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DiscipleofBob
2010-01-30, 10:48 PM
The group I'm DMing is now in the Tiefling country of my campaign world, a theocratic monarchy roughly based off of Russian and Middle Eastern commercial.

They now have to infiltrate the equivalent of the Sultan's Palace for a few objectives:


Investigate one of the Sultan's new advisors who may be one of the BBEG's lieutenants they're looking for
Perhaps investigate the mysterious disappearance and presumed kidnapping of the country's princess.
Rescue a specific one of the king's concubines.
Probably deal with a rival thief group who might sabotage them.


They have the support of the local thieves guild, who know all the little secret passages in the palace, as well as have a few inside men on the guildmaster's payroll.

With as little railroading as possible, I need to get the players to investigate one of the military advisor's bedchambers, where they can discover a magic mirror which will teleport them to the BBEG's lieutenant's area. From there, it'll be easy.

The level 8 party consists of the following:

Josephine: A human rogue, obviously fine with the whole sneaking thing.
Aramil: Human fullblade fighter. Really going to be the biggest setback as far as stealth goes.
Puppet: Tiefling warlock. I'm letting her temporarily retrain some skills so she can get Stealth and Thievery.
Bach Jecklin: Half-elf bard. Not worried about the skill challenged with him.
Furion: Shifter swarm druid. Also not worried about since he'll have animal and bug forms and stuff.

Some known opposition:


The Sultan has at least 1 Elder Fire Elemental (scaled back to level-appropriate solo should the group have to fight it) loyal to only the sultan.
Any non-tieflings will probably be imprisoned on sight and tortured for information unless they can escape
The country is known for literally making deals with devils, so some might be walking around.
Of course the usual guards, soldiers, etc.


I'll probably need to layout the entire palace with every room imaginable.

Any ideas, suggestions, and/or tips for running this little escapade?

Kol Korran
2010-01-31, 09:10 AM
i don't have a concrete idea for the sneaking into the palace part, but i'd suggest that you enable the party to somehow acquire two types of items, (maybe on loan from the guildmaster)- an item that increases stealth for the fighter, and maybe an item or two that enables a character to appear like a tiefling. don't have enough items for the whole party (or else sneaking would be made null), but for one or two extra- it will increase their options. i suggest a mini quest/ encoutner for this (maybe a favour for a guild member?) you could use this to get the opposing thieves more involved (they try to oppose the character, or maybe sell them a faulty item, that stops working when a command word (spoken by thieves or guards) is spoken)

a few ideas from the top of my head:
1) perhaps one approach may be through some sanctified tunnels/ catacombs, which the locals belive may be cursed. heck, they might as well be!

2) another approach might be to impersonate guards- allow the party some room to fraternize with some low levels, and then maybe kidnap them/ take their uniforms.

3) definetly some sort of devil guarding the concubines, perhaps even a succubus/ other pleasure devil? they could be on disguise as one of the concubines themselves, fooling the PCs.

4)the opposing thief group could be major or minor in this. i suggest one or two might even accompany the party under guise of a man under the guildmaster's pay roll, only to spring a trap when most dire. or perhaps they could block the way the party got in from, making them have to improvise, while the thieves (impersonating guards) call for the watch.

5) as to getting your party to the advisor's room- when they collect information give out some other clues, and then this one, but make it a bit more prominent. play to their goals though (on the way to the concubines, or they might belive there might be clues to the princess disappearance here)

again, it's not much, but i hope it can help

storybookknight
2010-01-31, 09:38 AM
If it's a Sultan, then obviously you need Prince of Persia-esque traps. It's totally a theme. I'm thinking spiky pit traps, captive monsters, the works - you could have a mini-dungeon for 'the old sewer system' or 'a hidden escape tunnel' that they could use to get into the palace proper. Bonus points if it's disused and forgotten: one of those scythes that comes out of the wall, for instance, could have no more blade (completely rusted away). The copper pipe it was attached to, though, could slam characters off a ledge and into a pit full of Feymire Crocodiles. (Or ordinary crocs, I guess. If you want to be nice.) Similarly, a wall full of pneumatically-propelled darts that hasn't been reloaded in a few centuries could still create an awful racket and alert the sleeping manticores.

There's also a mechanic you could steal from the L5R system: group stealth checks. Add up everyone's modifiers and divide by the number of people, then have the person with the highest mod roll for it. Big timesaver, and it lets the sneakier people help a brother out rather than feeling like they need to split away from the party to accomplish any stealth. Perhaps by pointing out good floorboards to walk on, that sort of thing?

In any case, the upshot of secret passages is that they usually lead to someplace important in the middle of the castle, not someplace in the middle of nowhere. That way, you only have to draw up the 'inner sanctum' portion of the palace.

If you're looking for a less 'sneak in and then cause havoc' and more of a 'work our way into someplace important' there's a lovely set of encounters in the DMG2 with a hobgoblin-controlled city divided into parts that you could use.

Basically, you would set up certain parts of the castle: 'the garden', 'servants' quarters', 'the barracks', 'the palace'; then have the players mostly make checks to avoid detection when trying to get from one place to the next. Failing on a pure Stealth roll might alert the guards, whereas failing on a Streetwise roll to find the players' contacts in the castle would alert the rival thieves guild, or the Sultan's secret police/assassins (assuming they aren't the same thing!) Each failed roll would increase the overall level of security, and the goal would be to accomplish their mission (10 skill checks, maybe?) before setting the castle completely on its ear into an emergency state (3 skill check failures, if you're going by the revised skill challenge rules.)

Kol Korran
2010-01-31, 10:39 AM
originally by Storybookknight
if you're going by the revised skill challenge rules

there are revised skill challange rules? where?

Kol.

Optimystik
2010-01-31, 10:55 AM
Rather than try and be stealthy, the fighter can help by removing obstacles from the path of the sneaky types.

Have the fighter give the others a boost up to a high window (tossing them up with Athletics.) If he makes his check, they bypass some traps or an encounter. If he fails three times, a handful of junior guards investigate the sound of PCs smacking the ground and launch an attack (with or without calling for help.)

Another option is to have some sealed portcullises blocking a shortcut - the fighter needs athletics to turn a heavy, multi-person winch to open them all, then Endurance to hold them open while the others sprint through. Failure means one or more drops with a deafening clang, alerting defenders.

You can also have the less stealthy types cause a diversion elsewhere in the palace - drawing off some opposition so that the sneaky types can get where they're going more easily. Smash some doors etc, the guards leave their posts to check it out.

Note: The fighter probably shouldn't be by himself during any of these, so have someone (preferably the Bard) stay with him, though any of the players except the Rogue can probably do it.

The Tiefling can also attempt to talk their way out of any mishaps, since it's his home country, unless there's something about your setting that wasn't apparent to me from the OP.

EDIT: Storybook's "Group stealth" sounds like a wonderful and sensible idea as well. "Quiet! Step where I step!"

icastflare!
2010-01-31, 11:11 AM
These be some good ideas. I wholehartedly support for a concubine ( bring on the wenches!!) and a prince of persia esque qould help as said above, but the fighter is very likely to get his sneak check shoved up his bumhole. possibly create an alternate route with more monsters with less sneaky parts with a route with more sneaky parts and less monsters.

storybookknight
2010-01-31, 11:22 AM
there are revised skill challange rules? where?

Kol.

The DMG2 has them, also check the errata for download on the wizards.com main site.

Behold_the_Void
2010-01-31, 11:24 AM
The biggest thing that jumps out at me is requiring the party to get to one specific room in an entire palace and activate a magic item that they will, in and perhaps out of character, not know what it is. I would make about... five more backup plans at least because that's a tall order and in my experience, expecting a party to do ANYTHING the "right" way without guiding them around by the nose (and sometimes not even then) is a recipe for disaster.

Unless they know what they're looking for, of course, then they'll eventually find the mirror, but the way you said it in your post implied that they do not.

DiscipleofBob
2010-01-31, 12:54 PM
Unless they know what they're looking for, of course, then they'll eventually find the mirror, but the way you said it in your post implied that they do not.

They know to investigate the advisors' rooms because they're pretty sure that one of them is secretly working for the BBEG, but they don't know which one.

I'm definitely taking notes on all of these suggestions btw..

icastflare!
2010-01-31, 07:03 PM
IT might also be a good idea to suggest that the other races are slaves to the tiefling ( good way to lie to the guards)

Altima
2010-02-01, 10:12 PM
There's also the alternative to forced infiltration--simply walk up to the front door.

I suppose it all depends on how large the country is, how influential and powerful it is, and how much magic exists within it. However, if you wished to inject a bit of non-combat into the game, perhaps your players can act as a diplomatic representative of a border nation, or even as the relative to one of the country's minor, but powerful, nobles.

They have the help of the thieves' guild, so document forgery should not be much trouble. A tiefling is in the group, who can act as the mission's leader or guide. Really, getting inside the palace would be the most important objective.

The others? They can act as slaves or servants. After all, no one notices or cares about them in large palaces. Once inside, the other party members can infiltrate the kitchen and visit the suspicious areas under the guise of bringing the increased guard presence meals (princess was kidnapped, after all) or as rudimentary cleaning staff.

Of course, this brings its own set of problems. Smuggling weapons will be difficult (though perhaps the thieves' guild may help there) and even if it succeeds, the party may be in trouble with the nation afterwards. Also, the party may be split for the majority of the session.