bawylie's tutorial dungeon

Bawylie

A very OK person
Copied over from the WotC forum ...

For Pukunui and Eck.

The two of you have asked for some encounters/dungeon from me. So what I've done here is taken my beginner dungeon and stripped it down of story, narrative, and drama. The point of it (as presented here) is just to get to the end. I'm just showing mechanics and setup.

If you decide to run it, this is a skeleton. You'll need to put meat on the bones. Here we go.

[sblock=Room 1]
room2011_zpswonjuomd.jpg


Party starts in the south door. There are additional enemies in the adjacent rooms who will not join combat unless their doors are opened. On their own, these are pretty easy. But they get complicated as the bandit starts throwing doors open.[/sblock]
[sblock=Room 2]
room2021_zpsoes7ibxq.jpg


This room introduces a different type of consideration. Enemies that work together and control zones. The Acolyte typically acts in a support role while the Bandit is artillery. The Guard relies on his high AC and the barricades to protect his allies. Ideally, your players realize the enemy position is working against them and try to pull the enemy OUT of position or take ground for themselves.[/sblock]
[sblock=Room 3]
room2031_zpsmej5ucad.jpg


We're returning to our first encounter but adding a second bandit to throw doors open. Basically we're reducing the amount of time the party has to react to imminent threat. It should be clear that the bandits' goal is to open those doors and thus gain allies. By now, your party fighter should know his job is to sort of set a scrimmage line (engage the wolf) so the rest of the party can stop the bandits. We're trying to reinforce roles here. And match those roles to goals. But the players need to know what's at stake in order to ID those goals.[/sblock]
[sblock=Room 4]
room2041_zps3l0ol4av.jpg


Alright. We've seen two scenarios. 1 where baddies summon allies to make your life hard. And 1 where baddies work together and use positioning to make your life hard. Now we're going to do both. This stays relatively modest here - the guard will probably stay around long enough for the bandit to free the wolves. Party should by now have learned to coordinate efforts. Now they deicde - what do we do first? Stop the Acolyte or the Bandit? Can we do both? [/sblock]
[sblock=Room 5]
room2051_zpscxojc9vy.jpg


Like room 2, the enemies are working together. Only this time, instead of holding a defensive position, they've created a kill box. I use kill boxes all the time, so I want my players to be able to recognize them, and know what to do when they get in them. The enemies shout things like "bring down that armored fighter!" and then focus fire. This is also a situation in which players learn about acceptable losses and temporary setbacks. It is VERY unlikely that a PC in the kill box doesnt drop. But if taking that hit gets everyone else to safety... Its back to reinforcing roles, goals, priorities, and costs.[/sblock]
[sblock=Room 6]
room2061_zpsa4wj3nls.jpg


Big kill box here, a reinforcement Lion, enemy artillery behind defended positions, and spell coordination. Success here depends on on taking positions offensively or defensively, maneuvering to create your own kill box(es), forcing enemies out of position. In other words, if this stays static, the party dies. But they've already learned how to route enemy positions, thwart reinforcement, and frustrate teamwork. So this could be an even match.[/sblock]

This was designed to teach coordination and teamwork to new players in my games. I include intervening rooms in which I put exploration-based challenges and lots of healing potions. The complex they explore is BIG, but its falsely linear. Meaning, whatever direction they choose to go, they encounter the rooms in the order I want them to encounter them. (This dungeon only).

Between these rooms and the exploration, its around 12 "filled" rooms total, and my guys are usually level 2 in the last two combat rooms. USUALLY. I've designed it with 4 players at level 1 - because situationally, this swings from super duper easy to crazy hard, if they don't learn anything.

On completing the dungeon, they attain 3rd level. (Or second, whatever).

What I've done here is strip it down so you can build it up how you want it. I've also used repeat enemies that can be any race or alignment. As I said, just trying to show behind the curtain how I put it together.

If you run it, or throw some paint on it, let me know!
 
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More details from @Bawylie:

I put a fountain in. It's a weeping statue of a woman who's tears flow into a shallow pool. There are silver cups there. Drinking from the pool of tears and taking a short rest there is equivalent to taking a long rest. But only in that room - the tears don't work away from the cup and statue.

I had a pair of scales over a deep pit. Different sorts of things on either plate. Any disruption tipped the scales.

Im using a very limited roster bc I want the players to learn tactics & not worry about "Oh what's this thing do?" You'll know what everything does by the 2nd room.

Let me ask you a few Qs:

1.) if you've read this, what stood out? What'd you pick up?
2.) If you ran it as a DM, did your players adapt & learn? Did it teach them anything?
3.) if you played through it, were the expectations clear? Did you understand what you had to do to win?

I'm not going out of my way to alleviate the deadliness because part of the point is to get the players to mitigate the situations by recognizing the dangers and responding intelligently. (That's why they kind of repeat).

So let's say you hit the second room with the wolf and 2 bandits, who are clearly going to grab reinforcements. After having gone through it the first time, you know you've got to stop the bandits from opening the doors. You act to either take out bandits or defend the doors, right? YOU mitigate the deadliness yourself by learning and applying knowledge.

I tend to KO some people in kill-boxes. Frequently, after a round in the kill-box, I'll frame the danger. Considering the enemy's cover and your position, It's clear that if you stay here, another round, you'll lose, and maybe die. What do you do?" This tends to mitigate deadliness too, but only to get the scope of the problem across. Because yes it is clear that you're in a disadvantageous position. I must make clear you're in imminent peril. Now you can decide intelligently how to handle that. Y'dig?

I have 3 categories of room and 3 difficulty levels. I want the experience to increase gradually in difficulty AND in complexity.

Thus, no easy c, medium b, or hard a.

which I guess seems like a typo or a weird way to label, but I didn't put it together based on the labels, I put it together based on the progression I wanted to use.

You could definitely add rooms.
 
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My own contribution to the old thread:

FYI: I am planning on upscaling this for 3rd level PCs. In a private message, Brad suggested replacing the CR 1/8, CR 1/4, and CR 1 creatures with CR 1/2, CR 1, and CR 2 creatures respectively.

This is what I get when I do that:

EASY A: A Timed Challenge
CR 1/2 NPC + CR 1 beast = EASY
*Add in two CR 1/2 NPCs = HARD
*Add in two more CR 1/2 NPCs = HARD

EASY B: A Tactical Challenge
CR 1 NPC + two CR 1/2 NPCs = MEDIUM

MEDIUM A: Pressed for Time
Two CR 1/2 NPCs + CR 1 beast = MEDIUM
*Add in two CR 1/2 NPCs = HARD
*Add in two more CR 1/2 NPCs = DEADLY

MEDIUM C: Bringing It All Together
Two CR 1/2 NPCs + CR 1 NPC = MEDIUM
*Add in two CR 1 beasts = DEADLY

HARD B: Stay Out of the Kill Box
CR 1 NPC + four CR 1/2 NPCs = HARD

HARD C: Bringing It Together Again
Two CR 1 NPCs + four CR 1/2 NPCs + CR 2 beast = DEADLY

As you can see, the challenge difficulties remain the same for all scenarios except the first one. If the PCs end up fighting all 5 CR 1/2 NPCs and the CR 1 beast, it's still technically only a Hard challenge instead of a Deadly one, but I think that's OK.
 

Thanks pukunui! Another one of those threads I was concerned was going to be lost. And thanks for joining the migration - I know I was new 'over there' but I really enjoyed many of your threads. Reading and contributing to them really inspired my own creativity at times.
 





[MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]: You can turn ownership of the first two posts over to [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION], since they're pretty much all his words.
 


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