How to spice up this chimera/trap encounter?

I'm converting an old DUNGEON adventure called Object of Desire by Gary O'Connell and Lucya Szachnowski, written for 4-6 PCs of levels 5-8 in Basic D&D.

The question is edition-less, but for the record it's for a party of about five 11th-12th level PCs in 5e.

How can I spice up this encounter with a chimera? It feels oddly out-of-place and underdone (not to mention underpowered for my party) in an otherwise wondrous dungeon.

Here's the original write-up:

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2. Guardian Room

[SECTION]Beyond the door is a 40' x 30' room with a copper door on the far side. The floor is a mosaic of red and yellow geometric patterns, and the bare rock wall are as smooth as marble.[/SECTION]

The floor is a magical trap. When anyone not wearing one of Nazir's rings of returning (see the sidebar on page 45) steps into the room, he or she triggers a create any monster spell that conjures a chimera in the center of the room. The chimera attacks for the duration of the spell (three turns) or until it is killed. It will not leave the room and does not have enough room to fly.

The chimera cannot strike PCs protected by anti-magic shells or protection from evil spells, although PCs protected by the latter are still subject to its ranged attack (breath weapon). The chimera reappears each time the PCs reenter this room, but it does not regain lost hit points automatically. Once the chimera is slain, Nazir must recast his spell to prepare another guardian for this chamber.

The copper door on the far side of the room is unlocked and opens onto a set of steps that rises to area 3.

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I have some ideas involving a swirling pattern on the floor empowering the chimera if it's stepped on in the wrong order / out-of-sequence. But I'd love to hear any ideas you have As the first encounter of this dungeon, I wanted to make it stand out more.

Further details and picture of intro...

[SBLOCK=In spoilers because we're running this game on ENWorld and I don't want players seeing]
The adventure's premise is to free a princess who looks live a prince's beloved. The prince has charmed her and taken her captive; he's been polymorphed by a wicked mage and in the process went a little nuts. The mage polymorphed him because the prince was to elope with his daughter. Outraged at his daughter, the mage turned her into a statue. The PCs come in to rescue the princess originally, but end up on a quest to reunite prince & mage's daughter. I'm adding a few more layers in my own game, but that's the gist of the original.

The dungeon is the Fortress of Nazir al-Azrad, the hidden redoubt of a wicked mage in a desert mountain fissure. This room is literally the first room of the dungeon after wending through the fissure. The mage commands a magic called the White Flame, which is a bizarre heatless flame which heals/rejuvenates creatures entering it (and grants the mage immortality)...however it does this by transferring any damage/conditions to creatures imprisoned in the crystals that the flame causes to grow. This White Flame grants his mortal followers some damage resistances and they can use their rings of returning to teleport back to it to heal up. Remind me a bit of the AD&D Positive Energy Plane / Plane of Radiance.

EDIT: I've also created Nazir's spellbook, based on the spells listed for the NPC and on other spell effects described in the dungeon that he would have cast...

Nazir’s Spellbook
1st level: attract evil eye*, charm person, detect magic, false life, mage armor, magic missile
2nd level: arcane lock, continual flame, detect thoughts, mirror image, see invisibility, web
3rd level: dispel magic, fly, haste, hold person, sending, slow
4th level: confusion, dimension door, greater invisibility, hallucinatory terrain
5th level: geas, hold monster, telekinesis, teleportation circle, wall of stone
6th level: disintegrate, flesh to stone, magic jar
7th level: force cage, teleport
8th level: dominate monster, power word stun
9th level: true polymorph


[/SBLOCK]

Well, here is my feeble attempt. You are much better at this than I am. You could always make the creature last longer than 3 rounds, or bring more chimera's in on the encounter, or allow the chimera to heal between re-summons.

But to make this an interesting encounter, I think you would want to mix it up a little, create some tensions, urgency, and uncertainty.

I've always liked the idea that the dragon head could be something other than a red dragon and the breath could be something other than fire. I think 3 rounds is not very long and it is possible the characters might not kill it before it disappears.

How about tying the patterns on the floor to the type of chimera it summons? Failure to stay on the establish pattern causes the chimera to "re-summon" a new chimera (with fresh HP) with a different dragon head (keeping the characters off guard and preventing the dosing of any resistances to selected breath type from being predictable.) And of course, lock the door.

This will require the party to defeat the monster quickly, and control their movements, to prevent a refresh of the monster with a different dragon head.

You could go with a radically different approach and running the chimera as an NPC... less of a traditional chimera and more along the lines of 'summoned guardian in the shape of a chimera', by which I mean that while it is compelled by the magic that binds it to fight the adventurers have it try to strike up some friendly banter.

I'd play on the odd juxtaposition of a creature hell bent on destroying the PCs while simultaneously apologizing for the need to messily disembowel them, have him ask about the weather, or lament the lack of meaningful company in his line of work etc etc.

Since he reappears once destroyed you could even use him as a recurrent NPC... perhaps he groans 'Not you again! haven't you figured out the trick to this room?" the third time he is summoned or something along those lines. Depending on your PCs they might try to strike up a conversation (while dodging blows and fire) or try to free him from bondage.

Don't know if it would fit your group, but might be worth a shot!

Easy. Play this during the encounter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wfpXI5PKlw


If that doesn't do it for you - perhaps have the trap polymorph a random PC into a Chimera instead of summoning one. The PC temporarily believes they are the chimera and their player can control the Chimera until the rest of the PC's kill it and return them to normal.

I'm not familiar with the adventure so some fo my ideas may have questions imbedded in them.

First, is a chimera particularly flavorful to the adventure? If not it's always easy to trade up to something or somethings.

Second, I can definitely see some Lair action (or even Legendary actions) granted by the mosaic to those not wearing the Rings of Returning. This could just pwoer it up and make it a viable point if some PCs have found and are wearing them that's useful even if not everyone has one. Not knowing the magics (besides summoning) I don't have thematic sugestions, but maybe things that shore up the chimera's weaknesses (both tactical and mechanical) or do otherwise direct boosts (life draining that heals/buffs the chimera).

Third, since we've already established the mosaic as summoning, perhaps more chimeras. As in it starts with a reasonable number that the PCs treat it as a combat encounter, but then more keep coming and the PCs need to realize it's a puzzle encounter with much hurting happening until it's solved. Giving them a round of "oh, we just have to kill them" so they make assumptions is a good way to throw this twist at them.

Blue said:

I'm not familiar with the adventure so some fo my ideas may have questions imbedded in them.

First, is a chimera particularly flavorful to the adventure? If not it's always easy to trade up to something or somethings.

Second, I can definitely see some Lair action (or even Legendary actions) granted by the mosaic to those not wearing the Rings of Returning. This could just pwoer it up and make it a viable point if some PCs have found and are wearing them that's useful even if not everyone has one. Not knowing the magics (besides summoning) I don't have thematic sugestions, but maybe things that shore up the chimera's weaknesses (both tactical and mechanical) or do otherwise direct boosts (life draining that heals/buffs the chimera).

Third, since we've already established the mosaic as summoning, perhaps more chimeras. As in it starts with a reasonable number that the PCs treat it as a combat encounter, but then more keep coming and the PCs need to realize it's a puzzle encounter with much hurting happening until it's solved. Giving them a round of "oh, we just have to kill them" so they make assumptions is a good way to throw this twist at them.

Click to expand...

I don't think the chimera is particularly flavorful to the adventure, no. It's not that it doesn't fit, it's just neither here nor there; it's clearly a summoned monster (but why would a mage summon a creature whose main asset is the ability to fly in an enclosed space?).

[SBLOCK=In spoilers because we're running this game on ENWorld and I don't want players seeing]
The adventure's premise is to free a princess who looks live a prince's beloved. The prince has charmed her and taken her captive; he's been polymorphed by a wicked mage and in the process went a little nuts. The mage polymorphed him because the prince was to elope with his daughter. Outraged at his daughter, the mage turned her into a statue. The PCs come in to rescue the princess originally, but end up on a quest to reunite prince & mage's daughter. I'm adding a few more layers in my own game, but that's the gist of the original.

The dungeon is the Fortress of Nazir al-Azrad, the hidden redoubt of a wicked mage in a desert mountain fissure. This room is literally the first room of the dungeon after wending through the fissure. The mage commands a magic called the White Flame, which is a bizarre heatless flame which heals/rejuvenates creatures entering it (and grants the mage immortality)...however it does this by transferring any damage/conditions to creatures imprisoned in the crystals that the flame causes to grow. This White Flame grants his mortal followers some damage resistances and they can use their rings of returning to teleport back to it to heal up. Remind me a bit of the AD&D Positive Energy Plane / Plane of Radiance.

EDIT: I've also created Nazir's spellbook, based on the spells listed for the NPC and on other spell effects described in the dungeon that he would have cast...

Nazir’s Spellbook
1st level: attract evil eye*, charm person, detect magic, false life, mage armor, magic missile
2nd level: arcane lock, continual flame, detect thoughts, mirror image, see invisibility, web
3rd level: dispel magic, fly, haste, hold person, sending, slow
4th level: confusion, dimension door, greater invisibility, hallucinatory terrain
5th level: geas, hold monster, telekinesis, teleportation circle, wall of stone
6th level: disintegrate, flesh to stone, magic jar
7th level: force cage, teleport
8th level: dominate monster, power word stun
9th level: true polymorph
[/SBLOCK]

This is a straight forward summoning trap with a simple proximity trigger.

The first thing you should obviously do IMO is double the chimera's HD and increase its size category to make it a more creditable foe against such a potent party.

The second thing you should do is decorate the presently uncarved walls with serpents, goats, and lions to subtly reference the trap.

The third thing you should is reduce the area of the trap trigger so that it only involves the middle third of thee room, otherwise the trap is stupid. Every party I've ever been in would simply step back and close the door. Thirty minutes (1e turns are 10 minutes long) of polishing armor later, the room is deactivated. Blah. Worse, only an idiot would design the trap this way, since it goes off literally before the party can get into the room, so who is even trapped? To enhance the design, the copper doors to the room should slam shut when the trap activates. This at least means that evading the trap is non-trivial and requires anticipation on the party of the party.

There isn't a lot to do with this encounter because a chimera is a fairly boring monster with no particular advantage in mobility, resistances, tactical weaponry, or skills to be taking advantage of. It is a nice somewhat scalable brute with the sort of suite of abilities you'd expect in a scalable brute (flight, at least one ranged attack, multiple attacks), but that's it. Anything you could do to make the encounter harder would only be additive rather than multiplicative in difficulty and interest. About the only thing that its got going for it is dark vision, so you could conceivably do something to 'turn off the lights', but a party of this level has little difficulty lighting an area and probably has magical objects that shed light (and if they don't by now, they deserve to die), so I don't see that as necessarily worth the effort.

Other than delighting the room when the doors slam shut with some sort of dispel light type effect (???), the only other interesting option you have is if the colored tiles in the room debuff who ever steps on one in a way that doesn't debuff the chimera. That's not easily managed in this case, as the chimera as I said isn't immune to anything and being summoned is also magical so you can't even go for the good old fashioned 'dispel magic' trap (which itself is pretty pointless in 5e anyway, given how harsh 5e is on buffs). The other option is to go for the chimeras flight and sprinkle the room with small pit traps, that the bulky winged chimera automatically is not effected by when he triggers them.

Rather than buffing the terrain, you might look to make the chimera a more interesting monster with more abilities that interact with the party as a group - in 5e terms, give the chimera some legendary abilities/points to let it take extra actions, roar as a sonic attack, refresh its breath weapon, increase the area of effect of its breath weapon, toss/throw foes with an effective attack by the goat head (PC lands 20' away, is prone, and takes falling damage), and so forth. Combined with the increased HD, this might make the chimera an interesting 'mini-boss'. Just don't get too disappointed if they cast detect magic, fly over the floor, and avoid the encounter entirely.

Note the encounter explicitly says this is a one shot, and I don't think the encounter is interesting enough to warrant loading lots of chimeras depending on which square the party steps in. Additionally, since the chimera(s) can't escape the room, that might lead to unintentional hilarity and death of the foes by asphyxiation.

UPDATE: I just noticed that the chimera keeps coming back when it despawns. That makes the trap slightly less stupid, but not much less stupid, as now the tactic is open the door, move back 60' and pepper the trapped beast with arrows or other ranged attacks. Since its the same beast every time, even if it tries to evade this tactic, you can just wait for it to despawn and repeat.

One possible work around is to introduce the 'white flame' healing at an early point, so that the poor creature doesn't die to attrition.

I like the ideas of making the encoutner not just a fight, but a lateral thinking challenge. That really suits the rest of the dungeon which is a bit more "fairy tale" in feel, and involves several traps/illusions and fights that involve tricks to make them go smoother / be resolved easily.

[MENTION=80982]pdzoch[/MENTION] The idea of a new or rejuvenated chimera being (re)summoned with each misstep is apropos to the dungeon/adventure. And the idea of the heads morphing with each summoning is also apropros to the nature of a chimera. Sort of the same as what [MENTION=29387]Askaval30[/MENTION] was recommending; a recurring monster who keeps coming back with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor/interaction with the PCs. I think that's smart because it elevates the chimera from being a boring under-level monster ill-suited to an enclosed space.

The idea of the trap polymorphing a PC into the chimera fits with the dungeon/adventure [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION], though in terms of challenge four 11th level PCs vs. one chimera...the PCs are still going to stomp the polymorphed chimera... It's interesting though... Might have to experiment with that!

Quickleaf said:

The idea of the trap polymorphing a PC into the chimera fits with the dungeon/adventure [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION], though in terms of challenge four 11th level PCs vs. one chimera...the PCs are still going to stomp the polymorphed chimera... It's interesting though... Might have to experiment with that!

Click to expand...

You could have the two PC's with the lowest save rolls get polymorphed into Chimera's. Instead of 4 vs 1, it's now 3 vs 2. Be careful though - major shifts like this can significantly change the lethality of the counter.

UPDATE 2: Thinking about this further, I now get what was going on in the head of the original designer when he designed this. I think that in its original form this was meant to be a somewhat simple skill test, wherein the players where supposed to recognize that they could just step back through the door and close it. I originally thought this disarmed the trap, but it doesn't do that. It just tells the party where to expect the trap. At that point, it becomes a puzzle in getting the party across the room without touching the floor or otherwise obliquely disarming the trap, which might be an interesting puzzle for a party of 5th level in its era.