Best Laid Traps . . . Or Not (long) [Archive] - Wizards Community

Best Laid Traps . . . Or Not (long) [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
tarsia
09-15-05, 10:51 AM Let's see how well I can lay this out for some suggestions.

For some background, the party is currently composed of a human druid with a shapeshifting prestige class, a changeling warlock, a anamorphic monkey wizard, a thrikreen monk and a sized-tiny dragon psi-character (with plenty of yolk behind his scales). The dragon is a 'new' dragon race the player came up with, and not overpowered in any regard that we've found thus far. And yes, it's a good group, well, mostly neutral, but it's not an evil campaign at any rate. The party ranges from level 7-8.

Recently the party lost one of their party mates - a troll who went back to live with his home tribe (the player moved to the other side of the country).

So anyway, the party's making their way to the next town, hacking through some wilderness that's in the way. They come across the troll's limbs which have been piled into an arrow pointing to a city decently north of them (the thrikreen has a bunch of points in cartography, so I let him use some of those nifty tools to find where the arrow was pointing, and he did really well on the roll). And under the limbs there is a note, which should help them figure out who did it. They're still working on figuring that part out at the moment.

So the guy behind his is a rather powerful troll BBEG that they angered a few months ago. BBEG has his own collection of various humanoids and rules a fair bit of land in his own right. The party wiped out one of his scouting parties and kidnapped one of his lieutenants and turned the lieutenant over to some locals to be tortured for information (for the adventure they were running through at the time). And at that time the party didn't realize just how powerful this BBEG is and assumed that he would never know what happened to his lieutenant.

So anyway, BBEG got his lieutenant back, and now wants some revenge on the party for being so arrogant. So he took away 'their' troll, and tried to make sure the party knew who did it.

So I figured out what BBEG is doing with the troll, and what his main encampment is, but I've neglected to come up with what's waiting for the party. BBEG would expect that the party would come after their troll, and should have something waiting for the party in case they do show up. I'm just not sure what, and just realized that gaping hole in this plot line.

So any ideas?

The troll is in a separate location from the main encampment (which is an abandoned dwarven city/mine in a mountain). The main encampment probably isn't realistic for the party to invade, if they even learn of it. The location of the troll isn't a good place to setup a trap or some such thing either (an abandoned sanitarium that BBEG uses to torture various folk).

There is a decently large city within a day south of where BBEG has his lair and whatnot, which is where the party will be headed.

If you want to know anything else, just ask, but I think I've covered the basics at any rate.
Muddball
09-15-05, 12:24 PM so your looking for more or less an ambushing kind of situation, am i right? well, something i like to do is hand out very, very low traps as bread crumbs. strew the main path into town with half a dozen very obvious, very poorly conciled traps. (i think of the cartoon with the red monster in the armor trying to hack bugs-bunny kind of obvious, with his hair sticking out of every joint in the armor) the side path into town, keep trap free, untill the are nearing the center of town, where a very large, very fiendish and well hidden (search dc 35+) trap should be layed. (40 foot wide 20 foot deap pit trap with spikes) something that is hand sprung, as in lever or button pushed. while it shouldn't do much damage, what is SHOULD do is drop the party (cept mabey that dragon) into the pit, where as your troll-scout excellet hiders should surround the pit and arrow them to death, or jump into the close quarters, minimizing the spellcasting abilitys of this party.
tarsia
09-15-05, 03:17 PM Not really what I was going for - and with this being a pretty major city, a pit trap in the center wouldn't work. Too many bystanders anyway. I'm more looking at the city as some sort of jumping-off point.

The BBEG actually goes to some non-violent means to keep city-folk out of the mountains he's located in nearby (has some contacts who spread rumors for him, etc).

So I suppose I'm more looking for some clues to location X that BBEG can leave for the party in town, just not sure what he'd have at location X for the party to find. Especially where there's a bit of time lapse between when this is setup and when the PCs will arrive.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
tarsia 09-15-05, 10:51 AM	Let's see how well I can lay this out for some suggestions. For some background, the party is currently composed of a human druid with a shapeshifting prestige class, a changeling warlock, a anamorphic monkey wizard, a thrikreen monk and a sized-tiny dragon psi-character (with plenty of yolk behind his scales). The dragon is a 'new' dragon race the player came up with, and not overpowered in any regard that we've found thus far. And yes, it's a good group, well, mostly neutral, but it's not an evil campaign at any rate. The party ranges from level 7-8. Recently the party lost one of their party mates - a troll who went back to live with his home tribe (the player moved to the other side of the country). So anyway, the party's making their way to the next town, hacking through some wilderness that's in the way. They come across the troll's limbs which have been piled into an arrow pointing to a city decently north of them (the thrikreen has a bunch of points in cartography, so I let him use some of those nifty tools to find where the arrow was pointing, and he did really well on the roll). And under the limbs there is a note, which should help them figure out who did it. They're still working on figuring that part out at the moment. So the guy behind his is a rather powerful troll BBEG that they angered a few months ago. BBEG has his own collection of various humanoids and rules a fair bit of land in his own right. The party wiped out one of his scouting parties and kidnapped one of his lieutenants and turned the lieutenant over to some locals to be tortured for information (for the adventure they were running through at the time). And at that time the party didn't realize just how powerful this BBEG is and assumed that he would never know what happened to his lieutenant. So anyway, BBEG got his lieutenant back, and now wants some revenge on the party for being so arrogant. So he took away 'their' troll, and tried to make sure the party knew who did it. So I figured out what BBEG is doing with the troll, and what his main encampment is, but I've neglected to come up with what's waiting for the party. BBEG would expect that the party would come after their troll, and should have something waiting for the party in case they do show up. I'm just not sure what, and just realized that gaping hole in this plot line. So any ideas? The troll is in a separate location from the main encampment (which is an abandoned dwarven city/mine in a mountain). The main encampment probably isn't realistic for the party to invade, if they even learn of it. The location of the troll isn't a good place to setup a trap or some such thing either (an abandoned sanitarium that BBEG uses to torture various folk). There is a decently large city within a day south of where BBEG has his lair and whatnot, which is where the party will be headed. If you want to know anything else, just ask, but I think I've covered the basics at any rate.
Muddball 09-15-05, 12:24 PM	so your looking for more or less an ambushing kind of situation, am i right? well, something i like to do is hand out very, very low traps as bread crumbs. strew the main path into town with half a dozen very obvious, very poorly conciled traps. (i think of the cartoon with the red monster in the armor trying to hack bugs-bunny kind of obvious, with his hair sticking out of every joint in the armor) the side path into town, keep trap free, untill the are nearing the center of town, where a very large, very fiendish and well hidden (search dc 35+) trap should be layed. (40 foot wide 20 foot deap pit trap with spikes) something that is hand sprung, as in lever or button pushed. while it shouldn't do much damage, what is SHOULD do is drop the party (cept mabey that dragon) into the pit, where as your troll-scout excellet hiders should surround the pit and arrow them to death, or jump into the close quarters, minimizing the spellcasting abilitys of this party.
tarsia 09-15-05, 03:17 PM	Not really what I was going for - and with this being a pretty major city, a pit trap in the center wouldn't work. Too many bystanders anyway. I'm more looking at the city as some sort of jumping-off point. The BBEG actually goes to some non-violent means to keep city-folk out of the mountains he's located in nearby (has some contacts who spread rumors for him, etc). So I suppose I'm more looking for some clues to location X that BBEG can leave for the party in town, just not sure what he'd have at location X for the party to find. Especially where there's a bit of time lapse between when this is setup and when the PCs will arrive.