What would the CR of this dungeon element be? [this thread can be closed]

[SillySymphonies]

What would the challenge rating (for XP purposes) of the following dungeon element be?

Adamantine door, can only be passed by teleportation or by being/becoming incorporeal.

Please state why you think it should be the CR you specify (references).

Thank you. :smallsmile:

[boomwolf]

CR 0, it provides no risk.

[Flickerdart]

CR -7, provides being removed, lugged back to the shops and sold for a ton of money, thus is the opposite of an encounter.

[Quietus]

CR 0, it provides no risk.

I concur.

What's the CR of the stone wall around it, so I can get experience for digging the door out to sell?

[MukkTB]

But wait. The entire dungeon is encased in a shell of Adamantine. You cannot dig the door out. However now the dungeon itself is worth a sick ammount of money. How do you go about melting a dungeon down?

What you actually want is a spell. Some force effect. But even with a spell the CR is very low. The PCs probably deserve some XP for getting past, but not much. This can change though if they are under time pressure. If they have to break through the door in 2 rounds or the princess drowns in a vat of pudding its worth more XP than if the only motivation is to leisurely loot the place.

[JaronK]

You use a Mountain Hammer attack to knock out chunks of it for selling/crafting. Adamantine is hard to break, but a level 3 Martial Adept can just break it at will.

No CR, because it's just an insane amount of treasure.

And yeah, I agree... the real challenge here would be a Force Effect door that can only be bypassed by some special means (a hidden level that takes down the effect or something). In that case, the CR would be based on the difficulty required to find the way past.

JaronK

[Emperor Tippy]

As has been said, steal the door.

It's really worth nothing CR wise.

[Chronos]

Not only is it not worth considering it an "encounter", but it's poor dungeon design, since it's likely to give the party the wrong ideas. They might decide that they just can't go that way, and so end up missing out on your entire adventure. They might decide that since it's a door rather than a wall, there must be some way to get it to open, and waste the entire session trying to find the hidden lever or password or whatever. They might not realize that it's a door rather than a wall, and so completely ignore it, just like they ignore all the other walls. They might, no matter what you try to do to stop them, figure out some way to lug it back as loot. What they almost certainly won't do, is what you expect. And you really want to try to avoid (whenever possible, which it isn't usually) the players doing things you don't expect, since that makes it so much harder for you to prepare anything.

[Adrayll]

I'll add a vote for 0. Also, a vote for steal the door :smallbiggrin:

[ericgrau]

Doors are at worst a delay causing the PCs danger from an entirely different challenge nearby. Any adventurer with enough time can bypass them easily with little risk to himself. Any DM who tries to justify a villain spending thousands to put an adamantine door in his dungeon to protect some treasure worth far less than the door deserves to have the hinges removed via an adamantine weapon and the door sold.

I'll say it's a CR 7 encounter because that's the level where players actually spend a little of their resources getting past the door. However it never makes sense to have such a door before level 11, and probably not before level 15 so the CR is fairly moot... except in combination with the CR of whatever is chasing the PCs down to the dead end with the closed door.

[JaronK]

Basic rule of encounter design: always figure out how much treasure is there if they could use it. Making stuff out of Adamantine gives people a HUGE amount of loot available if they just steal the stuff. That's why when I do environments where I want pretty stuff, I actually make the decorations (reliefs, statues, etc) out of stone, with permanent illusions that make the actual gold, mithral, etc. It works well... the illusionist is the artist (so it's actually valuable, much like a Picasso is valuable because of the artist, not because paint is valuable), and the PCs can't just steal it. Lots of environment dangers can be made out of Wall of Stone, various illusions, force walls, and other things that either are immobile or are not worth stealing. In the case of your impassable barrier, a high caster level Wall of Force would be a solid option.

JaronK

[Flickerdart]

and the PCs can't just steal it.
Why not? Hack off some gargoyles and sell them to a wealthy collector for the artistic value.

[JaronK]

Eh, I imagine gargoyles carved with Fabricate out of random stone aren't THAT valuable for their weight. What makes them beautiful is the permanent illusion over it that makes it look like they're obsidian gargoyles with gold tracings and sapphire eyes... remove the stone from inside, and the illusion remains (the stone just gives it substance if you touch it).

I imagine the gold value of the stone itself is less valuable than magic items and such the party is supposed to be looting.

JaronK

[Flickerdart]

If the illusion is relative to the location, then you're going to get weird clipping issues after a couple decades because of tectonic drift and the ground level building up over the place.

[JaronK]

Assuming there's tectonic movement, sure. Good point. Don't do this in tectonically active areas. Though it might make for a fun detail if particularly old castles had their illusions shifting slightly off the stone.

JaronK

[Flickerdart]

Assuming there's tectonic movement, sure. Good point. Don't do this in tectonically active areas. Though it might make for a fun detail if particularly old castles had their illusions shifting slightly off the stone.

JaronK
A continent can move anywhere from 1 to 10 cm per year. Even in the least tectonically active areas, you'll have offset.

[flumphy]

Of course, if we account for natural forces like tectonic activity, decay, and erosion, we wouldn't have all these old dungeons and all this old treasure lying around in the first place. :smalltongue:

[deuxhero]

Are we going to go into the Really Unmovable Rod thing again?

Will we blame the Shifter deaths that result on the Silver Flame again?

[JaronK]

Eh, it's magic. I think it's fair to say illusions remain stationary relative to the ground.

JaronK

[ericgrau]

Ya otherwise where do you put the frame of reference? The sun with the earth moving thousands of miles per hour? But yeah the real answer is don't overthink games too much (cool tricks are great, but once you get into tectonic forces...)

[RedWarrior0]

You say "It's magic, deal with it." Problem solved.

[Tyndmyr]

CR 0, it provides no risk.

This. In addition, it will probably become loot.

It is, at most, a circumstantial modifier on another encounter since the door, all by itself, means nothing. If it's a door that prevents you from escaping the burning lava, then it IS a modifier to the "escape the burning lava" encounter.

[Dragonsoul]

Man, the death toll for catgirls is rally high today....


Anyone for salsa?

[Seharvepernfan]

A continent can move anywhere from 1 to 10 cm per year. Even in the least tectonically active areas, you'll have offset.

Would illusionists or dungeon builders know this?

[Flickerdart]

Would illusionists or dungeon builders know this?
Their disgruntled clients would let them know.

[Taelas]

So tie the illusion to the bedrock. Tectonic plate shifts, the illusion shifts right along with it.

[Flickerdart]

Hm, looking at Permanent Image, the caster can make corrections if he concentrates. So you get 'em to pay for a support plan, brilliant. However, figments cannot make something seem to be something else (which would include making a roughly hewn stone statue seem like a golden sculpture).

[JaronK]

The idea is you effectively put a layer of illusion over the stone. If you touched it, you'd immediately realized the solid mass is 1/4 inch behind the illusion... so I'd imagine you'd keep such things out of arm's reach (put it on a pedestal behind a rope barrier, or above the door, etc). This is fine of course... it's for visual appearance, not to actually seem real.

JaronK

[SillySymphonies]

(...) The PCs probably deserve some XP for getting past, but not much. (...)

I'll say it's a CR 7 encounter because that's the level where players actually spend a little of their resources getting past the door. However it never makes sense to have such a door before level 11, and probably not before level 15 so the CR is fairly moot... except in combination with the CR of whatever is chasing the PCs down to the dead end with the closed door.
Those where probably the only useful replies.

Perhaps some clarification is in order? The doors in question were the doors to what ammounts to Erebus, the realm of Hades. At ECL 7, the party spent considerable resources getting past (my D&D sessions require a great deal out-of-the-box thinking).

How anyone would loot a couple of doors with a mass well over 500000 kg each (assuming 15x5x30 ft. doors and adamantine having the same density as iron) is beyond me - my players mostly play PCs that would be considered unoptimized by this forum community.

[Gavinfoxx]

You loot it a little bit of a time. Hardness 20 doesn't mean it is impossible to knock bits off, it just means that it is REALLY REALLY HARD to do so readily...

[Taelas]

There is no encounter in getting past a door.

It's a door. You just break it apart (see Mountain Hammer).

[JaronK]

How anyone would loot a couple of doors with a mass well over 500000 kg each (assuming 15x5x30 ft. doors and adamantine having the same density as iron) is beyond me - my players mostly play PCs that would be considered unoptimized by this forum community.

Use Mountain Hammer (2nd level maneuver, available to all martial adepts when they hit level 3, or all characters when they hit level 6 via an item) to break it into small enough parts. Enough Adamantine to make a suit of full plate costs 5kgp and weighs 22.5 kg, so by your 500,000 kg estimates the total value of these doors is 111,111,111gp per door.

A Wagon costs 35gp and weighs 400 lbs. Two Magebreed Mules (32gp) can pull it, and if bred for strength and speed (which is expected for beasts of burden) the mules can each drag 6000lbs normally (which doesn't even factor in the wheels of the cart, that's just dragging stuff on the ground). We won't worry about that and just say each cart (which you invested 67gp into) can haul 11600 lbs (factoring out the weight of the wagon) or 5,261kg of broken up adamantine. Assuming a four man party, each of which drives one cart, and 32 miles of transit per day (40' base speed), you can take a bit more than 20,000kg of door per day to a place to sell within 16 miles. If the selling place is 32 miles away, then it's 10,000kg of door per day (let's go with that). But after the first load is sold you can afford to buy some portable holes and put stuff in that, which makes it all a lot easier. Even if you just go with the mules and wagons method (and don't hire any Commoners to drive more carts and thus speed the process up) it'll take you 50 days to move all this adamantium if the selling location is 32 miles away.

More reasonably, after the first load hire 20 commoners (they work for like 1cp a day), and purchase 20 wagons and 40 Magebreed Mules. Then get this done in 10 days.

Either way... you can see that the value of these doors is over 222 million gp, and can easily be broken up for sale and transported by level 3 characters.

This is not an encounter. This is a Monty Haul treasure. The encounter is going to be the various people trying to steal your adamantium as you try to get it to market.

JaronK

[Gavinfoxx]

The cost of Adamantine can be weird...

Adamantine:
Light armor +5,000 gp
Medium armor +10,000 gp
Heavy armor +15,000 gp
Weapon +3,000 gp
Shield +2,000 gp

Mithral
Light armor +1,000 gp
Medium armor +4,000 gp
Heavy armor +9,000 gp
Shield +1,000 gp
Other items +500 gp/lb.

Light armor is 5x mithral, medium armor is 2.5x mithral, heavy armor is 1.6x mithral, shield is 2x mithral

Draconomicon places adamantine and mithral as 100gp/pound, which would be smaller than a Mithral bar (mithral is light, both are listed as 1 lb bars), and conflicts with the other items bit in the DMG/SRD. Still..

[JaronK]

One way or another, these doors are the greatest source of wealth EVER.

JaronK

[Gavinfoxx]

An Ox is 15 gp in the SRD. Did D&D ever stat up how much an Ox can pull?

"Mother of All Encounter Tables" (3rd party) lists Adamantine as 800 gp/lb, which would work well.

[Tvtyrant]

This would be perfect for a party of Artificers. Because once gold is directly equal to power, you have won the game.

[JaronK]

I've never seen the stats of an ox anywhere. There's yakfolk but that's hardly useful. An Ox would probably get the job done quite well. I went with Magebreed Mules because they're cheap, probably available everywhere, and already statted.

JaronK

[Emperor Tippy]

How anyone would loot a couple of doors with a mass well over 500000 kg each (assuming 15x5x30 ft. doors and adamantine having the same density as iron) is beyond me - my players mostly play PCs that would be considered unoptimized by this forum community.

Whip out a scroll of Fabricate (1,125 GP) and some string and turn the doors into a collection of very easily transported Adamantium blocks linked together by pieces of string.

Shrink Item also works to make transport easier.

Mountain Hammer also works but isn't as neat.

As for getting past them, a simple Dimension Door would have done it. As would simply digging under them (a quick Stone Shape spell would do that in a round).

[JaronK]

Shrink Item only gets 2 cubic feet per level. With the sheer size of these doors, it's not going to be effective even with a CL of 20. Fabricate has similar issues. But considering you're going to melt this stuff down to turn it into weapons and armor anyway, breaking it into chunks should be fine.

JaronK

[Emperor Tippy]

Shrink Item only gets 2 cubic feet per level. With the sheer size of these doors, it's not going to be effective even with a CL of 20. Fabricate has similar issues. But considering you're going to melt this stuff down to turn it into weapons and armor anyway, breaking it into chunks should be fine.

JaronK
I never said it would get them all, just that it would make them easier to transport.

[JaronK]

There's a certain elegance to using a solution that level 3 characters can use. Is there a way to break the door apart and ship it at level one or two?

JaronK

[Emperor Tippy]

There's a certain elegance to using a solution that level 3 characters can use. Is there a way to break the door apart and ship it at level one or two?

JaronK

Depends on how well it's anchored into the walls. Remove the rock around the hinges and you can remove the door.

Besides that, a lot of Acid. It ignores Hardness and with enough of it you can break the doors up. But that would either take a while (using magic) or be expensive (buying acid).

[Flickerdart]

Depends on how well it's anchored into the walls. Remove the rock around the hinges and you can remove the door.

Besides that, a lot of Acid. It ignores Hardness and with enough of it you can break the doors up. But that would either take a while (using magic) or be expensive (buying acid).
A 1st level Incarnate has an infinite source of acid with Dissolving Spittle.

[JaronK]

Depends on how well it's anchored into the walls. Remove the rock around the hinges and you can remove the door.

Besides that, a lot of Acid. It ignores Hardness and with enough of it you can break the doors up. But that would either take a while (using magic) or be expensive (buying acid).

Acid doesn't ignore hardness. It's just that acid (and sonic) damage isn't halved or quartered like most elemental damage is.

And yeah, maybe a strong enough Barbarian 1 could hack the stone away, but you'd still have some VERY heavy doors to move. That would require a lot of mules.

JaronK

[Emperor Tippy]

Acid doesn't ignore hardness. It's just that acid (and sonic) damage isn't halved or quartered like most elemental damage is.

And yeah, maybe a strong enough Barbarian 1 could hack the stone away, but you'd still have some VERY heavy doors to move. That would require a lot of mules.

JaronK

Hmm, you might be right. I thought it ignored hardness but I haven't looked at it in a while. All the games I'm currently involved with are upwards of 10th level and it hasn't been a concern.

[SillySymphonies]

I guess the game I DM is more narrativist/simulationist than what the posters in this thread are used to.

I use the rules as a way to model a heroic action fantasy world, not as the physical and economical laws of the world.

If my players'd chipped off some bits of adamantine, good for them! :smallsmile:
If they'd set up a mining operation (which is what JaronK proposed), they would have drawn the attention of the denizens of the plane (these were the doors to what ammounts to Erebus, the realm of Hades).
Besides, weakening the veil between our world and the realm of the dead is never a good idea.

[Gavinfoxx]

For that much money? I'd have risked it...

[JaronK]

I guess the game I DM is more narrativist/simulationist than what the posters in this thread are used to.

If it was "simulationist" then you should expect that the players would take the doors and run. Adamantium is one of the most valuable metals in the world. "Narrativist" works well enough.


If they'd set up a mining operation (which is what JaronK proposed), they would have drawn the attention of the denizens of the plane (these were the doors to what ammounts to Erebus, the realm of Hades).
Besides, weakening the veil between our world and the realm of the dead is never a good idea.

Pfft. With the money from even a small bit of those doors, you could pay a Wizard to put up a permanent Wall of Force, which would be far more effective anyway. Maybe with a lead coating on both sides to block divination and line of effect (in case someone gets it in their heads to disjoin the thing). I might even build a castle on top of the site with some of the money. Surely you're not suggesting that there's some danger in building a castle on top of the doors to the realm of Hades!

One way or another, it's more money than a level 20 adventurer has. At level 3, or even 13... WORTH IT! ...which really could make the campaign far more interesting.

JaronK

[MukkTB]

It does help sometimes when DMing if you dont ask the question, "This is what I want to happen. How do I do it?" and instead ask the question, "This is what the npc wants to do. How can he do it?" No NPC will ever drop a block of adamantine that big as a tunnel plug. A God with infinite power won't do it. He'll just stick p a wall of force or something.

Though I will admit that the 'Mine out the Adamantine Block in the middle of hell' campaign sounds fun. Backstabbing contractors. Peasant workers ready to run away with a handful of the stuff. Kings, adventurers and bandits coming to steal the lode from the PCs. Demons trying to stop you from running away with their kingdom's life savings they were saving in convenient door form...

[CTrees]

If you know your players wouldn't realize the doors are treasure, rather than an obstacle? Dimension Door is the simplest and most obvious choice (if not the best - I'd say Abrupt Jaunt, but it doesn't really help the party). It takes a level seven wizard, normally, to do this. However, that's one spell - the ECL system is designed around a number of encounters per day expending the resources of the entire party. I'd probably reward the party as if it were ECL 4 or 5, if I were feeling generous.

If I were designing this encounter ("massive doors blocking off Erebus")... Illusion (for looks) over permanent walls of force (cast at some epic level - this is HELL after all), sandwiching a layer of lead (to prevent divination), possibly with a hidden interior permanent prismatic wall. Handwave a way to make this hinged. I'd like to combine this with a Forbiddance effect, but you want your PCs to be able to actually get around this. You still have the problem with simply digging under the doors, but... hrm. Maybe have bound earth elementals in the ground, given orders to attack if that's attempted?

My other suggestion would be to make the walls construct with Tippyverse-style resetting repair traps in interior cavities. Ordered not to attack, but presenting much more difficult. You can even still make them adamantine if you really want. This will not help past a certain level, but it's an option.

[JaronK]

An interesting variant: the doors are actually run by a Spell Clock, which just recasts Major Creation at CL 10 once every 10 rounds. You'd have to make sure the spell clock itself stays secure, but this means that stealing or breaking the doors doesn't matter... they're reset every minute, fresh and new, with the old bits disappearing.

Of course, this means it's possible for someone to dispel the doors to slip through.

JaronK