Yuan-Ti at lower levels: how to effectively run a Yuan-Ti pyramid dungeon

[aadder]

Hello everyone!

I'm considering running a short campaign (more like a dungeon + hang outs) set in and around a Yuan-Ti pyramid, and I'm struggling because all of the cool monsters like abominations are set at a higher CR than I think my players are enthusiastic to play at; many of them are inexperienced and don't really want to go past level 5, ideally even lower.

How would you go about creating an effectively cool, Yuan-Ti experience at that level?

I'm trying to power-down a lot of the monsters' CRs such as Broodguard to more like level 1 or even 1/2, but I feel like they have so many abilities (reistance to magic for example) that I don't know how to chop them down while still maintaining their essence.

I really wanted to have a big fight with an abomination and several broodguard, but I don't know if i can reduce the CR enough and still keep it fun and really feel like they're Yuan-Ti as opposed to just snake-themed mobs.

[aadder]

Never mind.

I apologize.

It's not your job to write my campaign for me.

[Mastikator]

I can't write your campaign for you, but I can offer some pointers

If you have multiple instances of a mid CR creature that you've toned down, give each of them one of the cool abilities. You can also decrease the difficulty of a combat by introducing the monsters in different rounds, for example they encounter two enemies, one calls for aid, on the next two turns one more monster shows up. What would've been a deadly 4 monster encounter becomes a medium/hard encounter.

Another thing that can swing the power to the side of the party is positioning and timing, allow the players to set up ambushes. Ie build the pyramid encounters to the players benefit.

You can also focus on the exploration, let the players explore and learn, learn specific things that help them win the fights, explore and find consumable items that give them a power boost (like potion of speed, potion of poison resistance). Consumables are great because they offer only their benefit once, there's no power creep.

The pyramid could also have prisoners that the players can free, maybe one of the prisoners can assist the players in some limited capacity?

You can add exploration encounters like puzzles and traps, these don't attack the players directly but still challenge them and add to the "encounter budget".

[Unoriginal]

Hello everyone!

I'm considering running a short campaign (more like a dungeon + hang outs) set in and around a Yuan-Ti pyramid, and I'm struggling because all of the cool monsters like abominations are set at a higher CR than I think my players are enthusiastic to play at; many of them are inexperienced and don't really want to go past level 5, ideally even lower.

How would you go about creating an effectively cool, Yuan-Ti experience at that level?

I'm trying to power-down a lot of the monsters' CRs such as Broodguard to more like level 1 or even 1/2, but I feel like they have so many abilities (reistance to magic for example) that I don't know how to chop them down while still maintaining their essence.

I really wanted to have a big fight with an abomination and several broodguard, but I don't know if i can reduce the CR enough and still keep it fun and really feel like they're Yuan-Ti as opposed to just snake-themed mobs.

A Yuan-Ti Abomination is CR 7.

CR 7 means the fight is a walk in the park for 5 lvl 7 PCs.

If the PCs are lower level, you're giving the Abomination a chance to be a very cool boss fight.


That being said, if you want to lower the CR of a monster, the number of special abilities they have do not really matter. CR is mostly calculated based on AC, HPs, attack bonus/save DC for the main offensive method, and damage output. Modifying that while keeping the special abilities will allow you to keep the identity of the monster while lowering the danger.

[stoutstien]

Hello everyone!

I'm considering running a short campaign (more like a dungeon + hang outs) set in and around a Yuan-Ti pyramid, and I'm struggling because all of the cool monsters like abominations are set at a higher CR than I think my players are enthusiastic to play at; many of them are inexperienced and don't really want to go past level 5, ideally even lower.

How would you go about creating an effectively cool, Yuan-Ti experience at that level?

I'm trying to power-down a lot of the monsters' CRs such as Broodguard to more like level 1 or even 1/2, but I feel like they have so many abilities (reistance to magic for example) that I don't know how to chop them down while still maintaining their essence.

I really wanted to have a big fight with an abomination and several broodguard, but I don't know if i can reduce the CR enough and still keep it fun and really feel like they're Yuan-Ti as opposed to just snake-themed mobs.

I don't think you have to change the stat blocks in any meaningful way.

Just don't run the NPCs as perfectly tactically aware beings. CR rating are very imprecise and rough estimates.

Look at The broodguards for example. At face value they're extremely dangerous combatant for the rating because of the three attacks, resistances, and decent saves however, they're also only able to perform simple tasks with direction. They can be a roving guard but if they are doing such you're not going to run and get help they're going to attack Intruders. If their task with guarding something they're going to do just that.
If something comes up that gives them two conflicting simple tasks they're going to be easily confused and prone to outburst of anger. You can represent this with a random action table depending on stimuli or whatever you like. Imagine they're like the raptors from Jurassic World but half as smart, pissy, and with little to no self preservation instincts.

So for a big dramatic fight they'd be very few reasons for the abomination to sitting around with a bunch of brood guards with the sole task of being there. They might be plot masters and clever tacticians but they're also vain and arrogant. They don't like the company of lesser versions of their race and/or created tools. That means the tasks they are given is going to be in such a way that's going to keep them occupied but probably slightly separated to prevent them from interfering with their own ideals of self perfection and from killing each other.

Now when you plop this into an environment and whatever motivation the party had to enter it in the beginning, you have the outline of a really cool challenge.

If you're still hesitant just knock one of the attacks off the block and have the abomination prefer to be in snake form when hanging about. That is their ideal to begin with.

When you're looking at CR ratings remember that they're basing a lot of the maths on averages and most NPCs won't see direct interaction with the party long enough for averages to matter CR can also be "off" because they are averaging to drastically different concepts of damage and staying power.

The bigger factors are action economy and the ability to prevent the party's plan A. NPCs I can take advantage of either one of these are going to be way more impactful than things that are three or four times their CR.

[Unoriginal]

Another thing that can help: the Yuan-Ti don't need to have an homefield advantage.


They could be in the process of taking over the pyramid from its occupants, or establishing themselves in one that was abandoned for a while, but in either cases they wouldn't know the place well and as a result both wouldn't have set up their own defenses and would need to be careful navigating it.

[stoutstien]

Another thing that can help: the Yuan-Ti don't need to have an homefield advantage.


They could be in the process of taking over the pyramid from its occupants, or establishing themselves in one that was abandoned for a while, but in either cases they wouldn't know the place well and as a result both wouldn't have set up their own defenses and would need to be careful navigating it.

Or just recently re-emerged from some sort of stasis that went on a lot longer than originally anticipated so while the environment is vaguely familiar it's different enough to be disorienting. Like taking somebody from 1700s London and dropping them downtown today.

[da newt]

I'll try for the super simple advice:

How to decrease CR of a creature:
- reduce HP
- reduce AC
- reduce to hit bonus
- reduce damage
- reduce DC
- remove magic resistance
- reduce status riders (replace restrained w/ grappled for example)

How to reduce CR of an encounter (multiple bad guys):
- reduce the number of bad guys present at any one time
- reduce the CR of individual bad guys (see above)
- reduce tactics
- provide the bad guys with competing objectives (something other than 'defeat the good guys')
- try to flee when badly injured or outnumbered

How to make a lower CR encounter FEEL epic:
- epic visuals (really play up what the bad guys look like)
- increase bad guy attitude (amp up personality - have the baddies talk smack)
- have the baddies capture someone the party cares about
- epic terrain
- add time pressure (when your Players are ready for it - amp up the drama by pushing them to make decisions quickly)

[Segev]

What do you plan for the "plus hangouts" portion of it? Is there a safe place filled with friendly NPCs to return to, or do you mean something else?

[Emongnome777]

This blog post is pretty old by 5E standards, but it's a quick way to get monsters up or down a couple of CR. Now, I don't know how you want to mess with their special abilities. Something less than CR 1 perhaps doesn't have magic resistance, for instance (too young?). Just a thought.

Another idea to ramp down the challenge is to use other creatures that are there as slaves or pets (lizardfolk, giant snakes, snake swarms, etc.). Let the party mow through the mooks and leave the (relatively few) yuan-ti be the bigger, more special battles.

[aadder]

Thanks for all the great advice, everyone!

I'm sorry it's taking me so long ot get back to these; I felt really guilty askign for so much help.

[aadder]

The pyramid could also have prisoners that the players can free, maybe one of the prisoners can assist the players in some limited capacity?

You can add exploration encounters like puzzles and traps, these don't attack the players directly but still challenge them and add to the "encounter budget".

I try REALLY hard not to include prisoners and whatnot because my "include my own PC" urge is too strong lol

I have so many PC's i never get to play so they keep showing up as "my super-cool OC DO NOT STEEL" Like this a lot

[aadder]

A Yuan-Ti Abomination is CR 7.

CR 7 means the fight is a walk in the park for 5 lvl 7 PCs.

If the PCs are lower level, you're giving the Abomination a chance to be a very cool boss fight.


That being said, if you want to lower the CR of a monster, the number of special abilities they have do not really matter. CR is mostly calculated based on AC, HPs, attack bonus/save DC for the main offensive method, and damage output. Modifying that while keeping the special abilities will allow you to keep the identity of the monster while lowering the danger.

Yeah taht's kind of what I'm looking for, is a good way to level-down monsters while still keeping them suitably monster-y.

The enounter I want to do is like an abomination, a pureblood, and 4 broodguards as the boos, and that's like CR 16 lol so I'm sweating a bit.

THe problem is I see broodguards as like minions but they're not; they really are just dinosaurs, basically, and all the Yuan-ti are actually pretty tough and scary

[aadder]

When you're looking at CR ratings remember that they're basing a lot of the maths on averages and most NPCs won't see direct interaction with the party long enough for averages to matter CR can also be "off" because they are averaging to drastically different concepts of damage and staying power.

The bigger factors are action economy and the ability to prevent the party's plan A. NPCs I can take advantage of either one of these are going to be way more impactful than things that are three or four times their CR.

Yeah I mean just... lying about how much the NPCs have in terms of hp, rolls, etc. helps too I guess, yeah.

[aadder]

What do you plan for the "plus hangouts" portion of it? Is there a safe place filled with friendly NPCs to return to, or do you mean something else?

I mean like a meeting before the dungeon where they get briefed on their mission and an intenionally briedf introduction to Yuan-ti.

There's a twist to the mission that they'll only pick up on if they carefully read the literature I give them.

[Segev]

A word of advice: posting multiple times in a row is frowned upon on thus forum. There is a multiquote button next to the quote button that adds the post to your reply when you finally hit "reply", and I also recommend using the "edit" function to copy each of your posts after the first in the chain out into a notepad, then edit the first in the chain by copying the notepad contents in after it, to get this all into one post.

Forum advice aside, one way to have a tension-filled escalating threat is to have the pyramid be a tomb. Either deliberately or via failed stasis mic or the like.

The whole place is trapped, and there are stasis-locked or entombed yuan-ti throughout. Tripping traps not only triggers a typical hazard, but also alerts or awakens undead guardians. A couple of zombies, maybe a handful, at a time. Sometimes these shamble after them from a distance, becoming a random encounter. Others, the trap drops them into the zombie den.

These zombies are obviously yuan-ti of varying castes.

As they get deeper, they start awakening still-living (or, perhaps, magically-revived) yuan-ti and other monsters of higher CR.