Questing idea help

[corymiester]

Hello everyone, this is my first post on this forum page, so if this post is in the wrong area, I apologize.

On to my question however, I recently started a new game with my group. I was nominated as DM and I have the story basically all planned out, and I have a large portion of the game basically complete. One thing I'm having trouble with is a certain quest, a rather important one at that. The players will encounter a dying dragon, looking to give away its vast horde of loot to any hero that can impress him through a series of rigorous tests. The dragon is going to require them to head through a gauntlet of sorts, and I'm having trouble thinking of things to have the players face. My question to you is, what should I put in this gauntlet? The players are going to get a crazy amount of awesome loot, so I don't want it to be easy. I kinda want to flavor it up, not just a standard few monster encounters, with an easy to figure out puzzle or trap, but something a bit more...fresh.

Cheers! :smallsmile:

[Callin]

They need to finish the horde. They must craft the most beautiful artsy gilded whathaveyou. They need to dig gems and ore from the plane of earth. Smelt it in the hottest flames on the plane of fire. Douse it in the coldest currents on the plane of air. Crafted by whathaveyou on the plane of ??? And finished off yadda yadda yadda you get the idea. The. After they do all of that the dragon and the art item dissapears and they are left with the horde.

[Benthesquid]

I'd say look at fairy tales. They're full of impossible tasks. Classic ones include "Make the King's daughter, who has not smiled in three years, laugh." "Show up neither naked nor clothed, neither mounted nor on foot, neither in day or night," "Sort/sow/harvest all of this grain by sundown."

Most of these are solved by assistance by someone the fairy tale protagonist has been kind to earlier in the story, or by some manner of deception, but there's no reason a D&D character of a high enough level to be in the running for the dragon's treasure shouldn't be able to accomplish things impossible for the average fellow.

I'd also suggest blatantly stealing drawing inspiration from the Twelve Labors of Hercules, which contained a good mixture of Fetch Quests, Monster Slaying, and lateral thinking.

[Vhaidara]

If you want traps, there's a fun book (I believe third party) called "The Wurst of Grimtoooth's Traps". It has some inventive, mean, funny, and downright cruel ideas in it. You can find a pdf of it if you use google.