Making a Killer Dungeon [3.5]

[Golden Ladybug]

With much of my Group away this weekend, I've offered to run a quick Dungeon Crawl for those who still remain in town. I told them all to make at least three characters, because this was going to be a very lethal dungeon and characters were going to die rather quickly.

DM Catharsis? DM Catharsis.

So, I come to the Playground and ask for some suggestions for truly terrible, unfair things to throw at my truncated Party this weekend. The Dungeon is made, some decisions likewise, but I can always add more horrible things to throw at my Party.

I'm mostly looking for things in the CR 8-12 Range, but I'll not complain about suggestions that fall outside that range, one way or another :smallamused:

[NotScaryBats]

The Sphere Mirror, page 46 Lords of Madness allows a beholder to fire rays at a party from around corners. Put several of them around a maze w/ tunnels built into the ceiling, where the beholder can hide and snipe people.

Give the beholder Improved Flight and Agile Tyrant, and it'll have perfect flight and be able to hover up the bolt holes effortlessly, move to a new one, then direct four rays at the party from a position they will have a tough time counter-attacking.

[NichG]

Have some item that's needed to get past a certain magical seal/etc in the dungeon. Make it just bulky enough that its unlikely to go into backpacks/etc (maybe its something like a wizard's staff). Then have a swarm of undead hands that basically attempt to steal the item and if successful can fit it through a number of tiny passages carved into the dungeon for its sake. The party then has to chase the hands back through all the traps/etc in previous areas at high speed.

On the plus side, if they figure it out they can use Gaseous Form or other tricks to use the tiny passageways themselves.

Dire Weasels are nasty due to being able to inflict Con drain if they latch on. Allips and Shadows are the other classic 'this will take out someone with a dump stat' encounters. Ghosts who have Horrific Appearance complete the undead stat drain trifecta. A room with 20 low level ghosts with Horrific Appearance is a TPK risk.

A very unfair trick is to have some barrier that can only be bypassed by a specific golem (either due to magic immunity or more likely just a specific bypass worked into the barrier). The golem is shaped like some giant serpent or other obvious swallower monster. The trick is, the party has to have someone get swallowed, wait for the golem to bypass the barrier, then escape and throw the lever or whatever that deactivates the barrier. The party is more likely to kill the golem before they realize this, so don't put anything essential on the other side - just extra loot or a quick bypass around a dangerous area. This is also going to seem way too contrived unless, for example, being swallowed by the golem is absolutely not harmful (the thing is basically a mecha for its master, and thats how you get in).

[Doorhandle]

Heard of fourthcore? Steal ideas from that. Without mercy.

Other ideas:
*Illusionary air. You start suffocating soon after you enter the room. Bonus points for cloudkill.
*Vanishing blocks, like in megaman.
**...Actually, basically every platformer hazard would work well as a trap.
* The ROOM OF DOOM: Lurker above, Lurker below/trapper, 4 stunjelly walls, sandwiching as many gelatinous cubes as will fit. Sprinkle with catarid columns, animated objects and mimics to taste. Bonus points if it's all part of/inside a greater mimic.
*Hell's harem. A room full of 6 pretty women. Or rather, 1 pretty woman, 1 succubus, one vampire, 1 erodaemon, (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/daemons/erodaemon), 1 pairaka div, (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/divs/div-pairaka), and 1 Ecorche (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/ecorche)
Also, the pretty woman is a high-level assassin.
Season gender/C.R to taste.



edit:



A very unfair trick is to have some barrier that can only be bypassed by a specific golem (either due to magic immunity or more likely just a specific bypass worked into the barrier). The golem is shaped like some giant serpent or other obvious swallower monster. The trick is, the party has to have someone get swallowed, wait for the golem to bypass the barrier, then escape and throw the lever or whatever that deactivates the barrier. The party is more likely to kill the golem before they realize this, so don't put anything essential on the other side - just extra loot or a quick bypass around a dangerous area. This is also going to seem way too contrived unless, for example, being swallowed by the golem is absolutely not harmful (the thing is basically a mecha for its master, and thats how you get in).

Oh! a Taotieh (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/taotieh)with some bottles of air is PERFECT for that!

Or a particularly big Tophet. (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/constructs/tophet)

[Golden Ladybug]

The Sphere Mirror, page 46 Lords of Madness allows a beholder to fire rays at a party from around corners. Put several of them around a maze w/ tunnels built into the ceiling, where the beholder can hide and snipe people.

Give the beholder Improved Flight and Agile Tyrant, and it'll have perfect flight and be able to hover up the bolt holes effortlessly, move to a new one, then direct four rays at the party from a position they will have a tough time counter-attacking.

Oh wow, that's perfect. And here I was, forgetting about how terrifying Beholders were. Into the Dungeon they go, Sphere Mirrors with them (which, because I really want to ruin someone's day from across a Dungeon, each Sphere Mirror will be combined with a Lens of Ray Extending... so each time it hits a mirror, it can go twice as far as it could've gone beforehand)


Have some item that's needed to get past a certain magical seal/etc in the dungeon. Make it just bulky enough that its unlikely to go into backpacks/etc (maybe its something like a wizard's staff). Then have a swarm of undead hands that basically attempt to steal the item and if successful can fit it through a number of tiny passages carved into the dungeon for its sake. The party then has to chase the hands back through all the traps/etc in previous areas at high speed.

On the plus side, if they figure it out they can use Gaseous Form or other tricks to use the tiny passageways themselves.

Oh, that's brilliant. I might even go with the good ol'Giant Superman Key (http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fm6s0c_YTyk/TcwaIOwFTlI/AAAAAAAAADM/sj8zYoDgzR4/s1600/Superman-Giant-Key%2BStage%2B1.jpg), which obviously shrinks down to normal key size when the Undead Hands get ahold of it :smallamused:


Dire Weasels are nasty due to being able to inflict Con drain if they latch on. Allips and Shadows are the other classic 'this will take out someone with a dump stat' encounters. Ghosts who have Horrific Appearance complete the undead stat drain trifecta. A room with 20 low level ghosts with Horrific Appearance is a TPK risk.

You know what makes this even more perfect? I gave my players the option of making anything that is legal under 3.5 rules, with a few obvious caveats (consorting with Sarruhks and the Candle of Invocation in general being some of them). One of them has created a Melee Bruiser, who through a variety of Templates, is sitting on 2 Charisma and 2 Intelligence (something he "solved" by buying a Headband of Intelligence +2 for his character). He's got a Touch AC of 11.

Mwahahahahaha!


A very unfair trick is to have some barrier that can only be bypassed by a specific golem (either due to magic immunity or more likely just a specific bypass worked into the barrier). The golem is shaped like some giant serpent or other obvious swallower monster. The trick is, the party has to have someone get swallowed, wait for the golem to bypass the barrier, then escape and throw the lever or whatever that deactivates the barrier. The party is more likely to kill the golem before they realize this, so don't put anything essential on the other side - just extra loot or a quick bypass around a dangerous area. This is also going to seem way too contrived unless, for example, being swallowed by the golem is absolutely not harmful (the thing is basically a mecha for its master, and thats how you get in).

...that's actually really, really cool. I might have to save that for another day, in my normal campaign. Because that's just devious

EDIT:


Heard of fourthcore? Steal ideas from that. Without mercy.

Nope, but I'll look it up


Other ideas:
*Illusionary air. You start suffocating soon after you enter the room. Bonus points for cloudkill.

Pfft, that's hilarious. That's definitely going in.


*Vanishing blocks, like in megaman.
**...Actually, basically every platformer hazard would work well as a trap.

Hmm, good advice. And an excuse to play some ol' school platformers before D&D this weekend. Marvelous!


* The ROOM OF DOOM: Lurker above, Lurker below/trapper, 4 stunjelly walls, sandwiching as many gelatinous cubes as will fit. Sprinkle with catarid columns, animated objects and mimics to taste. Bonus points if it's all part of/inside a greater mimic.

Heh, maybe not. I'd prefer to spread the "looks like something else, but is actually a monster" love around, and have Mimics, Lurkers, Stunjelly, Gelatinous Cubes, Arcane Oozes, Animated Objects et al throughout the Dungeon. No one will ever feel safe again!


*Hell's harem. A room full of 6 pretty women. Or rather, 1 pretty woman, 1 succubus, one vampire, 1 erodaemon, (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/daemons/erodaemon), 1 pairaka div, (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/divs/div-pairaka), and 1 Ecorche (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/undead/ecorche)
Also, the pretty woman is a high-level assassin.
Season gender/C.R to taste.

*Flashbacks to Austin Powers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C8Slzx-Gpc) abound*

:smallbiggrin:

That's definitely going in.

[maxriderules]

Traps. Everywhere.

Doorknobs are coated with touch poison, opening them activates a pit on either side filled with flight capable monsters, while ceiling crushers are completely a thing. Pits which can be just about jumped over- with a force wall hovering just above it. Lava pumps in the corridors. Ghosts floating through walls attacking your players. No light at all, with high level rangers waiting in boltholes to snipe anyone who lights a torch. Kobolds with ungodly amounts of alchemist's fire in a room full of brown mould. And once they've got all of the way through the dungeon? the treasure is all cursed, and the final boss's boss is on his way through, blocking the only exit.

[Golden Ladybug]

Oh, but that just makes them paranoid, and slows down play while they get the Rogue (if they have a Rogue, that is) to check everything for traps.

At the moment, in my 30 Room Dungeon (ignoring rooms without any danger in them, corridors and conflating a section of 15 rooms that are exactly the same; each of them has a single statue in them. Three of them are going to try and kill the party), I've not actually got that many traps. I've got a lot of traps, but not... too many traps :smallamused:

Might have the Brown Mould + Alchemist Fire thing goin' down though. That could be fun.

[Azoth]

First off, ever read Grimtooth's Traps or Best of Grimtooth? If not...find a copy and start reading. Everything in those two books is Killer DM material and will have your party ready to start naming their characters with numbers instead of actual names if used properly. Two of my favorite books of all time when I need to make someone cry...or just want to hear someone curse about not having trapfinding.

[CaladanMoonblad]

The Shrinking Hallway

This 100' long hallway appears longer than it actually is, due to the illusion of distance from the fact it gets smaller and smaller. On one side of the hallway it measures 10'x10'x10' but at the opposite hallway it measures 1'x1'x1' with a tiny door. Lining the walls of the Shrinking Hallway are riddles in draconic, and touching the walls with your finger will leave a lasting, glowing trail for 10 minutes. Writing the correct answer to the riddle in Draconic will cause all party members within the Shrinking Hallway to reduce in size. 7 of 9 riddles must be correctly answered in order to squeeze through the tiny door.

After passing through the tiny door, the heroes are now Diminutive sized or Fine sized (depending on how many riddles they answered). Now enter the automaton of your choice; perhaps a sculpted homunculus that is a dragon, or perhaps a goblin. Remember to include the size modifiers for being Fine or Diminutive from Monster Manual I (Str reduction, etc.). Feel free to similarly reduce the effectiveness of magic to 1/4 or 1/6 or 1/8 to really make your heroes feel small. The automaton you choose should probably have an AoE attack simply because the heroes' AC just jumped up a lot. Otherwise, the size change is permanent without walking back through the Shrinking Hallway. Feel free to line the walls with adamantine and a permanent Augment Object (from Stronghold Builders Guide) to make it difficult to bypass.

[Golden Ladybug]

The Shrinking Hallway

Oh, that is just excellent. I am definitely using that :smallbiggrin:

[thethird]

What my players are soon going to find is:

Fog + Lavabriars (https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20031123a) + Pale Flensers (https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20021123a) all in good quantity.

The lavabriars will shoot at the players then the pale flensers will just explode. Lavabriars' tremorsense will allow them to shoot at the players regardless of the fog, and the pale flensers blindsight (which is heat based) will make them able to spot the characters that end having lava sticking around them. Meanwhile the players will be just stranded in the fog. Neither of the monsters isn't really strong and they might be challenging just because they are different, but if you want to up the challenge even more brown mold is a good way to do it.

[Golden Ladybug]

Haha, oh wow, that is just cruel.

I think I'm going to have to save that for my real campaign as well :smallbiggrin:

[thethird]

Plants are some of my favorite monsters. And the far corners of the world articles get underused.

Similarly monster mayhem are fun sources of inspiration. A dungeoncrusher gravbeast (https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20040627a). And a black loper (https://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20010831a) with some levels of zhentarim spy and/or charlatan (dragon magazine 335) is an AWESOME recurring villain.

[Callin]

A set of doors or rings arcs whathaveyou that trades two players souls. Have em exchange character sheets. Temporary for 1 or 2 encounters.

[maxriderules]

How about ambushes then? A wizard casts darkness, and in the surprise round his mates run out, break torches and the like, then run off before getting too badly damaged. Small tunnels could be useful here, so things like kobolds can have the superior mobility. Also, giving the enemy battlefield control; from things like cloudkill to illusions, just as long as it keeps the victims PCs headed into the next trap/ ambush/ out of the door.

[J-H]

Psionics can produce some interesting and unusual effects. Check out the Ectopic Shambler cloud aoe...

[cd4]

Heres an idea I thought up when making my own version (never played).
I had a large dungeon crasher tripper in front of a door, and the hallway was 20ft long, exactly the range of his spiked chain. The hallway had a 5ft passage at right angles to the end of the hallway for 15ft and then turned away from the door to the rest of the dungeon.
This meant that any who entered the section of the hallway with the door would be in range of the tripping dungeon crasher who would trip them and smash them into a wall for a lot of damage. He would also be able to AoO any casters or those who got in range of him. If they stayed in the passage and tried to cast an area spell the spells range would also hit the caster. This small passage also made it practically impossible to fire any rays or other long range spells at the dungeon crasher.
To make it worse extend the hallway in front of the door and increase the size of the dungeon crasher.

Another idea I had was a malkonver who had as many spells as possible, all Summoning spells and was completely untouchable. To win all the party had to do was wait until he ran out of spells and eliminate every remaining creature.

Also one from Another Gaming Comic (http://agc.deskslave.org/comic_viewer.html?goNumber=541), a programmed image of the target walks into a wall. The wall is illusionary but about an inch behind it is a more serious wall. They had a prismatic wall, but any wall that hurts those who enter could cause trouble.

[NeoPhoenix0]

i suggest you get access to grimtooth's traps lite. maybe use a few lawyer traps but include 1 mega-death trap.

as for an encounter i find a high dragon CR tends to be unforgiving to an unoptimized party. i suggest a CR 12 or 11 black dragon and two CR 8 or 9 advanced rune hounds to punish the party for focusing on the dragon.

edit: the lawyer traps lull them into a false sense of security otherwise don't use any lawyers.

[hymer]

Have a room with a pool full of acid. The surface is icy, and strong enough to bear the party with no ill effects. Until someone casts a fireball into the room, dealing fire damage from the spell, cold damage from the cold and acid damage from the acid.
Can also be done with a wall of force effect as 'bridge' (they may think the real challenge was finding the 'invisible bridge'), and a beholder coming round to enjoy the sight of the PCs crossing.

Have an area that can be crossed precariously by climbing. Have an antimagic field situated so you'll likely only get into it if you try to fly past rather than climb. Start a fight.

Have a trap which the rogue can easily find, but which is murder to disarm. Note that it will loose some AoE attack if it does go off.
It targets the squares back around the corner, because that's where most of the guys will be standing for safety while the rogue with evasion works.

[Demorden]

I'm thinking about "the cube 2"... translated into D&D terms, I'd say that every room is like a small demiplane, and the rooms are randomly connected. You open a door and see a place; you close, open again, and see a different one. Another door shows you the group as it was a few minutes ago, in the previous room. In some rooms, time flows at an absurdly low/high rate. Good luck splitting the party.

These are random thoughts. Not everything from the cube series can be ported into D&D. Nor it should. But the action is basically located in a killer dungeon, so maybe you could find some ideas, apart the few reported above.

Beware, crappy plot ahead! But they're so paranoid that they can become interesting in the end.

[Story]

i suggest you get access to grimtooth's traps lite. maybe use a few lawyer traps but include 1 mega-death trap.

as for an encounter i find a high dragon CR tends to be unforgiving to an unoptimized party. i suggest a CR 12 or 11 black dragon and two CR 8 or 9 advanced rune hounds to punish the party for focusing on the dragon.

edit: the lawyer traps lull them into a false sense of security otherwise don't use any lawyers.

No mention of the Adamantine Horror?

Anyway, you'll need a way to stop the players from just blasting through an alternative tunnel, or sending summons in if they're properly paranoid.

I know that if I were told to make anything 3.5 legal for an explicitly killer dungeon, I'd probably just have an Incantrix, DMM Cleric, Planar Shepard, etc. and try to blast through with sheer magical power (scrying first to find the gaps in the defences, undefended approaches etc.) while stacking every long term buff I can think of. There's no reason you have to play by the dungeon's rules.

Remember, even a level 5 unoptimized Druid can tunnel through solid stone. It doesn't take much longer before Mountain Hammer types can do the same, though not as efficiently.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

1) Nyph vampire monk 2. Unfairly high AC and saves for her CR 10, unfairly high HP, stunning gaze, domination gaze, stunning fist, undead immunities, good damage reduction and a bit of energy resistance, fast healing, evasion, energy-draining fists that deal increased damage, blood drain, very good mobility, swimming, spider cimb, gaseous form, summoned helpers, deflect arrows, druid spells. Did I miss anything?
Several of those ladies in a small group can easily challenge a party of, say, level 18 characters despite being merely CR 10 each.



2) The lair has a room deep in its heart with a decanter of endless water spraying a permanent wall of fire. Thus a huge amount of steam is produced that slowly rises through the lair. This has the following effects;
a) Limited visibility - players can't see further than 10-20 ft at most and can easily get lost, miss clues, fail to see traps and so on.
b) perpetual darkness - light doesn't penetrate beyond 10 ft from the door so it's totally dark.
c) No scry - any scrying attempts only show lots of mist so it's impossible to magically scout ahead.
d) No teleporting ahead - since you can't get a clear visual, you can't teleport ahead.
e) High creepiness factor - it's a lair of vampires. How do you know which part of the mist is a vampire and which isn't? :smallamused:


3) Several corridors are full of mud, leaving only a foot of air near the ceiling. The party tries to cross and the dispelling trap dispels the stone-to-mud spell with the party still in the mud. Automatic entrapment, no save, no spell resistance. Then the vampires send a swarm of rats to chew on the party's faces till they fall unconcious, turn the stone back into mud and get the unconscious group for fun and games.
NOTE: stone-to-mud is a druid spell. :smallamused:


4) A large, open, cylindrical room with the treasure of dead adventurers at the center. The party tries to get to the treasure only to realize it's surrounded by a permanent forcecage they need to dispel/destroy first. Not impossible for 12th level characters.
As soon as they do destroy the forcecage? The ceiling, which is actually not stuck to the walls and only had the forcecage holding it up, falls on their heads. What's the falling object damage for a 3.000-ton piece of rock again?
NOTE: the ceiling was stone-shaped after the forcecage was cast so the workers didn't have to lift it in the first place.


5) 2/3 of the doors in the dungeon are false - they are actually (very) thick Walls of Iron whose surface is sculpted to look like an elaborate door. Breaking the doors or sufficiently weakening them results in a major boom because as the exploding door trap was created, it is a tiny sealed room filled with water and a fire elemental. With the seal (the wall of iron) not letting the steam or the fire elemental go anywhere, someone better not burst the thing open after the water boils.
NOTE: elementals do not need to eat, drink, sleep or breathe. Fire elementals are not actually hurt by being submerged in water for months at a time or even permanently. Being doused by boiling water deals 10d6 damage. The damage of the steam explosion is not given in a book so the GM should feel free to assign whatever he wants.
NOTE 2: an upgrade of this trap is to make a wall of force, paint it over, and put in a lot of lead or copper in the trap with the elemental instead of water. The party sees an opaque, nigh-invulnerable barrier and tries to smash through only to unleash a torrent of molten metal in their faces (treat as magma)


6) Two succubae -twin sisters- that are capable of ethereal form and possession (fiend of possession 5, CR 12 each) are the guards for the lower levels. They are hiding in a room with twenty medium-sized pools of water. They can possess and animate the water of each pool, making it into an animated object. Once the party defeats the animated water, they go and animate the second pair of pools, then the third, the fourth and so on. Once they run out of water for the pools, they animate the mass of stainless steel chains at the bottom of each pool. Once they run out of chains (or if they are discovered), they flee and go warn the boss vampire.

7) The boss vampire is a Nymph Vampire Paragon*, Druid 10 with a CR of 23. She casts as a 17th level druid with practiced spellcaster boosting her CL to 21, has far better AC and saves than her little girls, over 400 HP, 48ish charisma and has a tendency to cast Polar Midnight to make the battlefield utterly dark and freeze enemies into popsickles.
NOTE: A "paragon" is a creature advanced by +4 CR either via racial HD or the Advanced Creature template. In this case, she has been Advanced 3 times and has 4 extra racial HD.



Good luck to your group. :smalltongue:

[Tvtyrant]

Low level:

A platform with archers and low level mages on it which is separated from the party by a chasm filled with water and giant crocodiles. The boss of this room is a black dragon (young) who uses a ledge in the ceiling that faces away from the party and flyby attack to spit acid on the party and then disappear until he can do it again. The only way to get in sight of the ledge is to get on the platform, which is difficult because of the crocodiles.

[Silverbit]

The room full of elementals:
This room contains an open fireplace, a pond and what appears to be a rockery. There is a slight breeze.
Of course, the fire is a fire elemental and the pond is in fact a water elemental. The rockery isn't an earth elemental; it's under the floor. And there isn't an air elemental. Watch the PCs try to find it :smallwink:.

I've always wanted to use this, but never got the chance. Good luck.

[Gildedragon]

A gallery blasted by a howling wind full of caryatids made of pandemonic silver

[Golden Ladybug]

Have a room with a pool full of acid. The surface is icy, and strong enough to bear the party with no ill effects. Until someone casts a fireball into the room, dealing fire damage from the spell, cold damage from the cold and acid damage from the acid.
Can also be done with a wall of force effect as 'bridge' (they may think the real challenge was finding the 'invisible bridge'), and a beholder coming round to enjoy the sight of the PCs crossing.

Haha, that's brilliant. Yet more reasons for everyone to assume Beguiler's are Asshats.


Have an area that can be crossed precariously by climbing. Have an antimagic field situated so you'll likely only get into it if you try to fly past rather than climb. Start a fight.

Have a trap which the rogue can easily find, but which is murder to disarm. Note that it will loose some AoE attack if it does go off.
It targets the squares back around the corner, because that's where most of the guys will be standing for safety while the rogue with evasion works.

Hehe, magnificent. I like 'em both.


No mention of the Adamantine Horror?

Anyway, you'll need a way to stop the players from just blasting through an alternative tunnel, or sending summons in if they're properly paranoid.

I know that if I were told to make anything 3.5 legal for an explicitly killer dungeon, I'd probably just have an Incantrix, DMM Cleric, Planar Shepard, etc. and try to blast through with sheer magical power (scrying first to find the gaps in the defences, undefended approaches etc.) while stacking every long term buff I can think of. There's no reason you have to play by the dungeon's rules.

Remember, even a level 5 unoptimized Druid can tunnel through solid stone. It doesn't take much longer before Mountain Hammer types can do the same, though not as efficiently.

I'm not too worried about that; my Players were aware of a few conventions of the Dungeon before they went in.


You will be dropped in here by Divine Power, for the purpose of Entertainment of powerful beings
The Walls, Floor, Doors et al are completely indestructible, again by DM Fiat Divine Power
You go in unbuffed, even if you would normally have long duration buffs up. Its more fun for the viewers watching you try to get yourselves properly buffed while wandering Gelatinous Cubes wander in on you
Divination to investigate other areas of the Dungeon will result in false results about as much as it will true ones. Use at your own risk
You can't leave the Dungeon by any means besides finding an Exit. You can't bring things into the Dungeon once you get there (Summon [X] Still works, that's just copying a template to create a creature. Planar Binding et al will not fly)
The Dungeon won't play fair.


So, even if they do bring Incantatrixes and Planar Shepherds to the table, there are already at least two instances where they can get a Disjunction to the Face, Arcane Oozes, Kill Rooms, Save or Dies out the wazzoo (the first set-piece they're likely to face is four Bodaks, just staring at them till they start keeling over)

Adamantine Horror is a good idea, can't believe I forgot about it.


The room full of elementals:
This room contains an open fireplace, a pond and what appears to be a rockery. There is a slight breeze.
Of course, the fire is a fire elemental and the pond is in fact a water elemental. The rockery isn't an earth elemental; it's under the floor. And there isn't an air elemental. Watch the PCs try to find it :smallwink:.

I've always wanted to use this, but never got the chance. Good luck.

Okay, that's pretty good. I'll tell you how it goes, if they reach it :smallamused:

[Story]

You go in unbuffed, even if you would normally have long duration buffs up. Its more fun for the viewers watching you try to get yourselves properly buffed while wandering Gelatinous Cubes wander in on you


Not sure what the point of this rule is since thanks to Planar Shepard, it won't take long for everyone to get their buffs back up. Unless there are opponents waiting to jump them literally the second they get in, it won't make much of a difference.

My main concern is that it seems too much like a battle against DM fiat. A properly optimized spellcaster party will trivialize most of the mundane dangers suggested here (assuming they're not really low level, which the desire for CR8-12 enemies would imply), so the main danger is the stuff that isn't in the rules anywhere.

Edit: Planar Shepards don't get their time manipulation ability till level 10, so a level 9 party would probably require several minutes to fully buff up.

[Golden Ladybug]

Its not a problem at all, really. There's nothing that's going to jump out at them in the entrance; it just means they have to spend actions to buff up inside the dungeon. There are going to be Wandering Monsters, so there is a chance something walks in on them when they're prebuffing. I'm going to be rolling percentiles to see where they start in the Dungeon, and just randomly determining where they wander from then on. Considering what a kill-box I'm creating, there's better than even odds that they'll get killed before the Party ever sees any of them.

Everything in the Dungeon resets though, so it won't be a problem if the Wandering Monsters get ripped to shreds by traps.

If someone does go Planar Shepherd (and I laid this out beforehand) they'll find there Planar Bubble doesn't function, although they are still able to wildshape into exotic creatures from their chosen plane.

I wonder if someone will get upset with me for making that ruling... :smalltongue:

Anyway, they knew all the things I put in dot-points beforehand, and I did some explaining and what it all meant. Everything inside the dungeon is rules legal, and I'm not going to be fudging any rolls.

There are three ways out of this dungeon, all of which involve going through the meat-grinder. Because that's what I'm building; a Meat-Grinder. My Players know this, they know the assumptions the Dungeon was built on and I have absolutely no qualms about making it so that the party can't just tunnel/teleport/planar bind Efreetis their way out of the Dungeon :smallannoyed:

If they do find a way to trivialise this whole dungeon, then I will congratulate them and refine it for later use. Besides an attempt at taking a load off and destroying character after character in a one-shot, this is also a playtest for some monsters I never get to use and strategies I think might be interesting. If those strategies fall down, then so be it.

Sorry if I came across as confrontational, but I found your comment that I'm going to be using DM Fiat to make my player's lose rather aggravating. Friends?

[Jack_Simth]

Symbiotic traps and monsters.

You said you're looking for things in the CR 8-12 range? OK. You put four flesh golems (indvidually CR 7, so an encounter level of 11) in with a periodic auto-reset magic device trap of chain lightning (aka, it goes off every round, targetting a random creature in the room as the primary, and everyone else as the secondary). At a caster level of 16 (making it a CR 9 trap, for an encounter level of about 12).

The Chain Lightning trap doesn't care if it hits the golems. In fact, that's why they're there. See, these golems have been soaking in the lightning for several hours, and have an absurd amount of temporary hit points...

[Story]

Sorry if I came across as confrontational, but I found your comment that I'm going to be using DM Fiat to make my player's lose rather aggravating. Friends?

Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you, it was just the impression I got from the earlier list. But if you explain everything beforehand and don't introduce anything new, it's a lot better.

[Golden Ladybug]

Symbiotic traps and monsters.

You said you're looking for things in the CR 8-12 range? OK. You put four flesh golems (indvidually CR 7, so an encounter level of 11) in with a periodic auto-reset magic device trap of chain lightning (aka, it goes off every round, targetting a random creature in the room as the primary, and everyone else as the secondary). At a caster level of 16 (making it a CR 9 trap, for an encounter level of about 12).

The Chain Lightning trap doesn't care if it hits the golems. In fact, that's why they're there. See, these golems have been soaking in the lightning for several hours, and have an absurd amount of temporary hit points...

Haha, excellent. That's got a lot of potential for terrifying.

Now, lets replace those Flesh Golems with Shambling Mounds... :smallamused:

EDIT:
Sorry, I didn't mean to insult you, it was just the impression I got from the earlier list. But if you explain everything beforehand and don't introduce anything new, it's a lot better.

Just because I'm designing a Dungeon to throw my friends into to cause their gory dismemberment, doesn't mean I don't want them to have fun too. They know the premise, and they're trying to survive it :smallsmile:

[Story]

Are they evil? Persisted Consumptive Field would make things easier, especially with a Summon Elemental (Reserve) to fuel it.

If the enemies can get nigh infinite strength and temp hp, the PCs might as well do it too.

[Golden Ladybug]

Like I said, if its Legal under 3.5 (beyond the noted exceptions which the PCs are aware of), it can be used. I've decided that the only unbounded loop the Dungeon will contain will be that Shambling Mound trick (Flesh Golems just seemed unsporting, what with being Golems and all), and I've placed it in an easily avoidable room and given the terrain advantage to the PCs.

I ran a quick calculation for how much con the Shambling Mound would've picked up by sitting next to a Chain Lightning trap that activated every round for four hours; 35996 extra con, on average. That's a lot of Con :smalleek:

Whether they think about using Consumptive Field tricks is another story. The only two builds I'm aware of at this juncture are a Half-Ogre, Half-Minotaur, Lolth-Touched, Mineral Warrior, Water Orc Hulkling Hurler and a Handle Animal optimised Farmer (think Bubs (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7097263&postcount=38)), which goes to show that optimisation, killer dungeons and silly fun can go together hand in hand.

Of course, I'm expecting at least three characters from each player, so I'm prepared for a few surprises.

[Zubrowka74]

Put like five or six doors in a room, the party has to pick one if they want to go on. All of them are horridly bad choices. Make sure either they have a way around if they won some encounter earlier, a secret door or just one option for which they have immunity or is less detrimental.

Also, the old school trap I always mention when talking about deadly dungeons (and taken from some book I don't remember) : a room with a pipe at floor level that spits out delayed blast fireballs every two or three rounds. There's a stone or iron golem that picks up the un-detonated fireballs and puts them in an opening 12 feet up or so, cancelling them. When the PC enter the room, the golem attacks them, forgetting about the fireballs... Adjust to taste!

[Story]

I ran a quick calculation for how much con the Shambling Mound would've picked up by sitting next to a Chain Lightning trap that activated every round for four hours; 35996 extra con, on average. That's a lot of Con :smalleek:


Is there any way to get unlimited critical hits (i.e. Coup de Graces) against plants? Deathstrike gauntlets only work 3 times a day, but you'll probably need around 20 per mound due to their high con.

Best bet would probably just be standard Save or Dies.

[Gildedragon]

It's CR 5 but it is hillarious in its effects:
Arcane Polution (CS, 33) it can make a mess of a party. Putting them to sleep, turning them to toads...
A few rooms with that and alchemical fog, plus some living spells.

[Story]

It probably won't matter as you aren't using them, but I just came across this sentence for Flesh Golems and was amused at the rules lawyering implications.


A flesh golem golem gets no saving throw against attacks that deal electricity damage.

Find a way to add electricity damage to a Save or Die and you've got a No Save, Just Die. You could also auto succeed on Coup de Gracing with a shocking weapon (assuming you can bypass their crit immunity, which isn't hard).

[boldfont]

Four Short Fun Brainstormed Ideas

Ever hear of the Spawn of Kruss? (MMii) Creepy as heck. Have a slippery slope (DC 20-30 Balance) leading down into a chasm separating point A and B. Those that slip fall 100ft into a 50ft wide basin with waist deep water and hundreds of Spawn of Kruss crawling all over. [edit: hundreds is too hard, but lots!] Low ceilings makes it impossible for anyone but a perfect flier to fly across. A cross section looks a little like this:
.............____...____
.................../ /
................. / /
........_____ / /__
.......|................|
.......|-----------|
.......|__________|

Have a small door in an alcove with an arcane lock. You can get a simple brain teaser online or a puzzle from home to signify the lock. Only one person can work on it at a time because of the alcove size. The others will have to deal with wave after wave of X baddy. Use an egg timer or stopwatch to limit the amount of time each player can take on their turn. They survive if they unlock the door by solving the puzzle or actually manage to fight their way back the way they can (should be very hard)

If you can draw, then put a piece of paper over your map and draw a picture roughly using the lines of the map. The picture can be iconographic. If you can't draw that well, then just draw a series of interconnecting bones. Bones are easy to draw. But angel the bones so it isn't obvious what they are looking at. Place the picture as a mural early on in the dungeon. No matter what checks they make, do not explain what the picture actually is. At the end of the adventure, make them groan and hate your guts by putting the picture next to the map. Drink some coke. Cackle.

A hallway style room. At the beginning end of the hall have difficult to see razor wires, or invisible magic blades. Keen perhaps. (e.g. Spot DC 15, or blunder into 2d12 slashing dmg. Reflex DC 20 for 1/2 dmg. Death no save if running through) Players will think they are clever having discovered said trap. Make it easy. Maybe even fudge the rolls. They only need balance or escape artist DC 15 to do the Angelina Jolie thing as yoga past it. Maybe they have dimension leap, I dunno. Anyways, at the other end of the hall have tempting treasure X. Perhaps a key they need. You can throw in additional obstacles, but the crux is that when they grab the key/treasure mageripper swarms (MMiv) and/or needle tooth swarms start pouring out of holes in the wall at the end of the hall. Running the gauntlet in reverse with the added pressure of the swarm prevents them from taking ten and someone is bound to get left behind and eaten.

Hope you can use/adapt one of these.

[zlefin]

this sounds cool; the best I can come up with while I have time now:
an incorporeal creature that can cast fog cloud at will.
It starts trapped in its starting room, but if you let it out it'll just wander around spamming fog clouds to make everything harder.

doesn't feel lethal enough; I can't come up with anything that really seems optimal, so I'll just take one more stab before I ruminate some more:

An airborne ooze that operates as a fine mist; treat it as a swarm creature based using one of the standard oozes.


Oh yeah, one other thing, very important:
Put one ordinary duck in the dungeon; just an ordinary duck, to mess with them.

[Silverbit]

I've got another idea! This works best if you've got access to Sandstorm, but any other burrowing monster will do. Have a room filled with sand. Put some large columns of stone in the sand, but connected at the base. Make them raised, so the PCs have to make jump or climb checks to get to them from the ground or other columns. Put as many Asheratis (Sandstorm, they can burrow in sand) as you can fit in the sand, give them Warlock or Wizard levels for either blasting or Grease shenanigans. Then, put some earth elementals in the columns themselves. Have them try to bull rush or otherwise inconvenience the PCs. Oh, and for added nastiness, make the last column either a stone golem or a caryatid column. The plan is that the PCs will try to jump or otherwise move from column to column, and will thus be caught unawares by the earth elementals and/or stone golem/caryatid column. Make the ceiling low to avoid flight bypassing the whole thing, but perhaps have a dome or something in the centre., so they don't feel left out. Fill it with the missing air elemental from earlier :smalltongue:.



Oh yeah, one other thing, very important:
Put one ordinary duck in the dungeon; just an ordinary duck, to mess with them.

Seconded :smallamused:.

[Golden Ladybug]

Awesome Deviousness, especially the Bone Map


[B]Awesome Fog Monsters + Duck


Brilliant Sand Stuff

You guys are great :smallbiggrin:

Anyway, reporting back with results; it seems that my Party is significantly less competent/mature than I gave them credit for. Only three people ended up showing, which is a shame, but not the end of the world.

They started off with each of their characters; a Shadowcaster, a Chicken-Infested Commoner and a Hulkling Hurler with a grand total of 4 Int. I started them off at what I considered to be the "easiest" entrance, which had the Brown Mould + Alchemist Fire trap in one direction, and the Bodak Room in the other.

They went after the Brown Mould first; not one character had invested ranks in a knowledge skill, much less Dungeoneering. They triggered the Brown Mould and ran away from it bravely.

So, they tried the Bodak Room next. The Chicken-Infested Common decided to send 20 Chickens in to scout out the terrain, and upon seeing the Bodaks (all hidden from the PCs by stone pillars) they, without fail, dropped dead. They tried sending in more chickens to help their fallen comrades, with poor results. So, the Commoner moved forward to take a look at whatever was killing his chickens.

:smallsigh:

So, the Commoner fails his Fort Save against the Death Gaze of the Bodaks, and keels over. The Shadowcaster decides this is a great opportunity to treat the Hulking Hurler as a Mount, and climbs aboard. In retaliation ("My Character has only got 4 Int, and is primal, evil bastard who hits anything he doesn't understand" the player rationalises), the HH knocks him off, and then throws his oversized Orchis Shotput at him for significantly more damage than the Shadowcaster has HP.

The Last Survivor, the HH walks into the room, doesn't understand what the bodak's are, or in fact, even notice them and also fails his Fort Save against the Death Gaze.

So, we try again; a different entrance this time. Our cast of characters has changed to an Exalted Drow Bard, a Soul Manifester and a Cleric with Leadership; all 40 or so Followers have, of course, been brought into the Dungeon with him. This goes in a similar fashion to the Chickens, where the Cleric sends his followers forward where they begin getting disintegrated, stone'd and finger of death'd from across the Dungeon by a Beholder Mirror array. The Soul Manifester, after murdering a Follower so that it could be raised as a Necrocarnum Zombie, incurred the wrath of the other two players and he was brought down by a mass of level troops hitting at +15 with a 1d8+12+10d6 Damage to back it up.

The Soul Manifester player also played the Shadowcaster. Killed by the Party both times :smallannoyed:

They then trigger a trap of Wings of Flurry, which over the course of two turns wipes out all of the Followers as well as the Cohort. Fearing the Beholder Array and the Wings of Flurry trap, the remaining characters retreated to the starting area (they'd not even progressed through a single room, at this point) and pointed out that they had 5000gp worth of Rations together. So, they waited in the starting area for 6 Years and then starved to death.

So, it could've gone better.

I think I'm going to have to change the parameters of the dungeon and open it up for Play by Post; I put a lot of work into this dungeon, I don't want it to go to waste.

[Silverbit]

If you turn this into a PbP, consider me about as interested as possible. I've not got a load of free time right now, but I could probably manage to play in this. And lol at the 6 years in the starting area.

[Story]

I'd be interested in Pbp too. I don't have much free time, but I'd be curious to see how the Incantrix et all party does.

Is gestalting allowed? What about LA buyoff?

[Golden Ladybug]

Haha, I'm not going to be ready immediately :smallbiggrin:

there's a few things that I learnt from the (admittedly) poor performance of my party and just a bit of thinking. I'm going to do a bit of rejiggering of the dungeon to get it back in working order before I run it here.

If you like, I'll send you guys a PM when the Dungeon is up and running?

[rockdeworld]

The Shrinking Hallway

<snip> Lining the walls of the Shrinking Hallway are riddles in draconic, and touching the walls with your finger will leave a lasting, glowing trail for 10 minutes. Writing the correct answer to the riddle in Draconic will cause all party members within the Shrinking Hallway to reduce in size. 7 of 9 riddles must be correctly answered in order to squeeze through the tiny door.
Since it's draconic, at least 4 of the answers should be "Fire." :smallamused:

Also, no mention of the Grinder (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3665380)? If it's a killer dungeon for level 18 characters, it's certainly one for levels 8-12 :smalltongue:

On a side note, if anyone knows where I can find the original Grinder, please link me.

And for the OP: I got good mileage out of groups of 10HD wraiths (CR 6 individually, twice as strong as the MM entry), and 14HD Spectres (at the upper bounds of CR 8, also twice as strong as the MM entry). My players can attest that there's nothing like opening a box only to be surrounded by 4 ghosts coming out of the walls/floor and hitting you for +9 touch (1d8 and energy drain) to instantly steal 8 levels. It's a CR12 encounter though.

[Jack_Simth]

Haha, excellent. That's got a lot of potential for terrifying.

Now, lets replace those Flesh Golems with Shambling Mounds... :smallamused:It works with almost anything that heals with a particular damage type, yes. Most the golems, Shambling Mounds, and any undead will do.

An undead that applies negative levels or deals ability drain could benefit from a Summon Monster Trap, too.