Hey everybody, I have a question that I would appreciate input on: Is my gelatinous cube trap scenario an appropriate threat level?
I have been DMing a campaign with my friends for a while now and the five players are level 5 (wizard, rogue, ranger, and two barbarians). Up until now, I have been using the Create Encounter feature here and I have made every encounter qualify as "Deadly", but my players almost never have any problems killing everything. I am aware that CR is a contentious topic and that I should try to pick the right monsters to appropriately challenge my players, so I have drafted a scenario to create a challenge. The scenario goes as follows:
A cult leader (priest) lures the party to their base for a friendly dinner party when suddenly four hidden cult fanatics cast hold person on the party while the leader pulls a switch, dropping the party into a pit containing a gelatinous cube within a dark room. The idea is that anyone who fails the wisdom saves will fall into the cube and be dissolved, and anyone who succeeds the wisdom save but fails the dex save to not fall into the pit will land in a gelatinous cube in complete (non-magical) darkness. Anyone who gets out of the cube will have to fight eight skeletons (harvested from the previous victims) in the dark room and then the cultist later after they escape the dark room.
It depends on the party for sure. If they're all below level 5, and not very wise or dextrous, it's a TPK or near to it. If they're experienced as players, they'd probably take some kind of precaution before being lured into eating dinner with someone they're dubious about, checking the room for traps or hidden enemies, or even refusing the invitation outright.
As a DM you have the power to make it fun or not-fun of course. If they get stuck in the cube, give them a chance to fight out of it somehow, because reviving or resurrecting someone who's dissolved would be problematic. Or make it so the dissolving takes longer, giving the players that do escape a chance to defeat the cube before it eats their friends.
I had a trap where my players noticed the painfully obvious trap door at the foot of the chest. Because of an indecision to look up and a low enough perception check, they failed to miss the trap door over head. THey open the chest, confident they're dodging the trap, only to have the cube fall on their headshttps://tutuapp.uno/ .
A deadly encounter where the party face 14 monsters as well as a trap and spell effect ahead of initiative has a considerable risk for TPK, if not the potential to kill one or more player characters.
From experience, players don't usually like encounter staged this way where they're threaten before combat even begins.
Thank you guys for the input. I will let them know that they are going into a dangerous situation before they even enter the base and hopefully they prepare.
Thank you guys for the input. I will let them know that they are going into a dangerous situation before they even enter the base and hopefully they prepare.
This won't help your problem because alot of this will be reliant on how the dice rolls imaoct them, I will ask you say you are giving your players "deadly" encounters, how many encounters are they having between rests? DnD is setup to have an adventuring day of about 6-8 combat encounters between long rests, when you do anythign less then this you get hte issue of players easily dealing with combat because they do not need to worry about managing resources.
Recently my party played through 4 sessions between long rests, during that 16 hours of game time they fought 10 encounters and dealt with 5 traps, they had 2 short rests. The encounters I threw at them (level 3 6 players no cleric) in order
Day started
6 skeletons and 6 zombies
2 dart traps in a corridor
2 zombies
6 skeletons
2 Will O Wisp
Wight and 4 Skeletons
short rest
2 Will O wisps
Gas trap in a chest
2 Poltergeist
trapped door
2 Shadow
1 Will O wisp
short rest
Allip, 4 Zombies, 1 Will O wisp
Finally long rest and day ended.
on there own many of these encounters where easy, but, over time the players burnt up spells and abilities and used healing potions and other resources, The wight especially threw them, they assumed it was the "big battle" of this part of the game and so used up a few resources just finishing it off, then realised that no there was a lot more to go.
I would consider the amount of challenges and encounters you are throwing at your players rather then just add more and more and more to one big encounter.
The challenge here is the pit -- it is a trap, and the simplest way to overcome it is not to fall into it. Getting out of it is a roll, but that will leave them in a hurting spot, so the damage done will be a key point.
Note that in the Cube, they will have the Restrained condition, experiencing the following effects.
Attacks Affected. Attack rolls against you have Advantage, and your attack rolls have Disadvantage.
Saving Throws Affected. You have Disadvantage on Dexterity saving throws.
They can’t breathe, take 21 (6d6) acid damage at the start of each of the cube’s turns.
To escape, they can take an action to make a DC 12 Strength check. On a success, the creature escapes and enters a space of its choice within 5 feet of the cube. Generally speaking, this can be done on their turn, so there is a chance they can succeed, but it will be up to the dice and how long it takes them to get out.
If they can take about 42 HP of damage and have a strength score of at least 13, it seems pretty much like a good chance to escape, but then you have the issue of only a few at a time escaping, meaning a wounded and lower than normal hit point party facing off 8 skeletons. I'd have the skeletons trigger at 1.5 per member of the party who makes it out (so 1, then 3, then 4, then 6, for 1, 2, or 3 members getting out).
Definitely classifies as a deadly encounter, imo. I would use it without much hesitation -- but my players are also more used to such things.
The Gelatinous Cube Pit is an oldie but a goodie, in terms of classic traps. I mean, something has to clean those spiked pit traps...
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Hey everybody, I have a question that I would appreciate input on: Is my gelatinous cube trap scenario an appropriate threat level?
I have been DMing a campaign with my friends for a while now and the five players are level 5 (wizard, rogue, ranger, and two barbarians). Up until now, I have been using the Create Encounter feature here and I have made every encounter qualify as "Deadly", but my players almost never have any problems killing everything. I am aware that CR is a contentious topic and that I should try to pick the right monsters to appropriately challenge my players, so I have drafted a scenario to create a challenge. The scenario goes as follows:
A cult leader (priest) lures the party to their base for a friendly dinner party when suddenly four hidden cult fanatics cast hold person on the party while the leader pulls a switch, dropping the party into a pit containing a gelatinous cube within a dark room. The idea is that anyone who fails the wisdom saves will fall into the cube and be dissolved, and anyone who succeeds the wisdom save but fails the dex save to not fall into the pit will land in a gelatinous cube in complete (non-magical) darkness. Anyone who gets out of the cube will have to fight eight skeletons (harvested from the previous victims) in the dark room and then the cultist later after they escape the dark room.
Does this seem easy, fair, or a recipe for a TPK?
If you read to the end, thank you for your time!
But what's really going to happen?
Your players are going to be alert. Right? They're having dinner with a cult leader, so they know they're going to get ambushed. So there's no surprise round - they roll initiative. And likely, they win, meaning the cultist plan is already in shambles. But let's say they lose. The trap is sprung. Half the party fall into the trap. Then what? Propably, the other half jump into the trap to help their mates. Skeletons get ignored, because they're skeletons. Someone lights a torch or casts a Light spell. Gelatinous cube is quickly dispatched - skeletons are dispatched even quicker. Then the party rolls over the cultist.
The only thing that's really dangerous is forcing the cultist plan to work. If the cultists have a surprise round - by design - then everything falls apart, you risk a TPK, the players feel rail roaded, the peasants storm the castle with torches and pitchforks.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Honestly, I'd say the biggest thing here is to try and run the trap so only part of the party- like, two members- gets dropped into it; makes it less of a save or suck scenario for the whole party and gives the remainder the agency to choose between directly engaging the enemy and assisting anyone stuck in the ooze.
We kept seeing an eerie, ghostly figure following us on the high shadowy balconies of an underground ruin. Eventually, it confronted us from down the hallway and we found out that it was just a cube wandering around with a corpse in it. The intense atmosphere leading up to it just made the whole thing hilarious https://tutuapp.uno/ .
We kept seeing an eerie, ghostly figure following us on the high shadowy balconies of an underground ruin. Eventually, it confronted us from down the hallway and we found out that it was just a cube wandering around with a corpse in it. The intense atmosphere leading up to it just made the whole thing hilarious.
I had not considered that the calculations for encounters has the assumption baked in to it that many encounters are to be had on a given day. I thought the calculation was expressing the danger of a given, isolated event. Since I prefer to roleplay to combat, I strive to create dramatic, deadly, and concise encounters.
After reading through your comments, I realized that I had taken it as a given that the cult members would get a surprise round. This was not a very good assumption and is railroading. It is also clear to me that without the trap being sprung, the whole encounter will be trivial. Hm...
Despite that, I really do want this trap to work so I will contemplate on how to do that in a way that is fair.
Again, thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread.
I mean, the first stage of a trap going off successfully isn't necessarily railroading, but what you want to avoid is creating such a strong "save or suck" scenario where most of the tension simply relies on how the initial rolls go.
I had not considered that the calculations for encounters has the assumption baked in to it that many encounters are to be had on a given day. I thought the calculation was expressing the danger of a given, isolated event. Since I prefer to roleplay to combat, I strive to create dramatic, deadly, and concise encounters.
After reading through your comments, I realized that I had taken it as a given that the cult members would get a surprise round. This was not a very good assumption and is railroading. It is also clear to me that without the trap being sprung, the whole encounter will be trivial. Hm...
Despite that, I really do want this trap to work so I will contemplate on how to do that in a way that is fair.
Again, thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread.
This is a common misconception, and is the reason most DM's struggle to understand why that deadly encounter was so easy to walk through, the DMG doesn't really make it explicit and doesn't really give examples of this, and a lot of the youtube shows also tend to have fewer encounters per a long rest (hence why they also rarely struggle in fights).
The fact of things is that despite insisting it can be "equal" DnD is a combat heavy engine, if you prefer roleplay then there are other combat light TTRPG's which are far better then DnD, if you choose to stick with DnD and don't want to have multiple combats in a day then the other approach is just to buff all your monsters hitpoints, I usually go with adding at least 50% as standard, or I just use the max possible hitpoints if you assume you rolled the dice and rolled max on every one (although I then usually add a couple)
if you feel you added to many when combat starts then you can always tweak down and the players will be none the wiser, as a personal rule of thumb I have no issue removing hitpoints from a monster (if I have added them at combat start) I never add hitpoints midway through the combat, I just take the lesson that I need to add more next time.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hey everybody, I have a question that I would appreciate input on: Is my gelatinous cube trap scenario an appropriate threat level?
I have been DMing a campaign with my friends for a while now and the five players are level 5 (wizard, rogue, ranger, and two barbarians). Up until now, I have been using the Create Encounter feature here and I have made every encounter qualify as "Deadly", but my players almost never have any problems killing everything. I am aware that CR is a contentious topic and that I should try to pick the right monsters to appropriately challenge my players, so I have drafted a scenario to create a challenge. The scenario goes as follows:
A cult leader (priest) lures the party to their base for a friendly dinner party when suddenly four hidden cult fanatics cast hold person on the party while the leader pulls a switch, dropping the party into a pit containing a gelatinous cube within a dark room. The idea is that anyone who fails the wisdom saves will fall into the cube and be dissolved, and anyone who succeeds the wisdom save but fails the dex save to not fall into the pit will land in a gelatinous cube in complete (non-magical) darkness. Anyone who gets out of the cube will have to fight eight skeletons (harvested from the previous victims) in the dark room and then the cultist later after they escape the dark room.
Does this seem easy, fair, or a recipe for a TPK?
If you read to the end, thank you for your time!
It depends on the party for sure. If they're all below level 5, and not very wise or dextrous, it's a TPK or near to it. If they're experienced as players, they'd probably take some kind of precaution before being lured into eating dinner with someone they're dubious about, checking the room for traps or hidden enemies, or even refusing the invitation outright.
As a DM you have the power to make it fun or not-fun of course. If they get stuck in the cube, give them a chance to fight out of it somehow, because reviving or resurrecting someone who's dissolved would be problematic. Or make it so the dissolving takes longer, giving the players that do escape a chance to defeat the cube before it eats their friends.
I had a trap where my players noticed the painfully obvious trap door at the foot of the chest. Because of an indecision to look up and a low enough perception check, they failed to miss the trap door over head. THey open the chest, confident they're dodging the trap, only to have the cube fall on their heads https://tutuapp.uno/ .
Thank you guys for the input. I will let them know that they are going into a dangerous situation before they even enter the base and hopefully they prepare.
This won't help your problem because alot of this will be reliant on how the dice rolls imaoct them, I will ask you say you are giving your players "deadly" encounters, how many encounters are they having between rests? DnD is setup to have an adventuring day of about 6-8 combat encounters between long rests, when you do anythign less then this you get hte issue of players easily dealing with combat because they do not need to worry about managing resources.
Recently my party played through 4 sessions between long rests, during that 16 hours of game time they fought 10 encounters and dealt with 5 traps, they had 2 short rests.
The encounters I threw at them (level 3 6 players no cleric) in order
Day started
Finally long rest and day ended.
on there own many of these encounters where easy, but, over time the players burnt up spells and abilities and used healing potions and other resources, The wight especially threw them, they assumed it was the "big battle" of this part of the game and so used up a few resources just finishing it off, then realised that no there was a lot more to go.
I would consider the amount of challenges and encounters you are throwing at your players rather then just add more and more and more to one big encounter.
The challenge here is the pit -- it is a trap, and the simplest way to overcome it is not to fall into it. Getting out of it is a roll, but that will leave them in a hurting spot, so the damage done will be a key point.
Note that in the Cube, they will have the Restrained condition, experiencing the following effects.
To escape, they can take an action to make a DC 12 Strength check. On a success, the creature escapes and enters a space of its choice within 5 feet of the cube. Generally speaking, this can be done on their turn, so there is a chance they can succeed, but it will be up to the dice and how long it takes them to get out.
If they can take about 42 HP of damage and have a strength score of at least 13, it seems pretty much like a good chance to escape, but then you have the issue of only a few at a time escaping, meaning a wounded and lower than normal hit point party facing off 8 skeletons. I'd have the skeletons trigger at 1.5 per member of the party who makes it out (so 1, then 3, then 4, then 6, for 1, 2, or 3 members getting out).
Definitely classifies as a deadly encounter, imo. I would use it without much hesitation -- but my players are also more used to such things.
The Gelatinous Cube Pit is an oldie but a goodie, in terms of classic traps. I mean, something has to clean those spiked pit traps...
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
But what's really going to happen?
Your players are going to be alert. Right? They're having dinner with a cult leader, so they know they're going to get ambushed. So there's no surprise round - they roll initiative. And likely, they win, meaning the cultist plan is already in shambles. But let's say they lose. The trap is sprung. Half the party fall into the trap. Then what? Propably, the other half jump into the trap to help their mates. Skeletons get ignored, because they're skeletons. Someone lights a torch or casts a Light spell. Gelatinous cube is quickly dispatched - skeletons are dispatched even quicker. Then the party rolls over the cultist.
The only thing that's really dangerous is forcing the cultist plan to work. If the cultists have a surprise round - by design - then everything falls apart, you risk a TPK, the players feel rail roaded, the peasants storm the castle with torches and pitchforks.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
Honestly, I'd say the biggest thing here is to try and run the trap so only part of the party- like, two members- gets dropped into it; makes it less of a save or suck scenario for the whole party and gives the remainder the agency to choose between directly engaging the enemy and assisting anyone stuck in the ooze.
We kept seeing an eerie, ghostly figure following us on the high shadowy balconies of an underground ruin. Eventually, it confronted us from down the hallway and we found out that it was just a cube wandering around with a corpse in it. The intense atmosphere leading up to it just made the whole thing hilarious https://tutuapp.uno/ .
I am stealing this idea :)
I had not considered that the calculations for encounters has the assumption baked in to it that many encounters are to be had on a given day. I thought the calculation was expressing the danger of a given, isolated event. Since I prefer to roleplay to combat, I strive to create dramatic, deadly, and concise encounters.
After reading through your comments, I realized that I had taken it as a given that the cult members would get a surprise round. This was not a very good assumption and is railroading. It is also clear to me that without the trap being sprung, the whole encounter will be trivial. Hm...
Despite that, I really do want this trap to work so I will contemplate on how to do that in a way that is fair.
Again, thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread.
I mean, the first stage of a trap going off successfully isn't necessarily railroading, but what you want to avoid is creating such a strong "save or suck" scenario where most of the tension simply relies on how the initial rolls go.
This is a common misconception, and is the reason most DM's struggle to understand why that deadly encounter was so easy to walk through, the DMG doesn't really make it explicit and doesn't really give examples of this, and a lot of the youtube shows also tend to have fewer encounters per a long rest (hence why they also rarely struggle in fights).
The fact of things is that despite insisting it can be "equal" DnD is a combat heavy engine, if you prefer roleplay then there are other combat light TTRPG's which are far better then DnD, if you choose to stick with DnD and don't want to have multiple combats in a day then the other approach is just to buff all your monsters hitpoints, I usually go with adding at least 50% as standard, or I just use the max possible hitpoints if you assume you rolled the dice and rolled max on every one (although I then usually add a couple)
if you feel you added to many when combat starts then you can always tweak down and the players will be none the wiser, as a personal rule of thumb I have no issue removing hitpoints from a monster (if I have added them at combat start) I never add hitpoints midway through the combat, I just take the lesson that I need to add more next time.