I'm working on a puzzle for my party, where they're all in separate rooms but can see each other. They're each going to have a task to do in their room, but they're horribly unequipped to do it. However, a party member will be an expert in that field. So they have to walk 1 member through how to do their task, while listening to a different party member's instructions so they can accomplish their own task. I'm struggling to finish the last piece of the chain.
The characters:
A necromancer, who spent in game time learning to perform autopsies
A wizard artificer
A paladin warlock (*in a previous campaign, different characters created a mega magic scythe and gave it the soul of a god, which is now this character's patron. He doesn't have the scythe, since it's sentient it acts as any other god would)
A bard
Another paladin
What I have so far:
Artificer has a dead body, with detailed instructions on how a broken device works carved into their bones/organs/etc (Still have to decide what the device does). If he cuts wrong he'll lose the instructions, so necromancer has to instruct him.
Pali-lock has the broken device (TBD) which artificer has to help him fix. Bard has many pieces representing the god scythe, but only the pali-lock knows the lore on how the god was created. The pieces aren't actually big magic things, but when combined will create a portal out for everyone (make sense based on its lore, all about gates and stuff). So pali-lock has to help him put the pieces together correctly
Paladin is in a room where the floor is made of pressure plates, and nozzles filling everyone's rooms with poison gas. They don't activate if stepped on and come out in a specific pattern, matching the steps to a traditional dance which Bard was to help him perform, buying them time to not die by delaying the poison
To round this out, I need something for our Paladin to help the necromancer with, but I'm stuck. The Paladin is a followers of Persana, had a soldier background, and as a Triton can communicate ideas to sea creatures, but all his other traits are fully combat focused.
I also need to decide what the device does and why it's urgent it gets repaired.
Does your group like this kind of thing - if not you may want to test run something simpler many groups do not like puzzles in general and incredibly complex ones even less.
Hey, I love a good puzzle and, actually, this seems like an interesting RP opportunity.
Does your Triton speak primordial? Could the paladin be trapped in a pipe room with a water elemental? It has been used in magic experiments (or not) and has seen people work in the room before and could tell the Triton how to connect some pipes to allow magic ichor to flow into the Bard's room - it is needed to activate the portal device once it's constructed. It will do this in exchange for its freedom (just flushing it down a drain, or something). The Triton needs to translate the instructions.
I'm a little unclear about what you need for the device - is it a major plot McGuffin? Surely it would need to fit into your main story somehow.
He doesn't know Primordial, but the Triton is the only one who speaks Abyssal! That's a good idea, I can re-flavor it to fit the language.
As for the device, I thought of something. They're in different rooms, so even if the portal is successfully made, only the bard would be able to access it. So by repairing the device, the pali-lock can unlock the rooms and let everyone meet up. I'll just have to add some sort of boot up sequence, so if this is finished too early they can't all just trade tasks
Yes, my group enjoys puzzles. They've recently been itching for a good dungeon, and have had a lot of combat recently, so it feels like a good time to switch gears on them. This is just one floor of a larger dungeon I'm making, but this will be the trickiest puzzle. For the rest of the dungeon, there will be some combat and some rooms meant to further flesh out the over arching story of this campaign (very eldritch in nature. This dungeon has strong eldritch themes, but this puzzle is very early on before the eldritch influence really starts taking over)
I'm wondering how, mechanically, this puzzle will be resolved. Is it just "everyone rolls with advantage because the other party member is giving them the help action" or is there something more robust determining how well characters describe what to do as well as determining how well the unskilled characters follow instructions?
Just asking because I could see a version of this that just resolves with every character just saying "I say X" "ok, I do X."
It's an incredibly cool idea and if the players actually have the knowledge their characters are supposed to have it could be extremely cool & fun. The problem I forsee though is that at the table it plays out more like this:
-----------------------------------------------
Artificer: I need help to dissect a body, because there's something written on the bones.
Necromancer: Can I use my character's expertise to explain to figure out how to dissect it?
DM: Yes, roll Intelligence with Adv.
Necromancer: 18!
DM: Spends 5 minutes describing in detail how to do the dissection.
Necromancer: I repeat that to the Artificer.
Artificer: I do what the necromancer said, what does the writing on the bones say?
--------------------------------------
^^ that doesn't seem like much of a puzzle or much fun for the players.
The only alternative I see, is for you to write up a book of lore/knowledge and give it to each player to study before hand. Unless of course the person playing the Artificer is an engineer in real life, the one playing the necromancer is a biologist/doctor in real life, the one playing the paladin has an anthropology degree in real life, and the bard is a dancer in real life.
It's an incredibly cool idea and if the players actually have the knowledge their characters are supposed to have it could be extremely cool & fun. The problem I forsee though is that at the table it plays out more like this:
-----------------------------------------------
Artificer: I need help to dissect a body, because there's something written on the bones.
Necromancer: Can I use my character's expertise to explain to figure out how to dissect it?
DM: Yes, roll Intelligence with Adv.
Necromancer: 18!
DM: Spends 5 minutes describing in detail how to do the dissection.
Necromancer: I repeat that to the Artificer.
Artificer: I do what the necromancer said, what does the writing on the bones say?
--------------------------------------
^^ that doesn't seem like much of a puzzle or much fun for the players.
The only alternative I see, is for you to write up a book of lore/knowledge and give it to each player to study before hand. Unless of course the person playing the Artificer is an engineer in real life, the one playing the necromancer is a biologist/doctor in real life, the one playing the paladin has an anthropology degree in real life, and the bard is a dancer in real life.
Yeah this kind of thing is what I was getting at with my comment. Unless you have a mechanical solution for how this puzzle is going to work, it's going to go like this.
It's an incredibly cool idea and if the players actually have the knowledge their characters are supposed to have it could be extremely cool & fun. The problem I forsee though is that at the table it plays out more like this:
-----------------------------------------------
Artificer: I need help to dissect a body, because there's something written on the bones.
Necromancer: Can I use my character's expertise to explain to figure out how to dissect it?
DM: Yes, roll Intelligence with Adv.
Necromancer: 18!
DM: Spends 5 minutes describing in detail how to do the dissection.
Necromancer: I repeat that to the Artificer.
Artificer: I do what the necromancer said, what does the writing on the bones say?
--------------------------------------
^^ that doesn't seem like much of a puzzle or much fun for the players.
The only alternative I see, is for you to write up a book of lore/knowledge and give it to each player to study before hand. Unless of course the person playing the Artificer is an engineer in real life, the one playing the necromancer is a biologist/doctor in real life, the one playing the paladin has an anthropology degree in real life, and the bard is a dancer in real life.
Yeah this kind of thing is what I was getting at with my comment. Unless you have a mechanical solution for how this puzzle is going to work, it's going to go like this.
Yeah, this is the sort of puzzle that doesn't work well, because it relies on character knowledge that the players cannot possibly have. It also has the potential problem of: what happens if the important roll fails? If the autopsy doesn't happen correctly because a 3 was rolled, what then?
I'd consider reworking into something where the characters have to perform in-game actions that affect the state of things in the other players' cells, and they'll have to experiment to figure out how it all works. (You probably also need some kind of in-game clock to prevent them mucking around forever, and it also will likely need to be way easier than you think it will so they don't get stuck, and it doesn't drag out for too long.
(I will admit, I'm not a big fan of explicit puzzles like these in RPGs, because they're so hard to make work.)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I'm working on a puzzle for my party, where they're all in separate rooms but can see each other. They're each going to have a task to do in their room, but they're horribly unequipped to do it. However, a party member will be an expert in that field. So they have to walk 1 member through how to do their task, while listening to a different party member's instructions so they can accomplish their own task. I'm struggling to finish the last piece of the chain.
The characters:
A necromancer, who spent in game time learning to perform autopsies
A wizard artificer
A paladin warlock (*in a previous campaign, different characters created a mega magic scythe and gave it the soul of a god, which is now this character's patron. He doesn't have the scythe, since it's sentient it acts as any other god would)
A bard
Another paladin
What I have so far:
Artificer has a dead body, with detailed instructions on how a broken device works carved into their bones/organs/etc (Still have to decide what the device does). If he cuts wrong he'll lose the instructions, so necromancer has to instruct him.
Pali-lock has the broken device (TBD) which artificer has to help him fix. Bard has many pieces representing the god scythe, but only the pali-lock knows the lore on how the god was created. The pieces aren't actually big magic things, but when combined will create a portal out for everyone (make sense based on its lore, all about gates and stuff). So pali-lock has to help him put the pieces together correctly
Paladin is in a room where the floor is made of pressure plates, and nozzles filling everyone's rooms with poison gas. They don't activate if stepped on and come out in a specific pattern, matching the steps to a traditional dance which Bard was to help him perform, buying them time to not die by delaying the poison
To round this out, I need something for our Paladin to help the necromancer with, but I'm stuck. The Paladin is a followers of Persana, had a soldier background, and as a Triton can communicate ideas to sea creatures, but all his other traits are fully combat focused.
I also need to decide what the device does and why it's urgent it gets repaired.
Any ideas/input would be super appreciated!!
Does your group like this kind of thing - if not you may want to test run something simpler many groups do not like puzzles in general and incredibly complex ones even less.
Hey, I love a good puzzle and, actually, this seems like an interesting RP opportunity.
Does your Triton speak primordial? Could the paladin be trapped in a pipe room with a water elemental? It has been used in magic experiments (or not) and has seen people work in the room before and could tell the Triton how to connect some pipes to allow magic ichor to flow into the Bard's room - it is needed to activate the portal device once it's constructed. It will do this in exchange for its freedom (just flushing it down a drain, or something). The Triton needs to translate the instructions.
I'm a little unclear about what you need for the device - is it a major plot McGuffin? Surely it would need to fit into your main story somehow.
He doesn't know Primordial, but the Triton is the only one who speaks Abyssal! That's a good idea, I can re-flavor it to fit the language.
As for the device, I thought of something. They're in different rooms, so even if the portal is successfully made, only the bard would be able to access it. So by repairing the device, the pali-lock can unlock the rooms and let everyone meet up. I'll just have to add some sort of boot up sequence, so if this is finished too early they can't all just trade tasks
Yes, my group enjoys puzzles. They've recently been itching for a good dungeon, and have had a lot of combat recently, so it feels like a good time to switch gears on them. This is just one floor of a larger dungeon I'm making, but this will be the trickiest puzzle. For the rest of the dungeon, there will be some combat and some rooms meant to further flesh out the over arching story of this campaign (very eldritch in nature. This dungeon has strong eldritch themes, but this puzzle is very early on before the eldritch influence really starts taking over)
I'm wondering how, mechanically, this puzzle will be resolved. Is it just "everyone rolls with advantage because the other party member is giving them the help action" or is there something more robust determining how well characters describe what to do as well as determining how well the unskilled characters follow instructions?
Just asking because I could see a version of this that just resolves with every character just saying "I say X" "ok, I do X."
It's an incredibly cool idea and if the players actually have the knowledge their characters are supposed to have it could be extremely cool & fun. The problem I forsee though is that at the table it plays out more like this:
-----------------------------------------------
Artificer: I need help to dissect a body, because there's something written on the bones.
Necromancer: Can I use my character's expertise to explain to figure out how to dissect it?
DM: Yes, roll Intelligence with Adv.
Necromancer: 18!
DM: Spends 5 minutes describing in detail how to do the dissection.
Necromancer: I repeat that to the Artificer.
Artificer: I do what the necromancer said, what does the writing on the bones say?
--------------------------------------
^^ that doesn't seem like much of a puzzle or much fun for the players.
The only alternative I see, is for you to write up a book of lore/knowledge and give it to each player to study before hand. Unless of course the person playing the Artificer is an engineer in real life, the one playing the necromancer is a biologist/doctor in real life, the one playing the paladin has an anthropology degree in real life, and the bard is a dancer in real life.
Yeah this kind of thing is what I was getting at with my comment. Unless you have a mechanical solution for how this puzzle is going to work, it's going to go like this.
Yeah, this is the sort of puzzle that doesn't work well, because it relies on character knowledge that the players cannot possibly have. It also has the potential problem of: what happens if the important roll fails? If the autopsy doesn't happen correctly because a 3 was rolled, what then?
I'd consider reworking into something where the characters have to perform in-game actions that affect the state of things in the other players' cells, and they'll have to experiment to figure out how it all works. (You probably also need some kind of in-game clock to prevent them mucking around forever, and it also will likely need to be way easier than you think it will so they don't get stuck, and it doesn't drag out for too long.
(I will admit, I'm not a big fan of explicit puzzles like these in RPGs, because they're so hard to make work.)