Night of the Living Bread - Help building a module

[BlueInc]

I was highly amused and intrigued by a free low-level module (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20010413a)from WotC.

It tells the story of a married couple (Gendrew, a chef, and Andolyn , a wizard) who put their respective talents together to create a calzone golem. The text also briefly mentions that there is a devil named Woganpuck, who is some kind of enemy to Andolyn. The adventure has some amusing ideas, such as the oven being warmed by a small fire elemental, but it got me thinking about making a module of my own about storming a more powerful wizard’s kitchen. The idea would be something like this:

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NIGHT OF THE LIVING BREAD

Gendrew has been saying for some time that Andolyn has a bun in the oven, but people in the nearby village assumed that this meant that they were trying to construct some kind of pastry golem. To everyone’s surprise, the husband and wife walk into the village with their new baby boy a few weeks ago.

Unfortunately for the family, Woganpuck has not been idle since his last attempt at revenge on Andolyn failed. He’s found an ally in Chef Fache, a former student of Gendrew so willing to prove his culinary mastery over his old teacher to make a reputation for himself that he’s made a deal with Woganpuck for infernal gastronomical powers.

One night, Woganpuck, Fache, and an army of food-related monsters stormed the family’s residence. Though Andolyn held them off as best she could, they captured her and the baby and returned to Fache’s castle. They left a ransom note, offering to free the baby if Gendrew and Andolyn surrender their immortal souls to Woganpuck and agree never to cook anything more than cold gruel again. Broken and desperate, Gendrew appeals to the PCs to rescue his wife and child from the depths of the devil’s kitchen.

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I’m trying to think of food-related monsters and monsters I could re-fluff as food related. My ideas for some encounters:

Oozes – Cheese, jelly, yogurt, maybe a butter ooze that leaves a trail behind that replicates grease.
Animated objects –cutlery, tables, chairs
Plant creatures –Vegetables and fruits. Maybe a refluffed broccoli treant.
Undead – Cow, pig, chicken carcasses and bones.
Deep fat fryer trap
Fight on a frying pan that heats as a heat metal spell
Water elemental – refluffed Wine/Juice elemental
Salt mephit, pepper mephit (refluffed fire mephit )
Mimic – Boiling cauldron of water. Grapples PCs who get to close and tries to drown them in scalding water
Some kind of spicy food with flame breath?
Fishtank/lobster tank with scary sea creatures
Trash dump with skeletons, aberrations
NPCs Chefs – fighters, rogues, clerics (gluttony domain, maybe?)

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What are some other kitchen encounters you can think of?

Which of these encounters sounds the most exciting?

What are some fun NPC Chefs/kitchen workers you can think of?

[Hoboshank]

the wine elemental sounds awesome, the PCs should make saves when struck by it to resist getting drunk

[BlueInc]

the PCs should make saves when struck by it to resist getting drunk

Excellent, that's a great suggestion.

[Hoboshank]

you could also add a "spice" rack full of unlabeled potions and materials that act as a lesser version of The Deck of Many Things. So someone could eat ground mindflayer tentacles and gain aberrant traits for an hour or so

[BlueInc]

you could also add a "spice" rack full of unlabeled potions and materials that act as a lesser version of The Deck of Many Things. So someone could eat ground mindflayer tentacles and gain aberrant traits for an hour or so

Oh god, not a deck of many things; only used one of those once and it destroyed a campaign. However, I like the idea of randomized foods that could buff/debuff. Could probably work this into the boss making Profession (Cook) checks to eat random things to heal himself/inflict damage, etc.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The lobster tank should definitely contain That Damn Crab (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040221a), probably an advanced version depending on the party level.

Use the Gluttony and Hunger domains for the cleric-chefs.

Maybe use the Living Spell template for those oozes, for example a Living Heightened Grease could represent a Butter Ooze, a Living Stinking Cloud could be used for a Cheese Ooze, I'm not sure about the rest.

Definitely include a room full of Ghouls and Ghasts where they throw the bones and other scraps.

The fight on a frying pan should be with some sort of metal implement which is healed by fire damage, as per an Iron Golem. Big Metal Spatula Golem maybe? Give it big spatulas for hands, and pads of butter under its feet. It should have a special move that lets it skate around them buttering the pan, which increases heat damage taken from that area and acts as a Grease spell. Then it can do a flip attack that tosses them face-down into the frying pan, preferably onto the buttered area.

Make a pit trap with a Gelatinous Cube at the bottom, anyone who falls in gets engulfed as though they'd walked into it. If they escape the cube they have to climb/fly/levitate way that same round or they'll just fall right back into it. There should be several chutes going into the pits from the walls which garbage is thrown down.

That's all I've got for now.

[Hoboshank]

You could have something like a Ragewalker except instead of having weapons float around it, it would have either food or utensils

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

A Darktentacles (MM2) washing dishes! It hides in a great big tub of soapy water, all they can see are its tentacles reaching around. Probably put other creatures there as well, some kind of helpers carrying around stacks of plates. The Darktentacles can open up with Wall of Force and use Hold Monster if nobody is within reach. Make it reach out and scoot the tub toward opponents to move around!

On that note, make the castle a gigantic restaurant continually servicing creatures from the lower planes. Give a purpose to all of these workers, and make a big dining room full of customers which the PCs would have to completely avoid. Patrons would be more likely to complain about the PCs than actually take action against them, unless they were mistaken for an appetizer. "You'd better get these bothersome adventurers taken care of, your reputation is at stake here!" By the time they confront the BBEG they would have disrupted his operation so severely that all of his customers had vowed to never return, thus ruining everything.

[BlueInc]

On that note, make the castle a gigantic restaurant continually servicing creatures from the lower planes. Give a purpose to all of these workers, and make a big dining room full of customers which the PCs would have to completely avoid. Patrons would be more likely to complain about the PCs than actually take action against them, unless they were mistaken for an appetizer. "You'd better get these bothersome adventurers taken care of, your reputation is at stake here!" By the time they confront the BBEG they would have disrupted his operation so severely that all of his customers had vowed to never return, thus ruining everything.

Brilliant! I really wanted this to be a kitchen-themed dungeon but just wasn't putting two and two together. This is a good explanation on why the characters would be entering through the kitchen instead of the front door - there's always a horde of powerful devils marching in, waiting to be fed.

I could even make it so that the devil's ultimatum was "Give me your soul and your cooking abilities or I serve your wife and son for dinner tonight! Mwahahahaha!" to put some urgency behind getting there.

I still feel like the adventure hook could use some tweaking, but now I've got even more ideas to work with. Thanks!