Have spent the past few weeks putting together my next campaign arc and was wondering how to go about kicking it off with a bang, and Matt Colville's recent stream reminded me how much I liked Skill Challenges in 4E and realized one would be a perfect fit to start it off.
For reference - the last arc involved the PCs being duped into helping the villain weaken arcane seals all around the Princedom, which warded the land against invasion from other planes. They eventually figured out that they were being duped, and were set to confront the villain, but took a jaunt through the Feywild on their way, and the resulting die roll for time warping caused them to fast forward several months, and fall behind in their race to stop the villain from going through with it.
The arc ended with a portal to the Astral Plane opening in the world by the villain, who turned out to be Githyanki. They pursued the villain into the Astral Plane (or more accurately, they got pulled into the Astral Plane when the portal opened) and finished her off, but the damage has been done and now there is an easy route for the Githyanki and their Red Dragon allies to flood into the Princedom.
The very last moment of the arc was the party plane shifting back to the castle of the Prince (They are too low level to cast the spell, but I made sure they had an NPC with them who could do so) basically straight after the final confrontation.
So I was left with a conundrum - the party is basically worn out from a mechanical perspective (spell slots used, low HP, etc) so if I decided to start off with a big fight, I'd either have to handwave that or they'd be in big trouble, so I've decided instead to do a Skill Challenge.
The party will arrive at the Castle's throne room to see that it's filled with wounded people being tended to by priests and doctors. The doors will swing open shortly after they arrive, and the Prince will come in, being helped to walk by leaning on the shoulder of an armored soldier. He will implore the PCs to help, as the castle and attached city are being attacked by dragon-riding gith. Rather than resolve it as a combat, the scenario is that the attack is a lot of hit-and-run tactics from the Gith, so it's an assault that happens in fits and spurts over the course of an entire night. It will be up to the PCs to come up with creative ways to use their skills to aid in the effort to both fend off the Gith, and to help the people in town escape, barricade, or get treatment for their inujuries.
7 successes needed. 3 failures results in a rout of the city and a fallback to the keep by the army, while the common folk are left to their own defenses. DCs set by how plausible/reasonable the things they come up with are.
I'll give them 2 skills which will definitely work to help the cause - Medicine to treat the wounded, and Survival to help build makeshift barricades and get people to safe places. beyond that, it's up to them to convince me that any of their other skills might be useful. I can think of ways that most of them could be:
Stealth - helping to hide people and important supplies so the Gith can't see them from above on dragonback
Deception - setting up false targets to draw the Gith away from the vulnerable areas
Animal Handling - Rounding up horses who are spooked by the attack and getting them under control for both cavalry use and for civilian mobility
Persuasion/Intimidation - Calming down panicked citizens and soldiers, and getting soldiers back to the front lines as needed
Investigation - Locating wounded people who may be trapped in buildings/under collapsed beams and getting them to safety
Athletics - Removing debris from pathways, physically carrying wounded people to a safe spot, etc.
Perception - spotting incoming strafing attacks early and giving people time to get to cover.
Insight - Guessing where the Gith might attack next and clearing the area of civilians
Nature - Using knowledge of fire and how it spreads to take preventative measures and keep the city from becoming an inferno.
I could go on, but I think this gives the party plenty of options in dealing with the scenario, and plenty of options for narration of all the things they come up with (which will hopefully include some I haven't thought of)
Anyone have any thoughts on how to improve this scenario? Any ways to ratchet up the tension even more?
edit - and now apparently I've been conscripted to run a one-shot in 2 weeks, since the current DM can't play. But I think I've got a good concept - A Dinner party, pitting the players against one another to earn the favor of a noble lord. The lord is a vampire, and will turn the "winning" PC into a vampire if the PCs don't figure out the plot. If they do, it will end up as a showdown against the vampire. I just need to come up with some clues and a handful of fun NPCs to play the party against in this "competition."
