Im a new-ish Dm and I was wanting to make my games more horror so was wondering how other DMs do this. Any good ideas or good monsters to use? What has worked for you in the past?
All help would be great. Thanks to all those who respond.
I would suggest before anything else ask your players if there are any topics that they deem inappropriate. The horror genre is great, but there are times that it crosses lines that not everyone is ok with. Best to know your audience and what not.
That being said mystery and the unknown can be truly terrifying if done right. A good reference that I really liked, and adapted to one of my games was a podcast anthology series called the Old Gods of Appalachia. The writers on that show do an amazing job of describing things that are just conceivable enough that you can wrap your head around it, but just mysterious enough that you fear for the characters involved.
D&D's combat system does not lend itself well to horror, seeing as it is turned based, can sometimes move a bit slowly, and very quickly becomes about folks crunching the numbers and thinking of the stat blocks. That is not to say there are not horrifying things you can do in combat, just that, if your goal is scaring your players, you want to minimize the combat portion of the encounter.
Outside of combat, here are a few things you can do to set the stage:
1. Atmospheric storytelling (think notes scribbled on walls, corpses huddled in a corner locked in an embrace, doors with long dried blood, claw marks on them, and no body to be seen, etc.). You want to focus on things that give the players an uneasy feeling that might give some clues to what kind of monster they are hunting (say, bleeding eyes on corpses for a psychic-based creature; giant claw marks for a monstrous one). Be sure to also describe the setting itself in spooky terms, such as describing cyclopean architecture, horrifying bas reliefs with themes like human sacrifice and such, etc. (consider reading something like At the Mountains of Madness for some inspiration)
2. Labyrinthian setting where your players feel like they are trapped inside a maze, cave system, spooky mansion, etc. so that feeling of "how long does this go on and are we lost?" really sets in.
3. Nothing quite adds to player paranoia like knowing one person in the party received information the others did not. Perception/investigation/arcana/etc. checks, and only giving information to those who beat the high DC. Or something like a Wisdom saving throw, and giving some kind of penalty to the lowest roll with instructions that they are compelled to try and hide their penalty.
4. Traps - Traps make the party weary, though they can slow down gameplay if used too much as the party will check everything and that might break the fourth wall and take everyone out of the horror. I would focus more on mental traps--like a Contingency Spell with an underlying Phantasmal Force, to play with characters minds as that, in turn, requires the players to start roleplaying with altered minds.
5. If playing in-person, choose the right atmospheric elements--maybe play with the lights dimmed and put on some quiet spooky music in the background.
I utilized the Sanity and Madness rules for a Lovecraftian inspired horror campaign.
I also designed combat and environmental encounters that left the players wondering if they were real or hallucinations. Those also included some of the suggestions above (like labyrinths, atmospheric storytelling, etc.).
On the Lovecraftian front, one thing that scared the b'jeezus out me just for the immense pressure of the situation was a section of the Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth video game called Attack of the Fishermen, you cna find it on youtube but the basics of it are, you have no weapons, you have no armour, you are alone at an Inn in your room and have to push furniture in to place to stop the locals from breaking into your room and killing you. Transfering that to D&D would be akin to a series of skill challenges with increasiong difficulties and consequences for failure, you could also have a look at the Dread rpg which uses Jenga blocks to ramp up the pressure, it sounds odd but it does work, I would recommend wathcing a series (featuring Will Wheaton among others) called Tabletop which gives a good overview fo the Dread mechanics.
Ultimately though fear requires you players to be invested in the situation.
Check out Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft for some great horror monster ideas. Also, there's a fabulous primer in the beginning of that campaign setting on how to run horror campaigns, which is useful for anyone who wants to throw in some horror elements.
Having the party hear things they can't see is a great way to build tension. Bring all their senses into play when narrating a scene - unnatural temperature, shifting visuals, phantom tastes, eerie sounds, unsettling sensations. The more you can make the scene feel like something they can't put their finger on is wrong, the more they will scare themselves.
I once tossed my players into the Shadowfell and had the entire landscape gaslight them. They'd be looking at a landmark in the distance, look away to talk to their companions, and the landmark would be in a slightly different location when they looked back - as if it'd always been there. Mountains don't just up and move, do they??
By far, though, the most I scared my players was when I introduced a faceless little girl in a dungeon. She was singing to herself and dancing in a circle. She was actually a cloaker in disguise and would attack if the party got violent, but really she was just lonely and looking for some innocent playmates. I almost had a player nope out of the whole dungeon because she creeped him out, lol.
Routinely expose players to overpowered enemies and unbalanced encounters giving them a temporary out or escape so as not to just destroy them right off the bat-- that way the players that feel tension going into each encounter and not knowing whether or not they've stumbled across something that isn't to be trifled with.
The most scared I've ever been as a player hasn't been when we knew we couldn't win, but when we didn't know what to expect and couldn't afford to be too cavalier.
Of course this style of game isn't for everyone, and you should clarify your players if they would prefer an aesthetically scary game (gruesome descriptions, ghouls and spooky stuff) or if they themselves would like to feel a little vicarious fear through their characters. Let them know going in that maybe every encounter doesn't have a traditional solution.
Have the players periodically roll a d20, but never tell them why. It’ll make them nervous every time, especially if you periodically sigh at the outcome.
I am putting together a horror style game which I intend to run, and I am working heavily on the psychological side of how to adjust the game to make it more worrying and tense for the players, so that their actions as characters will reflect this. Obviously, I still want it to be fun!
Some of the things I am working through for this are:
Control. Players feel confident and brave because they have control over things. They know where they are, what they can do, how good they are at some things, how bad they are at others. This has a lot of crossover to Player Agency, which is similar but different. The goal is to reduce their Control without reducing their Agency. Having a character go mad and lash out at the nearest creature is a method of madness which affects their Agency more than their Control. The ways I have considered thus far are:
track their HP for them, and don't tell them what it is.
track their spell slots for them, and don't tell them what they have left.
remove their vision. I made a monster which reduces visual distance, and cannot enter where you can see. It's going to freak peple out.
roll their damage for them. If needed, arrange pre-game that nobody has feats or abilities that let them choose to reroll things a set number of times - always rerolling a 1 or 2 for damage is fine, because the DM can do that too.
Add a timer. a physical timer which they can see, which reminds them that they need to work quickly to get through this alive.
Roll their damage whether they hit or not - they say what they roll, then you roll some dice, write down something on a iece of paper behind the screen, and if it did hit, you deduct the damage. If they roll below 8, then narrate the miss, but anything 8 or over gets a roll, it just might not get deducted! Them not knowing whether they hit the enemy will really affect their confidence!
Aside from this, make sure that the vibe is right - creepy, tense music adds to it, a sense of urgency in your descriptions to create the urgent mood. The players should be acting more afraid once they don't kow their HP, and don't know if they are hitting or not, and don't know how much damage they're doing, and can't see anything despite their precious darkvision. They should also be acting hastily with a timer, urgent music, and an urgent delivery of DM lines and description. These two things, when combined with a creepy, spooky, or horrific plot should conspire to make a good mood for the game!
The last thing is more of making sure it works - a session 0 where you explain in rough terms the theme of the game, explain that you will be making some adjustments to the way the game is played to establish a horror theme. make sure they are down for being survivors, not heroes. Explain that they need to know when to run, and that not every fight here will be one they can win. As long as the players are down for this sort of game, then it wil lgo well. No amount of adjustments and creepy storytelling will get a party of leeroy-jenkins' to take it seriously, and their characters should die if that is the case, because that is what a horror game should do.
Have the players periodically roll a d20, but never tell them why. It’ll make them nervous every time, especially if you periodically sigh at the outcome.
The converse also works - roll your own d20 and say “hmmm” and then do nothing or write something down. I’ll sometimes do this even when it doesn’t mean anything, just to keep everyone on their toes.
Nothing is more scary than when dice are rolled—either by DM or player—and the player doesn’t know why.
Have the players periodically roll a d20, but never tell them why. It’ll make them nervous every time, especially if you periodically sigh at the outcome.
The converse also works - roll your own d20 and say “hmmm” and then do nothing or write something down. I’ll sometimes do this even when it doesn’t mean anything, just to keep everyone on their toes.
Nothing is more scary than when dice are rolled—either by DM or player—and the player doesn’t know why.
Same vein as asking someone to remind you of their passive perception and then saying, "Okay, carry on." I would do that when my players took too long to strategize.
As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, you kind of need the players to "buy into" the horror theme, because if they're intent on being silly then nothing you do as a DM will make the game be creepy, unsettling, or horrific. I've been in several horror-themed games (both as DM and player) where all the pieces were there but the mood just wouldn't stick. I don't mean to discourage you, but it might take a few tries to get it right, because horror is tricky to do well in an RPG. That being said, here are a couple of things that have worked for me as a DM. Maybe something here will inspire you.
You might want to start small and create slow-build horror to put the players on edge, rather than introducing grotesque or gory things right away. For example, when arriving in a new village, the player characters might just notice some odd quirk about the way the villagers behave, speak or act: they don't have any mirrors anywhere, or nobody ever leaves livestock outdoors, or all candles and fires are extinguished by sundown, etc. As you lay additional clues that something is wrong, see if you can get the players to realize on their own what they've discovered, rather than directly pointing out that they found an important clue (at least at first; you might have to do this anyway if they're totally missing it). Naturally, no single NPC should have more than a scrap or two of information, usually in the form of rumors or third-hand stories. Your goal as the DM would be to have the players wondering "what's actually going on?" and draw out the sense of unease as they try to figure out exactly what the monster/threat is, how to kill/eliminate it, and where to find it. Once the party is progressing toward the story's conclusion, then the unsettling or grotesque descriptions start to increase -- basically part of a slow reveal of the real horror at work in the adventure.
Also, while it's hard to get players to be frightened on behalf of their own characters, you can sometimes get them anxious over peril that's aimed at their friends. This is kind of a cheap tactic and it stops working if you over-use it, but if the players don't know exactly what they're dealing with yet, and one of their friends is afflicted by it or being targeted, it can add urgency and tension to the story. For example: the townsfolk warn travelers against going into the forests at night, but the inconsistent reasons people give just make it seem like idle superstition... until a friend gets dragged into the forest by a shadowy creature, and comes back with no memory of the event, but has wasting disease that seems to have no cure, and the townsfolk insist "you're all cursed now" and are too afraid to let any of them get near. Again, no single NPC should be able to explain what the real problem is- the players have to scramble for clues while their friend's condition deteriorates. I guess that's more about tension than horror, but every horror story needs some tension, right?
It depends on level, and player experience. But ...
For horror, go slow, and give hints. 'Wait - did you hear that? Roll perception.' And when they do, if it's low, tell them they see nothing, but there was a sound, they're sure. If they role high, tell them they saw ... just a shadow, something fast, alien, with too many appendages.
Then, nothing. Maybe they find some sort of trace - drool, or slime, or something that's been gnawed by many large teeth.
Then tell them they're feeling watched - something patient, hungry ... malevolent.
Then jump them whenever it's convenient. Like, 'oh look, ancient runes - who can read this?' And while everyone is staring at the wall, trying to see if the scribbles matches their language proficiencies, long black tentacles grab Timmy! *Munch!*
Also, darkness. Best for inexperienced characters, but a friend of mine made the best noob trap. The players arrive at a solid wall of darkness. They try all the newbie things - poking it, shining light on it or waving a torch around in it: Impenetrable darkness. Conveniently, there is an O ring on the wall - so they tie a rope to that, and venture cautiously into the darkness.
Now, the darkness is just populated by a few skeletons - one of them cuts the rope. The players panic, and fighting blind they have the same chance of hitting a skeleton as hitting each other. They flee the scene, out into the light, taking attacks of opportunity and everything, having killed not one skeleton. Brilliant. Wouldn't work with experienced players, though.
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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.
One of the things I am considering implementing is making a two-stage stealth/perception system to use in the game.
Nothing overly complex, but I want to reward players with a higher passive perception a little, but also freak them out a bit!
Here's the plan:
Creepy Monster(tm) is creeping up on the party in Creepytown. It rolls a stealth roll, and rolls a 14, for a total of 22 (it's a sneaky monster).
Anyone with a Passive Perception lower than 14 is oblivious, they don't notice anything.
Anyone with Passive Perception of 14 or more rolls a perception check. If they roll less than 22, they are sure they heard something, but they can't see anything (something moving from the corner of their eye, or a rustling in the alleyway, but when they look, nothing is there). If they roll a 22+ then they glimpse something moving, and they are sure of it. It just slips out of sight, down the alleyway, into a side street, or behind a dumpster. When they investigate, the monster has slipped/teleported/turned invisible/etc. and is no longer present.
This should build for them a sense of forbidding. It also allows you to introduce multiple creepy monsters which are tracking them, and which may be stealthy enough to not prompt a roll. The players may quickly notice you're rolling more and more dice (as the monsters start to swarm) and this is the sort of meta-knowledge you want to give them. They don't know exactly what you're rolling, but if they notice you picking up an entire handful of D20's and rolling them, when before you were rolling one or two, they will realise the situation is escalating!
Im a new-ish Dm and I was wanting to make my games more horror so was wondering how other DMs do this. Any good ideas or good monsters to use? What has worked for you in the past?
All help would be great. Thanks to all those who respond.
I would suggest before anything else ask your players if there are any topics that they deem inappropriate. The horror genre is great, but there are times that it crosses lines that not everyone is ok with. Best to know your audience and what not.
That being said mystery and the unknown can be truly terrifying if done right. A good reference that I really liked, and adapted to one of my games was a podcast anthology series called the Old Gods of Appalachia. The writers on that show do an amazing job of describing things that are just conceivable enough that you can wrap your head around it, but just mysterious enough that you fear for the characters involved.
D&D's combat system does not lend itself well to horror, seeing as it is turned based, can sometimes move a bit slowly, and very quickly becomes about folks crunching the numbers and thinking of the stat blocks. That is not to say there are not horrifying things you can do in combat, just that, if your goal is scaring your players, you want to minimize the combat portion of the encounter.
Outside of combat, here are a few things you can do to set the stage:
1. Atmospheric storytelling (think notes scribbled on walls, corpses huddled in a corner locked in an embrace, doors with long dried blood, claw marks on them, and no body to be seen, etc.). You want to focus on things that give the players an uneasy feeling that might give some clues to what kind of monster they are hunting (say, bleeding eyes on corpses for a psychic-based creature; giant claw marks for a monstrous one). Be sure to also describe the setting itself in spooky terms, such as describing cyclopean architecture, horrifying bas reliefs with themes like human sacrifice and such, etc. (consider reading something like At the Mountains of Madness for some inspiration)
2. Labyrinthian setting where your players feel like they are trapped inside a maze, cave system, spooky mansion, etc. so that feeling of "how long does this go on and are we lost?" really sets in.
3. Nothing quite adds to player paranoia like knowing one person in the party received information the others did not. Perception/investigation/arcana/etc. checks, and only giving information to those who beat the high DC. Or something like a Wisdom saving throw, and giving some kind of penalty to the lowest roll with instructions that they are compelled to try and hide their penalty.
4. Traps - Traps make the party weary, though they can slow down gameplay if used too much as the party will check everything and that might break the fourth wall and take everyone out of the horror. I would focus more on mental traps--like a Contingency Spell with an underlying Phantasmal Force, to play with characters minds as that, in turn, requires the players to start roleplaying with altered minds.
5. If playing in-person, choose the right atmospheric elements--maybe play with the lights dimmed and put on some quiet spooky music in the background.
I utilized the Sanity and Madness rules for a Lovecraftian inspired horror campaign.
I also designed combat and environmental encounters that left the players wondering if they were real or hallucinations. Those also included some of the suggestions above (like labyrinths, atmospheric storytelling, etc.).
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
On the Lovecraftian front, one thing that scared the b'jeezus out me just for the immense pressure of the situation was a section of the Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth video game called Attack of the Fishermen, you cna find it on youtube but the basics of it are, you have no weapons, you have no armour, you are alone at an Inn in your room and have to push furniture in to place to stop the locals from breaking into your room and killing you. Transfering that to D&D would be akin to a series of skill challenges with increasiong difficulties and consequences for failure, you could also have a look at the Dread rpg which uses Jenga blocks to ramp up the pressure, it sounds odd but it does work, I would recommend wathcing a series (featuring Will Wheaton among others) called Tabletop which gives a good overview fo the Dread mechanics.
Ultimately though fear requires you players to be invested in the situation.
Check out Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft for some great horror monster ideas. Also, there's a fabulous primer in the beginning of that campaign setting on how to run horror campaigns, which is useful for anyone who wants to throw in some horror elements.
Having the party hear things they can't see is a great way to build tension. Bring all their senses into play when narrating a scene - unnatural temperature, shifting visuals, phantom tastes, eerie sounds, unsettling sensations. The more you can make the scene feel like something they can't put their finger on is wrong, the more they will scare themselves.
I once tossed my players into the Shadowfell and had the entire landscape gaslight them. They'd be looking at a landmark in the distance, look away to talk to their companions, and the landmark would be in a slightly different location when they looked back - as if it'd always been there. Mountains don't just up and move, do they??
By far, though, the most I scared my players was when I introduced a faceless little girl in a dungeon. She was singing to herself and dancing in a circle. She was actually a cloaker in disguise and would attack if the party got violent, but really she was just lonely and looking for some innocent playmates. I almost had a player nope out of the whole dungeon because she creeped him out, lol.
Routinely expose players to overpowered enemies and unbalanced encounters giving them a temporary out or escape so as not to just destroy them right off the bat-- that way the players that feel tension going into each encounter and not knowing whether or not they've stumbled across something that isn't to be trifled with.
The most scared I've ever been as a player hasn't been when we knew we couldn't win, but when we didn't know what to expect and couldn't afford to be too cavalier.
Of course this style of game isn't for everyone, and you should clarify your players if they would prefer an aesthetically scary game (gruesome descriptions, ghouls and spooky stuff) or if they themselves would like to feel a little vicarious fear through their characters. Let them know going in that maybe every encounter doesn't have a traditional solution.
Have the players periodically roll a d20, but never tell them why. It’ll make them nervous every time, especially if you periodically sigh at the outcome.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
if your playing in a place you have control of.
13 minutes into your session be telling a scary story and have someone kill all the lights.
Then scream like a 6 year old scared by a spider. While the lights are out put on a gorilla mask
"So you got the information from the merchant, what are you going to do now?"
*while players discuss*
Roll percentage or something other than a d20
Say:
"Oh that's interesting..."
or
"Ha!..."
or
"Ooh...I don't know if they're ready for that.."
or
smile and rub your hands together.
"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
If you want to scare your players, there's a post about that somewhere.
DMing:
Dragons of Stormwreck Isle
Playing:
None sadly.
Optimization Guides:
Literally Too Angry to Die - A Guide to Optimizing a Barbarian
I am putting together a horror style game which I intend to run, and I am working heavily on the psychological side of how to adjust the game to make it more worrying and tense for the players, so that their actions as characters will reflect this. Obviously, I still want it to be fun!
Some of the things I am working through for this are:
The goal is to reduce their Control without reducing their Agency. Having a character go mad and lash out at the nearest creature is a method of madness which affects their Agency more than their Control. The ways I have considered thus far are:
Aside from this, make sure that the vibe is right - creepy, tense music adds to it, a sense of urgency in your descriptions to create the urgent mood. The players should be acting more afraid once they don't kow their HP, and don't know if they are hitting or not, and don't know how much damage they're doing, and can't see anything despite their precious darkvision. They should also be acting hastily with a timer, urgent music, and an urgent delivery of DM lines and description. These two things, when combined with a creepy, spooky, or horrific plot should conspire to make a good mood for the game!
The last thing is more of making sure it works - a session 0 where you explain in rough terms the theme of the game, explain that you will be making some adjustments to the way the game is played to establish a horror theme. make sure they are down for being survivors, not heroes. Explain that they need to know when to run, and that not every fight here will be one they can win. As long as the players are down for this sort of game, then it wil lgo well. No amount of adjustments and creepy storytelling will get a party of leeroy-jenkins' to take it seriously, and their characters should die if that is the case, because that is what a horror game should do.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
Look at your monster sheet and say oh my.
Then start counting out a bunch of 1d4
Hmm going to use my blood dice for this one.
Say, Make a saving throw vs death magic.
The converse also works - roll your own d20 and say “hmmm” and then do nothing or write something down. I’ll sometimes do this even when it doesn’t mean anything, just to keep everyone on their toes.
Nothing is more scary than when dice are rolled—either by DM or player—and the player doesn’t know why.
Same vein as asking someone to remind you of their passive perception and then saying, "Okay, carry on." I would do that when my players took too long to strategize.
As someone mentioned earlier in the thread, you kind of need the players to "buy into" the horror theme, because if they're intent on being silly then nothing you do as a DM will make the game be creepy, unsettling, or horrific. I've been in several horror-themed games (both as DM and player) where all the pieces were there but the mood just wouldn't stick. I don't mean to discourage you, but it might take a few tries to get it right, because horror is tricky to do well in an RPG. That being said, here are a couple of things that have worked for me as a DM. Maybe something here will inspire you.
You might want to start small and create slow-build horror to put the players on edge, rather than introducing grotesque or gory things right away. For example, when arriving in a new village, the player characters might just notice some odd quirk about the way the villagers behave, speak or act: they don't have any mirrors anywhere, or nobody ever leaves livestock outdoors, or all candles and fires are extinguished by sundown, etc. As you lay additional clues that something is wrong, see if you can get the players to realize on their own what they've discovered, rather than directly pointing out that they found an important clue (at least at first; you might have to do this anyway if they're totally missing it). Naturally, no single NPC should have more than a scrap or two of information, usually in the form of rumors or third-hand stories. Your goal as the DM would be to have the players wondering "what's actually going on?" and draw out the sense of unease as they try to figure out exactly what the monster/threat is, how to kill/eliminate it, and where to find it. Once the party is progressing toward the story's conclusion, then the unsettling or grotesque descriptions start to increase -- basically part of a slow reveal of the real horror at work in the adventure.
Also, while it's hard to get players to be frightened on behalf of their own characters, you can sometimes get them anxious over peril that's aimed at their friends. This is kind of a cheap tactic and it stops working if you over-use it, but if the players don't know exactly what they're dealing with yet, and one of their friends is afflicted by it or being targeted, it can add urgency and tension to the story. For example: the townsfolk warn travelers against going into the forests at night, but the inconsistent reasons people give just make it seem like idle superstition... until a friend gets dragged into the forest by a shadowy creature, and comes back with no memory of the event, but has wasting disease that seems to have no cure, and the townsfolk insist "you're all cursed now" and are too afraid to let any of them get near. Again, no single NPC should be able to explain what the real problem is- the players have to scramble for clues while their friend's condition deteriorates. I guess that's more about tension than horror, but every horror story needs some tension, right?
It depends on level, and player experience. But ...
For horror, go slow, and give hints. 'Wait - did you hear that? Roll perception.' And when they do, if it's low, tell them they see nothing, but there was a sound, they're sure. If they role high, tell them they saw ... just a shadow, something fast, alien, with too many appendages.
Then, nothing. Maybe they find some sort of trace - drool, or slime, or something that's been gnawed by many large teeth.
Then tell them they're feeling watched - something patient, hungry ... malevolent.
Then jump them whenever it's convenient. Like, 'oh look, ancient runes - who can read this?' And while everyone is staring at the wall, trying to see if the scribbles matches their language proficiencies, long black tentacles grab Timmy! *Munch!*
Also, darkness. Best for inexperienced characters, but a friend of mine made the best noob trap. The players arrive at a solid wall of darkness. They try all the newbie things - poking it, shining light on it or waving a torch around in it: Impenetrable darkness. Conveniently, there is an O ring on the wall - so they tie a rope to that, and venture cautiously into the darkness.
Now, the darkness is just populated by a few skeletons - one of them cuts the rope. The players panic, and fighting blind they have the same chance of hitting a skeleton as hitting each other. They flee the scene, out into the light, taking attacks of opportunity and everything, having killed not one skeleton. Brilliant. Wouldn't work with experienced players, though.
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.
One of the things I am considering implementing is making a two-stage stealth/perception system to use in the game.
Nothing overly complex, but I want to reward players with a higher passive perception a little, but also freak them out a bit!
Here's the plan:
Creepy Monster(tm) is creeping up on the party in Creepytown. It rolls a stealth roll, and rolls a 14, for a total of 22 (it's a sneaky monster).
Anyone with a Passive Perception lower than 14 is oblivious, they don't notice anything.
Anyone with Passive Perception of 14 or more rolls a perception check. If they roll less than 22, they are sure they heard something, but they can't see anything (something moving from the corner of their eye, or a rustling in the alleyway, but when they look, nothing is there). If they roll a 22+ then they glimpse something moving, and they are sure of it. It just slips out of sight, down the alleyway, into a side street, or behind a dumpster. When they investigate, the monster has slipped/teleported/turned invisible/etc. and is no longer present.
This should build for them a sense of forbidding. It also allows you to introduce multiple creepy monsters which are tracking them, and which may be stealthy enough to not prompt a roll. The players may quickly notice you're rolling more and more dice (as the monsters start to swarm) and this is the sort of meta-knowledge you want to give them. They don't know exactly what you're rolling, but if they notice you picking up an entire handful of D20's and rolling them, when before you were rolling one or two, they will realise the situation is escalating!
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!