Skill challenges and NPCs

This weekend my player encountered Loxar the Spellscarred, and the experience was even better than I hoped for. The encounter went well, my player survived, and Loxar has accidentally been upgraded to a major NPC.

Running the encounter

I wrote the encounter as an exercise in skill challenges, the way they are described in the Dungeon Master's Guide 2. If you're struggling with skill challenges (as I was) and don't have the book (as I did), get a copy of DMG2 right now.

The encounter was set up as a robbery - my player was escorting a trade caravan, and Loxar had set her eyes on the goods. The encounter could either be resolved by defeating Loxar, or by negotiating a way out. Each success would lower the amount of money required to pay off Loxar.

In the beginning, the encounter played out as planned. As soon as my player realized her adversary had some intelligence, she started negotiating. I let her roleplay the negotioations at her leisure and called for skill checks when appropriate. The pay-off had already been reduced to a meagre 400 gold pieces, when my player managed to surprise me completely.

She suddenly proclaimed that the Eladrin Courts in the Feywild had the means to cure the spellscar and proposed a deal: she would send Loxar to an Eladrin healer, and if that failed, she would reimburse Loxar by paying her the 400 GP.

I was stunned. My girlfriend is new to playing D&D, but she seemed to have grasped the very essence of the game: cooperative play when appropriate. For the sake of it I let her make another Diplomacy check, but in my head the matter was already resolved. Loxar agreed, and she will meet my player again.

Discussion

Afterwards, when discussing the adventure, my player made three interesting observations about this encounter.

First of all, during the skill challenge itself she had no idea she was playing a skill challenge. This can be partially explained by her limited exposure to skill challenges so far, but the fact that I used skill challenges as an underlying mechanism to roleplaying instead of treating it like a combat encounter also helped a lot.

The second observation was about metagaming. While I was composing the encounter and when I was writing my previous article, she had a lot of exposure to Loxar's picture. In her head this exposure translated to "must-be-an-important-character". So while I had envisioned Loxar as a minor NPC, my player considered her a major part of the plot she's unravelling. In turn, this was an important reason for her to compel Loxar to be cured.

The last observation worth mentioning was her own joy at the cooperative play. It gave her a chance to expand on her own background, and she continued to do so during the rest of the adventure.

Lessons learned

In the end, to me each encounter is a lesson in writing and running better encounters. Most importantly, this encounter taught me that skill challenges can indeed be fun, as long as they are played properly.

The other lesson was: don't be afraid. When writing the encounter, I opted for a skill challenge of standard difficulty with complexity 1 and worried that this might be too hard for my player.

It wasn't.