PDA

View Full Version : wizard college themed dungeon



Elvenoutrider
2012-11-05, 08:27 PM
PLaygrounders, my players next dungeon is set to be a wizard college that has been taken over by the campaign's bbeg. I actually have a lot already figured out for the dungeon, but I am lacking in non combat encounters, and also have a few details I have yet to work out. Any ideas parodying harry potter will be much appreciated.

What I have so far for encounters:
1)6 professors, each 13 level wizard builds focused in theri own school of magic with a few mixing in some 3.5 prestige classes including the fatespinner and initiate of the sevenfold veil. I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for the evoker or the necromancer. So far I have teh necromancer fighting alongside a 12 headed hydra bodak.

2) dragon turtle in the lake - players will have to get around him while they are infiltrating the castle through the sewers (hoping the pcs will plan for a giant squid

3) players will have to fight a lobotomized beholder after a trap has scattered them to the far edges of the room so the beholder can fire off as many rays as possible.

4) enchanted suits of armor

5) an epic level golem will be set on them but its programming is damaged so the pcs simply have to command it to stop.

6) library books will attack the pcs in swarms but have beeen enchanted to be immune to fire.

7) soldiers will be guarding the grounds with a turret made of wands of fireball. should be enough the keep the players heads down and their airships out of the sky

8) final boss is a heavily grafted man the size of an ogre who can cast spells. he is entirely homebrewed

I seem to be in a good spot for combat encounters, I am wondering if any of the playgrounders have an puzzle or non combat encounters they can recommend.

I am trying to think of something suitable horrible for the bbeg to do with all of the students to stop the pcs but I was hoping for something more interesting than just having them attack the pcs.

The bbeg's ultimate goal is to siphon the headmaster's power in order to free an ancient artifact from the school so he can use it in a world ending ritual.

If anyone could help me think of more encounters, traps or puzzles it would be greatly appreciated. The characters are pathfinder characters between 12th and 13th level though 3.5 material is more than welcome.

Thanks for your time

therakishrogue
2012-11-05, 10:42 PM
Meddling kids! You've gotta have meddling kids. A group of 3 13 year old 2nd level wizards trying to save the school, who can be very helpful with their knowledge of secret passage ways and passwords and such, but are so gung ho they have to be dramatically saved by the party on several occasions.

Also, how about the bbeg threatens to/succeeds in making an pseudo elder-brain out of the student's severed heads in order to stop the pcs, which because it is a melange of the entire student body can control the schools security systems?

Zahhak
2012-11-05, 10:54 PM
Aside from this (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlienGeometries), I would say there should be less emphasis on traps, and more on things which require Knowledge (Arcana), detect/dispell magic, and the like. For example, fighting some mob which has an illusion working with it. There's always the "missing floor" gambit where the floor is there, but there's an illusion (or optical illusion) which makes it look like a chasm. Maybe a room inspired by the darts-from-a-wall scene in Raiders(?) with one with DBFB, only some of them are illusions, and the trick is to figure out which are real and which are illusions.

kieza
2012-11-06, 01:34 AM
Well, if it's a wizard college, I've written a few encounters that might fit the bill:

1) A student has summoned and lost control of a succubus. Normally, investigators would simply look for centers of heavy partying, lust-fueled aggression, and stunningly poor decision-making...but this is a college campus.

2) All of the experiments in the faculty's labs have been set loose, or worse, turned on.

2a) 12 hours (or however long) from now, one professor's theoretical, use-only-in-case-of-universe-ending-disaster time machine will be switched on and send some innocuous object to the "present" of the campaign, subtly altering the course of events so that the machine isn't switched on. The players have to figure out that the machine was used, and then rush to fix the timeline so that the machine is turned on in a fashion that will create a stable time loop instead of a paradox.

2b) A professor of Unnatural Biology has let his collection of exotic household pests get loose. The players have to track down and exterminate nests of mouse-sized mammoths, non-Euclidian weasels, and venomous, collectively intelligent dire flying squirrels.

2c) Doom rays belonging to the faculties of artificing and wizardry have been accidentally fired into the opposite faculty's offices. Even after the crisis at hand has been dealt with, the two departments are at each others' throats over the fact that neither weapon had a safety catch.

3) A student broke into the library's Special Collections section and read the wrong volume. Now the book is a detailed biography of the unfortunate student, and his body is walking around campus shedding living spells.

4) Due to a completely unexpected spell-interaction, the books in the library have become self-aware and motile. They have now formed a vast swarm and are tracking down and mutilating every library patron to dogear a page, spill his drink, or read while eating greasy food. Beware paper cuts.

CoffeeIncluded
2012-11-06, 05:48 PM
If there's an alchemy lab, then the players should have the opportunity to craft damn near whatever they want...as long as they make the right checks. And if they disturb someone else's work...

Randomguy
2012-11-06, 09:09 PM
2) All of the experiments in the faculty's labs have been set loose, or worse, turned on.


And everything's on fire! :smallbiggrin:


A troll in the dungeons would make both an encounter and a harry potter reference. So would a basilisk crawling around somewhere .You'd need to homebrew one that's a snake), though.

ReaderAt2046
2012-11-06, 10:24 PM
An interesting idea would be Glyphings, which are produced by a particularly powerful magic device gone horribly awry and essentially are sentient spells that float around and look for things to cast themselves on. Fireball Glyphings are particularly obnoxius, and common.

Also you can have every hybrid creature that could possibly exist, and a few that can't. Plus have the psych ward be broken and crazy wizards running around casting spells at randomn. (wizards that go crazy have to be kept on-campus because they'd turn a regular asylumn into chocolate pudding or bring all the window-bars to life).

Nyes the Dark
2012-11-08, 04:42 PM
A garden with a variety of plants, some helpful and some venomous and/or violent. There could be Mandrakes, too, if you can get rules for them (find or make them), and they reference Potter.

If you don't have characterizations for the teachers, give them some after the Hogwarts teachers. Some examples:
Divination-Trelawny (Duh?)
Necromancy-Snape or Quirrell
Evocation-Flitwick or Quirrell
Transmutation-McGonnagall

And so on.

Friv
2012-11-08, 06:10 PM
You could have students who have become magical batteries at the heart of various dangerous traps and monsters. If you can reach the student and disable the glyphs containing them, the trap resets or the monster is banished, but doing so is very difficult. If you don't, though, you have to get past whatever spell the student is powering. Easiest way through is to kill them, but who can kill plucky students?

PCs, maybe. Depending on the group. Regardless, it's something to do with those students who have been captured.

Arranis Thelmos
2012-11-08, 06:22 PM
And everything's on fire! :smallbiggrin:


A troll in the dungeons would make both an encounter and a harry potter reference. So would a basilisk crawling around somewhere .You'd need to homebrew one that's a snake), though.

Thank you! You've one one Internet.

Coidzor
2012-11-09, 12:24 AM
Geneforge I think 3 or 4 might offer some ideas as would one of the bundled in blades of exile scenarios which involves delving into a sealed and abandoned wizards college.

Elvenoutrider
2012-11-10, 05:16 PM
Thank you for all the wonderful suggestions. As it stands now I have stetted up the basalisk as a secondary piece of the encounter with the enchanter. The conjurer is a gnome meant to represent professor flitwick. The diviner is a centaur meant to represent Firenze and the transmuter is a gestalt wizard/ fighter who turns out to be a werewolf with the warshaper class ( so the references arent perfect).

Dungeon is pretty much done now I just have to actually map it out. Thank you for all of your contributions. I am now 2 or 3 dungeons away from completing my first lvl 1 - 20 campaign.