D&D 3E/3.5 Ideas & examples for mini-campaign without fighting at all?

[EdenNotRaven]

Dear Everyone,
I want to run a mini-campaign with 3 Sessions without any fighting.
A dungeon, with stuff the players can check, and think about how to solve the puzzles to escape from the dungeon.
Do you have any examples? or Ideas?
The general idea is to give them all the books of D&D 3.5 open to build their characters, and show them D&D 3.5 is not only fighting, and that's why there's a tier system that can show you the versatility of the classes.
I don't know if to give them level 5 characters, or level 10... Should depend on the difficulty?

I want to hear from you guys.

Thank you,
Best Regards,
Eden

 

[Gilladian]

I would look at the old Grimtooth’s traps guides. You can still buy them online As ebooks, I think. They’re system agnostic, and mostly deadly as heck, but definitely good puzzlers.

 

[payn]

I'd be careful saying "use any book" since many of them are directly focused on combat. Make sure to emphasize that this mini campaign is focused on exploration.

 

[aco175]

Sounds like the opening scene of Indiana Jones with traps and skill checks to steal the idol, watch out for the giant rolling rock, run from the locals, and escape on the plane.

Can I ask the reason of no fighting? A lot of players like to roll dice and kill things as part of a good night playing. Are you telling the players beforehand about it? I might be a bit mad if I made a fighter and all I got to do was make some checks and saves. 3e is not very favorable to skills like 5e and a fighter gets like 2 skill points to spread about.

 

[Enrahim2]

While I love a good escape room, I feel like they often come out as very contrived. I think one mindset that might help is to try to have the players stuck there because there are many layers of puzzles preventing eacape, but rather because there are so much fun stuff there that they get distracted from finding the means to get trough the only layer keeping them in.

Think theme park with facinating vistas, magical architecture the players can manipulate, a overly complex teleportation network, and of course hints about the original intent of this place liberally spread all over the place.

I think looking at non combat encounters of old "funhouse" dungeons also might be a source of inspiration. The computer game Myst is also a masterclass in how to subtly tell a story with hardly any NPCs.

 

[EdenNotRaven]

I like how your comments about "why no fighting", yeah... why not?
Let's include traps, like giant monsters and stuff... but not always.
But still, I'm searching for puzzles for the D&D mini-campaign in 3.5 ...

 

[Voadam]

I remember the 3.0 Doom of Odin 3rd party d20 adventure had a really cool trap in a dungeon with a lot of aspects going on (rune associations, a riddle puzzle) and multiple viable methods of getting through. It has been a while and I don't remember how much fighting there is in the rest of the dungeon part, but I believe it could be minimized or taken out. It also had a political/social aspect in a viking village which can go combat or no combat depending on the party. Terrible cover, pretty good adventure.

For low/no combat D&D I think investigation scenarios like from a lot of Call of Cthulhu work really well as the plot is not based around x encounters to level up. That is the route I would generally go.

Tomb of Horrors has some fighting, but a lot of traps and exploration.

 

[Blue]

So much of D&D mechanically is focused around combat. If you take combat (including combat spells) out of the PHB you could get it down to a few dozen pages.

Have you considered a different system for your 3-episode minicampaign? Nothing against 3.5, but you're not playing to it's strengths. And there as systems that will give you.

 

[Voadam]

The stats are for AD&D and not 3e, but Grimtooth's Dungeon of Doom is a trap heavy dungeon with lots of traps that can be used in different contexts. It does mention creature stats though.

For 3e you have a bunch of trap resources such as Traps & Treachery (3.0), The Wurst of Grimtooth's Traps (3.5 over 200 pages), and Lethal Legacies: Traps of the World Before. All three are more flavorful than what you get out of the trap section of Song & Silence or the 3e DMG.

 

[Tonguez]

I’ve done monster hunts for the Circus Maximus where the monster had to be trapped brought back alive - so all the drama and danger of fights, but PCs are challenged to not harm the creature.

Riddles and Puzzles a d overcoming traps can be used too

Putting ghosts to rest by solving the mystery of their haunting, being asked to mediate in a Pixie war about rights to the local berry bushes or dealing with ‘three heads in a well’ can ll be fun