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DerWille

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DM Diary: The Challenges of the Mad Wizarding Tower
« on: July 15, 2009, 08:07:33 AM »
 This thread is based off the other one where I ask for advice on how to make dungeons and traps more interesting. You can find it here: http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=4868.0

 After taking in all the advice I went to work. I asked my friend to make a new character and be a guinea pig as I'm learning how to become a better DM. After the last session where I came up a surprisingly fun dungeon in thirty minutes, he was in. I asked for him to make a level six character with 40k gold (He's be alone so I gave him more than what he should have by the wealth by level chart). Of all things, he decided to make a druid. His last character was an archer and he wanted to try something new, but he didn't know how to make a Druid and asked me for advice. I showed him the Druid's handbook in the handbooks section (great job the way) and he went to town. He probably spent ten hours on his character. Here's a quick summary of what he has going on:

[spoiler]
Level 6 Human Druid
Str: 8
Dex; 10
Con: 16
Int: 14
Wis: 19
Cha: 12

(His character was built with a stat spread I made called the heroic array - It's an 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, and 8 stat spread. It lets MAD classes get some of the stats they need and forces their character to take a dump stat and be bad at something hopefully providing a role play flaw)

Feats (2 flaws)
Natural Spell, Initiate of Nature, Ashbound, Greenbound Creature, Spell Focus (Conjuration), and Augment Summoning

 In other words, his army of plant animals rum amok and destroy absolutely everything in their paths. But it doesn't start there, he can transform into a fleshraker dinosaur and cause more mayhem. I allowed all of this because I wanted to see how broken druids can be. To my surprise, not as much as I thought.
[/spoiler]

 So after some role play I came up with quickly off the top of my head he entered the tower.

First floor:

 A large octagonal room with 3 switches and a button on the left side. The three switches are labeled 1 to 3. Below the switches is a large marking that looks like an asterisk. The door is on the opposite side of where the player enters. In the center of the room is an alter that is surrounded by three pillars of different sizes that do not connect with the ceiling. The smallest pillar is about 2ft tall and labeled, "1". The medium sized pillar is about 4ft tall and labeled "2". The last and largest pillar of about 6ft tall is labeled "3".

 The alter in the center of the room read,
"High to low
a telling blow.
Low to high
the angels cry.
The neutral
will surely fall.
Careful eyes
surely surmise
the pilings position."

 The riddles means that if the player flips the switches from 1 to 3 in order, a trap will spring shocking him for DC 15 2d6 blue lightning. Reflex save halves. If the player flips the switches from 3 to 1, an average swarm of cranium rats will attack (More on this), If he presses the switches starting with two, all the tiles in the floor will give way and he'll fall into the basement where he fights a Boneclaw. However, if he were to search or examine the pillars closely I would give him the next hint, "The pillars are sitting on top of the ground. They are not connected to the floor (Pushable)". It also tells him subtly to move the pillars in front of the switches matching them one for one.

 As he went through the puzzle he did something I didn't expect... he had his animal companion and summons throw a single switch then pressed the button. What should I do? So, I shrunk him down to the tiniest size in all of D&D. Confused, he had them climb on top of each pillar. However, nothing happened. So he started throwing all three switches, first was 1 to 3. He's shocked by blue lightning.  He rolls his eyes then immediately tries 3 to 1.

 A single swarm of rats came out and won initiative. Their first round was to charm person the druid and they won. He obeyed their commands to attack his animal companion, but the combination of a naturally high AC boosted up by tiny size made it impossible to hit. At this time his other animal in the army (a wolf he got through a quick romp in the woods and a command animals check) noticed that  there was a tiny button on the other side of the room. The wolf pressed it growing back to medium size.

 On the next round, the rats immediately mind blast the wolf. The wolf fails the save with his +2 will save and is stunned. A few turns later that consist of the druid attacking his animals and the animals trying to press the button, everyone gets big and the druid finally breaks the DC 12 charm person. However these rats are ridiculously powerful. Every time the druid would use summon nature's ally, they would stun the new creature. This continued until the battlefield consisted of, a druid wildshaped into a fleshraking dinosaur, two wolves, a dire wolf, and a desmodu hunting bat. Slowly and through alot of effort he was able to overcome the rats mind blasts, but then terror struck. After the rats split apart, he was wide eyed. Two more of them? However, their mind blast was no where near as scary because of its low DC. After this fight he said, "Those rats are evil." Yes they are, very very evil.

 After a little while longer, he examines the pillars and discovers their secret. After a bit of bad narration on my part (I really need to work on this) he figures that he should push the pillars to the asterisks. He matches each one perfectly, but then doesn't press the button. He's a single action away from solving the puzzle and he decides that he should start flipping switches! At this part I was becoming a bit frustrated, he was so close to the answer, just press the damned button! It's not hard! Unfortunately, my reactions sort of gave it away and he didn't flip the switches to knock out the floor and just pressed the damned button. He told me after wards that I shouldn't have done anything. He's right... T.T

Second Floor:

The same size octagonal room that is completely barren except three switches on the far wall, the three skeletons that arm them, and the Demon Arrow standing guard by the closed door. On the sides where the enemies are and the players start a bit of trim lines outlines a long 5ft stretch of tiles. All of the tiles are entirely empty.

 This fight consists of the three skeletons pulling switches that arm the spread of tile traps that make up the majority of this room. The first switch is the first ten feet of tiles from the player. The second the next ten feet. And the last switch, the final ten feet. Only a single switch can be pulled at a time so only a third of the room is trapped at any given time.

 He uses a nature's servant to scout and the demon arrow fires a shot at it, but because of the weird rules about the servant, it takes no damage and reports back to him. During this time the demon arrow uses his summon tana-tri or whatever it is and succeeds in summoning another demon arrow (Only a 35% chance). After some spell casting he rushes his army (consisting of a fire elemental, two wolves, two dire bats, and himself still as a fleshraking dinosaur) up the stairs, past the trimming and onto the armed traps all at the same time. Everyone makes a reflex save of 15 against the pit traps.

 I bent the rules of D&D a bit here. Given that so many pit traps were armed at the same time, it would be nearly impossible to quickly jump out of the way in time. Instead of ruling that he avoids the fall, I negated damage of the fall on a successful save. He didn't seem to mind and became extremely interested in the battle.

 His bats made hit and run attacks against the skeletons and demon arrows. The greenbound's DR 10/magic and slashing saved him this fight. The arrows would focus fire the bats but even with their +14 to hit they were still missing 60% of the time. If they did manage to hit the DR 10 would reduce their damage down to 2 or 3 damage which the bats would regen the next turn.

 In order to buy himself a little time he casts a wall of smoke between the skeletons and the rest of his army. I didn't make any sign or hint that he should have cast it directly on the bone arrows. With this spell, he effectively prolonged the fight and gimped himself. Slowly after a few more turns, a ton more falls through the floor, and some clever play on his part, he manages to beat the ECL 9 encounter (Two Bone Claws and 3 CR 1 Skeletons) winning 6,300 experience points gaining level 7.

 However even after killing all of those monsters, the door still wasn't open? Upon closer examination the door read, "Were you born in a barn?"

He promptly replies, "No."
 
 But nothing happened.

"Ok, fine I was."

 Nothing happened. He examines the room again. It's completely empty except for the remainder of army that's still around. The door in front of him is closed and the door where he entered is open. He starts repeating, "Was I born in a barn?" to himself again and again. He knows there's something there, but can't quite put his finger on it.
 
He begins to flip the switches randomly, but nothing happens. He continues to do it. I tell him that if he listens carefully he can hear, "Clank, clunk, clank, clunk" of traps being armed and disarmed. He continues to repeat to himself, "Was I born in a barn?" And then it hits him.

"I have Stiggy (The bat familiar) fly over and close the door on the other side." Success.

 After wards when I was talking to him about the session he said that this dungeon's traps felt like traps from a final fantasy game and that the puzzle on the first floor felt like he was playing Myst (I'll take that as a compliment!). Overall he enjoyed this session and now I have more floors to design. I've already got the third floor ready, now I just need to get the 4th and 5th ready to go (I doubt he'll clear all three in one night).

About the Druid: I now understand why Druids are a tier 1 class, but I was surprised how quickly his army was disabled by a single monster (Granted a powerful one). It's also incredible that he beat an ECL 9 encounter at level 6. If his character was in a party with other players, I'm not sure if I would allow him to become this ridiculous. If the other party members were optimized like he was then it would be fine, but I can imagine if his Druid was with let's say, a Paladin, Rogue, and Cleric. Everyone but the cleric would be feeling fairly useless. It's not the individual power that bothers me but the feelings of animosity that might develop in the Paladin and Rogue as the Druid does their job for them and better.

EDIT: I accidently pressed save when I was typing up the post.

« Last Edit: July 15, 2009, 08:58:46 AM by DerWille »

DerWille

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Re: DM Diary: The Challenges of the Mad Wizarding Tower
« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2009, 02:03:15 AM »
We had another session on friday.

 I hadn't prepared anything new because I thought we were going to be continuing our main game (Starting red hand of doom!) but the other player had to work overtime so that was out. Instead we continued the mad wizarding tower.

 I only had the third floor and a bonus room. The lesson of today was that I put too many riddles in this time. I'll ease up on them for the next sessions. So he arrives on the third floor to see the room partially submerged in a dark murky water you can't see the bottom of, nine trees standing in rows of three and a pedestal which reads, "The gods rule from the canopy above." Hooks line the walls around the room and it's impossible to see the ceiling because of the canopy of trees. If you look closely, it's possible to see scribbles on the closed door across the room.

 At first, I was surprised at how intelligent he played this floor. First thing he did was check to see how deep the water was by tying a rock to the end of a rope. About 3 feet. Next, he wild shaped into a bird and flew across the room to read the writing on the door and discover a glowing rope. The wall read, "Nine trees, Four straight lines continuous, connect them." He fiddled with the rope a bit, pecking at it, then flew up through the canopy and looked at the ceiling. A beautiful mural like the one found in the Sistine chapel is drawn on the ceiling and where the fingers of Adam and God would touch, there's a switch. He flips it and all the water drains from the room.

 When he came down he fond that the floor had a large series of raised plates between each tree. And this is when he stopped being intelligent and became an idiot. While still in his bird form, he lands on a raised plate. Honestly, I made the trap so obvious. He's in a tower where everything and its brother is trapped, especially the floor. Oh well, I got to try out a monster I wanted to play around with, a Gibbering Mouther. I love these guys. They're so despicably evil and fun. We didn't realize at the time that his greenbound summons were immune to the confusion effects, so the confusion his summoned army alive. They would run and cower. They would attack each other. And they would sit there doing absolutely nothing. It was amazing. Then the six bites would go and because of some good planning on his part, not a single bite hit him. Eventually, he was able to beat the mouther thanks to the single wolf that he had. The thing by itself, did every single point of damage.

 After that fight and realizing that trapped floors are trapped, he began working on the puzzle. And he worked on the puzzle. And he worked on the puzzle. It took awhile for him to realize that he had to use the hooks on the wall to solve it. And he worked. And he worked. And eventually, he got it. I gave him a huge heap of experience because it was far more difficult than I had imagined it to be. He proceeded up the steps to the bonus room.

 He found himself without his animal army. In front of him were two doors with twin boys standing in front of them. The wizard who sent him here was in front of them. "Behind one door is a great treasure and behind the other is a terrible monster. You may ask one of the boys in front of the doors a single question. But be warned, one boy always tells the truth and the other always tells a lie. See if you can get the prize for yourself."

 This puzzled ended up being more difficult than the previous. He struggled a long time wanting to not be defeated by it, but then after fourty minutes he relented. He opened the door and fought a bone claw. After messing around a bit and trying out his rhino form, he won, but missed out on the treasure, the +1 Caster Level ioun stone. The correct question to ask the boys would be something along the lines of, "What door would your brother choose?"

 For the next few floors I'm going to have fewer mind twisting riddles and more fighting and trap based fun. He seems to enjoy that more because if I had to classify his motivations as a player, I would put him squarely into the power gamer camp. I don't see problem with this because I share a bunk with him there.

archangel.arcanis

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Re: DM Diary: The Challenges of the Mad Wizarding Tower
« Reply #2 on: July 20, 2009, 02:16:51 PM »
interesting read here. I might end up using this in my game if you don't mind.
Clerics and Druids are like the 4 and 2 in 42. Together they are the answer to the ultimate question in D&D.
Retire the character before the DM smacks you with the Table as the book will feel totally inadequate now.-Hazren

DerWille

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Re: DM Diary: The Challenges of the Mad Wizarding Tower
« Reply #3 on: July 20, 2009, 08:38:21 PM »
I don't mind at all. Just be sure to adjust the monsters for your group. I've been running powerful, under CR monsters because my player is so ridiculously powerful. His dire wolf summons have 35 strength and something like a +16 to trip attempts. Part of the reason I've included so many puzzles is to challenge him at something that his character is not so well built for, but I still allow him to have his fun of destroying everything in front of him. I think the next few floors will be more fighty and less thinky.

Endarire

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Re: DM Diary: The Challenges of the Mad Wizarding Tower
« Reply #4 on: July 22, 2009, 01:04:23 AM »
Another answer: Hurt both brothers and ask which one got hurt.
Hood - My first answer to all your build questions; past, present, and future.

Speaking of which:
Don't even need TO for this.  Any decent Hood build, especially one with Celerity, one-rounds [Azathoth, the most powerful greater deity from d20 Cthulu].
Does it bug anyone else that we've reached the point where characters who can obliterate a greater deity in one round are considered "decent?"

DerWille

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Re: DM Diary: The Challenges of the Mad Wizarding Tower
« Reply #5 on: July 22, 2009, 07:50:34 AM »
You've fallen into the trap of that puzzle. Now you know which one is a liar, but haven't made any progress towards discovering which door has the treasure behind it. Remember, you can only ask a single question.

DerWille

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Re: DM Diary: The Challenges of the Mad Wizarding Tower
« Reply #6 on: July 25, 2009, 07:01:12 PM »
We've had two more sessions since the last post.

Fourth Floor

 Conceptually this floor was to be a bit tricky, but more or less a straight fight. There wouldn't be any fancy riddles or mind bending logic to it. Just a room with two archers and a bunch of teleporters. A rough layout would look like:

   3 V N I X 3 
2 I Y Z D Z O W
R C 1 G U S B H
E P M 2 Y X J Q
T A U      W V F
K S O R Q P N T
L M G H I  J K  L
   F C A B D E

 Match every letter and number with its mate. The two white spots in the middle are where the two demon arrows sat on raised plates.

 So my player sends his wood woose to scout ahead and the moment he walks into the room, he teleports from A to A. My player tries flying over, the tiles, he teleports again. He spends a minute or two teleporting across the room in a seemingly random pattern. When he asks what the archers are doing, I tell him, "They're looking at the door with their bows readied." He makes nothing of it. After something I can't quite remember, he makes the stupidest action ever. He walks into the room ahead of his monsters.

 Readied action, go! The demons let arrows fly, first hit... 20! Uhh, ouch. Confirm? 20! Shit... Rolling for damage... 64 hp worth. As I'm rolling the dice he says, "Dude, I'm dead."

No you can't be, don't you have a ton of health too?

"No, I'm pretty fragile."

 Well shit. The first I've actually killed off a player. I don't believe in permanent character death for players, I fail to see the point or fun in it. I remember reading an article on the Escapist that spoke about character death in regards to player death and agreed with it heavily. My friend has easily put five to ten hours into building this guy, looking up all the different spells he gets, looking up what feats would be great for him, and then throwing all of that out the window because he made a single mistake is too Gygaxian for me. However death should have a cost, so I take one of his two magic items, the storm fire ring. And then reset everything like nothing had happened minus the ring. I played it off as if he had a vision of the future (In reality, the wizard of the tower reset things).

 He then rests, summons a bunch of giant crocs, buffs them up, and storms in again, this time letting the crocs go first. The first one stepped on a tile and it's on two tiles. I hadn't planned for creatures larger than medium... There are two thoughts in my head, the first is that the croc teleports around the room in a completely random locations constantly. The other is that dies instantly from being torn into pieces. Or I could just ignore that happens and have it work like everyone else. I tell all of this to my player and he of course he argues for the one most beneficial to him. Unable to decide I used some of the advice not recommended by the Brilliant Gameologists that is used in Warhammer. If you disagree on a rule, roll for it. 10 or lower, it dies instantly. 11 or higher it teleports like everything else. My player agrees to this and rolls a 3. Bye bye Croc.

 He retreats to the previous floor again, rests, and then summons 16 greenbound wolves, buffs all of them, and then has them charge in. About this time he drew a copy of the room to the side and labeled it like a grid. We roll initiative for 21 creatures, 16 summoned wolves, 2 demon arrows, 1 wolf he commanded, 1 dire bat animal companion, and 1 Druid. After about 30 minutes or more, he ends up mapping 80% of the room and has defeated both demon arrows with nothing more than augmented greenbound wolves. I reward his exp and we continue to the next floor.

In retrospect: While I love the teleporter room, but my players didn't. Maybe I'll have a few less teleporters. Oh yeah, the trap teleported anything that was animate that was above it from the floor to the ceiling. That's why the archers could shoot, but things couldn't fly. So anything like fireballs, arrows, rocks, etc could be thrown at the demon arrows and not be instantly teleported.

Fifth Floor Part 1

 It was getting late and we continue up into the next room. I promised him this room would be simple. He walks through the door and doesn't find himself in the tower anymore, but in a large barren wasteland with not a thing in sight under a bright blue sky. The ground is a hard cracked earth, like it has been from a drought. He and critters stand out in front of the door that leads to nowhere and I have each one roll a spot check. All but the dire bat fails, so I tell them they notice a large blue winged creature circling high up in the air.

 He tries to ride his dire bat named Stiggy to get a better look, he fails again, but the bat once again succeeds. I mention that it has claws and blue scales. "I knew it, I knew it! It's a dragon."

 Yep.

He lands to go back into the room when the dragon swoops down and blasts the turned wolf and the wood woose with his electric breath. The two fail their saves and die. And we call an end to the session. He's up against a young adult blue dragon and it's going to be a tough fight or so I thought, and give him some time to prepare.

Fifth Floor Part 2

 At the start of the session he's excited. He thinks he has a master piece of a plan but it's a long shot. He says it only has a 20% chance of working. He summons his dire crocs, bark skins them, and puts up protection from energy. He goes in. I play the dragon intelligently, I change up its spells so it has Mage Armor, Grease, and Wall of Smoke. The dragon is able to disable 2 or 3 of the crocs at a time. However, my player did something interesting, he cast, "Dehydrate" doing 1d6+3 con damage. So that's his plan, he's going to burn all of its con. Pretty smart, but dragons have great fort saves.

 Next round he does the same and the dragon lands. Doing a single bite attack. Another dehydrate, this one missed like it should. Then on the dragon's next turn, he does a full attack nearly killing my player. He should know better and not to let a dragon get full attacks on you. He passes his casting defensively check and does the unthinkable, he casts baleful polymorph. Oh my god, that was his plan? He wants to turn the dragon into a toad? The dragon passes his check he now has to escape and manages to tumble into the previous room away from the door.

 Another breath attack that I targeted at the door. It misses him, but kills Stiggy the animal companion. Poor bat, I liked you. Left a nearly dead druid and three giant crocs, they fight a bit and he dismisses them once the dragon is fairly weakened. He rests, resummons his crocs, rebuffs them and begins round two.

 They pile through the door and a breath that hits all of them but one. Protection from energy protects the druid but giant crocs have so much hp that it won't matter. Also the inherent 10 Electrical resistance is good enough protection for some summoned creatures. Another dehydrate, hit. The dragon drops to 5 con and into the negatives. His turn comes up, and he's one hp from death. My player rushes to stablize him. What is he up to? He then casts baleful polymorph again... success. The dragon is now a toad.

 He now waits 24 hours and the dragon must make its will save or forever be a toad... the dragon fails. I reward him the exp for the fight with a bonus because he was inventive. But my player doesn't stop there. He uses his command animals ability and passes flawlessly to command the toad and then goes into town looking for a dragon trainer. I let the local kingdom have dragon knights who ride on wyverns. He speaks to them and convinces them that the toad he has is actually a blue dragon and he wants to train it. The commander brings his 8 year old son over who's an ace at training frogs.

 I was geneinuely impressed with the role play. My player isn't too much of a role player, but he was doing great. He was going to domesticate the toad and then dispel the baleful polymorph. He passes all of his handle animal checks and then dispels. He domesticated a blue dragon. He named him Ascarie or however you spell it, then taught the dragon that thinks it's a toad how to fly, eat, drink, wear a saddle, the difference between right and wrong. The dragon's alignment changes from true neutral to neutral good. I also say that he did such a good act of causing an evil creature to repent that his alignment changes to neutral good as well.

 We ended the session there.

 Now I have a question for you Brilliant Gameologists out there, how the hell do you challenge a level 10 Druid with augmented ashbound green bound summons that has a young adult blue dragon as pet? I don't mean like, "Throw a pit fiend at him!" Something workable. Something that is hard and he has to work for, but not so over the top ridiculous that it kills him or his dragon instantly (He really likes his new dragon). I'm stumped. Really, I am. I'm going to need more than inventive traps to do this.





Havok4

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Re: DM Diary: The Challenges of the Mad Wizarding Tower
« Reply #7 on: July 25, 2009, 07:46:14 PM »
Your player is awesome, that was a spectacular way to deal with the dragon. Something that could be interesting would be to allow him to take the dragon as his animal companion although they will cause further balance issues.

As for challenging him I would recommend swarms as their immunity to physical attacks can reduce the effectiveness of his summons and physical attacks.

archangel.arcanis

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Re: DM Diary: The Challenges of the Mad Wizarding Tower
« Reply #8 on: July 29, 2009, 01:58:34 PM »
throw him some curve balls. let him rescue a damsel in distress that is really a succubus.

have him fight another druid, evil for standard stuff, neutral or good for role play purpose. The motivation for N or G is he has to be evil if he has a blue dragon.

Anything with class levels or spells as if it had class levels works well too. I have always found that the guy who could be in your group is the hardest one to defeat.

Use the minion concept from 4e. nothing like 300 goblins with guys actually near his level to make him think. Preferably with the guy near his level as some kind of leader class to buff the goblins making them a real threat. Reach and Chained polymorph sounds nice doesn't it  :bash
Clerics and Druids are like the 4 and 2 in 42. Together they are the answer to the ultimate question in D&D.
Retire the character before the DM smacks you with the Table as the book will feel totally inadequate now.-Hazren