So, I'm thinking of shrinking my party....

[Evilhalfling]

I did this with Faerie queen magic. It was a small house, and every time the PCs changed rooms everying seemed to get 50% biggger. The only opposition was a cat.
housecat stats, cheeta (w/o speed), Lion stats, Dire lion stats, Titanic template on housecat. The last version was just a obsitical, it threatend to pounce for 1 round, then attacked with one claw, instead of riping apart PCs. cr 13 vs 5th lvl pcs. I think I gave it xp as a trap.

they had a great time recovering the x8 mass gold and platnium coins. Nearly got killed by a needle trap, and rode a spinning wheel to attack the (dire lion) which had retreated to a low (15') shelf. They had to chase down invisible mice (who could be seen in mirrors, but heard anywhere) and when they broke a mirror it released an invisible cat (hell cat)

 

[Lanefan]

How do you plan on doing the actual shrinking without being too rail-roady? I've thought about doing something like this in the past but I couldn't figure out a great way that wouldn't make the players feel totally powerless against it.

I also wanted to avoid going to the "artifact-level" to accomplish this as well.

Depends on the situation. If they're in some sort of structure that is already known to behave oddly, have them see a little tiny staircase in a crack in the wall...or have a foe flee into it and shrink; simply stepping "into" the crack shrinks you to scale with the stairs. They'll shrink themselves for you, in order to follow. Then, have the little staircase lead to whatever setting you have in mind (with some hazards to make retreat difficult but not impossible)...and shortly after the party arrives, have a breach occur in SmallRealm such that normal-size creatures up to about cat size can get in and keep their size. Perhaps the goal of the adventure could even become fixing the breach...?

I tried something like this once, except the shrunk area was nothing more than a great big dangerous red herring to distract the party from the real adventure.

Lanefan

 

[Zog]

Any one know which Dungeon had Chadrather's Bane in it?

If I do this, I'm definately going Fae Magic. Stolen fae magic, even

The party is a little low level for Big stuff, which is why I hesitate. If an owl = a Roc, they're toast, being level 4 or 5. Probably shrink to 1/12th size, so 6 ft becomes 5 inches.
With that size, rats become a threat and Squirrels Very Dangerous. Of course, squirrels are also theorically ridable....

Thanks for the replies so far.