A Dungeon for a Dragon

[WhamBamSam]

So I'm in the process of building a stronghold of a Xorvintaal Dragon for a campaign I'll be playing in, and I'm finding myself a bit out of my comfort zone when it comes to a few points, so I was hoping for a little assistance.



The planes and divine beings in this setting have been essentially wiped out, and my dragon is allied with the last descendants of the Moldrons (an army of Mechanatrixes, and a special snowflake LN Succubus who was an asylum seeker in Mechanus before the fall). He's a Cobalt Dragon (Dragon 356, the most important feature being a force damage bull rushing breath weapon, and water breathing also being somewhat relevant to the topic at hand) with an electricity breath weapon grafted on so he can avoid friendly fire and actually heal his mechanatrix subbordiates).

The dungeon I'm envisioning for him has a sort of steampunk/magitech vibe with a lot of electricity traps , shifting mazes (to disorient enemies and set up bull rushes and whatnot). Using water for generators and some of the traps would be cool if there's stuff like that printed somewhere.

Basically I'm looking for any printed material (I can't really just design stuff myself, since I'm a player not the DM), especially for traps and the like that will serve this concept. I seem to remember there being a Web Enhancement on Moldrons somewhere, and I could see there being relevant stuff in Eberron books, but I'm finding it all a little overwhelming to dig through on my own.

[Aharon]

Modrons (without the "L") are found in the Manual of the Planes web enhancement, located here: http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20010921a

[MisterKaws]

Why not make the underwater lair entirely of Riverine? It fits nicely with the Aquatic Force Dragon theme. Riverine is pretty damn expensive, though, so the Dragon's lair itself would be its hoard, because I doubt any gold would be left after paying all of the materials.

And it also makes the hoard relatively hard to steal, which I guess is the point of Xorvintaal?

[Uncle Pine]

The Consolidated Wyrms of the North (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxTt5u6rmj76Q3VMQlVjLTVsRXM/view?usp=sharing) archive has some decent trap stuff. Specifically, look for Breathbarb, Breathball and especially Breathdoom (since it's permanent until discharged).

[Vaz]

Are you going for a Bullrushing Fighter? The most important thing as you're essentially the Father of Kobolds is to be tricksy. I guess rather than tuckers kobolds you can use Tuckers Modrons. Half the challenge of fighting a Cobalt should be their lair.

You should also be able to cut off areas of the dungeon, ranging from simple pit traps like the Compactor Scene (Added Monster or no) to rockfalls or rolling balls Temple of Doom esque.

Others, like pressure plates. Then there are more abstract ones. One of my favourite is the Tesseracts. A Dragon in a large Tesseract so you don't know which way is up as you knock people all over the place (especially with gates you punt them through that may or may not be random/changing, so if they move through gate on face 2, they may end up on face 6 rather than 3 they intended, but moving back, they end up 5).

Warning; they are mind breaking as hell to run. Our DM took 2 weeks off work to plan it, and another week off from DMing after because of how stressful it was.

[WhamBamSam]

Modrons (without the "L") are found in the Manual of the Planes web enhancement, located here: http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20010921aThanks, that was the Web Enhancement I remembered. Unfortunately, it's mostly just statting monsters, though the fluffy parts might come in handy. Maybe I'll see what MotP has on the general environment of Mechanus.


Why not make the underwater lair entirely of Riverine? It fits nicely with the Aquatic Force Dragon theme. Riverine is pretty damn expensive, though, so the Dragon's lair itself would be its hoard, because I doubt any gold would be left after paying all of the materials.

And it also makes the hoard relatively hard to steal, which I guess is the point of Xorvintaal?I did consider messing around with Riverine, but I think the price may be out of my reach. It's almost twice the price of Adamantine, which means it's probably in the ballpark of +50k per stronghold space.


The Consolidated Wyrms of the North (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxTt5u6rmj76Q3VMQlVjLTVsRXM/view?usp=sharing) archive has some decent trap stuff. Specifically, look for Breathbarb, Breathball and especially Breathdoom (since it's permanent until discharged).Nice. I can't believe I wasn't aware of this. Those spells are great for what I'm going for (time to dust off the resetting spell trap rules) and I'll have to read the rest of the document more thoroughly as well.

Question: Breathbarb caps the damage at 5d8. What does it do if you use different dice, like the d4s for the Cobalt Dragon's bull rushing breath?


Are you going for a Bullrushing Fighter? The most important thing as you're essentially the Father of Kobolds is to be tricksy. I guess rather than tuckers kobolds you can use Tuckers Modrons. Half the challenge of fighting a Cobalt should be their lair.

You should also be able to cut off areas of the dungeon, ranging from simple pit traps like the Compactor Scene (Added Monster or no) to rockfalls or rolling balls Temple of Doom esque.

Others, like pressure plates. Then there are more abstract ones. One of my favourite is the Tesseracts. A Dragon in a large Tesseract so you don't know which way is up as you knock people all over the place (especially with gates you punt them through that may or may not be random/changing, so if they move through gate on face 2, they may end up on face 6 rather than 3 they intended, but moving back, they end up 5).

Warning; they are mind breaking as hell to run. Our DM took 2 weeks off work to plan it, and another week off from DMing after because of how stressful it was.I am indeed. We're progressing by CR, so I'm also angling for the Lawful Archdragon template for its ridiculous antimagic breath.

I plan to have some kobolds as well. Mortalbane Draconic Rite SLAs are handy for getting the most out of low level mooks, and being able to squeeze through tight spaces is handy.

I figured drop traps would be handy for the added benefit of creating things to bull rush people into and pressing walls together is always fun and handy for lining up line area attacks like my breath weapon. I had also planned on using pressure plates and proximity triggers for the electricity-based traps, since the Succubus can port in and trigger them even if the intruders are being especially careful.

Is there a trap printed anywhere to shift a wall of a maze so that one passage opens up and another gets blocked off? That seems like enough of a classic that it must exist somewhere.

Is there a printed D&D tesseract anywhere? I love me some higher dimensional space, and am on board with the idea of topological violence, but I'm playing this dragon, not DMing it, so I need to stay clear of homebrew. It does sound like a bit of a headache, especially when you have to keep embedding lines and cones and whatnot into it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Point your DM at dungeonscape's section on encounter traps and the woundrous architecture in stronghold builder's guidebook. Lot's of fun "lair" building stuff there. I -think- there was some stuff in draconomicon too; lair wards or something like that.

If you're designing the lair, same sources and give us an idea how much you can spend.

[WhamBamSam]

Point your DM at dungeonscape's section on encounter traps and the woundrous architecture in stronghold builder's guidebook. Lot's of fun "lair" building stuff there. I -think- there was some stuff in draconomicon too; lair wards or something like that.

If you're designing the lair, same sources and give us an idea how much you can spend.I haven't been through Dungeonscape yet, thanks for the suggestion. I'd forgotten about Lair Wards as well, which might do some handy things. Wondrous Architecture was among the things I was meaning to do a deep dive into, especially since I'll be looking into magic structure wankery for shenanigans with the spells mentioned above from the Wyrms of the North articles.

I'm designing the lair. I have 361,100gp with which to do so after equipping the dragon himself. The DM is also kicking in some stuff for free, though it's not altogether clear how much. Different players came away with different readings of his post on the subject, so we're sort of waiting for clarification.

[thethird]

I haven't been through Dungeonscape yet, thanks for the suggestion. I'd forgotten about Lair Wards as well, which might do some handy things. Wondrous Architecture was among the things I was meaning to do a deep dive into, especially since I'll be looking into magic structure wankery for shenanigans with the spells mentioned above from the Wyrms of the North articles.

I'm designing the lair. I have 361,100gp with which to do so after equipping the dragon himself. The DM is also kicking in some stuff for free, though it's not altogether clear how much. Different players came away with different readings of his post on the subject, so we're sort of waiting for clarification.

If you have some form of crafter take a look At races of stone forges. While you are at it look at the rune circles, they make interesting alternatives to wondrous architecture.

If any of your modrons can make the perform check you want a lyre of building from the srd. Actually i'm sure the succubus can make it so you want that.

You might want an aspect mirror from complete scoundrel.

You might also want cheap access to water wreathing for your guys. Perhaps a self resetting trap.

[WhamBamSam]

If you have some form of crafter take a look At races of stone forges. While you are at it look at the rune circles, they make interesting alternatives to wondrous architecture.

If any of your modrons can make the perform check you want a lyre of building from the srd. Actually i'm sure the succubus can make it so you want that.

You might want an aspect mirror from complete scoundrel.

You might also want cheap access to water wreathing for your guys. Perhaps a self resetting trap.Forges appear to only work for dwarves. Rune circles are interesting, but seem DM dependent. If I can get Rune Circles that give Mechanatrixes Water Breathing in rooms where I intend to put flooding traps and it looks like a Rune Circle that traps breath weapons used within it in breathbarbs should be cheaper than the alternatives as well. If I can't get those, I guess I'll use Wondrous Architecture, since it's cheaper than resetting traps for most of my purposes.

Huh, Perform isn't trained only. Can you take 10 on the check for Lyre of Building, or should I have her invest in some cross class ranks? I probably won't have any actual Modrons, or at least not more than a few. I'll mostly have their Mechanatrix descendents.

A pair of Aspect Mirrors is a good idea. The Succubus can carry one around and teleport around allowing the dragon to observe and issue orders from afar, possibly handing it off to a lackey to hold if she needs to port back and Motivate Charisma (she doesn't have it yet, but won't be too long) the dragon's face skills.