So I'm running sunless citadel right now and my players found the tunnel to the underdark. They bypassed it for now, but said they may come back to it. I havent the first clue about how to build an underdark side adventure. Any thoughts?
Do you want the side adventure to connect to your main story or not? If so, can we get a little detail about your main story? It's a great opportunity to seed something that connects to the larger world.
If not, I'd probably plan by doing something like this:
If you're running the Sunless Citadel then your adventurers are likely low levels, so be careful about picking monsters that are appropriate. There's a lot of nasty stuff lurking in the underdark that is more appropriate for higher level characters. Go filter monsters by environment and scroll through the things in the underdark. Pick a monster of CR somewhere between 3 and 5 (depending on what's appropriate for your party) that has flavor text that inspires you, and build the little side-arc around that as a boss. Some examples off the top of my head after doing the same:
The party stumbles across a small colony of Neogi who have been enslaving members of the goblin and kobold tribes who wandered too far away. You can have Yusadryl and Meepo (for the Kobolds) or Durnn, or Grenl (goblins) tell the party that members of their tribes have been going missing. They might even offer rewards for finding them and allow safe passage through the Citadel, who knows. The party encounters enslaved goblins and kobolds and a mix of random low-level underdark creatures on their way to discovering the colony, where they encounter a Negoi Master with some enslaved creatures.
A mage's keep was swallowed into the earth in another era. When she was alive, the mage crafted a flameskull to keep watch over her possessions. The party has a few random encounters before coming across the ruins. Allow them to loot some of the cool leftover things for a little while before the flameskull finds them or they find it, because once they encounter it, it'll take awhile before they figure out that it's never going to stop coming back. Retreat becomes necessary, lest they want to suffer fireballs every hour.
The planet's molten core has torn open a portal to the elemental plane of fire. The party fights steam mephits, magma mephits, and fire snakes on the way down. They find a Salamander leading the expedition force. Now the party has to figure out how to close the portal, giving them something to do/research when they return to the surface. Maybe other rifts are opening to the elemental planes in other parts of the world as well
I do not know the Sunless Citadel adventure, but my question is, what is the PCs motivation? Do they have a hook as to why do they ignore the tunnel for now? Is there some motivation missing in the scenario as to why they should want to delve down into the underdark?
"The tunnel appears to lead off into the depths. The dank smell and waft of cold, damp air seems to indicate that the tunnel goes much deeper. It could even lead into the Underdark, the vast network of caves inhabited by fell creatures. Everyone has heard of the stories of dark elves, dark dwarves, creatures that suck out your mind or eat your brains which thrive in the Underdark. You feel reluctant to enter the dark caves."
If the players have spoken with the kobolds ...
"Even the kobolds only venture a short distance into the caves to hunt for food. Some of them never return. When they do venture into the caves they are as silent as possible in order to gather food and hunt while not attracting unwanted attention. The kobolds know to fear the Underdark".
If you want to allow the campaign to develop organically then if the characters do decide to be foolish and venture into the Underdark they could be captured by a band of dark elves returning from a surface raid and added to the gang of prisoners they have taken to keep as slaves ... then segue into the Out of the Abyss hardcover storyline which starts with the characters trying to escape from dark elf captivity as slaves :)
P.S. What you choose to do in terms of possible encounters depends on what kind of world you want to run.
Is it a realistic world where the characters will need to assess opponents and decide when it is either best to approach or to flee? Are there challenges that the party will not be able to defeat? Or are you running a world which is adjusted to the character's level? Can the characters venture everywhere and eventually know they will never encounter something too challenging to defeat, that no matter what they do, they can always choose to fight an opponent and will know that they will win?
It's a good idea to scale challenges some of the time since no one wants a TPK ... but if the characters insist on making foolish choices then if there are no reasonable consequences for those decisions then the players tend to continue to make more and larger foolish choices which will eventually disrupt any campaign.
In this case, if the Underdark truly is dangerous in your world then only placing encounters the party can handle won't pay off in the long run.
I'll be running that with my players when they get there. They know it's there but have other things going on.
I simply collapsed the tunnel. I won't even mention it. But if the players push then I have a purple worm encounter ready for them. The path which is dark will lead to a cavern with numerous large holes that go beyond their sight. There will be skeletal pieces all over the cavern. This is the worms umm. Deposit area and smells horrible. If players go in the ground will rumble and the worm will show up.
So it doesn't have to go to the underdark. It can go anywhere and to anything.
So I've somewhat built my own world. In the overall campaign, which uses all of TYP, there is a wizard bent on raising a demon from the depths. He is responsible for taking the Jade totem and removing the 3 blessed gem stones and scattering them across the continent. The PCs are not 100% aware of the wizard yet, they are just hunting down the gemstones. They will find a gem and a clue for the next gem in the gulthias tree at the end of SC. I'm turning Belak into a minion of this evil wizard
I'll be running that with my players when they get there. They know it's there but have other things going on.
I simply collapsed the tunnel. I won't even mention it. But if the players push then I have a purple worm encounter ready for them. The path which is dark will lead to a cavern with numerous large holes that go beyond their sight. There will be skeletal pieces all over the cavern. This is the worms umm. Deposit area and smells horrible. If players go in the ground will rumble and the worm will show up.
So it doesn't have to go to the underdark. It can go anywhere and to anything.
So I ran this adventure a while ago and built two separate side adventures so to speak for the two entrances to the underdark. The one branching off the Grove area was a sort of bugbear hunting ground that featured two bugbears with a deathdog as the hunting party. There were also a few darkmantles (one of which was eating a dead bugbear, two hiding on the ceiling nearby) and a lake area featuring a group of territorial Merrow.
The area branching off the Citadel level was used by the kobolds as an alternate passageway in and out of the citadel via a mine shaft on the far end. This one had more trappings of sunken sections of the citadel, hidden walls, ritual chambers etc. It also had a fight between a kobold hunting party and a pack of gnolls they could interfere with. There were other things like a pod of ankheg in an egg chamber, a wounded displacer beast resting in the shadows and various traps. The big fight however was an Armanite demon and a merregon protecting it who had been bound against their will by Ashardalon as punishment for deeds long in the past. This fight included some fun lair effects as well.
I'd be happy to share maps and other info if you or anyone else wants
No worries, I've uploaded all the material for it here. If there is another place you'd prefer to download from just let me know and I can upload there instead.
What you'll find in that zipped folder is: 2 versions of the maps for each main area + a final boss battlemap (I made the maps myself in Wonderdraft/Inkarnate with the exception of the final map I found on imgur. I'm an amateur map maker so they'll likely not be to professional standards). A GM overview of each area that shows you the intended setup for tokens and traps. A script for each area (in both Word doc and PDF) that outlines trap triggers, monster and loot placement, along with NPC dialog and branching choices. Tokens for every monster included in each area and stat blocks for any custom monsters (3 total). Finally you'll find a document for the lair actions for 2 fights (Merrow Shallow Priestess and Armanite Boss Battle).
If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. Keep in mind this is an amateur attempt at world building/combat balancing, I am absolutely no professional.
Note: Due to party sizes/levels when I ran this, the intended order, party size and Average Party Level (APL) is as follows:
Bugbear Hunting Ground: Party size 4 (+1 level 1 NPC Erky Timbers), APL: 3 - This area should be run first (entry via Grove)
Kobold Passageway/Demon Prison: Party Size 5 (no NPCs), APL: 5 - This area should be run last (entry via Citadel - may need to dissuade party from entering early)
I realise that the maps seem to be in the wrong order; originally I decided to hand wave a reason they couldn't go that way. Later I chose to make these side quests to give them a taste of more challenging areas. If the players have not killed the kobolds, I suggest using the kobolds as the hook to send the party down to the second area via the Citadel. In my game, I had a kobold stop them before they left the citadel after completing the main adventure, and told them Yusdrayl needed their assistance. I had her bargain with them in order to have them go down into the underdark in search of her missing people.
I've downloaded and checked the files, they seem to be openable with winrar. However I've provided an alternative for you instead. Instead of zipping the files I've uploaded them directly to a temporary google drive. You can follow the links and right click on each folder to download the contents, or you can download files individually.
So I'm running sunless citadel right now and my players found the tunnel to the underdark. They bypassed it for now, but said they may come back to it. I havent the first clue about how to build an underdark side adventure. Any thoughts?
Do you want the side adventure to connect to your main story or not? If so, can we get a little detail about your main story? It's a great opportunity to seed something that connects to the larger world.
If not, I'd probably plan by doing something like this:
If you're running the Sunless Citadel then your adventurers are likely low levels, so be careful about picking monsters that are appropriate. There's a lot of nasty stuff lurking in the underdark that is more appropriate for higher level characters. Go filter monsters by environment and scroll through the things in the underdark. Pick a monster of CR somewhere between 3 and 5 (depending on what's appropriate for your party) that has flavor text that inspires you, and build the little side-arc around that as a boss. Some examples off the top of my head after doing the same:
"To die would be an awfully big adventure"
I do not know the Sunless Citadel adventure, but my question is, what is the PCs motivation? Do they have a hook as to why do they ignore the tunnel for now? Is there some motivation missing in the scenario as to why they should want to delve down into the underdark?
The easiest way would be to narrate it ...
"The tunnel appears to lead off into the depths. The dank smell and waft of cold, damp air seems to indicate that the tunnel goes much deeper. It could even lead into the Underdark, the vast network of caves inhabited by fell creatures. Everyone has heard of the stories of dark elves, dark dwarves, creatures that suck out your mind or eat your brains which thrive in the Underdark. You feel reluctant to enter the dark caves."
If the players have spoken with the kobolds ...
"Even the kobolds only venture a short distance into the caves to hunt for food. Some of them never return. When they do venture into the caves they are as silent as possible in order to gather food and hunt while not attracting unwanted attention. The kobolds know to fear the Underdark".
If you want to allow the campaign to develop organically then if the characters do decide to be foolish and venture into the Underdark they could be captured by a band of dark elves returning from a surface raid and added to the gang of prisoners they have taken to keep as slaves ... then segue into the Out of the Abyss hardcover storyline which starts with the characters trying to escape from dark elf captivity as slaves :)
P.S. What you choose to do in terms of possible encounters depends on what kind of world you want to run.
Is it a realistic world where the characters will need to assess opponents and decide when it is either best to approach or to flee? Are there challenges that the party will not be able to defeat? Or are you running a world which is adjusted to the character's level? Can the characters venture everywhere and eventually know they will never encounter something too challenging to defeat, that no matter what they do, they can always choose to fight an opponent and will know that they will win?
It's a good idea to scale challenges some of the time since no one wants a TPK ... but if the characters insist on making foolish choices then if there are no reasonable consequences for those decisions then the players tend to continue to make more and larger foolish choices which will eventually disrupt any campaign.
In this case, if the Underdark truly is dangerous in your world then only placing encounters the party can handle won't pay off in the long run.
I'll be running that with my players when they get there. They know it's there but have other things going on.
I simply collapsed the tunnel. I won't even mention it. But if the players push then I have a purple worm encounter ready for them. The path which is dark will lead to a cavern with numerous large holes that go beyond their sight. There will be skeletal pieces all over the cavern. This is the worms umm. Deposit area and smells horrible. If players go in the ground will rumble and the worm will show up.
So it doesn't have to go to the underdark. It can go anywhere and to anything.
So I've somewhat built my own world. In the overall campaign, which uses all of TYP, there is a wizard bent on raising a demon from the depths. He is responsible for taking the Jade totem and removing the 3 blessed gem stones and scattering them across the continent. The PCs are not 100% aware of the wizard yet, they are just hunting down the gemstones. They will find a gem and a clue for the next gem in the gulthias tree at the end of SC. I'm turning Belak into a minion of this evil wizard
I like this idea a lot.
So I ran this adventure a while ago and built two separate side adventures so to speak for the two entrances to the underdark. The one branching off the Grove area was a sort of bugbear hunting ground that featured two bugbears with a deathdog as the hunting party. There were also a few darkmantles (one of which was eating a dead bugbear, two hiding on the ceiling nearby) and a lake area featuring a group of territorial Merrow.
The area branching off the Citadel level was used by the kobolds as an alternate passageway in and out of the citadel via a mine shaft on the far end. This one had more trappings of sunken sections of the citadel, hidden walls, ritual chambers etc. It also had a fight between a kobold hunting party and a pack of gnolls they could interfere with. There were other things like a pod of ankheg in an egg chamber, a wounded displacer beast resting in the shadows and various traps. The big fight however was an Armanite demon and a merregon protecting it who had been bound against their will by Ashardalon as punishment for deeds long in the past. This fight included some fun lair effects as well.
I'd be happy to share maps and other info if you or anyone else wants
Hey, yeah I'd love that if you don't mind.
No worries, I've uploaded all the material for it here. If there is another place you'd prefer to download from just let me know and I can upload there instead.
What you'll find in that zipped folder is: 2 versions of the maps for each main area + a final boss battlemap (I made the maps myself in Wonderdraft/Inkarnate with the exception of the final map I found on imgur. I'm an amateur map maker so they'll likely not be to professional standards). A GM overview of each area that shows you the intended setup for tokens and traps. A script for each area (in both Word doc and PDF) that outlines trap triggers, monster and loot placement, along with NPC dialog and branching choices. Tokens for every monster included in each area and stat blocks for any custom monsters (3 total). Finally you'll find a document for the lair actions for 2 fights (Merrow Shallow Priestess and Armanite Boss Battle).
If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. Keep in mind this is an amateur attempt at world building/combat balancing, I am absolutely no professional.
Note: Due to party sizes/levels when I ran this, the intended order, party size and Average Party Level (APL) is as follows:
Bugbear Hunting Ground: Party size 4 (+1 level 1 NPC Erky Timbers), APL: 3 - This area should be run first (entry via Grove)
Kobold Passageway/Demon Prison: Party Size 5 (no NPCs), APL: 5 - This area should be run last (entry via Citadel - may need to dissuade party from entering early)
I realise that the maps seem to be in the wrong order; originally I decided to hand wave a reason they couldn't go that way. Later I chose to make these side quests to give them a taste of more challenging areas. If the players have not killed the kobolds, I suggest using the kobolds as the hook to send the party down to the second area via the Citadel. In my game, I had a kobold stop them before they left the citadel after completing the main adventure, and told them Yusdrayl needed their assistance. I had her bargain with them in order to have them go down into the underdark in search of her missing people.
I can't seem to access the rar file
I've downloaded and checked the files, they seem to be openable with winrar. However I've provided an alternative for you instead. Instead of zipping the files I've uploaded them directly to a temporary google drive. You can follow the links and right click on each folder to download the contents, or you can download files individually.
Bugbear Hunting Grounds
Kobold Passageway/Demon Prison
Hopefully that works a bit better for you