Indoor desert

[xkroku]

Hello

I'm trying to accomplish something like this:
PCs are in a dungeon, they open a strange, sarcophagus shaped door, enter a room, and boom, they are suddenly in a desert.

The only thing I can think of is the Hallucinatory Terrain spell, and a teleport to a real desert. The second option is out, because I want it to be in a room, and just seem like a desert.
Hallucinatory Terrian is ok, but I want to get a real desert threats there. Severe heat, a bit of sandstorm wouldn' hurt.

So, do you know a way to spice up this illusionary desert?

[Kaleph]

Would you also consider Option 3 - a demiplane, or is it also out of scope?

In any case, to put desert themed monsters, you need some traps that casts summon monster [x], maybe re-fluffed (summon desert ally also work, but I never used it). Regarding environmental threats, you should look into PHB, frostburn and sandstorm, to see if there's some spell that alters the temperature and the humidity, or manipulates sand.

To manipulate sand, you may use haboob, sandstorm, and slipsand (all of them are from sandstorm sourcebook).
To increase the temperature, you may use control temperature (from frostburn).
For general weather-related effects, you may use control weather.

Some of these spells are Level 5 or so, therefore you should check carefully if they are a reasonable threat for your players. Also you have to decide how they are activated. They are persisting effects (thay may be dispelled), are triggered by a trap (that can be disabled), or casted in real time by an enemy wizard (that can be detected and killed)?

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I agree with you that a set of illusions and magical effects is the best way to go. Control weather should actually be enough to create most of the weather, right? (EDIT: ninja'd by someone more knowledgeable.) And a lot of the rest is just building a zoo, collecting plants, animals and creatures from real deserts, putting them in there together, feeding them so they don't eat each other and separate them into different zones if they really don't get along. I suspect players will actually find it kind of funny if they have to pass some sort of magic door in a force wall between the desert umber hulk enclosure and the camelbear pit. They might also get a kick out of the terrain being much smaller than it looks. Normally this would be railroading, but if they figure out after walking through an endless dessert for a few kilometers that there were actually literal dungeon walls maybe a dozen meters from the path they've chosen the entire time that's kind of cool. This way they get to have a desert adventure that slowly turns into a weird sort of zoo themed dungeon crawl.

Alternatively maybe there is a teleport to a real desert, but in such a way that a piece of desert has been cut off from the rest of the world. The only ways in and out are from and to the dungeon, making it basically an external part of the dungeon. Now you don't need any magical effects to create a desert, but you do need magical effects to keep it enclosed. wall of force or force cage seems like a good start. Maybe combined with some sort of specific anti-magic field that prevents only the casting of anti-magic fields to break the walls. The players could probably still teleport outside (I don't know why they'd want that, but they'll find a reason), so maybe mess with them a little there. Maybe teleporting in is impossible, maybe the wall of force is completely transparent, except when it comes to seeing sentient creatures and their properties. Or maybe the piece of desert is actually located 6 hours in the past, and anyone teleporting out ends up in the present again.

On the other hand, that probably just leads to more abuse ones they figure it out. Probably better just to keep it indoors.

[xkroku]

Yeah, that demiplane idea is great. It would save a lot of troube. I think creator can alter the features of his demiplane? And they probably can' be dispelled. Thanks for all your great suggestions!

[xkroku]

Permanent Image
Effect: figment that cannot extend beyond a 20-ft. cube + one 10-ft. cube/level (S)
Duration: permanent (D)
This spell functions like silent image, except that the figment includes visual, auditory, olfactory, and thermal elements, and the spell is permanent. By concentrating, you can move the image within the limits of the range, but it is static while you are not concentrating.

At 13th level, this spell can affect 21,000 feet3, or a ~27 foot cube.

Ooh that also is great.

[Kaleph]

Yeah, that demiplane idea is great. It would save a lot of troube. I think creator can alter the features of his demiplane? And they probably can' be dispelled. Thanks for all your great suggestions!

"The spellcaster determines the environment within the demiplane when he or she first casts genesis, reflecting most any desire the spellcaster can visualize. The spellcaster determines factors such as atmosphere, water, temperature, and the general shape of the terrain. This spell cannot create life (including vegetation), nor can it create construction (such as buildings, roads, wells, dungeons, and so forth). The spellcaster must add these things in some other fashion if he or she desires."

It's an instantaneous effect, so no dispel.

[Kaje]

Did you get this from a podcast?

[Kaleph]

Did you get this from a podcast?

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[Kaje]

Sorry. The idea seemed startlingly similar to a recent thing from the podcast "D&D is for Nerds."

[Kaleph]

Sorry. The idea seemed startlingly similar to a recent thing from the podcast "D&D is for Nerds."
I'm curious, what's that?

PS I'm not the OP, so maybe you're right.

[Kaje]

At the bottom of a dungeon, the PC's opened a hatch and below was... a desert. It had a ceiling but the room was too big to see the edges and was entirely filled with sand. Nearby was a sarcophagus that had cracked with age and had sand very slowly spilling out, causing the entire desert. The PC's opening up this desert to the wider world is presumably going to cause the end of the world at some unknown time in the distant future as the world is slowly consumed by desert.

Obviously not exactly the same as the OP, but it was close enough that I thought it might have been inspired by the podcast.

[xkroku]

Nah, nothing from the podcast, I just rolled some mummies for the encounter when preparing the dungeon and thought it would be pretty cool to also have a desert :smallbiggrin:

[Bohandas]

Artificial sun + massive room (possibly with interior space compressed as in leomund's labile locker)