Post/Author/DateTime	Post
3v1l g3n1u5 07-29-05, 09:19 AM	I'm currently constructing a 20 level dungeon. A kick the door in, kill the monster and take the treasure type. To run as a side game whenever one of the players cannot make it for the regular campaign. Just using the three core rulebooks, and each level corresponding to a character experience level. I want each level to have its own theme. For example: vampire lairs, undead infested crypts, cultist temples, beholder nest at level 13plus The culminating level 20 encounter will be with a CR 25 Great Red Wyrm (as in the 5% Overpowering EL5+ higher than the party) (table 3-2 page 49 DMG v3.5) Any and all ideas will be welcome (silly, funny, dramatically serious, anything) :plotting:
alecthemad 07-29-05, 09:22 AM	Sticky land, the whole place is covered in the same stuff as tanglefoot bags, but it never evaporates. It has pools and deep places you could fall into and be stuck. slowly suffocating. Webs or other sticky things should be abundant here. Spiders, oozes and things that would have no trouble navigating such terrain would be great.
TheErsatzFacsimileOfMe 07-29-05, 09:25 AM	Snakes! Vipers, constrictors; big, small....Snakes! and/or animated ropes that act like snakes. Possible a "bbeg for the level" is a wizard obsessed with summoning and creating snakes.
CzarGarrett 07-29-05, 09:25 AM	There's always the teleporting maze level. Note: only use if you're players are not easily aggrivated. Basically, you design a maze that has random doorways that will teleport the person to another point in the maze. You could have it that each individual goes to a different point, or that the door sends everyone to one point. Make sure to have a bunch of illusions and minor traps all over the place. Eventually, they'll make it out and can then get to the next level. There could be some sort of aquatic level. Like a giant subterranian lake that the players will have to swim through to find an exit somewhere. And they'd have to watch out for Saughin, sharks, fiendish octopi, etc. Treasure room with lots of animated objects. Imagine a swarm of animated gold coins attacking the party. A silver lamp stand hopping about and striking at the PCs. Stuff like that.
Purkake 07-29-05, 09:50 AM	No dungeon is complete without cold and jungle environment ;)
3v1l g3n1u5 07-29-05, 10:10 AM	Realy cool ideas. I'm going to go home. I've had enough of work, been here long enough for today. I can't wait to see what the weekend brings. :evillaugh
Tifus Artwin 07-29-05, 10:15 AM	Purkake beat me to it. Add to that a Fire lvl, complete with lava rivers, pools, and everything else of the sort. Catwalk central, have one of the levels at a massive scale, say about 175' from ceiling to floor, with "catwalks" going from place to place with platforms as rooms, and dont forget the numerous gargoyles and flying swarms. Added fun is put strange things under the catwalks, such as water with jumping diresharks or whatever, acid, jagged stalagtites (sp?) or just about anything that makes jumping not a good idea. And while it was mentioned before, add a flooded level, but make sure its an underwater level, as in need to breath water the entire time your on the lvl that has giant oysters, schools of exotic fishes, pirhana (sp?) swarms, and every other nasty from the brimmy deep.
Claggart 07-29-05, 10:19 AM	Try to think of different categories that themes might fall in. Then expand on each category. Elements: Fire, Water, Air, Earth Terrain: Jungle, Desert, Ice/Snow, Altered Gravity (reveresed, increased, decreased) Monsters: Spiders, Undead, Snakes, Kobalds, Carrion Crawlers Encounters: Sub-bosses, Hordes of small things, tons of traps, "trick" monsters (oozes on the ceiling, blink dogs, ....) Fun stuff: Fight a mirrored party (the evil versions of the PCs), Optimized Tacticians (Chain Tripper, Sneak Attacking Rogues, Heavily Armored Knights, Sniper Archers w/great cover....) Puzzles: Riddles, Race against time, Room flooding with water...
Tusz 07-29-05, 10:36 AM	Up in the higher levels, you can have one that's simply a battlefield of the Blood War. Demons and Devils fighting eachother everywhere, with the PCs stuck in the middle of it.
Morka 07-29-05, 11:29 AM	The Giant Spiders Room: Build a basic room with any kind of furniture. The entire room is filled in with spider web. Add Monstrous Spiders and Scorpions, Phase Spiders, Ettercaps, and a Drow Priestess of Lolth. The Mad Wizard Laboratory: you have a high-level wizard, his improved familiar, 2-3 apprentice of half his level, a golem of each kind (that can be created by a wizard), bath full of alchemist fire and acid. If they are wise, the players must be able to end controlling a golem. The Formian Subterrean: Formians of all kind. Mephits are cool, but I doubt we can build an entire level with them. The Feys level: Dryads, Nymphs, Satyrs, Pixies, Nixies, Grigs... They are dancing. If the PCs don't want to join them, they made them dance! What could be cool also would be a war between some of those levels: formians in the spiders level, undeads attacking the Mad Wizard Laboratory, mephits invading the feys...
BRJN 07-29-05, 11:32 PM	Dinosaurs. Several packs of Velociraptors to fight, herds of Iguanadons to get around, Brontosaurus blocking a path while he eats. Level "boss" is a T. Rex or Allosaurus. Like Jurrasic Park or When Dinosaurs Walked America (Discovery Channel - on DVD) Mythical figures. One section of Greek myths, another section of Norse, &c. Bugs - giant millipedes, swarms of army ants, bee hives, crickets (chirping acts as a Bardic spell maybe), locusts eat everything including clothes and leather but not metal armor. One level is like the Plane of Air and the PCs must fly across. Maybe with leftover swim fins?
Auburn 07-29-05, 11:56 PM	Upside down or turned on its side level. Everything is made out of food level. Pac Man level. Basically a big maze with floating food with ghosts chasing everyone. No one can hurt the ghosts unless they pick up one of the floating magical weapons.
lonesoldier 07-30-05, 03:33 AM	A level that is made of hundreds of little rooms, each connected to each other. Each room is a cube, thus, one can travel up, down, right, left, to the front, or to the back. Each direction has a riddle, when the riddle is properly completed/answered that door opens, letting a rush of air out. Then they realize that each box has a finite supply of air. :(
WindupBird 07-30-05, 04:04 AM	A treasure hunt in a large mansion where most objects are animated, could throw in other constucts for variety (statues = golems, gargoyles) final encounter could occur in a massive library with hundreds (well perhaps just dozens) of animated books along with something massive... maybe an impressively huge sized scale model of the world/globe or anything that would be cool to get crushed by. DM: the world rises with a spin preparing to leave a texas shaped stain on the reflective tile floor. curious, how are you stringing together the 20 dungeons?
nyysjan 07-30-05, 05:15 AM	a Big Library where everyone who fails their silent movement check get's punished by the Hag librarian and her minions it's also filled with readers (zombies & skeletons)
Da Dinictus 07-30-05, 07:46 AM	Construct a level that is simply a single room with two gates of sorts, the outer edges looking like interlocking gears. In front of one of the gear-gates a switch stands, which can rather easily be pulled and causes the gear to turn, but as it stands just a bit ahead of the other gear-gate, it cannot turn the other gate. Energy whirls and lightning crackles, and players can walk into the gate. They will be teleported to a metal box of sorts, some 30 by 30 by 30 feet, perhaps bigger. These dimensions will last throughout the actual level. Construct a box maze of X by X boxes, some of which interlock with other boxes within the maze so players can get around. One room will be a 90 by 30 by 30 feet, or as three 'boxes' put together. End-game room, so to speak. The players are teleported to the first room, just outside of this box maze. They will encounter a single metallic creature, with a box-like body of 3 by 3 by 3 feet, two arms, metallic wings and two arms. Its face is as if it's some television on the front of the box-body, and it merely stares ahead of itself. Once the players near the creature, the creature greets them with a chirpy and monotone voice: "Welcome to the Rubicube, interpretid adventurers! We are one of many. We are Modron. This place is our bastion of Law within Chaos, and we try to research the effects of Limbo on Modron-kind, as well as to research the mechanics of adventuring. Beyond this door you may find the control room where you may rest up and repair yourselves. Beyond there the maze begins. Enjoy the 'good fight'." The creature merely beckons to the door next to it, which splits open in two for the players to enter. They will enter a more descript area, box-like as before, with several of these Modron creatures maintaining gears, equipment and simple consoles. Most of these carry wrenches, and appear to have four arms rather than wings. The Modron quadrones are non-hostile, and may explain their situation a bit more than the greeter at the gate. They have set up this maze to study Law and Chaos' effects on one another and have several portals set up throughout the Multiverse to invite adventurers into the maze's bowels and observe their actions. The maze pretty much offers opposition well within the limits of the PC's (mostly mechanical golems, clockwork horrors as per the MM2 and the like), and the maze is currently controlled by a techno-mage creation that has taken control for this setting of the maze. The players are to defeat the mage creation before the gate will sink next to the other gate outside of the Rubicube, and activate it to the next level below. Now, these battles may prove rather interesting: almost every room has a few monstrosities to battle. Those able to speak (and most golems will), will greet the players with comments as 'destroy all adventurers', 'we need a new line of work' and such things, and may engage in a few exchanges of lines before going into a frenzy to attack the players. All loot found on them is either a collection of iron coins with peculiar markings on them, but they're obviously not gold, silver or even damn copper - bending when tested and such. Notes of 'mastermind plans' may also be found, but they really offer no clues at all. Hell, some notes even read 'CLUE!', but that's it. And some widgets. Worthless, but it's a widget. The final encounter with the mage (a floating creature of metal and gold with a pyramid-like wizard's hat of metal who may introduce itself as the Techno-Mage Itself) may also be one with some talk - the techno-mage has become sentient through the effects of Limbo on it as the Rubicube has reset itself every decade or so, or after each time it was bested by adventurers. It kind of had it with this charade, and now has serious plans of finding freedom, but not after defeating the players and whiping out the Modrons within the Rubicube. Treat it as an intelligent construct with plenty of access to spells and added loot/gear to match up with the constructs met earlier. Pearls of Power aplenty. It's become rather cocky, and will indeed taunt the players continually as it casts spells and will comment on a 'round two already?' if players retreat and return to it. Also note it may have a few more golems with it to protect itself from bodily harm. If the techno-mage is destroyed, it will leave loot and a large iron wrench with some piece of glass on it. This wrench is to be returned to the overseer Modron quadrone at the control room, who will have it installed into the machinery of the Rubicube, wishes the players (and he will call them players) a goodbye, and good luck on their travels, before preparing the cube to reset. The players can now get to the room with gear-portals, and will see both gears now truly interlock and turn, and the other gear-portal to be activated as well, ready to move anyone to the next level of the dungeon. I suggest you may want to read up on Modrons if you do consider this one. They are a collective species of Lawful extraplanar creatures with a very, very strict hierarchy, and all Modrons on this project will address themselves with 'we', since they know practically no individuality. And for the sake of keeping things simple, stick to quadrones only. Why, yes, I did rip this one off of Planescape: Torment :P
TRCEttin 07-30-05, 08:15 AM	A giant, spider-like golem, currently engaged with its kobold/orc/insert creature here controllers in a very specialised business. It trawls the Elemental Plane of Fire, giant fireproofed metal legs grabbing any available rocky outcrops or just tap-dancing on molten lava as the kobolds use enormous metal traps on chains to reach down and haul globs of molten lava into special chambers, where (possibly via magic) metals and precious minerals such as gold are extracted from the molten mixture. Whatever creatures are pulling this off, they don't like intruders on their lava-trawling construct. :shifty: As well as fighting their way through the thing (possibly to get to a portal) and braving whatever runs the place, as well as various steam jets and the like, the PCs could fight on top (although whatever mechanisms keep the interior cool don't work outside) and, if they want to play Captain Dangerous, in the big rooms with the lava-grabbing devices (trapdoors open, of course) and along walkways on the underside used for maintenance (risk of falling into burning lava is always interesting!). And there's also the problem of how to kill all the creatures, or at least get out of there, whatever floats your bouyancy-reliant vehicle, without causing the thing to crash... :evillaugh
3v1l g3n1u5 08-01-05, 09:35 AM	Love the Pac Man level, as my players are to young to remember Pac Man or even Miss Pac Man It will be fun to see them handle the situation. Yes the Mondron cube is a good idea, I spent lots of time in it when I played Torment; still my favourite C-RPG. As to how the levels will connect, it is going to be one long dungeon crawl with the pc's having to open the entrance to the next level. The basic idea, for fluff, is the dungeon is built under a small thorp/village, for food supplies, weapons, training, healing, so on and so forth. The dungeon is basically: steal treasure from the great read wyrm and survive getting there and coming back. Story, no real story, I’m taking a break from stories. The other group DM is running the main campaign, her first real major DMing All suggestion will find a place in the dungeon, somewhere Thanks allot. :clap:
CzarGarrett 08-01-05, 09:38 AM	A level with nothing but 20x20 rooms containing a single orc and solitary treasure chest.
Nurgan_the_drunked 08-01-05, 10:27 AM	The stupid Dungeon ecology level. Standard seeming dungeon, with a suitable assortment of monsters, most of which do actually eat. There's no food or water source anywhere on this level, or if there is, it's across a gaping chasm, with a rough rope bridge crossing it, with arrow slots firing at it, and guarded by an owlbear. There is a kitchen or two, but they have collapsing ceilings outside, or are inhabited by magmins. While the rooms may have a purpose, their inhabitants (and every room has inhabitants) have no purpose their, or are contradictory to the rooms purpose. Libraries next to lava pits. With grimlock barbarians in them 20-year old Warlock in a prison that's been locked for centuries. With a wand of knock Gnome mineral prospector looking at the spider's lair. Before a giant frog drops from the ceiling. Ogre guards, guarding empty rooms, who have to negotiate scything blade traps to get to their beds. Watching the players trying to get their heads round all this. Ah, classic dungeons.
ShadowDragon8685 08-01-05, 10:36 AM	A mechanical nightmare factory. Think the Magitek factory from Final Fantasy VIJ/IIIE if you remember it. This would be good to add with the Catwalks. Instead of acid-leaping Dire Sharks, falling to the bottom means a grisly end amidst gears, hammering hammers, a construction belt 'o doom, etcetera. Possible encounters: Weapons' testing: The PCs see a chest heaped with gold and some of the magi-tek weapons (autocrossbow, etcetera,) that the automated defense drones (who don't attack unless you do something you're not suposta,) carry. The PCs of course rush in, to find that that was the bait. The trap? Testing experimental weapons at a 240 foot firing range. The Gear n' Cog Jump: This is your standard platform jumper with a twist. The platforms are enormous cogs, gears, conveyer belts, etcetera, amidst the industrial assembly. None of the jumps should be too hard (Hardest should be DC 15, and only as an extra, not required,) but you should throw in twists: The platforms are all moving, or rotating, or in other ways not stable and not going to cooperate. This means the smart ones can time their jumps with Int checks (or any potentially relevant Knowledge check, exceptional checks should reduce Jump DCs,) and the twitchy ones can intuitively make their leaps with Dex checks. Remember, grindy, mashy death awaits if they fail. So there should always be ref saves before you send them to grindy, mashy death. But what's a save hand-hold now might be getting your arms and head squished between gears in a turn, so think! (and move) fast!
Leewei 08-01-05, 10:47 AM	You need a room full of vampires all walking around playing rock-paper-scissors and pretending they're college students.
NinjaE 08-01-05, 11:11 AM	A level with nothing but 20x20 rooms containing a single orc and solitary treasure chest. Isn't that 10x10 rooms? Anyways, I got an idea: first, do a "mostly-burnt-down mansion" level, with crazy, bloodthirsty ghosts and spectres and such. Have the PCs come upon some old journals and labs detailing that there used to live a pretty f'ed up mage(have the PCs fight his ghost or something) who were making human experiments for his transmutations. Have the players see some really messed up skeletons, but the only undead are the human inhabitants and the mage. From what little they can see from the outside of the mansion(they can't actually exit, for some odd reason; The walls or windows won't break, and the doors are locked) before it fades to mist, a single sign is visible: It details what happened, and that the experiments got loose, killed the inhabitants, and would have overrun the countryside if a servant hadn't gotten outside, locked the door, and set the place on fire. Later on, after killing the mages ghost in the room with his corpse, the PCs note a big hole in the wall, as if something about human-sized had been flung through it. On the other side of the hole is a secret room(with a door into another ordinary room in the mansion; perhaps have the PCs discover the door from the other side, but the mechanism is broken) with a huge skeleton of something really freaky, and a broken-open tank, sized to fit. Have the tank hold a portal into the next level, which doesn't matter. Then, a few levels later, they return to the mansion, except, this time, it isn't burned down, and they can hear screaming in the distance(have them appear somewhere like a broom closet). Then, they have to fight through the evil experiments(who've totally massacred the servants; have corpses all over) in one wing of the mansion to reach the doors(the windows and walls still won't budge), but when they reach 'em, they get to see the last servant throw a molotov in and lock the doors. So, now, if they put two and two together, they should think of using the tank again to get to the next level, and hurry off towards the secret room(perhaps, for extra "weird factor", the fire should always stay just one room behind them, only blocking off their retreat.). Then, when they reach the secret room, the "thing" is just finishing off the mage(through the wall), and the PCs have to fight it as the fire is getting ever closer. Could be really dramatic/scary if you do it right.
BRJN 08-02-05, 07:42 PM	The "Cave of Cash," from original Ultima. This is a magically infinite plane with a ladder up and a ladder down to connect it to the other levels. It consists of a grid-formed set of passageways. Every time the PCs come to an intersection, something with their CR shows up and they must fight it. When they kill it, a treasure chest appears in the hallway ahead. This is a way to come out rich enough to buy whatever expensive item they need for the 'real' game. The ladders up and down can be seen in the distance every 10th intersection or so. If you want to pester the PCs, make the enemies ridiculously underpowered and the treasure chest contents measly.
TheErsatzFacsimileOfMe 08-02-05, 07:50 PM	A level of nothing but animated items. EVERYTHING but the dungeon itself, doors, chests, books, torches, chairs, tables, carpets, drapes, paintings, chandelier and the likes...all with the final instruction,"Kill anything that comes into this area".