[5e] Printable Adventure: Krillo's Tomb

[John Out West]

Hey there,


I made a printable adventure, including miniatures, maps, and puzzles/codebreaking, but I want to get some more eyes on it before I put it on Drivethru. Its 34 pages, including the maps, handouts, and character cut-outs. I'll put below some parts i'm particularly uncertain about and would like some feedback.


-Codebreaking: Page 17. The puzzles in this quest include code-breaking, and I want to make sure that the rules are clear enough.
-Codebreaking Puzzles: Page 5 & 9. If you understand the code-breaking, could you try and solve the puzzles on page 28 based on the room descriptions on pages 5 & 9. I would like to know how difficult the puzzles are, how long it takes you to solve them, and if they are fun to solve.
-Premade Characters: Page 24: We include some simplified characters, excluding some of the ribbon abilities, and want to make sure they are easy to read and capture the spirit of playing those classes.
-Combat: Page 8 & 13. This quest is designed for four level 3 characters, and includes two fights, stealth, and lots of traps. An assessment on how easily the players could succeed would be appreciated.
-Stealth: Page 15. There are two sections where the players can use stealth, and i've created some stealth rules. I would like to know if they make sense and are intuitive.
-Ease of Use: In general, how easy do you think it would be for you to run this adventure?


You can get it here.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, haven't actually done more than skim this, but dammmmnnnn that looks pretty. Love the dwarven script thing too. That's some deep thinking there.

 

[robus]

Looks very nice indeed. On the stealth rules, my worry would be that given enough rolls the PCs are going to fail sooner rather than later. This approach appears to involve a lot of rolls? This is what the passive stealth is supposed to cover, basically a decent average. Of course you don’t want to compare passive to passive because that’s boring.

Not sure of the best option here, but I would say it’s better for the guards to roll perception checks because then the PCs have a chance to elude detection if a guard catches a hint of them (prestidigitation or sleep or something). In other words the PCs don’t have to worry about messing up, they just have to worry about dealing with an over attentive guard?

“These are not the PCs you’re looking for....”

 

[robus]

As for ease of use, a big thing that bugs me about most adventures is there is no guidance given as to the intended difficulty of each encounter. Is it meant to be easy, hard, deadly? Without that, making adjustments for differing parties is more work than it should be.

 

[DMP]

Nice concept having everything you need including the paper minatures all in one neat package .

 

[John Out West]

Ok, haven't actually done more than skim this, but dammmmnnnn that looks pretty. Love the dwarven script thing too. That's some deep thinking there.

Danke, a lot of its due to our collaboration with Papermage who makes the minis. The dwarf script started out as world building, but I was able to finagle it into a puzzle.

Looks very nice indeed. On the stealth rules, my worry would be that given enough rolls the PCs are going to fail sooner rather than later. This approach appears to involve a lot of rolls? This is what the passive stealth is supposed to cover, basically a decent average. Of course you don’t want to compare passive to passive because that’s boring.

Not sure of the best option here, but I would say it’s better for the guards to roll perception checks because then the PCs have a chance to elude detection if a guard catches a hint of them (prestidigitation or sleep or something). In other words the PCs don’t have to worry about messing up, they just have to worry about dealing with an over attentive guard?

“These are not the PCs you’re looking for....”

My philosophy on stealth is the same as combat, in that I generally want the environment to take on a big role. With the Stacking Advantage Rule, players know when they have to roll based on their environmental conditions. If they can stay out of visual and auditory range, use cover, and use distractions, then they generally never have to roll.
More stealthy players can sneak up and create different paths as well, or take down a guard to help clear a path. I think this system rewards players for splitting up, or at the very least not making simultaneous rolls while is sneaking as a group. The purpose was to make it feel more like a combat, where each player has individual strengths and weaknesses, and made their own decisions rather than following the leader with a group roll. I feel like with these rules, each player can have a rule in moving the group forward, even if its just making a distraction and drawing the guards forward.

For example, in the first scene, a character could sneak past the tired guard in area C, then let down a rope from Area D from behind the box's cover, allowing players in area A to move in without a roll.
Another example, a player could climb the ladder into Area F, then grapple and throw the guard off the ledge (Letting gravity do the killing), to clear the area for the rest of the players.

Magic is definitely an option. Prestidigitation to snuff out torches & fires have very exciting possibilities. Plus using invisibility to walk by, although they could still be heard and draw suspicion. Casting charm can help distract them as well. However, I think mundane means typically are the funnest. A simple rock can distract a guard and send them far enough that you don't need to make checks anymore.

I definitely agree that I should add a note for the difficulty of each encounter. Although most of my notes will probably be "This is designed to be hard, unless the players are clever." The first sneaking mission is pretty much designed as a tutorial, since getting caught can actually get you past a few guards, and the guards are very lenient. (They assume you are lost archaeologists) Meanwhile, the boss monster at the end specifically does the "Hero Throw" as to not murder the players immediately.

Nice concept having everything you need including the paper minatures all in one neat package .

Thanks, I was partnered up with Papermage on a different project and I got inspired. Pending the success of this one, i'll try and convince them to create set pieces as well, like necrotic trees and dragon boneyards.

 

[Blue]

Okay, thoughts as I read through, then I'll pull them together at the end.

Like the art at the beginning, but the red outline on "It Came From the Shadow Realm..." doesn't work well.

Printable adventure - I'd make sure my color art is still readable in B&W. And as many have ink-jet printers perhaps use thinker fonts if over art, if the "It Came From The Shadow Realms..." is an indication.

New Mechanics - would have expected to see they laid out here. Also, there already are group checks in the base mechanic (PHB 174) that work for group stealth - there needs to be a seriously compelling reason to overwrite those rules.

Scene 0 - good, glad it has RP notes.

Scene 1 - these seems to assume that players will only use one way. No discussion about bluffing their way past, disguise, bribery, forging a letter of entry from the people hiring the guards, etc. Player creativity will lead them lots of different ways, be prepared for some common ones. And make them all interesting.

As a side note, the party can easily overcome and knock out all of the guards - they aren't a challenge for four 3rd level characters. So there's no tension. Maybe add in a leader with darksight, and some guard hounds?

This shows some plot holes from Scene 0. Who hired these guards? The excavators most likely, if they expect their later team to have access. As an original excavator, why can't he either order off the guards, or talk to the excavators currently in charge about sending you down an his worries. He's a bard, so he's probably well known. And he would likely have to be to be a goblin who's hired as an expert.

I will be looking for a resolution for this as I read, such as they through him off the dig for doing something bad. Otherwise it's a major plot hole.

Scene 1 map - as a side note, I was going to refer to this by page number (as you do in your original post), but there are no page numbers.

Is behind the church a steep drop-off that the players could attempt to climb?

Also, with the idea of "print and play" a version without DM marks (aware & unaware guards) would make a good handout so players can strategize their quiet entry.

Scene 2
Please update every trap to have the standard information in 5e that traps have, such as DCs to notice and attack bonus to hit/DCs to avoid. These don't feel like you are presenting 5e traps at all.

DMG pg 120. You may also want to look at suggested trap damages, these are quite low. That may be because you assume auto-hit.

Really, this feels like you are only allowing this to be solved as players and not characters. Characters, whom may be quite experienced with traps, do not have any mechanical way to interact with them.

At this point I'm going to jump past the rest of the adventure to the handouts. This critique is growing quite large and I would suggest a developmental editor to give this a pass.

Okay, onto Rules and Resources

Stealth - okay, this is supplimental, not replacing. Not bad. It's a bunch of pages towards one method of entry, but okay. I'd really use passive perception since that's what it is for, with a modifier because advantage and disadvantage won't effect it. This also puts the rolls in player hands.

Stacking Advantage is directly against the core rules for stacking advantage. Without an overwhelming reason why advantage works differently here then anywhere else in the campaign, drop it.

Hey, I see there is a player version of the handout. Woo. Though it shows a problem with the original. Each tent has a red vaguely triangle marker that's the same shade of red as "Aware guard". I read that map as each tent had an aware guard (on shift?) in front of it and a sleeping guard (off-shift?) in it. May want to change that shade of red.

Character handouts - I quite like the artwork. And that it's repeated later in a way I can make paper minis. I strongly wish the Paper Mage logo was more towards the left border so that there could be more separation. Right now if I attempted to make rectangular cutouts then part of Fod or Tibles would be cut off. Maybe a bit more separation between Fod and Hund the dog as well.

 

[John Out West]

Okay, thoughts as I read through, then I'll pull them together at the end.

Excellent feedback, thank you. Added in the page numbers, plus added references to the rules sections & Handouts.

I was going for kind of a spooky 50's movie look with the "It came from the Shadow Realm" font, but maybe that didn't come across. Changed it to a solid black.

The current rules for stealth in 5e are essentially non-existent. Stealth could be an entire pillar of gameplay alongside exploration, combat, and social, which was my aspirations while writing them.

Its mentioned in "Roleplaying Krillo" that the leaders of the excavation wont listen to him, as they are intelligent, but not worldly. I added a bit of extra info to pad that area and make it more clear that the leaders won't listen to reason and don't want to endanger anyone else.

With the multiple ways to get past the guards, this goes back to Robus' "You should say what difficulty of an encounter this should be." Since this is designed to be an easy encounter that teaches the stealth gameplay, as later they'll be hiding from the boss monster, who cannot be bribed or bluffed past. I've made the note in each section of what kind of difficulty it was designed for.

The guards are quite weak, but they're each 1/2 CR and there are six of them, so apparently its balanced for the level. I generally will prefer low health, since knocking out guards would be fun to do. (Its why we krillo gives them clubs) The scene will be plenty difficult enough (For a tutorial) without adding dogs or dark vision, but in later "It came from the Shadow Realm!" editions i'll definitely step up the difficulty.

I just added some information about defeating traps with characters in a later trap section, so thanks for that. However, I definitely want it to be solved by the players more than the characters, so the DC's are an absurdly high 20, and the traps activate if they get less than 10 on the check. I also added a dexterity save with the same DC20, since I want the "Click" trap reaction to still have meaning. This way, if they've done their research, they can make predictions about the trap and avoid the damage by being clever players, rather than just rolling well.

You are correct, i assume the traps will auto hit, even with the DC20 dex save. Considering all the resources they have to avoid the traps, including clues in both codes and the environment, if they get hit by a trap i would say its their fault. That being said, there are four more scenes after this one, and i'd prefer the players not to lose all their health at scene 2.

The stealth rules do use passive perception, largely. Only when a character fails a check against passive perception do the contests begin, as the guard changes from an Aware state to a Suspicious state.

The stacking advantage was designed to fill in a hole in the stealth gameplay, since otherwise there is too much rolling. It also turns it more into a strategic game than a crapshoot, since now you can look at the terrain and find areas where you do not need to roll to get past the guards. Its not really "Stacking Disadvantage" as it is an indicator that "This guard has so many obstacles to overcome in seeing you that he doesn't even get a chance to perceive you." So, if you are in shadows, during a foggy day, then it will be so hard to see you that the guard doesn't even get a check. I think this works well as a system.

I changed the location on the maps of the triangles to have them sit on top of the tents in such a way that you will not confuse the markers with the tent's floor textures. Good catch!

 

[robus]

If knocking out is going to feature (still haven’t thoroughly read it ) then I offer my alternate rules. We have to remember that HP measures in part a creatures ability to fight back. So if the PCs have successfully stealthed up to a guard then I would let them make a simple strength + bonus for the club (perhaps that doubles their strength bonus?) vs the guards constitution. If it matches or beats it the guard is knocked out. (if the guard has a helmet then the check is made at disadvantage).

 

[aco175]

I did not really read it through all the way, but when skimming it I noticed a few minor grammar or logic errors.

- Page 2 talks about Grillo paying the Players extra. Players should not be capitalized and he will be "paying the PCs more". Everyone will understand what you mean, but will not look as polished. This is also reference on Page 14 win the aftermath section and several other areas of the adventure. I also have a problem with the PCs working for a goblin, but this may be the setting or the group I play with who would never do this. It is listed later in the book about another wild west type setting so that part may not matter much.

- Page 8 stat blocks with Binking Raven. He has a reaction to throw a smoke bomb and move away from an enemy that comes within 5ft of him. You wording use of "THEY can throw a smoke bomb" makes it reference the PC that moves up to Blinking Raven instead of Bliking Raven himself. Also the power of using a smoke bomb and moving 30ft seems like a lot, but is fine. You could make the PC in the smoke have disadvantage on attacks for a round.

-The shadow Mummy stat block on Page 12 has an attack of throwing hero. It never talks about grabing a PC and throwing him. There is no range or grapple check or anything. It is basically a slam attack. It is also listed as a melee unarmed attack, which unarmed should not be used. It is listed in the room text, but needs to be here as a power.

- Same with frightful presence. It is listed in the room text as having a save, but not in the stat block. You should also add that PCs can make a save at the end of each of their turns to overcome the fear.

- Page 15 stealth rules. You state that when a player (should be PC) moves within sensory range of a guard, they must make a Stealth check against THEIR passive perception... This should be against the guards passive perception. There is also too many checks and if the guard had advantage within 15ft, then they will make eventually catch the PCs.

- I really like the rune section and the printable hero section, but may prefer them to be in another PDF so I can print them in cardstock.