I frequently besiege PCs in my game with circumstances that are chaotic, random, and violent as they navigate through an area to get to their destination. It’s essentially random encounters, but with different plugs into the tactical side of the game to keep things moving even while the heroes feel the resource drain. It’s an art that chase rules do well. Applying them to other parts of the game has helped me keep the PCs moving while letting them feel like they’re actively engaging in a travel montage or an action scene.
The Structure of the Chase
The nature of chases is that they have a beginning and an end. The reverse chase — where PCs have to navigate from one point to another while various calamities strike — means defining how many rolls they need to make. Given I can have up to ten or more players at a table, this helps also keep things moving so that one random encounter doesn’t bog down the whole game.
I typically keep the encounter table to three rounds of rolls (with a lot of players, this is plenty). The goal is not to kill the PCs but make them feel like whatever they’re passing through is challenging. I have each player roll a d20 to determine what happens to them, with a roll of 11 or higher resulting in no complication (like in the chase rules). Various encounters can involve random attacks from monsters, saving throws, or skill checks. All of these require the PC to roll to counter the effect, with mitigating circumstances (e.g., the PCs using magic) to give them Advantage when appropriate.
Unlike in a typical chase where the PCs fall behind their target if they fail some challenges (which can end up Restraining them or causing Difficult Terrain), reverse chases are all about slowing the PCs down narratively. In addition to damage that carries over to the next encounter, a failed roll can delay a PC a round from showing up for the next battle. This can have significant implications, not the least of which resulting in monsters not getting overwhelmed by large groups of PCs as they arrive in waves.
The Reverse Chase works surprisingly well in keeping players engaged, characters a little roughed up, and the speed of play clicking along so we can feel like the story is moving along even in abstraction.
Making Up the Difference
Revsrse Chases, and chases in general, lie somewhere between the Combat and Exploration pillars of Dungeons & Dragons. On the one hand, PCs can take damage or otherwise suffer impairing conditions; on the other, they are narratively making progress from point A to Point B. Trying to keep the flow state so that PCs move smoothly from one to the other can be challenging without making it feel like two separate games.
One thing Reverse Chase rules don’t do well is treat the party as a group. Because I want every PC “doing something” these aren’t really standard encounters. It also doesn’t allow PCs a means to “catch up” once they fall behind.
To that end, I instituted a rule that they can make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw to Dash and regain a round lost due to an encounter, with the risk of gaining an Exhaustion level if they fail. I gave them bonuses too. The character is considered to be Dashing (similar to Chase rules) with a unmodified Constitution save, but faster movement (from a spell that increases movement or teleports, a monk feature, or the Rogue’s Cunning Action), adding +1 to the check for every additional 5 feet of movement. This didn’t apply to every Reverse Chase, as sometimes going faster wouldn’t overcome the fact the PC simply got lost. But for navigating a town in chaos or running away from a spirit, it helped the PCs reclaim some agency in the narrative flow.
Navigating the Chaos
In my weekly library game, I ended up using these Reverse Chases frequently to help drive home that the PCs were navigating hostile environments or were potentially getting lost and separated:
- Town in Chaos: My personal favorite, when my dwarven town of Hammersmith was under attack (first by Gremlins-like soulings on Souling’s Eve AKA Fantasy Halloween in the beginning of the story arc, then by dwarves who had been mind-controlled at the end of the arc), the PCs had to navigate from one side of town to another, all while dodging giant goats barreling down the town square, rolling barrels of explosives, and poison gas.
- Navigating the Mists: A poisonous fog infested the woods and the PCs had to navigate through it as the trees themselves shifted and attempted to seal off their path. This was as much about making the PCs feel like the woods were out to get them as it was to make the journey feel hard-earned. PCs who failed were susceptible to mind control by a monster that was stalking them.
- Avoiding Booby Traps: The PCs were tasked with retrieving a wily gnome who didn’t want to be found. He set booby traps around his lair that sorely tested his PCs, and the Reverse Chase table determined how many they encountered. The party’s wizard was a mess by the time he arrived three rounds late. Ironically, the gnome was very receptive to the paladin’s requests for parley; he was less receptive when she realized they didn’t speak the same language and she rolled a natural 1 trying to convey why they needed from him.
- The Roaring Spirit: Our paladin got separated after retrieving the gnome and lost in the woods. A roaring, Evil Dead-style spirit chased her through the woods, and every time she rolled poorly, it caught up and tossed her around. The chase ended once she made it to her destination, though she immediately jumped on a stagecoach…
- Riding a Stagecoach: PCs in a stagecoach were outrunning rolling piles of animated pumpkins at high speed. Failure meant one of the monsters got into the stagecoach (essentially, added to the battlemap) and they had to conduct one round of combat. This was a little different from the narrative chase rules I usually employ. Complications included: the stagecoach tipping precariously’ stuff flying around inside and smashing into the PCs; and for those atop, being hit by branches.
In all these cases, there was a combat encounter at the end of the checks that made effects like Exhaustion, Poison, damage, and being delayed by a few rounds tactically relevant.
Did It Work?
For the most part, the checks are things that happen to the PCs. Unlike Skill Challenges from 4th Edition, I generally chose the checks to make with a few Skill options or Saving Throws to choose from; that said, PCs definitely negotiated to give themselves Advantage when dealing with copmlications. Even if they used a spell, I had them roll (in one example, the fuse on a burning barrel of explosives was put out by ray of frost, but I requested an Arcana check to do it).
The 2024 rules use Exhaustion differently, a welcome change. The cumulative penalty to rolls vs. the “death clock” is much easier to parse for players and much easier to manage in-game effects. That said, I tried to use Exhaustion sparingly as the penalties add up fast, and of course penalties-begt-penalties when PCs start getting Exhausted. The rounds of using the Reverse Chase tables seem to be enough to keep the PCs on their toes, use up some resources, and make the journey feel hard-earned.
There’s still some tweaks I might make to give PCs more ability to “jump in” and help each other during these Reverse Chases. But overall, they worked well in making the environment feel tactically relevant in a way that round-by-round combat might bog down the game.
Your Turn: How do you handle narrative flow between combat encounters?
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