in my game, the current arc revolves around monsters being created from the dreams and nightmares of a cursed child- the party will need to go through an astral sea type demiplane which is essentially her mindscape in order to destroy the curse affecting her- which is turning out pretty difficult to design encounters for; (for reference, the party is made up of a rogue, blood hunter, paladin, barbarian, and 2 warlocks- all level 5)
the general idea i have so far is that they enter the dreamscape to attempt a rush through each room, waking up and restarting the gauntlet each time they are killed in that plane- structured similarly to games such as hades, binding of isaac, or pressure. The only real trial i have designed is the one at the end of the road, where the girl takes the role of a kidnapped princess in her imagination, guarded in a castle by a wyvern
Why the roguelike structure? What is that adding? (Full disclosure, I have a personal bias against the genre in general, and find it really doesn’t work in tabletop.) But my feelings aside, how would it work? One party member drops and they all get sent back to start? Or does it have to be a tpk? What if one drops early, what does that player do while the rest of the party continues? Are thru going to have to keep dealing with the same encounters in the same order? Why would they succeed the second time other than they got luckier die rolls? And if the encounters stay completed, why start again at the beginning?
But for the encounters, I’d probably use regular monsters, and then re-skin them to reflect the girl’s personality. Her fears and things she likes. So not all of them would be combat encounters. Maybe there’s one where they have to eat lots of candy, and make progressively harder con checks. Failure means they vomit and have the poisoned condition until they rest.
Thinking about your curse will also help you build encounters because the curse is modifier to the child. In other words kids imagination as depicted as kids stories but x and the curse will give you that but x. For example if the curse corrupts the child's mind then maybe their imaginary friend becomes a mutated monster or a demon.
As for random elements like rogue likes there are a few options
you can simply include some randomness in your creative process and do the random generation in advance. Wolves or lions flip a coin and design an encounter with them
Alternatively you can design a couple of encounters and apply random modifiers. I recommend modifiers that change the appearance of all creatures and give a single ability to all creatures for example. Giant rabbits, what ever the monster they become rabbits, rabbit people, giant rabbits ect... they also gain a bonus action to jump their movement speed without provoking an attack of opportunity and can be bribed with carrots.
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in my game, the current arc revolves around monsters being created from the dreams and nightmares of a cursed child- the party will need to go through an astral sea type demiplane which is essentially her mindscape in order to destroy the curse affecting her- which is turning out pretty difficult to design encounters for; (for reference, the party is made up of a rogue, blood hunter, paladin, barbarian, and 2 warlocks- all level 5)
the general idea i have so far is that they enter the dreamscape to attempt a rush through each room, waking up and restarting the gauntlet each time they are killed in that plane- structured similarly to games such as hades, binding of isaac, or pressure. The only real trial i have designed is the one at the end of the road, where the girl takes the role of a kidnapped princess in her imagination, guarded in a castle by a wyvern
thank you for any help in advance
Why the roguelike structure? What is that adding? (Full disclosure, I have a personal bias against the genre in general, and find it really doesn’t work in tabletop.) But my feelings aside, how would it work? One party member drops and they all get sent back to start? Or does it have to be a tpk? What if one drops early, what does that player do while the rest of the party continues? Are thru going to have to keep dealing with the same encounters in the same order? Why would they succeed the second time other than they got luckier die rolls? And if the encounters stay completed, why start again at the beginning?
But for the encounters, I’d probably use regular monsters, and then re-skin them to reflect the girl’s personality. Her fears and things she likes. So not all of them would be combat encounters. Maybe there’s one where they have to eat lots of candy, and make progressively harder con checks. Failure means they vomit and have the poisoned condition until they rest.
Thinking about your curse will also help you build encounters because the curse is modifier to the child. In other words kids imagination as depicted as kids stories but x and the curse will give you that but x. For example if the curse corrupts the child's mind then maybe their imaginary friend becomes a mutated monster or a demon.
As for random elements like rogue likes there are a few options