Post/Author/DateTime	Post
razorboy 05-02-07, 01:45 PM	Hi. I'm trying to design a dungeon/tomb adventure for a party of five level 8 PCs or so. The theme of the tomb is that powerful dragon hunters of yore are buried there along with their weapons and equipment, including some important items and information that the PCs will need to thwart some powerful evil foes in the future. Anyways, the idea is that the players will have to face the challenges of the five chromatic dragon flights (white, green, red, black, blue, in no particular order yet), to prove they are worthy of the treasures of the dead dragon hunters. I don't want every single challenge to be combat, so I'm wondering if anyone's got any interesting riddles or challenges that have dragons as the theme (or may involve the favorite breath weapon types of the chromatic dragons: fire, electricity, acid, cold, corrosive gas). Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance. :)
Magrus 05-02-07, 05:15 PM	Hi. I'm trying to design a dungeon/tomb adventure for a party of five level 8 PCs or so. The theme of the tomb is that powerful dragon hunters of yore are buried there along with their weapons and equipment, including some important items and information that the PCs will need to thwart some powerful evil foes in the future. Anyways, the idea is that the players will have to face the challenges of the five chromatic dragon flights (white, green, red, black, blue, in no particular order yet), to prove they are worthy of the treasures of the dead dragon hunters. I don't want every single challenge to be combat, so I'm wondering if anyone's got any interesting riddles or challenges that have dragons as the theme (or may involve the favorite breath weapon types of the chromatic dragons: fire, electricity, acid, cold, corrosive gas). Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks in advance. :) Hmm, just a random thought for a non-combat challenge at the end to include all 5 of them. Make an obstacle course. Say, a sheet of ice across the room that requires balance checks every round of movement. Falling leads to slipping, and hitting the ice when falling at certain points might crack it. Which leads down shafts to an earlier part of the dungeon. Perhaps a cave filled with lava, or acid to take damage when you fall down into it. The place is also filled with a corrosive gas, which means the group must hurry through the obscured, gas filled room. Not only is it obscuring vision, but you take damage every round you breathe in the diluted gas or you have your eyes open. Otherwise, your skin protects you from damage, if it is unbroken. Meaning, a full healed character keeping his eyes shut and holding his breath is fine, if blinded and able to cross the ice covered floor. I have no clue how you'd rank the challenge rating, but I do believe that would be a neat non-combat challenge to lead into the treasure room.
sabrewolf 05-02-07, 08:37 PM	Non combat chalenges... hmmm... Environments: If the place is magical, each area can be far greater on the inside then one would expect.. maybe they are demi-planes to be crossed in the span of hours. or days: - A bllizzard plagued area.. To test their strenght and resistance... - Maze-like passages (simple, with 3-7 "nodes") to cross a lava field (shallow, fluid silic-based lava.. make fast moving rivers and stay hot like hell for a good distance :D ).. - An area with cracks on the ground venting ocasionaly greenish/yelowish clouds of corrosive gas... might require some concentration as well if you ad a disorienting effect to the gas (some mind affecting due to spores from fungi that grows on the vents).. - A crossing inside the heart of a storm.. might have a clear spot in the middle where their objective lies... Like with the blizzard, thereīs lots of wind and visibility limitations.. lightnings can be more a scene/mood factor instead of a true danger.. - A seemingly uneventfull area.. An underwater maze (again, simple) conecting pools and underground air-pockets.. all filled with not-necessarily-foul but otherwise darkened swamp-like water... The envoronments may be a stage for other chalenges: Combats, the recovery of an iten to be placed somewhere else, the rescue of someone (summoned, semi-real)... Or maybe a mix of those, to test their spirit. Maybe each area have an iten (the dragonīs heart) that they need to take to a "final" area - and completing each area opens path for the next - for a final challenge (maybe a mini-puzzle where they need set the itens on a certain order or on specific places on the room) where is the "great final dungeon combat showdown" (tm) :cool: ... Small combats or choices in face of a incoming danger (to choose to take "someone" away from danger or go get the iten during the few rounds it takes for an avalanche to reach that area... with the true "key" being the person or with the person, for example..)... Puzzles could be to place the keys on areas on a world map where the dragons are usually found, or in crescent order in power or by an elemental order (like neverwinter magi-guild challenge)... Ideas.. ideas.. ideas.... hope some of those are of any help to thee.. ;)
razorboy 05-02-07, 11:53 PM	Thanks for the suggestions guys! I love them! Magrus - I love the combination of all the enhaz for final treasure, it just smacks of ridiculously fun and tough over-the-top stages in God of War games. :) Now I just need to put some half-dragon sorcerers in there to shoot the party as they're trying to traverse the challenge and it's set. Thanks very much. Sabrewolf - I didn't even think of that - making the inside of the tomb larger! That's brilliant! This is so in. I like the swamp-water passages idea in particular, as well as the blizzard. :) Thanks very much as well. Keep 'em coming. :D
Magrus 05-03-07, 01:17 AM	Glad I could help. I think I like your concept better than the one I'm working on now. :P I can have fun with mine, I just can't be very clever with the basis around the campaign. It's full of idiot NPC's. It's useful for dealing with new players though.
Anuvrix 05-03-07, 05:19 PM	Maybe they find out that not all of the Hunters are buried there. Then you can spread the challenges over a vast area of climates and locales. Maybe some one else got there first, and is currently searching for the rest.
Araes 05-03-07, 06:31 PM	Something to do with gold might be appropriate to the theme of dragons. You could potentially do something like those questions that interviewers at Google do: You have 4 piles of gold pieces. Each piece is a certain weight, except for pieces contained in one pile, where each piece is the standard weight + 1. Find the right pile of gold in one measurement. This could also be done with 8 coins, of which 1 is bad and two weighings. Also: There is a room, and outside the room there are three switches. Inside the room there are vents which flood the room with the breath weapon of one of the dragons. You can flip the switches as you want, but once you open the door you can't change them. How do you figure out which does which and get them to a certain position without killing your party? Also: There is a room with various statues of dragons, or something else representative of the five types of dragons (colored stones?). The group needs to figure out how to make certain combinations in some order while only adding or removing one object.
Knute 05-06-07, 07:33 PM	Maybe one of the 'Hunters' turned sides in the end and the dragon that is supposed to be dead isn't, perhaps the hunter too. K