I have come to a bit of a stand-still with designing this dungeon crawl. Essentially, the temple is one massive Mimic. I already have an idea for how the PCs to kill it (separate fights against the heart, lungs, and Liver... if mimics even have those) while acid slowly tries to digest them. But I have no idea how to proceed with doing an actual dungeon crawl with traps/puzzles and stuff that lead to his point, nor ideas for subtle hints that this place is a giant mimic. I dont want it to be a long dungeon crawl, but just at least a couple rooms to add some substance to this temple. Any ideas would be helpful.
Ya know, I think the pregnant mimics with like 20 mimic babies would add a little horror to the whole thing. Maybe it would give more of a reason for the temple-mimic to attack, to defend her young. I may very well go with that as one of the ideas!
Easy thing to do is have the structure of the 'temple' keep changing. The party tries to back-track and finds the doors they came through are now walls. If the mimic knows the party is in there it will route the passages in such a way to funnel the party to a specific point. The mimic would also go out of its way to keep the party from vulnerable spaces. What might have to happen is the party realizing that the 'walls' aren't really walls and trying to carve their way through them. Speaking of disturbing....
I was thinking about doing something similar with a mansion instead of a temple and building off the mimic-colony stuff in Tasha's. Post updates on how the adventure goes, please!
Older versions of D&D have statblocks for all kinds of mimics. Fake walls, doors, floors, ceilings, etc. Even an entire house could be a mimic. Based on that concept I'd suggest just making an entire temple filled with all sorts of mimics. Once they start to get really suspicious the entire building starts moving. The heroes now have to race for the exit or move on to the digestive track. Unless your players somehow manage to not catch on to the mimic theme, in which case they just walk right into the esophagus.
Now to mess with the players you can have mimics move around as they backtrack. Don't forget to add cloakers, darkmantles, piercers and such creatures.
For Traps: Walls closing in (make em run), suddenly opening pits with spikes or acid (after all it can mimic everything it wants), bolt spitting statues (the bolts "melt" away), sticky tentacles hanging from the ceiling, blade traps with a rythm opening and closing (just like a heart beat), rotating rooms. there's lot of options.
There are rules for mimic colonies in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, but they're pretty vague (all of the mimics have telepathy and there are juvenile mimics as well) and don't really talk about going in the colony. You would want to do things like sliding walls, floors opening, acid/green slime pits, and other structure-based things for traps. As for monsters, maybe the mimics are holding a bunch of monsters prisoner and they can sic those on the PCs as the mimics desire. For a more horror-type effect, maybe have hallways and rooms constantly shifting (this would be tough in terms of mapping), or the PCs stumble on a roomful of skeletons (undead or just normal ones) of the temple's past victims.
I have come to a bit of a stand-still with designing this dungeon crawl. Essentially, the temple is one massive Mimic. I already have an idea for how the PCs to kill it (separate fights against the heart, lungs, and Liver... if mimics even have those) while acid slowly tries to digest them. But I have no idea how to proceed with doing an actual dungeon crawl with traps/puzzles and stuff that lead to his point, nor ideas for subtle hints that this place is a giant mimic. I dont want it to be a long dungeon crawl, but just at least a couple rooms to add some substance to this temple. Any ideas would be helpful.
Maybe it has parasites or symbiotes? Maybe it’s a pregnant female and has little mimics in there somewhere?
Edited to add: on second thought, that last one is rather disturbing... maybe ignore that suggestion, unless you’re going for horror....
I live with several severe autoimmune conditions. If I don’t get back to you right away, it’s probably because I’m not feeling well.
Ya know, I think the pregnant mimics with like 20 mimic babies would add a little horror to the whole thing. Maybe it would give more of a reason for the temple-mimic to attack, to defend her young. I may very well go with that as one of the ideas!
For hints of mimic, you could have perception or investigation checks to notice structural changes. (Wasn't that door arched when we came in?)
Easy thing to do is have the structure of the 'temple' keep changing. The party tries to back-track and finds the doors they came through are now walls. If the mimic knows the party is in there it will route the passages in such a way to funnel the party to a specific point. The mimic would also go out of its way to keep the party from vulnerable spaces. What might have to happen is the party realizing that the 'walls' aren't really walls and trying to carve their way through them. Speaking of disturbing....
I was thinking about doing something similar with a mansion instead of a temple and building off the mimic-colony stuff in Tasha's. Post updates on how the adventure goes, please!
Older versions of D&D have statblocks for all kinds of mimics. Fake walls, doors, floors, ceilings, etc. Even an entire house could be a mimic. Based on that concept I'd suggest just making an entire temple filled with all sorts of mimics. Once they start to get really suspicious the entire building starts moving. The heroes now have to race for the exit or move on to the digestive track. Unless your players somehow manage to not catch on to the mimic theme, in which case they just walk right into the esophagus.
Now to mess with the players you can have mimics move around as they backtrack. Don't forget to add cloakers, darkmantles, piercers and such creatures.
I certainly shall! Thank you! Im starting to get a bit more of an idea of how to run it. Just need to do some short planning and drawing now :)
For Traps: Walls closing in (make em run), suddenly opening pits with spikes or acid (after all it can mimic everything it wants), bolt spitting statues (the bolts "melt" away), sticky tentacles hanging from the ceiling, blade traps with a rythm opening and closing (just like a heart beat), rotating rooms. there's lot of options.
Oooh, I love the heartbeat doors/blades!!!!
There are rules for mimic colonies in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, but they're pretty vague (all of the mimics have telepathy and there are juvenile mimics as well) and don't really talk about going in the colony. You would want to do things like sliding walls, floors opening, acid/green slime pits, and other structure-based things for traps. As for monsters, maybe the mimics are holding a bunch of monsters prisoner and they can sic those on the PCs as the mimics desire. For a more horror-type effect, maybe have hallways and rooms constantly shifting (this would be tough in terms of mapping), or the PCs stumble on a roomful of skeletons (undead or just normal ones) of the temple's past victims.
Or the Skeletons could also be controlled by mimic offspring like Krang's "body" from TNMT, which would make them bone-constructs(?).