply being a matter of dice rolls on the players part. I've designed it so that most of the rolling will be on the pursuer's part, with the players doing whatever they can think of to make it more difficult for those chasing them (which may or may not require a roll).

I'm just not sure how much to account for fatigue on a party-wide basis when designing a potential combat. Typically, only one person at a time is suffering from fatigue, so that person has trouble but not their companions. As such, there really aren't any guidelines for adjusting combat due to fatigue. Like you said, a low level party can be devastated by something that seems small, so I don't want to just say "Fatigue isn't that big a deal" and have the party be captured within moments of being overrun (if that even happens) because I misjudged it.

So I'm writing my next campaign, and I have a section where the players are going to be under a lot of stress. Basically, they will complete a dungeon crawl involving 5-7 combat sessions, one of them being a boss fight. The end goal is to rescue two people of import.

Immediately after the boss fight (people of import in tow), they are going to have to make a break for it. One of the NPC's makes it clear that they are not safe here, that there are a lot of forces in the area, and one of the people from the boss fight escaped, so they're going to put together people to capture the party. This NPC tells the players about a garrison that's a day's ride away, and they have to make a run for it.

The whole point of this section of the game is the chase from the dungeon to the garrison. If the players do well, they can get to the garrison before they are captured, and they'll be rescued (well, sort of, but that's for another day).

However, there is the chance that the players will be caught and will have to fight their way free to continue riding to the garrison.

Now, as I said: the heroes at this point will have spent an entire day fighting in a dungeon, then without a chance to rest they have to make a day's ride, under pursuit, to another location. I have decided that when their ride starts, they're all fatigued. This will affect any actions they take to evade pursuit, and will also have an effect on any combats that happen.

So here is my question: When putting together the combat scenarios for if the pursuers catch up to the heroes, exactly how much do I account for fatigue? Should I increase the ECL by 1 to account for fatigue, or is fatigue not THAT much of an impact on combat?

I've searched through the forums a bit, as well as other discussion boards on other sites. Most of the threads I found are about becoming fatigued while fighting, but that's not really what I'm going for. I'm looking at the players already being fatigued and then a fight happens (possibly even multiple fights, depending on how they perform).

I'm also looking at the fact that at this point in my narrative, any limited use per day abilities are going to be running low. Spell casters will probably be relying on wands and scrolls to get them through any fights, and even martial characters will most likely be low on special abilities. This adds another dimension to the challenge; not only will they be game conditioned fatigued, but they'll also be low on resources.

Any thoughts are much appreciated!

Halfling Barbarian wrote:

I'm still confused as to why more people write off the cavalier class, since it truly is a powerhouse.

Lots of people don't understand* how lances work.

*i.e. can't read

I have found in every game I've played that when someone plays a mounted character (Mounted Fighter/Paladin/Cavalier/etc) the nature of most campaigns renders all mounted bonuses useless: You're mount can't fit in the 5 foot halls of a dungeon, if the dungeon has larger halls, there's no enough room in the rooms for a charge, etc etc etc.

This is probably why cavalier gets written off so easily. I agree, it's a powerful class. But you only get like 50% of the class' functionality when in wide, open spaces. And as I said, in my experience, you get those spaces less often than you would hope for.

HB mentioned having a halfling cavalier: this is something that only occurred to me recently with my gnome alchemist: dungeon/size issues can be solved with a small character riding a medium mount. And if you TRULY want to be dungeon friendly with a cavalier or paladin, take a Giant Gecko mount for wall/ceiling running capability. This is something I plan to explore...

In 3.5, one of the Monster Manuals had a "Half Golem" template, where you would quite literally sever a limb and replace it with a golem-limb. You chose what kind of golem, and you got special abilities based on the type. The more limbs you replaced, the more powers you got. The drawback is every new limb increased your chances of becoming an evil, flesh hating creature that desires nothing more than the deaths of all living beings.

SO pretty freaking awesome, IMO.

Fake Healer wrote:

I always hated use rope. Everyone who goes adventuring should know how to tie a basic knot. If you need a special knot or a special situation I would use an intelligence check or just assume the dude can do it. I doubt that a trained rogue would ever fail to tie a rope right. Especially straight to a grappling hook.

Now if you were tying someone up that's different, use an intelligence check or just make the assumption that it works. If you need to have the tied dude try to escape use the CMB guidelines 15+ whatever the person's tying up modifier. Or something.

You could say "everyone knows how to move quietly" too. They don't, but they can try. Sure anyone can tie a basic knot... I'm not sure I want to rappel down a cliff with my life relying on their knot tying ability though. Anyone can try to mess with rope. Not everyone is an expert, with a knowledge of numerous knots, the best ways to tie off lines, etc. If your PCs ever moved through caverns this was an important skill. Rogues needed it, even if they could climb up with out rope, as they often tied one off and dropped a line for the rest of the party. It's your classic dungeon crawl skill. You can assume everyone has it, but then it becomes more difficult, and arbitrary, to ajudicate it's success or failure. What did Sam Gamgee say about rope in LotR? Something about rope, needing it if you don't have it. That goes for the skill too. Damn it's late. I'm waxing nostalgic about the Use Rope skill... oh well, more papers to grade. Summer school...

I have to agree with R_Chance on this one. In the campaign we are playing in, at least ONCE a session someone goes "Ok, I'll pull out the rope and make a...oh, nevermind!". In one session we needed to haul some heavy stones away from the opening to a dungeon. The next session we were trying to secure a run away boat. The session after that, we were scaling the inside of an old tower with broken steps: one character went up 40 feet, tied off a rope, and then helped everyone climb up. The session after that we need to tie someone up. In all of those situations, you can't just say "You automatically succeed" or "Just assume you know how to do that". It's too important of a skill to just get rid of.

In regards to the Sorcerer, we noticed it's continued weakness as well (and some of my players were equally eloquent in their displeasure). We implemented a mechanic similar to the Sword Sage in the Book of Nine Swords. We eliminated the spells per day mechanic for sorcerers, kept the spells known, and allowed use once per encounter. We included the recharge option of one spell for one standard action. We also modified a feat for sorcerers that would allow them to recharge their caster level in spell slots in combat as a full-round action. Both actions provoke attacks, of course.

This makes the Sorcerer a powerful spell caster, as opposed to the Wizard's retarded cousin. We haven't found it to be over-powered, though you may decide to limit the in-combat recharge.

I can definitely see where this will make the Sorcerer a powerful caster. Now, instead of raising your hands during the last battle of the day and saying "Sorry, all out!", you can just wade in with a new Fireball followed by a Magic Missile, then help a buddy with a Bull's Strength all as though you were well rested and hadn't spent the day fighting. Though this does present the problem of controlling a Sorcerer's casting outside of combat. You will still need a way to control that.

Another concern I have always had is with the Wizard. I will always end up playing a Sorcerer (given the choice between the two)on the account of one thing: the Wizard's spells per day. I understand that the low spells per day is supposed to balanced by the number of spells they can know, but then on top of that you have to prepare each spell at the beginning of the day. You may know 25 3rd level spells, but you can only prepare between 4 - 8 per day, and you have to do it before you know what you will need for the day. Now, you just gave Sorcerers not only spontaneous casting, but effectively a limitless number of spells per day. Add into that equation the new Bloodline feature of Sorcerers, and now you have someone who need not necessarily even recharge their spells in a single combat. Out of spells? Use Demonic Flaming claws to get the job done!

I think this will make the Wizard very weak in comparison, and you may see that people choose to play the Sorcerer over them for these reasons. I like the School Power feature, it goes a long way to redressing this imbalance, but I still feel as though the Sorcerer is coming out on top in the deal. Personally, I feel the Wizard, through years of study and research, should be able to prepare more than 4 spells per day as a class cap. Maybe now that you have removed spells per day from the Sorcerer you should up the ante on the Wizard and grant him 6 spells per day as a class cap.

Also, I was looking through the races, and I am glad to see that Humans finally get a little more love from the game designers. However, I have noticed one small catch as playing a Human. The Weapon Training feature allows Humans to select a single Martial Weapon to be proficient in in addition to their class proficiencies. However, if you Select Barbarian (who's proficiencies are not listed in the Aplha 2 PDF, btw), Fighter, Paladin, or Ranger, you are already proficient in ALL Martial Weapons. I know that this is only 4 out of 11 base classes, but 4 classes is still a good chunk of them. Perhaps the Weapon Training should allow either a single Martial Weapon or a single Exotic Weapon. This opens up new possibilities, like for a Wizard to use a Dwarven Urgosh, but in instances like that Wizards, Sorcerers, Rogues and the like aren't really going to have to strength bonuses to abuse an exotic weapon like that, but it lets your combat based classes still maintain that specialness of being Human and highly adaptable.