As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
1-Night D&D: Journey to the Temple of Total Annhilation
Rend
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Alright, so here's the deal:
One of the players in my Thursday night D&D campaign has relatives coming down for Thanksgiving. Apparently, they're all nerds and have approved of the stories she has told them regarding their epic tales, and they have requested I run a one-time adventure in D&D for them. This sounded like a great idea, so I jumped on board with it.
The mood will be Lawful Silly (Over the top, but not slapstick), and it will be called "Journey to the Temple of Total Annhilation!" (cue Elemental Evil nostalgia here)
So far this is what I've got: I don't know the relative skill levels of the players or the exact number, so I'm pregenerating a level 5 character for each class in the PhB using the SRD and such. I figure level 5 is good enough to be powerful but not so big as to be overly complex if some of the players are newer.
The purpose of this thread: I've already got a basic structure and some ideas going, I want more cool ideas from the greatest roleplaying minds this forum can come up with. Ideas for character concepts, NPCs, rooms and encounters, traps, dialogues, anything. Keep in mind this will be set almost 100% in a large ambiguous-in-climate-and-geography dungeon, and anything is plausible.
Character concepts can be in statistical build or in personality, as each character will come with a short snippet of the character's basic personality, to be roleplayed and added onto by its player.
My characters so far are:
-Grummthrug the Highly Irritated (Half-Orc Barbarian), a half-orc with a flair for language.
-Kabimble the Alchemist (Gnome Sorceror), a gnome whose tinkering has led him to more alchemical methods of combat (this character a couple special 'bomb' consumables which basically act like fireballs, but smaller radius)
-Larry the Necromancer (Elf Wizard), he is 'awesome', and 'rocks out', and has a 'soul furnace staff' which lets him 'spend' the souls of the creatures the party kills to boost his rolls.
One of the players in my Thursday night D&D campaign has relatives coming down for Thanksgiving. Apparently, they're all nerds and have approved of the stories she has told them regarding their epic tales, and they have requested I run a one-time adventure in D&D for them. This sounded like a great idea, so I jumped on board with it.
The mood will be Lawful Silly (Over the top, but not slapstick), and it will be called "Journey to the Temple of Total Annhilation!" (cue Elemental Evil nostalgia here)
So far this is what I've got: I don't know the relative skill levels of the players or the exact number, so I'm pregenerating a level 5 character for each class in the PhB using the SRD and such. I figure level 5 is good enough to be powerful but not so big as to be overly complex if some of the players are newer.
The purpose of this thread: I've already got a basic structure and some ideas going, I want more cool ideas from the greatest roleplaying minds this forum can come up with. Ideas for character concepts, NPCs, rooms and encounters, traps, dialogues, anything. Keep in mind this will be set almost 100% in a large ambiguous-in-climate-and-geography dungeon, and anything is plausible.
Character concepts can be in statistical build or in personality, as each character will come with a short snippet of the character's basic personality, to be roleplayed and added onto by its player.
My characters so far are:
-Grummthrug the Highly Irritated (Half-Orc Barbarian), a half-orc with a flair for language.
-Kabimble the Alchemist (Gnome Sorceror), a gnome whose tinkering has led him to more alchemical methods of combat (this character a couple special 'bomb' consumables which basically act like fireballs, but smaller radius)
-Larry the Necromancer (Elf Wizard), he is 'awesome', and 'rocks out', and has a 'soul furnace staff' which lets him 'spend' the souls of the creatures the party kills to boost his rolls.
Rend on
0
Posts
Yorn the Useless (Half-Elf Bard) an insult comic who has a massive inferiority complex about being a bard. Ranks in Perform (Stand-Up Comedy).
Silas the Short (Halfling Rogue) writes a lot of slashfic in his spare time. His motivations of hiding and moving silently as well as his perspective on dungeoneering are... unique.
Fox, Master of the Foot of the Dragon of the East Wind of the Brightest Star (Human Monk) is basically Keanu Reeves. Claims to have learned martial arts from "Maxi", constantly refers to himself as a Ninja.
:^: This.
Stareagorn the Sullen (Human Ranger) usually doesn't know what's going on and often "zones out". Wastes a lot of his spells feeding himself, often comes up with a way to make a bong out of whatever treasure has been found.
I actually played this character, and his build was extremely broken. DM went crazy because I kept talking about all kinds of stuff that didn't exist in her homebrew world, even though the guy was basically confused beyond belief. To be fair, her homebrew world was the major mythological eras of earth all happening at the same time, which I usually referred to as "The Soul Calibur Campaign Setting".
Other party member: "How did you get here?"
Fox: "Oh, I just astral projected. It's pretty awesome."
DM: "No, you didn't."
Fox: "Don't harsh me. Being a ninja is like having the cheat codes to the universe."
Other party member: "Who are you talking to?"
Fox: "Was I talking? Whoah."
Sorceror
Wizard
Barbarian
Fighter (I liked the almost-ready idea)
I also really like the Keanu Reeves monk, I'm going to start work on him next.
Let me know if you enjoy the posting of those characters, btw, I won't clutter up the thread with them unless they're useful.
[EDIT] It should be noted that I am bending a few rules for simplicity and flow's sake.
Critter: the Gibbering Mouser, a Common-speaking insane housecat-shaped-blob who rolls over mice and squashes them but then can't reach them to eat them.
Encounter: The Shrink's Puzzle, where each character has to lay down on a couch, explain why their mothers and fathers made them kill the monsters in the previous room, and correctly identify a Rorschach Test as the Gibbering Mouser eating the Teensy Tiny Tarrasque to proceed. Failure to correctly pass the puzzle does not actually prevent you from proceeding. It just makes your head really, really small.
Item: Bo and Arrow. The bow is intelligent and, when used in combat, starts every round with the words "BO KNOWS ARROWS." It also attempts to "spike" an arrow upon every kill. How it does so without hands, nobody knows.
Dart Frog Trap: Trap releases a dart frog that has starved to death from waiting for the adventurers to finally show up.
Treasure: The Tomes of Evil Dorkness and Exalted Dudes. Evil Dorkness can only be read by Larry the Necromancer, and thereafter renders all of his summoned undead into tall, emaciated boys with massive spectacles and pocket protectors who shout math formulae at the enemy instead of actually attaclking them. The Tome of Exalted Dudes makes anyone who reads it think they are an anime character with godly powers in service to the god of the sun, but has no other effects.
The Water room: A random room in the dungeon is actually an entire ocean. Nothing is in the ocean, no items, no fish, no monsters. It's just an ocean. For no apparent reason.
Item: The Windbag of Holding. An otherwise normal bag of holding, except that every time an item is put into or removed from it, it begins to explain, in lengthy, boring stories, how much more difficult life was in his time as an adventurer, when nobody HAD bags of holding, and you had to walk through the lava to the dungeon, uphill both ways, with no armor, every day, just to be eaten by a dragon.
Spell: Remove Hands. Target: self only. No saving throw. When cast, your hands fall off.
Spell: Find Hands. Range: 150 feet. Requires a complex somatic component that cannot be removed form the spell with metamagic. When cast, gives caster the location of all hands within 150 feet. Would be really useful if the previous spell had been cast if it could be cast without hands. unfortunately, it cannot.
Final Boss: The 20th level Munchkin. 20d100 hit points and the ability to rewrite any statistic at any time. Can only be defeated by destroying his Dice of Loading which he must throw to the ground every time he performs any action.
Horatio the Indecisive (Half-Elf Fighter/Wizard/Rogue/Bard/Cleric) You can never have too many options, right? I highly recommend stats of 13 or 14 across the board for this character.
Tinkerbell the Small (Fairy Rogue) Why stick to the usual Races? Ive always wanted to rollplay a tiny creature, myself... and lets just say that I don't think sneak attack damage is modified by size like weapon damage is.
Edit: Doh, I take too long making up character concepts. Oh well, maybe you'll be able to use one anyway :P
The party enters a large room, filled with piles of bones of creatures of all descriptions. It has two entrances. As the party makes it halfway between them, they both slam shut and a previously hidden ornate clock on one wall begins counting down. There is a button on the clock which resets the timer. As the timer goes down, there are hideous grinding and crashing sounds which only get worse and worse.
When the timer gets all the way down... both doors open
I think if you play it right it is good, because everyone will scramble to come up with great ideas to escape (hopefully) and keep hitting the clock over and over. I think the real trick is to not just shoot down everything they try but really make it seem like they might be getting somewhere. Perhaps litter the room with all kinds of random objects and things to try. Don't let it go on too long, maybe only give them a certain number of resets to the clock before the button stops working and they just have to resign themselves to their 'fate'.
Ideally, this will be fun roleplaying (especially with silly characters), a good example of the kinds of things DnD is capable of outside of being strictly a complex rules boardgame, a funny story, AND it has (almost) NO chance of killing or really even harming them so it's 'newbie-safe' while seeming like some kind of horrible epic level trap.
http://lexiconmegatherium.tumblr.com/
Grummthrug: Give him a high intelligence and max out his ranks in Decipher Script, but do NOT give him literacy.
"Give your paper of nooz to Grummthrug! I will decipher its arcane text!"
"Dude, it's just the paper. The headline is right there. It says---"
"SILENCE, FOOL! Smart people are working here!"
Kabimble: Here's a quick and dirty alchemical spellcaster feat:
Alchemical Thaumaterge [General]
Your unnatural knack with alchemy extends into the realm of the magical.
Prerequisite: Craft (alchemy) 4 ranks; ability to cast 1st-level spells.
Benefit: Add a Somatic and Focus component to all of your spells. In order to cast a spell, you must open a prepared flask appropriate to the school and level of spell being cast. This adds no additional time to cast a spell. Preparing such a flask requires one hour per level of the spell to be cast and costs an equal amount of gold in materials, and you require a flask for each spell you can cast.
When casting a touch spell, you may instead make a ranged touch attack with a range of Close (25ft. + 5ft./2 levels). Doing so destroys the flask used for the spell.
Larry: Make him human, and give him a leisure suit. :P Max out his ranks in Perform (singing). The soul furnace staff should grant +1 caster level to Necromantic spells three times a day, or act as a reverse pearl of power for Necromantic spells three times a day (namely that he can cast a necromantic spell in memory without losing the spell slot). Everything else can be fluff.
Other characters:
-Smokey the Bugbear, a bugbear ranger with favored enemy: plant, a +1 flaming greataxe, Quick Draw (and Rapid Shot from Ranger 2), and lots and lots of alchemist's fire.
-Waldo, the halfling rogue with goggles of hide in plain sight and a jester's outfit.
-Nob the Executioner: really dumb human (half-orc?) fighter with Profession (executioner) and a Headsman's Axe (greataxe with a base cost of 40g that grants +2 on Profession checks). Oh, and Improved Initiative and Deathblow.
-A cleric of Dionysus who is ALWAYS drunk off his gourd. Think Friar Tuck from Prince of Thieves.
-The Honourable Count Baxter Reginold Alabast IV, paladin, noble, and pampered wuss, who has Leadership and goes nowhere without a veritable entourage of worthless 1st level experts who tend to his things and help him get dressed every morning. Oh, and his bard (the cohort from leadership).
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
Did this a while back, though not QUITE the same:
MICRO-TARRASQUE
Tiny Magical Beast
Hit Dice: 6d10+9 (42 hp)
Initiative: +10
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares)
Armor Class: 22 (+2 size, +6 Dex, +4 natural), touch 18, flat-footed 16
Base Attack/Grapple: +6/-2
Attack: Bite +12 melee (1d4/19-20)
Full Attack: Bite +12 melee (1d4/19-20/x3) and 2 claws +7 melee (1d2) and tail slap +7 melee (1d3)
Space/Reach: 2-1/2 ft./0 ft.
Special Attacks: Augmented critical, rush
Special Qualities: Carapace, damage reduction 5/magic, fire resistance 10, immunity to poison, disease, energy drain, and ability damage, regeneration 1, scent, spell resistance 12
Saves: Fort +6, Ref +12, Will +5
Abilities: Str 11, Dex 23, Con 13, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 12
Skills: Listen +9, Spot +9, Survival +2 (+4 following tracks)
Feats: Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Toughness, Weapon Finesse(B)
Environment: Any
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 4
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 7-9 HD (Small), 10-12 HD (Medium)
Level Adjustment: --
An experiment created by a mad wizard long since eaten by his very creation, the micro-tarrasque is a much smaller version of the dreaded Tarrasque. While not nearly as powerful or destructive, the micro-tarrasque can still be a deadly foe, possessing less powerful versions of its larger cousin's myriad abilities.
Normally content to slumber in lethargy, preferrably near a place of some heat, such as a hot springs, forge, or fireplace, the micro-tarrasque will spring into a whirlwind of violence if disturbed, only ceasing when the disturbance is either dead or long gone. Also, about once per month, the micro-tarrasque will awaken and partake in a feeding frenzy, consuming about twenty times its body mass in as little as one hour. After such a frenzy, the micro-tarrasque will return to its lair and resume its month long hibernation.
Some very skilled (or reckless) trainers have tried raising the micro-tarrasque to varying degrees of success, and though the creature will sometimes "bond" with an owner, the loyalty of the micro-tarrasque will break if it is not provided with an ample supply of food during its feeding frenzies. A "trained" micro-tarrasque will sell for around 10-15,000 gp, depending on the number of regenerate spells required for the trainer.
COMBAT
The micro-tarrasque will attack with its claws, teeth, and tail.
The micro-tarrasque's attacks are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.
Augmented Critical (Ex): The micro-tarrasque's bite threatens a critical hit on a natural attack roll of 19-20, dealing triple damage on a successful critical hit.
Rush (Ex): Once per minute, the normally lethargic micro-tarrasque can move at a speed of 60 feet.
Carapace (Ex): The micro-tarrasque's armorlike carapace is tough and reflective, providing the micro-tarasque a +2 deflection bonus to armor class and an equal resistance bonus on saving throws versus all rays, lines, and cones, as well as a 20% miss chance against magic missle spells and effects.
Regeneration (Ex): No form of attack deals lethal damage to the micro-tarrasque. The micro-tarrasque is immune to effects that produce incurable or bleeding wounds, such as mummy rot, a sword with the wounding special ability, or a clay golem's cursed wound ability.The micro-tarrasque can be slain by raising its nonlethal damage to its full normal hit points +10 (ex. 52 hit points) and delivering a coup de grace with a magical weapon in which the micro-tarrasque fails its Fort save. Also, the micro-tarrasque is slain if it fails a saving throw against a death effect (that causes death) or a disintegrate spell that does damage equal to its full normal hit points (ex. 42 hit points).
If the micro-tarrasque loses a limb or body part, the lost portion regenerates in 1d6 minutes (the detached piece dies and decays normally).
Skills: The micro-tarrasque has a +4 racial bonus on Listen and Spot checks.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
awesome-looking magic item has a warning tag on it: beware of explosive runes. should be self-explanatory.
scrag encounter: PCs are walking through a room with several pools of water... turns out that the area below them is full of water and also scrags. the scrags will come up from the pools, grapple the PCs and drag them down underwater. Small-sized PC's will naturally be targeted first.
bad food: sprite vampires have been magically disguised to look like food, potions, belt pouches, or something else the PC would voluntarily put close to themselves. upon putting said creature in their mouth or on their belt it grapples them and begins draining it. the room would probably contain a swarm of these.
montezuma's revenge: PC's enter a room that smells terrible, and also has toilets full of gray ooze. there might be an otyugh down there too.
a treasure chest of clearly-labeled potions. unfortunately the labels are not accurate, and if the PCs decide to use these potions without identifying them via spellcraft they are in for a suprise. alright, one potion of enlarge strength coming up... oh shit why am I shrinking!
cursed items can be pretty great (for the DM). in fact, they are a treasure that is the most fun to roll for random properties.
something where megaraptors open doors. really, the reason there is unimportant. the important part is that they can open doors and this is something everyone should know.
I think it takes a few hours to turn them into a mind flayer, so it would be interesting if, at first, they meet a human whos like "HELP ME GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE" and then over the course of the adventure, he slowly mutates into this horrible aberration that wants very desperately to eat the party's brains.
When they get there....The dungeon turns out to be a one room shack, and the Orc living there complains to the PCs "Ooooh those kids. Always playing pranks on me since I wouldn't give them back the ball that came in through my window, scattering the ashes of my late wife Doris". From there go on to either: the orc hiring the PCs to get back at the kids for him, or have the orc send them to someplace that is actually useful.
CR 6; mechanical; location trigger, manual reset; DC 25 Reflex save avoids; Atk +10 melee (1d4+4/19-20 plus poison, dagger); poison (purple worm poison, DC 24 Fortitude save resists, 1d6 Str/2d6 Str); multiple targets (all targets within a 10-ft.-by-10-ft. area); Search DC 26; Disable Device DC 25.
random idea
a mentally challenged orc barbarian who thinks he is a wizard, so when he attacks he yells out random names of spells and such
I heard that from somewhere before, but i cant remember where
I can see it now.
"MELF'S MINUTE METEORS!"
"Dude, you're using an axe."
"SILENCE! PHANTASMAL KILLER I CAST ON YOU!"
"...Dude, honestly, you're, like, totally weilding an axe here."
"Don't make me get my MORDEKAINEN'S DISJUNCTION!"
"...Do you even know what that does?"
"I HORNUNG'S GUESS SO!"
Ettercaps have employed some ethereal filchers to steal the PC's stuff and run through a trapped area. "Trapped" in this case means tunnels pockmarked with holes that have a couple of Gibbering Mouthers waiting to pop out and swallow someone. After it starts attacking the Will-O'Wisps that have been lighting the place might decide to take off and leave you in the darkness too.
Ruby-eyed statue in a room has a cloaker draped over its shoulders. Cloaker wants hugs. And also your blood. Statue could also be a gargoyle or Moving Executioner Trap.
A few Drow would like you to meet their Drider friend. They might need to carry a small NPC away to accomplish this. Make that drider an Aboleth that they worship like a god and now you're really cooking with gas. Also mucus. Mmmmm.
While not an aberration, Darkmantles are pretty freaky. A crapload of them on the ceiling might make it look like a natural cavern... until of course they start casting darkness and dropping onto the PC's.
I like the traps that have cropped up here. Interesting traps are always awesome.
I once made one called Thirsty the Unquenchable - No amount of Lawful Good forced upon the masses that didn't want it was enough for thirsty. He was always looking for the next adventure.
Blackjack wrote about it in the City of Towers, City of Knives OOC thread.
Rhyming and alliterative names always add an element of humor. The first game I ran featured characters such as Seymour the Sorcerer and Eric the Cleric. I always thought that Aladdin the Paladin would be a neat name too—with the syllables in Paladin emphasized the same as the name preceding it. He would probably fight evil with his scimitar and bear a striking resemblance to Dustin Hoffman.
EDIT:
Missed that.
They can protect the terrible secret of space.
There are 4 levers, one on each side of the square room. They're labelled blue, green, red and yellow. Once you pull a lever, you take 1d6 shock damage (It zaps you)and all the doors close, and once released, the lever jumps back up . Only once you pull all the levers at the same time, the doors open again.
Basic nonlethal stupidity check, your average party will spent quite some time trying to figure out in which order they are meant to pulled, searching the rooms for hidden clues. If you are feeling particularly evil, write some nonsensical rhyme involving the colors on a pillar in the center of the room, to drive them mad. ("Blood is thicker then Water" "Nobles rule over Gardeners" and "Wolf eyes see everything first" would suggest red>blue blue>green and yellow>all, so yellow>red>blue>green)
You could also have a massive bell toll whenever you pull a lever, and if they pull it often enough, annoyed critters who you woke up/come to see what their trap fetched them come check it out.
Basically, they enter a room with a few skeletons on the floor, and in the center is a rod of resurrection or somesuch item. However, once they enter far enough or grab the rod or whatnot, the doors all close and are UNOPENABLE. However, once the doors close, the ghosts of the heroes that died here appear, just chillin near their bodies. They explain that the doors just dont fucking open, ever, and that they are only awake when the doors close, so theyre pretty well convinced that their immortal souls are screwed.
The solution is to either a) convince the ghosts to take a look outside for a way out, or kill a party member, who then promptly BECOMES a ghost, and get them to look outside, where the release level is located. once the party is out of the room, they can raise their dead friend with the rod of resurrection.
I remember reading about that trap too. The second part was something along the lines of, after your buddy is revived you examine the rod of resurrection and find it is in fact, not a rod of resurrection. How did your buddy come back? Is he back or just an imposter? Excitement ensues!
Especially since you can be walking over it before you realize it is there, plus the fucker has 15-foot reach, improved grapple, regeneration, paralysis, plant traits, and can swallow you whole... shit, it can swallow the entire party whole.
It's like a goddamn Sarlacc Pit that moves at 20ft per round. Hell, you could even have it set up in a pit... maybe goblins liked to throw things down there... make it seem attractive enough and the PC's might even go down there for the sake of curiosity or to rummage for treasure or plot-related stuff... then gahgoddamnsarlaccpiiiiiiit!
Plus, at a CR 6, it's a good encounter for 5th level characters... so if they whine tell them to sack up already.
Damn, I had this idea a while back and haven't sprung it on anyone yet.
For example, say a Huge Earth Elemental (CR7) or Elder Xorn (CR8) standing at the peak of a ziggurat, which (in addition to being an important place to take control of for the campaign) has a globe of invulnerability or other spells cast upon it that require actually getting up to him to take him down. PCs will have to go toe to toe or manage to push him out of there... which will be a pain in the ass when fighting something that's big and that can knock them the fuck off there and AoO'ing them as they fly through the air or make their way back up.
A higher dex creature could switch out a feat for Combat Reflexes as well.
Or, find a sufficiently large and nasty thing and switch a feat for Awesome Blow... it'd be a nifty addition to that aforementioned Tendriculos... slaps you away ten feet, and with 15 feet of reach you are still in range when you land. Sucks to be you. Or be a real dick and make it a dexwhored Cloud Giant with a spiked chain... but if I did something like that I would have to kick my own ass.
Please forget about this in the two week break we have for Odam.
I'll post more about it if you guys want, but otherwise, just thank you for the wealth of ideas, they combined fantastically with what I'd already had, and it turned out well.
http://lexiconmegatherium.tumblr.com/
It starts with the players drinking in a tavern called "The Stereotypical Jester," with Yorn the Hilarious (a modification of horseshoe's bard character) telling jokes on stage, when suddenly a bumbling herald comes in and informs the party of a dragon which the king needs to be killed.
As they stand in line behind all the other adventurers, they hear tales of how the king wants a band of orcs killed. Some say instead of a dragon or orcs, that it is a group of merfolk. This claim is particularly mysterious, as the nation is landlocked.
They go in and see the king's Grand Vizier, who is strangely suspicious, and informs them of the Dragon's Lair, which the PCs then go to raid! However, all they find is Orgtar the old orc, rocking in a rocking chair out in front of his shack complaining about all the adventurers the king is always lying to and sending to get him. Apparently the last group knocked him out and stole some of his valuables. Feeling charitable, the players decide to help the poor Orgtar out. He tells them they went to the Temple of Total Annhilation, about half a day's march to the west.
They arrive and meet Timothy. Some call him... Tim? But he's no enchanter. He is a bit twitchy, though. it was here that I introduced the man who has just extremely recently been infected with mind-flayer-itis. And the hilarity ensued when he turned blue and grew tentacles from his face. They began referring to him as Tentacle Tim.
The current PC roster:
Fox of the... etc. Keanu reeves.
Yorn the Hilarious (bard with perform: stand up comedy)
Sir Wacksworth the Almost Ready (standard fighter with an inventory full of empty bags)
Larry the Necromancer (nobody understands him, and the rest of the party is so conformist...)
Jennifer the Furry (fangirl druid omg KAWAII!)
Magnus the Hammerer (cleric who complains about healing)
Ritz O'Leary (Drizzt clone, but normal elf
Kabimble the Alchemist (Gnome with a deathwish that encompasses the whole party. Really likes bombs)
Ally: the soon-to-be Tentacle Tim.