Monday, July 8, 2013

Encounter: Meteor Shower


So I've gotten some advice about formatting and such, and tried to incorporate some of that into this post. It's another skills challenge, and this one is heavily influenced by Warcraft III and the Critical Hit podcast. I also added an "Applicable Skills" section - this is definitely not a comprehensive list. If a player comes up with an idea to use a different skill, by all means allow it. But these are the ones that I immediately identified as being applicable to this challenge. These are also only Pathfinder skills, so with the other systems you'd have to adapt to their skill lists. Credit for the image to Reddit user Valdair.

Type: Skills Challenge
Theme: Mystical, Race
Goals:
  • Navigate the meteor shower
  • Stop the meteor shower

Outcomes:
  • Succeed: Survive unscathed
  • Succeed: Stop the ritual causing the meteor shower
  • Failure: Be injured
  • Failure: The ritual goes to completion

Description:
Fire rains from the sky. The meteors streak across the night sky as bright lights, before growing large and crashing directly into the earth. Disorienting lights and noises surround you, preventing you from quite getting your bearings. You can see an intense light on a platform far ahead.

Applicable Skills:
  • Spellcraft (identify what kind of magic is being performed and how to disable it)
  • Knowledge (Arcana) (identify what kind of magic is being performed and how to disable it)
  • Acrobatics (dodge out of the way of meteors)
  • Climb (get over hills caused by the explosions)
  • Perception (discern where the meteors will fall and move through it)

Info:
This skills challenge involves the players being in a meteor shower of mystical origin. The primary threat to the PCs is the danger of being killed by the fireballs raining from the sky. They are mostly a bi-product of the magical ritual that is being performed, rather than the direct intent. 
The only specific goals for this skills challenge are to navigate through the meteors, and stop the ritual being used to create them. This involves the entire party, who will need to assist one another to get through the field of fire before confronting the ritualists.
The background for this skills challenge is rather specific. The ritual in question is of an apocalyptic nature, otherwise this kind of effect would not be happening. However, the way the "end of the world" is carried out can vary depending on the plot. Possible ideas I've had:
  • A powerful demon is being summoned into the world
  • A series of cataclysmic natural events are being started
  • The world is being moved out of it's natural plane and into a different one

The PCs "stopping the ritual" can have many different paths. For instance, the PCs may be able to identify the magical nature of the ritual, and use their Spellcraft to disrupt it. Or, they could attack the ritualists once reaching the altar. They could use different Knowledge skills to identify physical or spiritual ways to disrupt the ritual. There are many different avenues for success, allowing for any one party member to put the final nail in the coffin.
Should the ritual complete, many bad things can happen. The PCs awake the next day, with the apocalypse taking place. There is a demon towering above the mountaintops, working it's evil on the world. Earthquakes and hurricanes are ravaging the countryside. An army of fiends are spilling through a rift in planes. The possibilities are endless, and can set up the next arc of a campaign, almost regardless of the setting. This is a very typical "bad guys' plan succeeds" scenario, and a climax that leads into the next arc.
Should the ritual be interrupted, the day is not necessarily saved. Just because the PCs interrupted it, doesn't mean it didn't have at least some impact. Instead of the demon lord coming through, perhaps his spirit was only able to possess one of his cultists. Maybe one of his lieutenants slipped through. Maybe the meteor showers are now a permanent weather pattern, and must be fixed by other adventures at a later time. 

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