I made a dungeon where its entire thing is that the monster were constructs of the dungeon that didn't spawn in until the players crossed a certain threshold with the rooms resetting every time the room's door was closed and no one was in it. Halfway through the dungeon I introduced raiders from outside the dungeon, my players did a good job with exploiting the dungeon mechanics. Do you have any interesting dungeon mechanics you would like to share?
There's one cave system my players will soon be entering with an ever-sobbing empyrean at the bottom. His cries are so loud that every minute, the players must make a Con save or take 1d6 thunder damage. The monsters in the dungeon (mostly oozes) have adapted to the loud noise and are unaffected.
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All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
How long do you expect the party to be in the dungeon? Even an hour would be potentially 60d6 (210 avg damage, though depending on the DC it would likely be lower)
How long do you expect the party to be in the dungeon? Even an hour would be potentially 60d6 (210 avg damage, though depending on the DC it would likely be lower)
Probably about 30 minutes. The DC is 15, and they'll be 6th level when they're going through the dungeon. All of them have at least +1 to CON saves, and the sorcerer has +6. They also will be going in after a long rest, and they have a lot of healing spells.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
I was DM'ing my players through a villain one-shot where the goal was to go for a tongue-in-cheek Saturday Morning Cartoon level of villainy, rather than like... dark and violent villainy.
So anyway, with that setup, I ran them through a whole dungeon, and my favorite part was a door locked with a little computer that was designed to only allow Good People through... which took the form of a brief quiz with really obvious questions like:
"Drugs Are... A) Friggin' Sweet! B) The only way I can get through this life... C) Bad."
A really obvious, easy puzzle but luckily my players leaned into the ridiculousness. Although I was also careful to make sure there were alternatives to open the door... just in case
I've been playing around with fog (part) filled dungeons where the visibility is reduced to 15/30/60ft, fill it with enemies with blindsight and some without (To let the party ambush those enemies through the fog). All the doors creak, so it can also make them scared when they hear a door open but can't see what entered.
I had a security system in a dungeon that ran like this, for level 3-4 PCs:
The room starts with a deep pit, a rickety, rotten plank run over it, and a wider, safer path to one side. on the other side is a long corridor leading to a pair of vault doors. The corridor is heavily trapped with poison dart and spike traps every 10 feet or so. If the party reaches the end of the corridor, the doors open to a rolling sphere trap (reduced damage due to PC level) that moves down the corridor, on to the rickety plank, and through the invisible portal in the middle.
The plank is actually sturdy disguised to look rickety. A DC 20 perception check (DC 12 investigation if you touch it) will determine it to be cleverly disguised. Detect Magic will of course detect the conjuration magic of the portal in the middle if used.
If the players pass through the portal, prior to or after they witness the sphere roll through it, will reveal an identical (but untrapped) room with the doors at the end of the corridor opening up into the vault.
Another I have used...same general level of PCs:
The party descends into a rectangular room with two levels. One level is 30 feet below the other, with a sheer cliff behind. 2 grates are located in the cliff, and 8 barrels/crates in the room. As the party enters, the door behind them shuts and poison gas starts entering in the room from the grates. Rolling initiative, the party has 2 rounds before the gas fills the lower level and knocks them out. the on their turns, the party can 1) search the crates; inside each of the crates will be either nothing, a key, a bunch of rags, a rope, and the head of a grappling hook. The rags can be stuffed into the grates to slow the gas, gaining them an extra round. The key fits a hidden door in the side wall (DC 15 Perception to notice the keyhole in the stone wall) if they search the walls. The hook and rope can be used to make a grappling hook. The hook requires a ranged attack roll (AC 15) to hook on the top of the cliff, allowing the party to climb up at normal speed without checks. Or the party can 2) attempt to scale the cliff, which requires a DC 15 Athletics check on each turn to climb up (failure means no progress, failure by more than 5 means falling down.
My favorite dungeon was in a town the party was working in.
The night of a festival, the party drinks a magical elixir at a beer stand. When they go to sleep that night, they awaken trapped in an ever-repeating day that always ends in a TPK.
Upon dying, they awaken again in their beds, just as they had the previous morning, except a bard sings them to consciousness. Each time they reset, the bard sings a different song. Turns out the bard is a djinni. The elixir was poisoned with the djinni's blood.
The djinni toys with the party as they slowly figure out he is manipulating them in a dream world. If the party agrees to find the djinni's lamp and free him from the evil alchemist that's been using his blood to experiment, he will release them from the dream. (He also grants a wish spell to the creature that frees him, or a Ring of Djinni Summoning).
Kind of unrelated to the dungeon itself but I littered the dungeon with secret breakable walls
These walls would have any manner of things behind them but often it was a strange object, detect magic would reveal only that the object was magical and nothing else about it, when a player does a simple task with the object (i.e drinking from a goblet or poking themselves with a needle) the objects nature would be revealed and would summon a being called a primordial
these primordials differ depending on the object used and each have a different effect, often one positive and one negative. For example one would summon enemies and afterwards reward the players, or one would ask them three riddles and curse them if they got it wrong, however if they got it right he would grant them a blessing of xp and magic items.
The players have gotten paranoid at this point whenever they see any sort of ordinary looking item be it magical or not and it's incredibly fun watching them try and all decide if the item is worth the risk, then the fighter just does things with it against the advice of the party and the primordial spawns.
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I made a dungeon where its entire thing is that the monster were constructs of the dungeon that didn't spawn in until the players crossed a certain threshold with the rooms resetting every time the room's door was closed and no one was in it. Halfway through the dungeon I introduced raiders from outside the dungeon, my players did a good job with exploiting the dungeon mechanics. Do you have any interesting dungeon mechanics you would like to share?
There's one cave system my players will soon be entering with an ever-sobbing empyrean at the bottom. His cries are so loud that every minute, the players must make a Con save or take 1d6 thunder damage. The monsters in the dungeon (mostly oozes) have adapted to the loud noise and are unaffected.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
How long do you expect the party to be in the dungeon? Even an hour would be potentially 60d6 (210 avg damage, though depending on the DC it would likely be lower)
Probably about 30 minutes. The DC is 15, and they'll be 6th level when they're going through the dungeon. All of them have at least +1 to CON saves, and the sorcerer has +6. They also will be going in after a long rest, and they have a lot of healing spells.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
I was DM'ing my players through a villain one-shot where the goal was to go for a tongue-in-cheek Saturday Morning Cartoon level of villainy, rather than like... dark and violent villainy.
So anyway, with that setup, I ran them through a whole dungeon, and my favorite part was a door locked with a little computer that was designed to only allow Good People through... which took the form of a brief quiz with really obvious questions like:
"Drugs Are... A) Friggin' Sweet! B) The only way I can get through this life... C) Bad."
A really obvious, easy puzzle but luckily my players leaned into the ridiculousness. Although I was also careful to make sure there were alternatives to open the door... just in case
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I've been playing around with fog (part) filled dungeons where the visibility is reduced to 15/30/60ft, fill it with enemies with blindsight and some without (To let the party ambush those enemies through the fog). All the doors creak, so it can also make them scared when they hear a door open but can't see what entered.
I had a security system in a dungeon that ran like this, for level 3-4 PCs:
The room starts with a deep pit, a rickety, rotten plank run over it, and a wider, safer path to one side. on the other side is a long corridor leading to a pair of vault doors. The corridor is heavily trapped with poison dart and spike traps every 10 feet or so. If the party reaches the end of the corridor, the doors open to a rolling sphere trap (reduced damage due to PC level) that moves down the corridor, on to the rickety plank, and through the invisible portal in the middle.
The plank is actually sturdy disguised to look rickety. A DC 20 perception check (DC 12 investigation if you touch it) will determine it to be cleverly disguised. Detect Magic will of course detect the conjuration magic of the portal in the middle if used.
If the players pass through the portal, prior to or after they witness the sphere roll through it, will reveal an identical (but untrapped) room with the doors at the end of the corridor opening up into the vault.
Another I have used...same general level of PCs:
The party descends into a rectangular room with two levels. One level is 30 feet below the other, with a sheer cliff behind. 2 grates are located in the cliff, and 8 barrels/crates in the room. As the party enters, the door behind them shuts and poison gas starts entering in the room from the grates. Rolling initiative, the party has 2 rounds before the gas fills the lower level and knocks them out. the on their turns, the party can 1) search the crates; inside each of the crates will be either nothing, a key, a bunch of rags, a rope, and the head of a grappling hook. The rags can be stuffed into the grates to slow the gas, gaining them an extra round. The key fits a hidden door in the side wall (DC 15 Perception to notice the keyhole in the stone wall) if they search the walls. The hook and rope can be used to make a grappling hook. The hook requires a ranged attack roll (AC 15) to hook on the top of the cliff, allowing the party to climb up at normal speed without checks. Or the party can 2) attempt to scale the cliff, which requires a DC 15 Athletics check on each turn to climb up (failure means no progress, failure by more than 5 means falling down.
My favorite dungeon was in a town the party was working in.
The night of a festival, the party drinks a magical elixir at a beer stand. When they go to sleep that night, they awaken trapped in an ever-repeating day that always ends in a TPK.
Upon dying, they awaken again in their beds, just as they had the previous morning, except a bard sings them to consciousness. Each time they reset, the bard sings a different song. Turns out the bard is a djinni. The elixir was poisoned with the djinni's blood.
The djinni toys with the party as they slowly figure out he is manipulating them in a dream world. If the party agrees to find the djinni's lamp and free him from the evil alchemist that's been using his blood to experiment, he will release them from the dream. (He also grants a wish spell to the creature that frees him, or a Ring of Djinni Summoning).
Kind of unrelated to the dungeon itself but I littered the dungeon with secret breakable walls
These walls would have any manner of things behind them but often it was a strange object, detect magic would reveal only that the object was magical and nothing else about it, when a player does a simple task with the object (i.e drinking from a goblet or poking themselves with a needle) the objects nature would be revealed and would summon a being called a primordial
these primordials differ depending on the object used and each have a different effect, often one positive and one negative. For example one would summon enemies and afterwards reward the players, or one would ask them three riddles and curse them if they got it wrong, however if they got it right he would grant them a blessing of xp and magic items.
The players have gotten paranoid at this point whenever they see any sort of ordinary looking item be it magical or not and it's incredibly fun watching them try and all decide if the item is worth the risk, then the fighter just does things with it against the advice of the party and the primordial spawns.