D&D 5E Planning a GenCon one-shot using D&D Next. Help me polish things up a bit, please?

People who will be playing in the game I run at GenCon, keep out please.

In a one-shot I'm planning, there's a coven of witches who have set up shop atop a mountain that overlooks a city. They've been abducting, murdering, and all-around terrorizing the place to fuel their magic as they prepare to bring a horrible sun god back from his imprisonment in the plane of shadow. Their ritual is set for the night of a lunar eclipse, to start when the red light of the moon drapes the mountaintop in a cloak of blood.

The PCs (pre-generated) are a team of bad-asses preparing to free some hostages, assault the mountaintop, and stop the ritual.

* Lorcan, the king of the nation of Risur
* Harkover, the court archmage
* Tomas, a foreign paladin with special knowledge of the witches
* Melissa, the king's chosen successor
* Roland, the well-meaning mayor of the city
* Amielle, a war hero from a nation hostile to Risur who offers to aid the fight to help bring peace

There's the added complication that Amielle wants Melissa to die before she can take the throne, but she wants to make it look like an accident. And Roland, who is not much of a fighter, made a vow to a mysterious figure that in exchange for the power he needed to save his city, he had to make one promise: to kill Amielle before she makes it down from the mountain.

I've attached one of the sample character sheets I've made. I sadly don't have portraits yet, but I'm working on those. The PCs are each 10th level D&D Next characters, with some tweaks and simplifications to make the game run faster.

I'm looking for suggestions on things to add to the adventure. Ideally I'd like to have a mix of roleplaying, clever thinking, and a bit of combat. Right now my loose outline goes like so:

Intro. Group assembles at site of recent abduction. Some VIP was taken. Group gets some chatting time, and then a random bystander attacks. Upon his death (or if he's captured, after he starts eerily vomiting blood and dies), the group is addressed by the head witch, the Red Contessa, who can see and speak through pools of blood. Establishes villain, stakes, and modus operandi of bad guys.

Act One. Deal with some allies of the witches, probably rescuing hostages in the process. Mild combat, but ideally have some trouble that must be out-thought, not out-fought.

Act Two. Ascend the mountain. Deal with defending monsters, ghosts, goblins, etc. Trick is that if any of their blood touches the ground, the witch will know and send more forces at you. Party wizard has magic item that helps with that, but you still have to be judicious.

Act Three. Reach the peak during a lunar eclipse. Confront witches. Depending on how easy the battle is (and how much time we have), maybe the sun god emerges for the big boss.


The thing is, right now I've just got 'action' planned, and not enough 'character' stuff. I don't want it to just be dice-rolling vs. monsters, but for some reason my brain's not suggesting any good role-playing scenes that fit into that framework. I could use some help.

Cool ideas: here's some questions.

1. How do the players have a chance of knowing that spilling blood sends a signal to the witches in act II? How might they know that the item should be used then?

It's a cool item, but the description is not obvious (is there a range? is the wizard running around with it sucking up blood like a Tide-to-go stick?).

Just based on this, it seems likely that this is just a way for the witches to know the players are coming, and that the result is inevitable.

2. How do the players learn to arrive at a lunar eclipse? Or does that just happen? What if they are early? or a day late?

Again, it is not clear if player choices can actually affect the outcome here.

3. I'm not sure where the Sun god comes form, or how it ties to the moon coven.

4. The inter-player stuff feels forced -- will players know character motivations or everyone? or does the Amielle player and the Melissa player just get ambushed in the last ten minutes of the session? I'm not wild on forced PvP, especially if I were in a session with people I didn't know.

I think you have some great ideas here, and the possibilities for how-to-rescue-the-hostages could be very memorable. But those were the questions that the description raised for me.

1. I'll tweak the character sheets so that's more obvious, and I intend to clarify things in the set up. "Take a minute to read your character sheets, then discuss what you know about the situation." I'll point out if they leave out anything key.

2. The game begins in the afternoon before the eclipse. There's been a recent up-tick in abductions, Stanfield pled the case to the king, and divination said that today was the last chance to strike. The king needed time for people to arrive and gather the right magic items for the job. There's very little time for 'set up' in a one-shot, usually.

I'd be willing to tweak this, but my hunch is it's best to start where the action starts.

3. Well, the thought was it'd be a twist. But now I think I'm going to go with a more classical 'Golden Child' emaciated winged demon that swoops through a sky filled with blood rain.

4. I trust the players to tease the animosity or ulterior motives before the showdown. And I hope I'll be able to get the players cordially friendly as people even if their characters don't get along. But point taken; I'll keep an eye on it.


I'm thinking the hostage rescue situation should have an underling witch hiding among the hostages, hoping to curse people subtly. Hm. I need to brainstorm, but it's midnight.

Could be a fun situation in Act I if you present the hostages in a secure area and let the PCs decide how they want to handle it: stealth, disguise, trickery, or ultra-violence.
As a dark joke, what if the apprentice witches guarding the recent captives were burning the unneeded victims at the stake?

Cool ideas man, if I can throw some ideas around:

1 - When the PCs go past the witches Scrying Pools (of blood?) the Amielle sees on the "TV" screen troops from Risur ready to launch a treacherous sneak attack on the leaders who are meeting to discuss peace. It is happening on live TV in front of her, how will she react? Was she a fool to trust them? Are the visions real or lying? For added drama, the King knows they are true, but his next-in-line is sure they are not and that the king would never stoop to that. Maybe they had nothing to do with it, but the king fears it may be true, his general hates the other nation with such a passion he may have 'showed initiative' in this regard.

2 - Soon after, there is a communications room that the witches use to send messages to their followers. There are magic rituals all set up, ready to go. All you need to do is spill the blood of one of hte captives in this room into the scrying bowl and you can send a message. Will the paladin stoop to blood magic to warn her lords of the impending attack? Will the King of Risur call off the attack now he is sprung?

3 - A fun and creepy idea for combat. Whenever a creature is bloodied, 1-2 rounds later, if that creature is still alive, their pool of blood on the ground erupts into a living manifestation of the witches. A blood-golem-witch appears from the pool and starts casting very nasty spells on people. This manifestation is quick enough to kill, but very damaging. This adds some interesting bits to the combat. When they PCs get bloodied, they better watch out because a witch will appear soon. When the enemies get bloodied, the PCs want to kill them ASAP or else there is about to be a nasty surprise appear. The cultists are also likely to bloody their own guys in order to summon a witch to help. So they might turn on the weakest guy, cut him open but keep him alive, then guard him from the PCs until the witch manifests.

4 - Harkovers apprentice is actually one of the witches. She has been using his library to help perfect this ritual.

5 - What Sir Tomas knows about the witches is that they can only be finally killed by the blood of a martyr. Only a martyr's blood can harm them once they are at 25% HP. He brought a bottle of it with him, a holy relic from a saint in his homeland. The problem is, he has lost it. (The archmage apprentice stole it) He is beyond ashamed to have lost it. If the apprentices treachery is found out, PCs have a chance to find it in the witches hideout. Otherwise, somebody needs to die a selfless death in order to provide the material to finish the witches.