Posts from — August 2010

 
(Intro music discussion omitted)

I want to talk this first week about setting up proper goals and complexities for your skill challenges. We’ll look at some DMG2 challenges as well as a couple from the RPGA. The first one, and let’s start with a good one, is from CORM 1-1, “The Black Knight of Arabel.” This encounter, Encounter 2B, has you chasing the Black Knight of Arabel to try to catch him. Now that initially sounds kind of lame for a skill challenge, but once you read it you find out that you’re actually chasing him at night through a forest, so that gives you a couple of complications to play with, opens up more skills and makes the whole thing a bit more narratively interesting. Furthermore if you look at the victory conditions, you’ll find that the players always catch the Black Knight whether they succeed or fail. It’s merely a matter of ‘in what condition’ – whether the players get a +4 initiative bonus on a success or the Black Knight gets a surprise round on a failure. Add in the fact that there are a few optional scripted events as you go through the challenge and the DM has some really solid ways to provide varying degrees of success and failure based on how well the PCs do. Even at Complexity 3, this is a good, solid skill challenge, worthy of 8 successes to finish.

On the other hand, we have page 93 of DMG2 which contains the skill challenge “The Restless Dead.” No $%#!. That’s how your players are going to feel after this one. In this skill challenge, the PCs are trying to obtain information from some guardian ghosts about an upcoming puzzle trial they’re going to have to endure. That’s pretty much it. There’s no complications, no time limit, the ghosts aren’t going to lie to them, it’s just “get information.” It’s also information your players need to complete the puzzle so it’s kinda already smelling funny from the beginning as a skill challenge. Furthermore, it’s complexity 5. That’s twelve successes, ladies and gentlemen, TWELVE on FOUR primary skills – Arcana, Athletics, Dungeoneering and Diplomacy and you can barely count Dungeoneering since I think only three classes have it as an option for a trained skill so you’re really looking at twelve successes on three primary skills. Not only that, the Diplomacy check is a hard DC for the level and though you can replace it with Bluff, it’s still probably the same party member – the face – doing the same thing over and over and over again. So other than that, you’re looking at Athletics and Arcana checks to vaguely impress these spirits as to just how awesome you are. You see why I don’t like this challenge? I could even give it some bonus points for including multiple stages of failure (for every two successes you get, you gain a new piece of information), but why not make it a Complexity 2 challenge with six successes and give a new piece of information for each success? Why drag this monstrosity out twice as long as it has to be? This is just a bad skill challenge. It’s too long for not enough complications and the DM is going to burn out of ways to describe how you made a fool of yourself after the first couple rolls. Plus even after it’s over, the PCs are still in the same place, at the same time, facing down the same problems. Since the players need the information to continue, it’s not even a good skill challenge premise in the first place – at best a Complexity 2 but even then there should be another complication like “also determine if the ghosts are lying to you” or something. For 12 successes, you should be able to go through the entire puzzle trial. If you must use this skill challenge, shrink it down. Otherwise, just skip it.

For a better example of a long skill challenge, check out page 90 of the DMG2 “Hunting the Mastermind.” This is by James Wyatt, adapted from the Eberron Campaign Guide. This is a Complexity 4 challenge and the only goal is apparently to “find the demon” but if you read it carefully, this is really two skill challenges jammed together. The first half (5 successes) is “learn about the demon” where the second half, the last five successes is to physically locate the demon. Thus you can think of this as two Complexity 1 skill challenges (maybe Complexity 2) back-to-back. Here again, there’s not as much active opposition as I would like – there’s no time limit, no one is trying to protect the demon, no one is trying to stop you. The challenge is a little bit too passive for my tastes, but admittedly the PCs are physically moving around the city the whole time so there’s a nice change of scenery (always helpful for a skill challenge) and there are six legitimate primary skills with which to complete the challenge. Like “The Black Knight of Arabel,” the PCs will always end up at the demon’s lair whether they succeed or fail – it’s merely a matter of the circumstances under which they do so. So go ahead and take this one. You’ll have to fill in some of the details on your own and bring it to life a little bit more but as a framework or skeleton its really pretty good.

So that’s my rant on complexity and length. Next week, we’re going to talk more about primary and secondary skills in particular.

 
I’m launching a short Aberrant Rules series this week about skill challenges. I have four major problems with the way skill challenges are generally written and run in most preset modules, so in true Ryven fashion, I’m going to break them up into four segments to be aired at the end of the next few podcasts. I’m briefly going to cover each point in today’s show and then go into more detail using some RPGA modules as examples in the weeks to come. So here we go.

Point 1 – Scene Resolution and Mismatching Complexity. A skill challenge is best used when the characters are trying to resolve an entire scene – that is, the result of the challenge, whether passed or failed, will move the party on to a new plot point. A skill challenge to convince some guards to let you through a door isn’t all that great. It’s a single task. Do some roleplay, make a single skill check and be done with it already. Now having a two-hour dinner with the king and trying to convince him of your point of view while simultaneously fending off the opposition and maintaining courtly demeanor? THAT’S a skill challenge! It’s also worth mentioning at this time that the numerical complexity of your skill challenge should match the in-game complexity of your challenge. My rule of thumb is one level of numerical complexity for each complication in your challenge concept. Thus “scale the wall” is at best a Complexity 1 skill challenge and should really be considered for a single roll as task resolution. “Scale the wall at night in under half an hour” now has two complications on it and is more worthy of a Complexity 3 challenge. Don’t require your PCs to have eight successes to chase the bad guy through an open field. Just do it in three or four rolls and get on.

Point 2 – Managing Expectations. This has been said a hundred thousand times before but it’s crazy important so I’ll say it again. Do your PCs need to pass this skill challenge to move the story forward? If so, your challenge is invalid. Rewrite your challenge or add complications such that failure doesn’t kill the plotline. You don’t want to back yourself or the PCs into a corner. Skill challenges are for side advantages or disadvantages surrounding the main story, not the main story itself. Furthermore, make sure your players don’t feel like there’s only one right way to complete the challenge. I think Bonus Tokens (shameless self-promotion!) are an excellent way to do this, but however you go about it, let your players know that any reasonable idea will be acknowledged.

Point 3 – Dead Skill Challenges. If your skill challenge is unresponsive, your characters will be unresponsive as well. Don’t be afraid to have the challenge “bite back,” forcing the characters to make rolls they weren’t planning on in the beginning. A monster that doesn’t hit you back would be really boring. In the same way, a challenge that doesn’t react to what the players are doing is essentially dead. Furthermore, if your PCs are solidly whooping the challenge, a few unforeseen and awkward skill checks can push the tension factor up and leads nicely into my fourth point which is…

Point 4 – Complications, Not Failures. This was mentioned a couple weeks ago when ‘Chatty DM’ Phil Menard was on the show – he calls it “Mouseguarding.” A failed skill check doesn’t have to mean ‘no action’ or ‘no interest.’ As a DM, you can only tell your players “you don’t (whatever)” for so long before it simply gets lame and frustrating. So say one of your PCs fails a climb check on a wall-climbing challenge. Rather than simply tell him (or her) that the character doesn’t climb the cliff, say “You get partway up but the effort is exhausting you. You’ll need to make an Endurance check to keep going or lose a healing surge or leave behind some gear or something.” As much as possible, give your players a secondary skill roll and/or a couple of roleplaying choices to deal with the effects of the failure. In this scenario, the Endurance check doesn’t count as a failure for the purposes of the challenge if they botch it – it only forces the character to take the roleplaying route.

Here at Aberrant Rules, we try to keep the ideas more or less within the bounds of standard 4th Edition D&D play and they usually tend towards storygame elements so far. Today, I present you with something distinctly mechanical and well outside the realm of the core rulebook, so proceed with some caution.

One of the things that bugs me about turn-based combat both in 4E and anywhere else, really, is the lack of simultaneous action. Obviously having everyone take a turn sequentially makes things easier to deal with, but sometimes I really want two things to happen at the same time. So taking a cue from the old SNES game Chrono Trigger, I’ve developed a rough sketch of something I call Combined Powers. It’s actually a bit detailed so I’ve written up a PDF and sent it in to Jared* for him to include in the show notes, and I’ll just give you a brief rundown here.

A Combined Power occurs when two characters use Powers simultaneously to achieve greater tactical effect. The combined Power counts as a use of each of its component powers for both frequency and action type. One character must ready his or her component Power as an immediate reaction/interrupt to the other character’s component Power in order to initiate a Combined Power. Important – a character can only be involved in one Combined Power per encounter.

Then there’s a bunch of guidelines as to how to deal with all the numbers and such. They aren’t exactly hard-and-fast rules and you may find a loophole for something here or there, but I think it’s a darn good start. Let’s take a look at an example of a Combined Power. You are a Swordmage. Your allied wizard tosses a Scorching Burst to ignite your bonded weapon and you then sear everyone next to you in the same way you would normally Sword Burst. The new power is called:

Fire Whirl gives up Sword Burst’s ability to distinguish friend from foe and Scorching Burst is sacrificing range and targeting ability. Also, someone is losing an immediate interrupt action, probably the wizard. For this trade, though, you get an extra ability modifier on a single hit (good for overcoming nasty resistances) and half damage on a miss. It’s better, but given that you can only do one of these per encounter (the power itself is still “at-will” because it’s composed of two at-wills), it’s not game-breaking.

I’ve included a couple more examples in the document, so please – take a look at them, decide if you like them or not, see if they add something unique to your game and then send me feedback, either on the forums, at ryvencedrylle@gmail. com or on Twitter as ryvencedrylle. I’m looking forward to your input!

*for the full pdf, go here!

 
Here we are once again at the end of the show and I’ve got some weird and wacky mechanic for you to try in your game. The idea this week isn’t so much something I have done as it is something I want to do; wish fulfillment. You see, I get bored of my 4th edition characters very quickly – far more than any other game I’ve ever played. I think this is because WotC dishes out so many shiny new toys on a weekly basis that I get distracted. Fears, powers, builds – I want to try them all. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t think that 4E has abandoned or isn’t conducive to immersive roleplaying. I love immersive roleplaying and I love 4E. With the game mechanics so intricate and yet transparent, I can’t ever seem to get into character nowadays because I’m thinking of all the little things I want to explore and fiddle with mechanically. This, by the way, is the reason I can never play Magic: The Gathering. I’d have to have all the cards – ALL of them from the very beginning over a decade ago up through today or I’d never feel like I could play completely the game fully. My own little personal brand of OCD, I guess.

So here’s what I’d like to do sometime. I want to be the entire party for a change. Yes, I know this is supposed to be a cooperative multiplayer game, but darn it I have this whole stable of crazy characters who don’t really quite work right until paragon tier, and I don’t want to have to trudge through 10 levels of LFR just to get there. I’ve got this John Woo-style dual hand crossbow ‘gun-fu’ ranger, another ranger multiclassed to druid with a beast companion and a homebrew feat that lets him be his own wolfpack, a polearm fighter who augments his fighting with Quick Draw and Alchemical Opportunist, a possessed Barbarian/Warlock Hybrid and who knows whatever else – I’d have to go look through my hard drive to find them all. You know what, I.. I just don’t want to have to work my way through all these levels!! I just want to throw them down on the table as is and go nuts!

So why wait – why not start at level 1 and hack my way through all the levels like I’m supposed to? Because when PHB3 comes out, I’m going to have another half-dozen or so builds that I know I’m going to want to play. Seekers, Psions, Ardents… I can’t even remember right now all that’s in PHB 3, it’s sort of eluded me. And it’s not like you could even do this efficiently in 3.x Edition because making a character above 1st level took so long, doling out skill points and picking out spells and everything else. Making one character was hard and tedious enough, let alone four or five. And 1st and 2nd editions, while also having fairly simple character design, just doesn’t have the breadth and flexibility of options that 4th Edition does. To me, the game is just sitting here begging me to make a whole squad of my own guys and run them. I imagine that wouldn’t make any sort of a decent campaign, but as a one-off, a one-shot? Eh, maybe. The next time your regular game group comes up a couple players short, let whoever’s there bring out two or three character of suitable level, bust out a prebuilt dungeon from the WotC site and have yourself a good old-fashioned story-light beatdown. Then let me know how it goes. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get some pizza rolls and a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics and see if I can’t scratch this itch myself.

 
I originally started writing this entry talking about manipulatives, which are any tokens, objects or bits of something that is handled and moved around to signify meaning. But as I wrote it, it really coalesced around skill challenges and one manipulative specifically – the Bonus Token. Don’t go looking in your core rulebooks for this because you’re not going to find it. It’s something I’ve cribbed from other games and ported into 4th Edition D&D.

How often have you been adjudicating a skill challenge and one of your players makes a check that goes beyond a simple secondary skill, in a way that is both creative and reasonable but doesn’t directly contribute to winning the challenge? Many times, you dole out a +2 to the next check and go on with it, but as a DM, I found that got really lame really fast. It increases the odds of the next check succeeding by 10% but if it doesn’t help (or isn’t necessary), the player may not feel particularly inclined to come up with another unique idea later and I definitely want to encourage that sort of thinking. So here’s what I started doing. When one of my players goes in a direction with a skill check that I didn’t expect and passes a level-appropriate DC, I throw them a little chip with the word “Bonus!” on it. (I play mostly on MapTools VTT, by the way, so I can make all sorts of weird virtual stuff). Anyway – it tells the player that I officially recognize the successful skill check and feel that it was somehow appropriate but have no idea how to incorporate that check at this exact moment. I also take particular care to NOT describe that check in the game story when it’s made. In this way, I don’t feel like I ever have to say “no” to anything, but the pressure to come up with the result immediately is lifted. Later on in the challenge, players can ‘cash in’ their tokens for other effects related to the skill check.

Here’s an example – the players are chasing a thief through a busy town. The primary skills are Athletics, Acrobatics, Perception, Endurance and Streetwise. Your player’s Cleric is not trained in any of these things, so she decides to use Religion; she prays to Erathis, the goddess of law and civilization for help. That seems both creative and reasonable, so upon making her check, you throw her a Bonus Token. When the thief is caught, the cleric asks “is the thief part of the evil cult we’re looking for?” and waves her token. If the thief wasn’t already a cultist, but you’re prepared to play it that way you have her return the token and you say “yes, in fact he is and he has the entry password tattooed on his left hand.” Perhaps you don’t want to go just hand your players quite so much information. You could trade that token for “no, he isn’t, but one of the guards that comes to arrest the thief comments that the last couple burglars they’ve caught were dead and marked with a strange sigil in blood.” Now if the PCs were about to botch the challenge and had only one or two failures left, maybe the cleric player could decide to use the token more mechanically, say to add 2 to a check an ally has already failed in the hopes that it would then succeed or grant a new reroll altogether (much like the way the LFR card system works). However you do it, the purpose of the Bonus Token is to teach your players that a unique, creative idea will pay out somehow in a meaningful way. A simple +2 bonus may be the DM’s best friend, but after a few sightings, that Bonus Token will become your players’ best friend.

 

Along with writing for At-Will, I do some small podcast snippets for the Power Source Podcast on d20Radio. A couple weeks ago, we had a listener named Sam write in about including mechanics for character flaws in 4th Edition D&D. If you want to listen to the whole thing, check out Episode 8, but I’ll give you the short version here. His “mechanic” at the time was that his character has a short temper and throws away his weapon on any attack roll resulting in a natural 1. As you can guess, this didn’t go over entirely well with the rest of his group and he wanted advice on how to make it work. The hosts of the podcast – Jared and Scott – took the long way around telling him not to do it and just roleplay the temper in non-mechanical ways that wouldn’t affect the overall efficiency of the group. For the next episode, I turned in this piece, which I now offer to you all as an option to mechanically deal with character flaws in a way that is both compelling and appropriate for the game.

Dear Sam,

Don’t listen to Scott and Jared. You can absolutely have a mechanic for character flaws in 4th Edition D&D – your only problem is that you’re trying to lead with the stick, not the carrot. Let’s hop off the WotC train for just a moment – yeah, I know: sacrilege – anyway, and go peek at the Dresden Files RPG for a second. There’s a mechanic in that game called a Compel. A Compel is a weak spot in your character. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a character trait, it just need to be some handle your DM can tempt you with or jerk you around by. A short temper, rampant curiosity or even an easily kidnapped family member all make good Compels. If you follow a Compel, thus getting you and your group into a little more trouble, you get a Fate point which is used to modify die rolls and stuff. Without getting into specifics, the game is written such that you may need a couple more Fate points than what you’re normally allotted for the main story. The Compels, then, provide a personal risk/reward option for you to get that extra help, though possibly at a cost.

This is the concept I think you want to model for D&D. Your character’s flaw should be something you turn to when the chips are down in a sort of Faustian bargain, not a mechanic that does nothing but get in your way. So you seem to want to play a character with anger issues and you like the idea of throwing away your weapon mid-combat. Alright. Sit down with your DM and propose this idea: if you throw away your weapon as part of taking your second wind, you can spend two healing surges. You’re lowering your damage output and burning through your surges faster, so it’s a risk, but you are getting the immediate healing you need and so your party has some time to mechanically to deal with your decision – it’s not just a hosing. Your character flaw is not only a resource management option now, but it’s also probably not going to tick off your fellow players. Heck, they may even encourage you to do it! Your flaw contributes to both your character and the game rather than detracting from it. If you don’t like that option, then maybe throwing your main weapon away on a roll of 1 causes your secondary weapon to gain the high crit property. I don’t like that one as much, but it’s a thought. Hope this gives you and everyone else listening some ideas.

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.

Seize or Escort – This Special variant is very intuitive.  Get to that square or set of squares and hold it while you engage in a skill challenge.   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.  Don’t be afraid to change the numbers on the fly.   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.  Once they get the device going, they can use it to blow away the undead for good.

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.  Good roleplay and dialogue between the PCs and the enemy King is priceless, particularly while they cross swords.  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.

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 fight, Darth Maul himself is only half the battle.  Just getting to him is the other half.   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.

And that ends the four-part series on Victory Conditions.

 

The Alamo, the Great Wall of China, Stalingrad – there’s nothing like a stalwart last-ditch “you shall not pass” heroic defense to inspire courage and stimulate the imagination.  Defend is probably the least often seen Victory condition in D&D which is why it’s my personal favorite.  In a Defend situation, you don’t necessarily need to win – you just need to not lose…  usually.  There are three main variations of Defend and I have named them after fictional or historical battles, more or less.  I’m not going to explain them all right now (that’s what Wikipedia is for) but look them up later if you’re interested.

Rourke’s Drift or Koan Defense – This is the classic Defense option.  All the PCs have to do is stand there and take it for a certain number of rounds, at which point something awesome will happen.

The enemy force is inferior man-to-man (i.e. lots of minions or significantly lower-level non-minions) but outnumbers the PCs many, many times over.  Conversely, the enemies are of equal skill and ability but have some strategic disadvantage, like being downhill, across difficult terrain or on water.  After a certain number of rounds, the opposing forces will recognize the PCs superior spirit and simply give up, someone else will intervene to save them or the villain will miss his big chance.  This version is particularly fun since the DM gets to either completely panic the players or make them feel like the baddest dudes ever.    Again, there’s a sort of deus ex machine effect here since the PCs aren’t actually the heroes.  Be sure the players are OK with that in some way and really buy in to the fact that every once in a while, they need some help.

Thermopylae Defense or Custer’s Last Stand –  Yes, I know Custer’s Last Stand was not a defense, but just go with it.  A very unique take on the Defense idea – the PCs are going to die.  It’s planned in advance out of game (by both GM and players!) and destined in the narrative.  These characters will not see the break of dawn tomorrow.   Their only goal is to hold off the enemy for as long as possible in the hopes that someone else can either prepare their own defense or escape.  Ideally, the longer the PCs hold off the enemy, the greater benefit (either mechanically or narratively) to the next group of PCs that the players create or use.  Doing so creates a sense of continuity and reinforces that the first group of PCs did not die in vain.  This scenario is best run with Epic-level characters about to complete their destiny, but lower-level “throwaway” characters are alright too.

If you’re planning on running a Thermopylae Defense on an open field without much terrain, it should start with a handful of quickly dispatched enemies and then get progressively difficult as the rounds pass.  This is an attrition battle, so you want the PCs to feel like they fought long and hard, rising to the challenge, rather than blowing all their big guns up front and then being shot like fish in a barrel.    Status afflictions should increase as the PCs burn through their resources.  but avoid dominate.  Do not dominate your PCs; this is their last scene – having them fall to each other’s attacks only works if you’re doing a supernatural horror thing.   Otherwise your players may feel cheated out of a heroic end.  Also, set a definite endpoint in your own mind.  For instance, you know that if the PCs make it 10 rounds, the next wave is completely undefeatable. If you decided to use terrain, you can bring out most or all the enemies at once rather than in waves and give the PCs strong tactical position that they can use to minimize the enemy army’s ability to attack them.

The Frodo Defense – The Frodo Defense is perhaps the simplest Defense variant, but it comes last in this list because it’s not a Defense in the truest sense.  In a Frodo Defense, the PCs must Rout the enemy – just defeat them all – but must do so while keeping them away from a certain square or NPC.  In this way, the Frodo Defense is the opposite of an Arrive and the step-cousin of an Escort.  The PCs have their own King or Key that must survive in order to truly win the battle.  Setting up this fight is relatively simple; follow the standard encounter design rules given in the DMGs for a normal battle but take some cues from the Escort win condition as to how to have the enemies behave.  You may want to allow more ranged attackers for exactly the same reason that the Escort scenario discourages ranged attackers, that is, cover for the King or Key.<

In this installment of the Aberrant Rules alternate victory condition series, we’re going to talk about the Arrive condition.
There are several variations of Arrive, but the basic theme is simple – ‘move to this square to win.’  There is a spot on the map that if the PCs can make it there, it ends the encounter.  Maybe they push the button on the arcane machine that causes it to meltdown and send everyone running.  Maybe planting a battle standard in a certain spot is a way to claim a relatively bloodless victory among ‘gentlemen combatants.’    However it works, your goal is to claim territory, not lives.  Add more tension with a time limit!

Option 1: Escape – It’s going badly for the PCs.   You don’t want to TPK them…  this time…   Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.  What do you do?  Pick a square on the map . Any PC who can get to that square escapes the battle with some amount of XP The Escape condition lets PCs feel some sense of tactical accomplishment in the face of conventional defeat.    Follow this up with a good chase scene skill challenge for maximum effect.

Most of the time you’re not going to plan this victory condition in advance  The Escape battlefield looks like whatever other scenario you had written up, just with really  trashed PCs and a couple fewer enemies.    Due to the sudden nature of this condition’s creation, it’s difficult to arrange the field tactically.  In general, though, there are a few guidelines to follow to make the most exciting Escape you can from what you have at hand.

1. Slow Enemies –  Most NPCs should stay relatively in place and open up with ranged attacks.  A couple melee pursuers are ok, but remember that you already made the decision to let them try to legitimately skedaddle.
2. Unfortunate Escape Square –  don’t place the Escape square in some random spot with nothing going on nearby.    Good Escape squares are across pits or stationary traps, up ladders, or on the other side of that hoard of minions.  The PCs should either have to make a couple Skill rolls or bust out a unique movement power like Fey Step or Expeditious Retreat to surmount the final obstacle.  Not only does this add tension during the last couple rounds, it also gives you a reason to have the PCs’ pursuers delayed, thus allowing a daring escape.
3. Escape Is Still Victory or Failure is Fun – The PCs shouldn’t just be running from something, they should also run into something – just not something immediately lethal.   The next place the PCs end up should still be relevant to the story somehow.   The Escape zone should provide the PCs another method with which to acheieve their goal.

Option 2: Escort –  a specific person has to get to a specific point on the map, at which time the encounter ends.

Once again, this is really a battle against the clock, not against the NPCs.  A hard, plainly stated time limit is one way to go about it, say four rounds.  Another is to have most of the NPCs focus fire on the Key so that he or she will be dead or captured  far quicker than the PCs can Rout the enemy forces.  The attacking enemies need to be mobile enough to respond to  the Key utilizing terrain, like cover and concealment, yet be legitimately stymied by a couple good Defenders and maybe a Striker or Leader. Finally, the Escort path shouldn’t be any more than about half the length of the battlefield.  When the players feel “so close and yet so far,” you’ve done it right.

Option 3: Seize –  Seize something, a PC has to Arrive at that special point and then stay there for a round or two.  During this time, the PC may have to rub out the magic circle, beat down the door or do some similar time-consuming task.   Whereas the difficulty in the Escort is getting to the destination, staying there is the difficulty of the Seize .    Brutes are bags of HPs with low defenses and medium damage output and Push effects which are handy for dislodging that obnoxious PC from his Seize point as well as action-denying conditions like Daze and Stun.    Once the main PC arrives at the Seize point, he really only needs one action per round to perform the necessary activity, so being Dazed is actually a problem that the rest of the party has to deal with, i.e. keeping everyone else from using that Combat Advantage.   Finally, consider upping the amount of ongoing damage versus initial impact damage. Seize encounters are going to be longer encounters to begin with due to trying to hold the Seize point and all, so the effect of ongoing damage becomes greater the longer the fight wears on.