Drakevarg
2011-06-25, 07:49 AM
Apologies for the WoW terminology, but I honestly couldn't think of a better term.
A "heroic" dungeon here means a version of a dungeon designed to cater towards an 8-player party as opposed to a 4 player one. In my current campaign I noticed my dungeons were far too easy specifically because I had designed it according to the party's EL... but forgot to account for the fact that I was running with twice as many players as usual.
However, apart from that issue I rather liked the dungeons I'd come up with and wanted to turn them into a more permanent module for future use. Plus with future dungeons, I wanted to be able to adjust on the fly if half the party couldn't make it that week (which is happening more and more lately, almost to the point where I'm considering just ending the campaign and focusing on forward momentum in my personal life).
So my idea was to create each dungeon twice, one a normal, 4-player mode and one keyed for an 8-player party. Since the general rule of thumb I've been given is that double the numbers equals CR +2 (for both monsters and players), it seemed easy enough: double the number of monsters in some areas, or give them another 2 class levels in others.
However, the very first dungeon in this campaign which I adapting into a module is nothing more than a series of trapped rooms. Here I started thinking about the implications of a blind +2 CR boost. After all, just a normal CR 3 pit trap claimed the lives of 2 PCs the first time around. I shudder at what a CR 5 trap could do.
The reason for this, I think, is that while a larger party can divert fire from any one PC when it comes to monsters, you can't run interference for a pointy hole in the ground that just opened under your feet. Every PC faces the full brunt of it alone.
Considering this, it occurred to me that I could just leave traps as normal. However, this would mean only half the XP per player, and the area is specifically supposed to bring the party from level 3 to level 4 if they encounter every trap within. It's an infinite loop dungeon, meaning they'll keep encountering the same traps over and over and over again until they find the way out. To keep them from getting unlimited XP in this area, I ruled that each trap only grants XP the first time it is encountered. (To keep it from being an inevitable death trap for people with poor sense of direction, it also continuously resurrects those trapped within until they find the way out.)
So my question to the playground is: How can I create a "Heroic Mode" version of my trap dungeon without turning it into a blender? Doubling the trap variety (and thus doubling the granted XP) doesn't seem like much of an option, as the reason I only put the amount of variety in the dungeon that it has (as opposed to a unique trap in each of the 100 rooms mapped out) is because the DMG selection isn't particularly appealing and I only chose the ones that really seemed interesting.
A "heroic" dungeon here means a version of a dungeon designed to cater towards an 8-player party as opposed to a 4 player one. In my current campaign I noticed my dungeons were far too easy specifically because I had designed it according to the party's EL... but forgot to account for the fact that I was running with twice as many players as usual.
However, apart from that issue I rather liked the dungeons I'd come up with and wanted to turn them into a more permanent module for future use. Plus with future dungeons, I wanted to be able to adjust on the fly if half the party couldn't make it that week (which is happening more and more lately, almost to the point where I'm considering just ending the campaign and focusing on forward momentum in my personal life).
So my idea was to create each dungeon twice, one a normal, 4-player mode and one keyed for an 8-player party. Since the general rule of thumb I've been given is that double the numbers equals CR +2 (for both monsters and players), it seemed easy enough: double the number of monsters in some areas, or give them another 2 class levels in others.
However, the very first dungeon in this campaign which I adapting into a module is nothing more than a series of trapped rooms. Here I started thinking about the implications of a blind +2 CR boost. After all, just a normal CR 3 pit trap claimed the lives of 2 PCs the first time around. I shudder at what a CR 5 trap could do.
The reason for this, I think, is that while a larger party can divert fire from any one PC when it comes to monsters, you can't run interference for a pointy hole in the ground that just opened under your feet. Every PC faces the full brunt of it alone.
Considering this, it occurred to me that I could just leave traps as normal. However, this would mean only half the XP per player, and the area is specifically supposed to bring the party from level 3 to level 4 if they encounter every trap within. It's an infinite loop dungeon, meaning they'll keep encountering the same traps over and over and over again until they find the way out. To keep them from getting unlimited XP in this area, I ruled that each trap only grants XP the first time it is encountered. (To keep it from being an inevitable death trap for people with poor sense of direction, it also continuously resurrects those trapped within until they find the way out.)
So my question to the playground is: How can I create a "Heroic Mode" version of my trap dungeon without turning it into a blender? Doubling the trap variety (and thus doubling the granted XP) doesn't seem like much of an option, as the reason I only put the amount of variety in the dungeon that it has (as opposed to a unique trap in each of the 100 rooms mapped out) is because the DMG selection isn't particularly appealing and I only chose the ones that really seemed interesting.