[Good grief a dungeon] The Holdfast of Morndrim Shadowhammer (PEACH!)

[Saintheart]

Hi all!

Immediately I'm going to refer you to a GoogleDocs document that's open for viewing.

This is a small-ish dungeon of 15 rooms total designed to plug into my favourite 3rd edition adventure, The Red Hand of Doom. While it's helpful to know that adventure to figure out what the heck is going on, assume that basically there's a dwarven clanleader being held by two aranea, who needs rescuing from the dungeon, and that the players are arrrround ECL 8-9. Ish.

I'm really throwing this out there for PEACHes and any commentary or thoughts to add on it that you might see fit to provide. The idea is that this'll go into the Red Handbook of Doom I keep custody of over in the 3.5 forum, so I'd like to polish it and would really like to know what people think of it, good or bad. But if of course people would like to use the structure and builds for themselves, be my guest.

The Google Doc is not well formatted, and I'll fix that in the coming days, but if you can be patient with it and have a look through it, I'd greatly appreciate any comments or feedback you have. Thanks!

[Amechra]

I've just been skimming, but the note that Othrek might just withdraw all Dwarven forces on rescue seems like a bit of a jerk move on the part of the DM. Let's go down the list, shall we?

• If you do absolutely nothing, Brindol gets help from the Silver Axes.
• If you take Derra's path, Brindol gets help from the Hammerfist Hold.
• If you take Uldrina's path, a bunch of people die for no good reason, and Brindol gets some diminished help from the Silver Axes AND Hammerfist Hold.
• If you put in the work to actually rescue Othrek, you... make a Charisma check/impassioned speech to see whether or not Brindol gets any help at all?

If you confronted me with this list, I'd probably choose to do absolutely nothing. After all, the middle two options guarantee that Othrek dies, while the final option might cost Brindol all of its Dwarven aid!

[Saintheart]

I've just been skimming, but the note that Othrek might just withdraw all Dwarven forces on rescue seems like a bit of a jerk move on the part of the DM. Let's go down the list, shall we?

• If you do absolutely nothing, Brindol gets help from the Silver Axes.
• If you take Derra's path, Brindol gets help from the Hammerfist Hold.
• If you take Uldrina's path, a bunch of people die for no good reason, and Brindol gets some diminished help from the Silver Axes AND Hammerfist Hold.
• If you put in the work to actually rescue Othrek, you... make a Charisma check/impassioned speech to see whether or not Brindol gets any help at all?

If you confronted me with this list, I'd probably choose to do absolutely nothing. After all, the middle two options guarantee that Othrek dies, while the final option might cost Brindol all of its Dwarven aid!

I really appreciate this feedback. These are the sorts of blind spots I can't see when I read it back to myself. What I was aiming for was some granularity in the outcome, that there is a number of different outcomes that you can pull from the interactions. I can see I need to add some work on those.

Othrek refusing to bring anyone into the war after rescue does look like a jerk move in retrospect, so I'll go and take another look at that.

EDIT: Okay, so we're now adjusted a bit.

- Thaardin the cleric advocates against a direct assault but is in favour of an adventuring party trying the front door; he believes the tomb is cursed.
- Derra still has his offer but advocates for entry via the tombs because it's at least a waste of resources to go for a frontal assault
- Uldrina is still for a direct assault on the tomb with the dwarves.
- Othrek if rescued commits the clan and the Shining Axes and refunds the 5k the characters would have picked up to hire the Shining Axes. DMs can make him fearful of mobilising, but the Shining Axes remain available, and DMs are told to telegraph the possibility well ahead of time. Giving him an ancient set of armor that can be found in the tomb helps hugely with the issue.