World's Largest Dungeon in actual play [Spoilers!]

[Xiag]

Region E for me was such a mess, I actually ended my campaign early.

The party defeated seraxes, returned with the charter and a staff, used it to push the inevitables into understanding they've broken the charter, then sent them back to their plane for reprograming. When they returned, the celestials did what any good law abiding society would do when they hear of a high security jail break. They sent overwhelming force to curtail the rebellion. The reenforcements escorted the PC's out, and we got on with our campaign.

My honest suggestion is to take out the celestials, leave hints of thier recent occupation.. have the inevitables completely insane and unrecoverable, and all the wards have failed, but could be restored if the PC's work fast.

It basically requires a large rewrite of E.

I may push the other pieces of the dungeon as solo dungeons in my new campaign, but I won't run it again as a full campaign.

 

[erucsbo]

Region E worked really well for me, with the beleagured garrison providing a good base for operations in to the other areas of E. The different tactics needed to fight the shadows, the barghests and the shadow hounds made for good variety, and having the garrison present gave the party a focus for their efforts in trying to repair the damage rather than just doing the hack and slash thing.
The extra rooms and descriptions helped fill out some of the empty areas and the opportunity to reveal a lot of the history of the dungeon really upped the interest level of the players.
The sense of accomplishment from helping the garrison and reinforcing the wards, and tipping the power balance in the region back to the forces of good made for a very satisfying conclusion to the party's adventures in E and has carried over in to them looking at the big picture of trying to further help the Garrison as they move in to other areas of the dungeon.

 

[rvalle]

E worked pretty well for me as well. The fights with the shadows and baghest were some of the best so far. E became the characters base of operations not only for the rest of that region but for I and J as well.

Finding the 'All-Door' gave me a chance to add some magic items and other equipment for teh characters to pick up as well.

rv

 

[erucsbo]

Huge Air Elementals rock.
The ones in the northern part of M hammered the party last night. Things were fairly boring - as I expected they would be, and after they talked themselves out of heading to the bottom of Death Canyon (after seeing a group of achaierais on patrol) the got walloped by the 6 elementals to the north west of the canyon.
I gave them a couple of rounds of the wind increasing - then initiative.
DC 25 reflex saves to avoid damage from whirlwinds and again to avoid being picked up meant that it was extremely hard for any of them to make the save.
The elementals picked up characters, then with the remainder of the movement from the spring attack took them, scattered them and dumped them (30' fall). So for most of the party members it was 2d8 from the whirlwind and 3d6 from falling damage each round. The elementals were having fun - until the fighter and paladin managed to get a few hits in. Being NE instead of N the elementals were also subject to the holy damage from the paladin's sword, and she got a smite on one as well.
2 elementals ended up biting the dust before the elementals took to their caves and gave the party a round of respite. We ended the session there, but they will come out again next round to continue the carnage - they aren't too smart (Int 8) so figured they might try and drop the party off the edge of the canyon now instead of just playing with them. I don't think Feather Fall has been on any of the spell caster spell lists yet, so will be interesting to see how they cope.

Oh - question which we couldn't find an explicit ruling on.
Does Stoneskin work against falling damage?
I know that in earlier editions the answer was no, but with it being damage reduction/adamantine now, some of the players are saying that it is bludgeoning damage and therefore subject to damage reduction.

 

[JohnnFour]

Oh - question which we couldn't find an explicit ruling on.
Does Stoneskin work against falling damage?
I know that in earlier editions the answer was no, but with it being damage reduction/adamantine now, some of the players are saying that it is bludgeoning damage and therefore subject to damage reduction.

I would vote no because falling damage is environmental damage, and the Stoneskin spell specifically mentions weapon damage when explaining the DR.

 

[jim pinto]

hi

it's been a while since i stopped in and said hi

and since i'm looking for an excuse at the moment NOT to work, i'm checking in on my old haunt

rumor has it that AEG is stealing selling plenty of copies of this book, btw

which is a pretty good indication that people are enjoying it and that this thread is helping to get people to sell their blood and hair for a chance to play in it.

i recently had an idea for this book where the PCs are sent in to FIX the prison, because the wardens know its not working anymore and instead of killing everything in sight, they have to get everything back into its cages.

not sure how much fun that would be.

but, just an idea.

peace.

 

[erucsbo]

it's been a while since i stopped in and said hi

hi jim!

i recently had an idea for this book where the PCs are sent in to FIX the prison, because the wardens know its not working anymore and instead of killing everything in sight, they have to get everything back into its cages.

not sure how much fun that would be.

trouble is that most of the original prisoners are no longer present, and with perhaps the exception of Region N, neither are most of the cages. Being that it was the work of celestials, it would be a major undertaking to fix it up.

Coupled with this was the original reason that the undeveloped mortals could not handle the evil powers - but a party sucessfully negotiating the dungeon (and perhaps defeating some of the major evil players left there - Tyrus, World Eater, Krasveshk, Tarrasque) would show that mortals are now indeed capable of standing against the greater evil powers. Not to mention the river of lava running through the centre (and the hole in H, and perhaps M) which destroys the integrity of the prison itself.

But a rescue mission, artifact hunt or shifting through various times in the WLD history might be worth exploring.

As an aside - the way I'm running my campaign - with the death of evil beings in the dungeon feeding the escape of the World Eater - is stopping the party from killing everything in sight (they only kill most things now). There is a lot more interplay between PCs and NPCs and deals being made - as the PCs are beginning to realise how much their actions are destabilizing things and potentially hurting the garrison efforts to bring things back under control.

 

[jim pinto]

But a rescue mission, artifact hunt or shifting through various times in the WLD history might be worth exploring.

yeah.

that's a better call.

the PCs go in KNOWING that the dungeon is a prison. but no one has been inside for 10,000 yeas so know what knows the contents.

and no one has any IDEA where the RELIC might be.

 

[Hussar]

Oh - question which we couldn't find an explicit ruling on.
Does Stoneskin work against falling damage?
I know that in earlier editions the answer was no, but with it being damage reduction/adamantine now, some of the players are saying that it is bludgeoning damage and therefore subject to damage reduction.

There is a sage advice (and I don't remember which issue of Dragon) that said that falling damage is not reduced by damage reduction. I thought it was kinda wonky, but, there you are. You can kill werewolves by pitching them off cliffs.

 

[rvalle]

yeah.

that's a better call.

the PCs go in KNOWING that the dungeon is a prison. but no one has been inside for 10,000 yeas so know what knows the contents.

and no one has any IDEA where the RELIC might be.

This reminds me of that Escape from New York movie.


rv