The two of you have asked for some encounters/dungeon from me. So what I've done here is taken my beginner dungeon and stripped it down of story, narrative, and drama. The point of it (as presented here) is just to get to the end. I'm just showing mechanics and setup.
If you decide to run it, this is a skeleton. You'll need to put meat on the bones. Here we go. Room 1:
Party starts in the south door. There are additional enemies in the adjacent rooms who will not join combat unless their doors are opened. On their own, these are pretty easy. But they get complicated as the bandit starts throwing doors open.
Room 2
This room introduces a different type of consideration. Enemies that work together and control zones. The Acolyte typically acts in a support role while the Bandit is artillery. The Guard relies on his high AC and the barricades to protect his allies. Ideally, your players realize the enemy position is working against them and try to pull the enemy OUT of position or take ground for themselves.
Room 3
We're returning to our first encounter but adding a second bandit to throw doors open. Basically we're reducing the amount of time the party has to react to imminent threat. It should be clear that the bandits' goal is to open those doors and thus gain allies. By now, your party fighter should know his job is to sort of set a scrimmage line (engage the wolf) so the rest of the party can stop the bandits. We're trying to reinforce roles here. And match those roles to goals. But the players need to know what's at stake in order to ID those goals.
Room 4
Alright. We've seen two scenarios. 1 where baddies summon allies to make your life hard. And 1 where baddies work together and use positioning to make your life hard. Now we're going to do both. This stays relatively modest here - the guard will probably stay around long enough for the bandit to free the wolves. Party should by now have learned to coordinate efforts. Now they deicde - what do we do first? Stop the Acolyte or the Bandit? Can we do both?
Room 5, in which I introduce the Kill Box.
Like room 2, the enemies are working together. Only this time, instead of holding a defensive position, they've created a kill box. I use kill boxes all the time, so I want my players to be able to recognize them, and know what to do when they get in them. The enemies shout things like "bring down that armored fighter!" and then focus fire. This is also a situation in which players learn about acceptable losses and temporary setbacks. It is VERY unlikely that a PC in the kill box doesnt drop. But if taking that hit gets everyone else to safety... Its back to reinforcing roles, goals, priorities, and costs.
Room 6
Big kill box here, a reinforcement Lion, enemy artillery behind defended positions, and spell coordination. Success here depends on on taking positions offensively or defensively, maneuvering to create your own kill box(es), forcing enemies out of position. In other words, if this stays static, the party dies. But they've already learned how to route enemy positions, thwart reinforcement, and frustrate teamwork. So this could be an even match.
This was designed to teach coordination and teamwork to new players in my games. I include intervening rooms in which I put exploration-based challenges and lots of healing potions. The complex they explore is BIG, but its falsely linear. Meaning, whatever direction they choose to go, they encounter the rooms in the order I want them to encounter them. (This dungeon only).
Between these rooms and the exploration, its around 12 "filled" rooms total, and my guys are usually level 2 in the last two combat rooms. USUALLY. I've designed it with 4 players at level 1 - because situationally, this swings from super duper easy to crazy hard, if they don't learn anything.
On completing the dungeon, they attain 3rd level. (Or second, whatever).
What I've done here is strip it down so you can build it up how you want it. I've also used repeat enemies that can be any race or alignment. As I said, just trying to show behind the curtain how I put it together.
If you run it, or throw some paint on it, let me know!
Thanks so much, Brad!
It's funny. My original attempt at a tutorial dungeon as per your initial guidelines had false linearity. I ended up scrapping that in favor of something more overtly linear. However, I like what you've done here. I'm going to have to flesh it out and give it a try at some stage.
Well, it's tricky to do, but easier if you intersperse things like exploration, and safe rooms.
I put a fountain in. It's a weeping statue of a woman who's tears flow into a shallow pool. There are silver cups there. Drinking from the pool of tears and taking a short rest there is equivalent to taking a long rest. But only in that room - the tears don't work away from the cup and statue.
bawylie wrote:
pukunui wrote:
This is pretty much just what I need for my next session. *YOINK*
mind you, I have to bump it up to level 6, so that lion is gonna become a sphinx. (the bandits gang is the Thebes)
Thank you, Brad.
Yeah, my pleasure.
Im using a very limited roster bc I want the players to learn tactics & not worry about "Oh what's this thing do?" You'll know what everything does by the 2nd room.
1) I am really glad to see these. Not ony useful on their own, but good to spark ideas.
2) Its too bad you stripped out all the other detail, I would have loved to read those also...
Coredump00 wrote:
just because
I like how this dungeon gives the players and idea of what kind of encounters they can expect in your campaign. This sure beats the 'line up and beat on each other' types of encounters.
This is great, thanks bawlie for the thread and pukunui for the bumb. Things like these should be "standard" in any DMG
Thanks, folks!
Let me ask you a few Qs:
1.) if you've read this, what stood out? What'd you pick up?
2.) If you ran it as a DM, did your players adapt & learn? Did it teach them anything?
3.) if you played through it, were the expectations clear? Did you understand what you had to do to win?
Oh, yeah. I meant to post here a while ago. I ran a shortened version of this, using just a couple of the encounters, so I can't say the players learned or adapted since it didn't go on long enough for that.
I used room A, modified so instead of more mooks behind doors, it was lions in cages, so the goal was exceptionally easy to figure out - take out the lion-tamer quickly - which they achieved with a summoned wyvern.
A modified Room B was overcome easily when the player wizard enlarged the fighter and he broke straight through to the support staff (wizard and priest) and sent the enemy archers in the front line running for alternate cover.
Those were the only 2 rooms I used, and they worked very well. Lots of fun was had.
Thank you for the inspiration.
. . . Have you by any chance got some interesting traps or puzzles you can share? I'm working on building a, well, Puzzle Pyramid - a vault with puzzles that have a "right" solution and a "shortcut" solution which causes problems (sets off a trap, destroys the tool needed for a future puzzle so the must shortcut tthat one, or something like that).
bawylie wrote:
Thanks bawylie!
I haven't been on the boards in a while because of real life stuff, but digging through a page or two and I see myself and pukunui called out by name. I'm happy I made a blip on your radar. 
I like the progressive nature of the rooms. It reminds me of text books exposing related concepts in sequence so that students can build up their learning with stepping stones. Very cool dungeon!
Levels 1-3 are pretty squishy. Apart from lots of healing potions for this tutorial, do you have any house rules that alleviate the deadliness? It looks like the monsters you've chosen don't hit too terribly hard which is a wise choice. How many deaths have happened in these halls of education? How many failed death saving throws?
I also like the fountain of tears for the long rest. It has a nostalgic old-school feel.
- Eck
I'm not going out of my way to alleviate the deadliness because part of the point is to get the players to mitigate the situations by recognizing the dangers and responding intelligently. (That's why they kind of repeat).
So let's say you hit the second room with the wolf and 2 bandits, who are clearly going to grab reinforcements. After having gone through it the first time, you know you've got to stop the bandits from opening the doors. You act to either take out bandits or defend the doors, right? YOU mitigate the deadliness yourself by learning and applying knowledge.
I tend to KO some people in kill-boxes. Frequently, after a round in the kill-box, I'll frame the danger. Considering the enemy's cover and your position, It's clear that if you stay here, another round, you'll lose, and maybe die. What do you do?" This tends to mitigate deadliness too, but only to get the scope of the problem across. Because yes it is clear that you're in a disadvantageous position. I must make clear you're in imminent peril. Now you can decide intelligently how to handle that. Y'dig?
Bawylie, I need to thank you as well. I've used this both for a zero-prep pick-up session (something like "hey, you have to try 5e" "okay, show us what the combat's like" "umm, sure, let me see what I can do on the spot") and as an illustration of how the DM-prep-side of 5e works. In both cases, it was a complete success: it wrenched a team that has been playing 3.5 since forever (rejecting even Pathfinder) to be excited about shifting to a new game.
Although I do have a small question about your labelling: You have Easy A, Easy B, Medium A, Medium C, Hard B, and Hard C. Is there an Easy C, Medium B, or Hard A missing from this? (In my impromptu zero-prep version, I used those gaps as places for a trap or puzzle challenge that, when cleared, gave players a safe zone for short rests, but your notes suggest the whiteboard is only for combat.) The overall "adventuring day XP" is pretty solid as it is, which makes the labelling seem more like a typo, but just in case...
It's not mislabeled. But I'm obviously not a publisher, yeah?
I have 3 categories of room and 3 difficulty levels. I want the experience to increase gradually in difficulty AND in complexity.
Thus, no easy c, medium b, or hard a.
which I guess seems like a typo or a weird way to label, but I didn't put it together based on the labels, I put it together based on the progression I wanted to use.
You could definitely add rooms.
So thank you for the kind words and please, please, give me a rundown of how it played out. :-)
FYI: I am planning on upscaling this for 3rd level PCs. In a private message, Brad suggested replacing the CR 1/8, CR 1/4, and CR 1 creatures with CR 1/2, CR 1, and CR 2 creatures respectively.
This is what I get when I do that:
EASY A: A Timed Challenge
CR 1/2 NPC + CR 1 beast = EASY
*Add in two CR 1/2 NPCs = HARD
*Add in two more CR 1/2 NPCs = HARD
EASY B: A Tactical Challenge
CR 1 NPC + two CR 1/2 NPCs = MEDIUM
MEDIUM A: Pressed for Time
Two CR 1/2 NPCs + CR 1 beast = MEDIUM
*Add in two CR 1/2 NPCs = HARD
*Add in two more CR 1/2 NPCs = DEADLY
MEDIUM C: Bringing It All Together
Two CR 1/2 NPCs + CR 1 NPC = MEDIUM
*Add in two CR 1 beasts = DEADLY
HARD B: Stay Out of the Kill Box
CR 1 NPC + four CR 1/2 NPCs = HARD
HARD C: Bringing It Together Again
Two CR 1 NPCs + four CR 1/2 NPCs + CR 2 beast = DEADLY
As you can see, the challenge difficulties remain the same for all scenarios except the first one. If the PCs end up fighting all 5 CR 1/2 NPCs and the CR 1 beast, it's still technically only a Hard challenge instead of a Deadly one, but I think that's OK.
Now it's just a matter of figuring out what to put in each slot ...
bawylie wrote:
General question: how important are the CR values?
I ask because the CR system seems a bit iffy. Take the guard for instance. Officially it's CR 1/8, but if you run it through the CR calculator in the DMG, it seems like it really ought to be CR 1/4.
NPC Guard
Defensive CR: 11 hp = CR 1/8, bumped up to CR 1/4 because of AC 16
Offensive CR: 4 dmg = CR 1/4
Final CR: (1/4 + 1/4) ÷ 2 = CR 1/4 exactly!
With that in mind, I was thinking of replacing the wolves in the tutorial with drakes. We've got two types courtesy of Hoard of the Dragon Queen: the CR 1/2 ambush drake and the CR 2 guard drake. Thematically, the guard drake makes sense as a replacement for the wolves ... but the wolf "slot" needs to be filled by a CR 1 creature.
However, if we run the guard drake stats through the CR calculator, we get:
Guard Drake
Defensive CR: 52 hp = CR 1/2
Offensive CR: 13 dmg = CR 1, bumped up to 2 because of +5 attack
Final CR: (1/2 + 2) ÷ 2 = 1 1/4, which should be rounded down to 1, not up to 2
Right?
Tempest_Stormwind wrote:
pukunui wrote:
Any particular reason why? I find the DMG tools invaluable for figuring out custom NPCs and upgraded monsters and the like.
It's more art than science, though, as I've shown above.
pukunui wrote:
I'll admit I'm a bit of a perfectionist, but I find it useful in terms of filling in the gaps. There's no CR 1 divine spellcaster, for instance. The acolyte is CR 1/8, while the cult fanatic, druid and priest are all CR 2. If I want a CR 1 divine caster to fill in for the CR 1/8 acolyte in the tutorial, I'm going to have to make it myself. And figuring out a spellcaster's CR can be fiddly.
We also only have two types of drakes, so if I want any different ones, I'll have to make them myself. Yes, I can use existing creatures and NPCs as a base, but it still helps to run them through the calculator to make sure I've got them in the right spot - not too hard or too easy.
It says to round up or down to the closest CR, which in the guard drake's case is 1, not 2.
That being said, I'm really just trying to figure out how much wiggle room I've got when upscaling this for 3rd level PCs.
If I go with drakes and things, I may just have to reduce the guard drake's hit points a bit to bring it closer to CR 1, so I can use it in place of a wolf.
Brad this is amazing. I'd LOVE to see it turned into an elegant PDF adventure, with the exploration (and other) elements added, a bit of color and detail, and then a nice story to explain why the heroes are in here.
Elfcrusher wrote:
I was just thinking that an undead version of this would be great, too. But maybe harder to do for 1st level without inventing your own monsters.
Elfcrusher wrote:
One thing you can do with these NPCs is just make them zombies and skeletons. One round after they go down, they rise again with half their starting health. Thereafter, they're destroyed at zero HP.
This can be preventing by dousing the collapsed undead in holy water or burning the bodies.
Thatll give you an undead 'feel' without too much messing with the CRs. You ought to increase the amount of potions or holy water or fire available. But not by much.
Since this is essentially just a coat of paint with an HP increase, there's not a whole lot of change in difficulty. If you start adding undead immunities, there may be more of a bump. But work it situationally. Give the bandit skeletons resistance to P/S while the Guard Zombies resist B.
Should be fun.