I’m looking for help with some encounter ideas. This is a group of six 4th level characters, and it is well balanced. They are looking for some magical onyx gems (they are in a vault under the ruins).
I have the players searching a school of wizardry that was destroyed about 120 years ago. The school specialized in conjuration magic, and it had a gate that was tied to the elemental plane of shadow. The gate “exploded” (due to sabotage) and killed everyone.
During the cataclysm the students were rushed into the basement (dungeon) while the guards and teachers tried to handle things with the gate. Sadly everyone died with the following results:
The bodies of the dead were turned to skeletons (with a wight or two thrown in). The souls of everyone was turned to shadows.
A few of the teachers got transformed to Shades (from 3rd edition – corporeal creatures from the elemental plane of shadow), and have been trapped underground for the last 120 years. The headmaster is a ghost, looking for the key to let them out.
What I’m looking for are weird, cool encounters that play up the wizard school theme of the adventure.
I have a few of my own ideas of course, but more is better. Please help!
PSusac wrote:
Here is a scenario I wrote that takes place in a ruined library while a fire approaches. It may be something you can use in whole or in part:
You might be able to adapt this one as well:
You might want to have a few non undead threats to change things up. Elementals pulled in through gates that warped and trapped them or constructs made by the wizards to fight off anything they summoned and lost control of. Animaled furniture brought to life by the magic accident. Maybe even intelligent. Think Cogsworth and Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast.
One of the students or teachers was caught in a time stasis bubble. If they can release them they can find out first hand information about the college and what happened.
Great ideas! I like the idea of the stasis bubble - combine it with the sickbay idea - once you get past the ghost, you can "decant" a student who has been in stasis as a medical intervention - he then dies and rises as an undead - if they cure him, then he's an ally.
A friend of mine is running a campaign where he had the players overcome special magical training rooms inside an arcane university. Each training room was fully automated, and would involve a puzzle of some sort.
* One had a statue that would attack the players with various common spells, and the players had to defend themselves against the onslaught.
* Another forced the players to make their way through a maze with a darkness spell in it.
* A third puzzle involved magical ingredients, where the players had to search for the right books, and then note what each ingredient does. They would then have to make the right mixture.
If the players completed the test, they were given the rank of registered student, and were allowed access into an area that was otherwise magically sealed off.
- The School kept a number of "creatures" for training purposes and once the school got destroyed they are now loose or undead versions
- Following on from the Shadow Explosion theme the characters find the portal/arch/magic gate and their own "shadows" are stolen from them and are trying to kill them
- Characters find a "book" (textbook/magic book/whatever) that is linked to the libraries "security system". The book is overdue and now the Shield Guardian or Golems or Whatever are searching the school for any late books. Obiously due to the magic damage in the explosion they are now set to lethal recovery!!
- The school had a number of portal doors which teleport you to the location they are linked too, easy for getting around. Now the portals have become detached/mixed up and when you go through you end up at a random location: 1. High up on one of the schools towers on a precious ledge (athletics, acrobatics needs to climb down), 2. Underwater in the school swimming pool. (the pool has become overgorwn with living plant life time for an underwater fight). 3. School Kitchen where all the food has rotted into living fungus!!! 4. Into the boiler room where the fire elemental that was powering the heating system is on the loose. 5. The room where the teachers locked contraband items (roll on the magic item tables) 6. Classroom where the ghosts of the children are repeating the same lesson over and over. The lesson stops before the conclusion and after a short time repeats itself. Characters need to "finish" the lesson to allow the trapped souls to move on.
Wow guys! Awesome ideas! Keep 'em comming!
These are just what I was hoping for, thanks!
Great idea. As much as I dig undead monsters, all-undead, all the time diminishes the wondrous variety of D&D.
For my part, when designing these sorts of adventures, I like to look at the function of the room, and what you’d need in such a building when it was in life. There’d be a summoning circle, library, alchemist’s lab (perhaps filled with some sort of ooze, pudding, cube, or slime from an experiment gone bad), and so on. But they’d also need dormitories, kitchens, and bedrooms. But if they were normal, it wouldn’t be a wizard’s school. Maybe the kitchen has a portal to a pocket in the elemental plane of ice for cold storage. Or the bedroom has a subtle sleep magic intended to help young scholars get their z’s (wish I had something like that in real life).
WorBlade wrote:
You could have a wizard who was trapped on the plane of shadow for a few years, and has been twisted by it. The gate allowed him to escape into the school.
Ok so, I have to brag a bit.
I use a flat-screen TV hooked up to a computer for my game board. I have a bunch of virtual battlemats, which I make using clip art from Dunjinni and various sources.
I'm running with these ideas, and what I've come up with is this:
The Mage School had three tests of magic. The first was a maze that consists of 20 zones that shift and re-arrange themselves from round to round. You get teleported into it by picking up a colored sphere, and you have to reach a zone that corresponds to this color. There are 7 colors to choose from. The party must conquer the maze to reach their objective.
Each character must carry his or her sphere independently of the rest of the party. They can help each-other, but once they reach their goal they are teleported from the maze, and are out of play.
I have made this maze using PowerPoint, and it LITERALLY shifts, using animations in PowerPoint! How cool is that?
The best part? Since the fall of the mage-school, the students have becomes shadows which populate the maze. Because they are incorporeal, they DON'T get moved around when the maze shifts. The PC's will move with their zone, but the shadows will be left behind when the zone moves. Sometimes this will deliver PC's to the bad guys; sometimes it will whisk them away.
PSusac wrote:
I'll be happy to post it, once it's done. I still have a few more screens to complete the adventure.
Be sure you let the "Out of Play" players participate in some way. Maybe the stones let them communicate to each other and offer advice on where to go. Otherwise they'll get pretty bored.
Good idea! Thx!