So a Goliath, 3 humans, a dwarf and an elf walk into a dungeon...

[StoneCipher]

No, sorry, no bad jokes here.

Riddle me this, I'm trying to balance a scenario to make it scary and yet survivable for this (non-optimized) party of the 8th level.

(12th level NPC Human Paladin)
Goliath Barbarian
Dwarf Scout
Elf Monk
Human (Melee) Cleric
Human Rogue

So, they've landed themselves in BBEG's lair and are going to end up wandering into the halls of darkness. The halls of darkness are a maze of narrow long corridors that intersect each other and have auto-reset darkness traps set up at random intersections and throughout some corridors. My plan is to split the party if I can, and then really hammer them with silent images and ghost sounds of things such as them coming across other party members, hearing screams, seeing blood pour from walls, etc.

In addition to this, there will be an assassin or two in the room to give the party members a real threat to respond to.

Knowing the party, I have a feeling I could kill them off easily if I managed to divide them up. So, what kind of counters could this party throw at me? Or is their only real chance sticking together at all costs?

Would it also be too much to throw a few simple traps in this room?

[LoyalPaladin]

So... do you want to kill a couple of them? Or do you want to make it so challenging that they barely make it out alive? If you want to make it difficult, have the halls rearrange every certain number of rounds. To me it looks like the only real challenge is lack of sight. In darkness you wouldn't see blood coming from walls. The sounds are a bit creepy. If I were a player, I would probably make sure we all just tied ourselves together by rope like a bunch of kindergartners. Traps, rough terrain, small areas of visibility and the like would probably spruce up this nice dungeon. The reason for the small areas of visibility is so you can add in environmental flairs like bleeding walls. Our DM did something similar once, but the areas we could see were either SUPER hot or SUPER cold. So we'd take damage in them. We could see our target through "glass" windows in those areas, but it turns out they were illusions and our wizard had been dead for about 3 rounds already, without us noticing. Good times...

How poorly optimized is your party?

[StoneCipher]

Well there are areas of vision, its just SOME corridors and intersections that are engulfed in darkness. So you could wander around seeing things, and then come to a wall of darkness which you can then decide to attempt to go through or turn back.

I don't ever actively try to kill my PCs, but some things can't be helped. I set challenges before them and their actions will win them through. Every encounter I set forth is survivable if played through intelligently enough.

The cleric is not bad for optimization cause I helped her make it, but she doesn't have a lot of spare utility spells yet.

The dwarf scout barely knows how to play, the Elf Monk is, well, an elven monk of the 8th level. The Rogue is 8 levels of rogue and is not a skill monkey, but has some wands and then you have the beatstick who can pretty much do nothing else but kill things with a big hammer. Interestingly enough for him, the halls will not be tall enough for him to comfortably fit through.

[Red Fel]

Have you ever split this party before? I think that's a particularly salient point.

In the instant case, it becomes even more relevant. A few key facts come to mind: Under the influence of Darkness, the Humans (who have no special vision) will be blind. The Dwarf (who explicitly has Darkvision), the Elf (who has low-light vision) and the Goliath (who, as a Monstrous Humanoid, gets Darkvision) will be subject to miss chance. Your party appears to be primarily melee or non-magical in terms of combat. In an area with lots of Darkness, this will be problematic, because miss chance hurts, and never stops hurting. The Cleric appears to be the only caster, aside from the Paladin, who I'm not counting because if he ends up saving the day, he is a terrible DMPC. The Rogue can UMD, but unless you have specifically some wands of Light, that won't mean much against the Darkness. And unless you have some wands of Cure Light Wounds or Vigor, your Cleric will be the only source of healing, apart from potions. In other words, anybody who travels away from the Cleric is incredibly hosed - they can't hit their enemies accurately, they can't recover from injuries, and if enemy assassins use poisons, they're basically going to lay down and die.
In short, the Darkness will cripple their melee abilities, and being away from the Cleric will amount to a death sentence if they trigger any poison traps or encounter any assassins. They need to stay together.

Now, if you've never split the party before, it's possible they don't realize how royally hosed they'll be. If you're fond of having lethal consequences of stupid actions, let them split up. But if they do split up, they're basically asking for it. It's more or less guaranteed that those who leave the Cleric's side of the party won't make it back intact.

[StoneCipher]

I've never split them MUCH before, but they at least know to stick together at all costs for the most part. Especially in situations like these. That's why I want to try to push them apart, which I will figure out how exactly a little later.

The rogue does have a CLW wand, wand of invisibility, and a wand of darkness, so if he gets separated he should be fine on his own for a little while so long as he doesn't do something incredibly dumb.

I think I have my answer though. I just wanted to see if people could poke holes in the room and abuse it, given the party. But if sticking together is pretty much the only way they will survive, I feel my job is done. I do want to give it the cliché horror movie "don't split up, dummy" effect. I just didn't know if there were any ways around it, which looks like that's a no.

[Red Fel]

I've never split them MUCH before, but they at least know to stick together at all costs for the most part. Especially in situations like these. That's why I want to try to push them apart, which I will figure out how exactly a little later.

The rogue does have a CLW wand, wand of invisibility, and a wand of darkness, so if he gets separated he should be fine on his own for a little while so long as he doesn't do something incredibly dumb.

I think I have my answer though. I just wanted to see if people could poke holes in the room and abuse it, given the party. But if sticking together is pretty much the only way they will survive, I feel my job is done. I do want to give it the cliché horror movie "don't split up, dummy" effect. I just didn't know if there were any ways around it, which looks like that's a no.

I mean, there are ways. Unless the enemies have methods that specifically counteract miss chance, they're subject to the same penalties even if they can see in the dark. And if most of the challenge is illusory rather than traps/assassins, the PCs could simply meander hopelessly until they give up.

But let's look at some of the reasons to split the party: Recon. Scouting is a thing, and only takes one character with high enough stealth rolls and good sensory rolls to pull off properly. Unfortunately, only half of the party can even see in this place, and your Rogue isn't one of them. The Dwarf can see, and he can scout, but may be at risk without UMD. Timed event. When you need to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time, splitting can do it. You haven't mentioned time being of the essence, however. Specialized teams. When you need particular people to do particular things, it makes sense for them to split off and do the thing. Again, you haven't mentioned this being an issue. Tactical maneuvers. Maybe you need to attack the enemy from multiple angles, or block off entrances or exits, or otherwise prevent retreat. But again, you haven't mentioned this being an issue.
Basically, on that list, the only thing that might be important is recon. Of your two recon guys, one has UMD but is blind, and the other can see but lacks UMD. And you can't very well have them going off together; your Dwarf can't be barking instructions to your blind Rogue and still expect to remain stealthy.

Bottom line, there doesn't seem much need to split the party, and there's certainly a lot of reason not to do so.

[StoneCipher]

Yeah the assassins will be trying to threaten the party enough to give them a sense of urgency. As you said they will be subject to the same darkness penalties but they have the advantage of turf knowledge and party location. They will have ways of knowing what areas everyone is in so they will most of the time get the element of surprise.

However the rogue doing the not so obvious thing of casting MORE darkness would actually help the party more than it would hurt it. The assassins know exactly which areas to avoid and what are safe paths and that would confuse them.

But your reasons to split the party do give me ideas. The BBEG in question has been stalking the party for a while so they know much more about the party than they know about them. I added the paladin in there to be a "trainer" of sorts since this party is almost incapable of fighting anything close to a CL caster encounter. The paladin is anti caster but does not have enough ammo to counter the halls.

[Scipio_77]

Well, you are the DM. If you design dungeons specifically to target group traits, it will likely hurt those group traits. This is the same as if you design an encounter to charm the the lvl 1 fighter, he will likely be charmed. I think dungeons should be designed to make sense mainly. I'm not saying your dungeon idea does not, but instead of thinking "how to hurt the party" just consider "how would these antagonists try to hurt the party".

Also, if your group likes to stay together I think that is a great asset for you as a DM: Instead of focusing on how to split them up and potentially kill them, you have the opportunity to build epic fantasy-style "Black Hawk Down" scenarios where players have to go all-out for eachother.

[Greenish]

Under the influence of Darkness, the Humans (who have no special vision) will be blind. The Dwarf (who explicitly has Darkvision), the Elf (who has low-light vision) and the Goliath (who, as a Monstrous Humanoid, gets Darkvision) will be subject to miss chance.Unless these are some weird auto-resetting traps of non-magical darkness (which doesn't seem likely even if you could probably build those based on Darklight from SoS), vision modes don't really matter. It's shadowy illumination, 20% miss chance, whether you have Darkvision or plain ol' human eyes.

[JDL]

Yeah, the Darkness spell, RAW, actually provides illumination. If you cast it in total darkness, for example, everything in the radius is illuminated enough to give them 20% concealment. This leads to some interesting consequences, especially if there's a ranged character in the group with Improved Precise Shot.

[StoneCipher]

Well, you are the DM. If you design dungeons specifically to target group traits, it will likely hurt those group traits. This is the same as if you design an encounter to charm the the lvl 1 fighter, he will likely be charmed. I think dungeons should be designed to make sense mainly. I'm not saying your dungeon idea does not, but instead of thinking "how to hurt the party" just consider "how would these antagonists try to hurt the party".

Also, if your group likes to stay together I think that is a great asset for you as a DM: Instead of focusing on how to split them up and potentially kill them, you have the opportunity to build epic fantasy-style "Black Hawk Down" scenarios where players have to go all-out for eachother.

I didn't design this encounter to break the party. This is exactly what the group behind this dungeon would try to do. They're nefarious finger wagglers that love hiding in the shadows and killing people. Up close and personal is not their forte. I'm trying to think of how I can hurt the party because I tend to run very difficult games for my group, but they seem easy to me. That's why I am asking people where my holes are and what they would do to counter this. I'm not trying to patch things, I am just trying to see what kinds of options the party really has.

I'm sure any party that is well prepared and optimized enough could easily breeze past this encounter. These are people who are newer to the game or have been consistently...not so tactful... I'm using this as an advanced training exercise in addition to attempting to convey a horror theme.

[ben-zayb]

In addition to pointing out how Darkness isn't really absolute darkness, there's also the fact that it only targets objects. AFAIK there are no penalties for walking barefoot, to counteract that.

[jguy]

I did something similar but instead of darkness preventing the party from seeing enemies and traps, it was fog clouds the killed line of sight with enemies that could see through it and move through the maze walls at will. You could have your maze with orbs of darkness at intersections with lit corridors between it. Then have Shadowdancers with ranged weapons, or just plain alchemist fires, chucking them from the blackness. When they come to investigate, teleport away.

[Scipio_77]

I didn't design this encounter to break the party. This is exactly what the group behind this dungeon would try to do. They're nefarious finger wagglers that love hiding in the shadows and killing people. Up close and personal is not their forte. I'm trying to think of how I can hurt the party because I tend to run very difficult games for my group, but they seem easy to me. That's why I am asking people where my holes are and what they would do to counter this. I'm not trying to patch things, I am just trying to see what kinds of options the party really has.

I'm sure any party that is well prepared and optimized enough could easily breeze past this encounter. These are people who are newer to the game or have been consistently...not so tactful... I'm using this as an advanced training exercise in addition to attempting to convey a horror theme.

Ah, like that.

Well, a clever party in a dungeon filled with sneaky assassins will communicate... loudly and diligently if they have to. They should at all costs protect the party member with the means to discover their enemies (spot/listen/spells), the healer and the best navigator (in that order). They should bring a lot of light and spells that counter darkness and also spells that remove poison.

The barbarian with his (presumably?) uncanny dodge can melee sneak attackers very well (even assassins attacking from magical invisibility), so it is all about negating the ability to deliver "true sneak attacks" which translates into removing shadows at all costs.