Help building a dungeon/adventure!

[MissJynx]

Hey there! You guys are usually very good at giving me all sorts of new and exciting ideas for my campaign, so here goes!

This time, I've went full Legend of Zelda on their asses. They have a prophecy that involves getting special "artifacts" from a series of dungeons that represent each God for my custom pantheon. So 12 in total. The prophecy mentions that you need to get all these artifacts and receive blessings for each of the gods in their temples, bring them to somewhere special *The bard couldn't decipher where exactly, yet*, and they could get some kind of divine weapon that could defeat BBEG.

The world is already in ruins, BBEG having invaded while they wasted over a year in a portal to another dimension. The lands is dust and ice, creatures similar to a zombie/demon hybrid, know as the Ashlang, have rapidly infested pretty much every nook of the continent.

Now that the setting is done, here's where we are.

The first temple they decided to go through is the "Temple of Power", which is a monument to Tordukk, the God of Power and Discipline. I've made the temple to be a Colosseum hidden in a high mountain's valley. There is no forest, only rock and sand. The god itself is a Divine Cobalt Dragon, that only respects true strenght and discipline, and to be able to complete the dungeon, I want my party to REALLY be tested in these ways. Physically and emotionnally. They will face, at the end, some kind of Aspect of Tordukk. The goal is not to murder them, but to push their limits to the very end.

The party is around a CR 15, with a subsonic bard, a dark scholar sorceress, a frenzied berserker/barbarian lady, a chameleon who acts mostly as a cleric, and a ranger.

Any ideas to make the dungeon tough and exciting?

Thanks!

[DarkSoul]

What kind of discipline are you talking about? Mental? Martial? Both?

For mental discipline, I think of Will saves and Concentration checks. Things the casters will likely excel at. I'd say a battle in a snowstorm, with winds that make it difficult to cast their spells would be a good one. It doesn't have to be a hard fight unless the casters start failing their concentration checks. Will saves could be something like a battle in a room with a permanent symbol of stunning (with a 1 round stun rather than 1d6 if you feel like being nice) inscribed on the ceiling. Some targeted dispelling on effects that make the PC's immune to mind-affecting effects would put them on edge. A calm emotions effect somewhere could make your frenzied berserker squirm a little, especially if you drop her out of frenzy early with it.

Martial discipline could be anything from straight up combat, to combat against trippers, bull rushers, grapplers or disarmers. At level 15, I don't know if I'd put sunderers into the mix. You could set up a contest encounter using the Perform (weapon drill) skill from Complete Warrior to show off martial discipline as well.

Power encounters could be things other than combat as well, but combat encounters would be the bulk of them.

Some other ideas might be putting the group in a room covered with an anti-magic field, then filling it with water over the following 5 rounds. The only way out is to break through the adamantine door; all the walls are protected by/made of walls of force. Give the door enough hit points that the berserker will take at least 4 of the 5 rounds to break through it, and give it a break DC high enough that they can't take 10 on the check. Remember their destructive rage feat gives them a +8 on break checks. Even better, make the door a series of three instead, lower the DC a little bit, and require them to break through all the doors to get out.

A non-physical power test that would probably make your players a bit nervous would be entering a room with one distinguishing feature: a sphere of annihilation floating in the middle of the room. As soon as they walk in, someone steps into the room from the other side and immediately takes control of the sphere, pushing it directly at the characters. Someone better either get control of that sphere fast, or find a way to get through the wall of force protecting its controller. Add a talisman of the sphere if necessary to make it a good fight. A less deadly-appearing version of this encounter could require dominating a monster and using it to perform some task, whether it's an attack that everything else in the room is weak against or something the characters aren't able to do themselves is up to you.

[MissJynx]

Loving the ideas, DarkSoul! :smallsmile:

Thanks!

I was definately looking for something that would involve both mental and physical discipline.
Got the creative juices flowing!

[DarkSoul]

Oh yeah, one more thing: 15th level characters can do some crazy stuff. Take a look at their sheets, see what they're capable of, and don't just expect that they might do something you aren't expecting with their high-level abilities; require them to use them to finish the adventure. So what if they can contact other planes for information, maybe even directly speak to a deity? That's the only way to find out what they need to know.

Find the Path spells make mazes obsolete unless: they're working through a labyrinth so enormous that they'd never get through in time without the spell, the spell runs out before they're through, or the exit they're looking for is on another plane. Multi-planar mazes anyone?

[MisterKaws]

If you want to do something funny to help with tension, you could always put Awakened Cat Swordsages with Don't Mind Me and Twinning Trip for feats, it's always quite a sight when a cat starts to wrap around your leg and then suddenly you're flying 30 feet away from where you were.