I briefly considered announcing the skill challenge, as this was the first one the group had encountered. The group chimed right in with diplomacy attempts as soon as Sir Keegan finished his opening monologue, so I stuck with my standard operating procedure and asked for the appropriate skill check after they told me their actions.
I modified the challenge from the module. Sir Keegan’s interrogation felt artificial. Instead, PC’s could make a Bluff, Diplomacy, or Insight check for a success. Arcana, History, or Religion provided a bonus to those rolls. Intimidate resulted in failure. I gave the challenge a complexity of 2 (6 successes before 3 failures). Day started the challenge with a Diplomacy failure, but followed up with a different tact and rolled a success. Gullyven batted his eyes and tried to play up the “I’m too cute and cuddawee to be a bad guy” angle, and succeeded in his Bluff.
The group encouraged Ansis to show the holy symbol of Bahamut they obtained, and Ansis made a successful argument in their favor. Galin failed his Diplomacy, revealing Sir Keegan’s distrust of the fey. That left Kiran, whose feral visage made Keegan leery. The bard spoke eloquently about their mission, asked for help, and overcame Keegan’s misgivings. The undead knight revealed that he could aid them in a couple ways, but he still hesitated over giving them his full trust. I could see the players where stumped, so I had Ansis roll an Insight check. The deva succeeded and, recognizing the symbol of Bahamut on the knight’s breastplate, asked if he was Sir Keegan.
The observation convinced the knight of the group’s intentions, and he related the events of his fall and the resulting curse. He offered the group the use of his sword, told them about the five statues hidden in the altar that would be necessary to stop the ritual, and gave them rough directions to the rift. Then he fell to dust, leaving his sword hanging in the air before them. Kiran stepped up and took it. Darla, Gullyven’s player, totally got a LotR-the-path-of-the-dead vibe from the encounter, which was cool.
The party left the tomb of Sir Keegan, grabbed the statues after locating the secret compartment in the altar, and returned to the dark hallways. They encountered some runes burned into the floor, which Ansis recognized as terror-inducing triggers. The heroes turned aside until they ran into another set of similar runes. As they discussed how to get around them, Gullyven decided to take a running long jump and cleared the rune before them. Galin fey stepped. Ansis did not think he could make the jump, so Day pulled out her blanket and laid it over the section of the floor with the rune. Ansis walked over without effect. Day followed. Then Kiran jumped over.
Day took the lead, and ran into another group of zombies as she rounded a corner. The encounter did not present much of a challenge to the group, though Day did get slammed hard a couple times. We ended the session after the fight, and I awarded the group two milestones, as the zombies were the second half of one of the unfinished encounters from last session.
I was a player when our group did this adventure and Sir Keegan was the first example of a skill challenge we faced in 4e and I have to say I wasn’t impressed.
I’m not sure if it’s the 4e rules or just how the module was written but it seemed pointless. To much mechanics and not enough role-playing.
The runes got us when we failed to jump over them. Using a blanket never occurred to us.
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