I want to do a halloween oneshot with a death game gauntlet like Saw, im using the 5e system because thats the only one im familiar with, how can I make it challenging for my players (we are just using humans, no classes with base stats, just bare bones stuff https://19216811.cam/
Without using class features or anything, you'll want to make most encounters puzzle based and avoid any combat that isn't meant to threaten, scare, or kill your party. You might write in a combat encounter expecting the party to run and hide when they're clearly outmatched, but they won't, so people will die unless you provide an alternate win condition in these sorts of combats. In horror movies, it rarely comes down to simply killing the monster with a stick, and so should it be here. Let them find it's weakness, force or through a portal, or steal it's control gem. Something like that.
One of the problems with a gauntlet like that is, if someone really botches their first challenge and their character dies, they don't get to interact with the rest of the game. Resurrecting them would kind of ruin the stakes of the game, but at the same time, watching other people play D&D is less fun than joining in. So you might consider finding a way to give dead characters some limited ability to aid or advise the surviving characters. Or, if there's an option for the players of dead characters to help operate the traps/challenges, that could work too.
Sorry, I just realized my previous post wasn't super helpful (and probably sounded a bit critical of the idea), so let me try again.
I've had some good reactions to traps that have a layer of misdirection to them. Sometimes players are frustrated when they run across totally hidden traps, but getting hit by one you just mis-judged can be a little easier to take. If you scale up your traps to a deadly level and keep them interesting, you could just make a one-shot dungeon out of those alone and keep the players entertained as they die in awkward and embarrassing ways.
For example: at one point I used the classic "swinging maces across the hallway" obstacle, where the characters would have to slip past 3 swinging spiked pendulums to proceed. After watching the timing of the obstacle for a minute, it seemed pretty easy to predict. But the real trap was the Glyph of Warding under the 2nd spiked pendulum, which cast Hold Person on anyone trying to walk past it. (This could also be a trapdoor or something like that, if you don't want a magical trap.)
Another one was a pit trap in a dug-out tunnel, where the floor was tangled with roots and debris (on both sides of the pit) so trying to leap over it wasn't an automatic success. A rickety plank of wood was placed across the pit for anyone brave enough to make an Acrobatics roll for it, but if they did, they'd notice the bear traps and spikes hidden in the roots and dirt on the other side. Anyone who just made a big leap across was in for a rough landing.
The only other one I can remember off the top of my head, had spears and darts coming out of wall traps, but the characters saw that crawling along the floor looked safe. When they were halfway across, the kobolds lurking in the ceiling started throwing glass bottles full of rusty nails and salt at them.
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I want to do a halloween oneshot with a death game gauntlet like Saw, im using the 5e system because thats the only one im familiar with, how can I make it challenging for my players (we are just using humans, no classes with base stats, just bare bones stuff https://19216811.cam/
Without using class features or anything, you'll want to make most encounters puzzle based and avoid any combat that isn't meant to threaten, scare, or kill your party. You might write in a combat encounter expecting the party to run and hide when they're clearly outmatched, but they won't, so people will die unless you provide an alternate win condition in these sorts of combats. In horror movies, it rarely comes down to simply killing the monster with a stick, and so should it be here. Let them find it's weakness, force or through a portal, or steal it's control gem. Something like that.
You could pull ideas from Tomb of Annihilation and scale the dangers to the party's level. It's mean, but that sounds like the goal
One of the problems with a gauntlet like that is, if someone really botches their first challenge and their character dies, they don't get to interact with the rest of the game. Resurrecting them would kind of ruin the stakes of the game, but at the same time, watching other people play D&D is less fun than joining in. So you might consider finding a way to give dead characters some limited ability to aid or advise the surviving characters. Or, if there's an option for the players of dead characters to help operate the traps/challenges, that could work too.
Sorry, I just realized my previous post wasn't super helpful (and probably sounded a bit critical of the idea), so let me try again.
I've had some good reactions to traps that have a layer of misdirection to them. Sometimes players are frustrated when they run across totally hidden traps, but getting hit by one you just mis-judged can be a little easier to take. If you scale up your traps to a deadly level and keep them interesting, you could just make a one-shot dungeon out of those alone and keep the players entertained as they die in awkward and embarrassing ways.
For example: at one point I used the classic "swinging maces across the hallway" obstacle, where the characters would have to slip past 3 swinging spiked pendulums to proceed. After watching the timing of the obstacle for a minute, it seemed pretty easy to predict. But the real trap was the Glyph of Warding under the 2nd spiked pendulum, which cast Hold Person on anyone trying to walk past it. (This could also be a trapdoor or something like that, if you don't want a magical trap.)
Another one was a pit trap in a dug-out tunnel, where the floor was tangled with roots and debris (on both sides of the pit) so trying to leap over it wasn't an automatic success. A rickety plank of wood was placed across the pit for anyone brave enough to make an Acrobatics roll for it, but if they did, they'd notice the bear traps and spikes hidden in the roots and dirt on the other side. Anyone who just made a big leap across was in for a rough landing.
The only other one I can remember off the top of my head, had spears and darts coming out of wall traps, but the characters saw that crawling along the floor looked safe. When they were halfway across, the kobolds lurking in the ceiling started throwing glass bottles full of rusty nails and salt at them.