Dungeon Design [3.5]

[Jsuelieta]

I'm trying to design a small dungeon/temple, but I'm not really sure how hard to make it. I want to design it as something the party can get a bit of story exposition on, some xp and some treasure without having to spend days or weeks in game in there. My main issue isn't the design, it's deciding DCs and ELs. The party is level seven and the composition and number vary from session to session (it's on IRC, so when it runs not everyone is there every time, and people tend to pop in and out). I was thinking along the lines of the DCs being 15-20 in most cases, but I'm not sure if that's too high or low to actually provide a challenge.

Fun thing is this place is actually designed to curse the party in fun ways while providing difficult-to-find ways to reverse it in the event the party cleric/druid/otherdivinetype doesn't have the spells to do it at the time.

[bokodasu]

It entirely depends on the composition of your party. That said, flexibility is your friend - design it the way you want, and that makes sense. If the party starts steamrollering it, add waves of reinforcements that are alerted by the sounds of battle; if they start having too much trouble, start removing enemies and/or reducing their abilities (making them pre-injured is especially easy).

Personally I'm of the "make it hard and subtract if necessary" camp - you never know how your players are going to surprise you, and as a player I think it's more satisfying to overcome a challenge the DM doesn't think you can - but I have played in games with "make it easy and add as necessary" DMs and that's also worked perfectly well.

[Jsuelieta]

The main issue here is so far I've got all of one actual 'encounter', per se, it's supposed to be pretty devoid of life, just a TON of traps and cursed items. The first trap I designed is a 100x50 pit filled with wolves that each have an amulet of sustenance, they don't -need- to eat, but they sure like to. There's a plaque on the wall written in a language the party isn't meant to understand with a scrawling of a translation from the local goblin tribe along with a number of amulets like the wolves are wearing. Wearing them causes 1d6 int damage every five minutes unless they make a will save and causes the wolves in the pit to gather around them but not attack. As the wearer loses int, they slowly become wolves themselves until they hit 0 int, then they're set to 3 int and don't remember ever not being a wolf and the amulet acts like the rest.

Two caveats to this: the int damage isn't meant to reduce cognitive function, just represent a gradual overwriting of memories. Of course the rogue always had that tail, but for the life of him he can't figure out how he ever picked a lock with those paws before. The other is I don't even know where to begin placing the save DC for such a thing. The rest of the place is like this in nature and the objective is to make it through, get the goods and get out without going from a pack of adventurers to a pack of wolves.

[Kaww]

When I make stuff like this I see what's the average save then add 15 to it if I want whatever to happen. If I want it to be 50-50 I add 10, if I want it to be unlikely I add 5.

It's rather simple really, everything in the game should (more or less) come down to what you think is appropriate for the story. It the poison that knocks them down has puny DC increase it, if you think "Well this is gonna kill them and they can't do anything about it" than decrease the DC.

Same goes for monster HP and similar.

Just my 0.02$