Primal/Within Chronicles: Say Yes and have Fun! Part 1

Previously in Chatty’s game…

Our heroes are hired by a mercenary outfit to protect the lives of four City Within candidate in a one-day campaign/election of the city’s newest burg.  Thought wheeling and dealings, criss-crossed agendas, monsters gone wild and delusional candidates, our heroes are caught in this electoral storm and try their best to keep things under control.

This week we found ourselves 2 short for the game, Eric and Stef couldn’t make it leaving us at the minimum number of players to have a game (if we have 4+ PCs, we have a game).  Stef literally canceled at the last minute, so I found myself with the task of re-scaling an adventure geared for 5 players on the fly.

Which ended up being a good thing because I managed to do a lot of things on the fly, finally proving that I could improvise and go where my notes didn’t go.

We started the game shortly after that mysterious kiss that Jaiel (Yan’s Deva avenger) and Jevica Sarn-Mors (Candidate) shared.  All four PCs were invited to help Radik Whiteblade, the candidate representing the Preservers get ready for his demonstration.  The Preservers are a faction that believe that the City should stop growing so aggressively and that some areas liberated from the Dungeon should be returned to a more natural state.

Like all candidates, Radik’s had a few hours to try to convince the 200 voters to choose him as burgomaster.  In order to do that he presented to the PC a complex ritual that would ultimately lead to the binding of a nature spirit to the whole area occupied by the future Burg. The spirit would do the same job that the city’s Nexus (the energy core that protected the City and kept the Primordial imprisoned) could, but without having to drain the Nexus of it’s much needed energy.

To make things more interesting, as soon as the ritual was started, the dungeon, feeling its future chances to invade the area slip away, unleashed everything it could to the area.  The earth shook and cracked, lava poured out of everywhere, and 5 elemental creatures: 2 flame snakes, 2 Galeb Duhr Rockcallers and one Magma Strider converged on the PCs.  (I originally had 2 gargoyles joining the fight, but with a PC missing, I cut them from the encounter).

Yes, another combat-embedded Skill Challenge was upon us. I love doing those, so much so that I got green-lighted to write a Kobold Quarterly article about that.  But that’s a story for another day.

In that particular challenge, I explained to the players that they could achieve the ritual’s goal by getting 8 successes in either of 3 aspects:

• Nature:  Negotiating with a nature spirit to come and bind to the area.
• Religion: Unlink the Nexus’ energy and weave it as a support to the bound spirit
• Arcana/Dungeoneering: Push back, re-route the dungeon’s energies to make way for the nature/divine energies.

Each skill checks was a standard action. I explained that the PCs couldn’t just focus on killing monsters as the Dungeon would periodically send new waves of monsters.

However, I added a little extra to the challenge that ended making it really fun.  I told the players that each skill attempt would have 3 levels of success.  If the PC beat an easy check, a prior skill check failure could be canceled.  If the PC managed to beat a moderate check, a success was achieved.  The good part was that if the PC beat a hard check, the PC would be able to channel sufficient extra energies to manifest itself as a combat effect roughly equivalent to an encounter power (and still get a success).

Players were free to describe to me the effect they wanted to achieve, as long as it was thematically-linked to the power source they were manipulating (Primal/Divine/Arcane).

Needless to say that my players went to town with that.  Dworkin the Dwarven Shaman and Jaiel the Avenger focused on the ritual as much they could while Usul the Invoker and Corwin the Sorcerer faced the monsters.

The fight was really hard.  Most PCs had already used their dailies and the opposition, made up of 4 artillery monsters and a skirmisher hurt the PCs bad.

Franky’s game plan was to open a primal channel that linked him back to his native mountains to summon a Bear Spirit.   As we shared descriptions, him saying what he wanted and me throwing back possibilities, a scene was built where Dworkin reached out to this ancient Kodiak spirit roaming his mountain.  He tried (and succeeded) to lure it to the ‘Cave’ that was the conduit between the spirit and the Shaman.

Awesome visuals!

When Franky pulled a first hard success, he asked me to create a zone of difficult terrain to protect the party.   I described how spectral spikes of rock jutted outward from Dworking, hindering the monsters but leaving full freedom of movement to the PCs (the effect lasted until the end of Dworkin’s next turn).

As the monsters kept hitting everyone, Jaiel focused her part of the ritual by re-routing the Nexus’ energy flows to help defend against the monsters.  Thus, on her first high success, she had the divine energies flow  over each party member to form a shield, granting +2 to all defenses.

Cool!

Later, Franky made a forest of phantom plants, giving cover to his teammates and Jaiel used her hard successes to heal bloodied party members.  The fight was hard but the PCs kept together and played brilliantly.

As the fight moved on, Yan asked me if the sorcerer had to make a skill check in the challenge.  I thought about it for a few seconds and said ‘probably’ but then I got up to go to the bathroom. While I was climbing the stairs (we play in Math’s basement), I heard Math say ‘I would much prefer to continue dealing damage”.  When I came back I said, “you know what? The ritual’s goal is to detach the divine energy and link a nature spirit, so there’s no need to play an arcane check”

Say yes and… see your players be happy!

The fight was a success, really hard, but a total success.  Franky the storyteller was really happy to play a key role in choosing which spirit would be bound to the area and he quickly established a relationship with it.  Yan, as the group’s brilliant planner, had fun devising new uses for each hard success they rolled.  Mike and Math also had fun doing the dirty work of blasting away monsters.  All in all a great fight!

I’m loving these combat-embedded skill-challenges more and more.  Expect a lot more of those in future games and in all adventures I will write.  It’s a great mechanic and working in combat effects for successes are a great way to make spending a standard action worthwhile.

Up next: Corwin bluff’s the pants off all voters and Jevika’s Secret comes into play