D&D 5E Enhancing "Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage"

Khisanth the Ancient said:

Well, level 4 (Twisted Caverns) has this thing where an aboleth is killing off the fish in the river, and the "Aftermath" section says that if the PCs don't get rid of the aboleth, the fungus forests will die off too, "destroying the delicate ecosystem".

Maybe they want PCs to kill the aboleth, either kill, chase off, or make a deal with the drow, and start expanding Wyllowwood's forests into level 4? They could mix the real plants from Wyllowwood into the fungus forests... (Maybe some continual flame spells for light? It's already moist enough...)

Click to expand...

That's a good idea. I'll use that, thanks!

Here's one tweak of my own.

For background info I first must tell what I've done before. I've made it so that the gates have no level requirements. I thought that it would just be confusing to the players to have them, and it creates more of a computer game experience where you must X tall to enter a ride. Secondly I have converted many of the passages leading to expanded dungeon portions into passageways leading to other levels, but more about those in another post perhaps.

The PCs made a deal with Rizzelyr the Drow, found in the Arcane Chambers in location 14a. The text says that he is associated with the drow house Auvryndar but will not reveal that information. He's found on level 3, and if the PCs complete his mission, he could give them directions to Skullport, along with his stone key. Well, the regular entrance to level 3 takes the PCs right through the drow town area, so it could be seen that it would be against his interests to send the PCs that way. Along with my previous idea to switch around the entrances and exits to levels, I made it so that he'll give the PCs the directions to go into the hobgoblin town instead.

I do not know if this counts as an enhancement for most of you, but I put together a miniature to represent the Big Bad on Level 10. The miniature has the body of a Reaper Bones Giant Scorpion and the torso of a Games Workshop Chaos Reaver. I pinned the pieces together and used green stuff to fill in the gaps and make the big sword. I painted it to a table top standard. Sadly, my PCs killed him in about 4 rounds!

Here's a link to a fan-made map for Skull Island that I found on Reddit:

https://i.redd.it/hck6vm00wg031.jpg
View attachment hck6vm00wg031.jpg


Here's the original entry:

https://www.reddit.com/r/battlemaps/comments/bt2u3m/dungeon_of_the_mad_mage_skull_island_map/

And here's a link to the same map (free) on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/free-map-skull-27104659

You can use the Tales of the Yawning Portal as an enhancement. Undermountain has various connections to the adventures in TotYP on various levels.

Why didn't Arcturia cast Sequester on her phylactery? Why does the Raksasha know its location?

Not terrible important questions - realism or verisimilitude or even logic is way overrated in a mega dungeon. However, I would like some sort of explanation. Suggestions?