My regular D&D group is taking a short break from our campaign for about 3 or 4 weeks, so rather than not play at all I was thinking of running a mini-adventure with a bit of an unusual gimmick to it. I'm usually pretty happy to come up with my own ideas, but given I'm due to play on Monday I wouldn't mind some inspiration from others to get things together faster.
My idea is basically inspired by 'the borrowers', where everyone will be playing as Garden Gnomes living in a 'giant' world. I'm going to have to homebrew the race, but they'll be tiny in size and have their damage and health scaled down to reflect that. For example, if they are to normally roll a d4, they do 1 damage instead. Rather than a d6, it will be a d4-1. And so on. Since it's only going to be from levels 3 to about 5 in scope, I don't think long term scaling will be a problem.
The enemies they'll face will be mostly be CR 0 creatures, which will be dangerous rather than just being trivial, and I'm hoping that will be fun for everyone. The BBEG might end up being a CR 1 goblin, or something, but I haven't quite got that far yet.
The adventure itself will go something along the lines of being gathered by the Head Gnome of the garden, and told that the ingredients needed to make a traditional 'gnome pudding' for Gnome New Year (or whatever) had been stolen. They'll be tasked them with recovering the stolen goods (or the closest thing they can find to it) to save the day. I'd like to give them trying to track down the goblin (i.e. BBEG), or breaking into houses or supermarkets to steal things themselves.
I feel like for a 3 week adventure collecting two or three items would be plenty of content, but I'm having a hard time coming up with unique scenarios, and would like some suggestions! Thanks!
Many years ago I did a two-nighter, of an old hunting cabin that had a magical spider, that shrunk people when you broke one of it's webs. It was a lot of fun. I just used creatures that you might find living in an old dilapidated cabin, that would be a danger to a 5" tall PC. Rats, weasels, bats, centipedes, carpenter ants, etc. It worked out surprisingly well. Rather than a goblin, your thief/BBEG could just be a raccoon that took advantage of an open window.
Also I wouldn't bother scaling down the the PC's, just scale up the monster. Much simpler and less for the players to worry about.
An almost RAW mechanical way to do this would be to treat them as regular (small) gnomes under the effect of Enlarge / Reduce, which will subtract a d4 from weapon damage rolls (minimum 1). That’s not quite the same as your rule, but it averages out to about the same.
Likewise, tiny monsters use a d4 hit die instead of the usual d6 to d10 for PCs based on class.
My guess is most CR 0 creatures are kind of boring as well as weak, so you’ll probably want to think of some clever battle tactics to make it interesting. Choose your battle terrain as well to maximize tactical options. For example, offer cover where your gnomes can fit but the cat can’t.
I imagine throwing in some interesting magic or even relatively giant mundane items might be fun.
I would aim to use regular character statistics and then reskin the tiny creatures as larger monsters. If you scale it right, you can use the giant versions of the various critters as their basic ones for ease.
If you're set on going smaller with smaller stats (which, to be fair, will help with immersion quite well) then I would suggest halving damage dice results (rounding up) for a smoother result. this is only because the D10 exists and there's not a common D5. you could halve the sides of dice, and then if a D10 comes up just halve the result, or roll a D6, rerolling any 6's:
If you go for reducing damage to a minimum of 1, you skew all results towards 1 damage. halving the dice size keeps the spread of damage, but makes it lower.
I love the idea of the racoon being the BBEG, having stolen the ingredients! Alternatively, it could be a bear who's collecting food for winter. Another, interesting option - have any of the characters in your recent campaign picked up anything notable but not key to the plot - perhaps picking a specific flower for their spells, or taking a gem or something. Perhaps have the quest be to recover the item from their party whilst their party takes a break from the campaign, making a party member the "BBEG" who they are stealing something back from. It would certainly be a great "big reveal"!
From my perspective, going with the normal gameplay rules with everything else scaled up is the easiest to use. Creatures notably bigger without a giant version can have their hit points scaled up by their hit die; for example, a goblin would go up to d10s from d6s, a hobgoblin would be d12s from d8s, and an ogre could be d20s from d10s! Weapon damage would also scale up accordingly (the goblin being effectively large does 2d6 with its weapons, the hobgoblin does 3d8, and the ogre does 4d8 and 4d6. For the particlarly sadistic, anything bigger would be colossal sized, with a d100 hit die and weapons doing 5* dice damage! Such titanic oppositions are best avoided (a squirrel versus a mac truck; it doesn't end well).
The world is dangerously lethal for tiny creatures. This should reflect that.
My regular D&D group is taking a short break from our campaign for about 3 or 4 weeks, so rather than not play at all I was thinking of running a mini-adventure with a bit of an unusual gimmick to it. I'm usually pretty happy to come up with my own ideas, but given I'm due to play on Monday I wouldn't mind some inspiration from others to get things together faster.
My idea is basically inspired by 'the borrowers', where everyone will be playing as Garden Gnomes living in a 'giant' world. I'm going to have to homebrew the race, but they'll be tiny in size and have their damage and health scaled down to reflect that. For example, if they are to normally roll a d4, they do 1 damage instead. Rather than a d6, it will be a d4-1. And so on. Since it's only going to be from levels 3 to about 5 in scope, I don't think long term scaling will be a problem.
The enemies they'll face will be mostly be CR 0 creatures, which will be dangerous rather than just being trivial, and I'm hoping that will be fun for everyone. The BBEG might end up being a CR 1 goblin, or something, but I haven't quite got that far yet.
The adventure itself will go something along the lines of being gathered by the Head Gnome of the garden, and told that the ingredients needed to make a traditional 'gnome pudding' for Gnome New Year (or whatever) had been stolen. They'll be tasked them with recovering the stolen goods (or the closest thing they can find to it) to save the day. I'd like to give them trying to track down the goblin (i.e. BBEG), or breaking into houses or supermarkets to steal things themselves.
I feel like for a 3 week adventure collecting two or three items would be plenty of content, but I'm having a hard time coming up with unique scenarios, and would like some suggestions! Thanks!
Many years ago I did a two-nighter, of an old hunting cabin that had a magical spider, that shrunk people when you broke one of it's webs. It was a lot of fun. I just used creatures that you might find living in an old dilapidated cabin, that would be a danger to a 5" tall PC. Rats, weasels, bats, centipedes, carpenter ants, etc. It worked out surprisingly well. Rather than a goblin, your thief/BBEG could just be a raccoon that took advantage of an open window.
Also I wouldn't bother scaling down the the PC's, just scale up the monster. Much simpler and less for the players to worry about.
An almost RAW mechanical way to do this would be to treat them as regular (small) gnomes under the effect of Enlarge / Reduce, which will subtract a d4 from weapon damage rolls (minimum 1). That’s not quite the same as your rule, but it averages out to about the same.
Likewise, tiny monsters use a d4 hit die instead of the usual d6 to d10 for PCs based on class.
My guess is most CR 0 creatures are kind of boring as well as weak, so you’ll probably want to think of some clever battle tactics to make it interesting. Choose your battle terrain as well to maximize tactical options. For example, offer cover where your gnomes can fit but the cat can’t.
I imagine throwing in some interesting magic or even relatively giant mundane items might be fun.
I would aim to use regular character statistics and then reskin the tiny creatures as larger monsters. If you scale it right, you can use the giant versions of the various critters as their basic ones for ease.
If you're set on going smaller with smaller stats (which, to be fair, will help with immersion quite well) then I would suggest halving damage dice results (rounding up) for a smoother result. this is only because the D10 exists and there's not a common D5. you could halve the sides of dice, and then if a D10 comes up just halve the result, or roll a D6, rerolling any 6's:
D4 = D2 (odds = 1, evens = 2)
D6 = D3
D8 = D4
D10 = D6, reroll 6's
D12 = D6
D20 = D10
If you go for reducing damage to a minimum of 1, you skew all results towards 1 damage. halving the dice size keeps the spread of damage, but makes it lower.
I love the idea of the racoon being the BBEG, having stolen the ingredients! Alternatively, it could be a bear who's collecting food for winter. Another, interesting option - have any of the characters in your recent campaign picked up anything notable but not key to the plot - perhaps picking a specific flower for their spells, or taking a gem or something. Perhaps have the quest be to recover the item from their party whilst their party takes a break from the campaign, making a party member the "BBEG" who they are stealing something back from. It would certainly be a great "big reveal"!
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From my perspective, going with the normal gameplay rules with everything else scaled up is the easiest to use. Creatures notably bigger without a giant version can have their hit points scaled up by their hit die; for example, a goblin would go up to d10s from d6s, a hobgoblin would be d12s from d8s, and an ogre could be d20s from d10s! Weapon damage would also scale up accordingly (the goblin being effectively large does 2d6 with its weapons, the hobgoblin does 3d8, and the ogre does 4d8 and 4d6. For the particlarly sadistic, anything bigger would be colossal sized, with a d100 hit die and weapons doing 5* dice damage! Such titanic oppositions are best avoided (a squirrel versus a mac truck; it doesn't end well).
The world is dangerously lethal for tiny creatures. This should reflect that.
Do keep in mind, though, that a squirrel can fall from unlimited height and take no damage.