Today's the day - WotC's latest Dungeons & Dragons adventure, Tomb of Annihilation, is out! Head on down to your friendly (or unfriendly) local (or not so local) gaming (or comic) store and pick up your copy. Alternatively, if you use a virtual table top, it's available for Fantasy Grounds and Roll20.
Tomb of Annihilation Is Here - What Do You Think?
Today's the day - WotC's latest Dungeons & Dragons adventure, Tomb of Annihilation, is out! Head on down to your friendly (or unfriendly) local (or not so local) gaming (or comic) store and pick up your copy. Alternatively, if you use a virtual table top, it's available for Fantasy Grounds and Roll20.
Warmaster Horus
Explorer
Here are some (mostly non-combat) encounter/event ideas I brainstormed up this morning for ToA. These can be linked to other types of encounters or just used as window dressing. No DCs or the like included to keep it level-agnostic.
1) A vast and exceedingly deep sinkhole crevasse has recently opened on your path. Over 50’ wide it stretches off to the sides as far as you can see. A large, downed tree bridges it nearby.
2) You find a roughly-hewn stone altar to a savage, unknown god with the bloody decapitated heads of seven jungle tribesmen staring unseeingly into the distance. As you approach, one head stirs and hoarsely utters a curse in Chultan, affecting the nearest PC, before falling silent.
3) A poisonous viper has curled up in one of your party member’s packs. It will strike from surprise the next time the pack is opened unless somehow detected first.
4) A ‘stack’ of goblins have been staked to the trunk of a tree, still one on top of the other. The lower ones have been significantly gnawed upon by jungle scavengers while the upper ones are still somewhat unspoiled.
5) The way ahead has flooded, with water gradually rising to 3-5 feet in depth. Traversing this area is slow, exhausting and fraught with unseen dangers - pitfalls, quippers and more, below the waterline.
6) You find a stone cairn in a clearing raised around a well shaft. Faint markings on the stone show it to be of ancient construction and even though it contains remarkably clean, cool, fresh water, there is no sign of it being approached or used by any local inhabitants.
7) The air beneath the jungle canopy becomes a stifling miasma, even more hot and oppressive than usual. The usual animal sounds trail off and an eerie silence descends as you move forward.
8) A disembodied hand (creeping claw) is occasionally seen skittering in the boughs above you, matching your direction of travel. It is elusive and unpredictable, never approaching within 50’ and always in the trees.
9) The large corpse of a stegosaurus surrounded by a bloody, trampled battleground opens up in the jungle to one side of your trail. It was obviously killed recently by a large predator, evident by the absence of scavengers and the fresh, iron-tinged scent of blood in the air.
10) You spot a treehouse on the lower limbs of a large tree bordering a clearing. It is abandoned but surprisingly uncluttered, with a simple latched door to it’s three-room interior.
11) A whiff of sulfur betrays a series of hot springs that open up before you. The skeletons of dead trees and colorful sprays of accumulated chemical deposits decorate the ground around bubbling pools of caustic water.
12) A large, ancient brass bell, stamped with strange pictograms, lies covered in mosses and aged verdigris at the foot of a vine-covered tree. Lifting up the heavy object reveals the body of a badly-decomposed albino dwarf clutching a fabulously valuable emerald to its’ chest. The emerald is cursed.
13) A small, circular stockade of pointed stakes lays on the bank of a small stream. Covered in glowing fallen leaves at its’ center is a tiger skull with Continual Flame cast on it.
14) The area becomes crossed with old, tattered giant spider webs. Moldering, silk-wrapped corpses of monkeys, sloths and other jungle creatures hang from the branches above. The largest such bundle contains the husk of a half-orc adventurer named Nurl Twotongue. Although his equipment is useless he bears a scroll tube with a roughly crafted map bearing his name which can confirm the player’s current location in the jungles of Chult.
15) A friendly, colorful parrot named ‘Tim-Tim’ flies onto the shoulder of a party member. He knows a handful of phrases and loves to eat juicy bark beetles. He is also an polymorphed imp familiar of a yuan-ti warlock who is keeping track of the party’s progress.
16) Loud jungle drums start up and continue night & day as you move through the forest. Their location and distance is nearly impossible to discern and their constant thrumming makes resting difficult. Efforts to decipher any meaning in them is very hard, though if successful, information about the party’s location, activities and direction of travel can be made out.
17) You come across an old slash & burn farming plot that still has a small number of gnarled tropical fruit trees with stunted but perfectly edible produce.
18) A gnomish trader named Barleyoat has set up a small barter post along the river. She has several local tribespeople working for her and is a valuable resource regarding local activities. She’s quite friendly, overly so, in fact, and very eccentric.
19) One of your party falls into a patch of puff-ball fungi, coughing as they are surrounded by spores. Although they receive two levels of exhaustion they gain insight (advantage) on all Survival rolls made in jungle terrain for the remainder of the adventure.
20) A heavy mist rolls in over the jungle, interrupted only by daily torrential rains, limiting vision to 30’. Heavy local iron deposits make compasses useless. Without extraordinary guidance you become lost and have a 25% chance per day of exiting this area to a randomly determined adjacent hex.
1) A vast and exceedingly deep sinkhole crevasse has recently opened on your path. Over 50’ wide it stretches off to the sides as far as you can see. A large, downed tree bridges it nearby.
2) You find a roughly-hewn stone altar to a savage, unknown god with the bloody decapitated heads of seven jungle tribesmen staring unseeingly into the distance. As you approach, one head stirs and hoarsely utters a curse in Chultan, affecting the nearest PC, before falling silent.
3) A poisonous viper has curled up in one of your party member’s packs. It will strike from surprise the next time the pack is opened unless somehow detected first.
4) A ‘stack’ of goblins have been staked to the trunk of a tree, still one on top of the other. The lower ones have been significantly gnawed upon by jungle scavengers while the upper ones are still somewhat unspoiled.
5) The way ahead has flooded, with water gradually rising to 3-5 feet in depth. Traversing this area is slow, exhausting and fraught with unseen dangers - pitfalls, quippers and more, below the waterline.
6) You find a stone cairn in a clearing raised around a well shaft. Faint markings on the stone show it to be of ancient construction and even though it contains remarkably clean, cool, fresh water, there is no sign of it being approached or used by any local inhabitants.
7) The air beneath the jungle canopy becomes a stifling miasma, even more hot and oppressive than usual. The usual animal sounds trail off and an eerie silence descends as you move forward.
8) A disembodied hand (creeping claw) is occasionally seen skittering in the boughs above you, matching your direction of travel. It is elusive and unpredictable, never approaching within 50’ and always in the trees.
9) The large corpse of a stegosaurus surrounded by a bloody, trampled battleground opens up in the jungle to one side of your trail. It was obviously killed recently by a large predator, evident by the absence of scavengers and the fresh, iron-tinged scent of blood in the air.
10) You spot a treehouse on the lower limbs of a large tree bordering a clearing. It is abandoned but surprisingly uncluttered, with a simple latched door to it’s three-room interior.
11) A whiff of sulfur betrays a series of hot springs that open up before you. The skeletons of dead trees and colorful sprays of accumulated chemical deposits decorate the ground around bubbling pools of caustic water.
12) A large, ancient brass bell, stamped with strange pictograms, lies covered in mosses and aged verdigris at the foot of a vine-covered tree. Lifting up the heavy object reveals the body of a badly-decomposed albino dwarf clutching a fabulously valuable emerald to its’ chest. The emerald is cursed.
13) A small, circular stockade of pointed stakes lays on the bank of a small stream. Covered in glowing fallen leaves at its’ center is a tiger skull with Continual Flame cast on it.
14) The area becomes crossed with old, tattered giant spider webs. Moldering, silk-wrapped corpses of monkeys, sloths and other jungle creatures hang from the branches above. The largest such bundle contains the husk of a half-orc adventurer named Nurl Twotongue. Although his equipment is useless he bears a scroll tube with a roughly crafted map bearing his name which can confirm the player’s current location in the jungles of Chult.
15) A friendly, colorful parrot named ‘Tim-Tim’ flies onto the shoulder of a party member. He knows a handful of phrases and loves to eat juicy bark beetles. He is also an polymorphed imp familiar of a yuan-ti warlock who is keeping track of the party’s progress.
16) Loud jungle drums start up and continue night & day as you move through the forest. Their location and distance is nearly impossible to discern and their constant thrumming makes resting difficult. Efforts to decipher any meaning in them is very hard, though if successful, information about the party’s location, activities and direction of travel can be made out.
17) You come across an old slash & burn farming plot that still has a small number of gnarled tropical fruit trees with stunted but perfectly edible produce.
18) A gnomish trader named Barleyoat has set up a small barter post along the river. She has several local tribespeople working for her and is a valuable resource regarding local activities. She’s quite friendly, overly so, in fact, and very eccentric.
19) One of your party falls into a patch of puff-ball fungi, coughing as they are surrounded by spores. Although they receive two levels of exhaustion they gain insight (advantage) on all Survival rolls made in jungle terrain for the remainder of the adventure.
20) A heavy mist rolls in over the jungle, interrupted only by daily torrential rains, limiting vision to 30’. Heavy local iron deposits make compasses useless. Without extraordinary guidance you become lost and have a 25% chance per day of exiting this area to a randomly determined adjacent hex.
CapnZapp
Legend
The problem is there is one tag working on desktop and a different tag working on mobile (app).
Spoiler tag works in the app
[sblock]
Sblock tag works in the browser
[/sblock]
Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app
tomBitonti
Adventurer
I was thinking not so much re: 1'st level characters as to the curse timing, but whether any party has a chance to prevent massive deaths for the affected at large.
I'm seeing a mismatch between the scale of the response and the response as described in the adventure. *Anyone* on the planet who has been raised is affected. Any of them which who are actively adventuring are likely in big trouble. Lots of retired adventurers will be in trouble. A lot of very high level persons will be impacted. There should be a massive introdus of high and epic level folks to Chult. Seriously, many more folks than the adventure describes.
And not only are folks who are raised affected: Souls cease to reach their intended final destination. They are being imprisoned, and consumed, with an average delay of 10 days. Religions all over would be pulling out all of the stops to deal with the problem.
Thx!
TomB
Sacrosanct
Legend
I am interested... how would this work? Would healing spells magic do less healing? Would healing from magic "wear off?"
hawkeyefan
Legend
Yes, the curse should not matter at all to 1st level characters except as motivation to keep going forward. Looking at my comments, I see how it wasn't clear that's what I was saying, but I do agree with you.
For my game, my PCs are 10th level, and so far two of them have been raised. Those characters will suffer from the curse. I don't plan on going straight to Omu. They'll have to search the other locations to get the info they need. Acererak can counter the divinations and other such tricks they can deploy to try and use shortcuts, so they're going to have to do a lot of trekking.
I feel like the adventure does a good job of portraying the fact that many folks are seeking the Soul Monger. They could go with more, but that'd be overkill. Also, I don't know if there are as many "epic" characters in Faerun as there used to be. With a few notable exceptions, they've removed a lot of them from the picture.
Plus there's also the meta reason that no one wants their PCs to watch NPCs solve the problem while they make the NPC coffee.
Syndra gives them all 50gp each at the start. Also, there are plenty of random encounters as well as specific encounters that can happen in Port Nyanzaru that delay leaving, entangle the PC's in various side-quests and lots of NPC's to interact with and further the plot. I think I'll probably end up giving the PC's a lot of ropes to hang themselves with and that they'll end up not leaving the port until 3rd level (which is pretty quick in 5e).
Well, there was that whole Rise of Tiamat thing, then these silly Elemental Princes came along, and then there was that whole Demonic Rage thing, and then people kept disappearing into some sort of Dreaded Demi-plane and if that wasn't enough, the Giants Stormed all over the place.
So, you know, attrition and all that.
Hutchimus Prime
Adventurer
I know. I was really surprised that Isle of Dred wasn't listed as one of the sources of inspiration for the adventure.
Similar Threads
Related Articles
-
-
-
D&D General Why Isn't There a D&D Table Top Miniatures War Game?
- Started by MGibster
- Replies: 143
-
D&D 5E [Legendary Games] 5E Friday with The Dragon's Hoard and Foundry!
- Started by LegendaryGames
- Replies: 0
-
D&D 5E [Legendary Games] 5E Friday has The Dragon's Hoard and Mechanical Monsters!
- Started by LegendaryGames
- Replies: 0