Step 4c for Writing Super Hero Adventures: Challenge Encounters!

Hello heroes! Welcome back to my writing super hero adventure series. Today I am continuing step 4, which revolves all around encounter design. Last time we talked about roleplaying encounters, but today is all about challenges! I’m going to pretend I totally planned for 4c to line up with Challenge Encounters on purpose…

Anyway, challenge encounters cover a wide umbrella of scenes. These can be anything from death traps, to natural disasters, heists, and everything in between. They are characterized by the PCs using their skills and powers to overcome obstacles that aren’t necessarily trying to punch them in the face. That isn’t to say that there aren’t challenges with fighting, but the combat in a challenge scene is handled in a narrative sense, rather than breaking out into full initiative order.

Needless to say, these scenes cover a lot of ground, so my advice for designing them is going to be a little more general than what I usually provide. Here are some tips about building a solid foundation for memorable challenge encounters:

Generalization

I tend to find that challenge scenes are more exciting for players when you leave yourself a lot of room for their creativity. For example, say you want to create a skill challenge to simulate robbing a casino. I start by listing the various things that have to be accomplished in order to succeed in this task. The PCs have to case the joint, enter the casino, overcome the security, collect the money, and escape. Three groups of players given that list of tasks will come up with approximately 745, 290, 321, 092.5 ways of approaching the job. You could try to stat up all of those various options, but you’ll be a lot of work that will probably be circumvented by the heroes anyway. To avoid this overpreparation, I tend to keep things generalized and come up with blanket difficulties for the various stages of the task. Sometimes I’ll add one line about what I think this skill check can simulate if I need the guidance. I’ll show you what I mean below:

Casino Heist Challenge

• Casing the Joint/Gathering Information: Relevant Skills (Investigation, Perception, Deception, Intimidation, Expertise: Criminal, Technology) DC: 13 for expertise skills, DC: 15 for interaction skills, DC: 18 for observation, and DC: 20 for technological skills. Players who succeed on a DC 18 Stealth check will add a +2 circumstance bonus to one of their other skill checks in this phase.
• Entering the Casino: Certain Powers such as Teleport, Insubstantial, or Invisibility will give one Degree of Success to this challenge. Relevant Skills (Stealth, Deception, Technology) DC: 16 Stealth to sneak into one of the side entrances, DC: 18 Stealth to sneak through the front door, DC 16 for interaction skills, DC 18 Technology to pick electronic locks or forge fake security keycards.

Time Control/Montage

Another thing to consider when designing challenge encounters is how long the scene should take. Challenges are a tool in your GM toolbox that gives you the ability to control the passage of time within the game world. You can simulate the investigation, invention, or training montages that are so popular in superhero media. You can also create tense scenes that need to be accomplished in a short amount of time, like defusing a complicated bomb as the timer ticks down to zero. Always include a line in your challenge scene that tells the players how long each check in the challenge takes. Checks can take anywhere from one combat round (6 seconds in a lot of games) to one week or month, depending on the nature of the challenge you’ve built. Keep in mind that the heroes will be doing activities that overlap timewise. Basically each check happens at the same time, unless you specify that only one character can act on the challenge at a time. Don’t be afraid to let the heroes do other things not related to the skill challenge if a particular check takes a long time.

Spotlight!

More than most scenes, challenges can be a great time to shine a spotlight on specific characters’ abilities. Don’t be afraid to create portions of a challenge that are in the wheelhouse of a specific character. If one of your PCs is a hacker, create an opportunity for that character to hack into an important terminal or even seize control of the villain’s defense system. An avalanche challenge is an awesome way to give the ice-controller or fire bender on your team a moment to feel like they really saved the day. In this same vein, try to avoid coming up with obstacles that none of your players are able to solve. The idea is to make it challenging, not impossible. If there are things they can’t do, suggest that maybe they could hire someone who has the specialized skill they’re missing. That could lead to a fun roleplaying negotiation, or a whole other adventure to find the right person for the job.

Player Narration

Challenge scenes give you an amazing opportunity to turn the narrator hat over to the heroes. Since I keep the legs of the challenge general, I prefer to tell the player, “You have succeeded at this roll, what does this scene look like as your character deceives their way into the casino.” This gives the players a great chance to flex their storytelling and brings them fully into the story you’re telling as a group. I’ll even let them describe what a failure looks like once we’ve worked out the mechanics side of the failure. It really helps elevate these scenes from rolling dice to solve a problem to a cinematic experience.

That should be enough to get you started with Challenge Encounters. Keep them general, work out the time table, and give your players a chance to shine both mechanically and narratively and you’ll be well on your way to crafting memorable non-combat scenes. I’ve included a template I use for my challenge scenes below. We’re closing in on the end of this series. Thank you for reading so far and I’ll see you in the next one!

Example Challenge Encounter Template

Challenge Title:

Time per Check:

Phases of Challenge:
Phase 1:
Phase 2:
Phase 3:
Amount of Successes Needed
Effect of Successes: The effect of achieving the bare minimum amount of successes needed and any additional benefits the heroes can attain for overcoming that threshold.
Effect of Failures: A penalty incurred for failing in any phase. These can be phase specific or general. I prefer penalties to future checks or rolls to resist damage to simulate minor scuffles or death traps and the like.
Fail State: