The Path to Victory – Special

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Special – Finally, we come to the catch-all, the miscellaneous. The Special victory condition means that the PCs can do (or have to do!) something else non-combative while they’re fighting in order to win. The two primary non-combat options in D&D are skill rolls and pure roleplaying, so someone (or everyone) is involved with either a skill challenge or an intense roleplay concurrent with combat. The vast majority of Special Victory Conditions are based off of one of the other three alternate conditions or combinations thereof.  Thus, rather than try to describe Special encounters by themselves, here are some examples of how other alternate condition encounters can be taken to the next level with a Special add-on.

1) Seize or Escort – This Special variant is very intuitive.  Get to that square, and hold it while you engage in a skill challenge.  Usually, it’s not just a single square, but an Area Burst 1 or 2 around some non-combatant or terrain feature. It’s very important here to keep the side action moving fast enough that the PCs can’t simply wait until the fight is over to win the skill challenge nor can they endanger any innocents in combat. The Skill Challenge is a shortcut to what would otherwise be a long, difficult combat; one that the PCs may or may not be suited to take on.  If they wait to finish fighting to take on the challenge, the opportunity is lost to them. For this reason, your Skill Challenge should probably not require any more than 3 or 4 successes per active character to complete. If you think your group will split into three combatants and two skill-users, run a complexity 3 challenge. Don’t’ be afraid to change the numbers on the fly. Ironically, the big pitfall to avoid is making the skill challenge a requirement to further the story.  It can be very tempting to say that the PCs must succeed in this challenge to proceed with the story – but you wouldn’t do that outside of combat, would you? If they blow the challenge, they have to be able to win by combat, so be prepared to break down your Arrive condition to a standard Rout if things go awry.  Combat success will put the party the same distance down the path of the story that skill success would, just a different branch.

Examples:

· Canon Cannon! – The PCs arrive at a temple of Pelor that contains a spectacular radiant artillery piece.  To get to it, though, they must face down a horde of undead that can be defeated, but simply reattach their missing body parts and continue after a round or two.  The Divine characters use Dungeoneering, Religion and Arcana to consecrate and then operate the device while the other characters hold off the encroaching abominations. There should of course be another option if the machine doesn’t get fixed, like burning the undead while they’re temporaily incapacitated.

· Quell the Mob – The PCs are caught in a huge free-for-all between two or more factions. The factions are in the midst of a terrible misunderstanding and should be working together against a common enemy, not infighting.  The PCs could in fact try to physically subdue every NPC on the board… or the Warlord,  Bard and/or Invoker could climb those steps over there.  From their vantage point, they can use Bluff, Intimidate and Diplomacy to unite the masses and stop the violence while the more combative PCs break up large scuffles or keep interlopers from climbing the stairs as well.

2) Checkmate – As long as we have players who aren’t just going to slaughter senselessly, why not have the enemy forces show a little prudence as well?  A modified Checkmate is one good way to get your players to parlay with the enemy on the field of battle.  Bards and Rogues love this in particular because many Special Checkmates can becomes displays of swashbuckling prowess in a hurry. Good roleplay and dialogue between the PCs and the enemy King is priceless, particularly while they cross swords.  While not exactly a traditional fantasy movie, consider the final scenes of Return of the Jedi – it’s essentially a Special Checkmate scenario.  Luke talks Vader into literally overthrowing the Emperor and takes a beating in the process. In the comic books, Spiderman is a master of this scenario, goading and provoking his enemies into making stupid decisions. If the King can’t be taunted, reasoned with or swayed to your viewpoint, perhaps the PCs can bribe him or pay tribute of some sort to escape with their lives. I suggest freeform roleplaying because you’re letting the players’ mental ingenuity and sense of humor loose here, not the characters’ mechanical abilities.  However, if you have a group that likes rules and structure, a skill challenge is an acceptable way to go. If you really want to throw the party for a loop, consider setting up a Pacifist Checkmate where the King himself is dominated or a thrall of some sort.  The PCs must not only avoid killing innocents, but when they get to the King, they must restore him to his senses as well bringing whatever skills and spells they have to bear!

3) Escape or Rout – I refer to this as the The Stop’N’Go Slugfest and it’s not for the lazy DM.  First, to get a really good idea of this sort of encounter, watch the Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobe vs. Darth Maul fight from Episode I. (I know, more Star Wars references…) While the encounter is really little more than a three-man Rout, Darth Maul himself is only half the battle.  Just getting to him is the other half.  Between leaping up and down across catwalks, avoiding pits and dodging timed forcefields, the Jedi certainly have their work cut out for them.   Take a relatively straightforward battle for your PCs and give them something to think about by breaking up the battlefield into discrete sections.  Again, I recommend not involving a lot of skill checks here and instead testing your players’ puzzle-solving abilities. Just be sure the characters have some way to communicate with each other reliably and the players have something to draw with.  I also don’t recommend this scenario for groups who avoid the ‘metagame’ or dislike moving around  miniatures/tokens since the puzzle-solving aspect can break method acting-type immersion sometimes.

Examples:

· The party comes across a maze of small corridors separated by thick walls and joined only by teleportation circles.  The party must figure out which circles go where in order to pass.  In the meantime, they are harried by monsters trapped in the corridors.  The final exit should rely on different characters pressing switches, standing on pressure plates or performing Arcana checks in different parts of the maze to reroute the circles.

· The party is somehow forcefully split and ends up on large moving platforms suspended over a seemingly bottomless pit or gliding over a natural lava bed. The PCs must move platform to platform, either by leaping, unique movement abilities or somehow forcing the platforms to move in more suitable ways.  This would most likely be accomplished by Theivery or Acrobatics checks.  While this happens, enemies come from above and below, trying to knock the PCs off of their safe zones and into certain doom.

Similar Posts:

•      The Path to Victory: Checkmate
•      The Path to Victory: Defend
•      The Path to Victory: Alternate Victory Conditions in 4e