Did I do something wrong?

[Dayvig]

I was running a 3.5 session a while ago, and it ended with the PCs getting destroyed in combat, having to be bailed out by a few NPCs who happened to be in the area, with one permanent causality. While not particularly upset, one of the players remarked that the dungeon was poorly designed. Since I'm always looking to improve, I wanted to know if that had any merit.

The campaign takes place in a desert environment with a rocky tunnel network underneath. The PCs were sent to investigate the source of the sand-based undead trickling into the city and causing mayhem, and perhaps grabbing some loot from a tomb to boot. The undead are similar to skeletons with some special sand-based abilities. The problem is that these creatures are the main enemy the PCs are facing, and the Damage Reduction is becoming a real pain for them. (DR 5/Bludgeoning) The party is level 1/2 and consists of a Psion, Swordsage and Rogue.

They dropped into the dungeon through a secret passage concealed by a coffin; then there were two paths. One path led to a dark room with a bunch of coffins and a couple of ghouls. They took care of the ghouls no problem but the rogue got infected with Ghoul fever. The other way led to a room with tiles on the floor, some of which would give way under their feet. They had to conduct some minor combat in this room, but everything was fine. Further in they found some masterwork weapons on pedestals, for which they quickly found out was trapped. However with some quick fingers they replaced some scale mail with a masterwork breastplate. Further in was an arena-like area, where some (4) of these undead, lead by a 2nd level cleric leader (also custom with some sand based powers) were waiting to ambush them. They got ambushed, and after some very poor rollings, got completely destroyed by the combat.

Does any of this sound unfair to you or did they just not adapt to the situation?

[The Glyphstone]

Did they not have any bludgeoning weapons, or any place they could buy bludgeoning weapons before entering the tomb?

[YossarianLives]

It's sounds fine to me. My only recommendation would be to give them enough warning to buy some bludgeoning weapons.

[Strigon]

Do the other players feel the same way? Perhaps that player just likes easier dungeons.

The only real thing I can think of was that it all seemed a bit... disjointed? Perhaps straightforward is a better term, but it might have just been a particularly small dungeon. If that is the problem, fixing it comes with experience more than anything else.

As for it being too difficult, you mentioned that the cleric was level 2, in a 3-man party of levels 1-2.
That cleric, therefore, is roughly equal to 1/3 to 1/2 of the total party. Throw in some zombies, and the fact that they were weakened from prior battles (you even mentioned the rogue had ghoul fever), and that's a pretty solid chance of a TPK. Doubly so if they were ambushed.

As this forum is so fond of bringing up, the first few levels are notorious for being risky; a crit from just about any weapon has a serious chance to bring down anything but a front-line fighter at level one! To fix this, some groups start at a slightly higher level, though others (myself included) don't like doing that. All you can do otherwise is try scaling back the combat until they're out of one-hit-kill territory.

[Geddy2112]

Short answer-no. DR/5 bludgeoning is not too terribly hard to overcome, considering clubs are free things you can find and use as weapons since they have no listed cost. They are also simple weapons so everybody is proficent-1d6+Str should be fine. Were any of the masterwork weapons bludgeoning and things the party was proficient in?

The 4 undead led by a cleric may have been too powerful. Being able to heal the undead and damage the party with the same negative energy is very powerful, and with the level 2 cleric +4 level 1/3 skeleton equivalents you are looking at a CR3 (possibly more depending on what sand powers they have) for a party that is 1.5 on average. A tough fight but not impossible, unless the party does not have the tools to overcome DR/5. What about healing? Was the party badly wounded and do they have a reliable source of out of combat? Should they have rested? Were they down to at will abilities or did they have any powers?

Although it is probably a bit on you as the DM, particularly if they had no reason to expect such a tough fight or there were no signs given that this would be a bad fight, but also could be on the party for acting rashly. Also, with poor rolls these things just happen, but most fights should average out if the matchup is fair.

[Camman1984]

i think the dr5/blugeoning undead might have been a bit too tough for this party and kind neuters their strengths. The magic from psion/swordage is pretty poor at that level so can be essentially ignored if there are more than 2/3 fights in a day. then you have weapon specialities, sword sages love sword and rogues love pointy things.

basically, by the time they got to the fresh cleric and his minions you have 2 casters that are probably out of spells and a rogue with no sneak attack (undead everywhere), i am not suprised they needed saving.

Its not neccesarily a badly designed dungeon, its just it seems it might have been a bit too much for this particular party.

[Dayvig]

Thanks for the responses. Yeah it was mostly as I expected, perhaps I can give a bit more context.

The rogue was at extremely low health (2) at the beginning of said fight, and the swordsage was far away from the party at the beginning of the encounter. In hindsight I probably should have made one of the weapons on the pedestals a mace to give them a possible way to adapt to the DR. The fight with the cleric was supposed to be somewhat challenging; the dungeon goes on but there were no more real combat encounters on the way, or should I say they were close to the end. The psion blew up the cleric with an energy ray on the first round, so that wasn't really an issue. Also one of the undead crit through the psion's 19 AC so it was just bad luck all around.

Also the dungeon is somewhat small because it's a tomb, a large, extravagant tomb.

[KillianHawkeye]

In hindsight I probably should have made one of the weapons on the pedestals a mace to give them a possible way to adapt to the DR.

Yeah, if the dungeon is full of monsters with DR 5/bludgeoning, and none of the PCs have a bludgeoning weapon, AND there's a room in the dungeon that specifically contains weapons for the PCs to take, then PUT IN A BLUDGEONING WEAPON for Pelor's sake!

Anyway, "poorly designed" is an incredibly vague criticism, and without knowing what exactly was meant by that it's hard to say whether or not it's accurate. It doesn't seem like things went that poorly; maybe your players are just not used to that level of difficulty. D&D is capable of offering a wide spectrum that ranges from "The PCs have plot armor and cannot actually lose" all the way to "You guys might die. Everyone might die. Be careful and proceed at your own risk."

[LibraryOgre]

It sounds to me like the party was under-prepared (no bludgeoning weapons) and had poor tactics (their main beatstick was wandering away from the party). Not the GMs fault if the players are playing poorly.

[Kane0]

Could they have opted to leave and return after rest and/or getting some bludgeoning weapons?

[Dayvig]

Yes, there was a safe area right outside of the tomb.

[Gray Mage]

What do these custom sand powers do? How did the npcs rescue them? Any way he interpreted the npcs as DMPC?

[Skaven]

You didn't do anything wrong, your party just prepared terribly. It doesn't take a genius of RPG's to know you should cover all your damage types. Especially your martial characters. A club (bludgeoning) is free and can be something as small and simple as a policemans baton that you can throw in your belt alongside your dagger (slashing) alongside carrying your sword (slashing). That right there covers all damage types.

Its a learning experience, next time they're in town they might think 'maybe we should get a couple clubs'.

[Vitruviansquid]

The only thing I see that might be indicative of poor design in the dungeon is how it seems to be made up of just chambers with monsters and loot in them. Seems kind of boring, but I bring that up as a nitpick - you could do far worse in dungeon design.

Maybe when your player says the dungeon was poorly designed, what he actually means is that the homebrew monsters were poorly designed?

[Mr.Moron]

I probably made a point of calling attention to some rocks or old stick lying around that would functionally serve as a club or the like, but beyond that it was what it was.

[Dayvig]

The custom sand powers on the skeleton enemies were "skating" across the sand to double their movespeed to 60ft, and they can disorient their opponents by spewing sand at them, making them lose they dex bonus to ac until their next action

The priest has a custom spell that transmutes a small area of sand into blacksand, which deals 1d4 negative energy per turn and has a small area of darkness around it.

[Gray Mage]

The custom sand powers on the skeleton enemies were "skating" across the sand to double their movespeed to 60ft, and they can disorient their opponents by spewing sand at them, making them lose they dex bonus to ac until their next action.

Was there a save to avoid this? If so, what was the DC? Your party is likely very lightly armored due to their classes, so this might have been an issue.

[Maglubiyet]

1st and 2nd level characters are glassy...tap them the wrong way and they break.

One way I like to get past this delicate phase is for each player to have more than one PC. The expectation is that some of them aren't going to make it. It's funny how often the favored character ends up being the one who doesn't make it. By virtue of surviving, though, the scrub of the group becomes an especially cherished favorite in later levels.

EDIT: This radically changes the nature and flavor of the game. It requires more prep time and record keeping and can be disconcerting to some players. Don't jump into this style of play lightly! It's not for everyone.

[GungHo]

I probably wouldn't have thrown a tomb full of baddies with DR 5/bludgeoning at people with no bludgeoning without providing obvious bludgeoning or a weapon that's bludgeoning as an "upgrade" to a slashing/piercing weapon. However, as others have said, the party should have planned a little better. They don't each have to outfit themselves like the Punisher, but having "backups" or a diverse weapon load-out amongst themselves isn't necessarily meta-gaming.

[JCAll]

You didn't do anything wrong, that just happens sometimes. I would like to know what they knew about this tomb to begin with. I mean, "Tomb full of Undead" is so broad as to be meaningless. Maybe they catch a rumor that skeletons are running amok, some sort of check to see what they know about skeletons in character to hint at what they might be wanting to bring along. When throwing anything with DR in at the one bad hit and you're dead levels, it never hurts for your warnings to be a little specific. Not that you should take it too easy on them, if they want to be suicidal it's not your fault.

[Dayvig]

You didn't do anything wrong, that just happens sometimes. I would like to know what they knew about this tomb to begin with. I mean, "Tomb full of Undead" is so broad as to be meaningless. Maybe they catch a rumor that skeletons are running amok, some sort of check to see what they know about skeletons in character to hint at what they might be wanting to bring along. When throwing anything with DR in at the one bad hit and you're dead levels, it never hurts for your warnings to be a little specific. Not that you should take it too easy on them, if they want to be suicidal it's not your fault.


Well, since you asked, the tomb is of a long-dead desert society that is slowly coming back, although the players don't know that yet. The tomb is just for some very important figures in that society, and is very embellished and furnished, much like egyptian pyramids.

Like, alongside the weapons were pictures of famous warriors; presumably the wielders of those weapons.

[Rhaegar14]

I would say that with such a small party, neutering the Rogue by making them fight primarily undead is problematic, though not as much as it is at higher levels. Psions are weak at this level unless they're being played very well, and a lot of the better low-level control effects won't work on undead (at least, going off other casting classes; I admit to not knowing the Psion power list that well), so really your only guy who was operating at full capacity was the Swordsage. That's not the end of all things, but combined with their lack of bludgeoning weapons (and if they didn't know they were up against skeletons, or aren't experienced enough players to know ooc and didn't find out ic that skeletons have DR/bludgeoning, that's not entirely on them either) it pretty heavily stacks the deck against them.

They are definitely not blameless in their defeat, but for what YOU should take away from it, bear in mind the strengths and weaknesses of your PCs when designing encounters. If various circumstances have stacked the deck against them you need to adjust your encounter difficulty appropriately. Don't be afraid to adapt monster statistics or improvise the presence of necessary items; removing the skeletons' DR behind the scenes probably would have been a big help.

[BayardSPSR]

It sounds like one more level on the players would have made a dramatically different result.

Side question: how well does 3.5 apply CR to monsters with damage resistance? Does it expect that players have countermeasures, or that they don't? Or does it average the two - or is it just inconsistent? If there are problems there, that would be a good thing for a less-experienced DM to know.

[hifidelity2]

It sounds fine to me. The party should have once they realised they needed bludgeoning weapons have left and come back.
PC’s need to understand that sometimes you need to run away and come back.
It’s the old adage – there are old hero’s and bold hero’s but very few old, bold hero’s

Some systems (GURPS, RQ etc) keep this lethality all the way though

[Dayvig]

It sounds fine to me. The party should have once they realised they needed bludgeoning weapons have left and come back.
PC’s need to understand that sometimes you need to run away and come back.
It’s the old adage – there are old hero’s and bold hero’s but very few old, bold hero’s

Some systems (GURPS, RQ etc) keep this lethality all the way though

I agree with this mentality. One thing about DnD is that sometimes running is the best option.