Running the Well of Demons in Thunderspire Labrynth -Warning Spoilers!

[MacMathan]

Warning Spoilers Below!




My group has reached the Well of Demons section of Thunderspire Labyrinth and I wanted to hear about others experiences in that area especially any tips on running the extended skill challenge in encounter W5: The Restless Dead with the three ghosts as it is left very wide open in terms of personality and dialogue (KotS gave me a little more to work with in that regard)

For those who are not familiar with it the encounter involves a trio of adventurers slain years ago in an attempt to cleanse the area of demonic influence. They failed and now their ghosts can only rest once they find worthy heroes to avenge them.

The ghosts are interested in evaluating the party’s goodness of spirit, resolution to see the task through and appropriate ability to do so.

 

[MacMathan]

C'mon the Well couldn't have tpked everyone
(I hope)

 

[Plane Sailing]

The party I run have only just encountered the well of souls, and retreated from the first room after that nearly turned into a TPK.

Cheers

 

[winndwalker]

I'm in the middle of running it even now. It's pretty cool. My group has made it through the ghostly encounter, the hall of introspection, and the bloodwhip room. That was nasty!

The skill challenge with the dead adventurers went OK. The nice thing about it is that failure isn't punishing (of course the players don't realize this). I just had the NPC's ask very pointed questions to each member of the party to help the roleplay. "Show me what you can do with that axe!" (athletics) "you, rogue, what skills do you bring to such a place" (bluff or diplomacy) "your arcane might must be keen to wrest the secrets from this place, show me what you know" (arcana) "I'll bet you couldn't find your way around a dungeon if you wanted to" (dungeoneering). I made a whole list of them, and just asked people in turn. Eventually people started being a bit more proactive.

If they fail a check have the ghost laugh in their face and challenge another person or something. I make sure that the players can see whether they succeeded or failed (I marked it on a board). All in all it went OK. Quiet players really get put on the spot, especially since I give bonuses to rolls if a player roleplays well. But it was fun.

For the mirror hall I made little mirrors out of cardboard and tinfoil to add to the mood (I use dungeon tiles so this helped). The rogue got put in the oubliette on the first turn, and tried to talk the hungy Gnoll down. I let him, which was a mistake, because they both spent the rest of the combat sitting there looking for a way out. By the end I had about half the party in oubliette. I added a few more skeletons because there is a lot of radiant damage in the party, and it seemed to make the encounter a bit more exciting.

For the blood room, I used red felt for the pools and set dungeon tiles on top of it. I spraypainted some old Mage Knight minotaurs gray for the statues. The characters hooked grapples to the horns and shimmied across, and when the traps were sprung people were falling in blood and battling evistros all over the place. About half of the party dropped and I was being nice. No TPK's or anything though, I'm looking forward to running the rest of the encounter. I made howling pllars out of cut up army men and hot glue, and I'm excited to see how they look when I drybrush them with a flesh tone. Hopefully the players think they're cool. Happy to post the rest here if anyone cares.

Cheers.

 

[SlyFlourish]

Yeah, the NPC skill challenge didn't go over well with our group. The DCs in the book are way too high, use the new DCs from the errata. Players hate missing a skill check with a roll of 17.

There was a great moment where our fighter showed off his strength by bench-pressing Brodo, Ulthand Deepgem's missing boar, which the party had been using as a pack animal. He failed the check, though and got pinned under Brodo. Still, it was a fun moment.

The party had a good time in the Well of Demons. It had a couple of memorable points like our warlord saving our ranger from falling in the pit in the center after being pushed by the green dragon and eventually throwing himself into a Shadowfell rift to save the two girls the Gnoll chief Maldrick was using for his sacrifical rituals.

The toughest battle for them was the Howling Pillar hall. They got caught in one of the center hallways between three carnage demons and the barlgura. I really love Carnage demons. It was a great fight with the party fighting back to back in the hall against hordes of really nasty beasts.

Oh, the mirror room has a problem if you ask me. Teleporting folks into a separate room really wreaked havok on our party when I ran it as a player. When I ran it, I changed the trapping mirrors so they pushed players randomly to another mirror like a big pinball machine. It worked a lot better than separating the party. It's not really clear how anyone outside can pull the party out and it is very likely the whole party will get trapped. - not fun. I'd recommend changing this so it doesn't separate the party.

 

[Eryndur]

The 3 ghost adventurers skill challenge didn't seem very organic to me. They have no ties to the overall plot at all (except that they got killed by the Guardian), and seemed shoehorned in to provide the PCs with some advance warning as to what awaited them.

Of course, going in blind to the Proving Grounds is suicide, so I reskinned the encounter to be a single ghost, a minotaur cleric of Kord known as "The Foundation" in Kordian legend. This tied in neatly with my focus on differing minotaur societies in the past (serene ascetics in the Horned Hold, crazed Baphomet-worshippers in the Well of Demons), and with my group's Kord-heavy bent (two of my four PC's worship Kord).

What's more, I have to admit I didn't run the encounter as a skill challenge, either. I had the rules for it worked up (similar to the published encounter), but it occurred at the start of the session, and I could tell the players were raring for some slaughter, so I simply had The Foundation give them some basic info on the Proving Grounds, namely:
- collect the 4 items
- place them simultaneously on circles
- bad stuff will happen, but this is the only way forward

This seemed to be enough warning, and the PC's have so far successfully gone through the Hall of Forced Introspection and the Hall of the Crimson Whip. The latter encounter was ridiculously fun, and VERY well-designed. The Wavestrider Boots I threw the wizard about three levels ago, and that everyone forgot about? Yeah, they came in MIGHTY handy.

I'm looking forward to this week when I run them through the Proving Grounds and the Guardian. Sure to be awesome.

 

[Nebulous]

For the blood room, I used red felt for the pools and set dungeon tiles on top of it. I spraypainted some old Mage Knight minotaurs gray for the statues. The characters hooked grapples to the horns and shimmied across, and when the traps were sprung people were falling in blood and battling evistros all over the place. About half of the party dropped and I was being nice. No TPK's or anything though, I'm looking forward to running the rest of the encounter. I made howling pllars out of cut up army men and hot glue, and I'm excited to see how they look when I drybrush them with a flesh tone. Hopefully the players think they're cool. Happy to post the rest here if anyone cares.

Cheers.

I like hearing how other people do props, i'll probably steal some of your ideas. I was able to find all the internal maps for Thunderspire on Cartographer's Guild, so i'll eventually get around to printing those out. But i like to add 3-D things and your Howling Pillar idea is a good one. But what gives the pillar "shape" Wouldn't the glue just make a big gooey mess?

 

[hailstop]

My party got 3 failures right off the bat, so they didn't really get a lot of help...certainly made the combat longer since they thought they had to destroy all the traps in order to solve the room.

 

[GorTeX]

My party actually had one death in the mirror room...most of the party got trapped in the separate room and the Warlock bravely made his way to the altar...(walking with his eyes closed). Thinking he'd be safe when he entered the curtain he was very supprised by the 2 Skeletons there, and quickly fell to them.
(I had a group of gnolls come by later and activate the release from that room, as well as begin a ritual to turn the warlock into a skeleton--the rest of the party was able to stop that and raise the warlock, luckily).

The other encounters went pretty easily for them--the rogue had Water walking put on him and he just ran in, grabbed the dagger parts and ran out of the Blood room. And the Pilar room they had no issues with (besides missing the hidden treasure there).

I made on prop for the Well. Got a styrofoam ball, put toothpicks in it, mounted it on a small dowl and painted it black...for the rolling Ball of Death that speeds along the inner ring. I got a good chuckle from my parties reaction when I put it out..."What the H*** is that!" and such...

 

[Obryn]

I thought the skill challenge felt very ... tacked-on. Like someone said, "Hey, we need some more skill challenges here!" and then just added it at the last minute. It also seems like it's kinda shaky... There aren't even any guidelines for how to get successes with the dwarf.

Really, in the end, the only consistent way to get successes is to trade lore with the Wizard. And that drags on - the skill challenge lasts too long, in other words.

What's more, I don't think it's particularly vital information - other than that all the items need to be placed simultaneously.

OTOH, I love the skill challenge to tame the wild boar. I think that one's well-implemented.

-O