Again I raid ENworld for its ideas!

[Snowy]

After so much success with the ideas posted the last time I asked for ideas about my wild-elfy savage homebrew. And due to the stinking cough cold andsore throat that is slowing my thinking to a crawl. I thought I'd ask for some cool ideas of items creatures or locations within a dwarven fortress.

The party hastraced the tracks of their dastardly foe back to the fortress it is buried or mined with in a lareg cliff/pile of boulders.

They have neutralised a sentry on a raised up lookout point in the rocks and murderinated 4 dwarves who came out to send them packing at the main door. Unfortunately the large stone door ground shut before they could get inside.

Resourceful as ever they climbed up to the sentries position and battered the (weaker being wood not stone) door in and attacked.

One cleric 2 dwarves and 2 baby earth elementals (and a scroll of colour spray later) they have an empty ante chamber and are about to descend into the rest of the fortress.

They have found 4 potions on the cleric (one faintly evil), a magical hooked hammer, a magical belt and a "not quite" sun rod.

firstly ideas for the items. potions probabky just boring ones though they have loads of healing at present.

Secondly ideas for their descent into the fortress, they have made a sound tactical choice breaking in the side door so I want to reward them with them being on the *wrong* side of the dawrves defenses at least at first till the derro secretly in charge sorts them out.

Basically this colds got me brain dead, you have no idea how long it took to make this post make sense! and I don't want to miss an oppurtunity to add flavour to the dwarves. (I'm seeing them in stone armour (banded mail stats but heavier) live underground very closed secret society extremely lawful,mixed good and evil, very respectful of their elders.

 

[Mr. Draco]

The fortress is underground. This is key.

From an architectural standpoint, an underground fortress can be easily made into a twisting three dimensional maze of tunnels and hallways. Think about anthills--they aren't separated by floors or levels, their tunnels go wherever they're supposed to go. Why shouldn't the dwarves build in the same way? This will go quite a ways towards making the fortress seem different.

Another thing to consider is the height of the ceilings. These are dwarves with an average height of four feet, six inches or so. Why not have five foot tall ceilings? It doesn't affect them, and it'll be a pain for any invaders (I would rule that after half an hour anyone having to continuously bend over is fatigued, and exhausted after several hours).

 

[Snowy]

I was considerign making a part of it a gold mine, vast amounts of gold, that they living in a barter economy wont really have much use for.

Unfortunately it would mean that they could come back once they have reached some filthy foreigners who use money lots and be loaded beyond their wildewst dreams.

 

[JonMonster]

Seems to me that one of the things that dwarves fighting on their home turf have in thier favor is the ability to choose the time and place of battle. By moving in through the back door the PCs have already ruined that strategy.

I would imagine the dwarves would make it a point to force invaders into bottlenecks where strength of numbers counts for little. Initially, PCs would counter this by striking where they choose - wide open spaces where wizard's boom-boom spells can work thier magic. So to speak.

The dwarves would make use of siege engines. Great blunderbusses that fill corridors with a hail of shrapnel. Fire belching cannons. That sort of thing. The problem with these devices is that it takes a long time to move them - in fact, they might be designed to not turn around at all. This would prevent invaders who over-run a position from using it against the dwarves. Which means PCs coming up from behind don't have to worry about it either.

The hardest part for me to wrap my gray matter around is the three dimensional aspect. Yeah, murderholes and pit traps all that jazz. But surely there's more to it than that. How do you defend against enemies who make use of quick tunnelers like umber hulks? Quick strike forces, I would imagine. Small quick moving squads. Rush in. Push it back. Seal the gap. Kill it and let the clerics stoneshape the breach.

Weapons. Imagine yourself standing in a narrow corridor. What weapon do you want to hold? For me - I'll take something long and stabby instead of something short and swingy. Forget the image of dwarven miners swinging big hammers and picks. That's only the local militia who know nothing else. For your frontline troops you give 'em something that kills in confined spaces. As for me though, I'll take a nice big two handed shield. Then give the three or four guys behind me progressively longer spears. Now I've got a tunnel blocking wall with lots of pointy bits facing the enemy. That is mobile. I like that. Of course, if they are waiting for the PCs the pointy bits may be facing the wrnog way and need too much time to reverse so they'll have to drop the spears and go with the hold out knives.