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View Full Version : Need help with dungeon (3.5)



Harperfan7
2009-07-02, 12:50 AM
First off, I highly appreciate any help or opinions.

Ok, so I'm in the middle of DMing an adventure I made, but I'm having second thoughts about one section of it and would like some advice and opinions. The party is 1st level and will be 2nd after the adventure.

First off, the party I'm DMing is (all elite array - not optimized at all)-
-Human Paladin
-Half-elf Cleric (Sun, Plant)
-Gnome Rogue (who will be multiclassing to illusionist)
-Half-Drow Bard (who hasn't done much at all so far)

What I'm requesting help for is one section of my dungeon that I'm unsatisfied with. We will start with the door to that section.

1. Door
The door is made of stone, is set in a stone wall, and has no visible means of opening. On its surface are faintly blue glowing letters (a phrase in draconic, followed by the draconic alphabet) that reads "Reverse after you return". To open the door, somebody has to press "n-r-u-t-e-r-u-o-y" in that order. If they press any other letters or in the wrong order, they are affected by a shocking grasp spell (1st).
This door leads to the room which used to belong to a high priest of a now extinct religion (of a beholder-ish CN god), later belonged to a wizard who betrayed the priest, and has been empty for a very long (but undetermined) time.

My problem with this is that its just not a very good idea and is probably too simple. No one in the party can read draconic, but the cleric can just cast comprehend languages. Plus I want the bard to shine.
One idea I'm unsure about, but was considering, was to have the runes on the door represent stars in a certain part of the night sky which would hide a constellation ("the beholder") that could be identified by a bardic knowledge check. To open the door, you need to press all the stars of the constellation. If you press any that aren't, you get shocked. If this sounds good, please propose a DC. If not, let's hear your ideas.

2. High Priests/wizards room
The room is circular, with an everlasting torch for light. It contains a bed on a large rug, a dresser/cabinet, and a table with a chair. There is a vargouille in the dresser/cabinet. There are two secret doors in the wall. One leads to a treasure room, the other to a prison. The vault contains some armory and a trapped treasure chest (ray of enfeeblement + contains 6 crawling claws) I don't have any problems with this room or the treasure room, so on to the prison.

3. Hidden prison room
This room is circular like the last one, but has no illumination and contains nothing but three circular pits evenly spaced in the floor. They are covered with iron grating which has up-opening swing doors built in. The circular pits are 20ft. deep. Two are empty, but one has a stone missing in the wall near the bottom. If the pcs open the door to this pit, a swarm of spiders erupt out of the missing stone and attack (it's a summon swarm trap on the swing door - the missing stone could never hold so many spiders). The missing stone space holds an obsidian-with-a-garnet statuette of the god (worth 800gp).
The statue is wholely unimportant to the adventure, but it popped up during random treasure generation and I didn't want all the treasure to be in one somewhat guarded room, and I had the prison mapped up (but nothing in it), so I put the statue in there and added the swarm trap.
However, the whole adventure so far has had hobgoblins/gnolls/human skeletons/the varguiolle/the crawling claws/and a couple dread guards after this, so there needs to be some encounter variety.

So, any thoughts/opinions/advice/criticism about everything above would be greatly appreciated, as I'm DMing this weekend.

If I had a freaking scanner, I would just put the map on here with the whole dungeon write-up so this wouldn't be just islands in the darkness.

llamamushroom
2009-07-02, 01:04 AM
Personally, I really like the idea of the Constellation on the door - I'm not too sure of DCs, but seeing as Bardic Knowledge (and Knowledge in general) is a no-retries ability, you shouldn't make it too high. Maybe draw a couple of basic pictures of the constellation for different levels of success (drawing 1 - the 'picture' on a blank background, 2 - the picture with the stars in it, 3 - as 2, but with some surrounding stars, 4 - full star-map, with picture/imprtant stars)?

As for the prison, the spiders seem good (though I personally would've made it a summon spell that (somehow) makes a skeleton for flavour reasons, but then I'm a traditionalist :smallwink:), but maybe you should make the statue cooler? Like a once-off gaze attack that casts 'daze' from the statue's main eye? Or maybe make it a more powerful item, thrice-per-day sort of thing. But that just me trying to address that part - it just seems so out-of-place to have a cool statue of the god of a long-forgotten religion to be just a lump of obsidian and garnet to be sold. Especially if it's in the prison. But that's just me being a malcontent.

All in all, I think you've got a pretty solid encounter there. Certainly better than the first I made up (think centipedes. Lots of centipedes).

Rhawin
2009-07-02, 01:27 AM
Perhaps make the riddle on the first door more directly related to bards? You could have it reference some legendary historical figure, or even a song. A Bardic Knowledge or Perform check would identify the song, and then they simply have to touch the runes representing the right notes.

Spoilers are done by typing (spoiler)text(/spoiler), only using square brackets instead of parentheses.

Harperfan7
2009-07-02, 01:34 AM
Personally, I really like the idea of the Constellation on the door - I'm not too sure of DCs, but seeing as Bardic Knowledge (and Knowledge in general) is a no-retries ability, you shouldn't make it too high. Maybe draw a couple of basic pictures of the constellation for different levels of success (drawing 1 - the 'picture' on a blank background, 2 - the picture with the stars in it, 3 - as 2, but with some surrounding stars, 4 - full star-map, with picture/imprtant stars)?

As for the prison, the spiders seem good (though I personally would've made it a summon spell that (somehow) makes a skeleton for flavour reasons, but then I'm a traditionalist :smallwink:), but maybe you should make the statue cooler? Like a once-off gaze attack that casts 'daze' from the statue's main eye? Or maybe make it a more powerful item, thrice-per-day sort of thing. But that just me trying to address that part - it just seems so out-of-place to have a cool statue of the god of a long-forgotten religion to be just a lump of obsidian and garnet to be sold. Especially if it's in the prison. But that's just me being a malcontent.

All in all, I think you've got a pretty solid encounter there. Certainly better than the first I made up (think centipedes. Lots of centipedes).


Good idea with the star map, one of the gods portfolios is the moon, so during one night of the year, the moon would be the "beholders" central "eye". Freaking cool, thanks.

I suppose I should have mentioned that the wizards looted the temple, made it his lair, and hid/guarded the loot. That's why the statue is down in the hole and why spiders erupt out of it (arcane spell). Also, If it summoned a skeleton, the skeleton would be stuck in the hole, whereas the spiders can climb out.

I like the daze idea, maybe I'll make it a unique magic item that normally could only be used by clerics of this god (who have an obscure moon domain), but can be used with UMD. They should have plenty of other crap, so a straight up once/day might be a little too much.

Harperfan7
2009-07-02, 01:37 AM
Perhaps make the riddle on the first door more directly related to bards? You could have it reference some legendary historical figure, or even a song. A Bardic Knowledge or Perform check would identify the song, and then they simply have to touch the runes representing the right notes.

Spoilers are done by typing (spoiler)text(/spoiler), only using square brackets instead of parentheses.

That would work, but it would be out of place and pretty obvious that its' only there to make the bard useful. The star map idea is a little less straightforward.