My players have, by experience, learned early on that splitting up the party is usually dangerous or deadly. I’m playing Deep and Creeping Darkness from Candlekeep and I need tips on how to split up the party to atleast give my meenlocks a chance to torment my players a tiny bit even if only for flavour. I’m not sure I as DM can just make them fail a wisdom check and say “while the rest walks on, you feel drawn toward this house and away from the party”.
I'm not familiar with the adventure, but you don't necessarily need to physically split the party to achieve your goals. I've used passive scores to give special information to certain characters just to mess with them.
The wizard in my last campaign had a passive investigation of 22. In haunted ruins, I preyed on this to have him notice creepy clues no one else did, just to heighten the ambiance. The cleric with a passive insight of 20 would get whispers about suspicious things or scary things no one else could pick up on. And in my current campaign, the characters with the highest passive perception sometimes notice disembodied voices or catch movement when the others don't. Sometimes it's mechanical, because there's actually baddies there, but sometimes I do it to really sell the horror vibe of my setting.
Add a stone block trap the fills a corridor at a T or Y junction. It is okay to split the party up however you then have to design encounters for 1-2 people instead of four. so what might bean easy encounter for a full party is deadly encounter for a pair.
I would just caution not to keep them split for very long. Otherwise, you end up with half the table playing while the rest twiddles their thumbs.
I second this. maybe cause an illusion to make each half of the party think they went one way, or moved faster. that way you can temporarily split them without them getting to far afield. then when the illusion wears off, or they see through it, they can worry about backtracking to find the others.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Old School original D&D/AD&D veteran.Started playing (@1977-78) before the original bound volumes or modules. Player/DM in the process of redeveloping my world atlas from memories. Avid Fantasy/Sci-fi fan. among those who used the original AD&D rules to re-enact The Hobbit (and yes most of the dwarves still died).
Star Wars fan with an old fan-fic blog for those interested: Tales from Soma III
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
My players have, by experience, learned early on that splitting up the party is usually dangerous or deadly. I’m playing Deep and Creeping Darkness from Candlekeep and I need tips on how to split up the party to atleast give my meenlocks a chance to torment my players a tiny bit even if only for flavour. I’m not sure I as DM can just make them fail a wisdom check and say “while the rest walks on, you feel drawn toward this house and away from the party”.
I'm not familiar with the adventure, but you don't necessarily need to physically split the party to achieve your goals. I've used passive scores to give special information to certain characters just to mess with them.
The wizard in my last campaign had a passive investigation of 22. In haunted ruins, I preyed on this to have him notice creepy clues no one else did, just to heighten the ambiance. The cleric with a passive insight of 20 would get whispers about suspicious things or scary things no one else could pick up on. And in my current campaign, the characters with the highest passive perception sometimes notice disembodied voices or catch movement when the others don't. Sometimes it's mechanical, because there's actually baddies there, but sometimes I do it to really sell the horror vibe of my setting.
Add a stone block trap the fills a corridor at a T or Y junction. It is okay to split the party up however you then have to design encounters for 1-2 people instead of four. so what might bean easy encounter for a full party is deadly encounter for a pair.
Just published a map on DriveThruRPG The Forgotten Temple
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I would just caution not to keep them split for very long. Otherwise, you end up with half the table playing while the rest twiddles their thumbs.
I second this. maybe cause an illusion to make each half of the party think they went one way, or moved faster. that way you can temporarily split them without them getting to far afield. then when the illusion wears off, or they see through it, they can worry about backtracking to find the others.
Old School original D&D/AD&D veteran.Started playing (@1977-78) before the original bound volumes or modules. Player/DM in the process of redeveloping my world atlas from memories. Avid Fantasy/Sci-fi fan. among those who used the original AD&D rules to re-enact The Hobbit (and yes most of the dwarves still died).
Star Wars fan with an old fan-fic blog for those interested: Tales from Soma III