I've been designing a series of encounters for my players that is going to be similar to The Ways from the Wheel of Time series. The Ways are a pocket dimension that was created in times past when mages grew a bubble pressed between our reality and the Far Realm to facilitate travel. The Ways are populated with bridges and islands which connect distant places. Time and distance is not the same inside the Ways as outside, so a days journey inside could cover many hundreds of miles outside. Over time they've become a shadowy corrupted version of themselves.
The party is going to have to push through this place in order to get to a city in time to counter the Big Bad.
I'm going to borrow an idea from Penny Arcade and run it as a single long encounter. One initiative roll at the start of the night, and then the PCs have to move in initiative order for the rest of the night. There are no chances to rest or sleep, and any attempt to do so will result in being attacked.
The Ways are currently populated by Fell Taints. (MM2 and Dragon #376) There will be no Black Wind, although an early draft of this included some Deep Crow.
The party consists of four members (druid, paladin, ranger, warlock) is expected to be level 6 or 7 when they hit this encounter.
So with all that in mind this is what I have as overall design. Thoughts and comments are welcome.
There are two main areas in the Ways, bridges and islands.
Bridges:
Simply put, bridges connect islands. They're wide enough for two characters to walk abreast. On them, the party can easily outdistance the monsters. I feel that nothing of great import will happen on a bridge. They'll probably provide 5-10 minute role play opportunities. There may be a semi-scripted encounter here where the party will have to deal with a collapsed bridge. IE: Can they get the party across a 50' gap over nothingness before the monsters can catch them?
They party will need to roll increasingly difficult Endurance checks here to represent the physical exertion as they push themselves more and more without rest. Failure would mean the loss of healing surges.
Islands:
Each island is a 16x16 square. There will be several exit options from each Island and a number of randomly placed crystal clumps. I would like some way to differentiate each island, other then the placement of the exits and crystal clumps. I'm not 100% sure how best to do this though. Maybe some islands have a second level? Or raised areas? I could have holes in the island itself, forcing careful movement around them. Each island should represent a semi-unique challenge or have some nifty aspect to itself, rather then repeating the same encounter a bunch of times, but with tougher monsters.
The basic challenge of the Ways is to navigate their way through it to their desired destination. You could think of this as a skill challenge, where success is defined by taking the correct bridge and the party needs to cross a number of bridges to get out. Failures on this challenge simply mean that they spend more time in the Ways and are exposed to more and tougher monsters.
Monsters:
I'm still developing an encounters table. The basic idea is that on arrival there are no enemies, or few enemies. Each turn spent on an island allows more and tougher enemies to arrive. As the party progresses, the difficulty is ramped up. EG: the first island starts with 4 minions and slowly ramps up to tougher stuff, while the fourth island starts with a pair of elite brutes and ramps up quickly. This gives the PCs a couple of islands to get their stuff sorted out before I throw them to the wolves, so to speak.
Guidestones:
Each island has a Guidestone somewhere on the south edge of the island. The party will need to read the Guidestone in order to know which exit to take. If the party takes an exit without reading the Guidestone then they're lost and will not get any more successes until they're able to read a Guidestone and get directions. At least once, they'll be confronted with a Guidestone that is partially illegible (requiring an additional round to decipher), or outright missing, requiring them to blindly take a bridge or backtrack.
Crystals:
On each Island grows clumps of crystals. These can be harvested as a minor skill challenge that requires two successes before one failure. Two characters can act together to harvest a crystal in a single turn. Useable skills are a hard athletics or nature check, or a moderate arcana check. On success the PC recovers one crystal from the clump. Failure shatters the crystal that's being removed, dealing 1d10 damage to whoever is removing it, and destroys the crystal being removed. There are a limited number of crystals per clump.
Crystals can be used as a standard action in the following manner.
1 crystal: Recover an expended encounter power or second wind.
3 crystals: Recover 1d4 healing surges.
7 crystals: Recover a daily power, or an action point.
Using the crystals in one of these manners consumes them.
Additional Concerns:
Insanity/Corruption:
Since the Ways are corrupted, I want this corruption to seep into the characters. For the duration of the Ways, each character gets an corruption counter. You gain corruption points by using encounter or daily powers, but gain no corruption from using at-wills. I'm currently thinking +2 points for using an encounter power and +5 points for using a daily power.
The corruption scale starts at 0 and goes to 10. At 3, 6, and 8 points, the character must roll on the corruption table and suffer whatever effect is given there.
At 10 points of corruption, the PC loses their mind and turns into some sort of hyper-dangerous version of themselves.
For example the druid would get locked into her Wild Shape and gets bonuses to attack, damage, defense, and speed, or the dragonborn, might sprout wings and gain his fire breath as an at-will. Regardless of the boost, the character MUST attack the nearest creature, friend or foe. You can de-corrupt by spending taking a standard action to refocus and burn healing surges, similar to a second wind. (1 healing surge = -1d4 corruption)
This table is adapted from another adventure. I didn't want pure penalties, but something more like a tradeoff.
The ongoing damage effects, doesn't work so well as they escape across the bridges so I'll probably simply have the player burn extra healing surges or take some non-trivial damage (?2d12?) to represent the ongoing effect.
1 Hallucinations - Dazed, +2 Will Defense
2 Body oozing blood - Ongoing 2 necrotic damage, Enemies that hit you with melee attacks take +5 acid damage from blood splatter.
3 Eyes disappear / delusions - Blinded, ?Need an offsetting bonus?
4 Disorientation - Slowed, +2 Ref Defense
5 Squealing in ears - -2 to attack, +2 damage
6-7 Harmless but disturbing appearance change
8 Dizziness / distorted vision - -2 to defenses, +5 damage
9 Fainting / feet and legs distort Knocked prone, 1/2 movement. No penalty for attacking from prone, +1 defenses.
10 Bones soften Immobilized Teleport 4
11 Screaming in mind Ongoing 2 psychic damage Aura 2, 5 psi damage (friendly fire possible)
12 Overcome with fear Can't be closer then 5 to an enemy +2 Speed
Lighting:
I'm going to give this one a pass. In the WoT series, the Ways had an oppressive light eating darkness. Unfortunately until I get my Surface table, tracking who can see what sounds like it would be more of a nightmare then it's worth. Also three of my four PCs have low light vision. I don't really want to penalize the one that doesn't. The current Island will be visible, but beyond it will be lost to the darkness.
Exit Doors:
Once they find the exit door, then the party will need to fight a delaying action, while they use a number of crystals to power up the exit door. Each crystal will require a standard action to insert into it's receptacle, and then the door may require a turn or two to open.
This will be foreshadowed by having the entrance door de-power (old, worn out crystals) after the party crosses through it.
Falling:
If someone falls off the edge, I don't want it to be end of line for them. I'll simply return the character to the center of the island they fell off two rounds later and hit them with some minor falling damage. The mages that created the place would have accounted for the possibility, although the return magic is a little worn now. This gives a penalty for falling off, without encouraging them to simply jump off to avoid enemies. |