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I'll be running the flavor encounters that occur between the Swallowtail Festival and the Glassworks encounter tonight. I've decided that I wanted to handle the boar hunt less as combat and more as a chance to RP, interact with and form bonds with Foxglove and for the PC to get to know each other better.
I looked up boar hunt threads here for idea but most of them seem to involve scaling the boar hunt up to make it more exciting. I'm not so much looking to scale it down as much as to move it from the combat realm to the skill realm.
My thought was to break it down into a series of opposed Survival checks - the PCs and Foxglove (with, perhaps, a circumstance bonus for hunting dogs) against the boar.
Could it be run as a chase? Each success gets the hunting party one step closer to the boar while each failure moves the boar one step further away?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Don't make it just Survival checks -- try some Climb and Swim checks as well, and maybe a few Knowledge(nature) checks at various point. If Quint gets invited along as a guest maybe he can point out some old Thassilonian ruins to them; if Shalelu shows up, she can do other stuff.
But the focus of the hunt is Aldern Foxglove; get the PCs interacting with him and relating to him -- Book 2 will be MUCH more meaningful if they do. You can give him a small retinue if you want, and drop some hints about how his wife couldn't come along because she's ill, or doesn't like hunts, or something...
Things like "the boar went into this swamp, do we leave the horses and go after him, or circle it to pick up his tracks on the far side, or just wait for him to come out" might be interesting decisions to make it.
Traces of a couple of goblins camped in the woods might be good foreshadowing and maybe an extra little adventure in its own right.
I likely get to run this this weekend myself, or it might be next week depending upon how the assault goes.
I have a list of skills that could be appropriate
- Survival
- Know (nature)
- Climb
- Acrobatics (use this as a con based skill for this)
- Ride
- Perception
- Swim (I didnt think of this thanks tonyz)
I'm going to make them make a few skill checks based-upon how they want to hunt the boar. I'm arbitrarily setting the DC at 15 until they make 3 successes, at that point they have the trail of the boar.
Once on the track of the boar, DCs become 13. At 5 more successes they bag the boar. If the party goes 1 "round" without making a success, they have lost track of the boar and must start at the beginning again.
Failures will lead to -2 on the next roll.
Three rolls with a modified total under 10 and they will run into 3 goblins, stragglers from the assault on the town, lost in the forest.
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I ran the boar hunt last night. Due to technical difficulties with Roll20 it was the only thing we did (we lost about an hour because the server farm where Roll20 was stored got a DDOS attack). I have to say the Roll20 folk were amazing at getting things back online for everyone.
I decided to run the boar hunt as a chase with nothing extra - no goblins, no additional rune wells or sin-spawn, no monsters of any kind.
My goals:
- Establish Aldran's presence strongly as an NPC.
- Establish how smitten Aldran is with the Maayan, the elven hunter PC.
- Give the PCs a chance to get to know one another (they've only just met) and learn more about each other's abilities.
- Give the players a further chance to establish the identities and personalities of the characters.
- Introduce the party to the Hinterlands.
We started out with a surprise. In my campaign, Aldran is the one paying for the PCs to stay at the Rusty Wyvern (there are no dragons in my game world). He was to have dinner with them two nights after the Swallowtail Festival. Instead he shows up early that day and announces:
"Well, friends, come along! We've got to go catch dinner. To the Tickwood! Dreadful name, I know, but the boar hunting is excellent!"
He takes the elven hunter (who he is crushing on), the human swashbuckler and the human witch/healer to the Squashed Goblin Stables where he buys them each a horse. Then they ride out. On the way to the Tickwood, Aldran gives them a brief tour of this part of the Hinterlands. He explains they'll be leaving the horses at the edge of the wood because he is hoping to learn more about hunting the elven way (from the elven hunter he adores).
Once in the Tickwood we switched to the Chase rules.
- At the first obstacle, the elven hunter and human swashbuckler both leaped up into the trees and made like Tarzan. Aldren tried to follow and fell flat on his backside while climbing the tree. The human witch just struggled through the undergrowth. Instead of cursing, I played up Aldren's good humor and had him laugh at himself. I was going hard for dopey but sweet.
- The human swashbuckler spotted the pit trap and warned the others - but too late. Aldren fell in. He insisted the others go ahead so the boar (which they are chasing at this point) doesn't get away. The human witch stayed behind to help him climb out.
- Both the human swashbuckler and the elven hunter found the goat trail leading up the cliff face. When Aldren reached the cliff he didn't even look but tried to climb... and got about two feet up before he slid back down. The human witch spotted the path and pulled him up by hand. All the while, he gushed about the elven hunter. I made sure not to make him too creepy here - he treats the elven hunter like a lady and doesn't gush over her like a stalker. I want him to be liked.
- At the dire tick attack point, the swashbuckler uses his rapier to dispatch the ticks while the elven hunter dodges them. Aldran tries to use his own sword to fight them and ends up stabbing himself in the foot (I rolled a 1) and a tick lands on him. The human witch saves him using magic.
- Aldran and the witch catch up with the others just in time to see the elven hunter, his crush, put an arrow between the boar's eyes. I didn't have them play out the fight - whoever succeeded at obstacle 5 (the hiding boar) got the kill. I didn't want to distract from the roleplay with a lot of unneeded rolls here. Aldran exclaimed at the elven hunter's skill and marvels at her abilities.
- Aldran, once his foot is healed by the witch, ties up the boar and leads the others back to the horses.
"We'll eat well tonight, friends! I'm sure Ameiko won't mind roasting up this beauty for us. Not to worry, dear Maayan. Not to worry. I know elves don't eat meat. I'm having fresh vegetables imported from the local farms just for you and your sister."
I think this was really successful. Keeping the encounter simple let the players focus on Aldran and their RP. They found him silly but endearing and asked questions to learn more about him - finding out he was a merchant from the same city as the swashbuckler and that he made his fortune establishing the transport of magical stone from the Irespan. This sets up the second chapter nicely - they've made a friend of him.
Cool! Many thanks for the chase cards.
Ruyan.
I ran the boar hunt last night. Due to technical difficulties with Roll20 it was the only thing we did
Your chase sequence is good - definitely swiping some ideas for scenes.
Thanks for sharing what you used.For me, for Sunday night, I have an extra challenge.
"a Boar Hunt" is a bit of a joke phrase amongst most at my table, we had a boar hunt in a game last a whole session ourselves.
The boar, when they fought it would not go down, people weren't getting crits, the hunt and the fight took the majority of the night.
The majority of the players got to spend hours watching a boring fight that wouldn't end, and then go home. Having the Boar hunt last hours is certainly something I want to avoid - I have no desire to add to the legend...
I dont have to worry much about Aldren's flirtation - I'm going to do the Lust/Envy triangle with Shayliss.
Ruyan: Hope they work for you!
Lorax: Interesting story and a great example of why I avoided turning this into a combat. I felt making it just another fight would detract from the goals of the entire encounter.
I've uploaded a new version of the boar hunt chase mat. This one is just the cards without the arrows. I was in a hurry making this so the arrows came out like crud.
I went a little off the deep end with this, and have come up with a set of 24 cards that will build the chase mat, based upon your mat. Its WAY to much for this encounter and I have some strange ideas on how to use them too which I hope will keep it short and amusing.
I'm going to give the players a small hand each of the cards and let them play them, It wont be all the cards, but I want to make a (brief) game-within-a-game, which I won't tell them the rules.
Its probably going to be a hot mess, but at least I'll warn the players that it might well be a mess before we start.
Looking forward to hearing how it works! :)
I got to do my Boar Hunt encounter tonight.
I gave the player's a "hand" of one card, plus one card if they made a DC 15 Survival, plus one card if they made a DC 15 Know.(nature).
I told them the boar hunt was going to be a game which I wasn't going to tell them the rules, but would let them know if they COULDN'T do something.
I picked the character with the highest survival skill check to go first.
The cards all looked something like this - and had the style of a typical deckbuilder card game card - the first card used was:
Fallen Trees
The boar tracks are muddled around this fallen log
(picture of a fallen tree)
Make a DC 17 Survival Check
or
Make a DC 15 Climb Check, and
Make a DC 17 Perception Check
You may use Aldren’s guides to gain a +2 to either check.
The player of this card is a Ranger, he passed his Survival check, and the hunt was on. Aldren piped in after the resolution of each card, cheering on the players, and chatting with them about town (the PCs are all natives)
The player's went around - discovering that they could aid each other, and that they could if they wanted draw more cards (at an increase of 2 to all DCs per card drawn). They did not discover that they could have played the cards on each other.
Overall, the players had a lot of fun with it, were impressed with the cards, and it was done pretty quickly. Some of them were suspicious of Aldren and or thought he was a little creepy, but not a bad guy. Aldren is well set up for his future appearance and while the cards were WAY TOO MUCH for the boar hunt, it was entertaining and the players were impressed.