I want to introduce a scenario to my game that I might have stolen from Harry Potter. I want to set up a chess board where the players must switch places with a white piece of their choice and play against me. Do you think this is a good idea? If yes what would you do with a PC that gets hit during the game? I don't want to kill them but I want the match to still feel threatening.
KO them? But given how chess works, the PCs and PCs switch turn by turn so they will have to roll death saves very often, and who knows how long before a party member can come to their aid.
Have them take enormous damage? But is that threatening enough?
Thanks for the help
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“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, Gandalf
Harry Potter is a very good source however to me the Chess game form Soceror's Stone has a flaw it's set up as a one-shot kill for both sides if you change it to an all-out combat encounter with AC and hitpoints it could work but will go on for a long time, unless a ranger or magic user just straight for the Queen. You could always use the other rooms from the ending of the book along with it to drag out the runtime like Fluffy, the Devil's Snare room, Flying broom / Key room, the Troll room, the potions riddle room, and finally the Mirror of Erised. all leading to the final stage. That will force your player to think and not just try to force their way through. I use this as a dungeon at some point in all my campaigns and it goes over well. A few tweaks here and there for their level but it flows nicely.
Critical Role did a Hogwarts-set one-shot on their stream. (Sorry, Shmogwarts.) The final battle took place on the chess board. You could watch that one-shot for inspiration. (You don't have to have watched anything else of CR to understand the one-shot. They were all new characters and she'd combined HP with Breakfast Club.) It's been a while since I watched it, but IIRC, the chess pieces were basically like animated armor and they also faced off with giant spiders. So you would just pick a monster from the MM to reskin into the chess pieces and use the normal damages reskinning for flavor.
That one-shot was truly delightful so I may just go rewatch it for funsies.
What I would do is set the room like a chess board and make it to where ranged/melee attacks can ONLY target creatures that are in a position that the chess piece the are could move. In other words, it's not an insta-kill, but a situation in combat that almost ignores the rules of physics lol a fighter that is a bishop could attack a creature 20ft. diagonally away from him, as long as no other pieces are in the way, then if the character reduces the creature to 0 hit points, they take their spot.
I want to introduce a scenario to my game that I might have stolen from Harry Potter. I want to set up a chess board where the players must switch places with a white piece of their choice and play against me. Do you think this is a good idea? If yes what would you do with a PC that gets hit during the game? I don't want to kill them but I want the match to still feel threatening.
KO them? But given how chess works, the PCs and PCs switch turn by turn so they will have to roll death saves very often, and who knows how long before a party member can come to their aid.
Have them take enormous damage? But is that threatening enough?
Thanks for the help
“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, Gandalf
Harry Potter is a very good source however to me the Chess game form Soceror's Stone has a flaw it's set up as a one-shot kill for both sides if you change it to an all-out combat encounter with AC and hitpoints it could work but will go on for a long time, unless a ranger or magic user just straight for the Queen. You could always use the other rooms from the ending of the book along with it to drag out the runtime like Fluffy, the Devil's Snare room, Flying broom / Key room, the Troll room, the potions riddle room, and finally the Mirror of Erised. all leading to the final stage. That will force your player to think and not just try to force their way through. I use this as a dungeon at some point in all my campaigns and it goes over well. A few tweaks here and there for their level but it flows nicely.
Critical Role did a Hogwarts-set one-shot on their stream. (Sorry, Shmogwarts.) The final battle took place on the chess board. You could watch that one-shot for inspiration. (You don't have to have watched anything else of CR to understand the one-shot. They were all new characters and she'd combined HP with Breakfast Club.) It's been a while since I watched it, but IIRC, the chess pieces were basically like animated armor and they also faced off with giant spiders. So you would just pick a monster from the MM to reskin into the chess pieces and use the normal damages reskinning for flavor.
That one-shot was truly delightful so I may just go rewatch it for funsies.
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“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, Gandalf
What I would do is set the room like a chess board and make it to where ranged/melee attacks can ONLY target creatures that are in a position that the chess piece the are could move. In other words, it's not an insta-kill, but a situation in combat that almost ignores the rules of physics lol a fighter that is a bishop could attack a creature 20ft. diagonally away from him, as long as no other pieces are in the way, then if the character reduces the creature to 0 hit points, they take their spot.
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