Putting the fear back into PCs

[Theodred theOld]

My players have become increasingly unwary. It's time to unleash something truly nasty amongst them and let the carnage ensue. We are currently running a side adventure which is leading them into the underdark toward a lost drow city deep underground. I'm using the City of Spider Queen adventure path as a base but running it with two gestalt PCs. The first is a lizard folk spellthiefX/swordsageX/master throwerX etc, etc and barbarianX/ frenzied berserkerX. I have to admit, I actually don't know the order or number of levels in each class. What I do know is that this guy carries 3 bastard swords. Two with returning for throwing and one katana for raging. Through a variety of tricks he piles up SA damage with the throws and uses shadow hand to teleport around. True munchkin. The other guy is a bit simpler but compliments the first perfectly. Centaur druid 10 - cleric 10. What makes this guy so potent is the feat versatile spellcaster. Since both clerics and druids can burn slots to cast spontaneously it grants spontaneous access to both lists at a cost of two slots of the next level down for one. So yeah. Combined with the spellthief's ability to steal spells they're able to handle quite a bit of punishment. The spellthief nearly solo'd 4 abyssal ghouls and a corrupture. He was assisted by the centaurs tiger but in the process the tiger was eaten (RIP Rajah). The BBEG at the center of this quest needs to be more than just some crazed drow priestess. I'm thinking these events were orchestrated by something more dangerous. I remember seeing a hybrid beholder/ illithid somewhere and I think that would be a suitable foe. If anyone remembers which book that was in or has any better suggestions I'd be grateful for the input.

[Tvtyrant]

You are thinking of a Mindwitness.

A word of caution though. Single opponents are nearly always weak due to being fragile (one pool of hit points means large damage amounts can instantly gib them) and lacking action economy. Beholders are better than most on the latter, but are very squishy. If you want to really scare them give the Beholder some cheap tough guys like trolls as bodyguards.

[Arbane]

If you want to make them wary, I'd suggest setting up a situation where they're going to get hurt bad for being overconfident. Any GM can drop a CR+8 ambush TPK on PCs, but it takes a skilled one to have the players re-evaluating their strategies after a run-in with kobolds.

[Theodred theOld]

Kobolds? I think my players would certainly be suspicious of any kobolds. Some of the more unique and powerful builds we've been at our table were kobolds. And i certainly don't want it to be some sort of ambush. I want it to be a culmination of sorts. I like the idea of the bbeg having some guards. The original material mentions the drow antagonist using planar ally to make a deal with a nalfeshnee so a multi-layered final encounter would make alot of sense. The question is what to use.

[razorback]

If you want to make them wary, I'd suggest setting up a situation where they're going to get hurt bad for being overconfident. Any GM can drop a CR+8 ambush TPK on PCs, but it takes a skilled one to have the players re-evaluating their strategies after a run-in with kobolds.

I agree with this.
A few years ago I ran an adventure about the same level with 3 gestalt characters. The ran over everything I put in front of them easily until they ran into some Meenlocks (MM2). One of the PC's recognized them and basically they were too weak to even worry about, so the Meenlocks just followed the PC's for a time and the PC's ignored them. The first brood called upon a second, third... then fourth and fifth brood. With some low teen saves, the PC's were confident until they started failing against 16-20 saves per round as the Meenlocks attacked en mass from different areas and the PC's weren't able to cope with them. The cleric/crusader pulled out some trick and managed to teleport them to safety but only after they were down tons of wisdom and burned a bunch of resources. After that the PC's were suitably paranoid for the Lovecraftian adventure I put together.

[Molan]

This may be really elementary, but I really love the Book of Challenges for inspiration.

Generally I do find a need to increase the damage on some of it's traps (without actually increasing the DC's) just to make them appropriately Deadly; but ultimately the value in this book is it presents complex challenges that push the player's outside the box. There are lots of situations where normally non-terrifying enemies use tactics, terrains and ambushes to make things really difficult, and motion economy becomes much more important then how sweet your stats are.

Great example: PCs walk down a hallway. Hallway's walls are illusions. PCs fail to notice them and just trudge through. On the other side of the illusions are explosive lightning glyphs of warding, and behind either set of glyphs is a roper. PCs had already taken damage from previous encounters and some weren't at full health. Ropers grab PC A through the illusion and drag him over the glyphs, and bam. We've got a desperate fight on our hands. And that's just a simple one.

What I like about the book is it gets you thinking in three dimensions. You may not explicitly love the challenges you see or you have have seen them before. But when you KNOW your PCs are overconfident all it takes is one of them to suddenly be drowning and incapacitated at the bottom of a subterranean lake while the other has two to three enemies to deal with to suddenly get them panicking.
++++++

Alternatively, I also ran a lower level BBEG where the target was a cadre of four blighters in a room at the end of an unlit hall. The PCs missed an alarm trap aka Skyrim style that warned the coven they were coming. Now, Blighters suck. They really ONLY work as lower level BBEGs as they get no synergy from being ex Druids, only have ten levels and enjoy limited feat and spell diversity. But I made the most of it. Once alerted to the PCs they layered the opening to their chamber, along with half the room, in Darkness and other sustained APEs like a poison gas cloud. The room had two levels -- the central pit, which was dirt, and an upper ring which took a move action to climb up to, where the blighters stood. They summoned augmented Undead in the dirt under the cover of darkness, turned the dirt to mud and sent one of their number along with some minions to attack the PCs while they were preparing. The PCs were subjected to several Blightfires before putting that blighted down, then weakened, had to barrel through mud, darkness, and hidden undead to reach the wall to get to the upper ring, finding only more dangerous traps as they went. The blighters turned the mud to stone, trapping one of the PCs in it, and killed another with a save or die.

PCs won, but it was a desperate loss with a fatality. Pretty exciting for a couple of lame caster wannabes.

[Theodred theOld]

I do love the book of challenges. Maybe I'll bust that out tonight.

[nedz]

It's really all about psychology and not the CR of the opposition. In terms of information, less is more. The rumour of Kobolds may be more than enough, especially if they are reputed to be in disguise. You'll know you've succeeded when they run from a bunch of commoners.

[daremetoidareyo]

Make a group of PCs with integrated tactics go after them.

halfling bardsaders using some sort of ironwood spears riding awakened rustmonster totemists.

barbarian dungeoncrasher fighter war hulk half ogres that hang out with a totemist 2 who has a bunch of mounts/familiars and share soul meld. Basilisk mask x3 in a round while the war hulk makes the strength check to smash the petrified remains.

A druid who imbues his dire weasel summons with jaws of the moray. Or venomfires pseudonatural greenbound tiny vipers. He then turns into a bird and flies away for a few hours and attacks again later.

[Molan]

Agreed. Anti-PCs are a great move. Just make sure they work as well as the PCs, and try to give them an advantage

[atemu1234]

Agreed. Anti-PCs are a great move. Just make sure they work as well as the PCs, and try to give them an advantage

Terrain is fun.

[Theodred theOld]

I should probably add that I don't normally use dmpc characters to attack my players for one very important reason. It takes too much work to generate a pc that is destined to perish. I'd rather used stat blocks from monsters or even example pc stats and then tweak them as needed. I once used the example stats for the deepstone sentinel straight out of the Bo9S as a group of dwarven militia and they actually gave the party a really hard time. Also, terrain is not an issue with these two. Freedom of movement and flight take care of most of it. Teleporting does the rest.

[daremetoidareyo]

I should probably add that I don't normally use dmpc characters to attack my players for one very important reason. It takes too much work to generate a pc that is destined to perish. I'd rather used stat blocks from monsters or even example pc stats and then tweak them as needed. I once used the example stats for the deepstone sentinel straight out of the Bo9S as a group of dwarven militia and they actually gave the party a really hard time. Also, terrain is not an issue with these two. Freedom of movement and flight take care of most of it. Teleporting does the rest.

You could grab an entire set of iron chef entries and make them into an adventuring group. (Might have to tweak some alignments). Some would be downright scary adventuring parties. Off to start a thread about that!!!

[Segev]

A goblin suicide squad of fighter/rogues with high sleight of hand checks and improved disarm and improved sunder. Their tactics are to run in and make pickpocket checks to take magic items, spell component pouches, and other stowed tools and implements, then to attack armor to destroy its binding straps and try to steal that. And steal the weapons out of their foes' hands.

They're only interested in attacks of opportunity; otherwise, these goblins are counting coup and stealing everything they can. Their whole MO is to race to see how fast they can field-strip an enemy. But they're thrilled to take AoOs against casters.

They use stealth to get close.

[atemu1234]

A pit trap filled with Shadows.

[Fizban]

Wait, so what level are they? The only thing that sounds munchkiny here is the cleric//druid casting from one list with slots from the other, and either way that should only work for Cure and SNA spells so it's hardly an insurmountable problem even if he's using the reading that supposedly lets you cast spells above your level. Someone will probably say I'm being too combative, but if you got ahold of their character sheets I'm sure some playgrounders would happily audit them for blatant rules violations, and explain the extent of their capabilities so you can actually start challenging them again. There should be plenty of weaknesses to prey upon in there: Frenzy, large size, returning weapons, lack of serious ranged attacks. . .

My first response was flat raw damage intimidation. Warmages get a lot of flak for being blasters, but a squad of optimized Warmages can kill a party of players faster than one PC blaster can kill a big monster, it's basic math. Not hard to build either since they use a fixed spell list plus only a couple additions of your choice, just line up the metamagic and fire away. If that's still too much, there are statblocks around. Drow of the Underdark has one, though it wants an extra level and it's feats are terrible.

But yeah, basically you gotta up your game. If the players are running crazy builds and you don't want to match them, the only other option besides stronger monsters is mean tactics. CR 2 Shadows that hide in the floor while following the PCs and only come out every 1d6 hours are the classic option that wrecks pretty much anyone. Don't just use Beholders, use Beholders on their home turf. All it takes is some fog or smoke to grant concealment and completely negate sneak attack. The Book of Challenges is nice, but I find many of it's scenarios overly complex for too little benefit.

[Molan]

I should probably add that I don't normally use dmpc characters to attack my players for one very important reason. It takes too much work to generate a pc that is destined to perish. I'd rather used stat blocks from monsters or even example pc stats and then tweak them as needed. I once used the example stats for the deepstone sentinel straight out of the Bo9S as a group of dwarven militia and they actually gave the party a really hard time. Also, terrain is not an issue with these two. Freedom of movement and flight take care of most of it. Teleporting does the rest.

You need to think a little bit more outside the box. You could try using things like anti-magic fields or spell casters designed to eliminate enemy spellcasting in order to eliminate their abilities. even doing that and one encounter can lead to some really difficult challenges if there's also terrain involved.

Case in point: I used Warding of the Dead from BoC with increased the DCs and damage and added the stock MM lich, two wraiths and a pair of home made vampires.

PCs were OP and bulldozing through my other challenges so I ratcheted this one up.

Lich spent his time countering their magic and the wraiths jumped in through the walls to harass back-liners. The Vamps used spider climb to cross the grid via the ceiling, which allowed the PCs to take pot shots at them. But they dropped onto Inflict Wards when they dropped onto the grid, and that plus fast healing kept them nice and healthy for their fights. One Vamp was a simple sword and board fighter tank designed to slow them down while the other was a rogue with improved trip, disarm, and excellent slight of hand, who just tumbled around tripping and disarming PCs and stealing their sh!t.

The result? Party cohesion broke down. Their damage-per-turn plummeted, as did their motion economy, the started failing saves and taking damage and their most vulnerable characters would up needing life saving intervention. They wound up retreating.

After that? They started to take my challenges a bit more seriously.

[Triskavanski]

Challanges.. Take some of the Olaf challanges for your party (obviosly the less perverse ones)

Like a room with the word "Overthink" on the wall, a button and a big red X in front of the button. The kicker is the button doesn't do anything at all, other than activate a ghost sound spell that is hidden off somewhere, but only when they're on the X

I've also had a trap that was a door with lots of flashing lights, levers and buttons. Above the door is a series of runes of some kind. Pressing buttons and levers causes the runes to change.

Again, another trap that doesn't do anything though. Sometimes it might have unusual transformational involved. You could even have a key hole in the door that shows unbelievable amounts of gold and jewels through it. After a bit of investigation with the dungeon, they might find the other side of the 'door' to only discover the keyhole was an illusion.


Those ones are more for frustation of course.

The most effective trap for fear was a broken spike trap, after having a second needle spike trap that lanced a bunch of rats into pink mist.

Sometimes, non-functional traps are the best ones, esspecially when gore and remains are there showing the trap did work at one time. Then follow it up somewhere with one that unexpectidly works.

[Yahzi]

The last time I scared my players was at the bottom of a Formian nest. Crawling into those tunnels (all protected by Forbiddance, of course), they knew that every step in meant a step to get out. Trapped in narrow tunnels, attacked by gigantic ants, assaulted by spells (the Queen could cast through her ants), when they finally got to her chamber, facing her over a sea of ants and spell traps, they decided that maybe negotiating was in order. Since she was also scared of them (they got to her chamber after all) she cut a deal. So that was cool.

On the other hand when facing a dragon they snuck into its cave and practically insta-gibbed it.

Lesson learned: make the territory long and hard. No monster looks scary if it's the first thing you see. But suck a few criticals from its minions on the way to its lair and now you're thinking about your mortality.

[Theodred theOld]

@Fizban. I would say that first paragraph was not only combative but kind of insulting. I've been over all the character sheet in question and can assure you that barring a few changes that I allowed everything is in order. I think a few deadly traps a la grimtooth mixed with some innocuous stuff that seems deadly should work. I'll save the mindwitness for the finale. Love the big red button idea btw.

[Theodred theOld]

Update: It turns out that the only thing that was needed were a few relatively weak drow wizards pulled straight from the module I'm running. PCs crashed into their home-turf and started tromping around like a bunch of buffoons. In response, each and every one of the wizards in the tower cast true strike then got into their defensive positions. When the bastard sword throwing lizardfolk rogue unlocked the first door he got immediately blasted by two rays of enfeeblement for -11 strength, thus rendering him utterly useless. The remaining two wizards both blasted lightning bolts through the open door at the druid, which was enough of a threat after seeing what happened to his friend to get him to literally turn tail and run. They spent the next 8 hours in stoneshaped foxhole licking their wounds and cursing drow SR. It would seem that their complacency was their undoing in this one.

[nijineko]

if they ever need a reminder... Tucker's Kobolds (http://tuckerskobolds.com).

[atemu1234]

if they ever need a reminder... Tucker's Kobolds (http://tuckerskobolds.com).

Still one of the better designs I've ever seen and built homages to.

For example, one of my favorite traps for 17th level or higher PCs is an antimagic field, in a pit trap, cloaked with layers of illusions, with similarly-high leveled Kobold Rangers standing around the edge shooting them with arrows, or a Kobold Blaster Sorcerer doing its thing.

[Tondrin]

Things with on-hit effects and an unnatural amount of 20's will put the fear of DM back into you real quick.


I do like Triskavanski's suggestions of mixing worn down traps with actual ones that work, mind games are effective at throwing the players off.

[Theodred theOld]

They killed a shadow spider that was following them. Any hints of movement in the shadows should cause them extreme caution.

[noob]

I do like Triskavanski's suggestions of mixing worn down traps with actual ones that work, mind games are effective at throwing the players off.
Except any good player never moves inside a building nor they get near any without smashing it from outside with their hurling hulker and other stuff of this kind.
Further they always react like if each square centimeter of the universe was trapped with everything possible no matter what you say to them.
if they are not acting this way the best solution is to send swarms of apocalypse wizards who splits into two swarms each time they are hit and who starts trapping all the universe with repeating ice assassin traps.
The only way I know to put the fear back into pcs is to rename the food rations "fear"

[nedz]

Update: It turns out that the only thing that was needed were a few relatively weak drow wizards pulled straight from the module I'm running. PCs crashed into their home-turf and started tromping around like a bunch of buffoons. In response, each and every one of the wizards in the tower cast true strike then got into their defensive positions. When the bastard sword throwing lizardfolk rogue unlocked the first door he got immediately blasted by two rays of enfeeblement for -11 strength, thus rendering him utterly useless. The remaining two wizards both blasted lightning bolts through the open door at the druid, which was enough of a threat after seeing what happened to his friend to get him to literally turn tail and run. They spent the next 8 hours in stoneshaped foxhole licking their wounds and cursing drow SR. It would seem that their complacency was their undoing in this one.

You are aware that Rays of enfeeblement overlap and don't stack ?

[Theodred theOld]

Not seeing it in the spell description but I'm guessing there's some fundamental rule of penalties and how they stack that I'm overlooking here and someone will be along shortly to paste up the relevant srd passage. The important thing is that you're the first person to notice that. It would seem I got away with one there.;)

[fishyfishyfishy]

Not seeing it in the spell description but I'm guessing there's some fundamental rule of penalties and how they stack that I'm overlooking here and someone will be along shortly to paste up the relevant srd passage. The important thing is that you're the first person to notice that. It would seem I got away with one there.;)

How did you know? (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/theBasics.htm#stacking) :smalltongue:

[Theodred theOld]

Thanks fishy. Good thing my players aren't rules savvy playgrounders. :) And the more I read about tucker and his kobolds the more I want to introduce a group of kobold prospectors into the setting.