AntiStateQuixote
Enemy of the State
I DM'd a group through about half of White Plume Mountain last night. I had hoped to complete the full dungeon in one session. I'm a reasonably good DM with 35+ years of playing/DMing D&D. I should have known better. Played for five hours of which about an hour was spent "researching" and traveling to the adventure site before entering.
Setup:
The party:
Into the Mountain:
Room 1: Spiral Staircase
Spend about 5 - 10 minutes of time (real world and fiction) navigating past the steam at the entrance and down the ladder (modified from staircase). No one takes damage.
Room 2: Riddling Guardian
They never even knew the wall of force was there. Solved the riddle in less than a second. Gynosphinx leaves the dungeon.
At the intersection leading to the three wings I add some description:
Head NE
Kalista spots the green slime and warns Ald giving him advantage to avoid being hit by the slime when it drops. The party retreats slowly back towards the entrance and the slime follows. It's not a threat as long as they move. They circle around it back in the entry room with the ladder and make their way back into the dungeon. It continues to follow. Eventually, at the door to room 4, they kill it with fire. It was never a real threat, but did cost them some time.
In NE passage see split going North to a wooden door (fired an arrow with light cast on it), but choose to continue down easterly passage.
Room 4: Glass Globes
Auggi casts clairvoyance before entering this room. He sees the glass globes and nothing else. The group enters, but Amaryllis stays outside. She's there to reopen the door repeatedly as it opens and closes over the next few minutes.
A great deal of discussion, detect magic as a ritual, light on each spehere, investigation, etc. and eventually they start breaking open globes. They dispatch the monsters pretty easily, taking a small bit of damage (Auggi, Kalista I think were the only two), and they take all of the loot.
Modification here: the keys are necessary to access the "Word of Making" the party is seeking. I describe each key as a skeleton key of identical shape, but different material (copper, ceramic, gold, silver, black iron, lead, glass, iron and a multi-metal twisted rainbow key).
Kalista takes the ring which gives it's speech telepathically to her (instead of out loud to everyone). She relays the message as clearly as she can remember. Fair amount of discussion. It's clear early on that Kalista is the only one really willing to take the risk on the ring. Auggi casts identify as a ritual: the ring has Nystul's magic aura on it and a modified version of magic mouth that works telepathically and it is a ring of protection ... no other powers. Kalista takes the ring and will attune to it at first opportunity.
The party is on a 12 hour clock. They spent an hour climbing the mountain and have now been in the dungeon 80 minutes. They have less than 10 hours left.
Room 5: Numbered Golems
I describe the room as empty except for the pile of body parts embedded in the north wall. They seem to be fresh corpses cut up into pieces and embedded in the walls. They count five torsos and heads and enough limbs to make a total of five compete bodies. Each of the torsos has a number tatooed on its chest. Two of the players immediately recognize that 9 is the only on that is not a prime number.
Auggi steps into the room. A voice booms out ... in Oerth Common which no one understands. Then the heads embedded in the wall start speaking and arguing ... in Oerth Common. Not able to understand what they are saying the party decides to leave. They'll come back later.
Room 18: Hall Pit
They head down the NW passage. Ald easily finds the pit. He's been prodding the floor under the water with a glaive that has light cast on it since they entered the place. Some jumping, swimming and rope hauling gets everyone across the pit with no problems.
Room 19: Metal-Heating Corridor
I played this pretty much as is. On discovery of the heating effect everyone not wearing armor (that is all except Yonni and Kalista) put their metal gear into bags and/or cloaks and tie them off with a rope and drag them across the place. Meanwhile Yonni and Kalista remove their armor (10 minutes) and make their way across the hall. While they are moving I decide that the mass of metal from the armor causes the water to boil. This alerts the ghouls in room 20 who come out and attack.
They get a few swipes, but the only attack that lands hits the elf wizard ... who is immune to ghoul paralyzation. One fireball kills six ghouls. Ald rages and drops the other two with Auggi's help.
Head up the stairs to ...
Room 22: Frictionless Trap
This room drove the party crazy. The player of Ald is a physicist. His character is dumb (INT 8), but he is freaking brilliant and can't stand that they can't solve the room. At one point they tied a rope off to Kalista and cast fly on her. I modified things here ... instead of magic just not working there's a targeted dispel magic on anyone crossing each pit. She fell into the first pit and took damage, but no Super-Tetanus. Ald, with help from the wizards, tries to calculate the correct angle, velocity, etc. to bounce off of the walls, leap straight up before crossing the pits, etc. to land at the other door ... while tied off with a rope.
INT check DC 15 (with advantage help from wizards) to calculate the correct angle.
DEX (athletics) check DC 15 twice ... once for each pit.
He fails the INT check and ends up falling into a pit. Falling damage, but not Super-Tetanus. I am a sad DM.
Auggi wants to try to counterspell the dispel magic effect. I give him an INT (arcana) check DC 20 to identify the source of the dispel magic. He fails. Eventually they retreat from this area to try the North wing.
Time elapsed: 150 minutes in the dungeon plus 1 hour climbing ... they now have 8.5 hours left.
Room 9: Pool and Drain
They pull the plug ... I describe the downward passage as a drain pipe. They have no interest in going down. Also: I do not have Keraptis here. If they had followed it would have just been an alternate exit from the dungeon.
They calculate it will take about an hour for the water to drain. Good time to short rest, spend some hit dice, wizards get back spell slots, fighters get second wind, cleric gets channel divinity.
Room 10: Deceptively Deep Room
Earlier Kalista had fired an arrow with light on it into this room and they saw/heard something swim up and take the arrow and light away.
They know there's a big pool, but not how deep. I've changed it from 15' to 60' deep. Kalista approaches the edge of the pool with an arrow with light cast on it. She waves it around. A "beautiful sea elf" swims to the surface, grabs the arrow ("I let it go") and swims away into the depths.
Auggi approaches and calls out in Elven. The "beautiful sea elf" returns ... and charms Auggi. He dives into the water. Ald drinks a potion of water breathing that Yonni hands to him and dives in after Auggi. The other kelpie tries to charm Ald. He burns inspiration to get advantage on the save and makes it. A raging, waterbreathing barbarian makes quick work of two kelpies especially with others pelting from above with spells.
Auggi shakes off the charm and swims to the surface long before drowning (Wow! It takes 1 minute PLUS 1 minute times CON modifier to drown!). Ald heads into the kelpie lair and loots it, all the while the player of Yonni shakes his head anticipating they'll need a new barbarian soon. Auggi joins Ald, casts detect magic and they take all the loot.
Room 11: Spinning Cylinder
This was a lot more fun than I anticipated. The group scouts out the place. Auggi thinks he sees some movement at the end of the hall (arrow slit), but isn't sure. Some chatter about how to navigate and Kalista runs towards the cylinder, drops her shield flat, kneels on it and "surfs" through the cylinder ... as Burket fires a flaming arrow ... the cylinder bursts into flame, Kalista takes some damage but slides through the cylinder and slams her shield up against the wall covering the arrow slits.
The rest of the party can't see Kalista for two rounds (the fire only burned for 3 rounds total and I ruled that as it was going out on round 3 they could then see but obscured) ... they stand ready to act, but afraid to enter the fiery cylinder while she fights Burket and Snarla. Fear spell doesn't affect Kalista. Haste on Burket makes him pretty dangerous and he lays into Kalista. She is using vampiric touch to hurt Snarla and regain some HP all the while calling for help.
The fire clears and Ald blows on his (modified) Horn of Valhalla summoning two berserkers that melee Snarla to no effect (werewolf ... immune to non-magical attacks). Meanwhile Amaryllis casts polymorph on Burket turning him into a rabbit. Yonni and Ald both stumble through the cylinder (reduced DC to 15 since the oil is gone, but they still failed). Eventually spells take out Snarla. Burket the fluffy white bunny is easy meat for the rest of the party so I hand wave his efficient murder.
Loot the place. Eager Auggi opens Snarla's spellbook and takes some damage from explosive runes. Stinking cloud is a dumb trap spell when there's no monster around to take advantage of the situation.
Room 14: Flood Doors
"Well this is odd. I wonder if we're going drown?" Doesn't matter. They press ahead opening each of the three flood doors.
Room 15 Boiling Lake and Room 17: Boiling Bubble
I do my best to describe this as clearly as a I can. It's like a plastic bubble. "You mean like an undersea complex?" Yes. That. Exactly. It looks really fragile.
See huge crab. Attack huge crab. Ald (and his two berserkers) and Yonni charge into melee with the crab. Everyone else hangs back about 60' and targets with spells. Auggi briefly contemplated lightning bolt but the horrified screams of "No!" from others around the table changed his mind. Slow it is. That spell pretty much ended the fight ... but Amaryllis really wanted to use vitriolic sphere "targeted behind the crab so that it doesn't hit Ald or Yonni." Are you sure? Make an INT (arcana) check for me. Rolls low. OK. Fire your spell ... the crab is hurt and there's acid on the walls and floor.
Ald spends another round fighting ... and uses action surge for two more attacks to finish off the crab. The rest of the group (including Yonni) has already run away knowing what was coming next.
The boiling bubble bursts. Ald takes 44 fire damage. No problem. He's a raging barbarian. He spends some movement to swim to the sinking chest, swim towards the doors ... onto dry ground and run ... to fall 15 feet short of the first flood door ... everyone else is ready to close the doors and let Ald drown or boil to death when Amaryllis casts wall of ice right behind Ald blocking the rushing boiling water for one round ... long enough to get beyond the flood door and close it.
Five hours in ... it's getting late. We call the game for the night.
They are trying to figure out how to finish the dungeon in the next 7 hours before the convergence ends.
Alternatives include: 1) giving up their quest; 2) risk continuing forward without a long rest ... low on spell slots. 3) Or maybe take a long rest inside the dungeon and risk getting stuck in Oerth.
They have information that suggests several more "convergence" events will occur at various locations over the next few months. My guess: they'll take a long rest in the dungeon, get transported to Oerth, finish their quest, and then try to figure out how to get home. They have discussed banishment as an option for one of the casters to send everyone else home.
Good times.
Setup:
- Game set in Forgotten Realms.
- White Plume Mountain is appearing at Mount Hotenow during a twelve hour "convergence" of parts of Oerth and Toril.
- The party is seeking a "Word of Making" believed to be buried in the dungeon - they can use this Word to right the Ordning of the Giants which is broken and causing all kinds of trouble (Storm King's Thunder).
- They have a copy of Keraptis's note about the stolen artifacts ... it's a couple of hundred years old.
- I have removed Blackrazor and Wave from the dungeon. Whelm is there, but modified to better suit our campaign.
- There will be hints about where to find Blackrazor and Wave (in other dungeons) in White Plume Mountain.
- The Word of Making is guarded by the oni.
- I'm not rolling for wandering monsters while they are in the dungeon.
The party:
- Ald: human totem barbarian 5/champion fighter 4
- Yonni Forgehammer: hill dwarf life cleric 2/battlemaster fighter 6
- Kalista Denumont: human death cleric 7
- Auggi rock gnome diviner wizard 6
- Amaryllis eladrin diviner wizard 8
Into the Mountain:
Room 1: Spiral Staircase
Spend about 5 - 10 minutes of time (real world and fiction) navigating past the steam at the entrance and down the ladder (modified from staircase). No one takes damage.
Room 2: Riddling Guardian
They never even knew the wall of force was there. Solved the riddle in less than a second. Gynosphinx leaves the dungeon.
At the intersection leading to the three wings I add some description:
- NW passage continues just like the one you're in: water on the floor, smooth cut stone/earth passage
- N passage: steam gathers along the ceiling and it's noticeably warmer
- NE passage: a smell of mildew and rot
Head NE
Kalista spots the green slime and warns Ald giving him advantage to avoid being hit by the slime when it drops. The party retreats slowly back towards the entrance and the slime follows. It's not a threat as long as they move. They circle around it back in the entry room with the ladder and make their way back into the dungeon. It continues to follow. Eventually, at the door to room 4, they kill it with fire. It was never a real threat, but did cost them some time.
In NE passage see split going North to a wooden door (fired an arrow with light cast on it), but choose to continue down easterly passage.
Room 4: Glass Globes
Auggi casts clairvoyance before entering this room. He sees the glass globes and nothing else. The group enters, but Amaryllis stays outside. She's there to reopen the door repeatedly as it opens and closes over the next few minutes.
A great deal of discussion, detect magic as a ritual, light on each spehere, investigation, etc. and eventually they start breaking open globes. They dispatch the monsters pretty easily, taking a small bit of damage (Auggi, Kalista I think were the only two), and they take all of the loot.
Modification here: the keys are necessary to access the "Word of Making" the party is seeking. I describe each key as a skeleton key of identical shape, but different material (copper, ceramic, gold, silver, black iron, lead, glass, iron and a multi-metal twisted rainbow key).
Kalista takes the ring which gives it's speech telepathically to her (instead of out loud to everyone). She relays the message as clearly as she can remember. Fair amount of discussion. It's clear early on that Kalista is the only one really willing to take the risk on the ring. Auggi casts identify as a ritual: the ring has Nystul's magic aura on it and a modified version of magic mouth that works telepathically and it is a ring of protection ... no other powers. Kalista takes the ring and will attune to it at first opportunity.
The party is on a 12 hour clock. They spent an hour climbing the mountain and have now been in the dungeon 80 minutes. They have less than 10 hours left.
Room 5: Numbered Golems
I describe the room as empty except for the pile of body parts embedded in the north wall. They seem to be fresh corpses cut up into pieces and embedded in the walls. They count five torsos and heads and enough limbs to make a total of five compete bodies. Each of the torsos has a number tatooed on its chest. Two of the players immediately recognize that 9 is the only on that is not a prime number.
Auggi steps into the room. A voice booms out ... in Oerth Common which no one understands. Then the heads embedded in the wall start speaking and arguing ... in Oerth Common. Not able to understand what they are saying the party decides to leave. They'll come back later.
Room 18: Hall Pit
They head down the NW passage. Ald easily finds the pit. He's been prodding the floor under the water with a glaive that has light cast on it since they entered the place. Some jumping, swimming and rope hauling gets everyone across the pit with no problems.
Room 19: Metal-Heating Corridor
I played this pretty much as is. On discovery of the heating effect everyone not wearing armor (that is all except Yonni and Kalista) put their metal gear into bags and/or cloaks and tie them off with a rope and drag them across the place. Meanwhile Yonni and Kalista remove their armor (10 minutes) and make their way across the hall. While they are moving I decide that the mass of metal from the armor causes the water to boil. This alerts the ghouls in room 20 who come out and attack.
They get a few swipes, but the only attack that lands hits the elf wizard ... who is immune to ghoul paralyzation. One fireball kills six ghouls. Ald rages and drops the other two with Auggi's help.
Head up the stairs to ...
Room 22: Frictionless Trap
This room drove the party crazy. The player of Ald is a physicist. His character is dumb (INT 8), but he is freaking brilliant and can't stand that they can't solve the room. At one point they tied a rope off to Kalista and cast fly on her. I modified things here ... instead of magic just not working there's a targeted dispel magic on anyone crossing each pit. She fell into the first pit and took damage, but no Super-Tetanus. Ald, with help from the wizards, tries to calculate the correct angle, velocity, etc. to bounce off of the walls, leap straight up before crossing the pits, etc. to land at the other door ... while tied off with a rope.
INT check DC 15 (with advantage help from wizards) to calculate the correct angle.
DEX (athletics) check DC 15 twice ... once for each pit.
He fails the INT check and ends up falling into a pit. Falling damage, but not Super-Tetanus. I am a sad DM.
Auggi wants to try to counterspell the dispel magic effect. I give him an INT (arcana) check DC 20 to identify the source of the dispel magic. He fails. Eventually they retreat from this area to try the North wing.
Time elapsed: 150 minutes in the dungeon plus 1 hour climbing ... they now have 8.5 hours left.
Room 9: Pool and Drain
They pull the plug ... I describe the downward passage as a drain pipe. They have no interest in going down. Also: I do not have Keraptis here. If they had followed it would have just been an alternate exit from the dungeon.
They calculate it will take about an hour for the water to drain. Good time to short rest, spend some hit dice, wizards get back spell slots, fighters get second wind, cleric gets channel divinity.
Room 10: Deceptively Deep Room
Earlier Kalista had fired an arrow with light on it into this room and they saw/heard something swim up and take the arrow and light away.
They know there's a big pool, but not how deep. I've changed it from 15' to 60' deep. Kalista approaches the edge of the pool with an arrow with light cast on it. She waves it around. A "beautiful sea elf" swims to the surface, grabs the arrow ("I let it go") and swims away into the depths.
Auggi approaches and calls out in Elven. The "beautiful sea elf" returns ... and charms Auggi. He dives into the water. Ald drinks a potion of water breathing that Yonni hands to him and dives in after Auggi. The other kelpie tries to charm Ald. He burns inspiration to get advantage on the save and makes it. A raging, waterbreathing barbarian makes quick work of two kelpies especially with others pelting from above with spells.
Auggi shakes off the charm and swims to the surface long before drowning (Wow! It takes 1 minute PLUS 1 minute times CON modifier to drown!). Ald heads into the kelpie lair and loots it, all the while the player of Yonni shakes his head anticipating they'll need a new barbarian soon. Auggi joins Ald, casts detect magic and they take all the loot.
Room 11: Spinning Cylinder
This was a lot more fun than I anticipated. The group scouts out the place. Auggi thinks he sees some movement at the end of the hall (arrow slit), but isn't sure. Some chatter about how to navigate and Kalista runs towards the cylinder, drops her shield flat, kneels on it and "surfs" through the cylinder ... as Burket fires a flaming arrow ... the cylinder bursts into flame, Kalista takes some damage but slides through the cylinder and slams her shield up against the wall covering the arrow slits.
The rest of the party can't see Kalista for two rounds (the fire only burned for 3 rounds total and I ruled that as it was going out on round 3 they could then see but obscured) ... they stand ready to act, but afraid to enter the fiery cylinder while she fights Burket and Snarla. Fear spell doesn't affect Kalista. Haste on Burket makes him pretty dangerous and he lays into Kalista. She is using vampiric touch to hurt Snarla and regain some HP all the while calling for help.
The fire clears and Ald blows on his (modified) Horn of Valhalla summoning two berserkers that melee Snarla to no effect (werewolf ... immune to non-magical attacks). Meanwhile Amaryllis casts polymorph on Burket turning him into a rabbit. Yonni and Ald both stumble through the cylinder (reduced DC to 15 since the oil is gone, but they still failed). Eventually spells take out Snarla. Burket the fluffy white bunny is easy meat for the rest of the party so I hand wave his efficient murder.
Loot the place. Eager Auggi opens Snarla's spellbook and takes some damage from explosive runes. Stinking cloud is a dumb trap spell when there's no monster around to take advantage of the situation.
Room 14: Flood Doors
"Well this is odd. I wonder if we're going drown?" Doesn't matter. They press ahead opening each of the three flood doors.
Room 15 Boiling Lake and Room 17: Boiling Bubble
I do my best to describe this as clearly as a I can. It's like a plastic bubble. "You mean like an undersea complex?" Yes. That. Exactly. It looks really fragile.
See huge crab. Attack huge crab. Ald (and his two berserkers) and Yonni charge into melee with the crab. Everyone else hangs back about 60' and targets with spells. Auggi briefly contemplated lightning bolt but the horrified screams of "No!" from others around the table changed his mind. Slow it is. That spell pretty much ended the fight ... but Amaryllis really wanted to use vitriolic sphere "targeted behind the crab so that it doesn't hit Ald or Yonni." Are you sure? Make an INT (arcana) check for me. Rolls low. OK. Fire your spell ... the crab is hurt and there's acid on the walls and floor.
Ald spends another round fighting ... and uses action surge for two more attacks to finish off the crab. The rest of the group (including Yonni) has already run away knowing what was coming next.
The boiling bubble bursts. Ald takes 44 fire damage. No problem. He's a raging barbarian. He spends some movement to swim to the sinking chest, swim towards the doors ... onto dry ground and run ... to fall 15 feet short of the first flood door ... everyone else is ready to close the doors and let Ald drown or boil to death when Amaryllis casts wall of ice right behind Ald blocking the rushing boiling water for one round ... long enough to get beyond the flood door and close it.
Five hours in ... it's getting late. We call the game for the night.
They are trying to figure out how to finish the dungeon in the next 7 hours before the convergence ends.
Alternatives include: 1) giving up their quest; 2) risk continuing forward without a long rest ... low on spell slots. 3) Or maybe take a long rest inside the dungeon and risk getting stuck in Oerth.
They have information that suggests several more "convergence" events will occur at various locations over the next few months. My guess: they'll take a long rest in the dungeon, get transported to Oerth, finish their quest, and then try to figure out how to get home. They have discussed banishment as an option for one of the casters to send everyone else home.
Good times.
