Cruel, Genius DMs, HELP!

[Gadzooks27]

I'm modding an adventure that will introduce my newbie (albeit 8th level) players to the Lovecraft-esque D&D horror known as an Aboleth. I want to put the party in a very suspenseful and uncertain predicament, somewhere deep within the aboleth's lair and surrounded by minions. But I don't know how.
My advantages: My players have never heard of aboleths. Also, I don't use illusions often, so they won't see it coming when the Aboleth decorates its lair with an arsenal of illusions.
My disadvantages: I'm not familiar with how to use illusions. I don't know what minions would work well, or what I should, if at all, disguise them as. Lastly, they're ready to assume that every friendly face will try to kill them.
Ideas? Suggestions?

[Geddy2112]

Illusions work best when they seem normal where they are. A dragon breathing fire in a city square arouses suspicion, but a fake wall that looks like the rest of the room seems business as usual. A false floor to a spike pit or other peril is probably the best illusion.

For minions, overly helpful minions are red flags, but suspicious ones who are slow to trust are not. At worst,the party fights and kills them, burning x/day resources. At best, the party trusts them and is led astray. The lost adventurers, follower of a god a party member follows, or the damsel in distress types work best for a mind control. I don't suggest an illusion here, as they will be red flags if disbelieved. Let illusions be terrain based,or maybe other enemies in a larger fight.

[Gadzooks27]

Thanks!
*bump*
Anyone else got anything?

[John Longarrow]

Something important to remember is your boss will enslave what is around. This means the party will encounter some strange bedfellows when it comes to minions.

Picture several orcs guarding a cell. The cell is barred in and about 15' wide and at least 10' deep. The room this is in is covered with phosphorescent mold, so it has a soft illumination. Inside the cell is an elf in robes. The orcs are tormenting the elf, telling her what they want to do to her... in graphic detail.

Party comes in. Orcs start fighting. Elf (spell caster) starts casting at the party through the bars. If the orcs go down and it looks like the party can get to the locked door, the elf goes through a secret door in the back of the cell.

If the Aboleth isn't exerting control its enslaved minions will resort to their normal behaviors. This can lead to enemies that hate each other fighting together against the party.

On the illusion side some of the best ones are to give the party a goal that isn't there. Part of a bridge that is over a deep chasm, but is 10' from the edge of the cliff the party starts on. A ledge 20' above the cave floor that the party could climb to. A pool of clean water. Likewise covering the water filled cave floor with the illusion of solid ground so the party gets far to close to the monster.

[the_david]

Step one would be to read the rules about illusions in the magic chapter.

I did an adventure with illusions once. A problem might be that your players start to disbelieve everything after 2 or 3 illusions. You might want to throw in the occasional illusion that your players don't want to disbelieve. Hiding a symbol spell behind an obvious fake wall is a fun way to fool your players.

[Banjoman42]

Step one would be to read the rules about illusions in the magic chapter.

I did an adventure with illusions once. A problem might be that your players start to disbelieve everything after 2 or 3 illusions. You might want to throw in the occasional illusion that your players don't want to disbelieve. Hiding a symbol spell behind an obvious fake wall is a fun way to fool your players.
I once used a dungeon where nearly every door was covered with an illusion. You should have seen them spend 2 hours in the dead end.

[ZamielVanWeber]

I did an adventure with illusions once. A problem might be that your players start to disbelieve everything after 2 or 3 illusions. You might want to throw in the occasional illusion that your players don't want to disbelieve. Hiding a symbol spell behind an obvious fake wall is a fun way to fool your players.

In 3rd edition players do not choose to disbelieve, it happens automatically when conditions are met. They can voluntarily fail the save, but this is not 2nd edition where to declare what you are disbelieving and go from there.

My personal favorite abolet illusion was one where it was created a shelf where the pool it lived it met the cave. It would hide under it and try to mind control weak-willed targets or slime someone who got too close.

How did it determine weak-willed targets? With pointless illusions. Cave water barely opens up? Create a full pool and observe who sees through it first. Cover up real openings with illusions and observe. He set up the faux-shelf in the room where he intended to fight them. All those openings also made it easy for his skim to spy on the party and report back to him safely.

[Platymus Pus]

I'd look into Tucker's kobolds. But with illusions

[Jack_Simth]

In 3rd edition players do not choose to disbelieve, it happens automatically when conditions are met."Study it carefully" is one of the possible conditions granting a save attempt. So yes, if they've run across a few, they can. If the party rogue is using search checks to locate possible traps and/or secret doors, then it's pretty clear that the rogue, at least, is carefully studying the floor, walls, and ceiling as part of that.

[Xervous]

"Study it carefully" is one of the possible conditions granting a save attempt. So yes, if they've run across a few, they can. If the party rogue is using search checks to locate possible traps and/or secret doors, then it's pretty clear that the rogue, at least, is carefully studying the floor, walls, and ceiling as part of that.

Ideally you'd have environmental features making it undesirable for the players to stop and stare at every possible illusion much in the same manner that you don't just fill a hallway with traps and leave it at that.


Spinning yarns off the top of my head here's an outline for a possible aboleth lair.

Ideally the best mind slaving creature is the one you don't suspect. It is much, much easier to do your dirty work when the adventurers aren't gunning for you, instead focusing their preparations and incendiary wrath upon... a cult of the Prince of Beasts. Worst case your base is wiped out and a grand majority of your minions are slaughtered. But you swim away, alive, to plot your slimy revenge with the eons of knowledge packed into your aberrant mind.

As the tavern rumors go there's a subterranean fortress not far off in the wilderness. Maybe the miners pushed on through with a recent bit of excavation, perhaps some band of adventurers tunneled down to the structure in hopes of riches. Whatever the case, the maze-like citadel is drawing adventurers and crusaders of many stripes. The former seek what is customary, riches and conquest. The latter are operating on some hushed divine orders, seeking to address the whispers of a demonic cult on the rise. Add a dash of distress, a son who narrowly escaped the maze and needs some help going back to save his father... or a jeweled lure, an archaeologist dangling a fine sum in the party's face if they can retrieve a dust coated relic from the ruins, yes of course they can keep anything else they find.

Down in the fortress you have the works. Traps, secret passages, illusions, and plenty of creatures lost or 'lost' in the maze. Skeletons and marks of combat adorn the tunnels at reasonable intervals. Furthermore, the aboleth keeps a controlled amount of his servants patrolling the maze for new arrivals. Nearly all of them will profess to be lost to some extent, either in seeking the way out, or the paths leading on to the fabled riches. Given the immense size of the maze it's not unbelievable for better equipped adventurers to have spent serious lengths of time down here. Demonic creatures, either summoned or called, will comprise the majority of living threats so long as the party is unaware of their helpers' ulterior motives. While this whole setup can be expected to kill a lot of weaker travelers they don't mean much to the Aboleth. One tenth level thrall of proper skill sets is worth more to him than a whole village of low level NPCs that are easily acquired and expended just as quickly.

Flood some sections with a 'natural' underground river that appears to have worn its way through the maze over time, and you've got a very convincing dungeon trap. For added kicks, the Aboleth really does control a cult of Baphomet at the structure's center.

Your players might not be ready for their tentacled overlord, but I'm of the opinion that surprises can often be enjoyable.

[Inevitability]

Have it cast illusions that look like, for example, Walls of Fire.

[Triskavanski]

Here is a few of the traps I've used.

1) Obvious spike trap. Step on it and it stabs. Over the top is a single candle in some sort of holder that looks like it can be pulled down. Candle is an illusion. Originally this was disabled by a DDO like control box hidden a bit back, but my players used a tower shield or something to sled across. Easist way to make Obvious spike trap obvious is to have it do something. Like you could have it do like 36d6 damage to some creature that runs across it before any player can attempt to. The amount of dice and size isn't really important. Its the "Wholly Geeze Wiz!" aspect of the trap that can do so much damage. Make it really easy to disarm, even if you have to put in a lever for non-rogues to disarm it.

2) After obvious spike trap (have something run across it and brutally die.) Have a second spike trap, with no method of disarming... Because its broken. The spikes are all completely up in the air (Unlike the last trap where they were still in the ground) and it could be transverse as difficult terrain with little to no issue. But the fear of the previous trap will drive them to make sure that the trap is completely not working.

3) The Door to nothing - This trap is a mental one. It features a big door that looks like it leads to something. But it never opens. Attempts to pick the lock don't work. Disarming it doesn't work. There are levers, buttons and switches around the room and lots of lights and sounds (Think like an arcade or gameshow game.) You could have it do various little things like small transformation curses or have it open doors. The second time I used it I put "The levers! The Levers!" as a warning to the users as I knew one of them tended to have a short temper if he ran into something like this.

4) Personal Traps - if you know your players personalities and that of the characters, you can design traps based on them. One of my players when I did do some dming was a greedy guy who would try all he could to get every piece of copper. So I had a trap that had like 2 gold pieces glued to the floor. One was on a lever went it was pulled up. Click and the trap slams into the ceiling.

[Beheld]

There is a construct that Aboleths can make from their slime in water, it's in Lords of Madness. I would recommend using multiple toned down versions instead of the one high CR version. But it looks like water, and can just blend in with water.

So have the party walk across a floor with ankle deep water or something, and you can hide them anywhere. Illusions you can basically make literally everything. It's kind of absurd. You can an Illusory Wall every single 5ft (or like, 8 every 5ft), so that they have to make 5000 will saves to even see the Aboleth. You can have programmed images of whatever that trigger to every move they make, because you can have infinity of them.

[Gadzooks27]

Interesting :-)

[Gadzooks27]

The Shaboath, yes. I plan on it

[Telonius]

One of my favorites: illusion of a threat on the safe squares, actually-trapped squares where it looks safe.

[Jack_Simth]

One of my favorites: illusion of a threat on the safe squares, actually-trapped squares where it looks safe.

Nah. As soon as they figure out you're doing that sort of thing, most illusions can be countered by way of Detect Magic, Arcane Sight, Greater Arcane Sight, and/or True Seeing.

If, on the other hand, you illusion ALL squares in the area, separately, then only True Seeing or a good save really helps.

[Story]

I'd look into Tucker's kobolds. But with illusions

Note that Tucker's Kobolds were from 1st edition, and don't work in 3.5.

[Draconium]

Note that Tucker's Kobolds were from 1st edition, and don't work in 3.5.

Mechanically, no. However, you can still draw inspiration from the story no matter what the edition you're playing it.

[Triskavanski]

Nah. As soon as they figure out you're doing that sort of thing, most illusions can be countered by way of Detect Magic, Arcane Sight, Greater Arcane Sight, and/or True Seeing.

If, on the other hand, you illusion ALL squares in the area, separately, then only True Seeing or a good save really helps.

Or you alternate and change the 'rules'. I think its kinda the 101 of traps, use the target's expectations against them.

Putting a sign on a door that says "This door is trapped with a gas trap." leads into a few things. Either one - The sign is truthful or two - the sign isn't truthful.

There was a quote in a card game that was pretty good. Something like using the argument that Merandez Ortigo is the greatest bullfighter of all time. Sure they might argue that someone else is. But in that moment, they've excepted that Merandez Ortigo is a bullfighter or he even exists at all.

The comic Olaf (Lots of NSFW stuff) has a number of things in it that are pretty good. Like the word "Overthinking" just plastered on a wall that causes the guys going through the dungeon to pause as they try to figure out what it means.

[John Longarrow]

oglaf,not olaf. Really funny to.

For those kinds of traps, my favorite is putting something in a dungeon that doesn't seem to belong. Not an illusion, but an actual object.

Last time this happened the party entered a hemisphere about 100' across. In the middle was a pool 80' across. Above the pool, suspended form the ceiling by a chain, was a cage. The party spent a loooong time trying to figure out how to get to the cage without touching the water.

That kind of thing will allow you to have the monsters work out a mass attack. Just keep track of the amount of time the players are discussing. At some pre-determined time ask them to make spot checks.

Monsters cast silence on the entrances so you couldn't hear them coming. No spell check since its not in players line of sight. Spot check is to see the monsters move in to attack or if the monsters surprise the party.

Best fun if the players are arguing at the moment! B-)

[Triskavanski]

Ah. Oglaf. And yes. I'd actually like to do something soon like the comics of that which are more dungeon crawler focused.

Heck have them roll spot/listen/perception checks randomly. Then roll some dice. Then continue. It'll put most players on edge

[John Longarrow]

Ahh... random rolls... Love using that to add a level of paranoia to a game. It is best used with a 'no monsters' dungeon.

Picture the following as a game session:

Players enter the dungeon. Before them is a scene best described as a slaughterhouse run by a lunatic. Body parts strewn about, broken gear scattered. Over a dozen orc corpses are found in the entry, the walls painted in blood. Most disturbing are the finger painting. Half a dozen images are drawn in the blood, all looking to have been done by a child. More disturbing is the below one of the pictures is a severed arm. The hand is shaped into a fist but one finger points forward. That finger, and only that finger, is covered in blood. It also matches the size of the finger used to draw the pictures.

As the party move through the dungeon they encounter dozens of equally bizarre scenes. Read Looking for Group and base your descriptions on things Richard has done. What they are really overcoming are traps, damaged areas that are collapsing, dangerous items on the ground, and the occasional unintelligent undead.

All the while you are asking them to make random rolls, your rolling and checking odd bits of paper, and you are occasionally giving them an evil grin over the DMs screen.

In the heart of the dungeon they find ruins. Scorched, blasted, smashed, twisted and melted waste. Fifty odd charred spots show where what ever fought here made its last stand.

And there, sitting in the center of this all, is a green vial that glows softly. Inside is a bubbling liquid. Yes, at the heart of the mountain they have found a bottle of Mountain Dew.

Be prepared to dodge things being thrown at you, especially if its taken a few hours for them to get there.

NOTE: This would also be a fantastic spot for an aboleth to flood the room, attack with its skum, and try to get all of the party members stuck breathing water.

[atemu1234]

The Shaboath, yes. I plan on it

Remember to roll the will saves for them. That way, they don't even know what's coming.

Or you can have them roll for it, adding suspense and build up. I prefer the latter, but different strokes.