Hey guys, So in my session last night my party went off the rails...like...they couldn't even see the rails any more...trains were just a rumour in the lands they ended up in. Essentially i had to fall back onto one of my random dungeons/encounters to try and bring them into something that ould approached the rest of the story...unfortunately the particular random drop in i ended up using has been sitting waiting to be used since the early levels.
So i had more or less 4 full dungeons planned out, based off of suggestions the group had made at the end of our last session. They didn't take any of those routes this time around, instead ending up sneaking through an enemy occupied city in broad daylight and hiding in an NPC's house when they got noticed. Fortunately one of the random encounters i had from way back involved dealing with a disturbance in the basement of an NPC's house and with a bit of tweaking the map i can easily get them back to the thieves tunnels that they were originally going to look for.
Problem is that my party is 6 level 5 characters at this point. The entire dungeon for the basement deal is 11 troglodytes and 4 rust monsters in real tight confined spaces. Not even close to a threat. There is an area which overlooks a ravine that is a risk of falling into but aside from that the monsters have no terrain on their side.
How would you go about making this more threatening for the party, i'm thinking make an area where the trogs can fire at the party as they cross the ravine but that seems a bit too smart for them. So maybe i add another creature to even the odds but what would be a good fit for our motley Trog posse?
Just give the troglodytes some elites? Add troglodyte adjustments to an NPC stat block (stench save DC is based on Con, I believe). Toss in a troglodyte Druid animal handler and a troglodyte Knight to lead them and it will at least slow the PCs down. Maybe some troglodyte thugs as an elite bodyguard.
A lesson I learnt long ago is that I will make encounter maps but don't place monsters in them until I need to use them, this is from experiences like this in the past where areas I created where bypassed by players and then when I went to quickly re use them to react to something my players did months later the whole area was far to easy now.
Instead of trying to keep the same monsters can you just keep the map and then change the entire encounter out with higher level monsters scrap the Trogs and the rust monster? maybe something that fits where the party are now? Or instead of forcing a hidden door in the basement of this random house force the players to roleplay emerging from the house and sneaking back through the town? I know my players, if they hid in a random house and handily found a secret passageway to where they needed to get to, would accuse me of railroading them (or leave that house and go and search other random houses to see if every house has a secret passageway).
Problem is that my party is 6 level 5 characters at this point. The entire dungeon for the basement deal is 11 troglodytes and 4 rust monsters in real tight confined spaces. Not even close to a threat. There is an area which overlooks a ravine that is a risk of falling into but aside from that the monsters have no terrain on their side.
(see emphasis above) How tight? Are we talking like the medium sized PCs have tosqueeze through and the small PCs don't? This can have a pretty drastic effect. Especially from ranged and AOE spells or objects. Are there any traps that could stick the PCs, or even one PC, in place while the monsters attack? Constraining the environment could effectively multiply the difficulty of the encounter.
Swapping out Troglodytes for Kobolds and variants like the inventor, dragonscale and sorcerer push this to a medium encounter alone. Re-mixing the Trogs like Patangruel mentions should net you a Deadly encounter rating. Throw a Gibbering Mouther at the bottom of your ravine and see who steps off the bridge?
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
It might be more interesting to leave the encounter as is. The characters aren't challenged by the danger level of the encounter, it's the fact that it draws attention to them. You noted they are hiding in their house/basement location. It'd be unfortunate if the people they were hiding from were drawn to this home by the commotion. A true shame...
The challenge isn't to survive, it's to manage the easy encounter without drawing attention. Combat is loud. Spells and their effects are loud. People getting injured tend to scream. Can they do this quick and quiet enough?
Just give the troglodytes some elites? Add troglodyte adjustments to an NPC stat block (stench save DC is based on Con, I believe). Toss in a troglodyte Druid animal handler and a troglodyte Knight to lead them and it will at least slow the PCs down. Maybe some troglodyte thugs as an elite bodyguard.
I've added a lvl 5 Trog Druid. Who has spells linked to their location in the underdark, specifically good for making enemy fall down holes. Gust, Infestation, Fog Cloud. She also has conjure animals in her bag and will summon an enormous tentacle (CR2 huge Beast) to threaten the adventurers when they get close to the chasm. Her primary tactic will be to wildshape into a rat or beetle, hide on a ledge over the ravine and drop form to cast spells which knock them into the horrors below. I might use a secret passage that could get some of the trogs behind the adventurers to form an ambush from behind as they cross the ravine. Trogs are on their home turf and know the adventurers are coming as well as knowing the terrain.
A lesson I learnt long ago is that I will make encounter maps but don't place monsters in them until I need to use them, this is from experiences like this in the past where areas I created where bypassed by players and then when I went to quickly re use them to react to something my players did months later the whole area was far to easy now.
Instead of trying to keep the same monsters can you just keep the map and then change the entire encounter out with higher level monsters scrap the Trogs and the rust monster? maybe something that fits where the party are now? Or instead of forcing a hidden door in the basement of this random house force the players to roleplay emerging from the house and sneaking back through the town? I know my players, if they hid in a random house and handily found a secret passageway to where they needed to get to, would accuse me of railroading them (or leave that house and go and search other random houses to see if every house has a secret passageway).
I usually do this, i've a few drop in maps which i use as and when i need, street battles, forest clearings and the such. But when its a dungeon i tend to build to specific story. Usually it's not a problem, I move the Boss monster closer to where the entrance is, add a couple more and then make something harder for the finale. This time the party have already seen the trogs, they kicked the door in to the cellar last session. So Trogs it must be. As for the railroading thing, a little background, the party have contacts within the thieves guild, in fact they got into the city via some thieve tunnels which led to the basement of an inn. The city has an extensive undercity, a whole network of people living below the streets, at this point about 50% of the buildings they've visited in the city have had someway or other of getting underground. It's not a stretch to suggest that the burial vault of a long forgotten hero, in the basement of the home where his family still resides several generations later, might have suffered a collapse into the catacombs beneath. They still won't have an easy way of getting to their location if they go underground, i've an extensive network made of dungeons and sewers which link from map to map so they'd still have to navigate effectively and either dodge the Thieves and use the older more dangerous and less stable tunnels (they've been warned not to visit the tunnels without an escort or they will be dealt with as a threat), fight their way through the guild or try and find an exit into another property.
Problem is that my party is 6 level 5 characters at this point. The entire dungeon for the basement deal is 11 troglodytes and 4 rust monsters in real tight confined spaces. Not even close to a threat. There is an area which overlooks a ravine that is a risk of falling into but aside from that the monsters have no terrain on their side.
(see emphasis above) How tight? Are we talking like the medium sized PCs have tosqueeze through and the small PCs don't? This can have a pretty drastic effect. Especially from ranged and AOE spells or objects. Are there any traps that could stick the PCs, or even one PC, in place while the monsters attack? Constraining the environment could effectively multiply the difficulty of the encounter.
Swapping out Troglodytes for Kobolds and variants like the inventor, dragonscale and sorcerer push this to a medium encounter alone. Re-mixing the Trogs like Patangruel mentions should net you a Deadly encounter rating. Throw a Gibbering Mouther at the bottom of your ravine and see who steps off the bridge?
Good Luck!
Not tight enough, 5' wide mostly so single file fights, with a party of 6 thats still uncomfortable. They recently went through a kobold encounter so i don't really want to double that up, the Kobold tribe nearby are almost a guild, they are brought in by the city when the sewers are needed to be repaired or expanded. The bridge is definitely the strongest attacking position, i'm hoping with a couple of spell slingers in the right place i can make that ravine a nightmare for them.
It might be more interesting to leave the encounter as is. The characters aren't challenged by the danger level of the encounter, it's the fact that it draws attention to them. You noted they are hiding in their house/basement location. It'd be unfortunate if the people they were hiding from were drawn to this home by the commotion. A true shame...
The challenge isn't to survive, it's to manage the easy encounter without drawing attention. Combat is loud. Spells and their effects are loud. People getting injured tend to scream. Can they do this quick and quiet enough?
Then it's interesting in a different way.
OO, interesting..i like that a lot, they've got a civilian in the house and if the trogs can get past the party to raid the now open upstairs there would definitely be a commotion. Being pursued through the undercity by the guard whilst avoiding the thieves guild and whatever other nasties can be found there would really make the encounter different. I feel like a fight below ground wouldn't be as loud unless something like thunderwave is being thrown around. Of course if the guard are going door to door and hear a lot of noise it'd be bad anyway.
Just homebrew some more powerful troglodytes. Increase their AC, hit points, hit bonus and damage dice. Don't waste the players time on encounters that they will mince through, it's not satisfying for anyone and still eats into the game time.
Alternatively, the cave has been invaded by Umber Hulks, and the trogs remains are lying around.
So in my session last night my party went off the rails...like...they couldn't even see the rails any more...trains were just a rumour in the lands they ended up in. Essentially i had to fall back onto one of my random dungeons/encounters to try and bring them into something that ould approached the rest of the story...unfortunately the particular random drop in i ended up using has been sitting waiting to be used since the early levels.
Maybe also worth mentioning - this is obviously a real pain when it happens and you might need to think about how your adventures are playing out in terms of plot hooks and drive. How did the players end up going so far off your story?
There are two common reasons that this can happen.
The DM caused it: The party didn't have sufficient plot hooks to think to go to those places, they weren't aware that they existed, or they were under too much pressure being hunted to be able to stop. If this is the case, then you need to personally invest the PCs into the story in some way - a good way is to have an NPC befriend them, and if they like that NPC, have them go missing, be killed, kidnapped etc. to invest the PCs into the story.
The party caused it: If the party ignored clearly signposted story elements, or showed no interest in the story, then you need to talk to them out of game and explain to them that the world is not a limitless sandbox and that you have to prep the game. Some players like the idea of messing with the DM's plans (and even kind of exult in it) which is a childish and stupid way to play the game. I've experienced this and this means that the players think that they can beat you. Warn them that certain areas are dangerous, and drop an adult dragon on them if they insist on ignoring your story.
It was a combination of things. They forgot certain elements to the story that they had written down, like that the Thieves guild was looking into ways of helping them cross the city unhindered. They realised something that i hadn't thought of as far as one of the NPC's they encountered goes. The Librarian in the city they are in is a Dragon who hordes books, she and a wizard in the city (who recently died) had access to a planar vault where he secured dangerous artefacts, she secured dangerous books. When they went to the wizards tower and met her in the planar vault, they realised that they could exit the vault in the library on the north side of the city instead of the wizard tower in the south where they have a lot of friends in the resistance, safe houses etc. So thats what they did and ended up on the other side of the city behind enemy lines away form the various NPC interactions that they could have taken. Bad dice rolls then led them the wrong way through the streets, they had a couple of guard uniforms but not enough for the whole group to disguise, the very first time they were questioned by guard they rolled abysmally and didn't manage to bluff them, the guards called for assistance. After that it snowballed, come nightfall the guard will have summoned bound demons to hunt them rebels down...
So in short, they know where they're meant to be going, they know several ways to get there, and they've taken the route with the most amount of potential for the whole city to come down on them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hey guys,
So in my session last night my party went off the rails...like...they couldn't even see the rails any more...trains were just a rumour in the lands they ended up in.
Essentially i had to fall back onto one of my random dungeons/encounters to try and bring them into something that ould approached the rest of the story...unfortunately the particular random drop in i ended up using has been sitting waiting to be used since the early levels.
So i had more or less 4 full dungeons planned out, based off of suggestions the group had made at the end of our last session. They didn't take any of those routes this time around, instead ending up sneaking through an enemy occupied city in broad daylight and hiding in an NPC's house when they got noticed. Fortunately one of the random encounters i had from way back involved dealing with a disturbance in the basement of an NPC's house and with a bit of tweaking the map i can easily get them back to the thieves tunnels that they were originally going to look for.
Problem is that my party is 6 level 5 characters at this point. The entire dungeon for the basement deal is 11 troglodytes and 4 rust monsters in real tight confined spaces. Not even close to a threat. There is an area which overlooks a ravine that is a risk of falling into but aside from that the monsters have no terrain on their side.
How would you go about making this more threatening for the party, i'm thinking make an area where the trogs can fire at the party as they cross the ravine but that seems a bit too smart for them. So maybe i add another creature to even the odds but what would be a good fit for our motley Trog posse?
Just give the troglodytes some elites? Add troglodyte adjustments to an NPC stat block (stench save DC is based on Con, I believe). Toss in a troglodyte Druid animal handler and a troglodyte Knight to lead them and it will at least slow the PCs down. Maybe some troglodyte thugs as an elite bodyguard.
A lesson I learnt long ago is that I will make encounter maps but don't place monsters in them until I need to use them, this is from experiences like this in the past where areas I created where bypassed by players and then when I went to quickly re use them to react to something my players did months later the whole area was far to easy now.
Instead of trying to keep the same monsters can you just keep the map and then change the entire encounter out with higher level monsters scrap the Trogs and the rust monster? maybe something that fits where the party are now? Or instead of forcing a hidden door in the basement of this random house force the players to roleplay emerging from the house and sneaking back through the town? I know my players, if they hid in a random house and handily found a secret passageway to where they needed to get to, would accuse me of railroading them (or leave that house and go and search other random houses to see if every house has a secret passageway).
(see emphasis above) How tight? Are we talking like the medium sized PCs have to squeeze through and the small PCs don't? This can have a pretty drastic effect. Especially from ranged and AOE spells or objects. Are there any traps that could stick the PCs, or even one PC, in place while the monsters attack? Constraining the environment could effectively multiply the difficulty of the encounter.
Swapping out Troglodytes for Kobolds and variants like the inventor, dragonscale and sorcerer push this to a medium encounter alone. Re-mixing the Trogs like Patangruel mentions should net you a Deadly encounter rating. Throw a Gibbering Mouther at the bottom of your ravine and see who steps off the bridge?
Good Luck!
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
It might be more interesting to leave the encounter as is. The characters aren't challenged by the danger level of the encounter, it's the fact that it draws attention to them. You noted they are hiding in their house/basement location. It'd be unfortunate if the people they were hiding from were drawn to this home by the commotion. A true shame...
The challenge isn't to survive, it's to manage the easy encounter without drawing attention. Combat is loud. Spells and their effects are loud. People getting injured tend to scream. Can they do this quick and quiet enough?
Then it's interesting in a different way.
Thanks for all the help guys. I've tweaked the encounter a lot and made it fit a bit better with them.
I've added a lvl 5 Trog Druid. Who has spells linked to their location in the underdark, specifically good for making enemy fall down holes. Gust, Infestation, Fog Cloud. She also has conjure animals in her bag and will summon an enormous tentacle (CR2 huge Beast) to threaten the adventurers when they get close to the chasm. Her primary tactic will be to wildshape into a rat or beetle, hide on a ledge over the ravine and drop form to cast spells which knock them into the horrors below. I might use a secret passage that could get some of the trogs behind the adventurers to form an ambush from behind as they cross the ravine. Trogs are on their home turf and know the adventurers are coming as well as knowing the terrain.
I usually do this, i've a few drop in maps which i use as and when i need, street battles, forest clearings and the such. But when its a dungeon i tend to build to specific story. Usually it's not a problem, I move the Boss monster closer to where the entrance is, add a couple more and then make something harder for the finale. This time the party have already seen the trogs, they kicked the door in to the cellar last session. So Trogs it must be.
As for the railroading thing, a little background, the party have contacts within the thieves guild, in fact they got into the city via some thieve tunnels which led to the basement of an inn. The city has an extensive undercity, a whole network of people living below the streets, at this point about 50% of the buildings they've visited in the city have had someway or other of getting underground. It's not a stretch to suggest that the burial vault of a long forgotten hero, in the basement of the home where his family still resides several generations later, might have suffered a collapse into the catacombs beneath. They still won't have an easy way of getting to their location if they go underground, i've an extensive network made of dungeons and sewers which link from map to map so they'd still have to navigate effectively and either dodge the Thieves and use the older more dangerous and less stable tunnels (they've been warned not to visit the tunnels without an escort or they will be dealt with as a threat), fight their way through the guild or try and find an exit into another property.
Not tight enough, 5' wide mostly so single file fights, with a party of 6 thats still uncomfortable. They recently went through a kobold encounter so i don't really want to double that up, the Kobold tribe nearby are almost a guild, they are brought in by the city when the sewers are needed to be repaired or expanded. The bridge is definitely the strongest attacking position, i'm hoping with a couple of spell slingers in the right place i can make that ravine a nightmare for them.
OO, interesting..i like that a lot, they've got a civilian in the house and if the trogs can get past the party to raid the now open upstairs there would definitely be a commotion. Being pursued through the undercity by the guard whilst avoiding the thieves guild and whatever other nasties can be found there would really make the encounter different. I feel like a fight below ground wouldn't be as loud unless something like thunderwave is being thrown around. Of course if the guard are going door to door and hear a lot of noise it'd be bad anyway.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Thanks everyone
Just homebrew some more powerful troglodytes. Increase their AC, hit points, hit bonus and damage dice. Don't waste the players time on encounters that they will mince through, it's not satisfying for anyone and still eats into the game time.
Alternatively, the cave has been invaded by Umber Hulks, and the trogs remains are lying around.
Maybe also worth mentioning - this is obviously a real pain when it happens and you might need to think about how your adventures are playing out in terms of plot hooks and drive. How did the players end up going so far off your story?
There are two common reasons that this can happen.
The DM caused it: The party didn't have sufficient plot hooks to think to go to those places, they weren't aware that they existed, or they were under too much pressure being hunted to be able to stop. If this is the case, then you need to personally invest the PCs into the story in some way - a good way is to have an NPC befriend them, and if they like that NPC, have them go missing, be killed, kidnapped etc. to invest the PCs into the story.
The party caused it: If the party ignored clearly signposted story elements, or showed no interest in the story, then you need to talk to them out of game and explain to them that the world is not a limitless sandbox and that you have to prep the game. Some players like the idea of messing with the DM's plans (and even kind of exult in it) which is a childish and stupid way to play the game. I've experienced this and this means that the players think that they can beat you. Warn them that certain areas are dangerous, and drop an adult dragon on them if they insist on ignoring your story.
It was a combination of things.
They forgot certain elements to the story that they had written down, like that the Thieves guild was looking into ways of helping them cross the city unhindered.
They realised something that i hadn't thought of as far as one of the NPC's they encountered goes. The Librarian in the city they are in is a Dragon who hordes books, she and a wizard in the city (who recently died) had access to a planar vault where he secured dangerous artefacts, she secured dangerous books. When they went to the wizards tower and met her in the planar vault, they realised that they could exit the vault in the library on the north side of the city instead of the wizard tower in the south where they have a lot of friends in the resistance, safe houses etc. So thats what they did and ended up on the other side of the city behind enemy lines away form the various NPC interactions that they could have taken.
Bad dice rolls then led them the wrong way through the streets, they had a couple of guard uniforms but not enough for the whole group to disguise, the very first time they were questioned by guard they rolled abysmally and didn't manage to bluff them, the guards called for assistance.
After that it snowballed, come nightfall the guard will have summoned bound demons to hunt them rebels down...
So in short, they know where they're meant to be going, they know several ways to get there, and they've taken the route with the most amount of potential for the whole city to come down on them.