World's Largest Dungeon

[alchemyprime]

So I'll be running the World's Largest Dungeon in Pathfinder/3.P with a few houserules to try to improve survivability. My players who have played it before tell me how it took five characters from them, how it's so hard and grueling, and so I want to ask: How hard is it really to get through it?

Currently the party seems like it will be a
Dread Necromancer into Pale Master
Cleric with Luck and Chaos
Druid with a wolf companion
Some other person, probably a fighter or monk

[Gavinfoxx]

Ignore most of the houserules for the dungeon... here are some questions I give everyone who is thinking of playing in the game to ask the DMs. You should consider the possible answers to them, and tell the players the answers up front!

1.) For characters that can invest resources in 'burrowing', 'earthgliding', and 'burrowing through stone' (there are several ways to do this, including Wild Shaping into a Thoqqua, for example, which specifically also leaves a usable tunnnel...), are the use of their abilities nerfed? IE, are inner room walls impervious as *well as* the obviously impervious outer walls? IE, will player characters sometimes be able to scout or bypass rooms in this way?

2.) For characters who invest in being able to do things with crafting materials, will the DM be using the standard lack of crafting supplies in this dungeon? Or will supplies be found, or will you be able to convert GP value in items to generic crafting supplies at a particular ratio with a particular amount of time?

3.) For characters who can replace animal companions or such things via summoning them, either a few times a day or via a 24 hour ritual, will those abilities work as advertised? What if characters want to release your existing animal companion and summon a new one? What about the magical paladin pokeball-mounts? Will those work normally?

4.) For characters that invest in short range teleports, or becoming etherial, or things like that, do those work as advertised? At least for interior areas?

5.) For characters that expect to be able to Take 10 or Take 20 on skills, do those work as in the PHB? Or is that nerfed, as the dungeon suggests? If you can't search things reliably, after all, you don't end up at the more interesting rooms...

6.) For characters that invest in having access to, say, an Extended Rope Trick at level 5, does that work as advertised, to get access to a safe space? What are your rulings on Extradimensional or nondimensional spaces working in the dungeon? What if a Wizard wants to actually scribe scrolls, will the DM be handwaving the exotic inks necessary to do so? Maybe just subtract a GP worth of value of loot to do this? What if an Easy Bake Wizard (it's a named build using a few combinations of techniques) wants to spend some time scribing scrolls to his brain by burning incenses, will those be placed as treasure?

7.) Will the DM be making intelligent adjustments to the 'security' of rooms or wandering monster based issues based on intelligent barricading techniques? Will the DM be enforcing the 'most locations are very dangerous and have hourly wandering monster rolls' rule? What if the party attempts to barricade themselves in one of the rooms that is NOT specifically marked as an obvious saferoom?

8.) Will the DM be changing the treasure of the module? Most of the treasure of the module is supposedly completely useless -- ie, 'art', or 'not equipment' sorts of things, or things that doesn't actually HELP, or things too large to be taken, and thus doesn't actually help the party. Alternately, is the DM relaxing the restrictions on the feat 'Ancestral Relic', ie, it's the only real way to appropriately sacrifice the crappy treasure (like a huge amount of material you can't change to useful gear because it's too big) to make useful equipment, maybe give it out as a bonus feat or not make it 'good aligned only'? Is this feat suggested or appropriate for this particular campaign of World's Largest Dungeon?

9.) The module suggests completely banning the entire category of 'battlefield control' spells from the game, and mentions that they will not be placed in the game. Typically, a few pages later, a Web scroll is given out as treasure. Are there any house rules on battlefield control spells?

10.) For characters that want to do summons in general, with 'summoning' spells not actually acting like calling spells (ie, summoning spells don't summon an actual creature from somewhere, they instead summon a mystical 'genericized' example of the creature type in question), will those summoning spells work as normal, or will they be nerfed as the module says?

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The main thing I noticed is that the game is absolutely horribly, TERRIBLY written, and appears to be one of the most mind bogglingly boring, inane modules ever. All the interesting places are specifically those that are HARD to find. The place makes no sense, even given the backstory. The combat encounters are not interesting, are repetitive, and boring. The entire thing could be condensed immensely. You could bypass maybe 90% of the area with the party coming up with intelligent heuristics on searches and where to search and what to search and how, and the DM running the party on autopilot until they come up against something INTERESTING. The game doesn't reward creativity on the roleplayers' parts. It gives no impetus for anyone to CARE about the metaplot of any of the areas. It gives no useful treasure. In other words... the module SUCKS, in such a profound way it is hard to put in words. I'd be happy if you just arbitrarily hand waved all the exploration, and put all the interesting rooms in linear order without even trying to lay them out as a maze, and assuming people make their checks to find interesting rooms... This dungeon isn't large because it has interesting or noteworthy places. It is large because it has an excessive amount of padding and repetition, like the worst kind of grinding video games ever...

[alchemyprime]

Hm... with that in mind, I may need to look over it again. Not that I mind the padding, honestly, but I may want to relook into this thing. It just seemed like "I don't want to have to think too much, this will do nicely, oh look, 842 pages, wonderful"

I think

1) Some areas will be bypassable, others with a Spellcraft check or a Caster level check.
2) I may invoke the Crafting Points rules from Unearthed Arcana for this, but tweaked to Pathfinder. Or I will let the party find the right materials in some rooms.
3) I would say Paladins should look into the holy weapon thing, and animals can only be summoned if they are already in the complex.
4) At least to the internal areas, though some parts of the dungeon are weak enough they can escape or find a door; but there may be a problem outside that door they are not aware of.
5) I will let players Take 10, at the very least. 20 in some areas. I guess Taking 20 isn't so bad...
6) Safe spaces will also require a Spellcraft check in some areas, but otherwise yes. I say extradimensional spaces do work here, but the "teleport to the astral plane" bag in a hole thing will only cause a small explosion. I will allow wizards to make their own exotic inks from the mosses in the dungeons with a proper Craft (Alchemy) check, and I have never heard of an Easy Bake Wizard, so maybe, and he better bring brownies.
7)Maybe. In some places. Enjoy your barricade, stuff will be waiting when you get out.
8) I will be adjusting the treasure to include much less art, and more possibly useful junk.
9) ... Well then, if they broke their own rules, who am I to enforce them? Have your control spells, just make sure yall don't kills yallselves.
10)Summoning spells will be under a random effect. Sometimes, the creature will just explode when its time to leave, some will go feral, some will dissolve, some will come to their senses and wonder why they listened to that guy over there.

[Chronos]

You really don't want to prohibit players from Taking 20, since doing so has no actual effect on the game, it just annoys everyone at the table. If you're in any situation where you would ordinarily be able to Take 20, then you can just keep on rolling the die until you get a natural (this is actually even mechanically superior to taking 20, since you might succeed on a lower roll). In fact, this is exactly what Taking 20 is supposed to represent: The person just keeps trying whatever-it-is over and over until they get it right. The game designers recognized that sometimes players would want to do that, and they recognized that it's annoying when they do, so they came up with a way to make it non-annoying.

[Gavinfoxx]

So the Druid says to their animal companion, "I release you".

What happens to that animal companion, then? Other than reverting to stats of a normal animal.

[alchemyprime]

So the Druid says to their animal companion, "I release you".

What happens to that animal companion, then? Other than reverting to stats of a normal animal.

Its stuck in there. Wandering the dungeon. Aimlessly. So if she does do it? She should feel really, really bad about it later.

[Andorax]

Never seen it, never read it...and thus never understood its appeal.

I've both played in, and run, portions of Undermountain though...and feel one could readily set a campaign there just as easily.

I thoroughly enjoyed Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil...so much so I assisted in the 3.5 rewrite on Monte Cook's forums.

I've also run, and am currently running, various Adventure Paths (from Dungeon and later Pathfinder) sets of adventures.

Nothing I've heard about WLD suggests it's got anything on the above options.

[navar100]

The paladin should use bonded weapon. For simplicity, the druid should take non-Animal domain.

[alchemyprime]

Bonded weapon would be the way to go. and I think I will let the Druid switch her Nature Bond if her wolf dies.