Are you one of my players?
GO AWAY! AMSCRAY!
Really, leave the thread.
You know better.
Go! Go! Go!
Mine! Mine! Mine!
I'M RICH! I'M A HAPPY MISER!
Phew.
Now that they're gone, let's talk. You guys helped me out big time with my last big challenge, so I'm going to do it, again. Only this time, it's not monsters I'm after, per se.
In a nutshell, here's what I'm looking for: my own Personal Tomb of Horrors. I don't want overt lethality, though...but I do want crazy-mad dungeoneering, to push their limits, somewhat.
Here's the sitch and a little background:
The players will soon be travelling (in whole or part), to the Crypt of the Shadow-Taker. The Shadow-Taker is a terribly powerful Lich who has present when the Bakluni called down the Invoked Devastation on the Suel Empire. In point of fact, he was partly responsible for egging them on to do it. He's a Big Bad Evil Guy that's been responsible for thing that have been happening to the players for almost two years now, though they didn't know it. He's worked through so many agents, he's never had a direct hand in it, but he's been there.
Long story short: The ST is a servant of the Shadow King, a Bigger BBEG. ST has built himself his place of power on top of a powerful holy spot to the followers of Pelor, known as Pelor's Pyre. He is also responsible for cursing some NPCs that the party is friendly with, which will be two of the reasons the party will be coming to kick his ass in.
His crypts are meant to be very, very easy in the beginning, ramp up a little harder for a few moments, and then go from zero to deadly in a matter of moments. In fact, I want the whole first level to be easy, with one hideous death-trap smack-dab in the middle of it, to throw the players out of their element. Then ramp up the challenge to salsa spicy, and leave the final battles like Scotch Bonnets on the tongue.
I'm looking at this to be sort of a book-end to the Sunless Citadel, so to speak.
So where do you come in? You may have guessed. I need high-level dungeon bad karma. I want devilish death-traps, cool set pieces and things to make the party nervous and intimidated. I want evil fungus, crushing walls and undead attacks. I want underdark floods, and ways to make metagaming roll over and beg for mercy. I want to give my players a roller-coaster ride, and I know some of you folks are virtual fonts of ideas.
Concepts of importance:
1. The Crypts (similar to the forge of fury) are in separate but connected multiple locations...they can and will have differing looks and feels. They will be deep underground and recall a good deal of travel to traverse.
2. The Shadow-Taker is smart and paranoid. His achilles heel is the Pyre of Pelor. He draws power from it, but it needs to give him some sort of blind spot. I haven't determined exactly how, yet. He has distanced himself from direct action, and entrenched himself deep in the earth in his underdark crypts, waiting until he's all but forgotten by the living to really start mucking about with people.
3. I want to generate challenges for ALL party members. Devilish traps, undead, floods of weaker creatures, obstacles requiring creative thinking (and casting), a few uber-beasts, and things to creep the party out and/or amuse them (be they fungal paladins or fake umbral-blots).
4. Advice on handling some of the high-level powers is certainly appreciated. What I don't want to do, however, is short-change anyone. I don't want blatantly obvious anti-archer or anti-mage tricks, I want things that will inconvience the same though. If the players completely disable things, GOOD. For those who follow my story-hour, I was happy when they defeated a WinterWight, and so were they, I think. I don't fudge rolls, and I don't want to cheat the players by thinking I was playing it soft. But with that trust is the expectation that I'll play fair, too. An anti-magic trap is great, but an anti-magic dungeon is NOT.
So Bring it on! Tell me what you've got. WizarDru's ENWorld Idea Buffet is now open!
