World's Largest Dungeon and shops

[Lanaya]

A few friends and I are currently planning on running through the World's Largest Dungeon, but we don't yet have access to the book itself, plus it's really really big and therefore hard to look through. So, quick question to anyone who's run, played in or read it before: how does buying stuff work in the WLD? Is it practical to play something like an archivist who wants to buy scrolls with specific spells on them, or is it all standard pregenerated loot and no MagiMarts?

[panaikhan]

all standard pregenerated loot and no MagiMarts?
Played as written, pretty much this.
People will buy stuff OFF you, but getting tailored items will be tough.
And, unless the party are VERY diplomatic, even this is not a 'given'.

That said, the WLD played as written will upset people, as it tells the DM not to allow the players to do things, then the bad guys go and do them.

[Lanaya]

Played as written, pretty much this.
People will buy stuff OFF you, but getting tailored items will be tough.
And, unless the party are VERY diplomatic, even this is not a 'given'.

That said, the WLD played as written will upset people, as it tells the DM not to allow the players to do things, then the bad guys go and do them.

Hmmm. That's irritating. Well, I don't think anybody's going to dislike the idea of adding a few video game style travelling merchants from time to time, so I guess we'll just deviate from the module as written. Thanks for the help.

[panaikhan]

The party NEED to be set up for the long haul.
If encumberance is played to the hilt, the PC's will find themselves leaving lots of stuff behind that they wouldn't normally (at least, my group found that) simply because they cannot carry it all and don't know when the next 'Vendor' is.
I gave the party a strange eternal wand when I ran it. It converted mundane items (Masterwork or less) into coins equal to 1/10th it's value. Sinse it only worked twice a day, and gave back much less than selling the item, I didn't see it as too 'overpowered'. The party also had an Artificer, who could leech unused magical items to improve (or create) ones the party wanted.

[Diarmuid]

Pana, from what I've heard the WLD is pretty unforgiving. How did the group find the time for the Artificer to create/update magic items at 1 day/1000 GP cost?

[Dusk Eclipse]

Standard trick for Artifers to craft and still be able to adventure is to craft a Dedicated Wright and chuck him into a portable hole so he can craft while you do your stuff.

Other option are the craft points rules in Unearthed Arcana.

[Diarmuid]

True, but unless you went into the WLD with those things then I imagine it would be difficult to get them due to the nature of no real vendors in the WLD.

The portable hole alone would take 20 days to make, and I imagine the Wright itself takes some time to make also.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I can't recall the price of the wright; but I think it wasn't that expensive (about 3 or 4 days at the most, less with time reduction feats).

[Diarmuid]

Right so 23-24 days (perhaps less with reduction feats) in the dungeon after getting to CL 12.

I was under the impression most parties went in well before level 12, so finding that kind of time in the dungeon would be problematic. I was curious how Pana's group got around that, or if the DM had used different rules (like the crafting point alternate you mentioned).

I'm not arguing that it can be done, I was curious how Pana's group had actually done it.

[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. As DM, 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 hand-waving 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? For example, have everyone start out with an Ancestral Relic of an item that takes up one of their item slots, and let them upgrade that item as a custom wondrous item, including the ability to combine with other like-slotted wondrous items and to cast spells as a custom wondrous item?

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?

------

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 back-story. 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 or interesting 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...

[panaikhan]

I'm not arguing that it can be done, I was curious how Pana's group had actually done it.

The Artificer was a Warforged. It spent it's "down-time" (while everyone else slept) siphoning craft reserve and improving the other items.
I was not quite as harsh on the party as the dungeon suggested I be - I allowed them to take breaks from adventuring with 'neutral-or-better' reaction communities.

As for alternative methods for escape, my party didn't try them. They invested in the spirit of the adventure, and didn't purposefully look for ways to break it.

(as a side note - no extradimentional storage is supposed to function within the complex, so no portable holes or bags of holding)

[Acanous]

I did this once, the DM got bored and gave up.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Be a spellcaster* with crafting feats. Or a wildshape ranger w/ Vow of Poverty (or some other martial class that doesn't need items, but there aren't many of those, and "monk" isn't one of them). Everything about the way WLD is set up is there to basically screw over noncasters. Even more so than they're usually screwed over. The more self-sufficient you are the better, and I don't mean self sufficient as in "derp, I can make DC 20 survival checks!" I mean it as in, "I can cast barkskin so I don't need amulet of natural armor" or "I can cast Greater Magic Weapon, so I don't really care what weapons we find."

Noncasters are heavily dependent on getting the items they need just to reach the levels of "power" normally expected of them -- which isn't even much, then. No availability of the items they need = No way. Na-ah. Never!

*I consider artificers "spellcasters".

[DrDeth]

There are some monsters in regions that can buy & sell to a limited extent.

The OA Samurai, the Kensai, and similar classes that can sacrifice loot for bonuses to their weapon are great. Every PC needs to get the Ancestral relic feat from BoED (it's one of the few that isn't exalted).

Our DM threw in a "traveling salesman" who dropped by from time to time. But rarely.

We found it rather fun, after the first area. One problem is balance- you can go into a area and it's a walk-over, then go somewhere you shouldn't and find yourself in a insta-TPK sitrep. But that's a problem with any non-railroad game.