Building a Tough Dungeon Crawl [3.5]

[Tokuhara]

Now before I begin with this, I'm looking for a custom dungeon that is completable in a 2/3 hour session with 0 roleplaying implications. This is just a dungeon that is dice-crushingly hard, yet rewards "doing it well," where a party can shuffle their resources and tactics to complete the dungeon easier.

Now, what I'm looking for:

A dungeon (in the Vaguest sense. Could be a lich's tower, a forgotten crypt, etc. The limit is your own imagination) with 25 rooms arranged on multiple floors.

I want this to be challenging for both new players and experienced optimizers without diminishing challenge/becoming frustrating. I want it to have the old Gygaxian level of difficulty without arbitrarily taking the weight out of any of the rooms.

I want some of the rooms to be combat rooms, some traps, and a few to be puzzle rooms that test the players as much as the PCs

I want this to be tough for 5-6 20th level PCs of many classes spanning the tier list without hamstringing the lower tier PCs or low-op PCs

This should be a dungeon with a theme, but not a theme of type, otherwise one PC may shine above all others (ie: an Undead-heavy crypt can get hosed by a Turn Undead-spamming Cleric).

I want the dungeon to have this "Ironman Match" feel where the party has little time to rest and needs to complete this dungeon. Perhaps as they pass through a door, the room previous becomes inaccessible through arbitrary means. Note that there may be inclusion of "rest areas", but these should be far and few between. You should feel like you've earned this "Save point".

I want a final boss to the dungeon that acts as the culmination of the skills the PCs have picked up over this extensive dungeon and be simply satisfying. If the Tomb has a lich, I want it to be a grueling encounter that if they win, feels like they defeated the biggest baddest lich they've ever met.


Now, the PCs will be limited to non-setting specific goodies (so no Faerun, no Eberron, no Dragonlance) and no Dragon Magazine/3rd Party/Homebrew, but this dungeon is free to use setting specific (with skins/refluff as appropriate) and Dragon Magazine material with VERY limited homebrew (No Uber monsters or Lightning Warriors), but feel free to include some homebrew to beef up the challenge. If you do, please link your homebrew.

And please give me a rough layout of the dungeon you design (or room/encounter/etc) so it can be implemented. And on one final note, please feel free to combine the three types of rooms (Puzzle, Fight, Trap) to make the room even more challenging/flavorful.

So please comment and let's build a tough custom dungeon. Thanks in advance to everyone who posts ideas below, and if someone has a cool idea, please refrain from criticizing it outright as "Bad" or "Stupid," ok? Believe me when I say that I am big on story, as is the rest of the players, but sometimes you need a pallet cleanser. This will be the pallet cleanser with a challenge.

[Tvtyrant]

The party is sitting in a bar/inn/whatever. An Earthquake drops them down into the Earth, and they find themselves at the bottom of a dungeon/Underdark. The party has to fight their way to the surface between afterquakes which collapse the tunnels behind them.

The party is made aware that one of them has become possessed by something, but there is no way to know who or by what except the dungeon was made to hold it.

[Emperor Tippy]

I want this to be tough for 5-6 20th level PCs of many classes spanning the tier list without hamstringing the lower tier PCs or low-op PCs
And I want a threesome with Scarlett Johanson and Elisha Cuthbert, alas I fear that we will both have our wants unfulfilled.

Making a dungeon that is a decent challenge for level 20 characters is difficult in the first place. Making one that can handle quite varied power and optimization levels is nigh impossible.

One trick of mine is to make the dungeon out of blocks that are Ice Assassin high level Psions. Every single brick in the walls in the entire dungeon is a Psion and every single one of them is permanently linked with telepathic bonds to a controlling intelligence that can coordinate their operations. For extra fun, the IA Psions are Aleax's and thus immune to all harm.

[Tokuhara]

The party is sitting in a bar/inn/whatever. An Earthquake drops them down into the Earth, and they find themselves at the bottom of a dungeon/Underdark. The party has to fight their way to the surface between afterquakes which collapse the tunnels behind them.

The party is made aware that one of them has become possessed by something, but there is no way to know who or by what except the dungeon was made to hold it.

this is a clever start.

Perhaps I was entirely too vague. I want to capture the raw difficulty of Tomb of Horrors/Undermountain without BEING ToH/Undermountain and having an organically "unique" feel.

To put it bluntly, I'm looking for Dead Money difficulty, not Mothership Zeta.

[PlusSixPelican]

Don't let them sleep/rest/recover. The end. xD

[Tokuhara]

Don't let them sleep/rest/recover. The end. xD

Twas the plan Pelican. No rest until you've hit a designated "Save Point"

[ArcturusV]

Actually more than that. It's "And also do something to screw them over to prevent them from doing it" as at level 20 they should have more than enough resources to accomplish that. even if it just means teleporting to a safe location, or setting up enough wards to make an area they cleared safe, usual Rope trick/MMM mentions...

And of course... you need your players to effectively shut off their brains and be willing to play along. Thus the infamous story about Tomb of Horrors where someone just hired a bunch of dwarves to mine around all the death traps to the final chamber. At level 20 they have a lot of options for that sort of thing. On top of hiring dwarves to mine a new way.

[Tvtyrant]

this is a clever start.

Perhaps I was entirely too vague. I want to capture the raw difficulty of Tomb of Horrors/Undermountain without BEING ToH/Undermountain and having an organically "unique" feel.

To put it bluntly, I'm looking for Dead Money difficulty, not Mothership Zeta.

Okay, so you want to have a series of extremely difficult encounters without spaces between them. Each time the party runs into a trapped door/puzzle lock they feel more tremors forcing them to rush against a clock.

Monster encounters should use lots of ability damage, drain and poisons/disease/curses to make the party feel harried.

[Emperor Tippy]

Let's see.

A room that is crisscrossed with Riverine wires with the floor being made up of IA animated objects with Permanent Emanation: Otiluke's Suppressing Field (so that the whole room is constantly covered) set against Transmutation and that is populated by fine and diminutive enemies. After the PC's enter the room the door is (naturally) locked behind riverine and then the whole place floods (perhaps with acid).

---
Put the whole Dungeon under a Silence effect. That hampers casters more than melee but also screws the party over if they aren't smart enough to have come up with other communications methods (and at level 20 they should all be linked with permanent telepathic bonds).

---
Shut down magical flight in the dungeon and then liberally seed variable gravity throughout. As in the PC enters a room and gravity is suddenly 70 degrees off of normal.

[Tokuhara]

Actually more than that. It's "And also do something to screw them over to prevent them from doing it" as at level 20 they should have more than enough resources to accomplish that. even if it just means teleporting to a safe location, or setting up enough wards to make an area they cleared safe, usual Rope trick/MMM mentions...

And of course... you need your players to effectively shut off their brains and be willing to play along. Thus the infamous story about Tomb of Horrors where someone just hired a bunch of dwarves to mine around all the death traps to the final chamber. At level 20 they have a lot of options for that sort of thing. On top of hiring dwarves to mine a new way.

Well, to get around the "parachuting" and "save stating" is that rooms refill if you leave. This encourages you to get to a designated save point before you decide to "patch up," though after a fight, feel free to heal and get ready to kick the next door in, because soon, the room'll seal

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

You have to put the dungeon in some sort of pocket dimension/plane, so that nonlocal teleportation and extraplanar spaces simply do not work. No chance of Greater Teleporting back home, resting and healing up, then Greater Teleporting back to the dungeon. Local teleportation from one point within the dungeon to another would work. Extraplanar spaces such as Bags of Holding, Portable Holes, Handy Haversacks, Rope Trick, etc. wouldn't function. They're already inside of one pocket plane, so another pocket plane cannot open or it will cause... problems. Luckily there are safeguards in place to stop that from happening, and such effects simply do not function.

Summoning, Calling, and spells that can reach across planes work normally. The Ethereal and Shadow planes are inaccessible from the pocket plane, so effects that would reach into either of those do not function. You can still summon creatures, call creatures, and Plane Shift, Gate, etc. However, there is a mesh screen of Dimensional Lock surrounding the pocket plane so nothing larger than a medium (tall) or large (long) creature can enter or leave via these methods, unless its form is malleable such as an air/water/fire elemental. That means only medium or smaller humanoid creatures and large or smaller quadrupeds can be summoned, called, or plane shifted/gated to or from the dungeon. Also, any Astral Projections coming into the dungeon whose silver cord touches that screen will have it instantly and automatically severed, killing the creature being projected. As the screen is invisible and insubstantial and does not even exist within the pocket plane itself, there is no means of preventing the silver cord from touching it apart from standing perfectly still.

The initial entrance to the dungeon and pocket plane is large enough to accommodate a creature of any size, but walking through that doorway is the only possible way a larger creature can enter the dungeon by any means. Across that doorway are two permanent spell effects: Wall of Greater Dispel Magic and Greater Dispelling Screen (SC), both at caster level 20, cast by someone with the Inquisition domain's granted power and fourteen effective levels in Master Specialist (Abjurer), so they both make dispel checks at +31. The entrance to the pocket plane is one-way, upon passing through to enter there is no means of leaving other than using Plane Shift, Gate, etc. or making your way to the end and defeating the last boss. Note that Wall of Greater Dispel Magic targets every creature that passes through and every item they carry, so it gets rid of personal buffs as well as Greater Magic Weapon, Magic Vestment, preserved Fire Seeds, Shrink Item, Explosive Runes, etc. Greater Dispelling Screen only dispels buffs on creatures an unattended objects, but it is not thwarted by the methods used to protect oneself from a targeted dispel magic. Note that Antimagic Field does not block line of effect for spells, so if they have one cast using Extraordinary Spell Aim to exclude the party members from its effect, any spell can still reach through the AMF and affect each excluded party member, so this will not protect them from either dispel effect on entering the pocket plane. I would highly recommend putting those spell effects at the doors between different 'levels' of the dungeon as well, or even in every doorway between every room.

The walls, floors, ceilings, etc. of the dungeon within the pocket plane should be composed of blocks and slabs formed from a mixture of clay, sand, iron, lead, wood, stone, glass, and uranium. The materials have been heated and molded into a single material that is unaffected by any transmutation spell that does not specifically affect every any one of the component materials, and both Passwall and Meld into Stone will not work on it. The rooms themselves can move and shift so that a route from one room to another is subject to change at any time, thus preventing spells like Find the Path from functioning. Even gravity can function differently, depending on what room they're in, plus you can include Wild Magic and even Dead Magic rooms. Every wall, floor, and ceiling is several layers thick. Anyone destroying a block of the wall will create a cloud of toxic radioactive dust, which can cause any effects you want, such as radiation sickness causing periodic no-save Con damage/drain that can only be cured by Wish or Miracle. Due to the unique material composition of the blocks, it will also reflect any ray spells targeting it back at the caster, such as Disintegrate, and it's immune to ranged weapon attacks.

That should give you a good idea of just what will be necessary to make such an adventure challenging for characters of widely varying power levels.

[Emperor Tippy]

Extraplanar spaces such as Bags of Holding, Portable Holes, Handy Haversacks, Rope Trick, etc. wouldn't function. They're already inside of one pocket plane, so another pocket plane cannot open or it will cause... problems.
That would be houserules. You can stack extradimensional items inside one another to your hearts content and nothing bad will happen. You can also stack non dimensional items into themselves as much as you want. And you can even mix those two together so long as you avoid combining bags of holding and portable holes.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

That would be houserules. You can stack extradimensional items inside one another to your hearts content and nothing bad will happen. You can also stack non dimensional items into themselves as much as you want. And you can even mix those two together so long as you avoid combining bags of holding and portable holes.

From Rope Trick (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/ropeTrick.htm) (Core):
Note: It is hazardous to create an extradimensional space within an existing extradimensional space or to take an extradimensional space into an existing one.

That's not a houserule, it's included in the core rules that it's 'hazardous' to do so, though exactly what happens apart from combining a portable hole and bag of holding is entirely up to the DM.

[Emperor Tippy]

From Rope Trick (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/ropeTrick.htm) (Core):
Note: It is hazardous to create an extradimensional space within an existing extradimensional space or to take an extradimensional space into an existing one.

That's not a houserule, it's included in the core rules that it's 'hazardous' to do so, though exactly what happens apart from combining a portable hole and bag of holding is entirely up to the DM.

RAW does not specify that anything happens so per RAW nothing does. Just because it is said to be "hazardous" doesn't actually mean anything.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

RAW does not specify that anything happens so per RAW nothing does. Just because it is said to be "hazardous" doesn't actually mean anything.

It fails to mention what specifically happens, similar to the dead condition, leaving it up to the DM to determine the specifics, if any.

[denthor]

Simple

This is tomb that is cut off from a restful nights sleep with nightmares and disturbing thoughts

The clerics can not gain spells so every spell cast is a depletion. Same for magic users.

Fighters can not get healing from the clerics they will move almost nowhere

Thievies will be forced in front always searching for traps.

Expect two to three hours to cover four rooms at best.

Very few monsters but lots of traps and pits that need to haul out of.
Treasure that is to much to carry.

use magic mouth liberally to tell them what is going on.

Monsters are deadly but willing to talk. and give the evil way to regain spells.


Oh a reverse alter. All healing spell do damage all inflict spells do healing very irratating but they can rest there.

Cold become fire fire becomes cold undead love fire spells?:smallcool:

What else do you need?

[MinMax Hardcore]

The BBEG is a very powerful planar creature. Should be powerful enough to solo 5-6 20lvs and have super powerful regenerate abilities so
it can keep coming back into the fight within a few rounds.

After realizing this BBEG won't stop and can't escape from it,
the spellcaster in the party use a magic device to teleport the
party and the BBEG in a customize maze like place.

The maze have 25 floors and the party must get to the top to
escape the maze. They also have that BBEG following them so
it is a race against the clock.

Did I forgot to mention that they have 10 minutes to escape
the maze before the maze collapse on itself which destroys everything in it, including the BBEG.

[ArcturusV]

Course, I think an odd answer that may do it, if only because it'd challenge about 90% of the players themselves I've played with? Dungeon built on non-Euclidean geometry.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Dispel Magic traps, seriously, instead of burning the party with fire, or trying to kill them by crushing walls, simple dispel magic traps.

Players use a lot of 1/hour or 10/min per level duration spells. These things can last for an entire dungeon. Remove those some of protections and the next encounter can get much deadlier.

Also I tend to have spellcasting villains prepare a wall of dispelling or a wall of greater dispelling.(if applicable). So many times my group buffed up before charging into the throne room only to run right through a dispelling wall.

[holywhippet]

You could consider putting in some mirrors of opposition. After all, what could be more on their level than themselves?

[Waker]

A lot of good ideas.
You might also consider putting some kind of a timer on the completion of said dungeon. The pocket dimension is unstable and periodically the outermost portions of it disintegrate, forcing the party to keep moving further inwards to avoid being annihilated. Alternatively something bad may happen if the party doesn't reach the dungeon center at a certain time, like the BBEG getting let out of jail or some other nasty event. This is done so that the party doesn't just take a 20 when doing certain action, resort to 15-minute workdays or some of the other tactics that they frequently resort to, forcing this to be more of an endurance trial.

[Starbuck_II]

Simple

This is tomb that is cut off from a restful nights sleep with nightmares and disturbing thoughts

The clerics can not gain spells so every spell cast is a depletion. Same for magic users.

Morbo says: Divine Magic Doesn't not work that way!

Resting has no impact on clerics getting their spells back: which is why the Cleric should ALWAYS be on Watch Duty.
Everyone else would like rest, but Clerics don't need it unlike Arcane casters who must rest.
Granted if the guard duty is peaceful (nothing happens) a Wizard could do it.

[Tokuhara]

Dispelling walls are perfect, and perhaps the "the last room just blinked out of existence" bit would make things challenging

[Tim Proctor]

Don't let them sleep/rest/recover. The end. xD

^^^ This.

If its 25 rooms, I'd run teleportation circles that automatically initiated every hour or so, have each room a 20x20 with the circle in the middle, no vents not intake nothing. Have an Magic Mouth explain the the group that they are going to travel through the gauntlet and that only one group of adventurers have survived before, then poof. They can't stop and rest, and while the first 4 or 5 will be easy enough their resources will start to dwindle, they will get fatigued, etc. the last battle should be extremely challenging and they should almost hate you for it.

The way I imagine encounters are that you want to beat up, stress out, mentally fatigue, and deplete the group, but you do bring them back. You want to push them to the limit where if there was another encounter that they wouldn't make it. Having said that I maybe wouldn't stick to 25 (I'd make all 25 but not tell them how many) and just watch their resources and when they are at that point tell them that they teleport to the end, lucky for them, and they did well.

Even at level 20 you can keep them from recharging their spells, and such you will grind that down and eventually they will get to that breaking point. The first couple should be easy, especially if they are wasting resources.

[Enguebert]

Challenging level 20 players will be hard
Edit : it is usually easier to keep players in control when they are around lvl 10

Maybe start the adventure as usual, and have them start the travel with a teleport...that goes wrong. Everything goes black

They wake up in a place they don't know (an extraplanar dungeon arena), where magic use is limited (no teleportation, no way to break the walls)

They have no or very few material and in the first rooms, they find some material (by limiting scrolls/staffs/spell components, you limit some of the power of the spellcasters), but common weapon/armor are easy to find

And have different rooms with different challenges. And for the map, make it difficult to map.
Have you seen the film "The Cube" ? Every room is a cube, with traps/challenge and lot of exit. What they don't know (at start) is that the cube can be "shuffled", making it hard to find a path

[Doorhandle]

this is a clever start.

Perhaps I was entirely too vague. I want to capture the raw difficulty of Tomb of Horrors/Undermountain without BEING ToH/Undermountain and having an organically "unique" feel.

To put it bluntly, I'm looking for Dead Money difficulty, not Mothership Zeta.

5 bullet points of difficulty form the fourth-core podcast:
1. Give them a time limit (I.E, 2 hours until the dungeon floods, 30 days until the red hand take over, ect.)
2. Limit information/resources, use misinformation: (I.E give them 3 pieces for a 4-piece map, tell them of a portal that transports them the BBEG, but not how it will kill you in the process.)
3. Give them a smaller margin for error, so that each mistake is costly. (E.G limiting consumables, increasing damage.)
4. Force them to multitask: (I.E have them simultaneously fight off kobolds, a mindflayer, and a hydra while tyring to pick the hydra's teeth for a puzzle and avoiding the encroaching boiling water.)
5. Being unpredictable (I.E varying challenges and EXP budgets.)
6. Forcing players to use their skill, rather than autopilot.

[zilonox]

Have the party wake up in a dungeon room. The dungeon is constantly changing (e.g. give differing descriptions of a room before they even leave it, doors that they just stepped through disappear or open to blank walls, scenes shift from indoors to outdoors randomly). Give them a solid CR 15-18 encounter right off. Continue giving solid CR 15-18 encounters throughout the dungeon, but give the party 2 negative levels every time they beat the encounter.

What they don't realize (at least right off, and possibly not until the end (up to you)) is that a BBG has put them into a dreamworld and the encounters they face are pieces of their own souls. Each time they defeat an encounter, they kill off a bit of themselves (reflected by the negative levels). Extra style points if the BBG is one they faced in the past. Extra-extra style points if the encounters reflect deeds/actions from the party's past.

If they die in the dreamworld, they are dead in the real world. Only by defeating all 10 encounters and gaining 20 negative levels are they able to avert the BBG's trap and leave the dreamworld (hey, it's a dream, it doesn't have to make sense!). Optionally you can have the survivors face the BBG in the real world at that point (with the PC's having none, some or all of the negative levels still in effect).

You can adjust the numbers (of encounters, CR, target negative levels, etc) as needed to suite your alloted time.