D&D 5E Critique my first one-shot adventure

[RoiC.]

So, I'm a player in a group of friends playing D&D 5e (in real life) once a week, and I've decided to run a one-shot adventure for my friends, as a DM. While our DM is a good friend of mine and offered to help as much as possible, I don't want to spoil the adventure for him.

Anyway, I have a pretty solid outline for the adventure, and I just want to hear a few opinions on something that's inherently bad or needs some work at the base, before I go deeper into the design.

Anyway, a group of 6 level 7 adventurers walking in the mountains stumble upon a gate to some kind of shrine or something carved into the mountainside itself, and a dying cleric near the entrance. After switching a few words with them, the Cleric's head violently explodes, and they see an undead mage (probably a reskinned revenant) behind them that cast the spell (mostly to prevent use of Revivify, to be honest), and roll for iniative. After the battle, they enter the shrine thingy, and the quest starts.

Anyway, the shrine used to serve as headquarters for a knight order called "The Bonecrushers", defunct for 200 years or so, that rose in order to save the land from a mighty lich raising an army (I'll make it a pretty known fact, probably a 10 DC history check or something around that range), and that the leader of the order (Ajantis) was slain after blowing a fatal strike to the lich. After it all ended, the leader was buried in a crypt in the HQ... But what his fellow knights didn't know is that the lich cursed him; to be raised in 150 years as a Death Knight, thinking the lich has returned, and that he must do everything in order to slay him now, killing and reanimating strong fighters and adventurers drawn to the HQ-turned tomb, not aware of the fact that he was manipulated in order to actually build an army to the soon-to-be coming back (now demi)-lich , that faked his, uhhh... death (destruction?).

The dungeon has a few traps, few riddles (mostly to get into Death Knight's crypt, and one to get his magical anti-undead maul, from him time as the order's leader), a few mook battles and one boss battle. I also have a marked map, with a legend:

Blue S: Starting point, where the party come out of a forest and see the gates, and the dying cleric.

1: Main hall, where there are statues for all the knights of the order, and a big one for Ajantis, the leader; behind his statue is his magical weapon, the Bonecrusher (a +2 silver maul, with +2d6 against undead. They're supposed to discover it a bit before the boss fight, after solving a puzzle in the cathedral). There's also a short fight in the hall against a few skeletons and 1 or 2 wights, and the entrance to the next hall is obscured behind some murals.

2: Barracks room, has 4 weak undead enemies and some loot.

3: Cathedral to the deity Thorm. Has a clue or a part to the puzzle used for unlocking the Bonecrusher, the magical maul, which has to be combined with some other part, probably found in the order leader's room, and a few potions and/or some other stuff. Also, has a secret entrance to the war-room, if the party will want to sneak in and avoid an ambush.

4: The war room. Still haven't decided what I'll put there, but probably some info regarding the order and what happened and some other fluff, and maybe some cool loot. Also, a bigger fight, this time with 2-3 wights serving as officers, and 2 undead clerics and mages, along with some skelies and ghasts.

5: Kitchen. Still haven't decided what goes there, but it makes sense so it had to go in. Also, there's a trap between the actual kitchen and the store-room.

6: Another barracks room, pretty much like the first one.

7: Atrium, also where the order leader's supposed grave is. When the party tries to open his grave, it'll reveal itself as a trap, and they'll have to find the real entrance, probably triggered by something in his room, probably a puzzle of sorts.

8: Ajantis' (the order's leader) former room. Has a few of his personal affects, a piece of the puzzle to 1unlock the Bonecrusher maul, and maybe a riddle to unlock his crypt.

9: The crypt, where the party meets the former order leader, now a deranged Death Knight. After some dialogue, they inevitably fight; he also will have some undead reinforcements (also, he's scaled to be 12th level instead of 19th). However, if the party has the Bonecrusher, aside from having an easier time, they'll be able to redeem Ajantis/the Death Knight, instead of just destroying him. Also, he'll be able to help him in the fight against the Xaggyth, the Demi-Lich that just had his plan kinda messed up, and is going to fight the party and the now redeemed Ajantis in order to salvage it.

Red Ts: Traps. Still haven't decided what goes in these.

Green I: Illusionary wall, obscuring the entrance to the atrium. Still haven't decided how they're going to break the illusion.

-Also, the unmarked room outside the HQ is a bathhouse. Because people wash themselves.

Basically, this is the outline of what goes in my adventure. I guess there's a few things to work on, but I think it's pretty much a solid basis. I've never actually DMed before, and this is my first try, so, anything that comes to mind about what I should do, throw away, include, change... Basically, **anything** that comes to mind, will be very appreciated.

...Also, feel free to use everything I put here, but please don't post it on other sites or placess without giving me credit.


Thanks a lot

 

[Quickleaf]

Hope you have fun with it! DMing can be really rewarding, and rotating is a great way to let others enjoy and take a load off the main DM Some thoughts based on actual experience with actual groups (of course, YMMV!):

Anyway, a group of 6 level 7 adventurers walking in the mountains stumble upon a gate to some kind of shrine or something carved into the mountainside itself, and a dying cleric near the entrance.

Cleric: I cast cure wounds and/or spare the dying and/or greater restoration on the dying cleric!

Rogue with Alertness feat: I search the area for signs of secret doors or hidden monsters.

After switching a few words with them, the Cleric's head violently explodes, and they see an undead mage (probably a reskinned revenant) behind them that cast the spell (mostly to prevent use of Revivify, to be honest),

Fighter (who is also rules lawyer): Wait! The mage just gets to kill him? Were we surprised? We should be on high alert coming through a mountain pass! Doubly so finding this wounded cleric.

Rogue: Why I didn't notice the mage?

Wizard: I would totally counterspell that s#!^.

Cleric: But I just healed him up a bunch of hit points! That must be a *really* powerful spell the undead mage used.

EDIT: I'll add that the trope of the dying character whispering last words to the protagonist before expiring works GREAT in the movies and in literature. At the game table? I have hardly ever see it go smoothly. This stems from the DM misunderstanding his or her players. When you present a "dying friendly NPC", the players don't see a STORY DEVICE, they see a PROBLEM-TO-BE-SOLVED. Which spell or treatment option do we use to make the NPC better? How do we save them? That's what a DM unconsciously sets up by starting with "you meet a dying friendly NPC." And it's not at all what you want. Because if they go into rescue mode (esp. the cleric), chances are the 7th-level PCs *have* what it takes to save the NPC. But you don't want the NPC to live apparently.

Here's one option I recommend (and there still could be issues with this kind of scene framing depending on the player at your table):

(1) Frame the opening scene very strongly, starting right with the NPC cleric dispensing information and getting head-explored. Don't beat around the bush. For example: While crossing the mountain pass you come across the entrance to an ancient shrine carved into the mountainside. Clutching the stairs is a dying man wearing the vestments of a priest of ##insert a deity##. Upon seeing you, he speaks quickly, "Please, take these scrolls. ##insert brief adventure relevant details##." It's clear the man's wounds are grave, but even before you are able to reach him to apply spells and poultices, suddenly his face grows swollen and his eyes and crackles with necrotic purple energy before his head bursts like a balloon, showering blood across the stairs. Emerging from around the corner of a rock face, you see a mage of deathly pallor, hand glowing with fell purple light.

and roll for iniative. After the battle, they enter the shrine thingy, and the quest starts.

Wizard: I cast stone shape and drop an overhanging ledge on him from 100 feet above. How much damage do you think that does? Enough to kill him? (very likely)

Rogue: No! Wait! We should parlay with him and try to learn what he knows. Maybe we can even pretend to be mercenary reinforcements for his evil order?

Cleric: That is an awesome idea. Maybe I can tweak my Turn Undead to make it seem like I'm controlling undead instead of turning them to convince him we're on his side?

Fighter: Well, we have this other big quest we're working on, and it's kind of time sensitive. Do we have a good reason to go into this shrine? I mean, besides gold & glory?

Anyway, the shrine used to serve as headquarters for a knight order called "The Bonecrushers", defunct for 200 years or so, that rose in order to save the land from a mighty lich raising an army (I'll make it a pretty known fact, probably a 10 DC history check or something around that range), and that the leader of the order (Ajantis) was slain after blowing a fatal strike to the lich. After it all ended, the leader was buried in a crypt in the HQ... But what his fellow knights didn't know is that the lich cursed him; to be raised in 150 years as a Death Knight, thinking the lich has returned, and that he must do everything in order to slay him now, killing and reanimating strong fighters and adventurers drawn to the HQ-turned tomb, not aware of the fact that he was manipulated in order to actually build an army to the soon-to-be coming back (now demi)-lich , that faked his, uhhh... death (destruction?).

Cleric: *rolls* 8 History?

Wizard: *rolls* Shoot! A 9?

DM: Ummmm... OK, well, it was a DC 10 but does anyone else want to roll?

Fighter & Rogue: Nah, History isn't really our thing. We just want to adventure!

DM: Um... OK, so I'll just tell you. This might be an inscription somewhere or maybe the cleric knows this from his Acolyte background training?

Wizard: So I guess the roll didn't really matter?

DM: Um... I guess not.

The dungeon has a few traps, few riddles (mostly to get into Death Knight's crypt, and one to get his magical anti-undead maul, from him time as the order's leader), a few mook battles and one boss battle. I also have a marked map, with a legend:

Nice map for a small dungeon! What software did you use?

Blue S: Starting point, where the party come out of a forest and see the gates, and the dying cleric.

1: Main hall, where there are statues for all the knights of the order, and a big one for Ajantis, the leader; behind his statue is his magical weapon, the Bonecrusher (a +2 silver maul, with +2d6 against undead. They're supposed to discover it a bit before the boss fight, after solving a puzzle in the cathedral). There's also a short fight in the hall against a few skeletons and 1 or 2 wights, and the entrance to the next hall is obscured behind some murals.

You have two points here where the party *might* not discover something very important to your adventure: (1) chamber with Bonecrusher hidden behind statue, and (2) door to rest of dungeon concealed behind mural.

Personally, I like #1 especially if you leave Bonecrusher as a strictly optional thing. It's a great inversion of the usual "you find a sword of dragon slaying in the dragon's hoard" trope (wherein players barely get to use the sword of dragon slaying. Not sure from your description if there's some mechanism in the Cathedral (Area 3) that is supposed to open/move the statue revealing the chamber with Bonecrusher? IF that's the case, you might want to introduce some event when that mechanism is triggered – perhaps it makes grinding noise that attracts roaming undead guards to the Main Hall (Area 1) and nearby passages?

#2 would work if you had a more convoluted/circuitous/"Jacquayed" dungeon, but for something simple I'm not sure what you gain by having the rest of the dungeon hidden behind a mural. If there's even a chance that the PCs might not notice it, and then the one-shot adventure ends prematurely, I probably wouldn't include the concealed aspect.

2: Barracks room, has 4 weak undead enemies and some loot.

This may also be a good place to include a roleplaying encounter with a non-hostile undead who could bestow any backstory that the PCs missed previously. For example, a talking skull or even an intact corpse (a skeleton, not a monster) who the Cleric could cast speak with dead upon.

3: Cathedral to the deity Thorm. Has a clue or a part to the puzzle used for unlocking the Bonecrusher, the magical maul, which has to be combined with some other part, probably found in the order leader's room, and a few potions and/or some other stuff. Also, has a secret entrance to the war-room, if the party will want to sneak in and avoid an ambush.

Sounds like fun! You could put the head of the maul in the secret room in Area 1, and the haft in another room; I would recommend some clue in each room (maybe wall engravings?) hinting at the separation of the maul into two parts which were interred separately in different parts of Ajantis' tomb.

Have you already designed the puzzle you're using? Or are you fishing for ideas?

4: The war room. Still haven't decided what I'll put there, but probably some info regarding the order and what happened and some other fluff, and maybe some cool loot. Also, a bigger fight, this time with 2-3 wights serving as officers, and 2 undead clerics and mages, along with some skelies and ghasts.

If party sneaks in through the secret tunnel – what is the "rubble" in the tunnel? – it might be nice to give them some kind of vantage point to see any hidden enemies / a sniping position / a giant pillar or statue they can topple over onto some of the undead.

5: Kitchen. Still haven't decided what goes there, but it makes sense so it had to go in. Also, there's a trap between the actual kitchen and the store-room.

A privy might make sense too, but when you're talking about an old structure, it's very possible the undead use the space in such a different way as to make it unrecognizable as a kitchen. Or some sections just might be caved/crumbled in.

For example, maybe Area 5 is used to store corpses before they're animated as undead. So you might have "proto-undead" here like crawling claws or half-formed skeletons borrowing the troll's Loathsome Limbs (see optional sidebar in the Monster Manual).

Also, why is the store-room trapped? What of value is being kept there?

6: Another barracks room, pretty much like the first one.

"Same as the first, a little bit worse" works in large dungeons. But for small one-night themed dungeons like yours, I recommend tweaking this. For example, making the opposition much more challenging, or introducing a disgruntled undead lieutenant of Ajantis who might be parlayed with, or including a bundle of letters/messages that were intercepted by a messenger the PCs or their allies sent in a previous adventure.

7: Atrium, also where the order leader's supposed grave is. When the party tries to open his grave, it'll reveal itself as a trap, and they'll have to find the real entrance, probably triggered by something in his room, probably a puzzle of sorts.

8: Ajantis' (the order's leader) former room. Has a few of his personal affects, a piece of the puzzle to 1unlock the Bonecrusher maul, and maybe a riddle to unlock his crypt.

Green I: Illusionary wall, obscuring the entrance to the atrium. Still haven't decided how they're going to break the illusion.

The problem with these areas is that you've "gated" them behind an illusory wall without foreshadowing to the players: THIS BE A PLACE WHERE ILLUSORY WALLS MAY BE FOUND. As far as I can tell, there's no inherent logic as to WHY an illusory wall would be there. It seems to just exist to ensure the players explore the rest of the dungeon before finding your boss monster.

Personally, I'd get rid of the illusory wall (unless I'm mistaken about your lack of good reasons for placing it there). And I'd let them "go right" instead of "straight", IOW, I'd let them encounter Ajantis before encountering the War Room (Area 4) and other areas. Now, to make this interesting, I'd seeds some clues very early on (in Areas 1,2,3 and passageways) hinting the nature of the lich's curse allows Ajantis to summon undead. So if the PCs go after him first (and you'd want to put hints in Area 7 that they're getting close to the death knight), then he'd be able to summon the undead from Area 4, making for a harder fight. This gives your players "agency" – they get to choose (to some extent) how they want to approach the dungeon, how hard the dungeon will be for them.

IF you insisted on keeping the illusory wall, I'd recommend clueing the PCs into its presence right away – maybe it's one of the last things your dying cleric NPC tells them. And then I'd include some clues within the dungeon that hint at where exactly the illusory wall is located, so it doesn't just become a case of trial-and-error for the PCs – for example, maybe the former knights conceived of the layout of their stronghold as a sword (Area 1 hilt/pommel, Areas 2 & 3 the crossguard, Area 4 tang of the blade, and Area 5 the point). In addition to hinting at what is NEW/modified construction, you might also use this by placing knightly inscriptions that hint at the illusory wall's location: For example, The hidden warrior's way lies not along the crossguard, nor in the hilt or grip. It lies not at the point, but at the perfect balance of the blade.

9: The crypt, where the party meets the former order leader, now a deranged Death Knight. After some dialogue, they inevitably fight; he also will have some undead reinforcements (also, he's scaled to be 12th level instead of 19th). However, if the party has the Bonecrusher, aside from having an easier time, they'll be able to redeem Ajantis/the Death Knight, instead of just destroying him. Also, he'll be able to help him in the fight against the Xaggyth, the Demi-Lich that just had his plan kinda messed up, and is going to fight the party and the now redeemed Ajantis in order to salvage it.

Cool! How do you envision the redemption working? How will the players know it's even an option?

Red Ts: Traps. Still haven't decided what goes in these.

These are traps placed by the undead, right? So they should have an undeathly / corrupted knightly order theme? Or maybe a lich's curse theme?

Given that you only have 5 traps, at most I'd only create 1 or maybe 2 trap types. This is because part of the fun of traps is not in the "haha, gotcha!" but in the players getting to learn the PATTERN of trap design & placement in a given dungeon.

What I notice about the areas you've trapped – 2 passageways, 1 stairs, 2 thresholds – these seem more like traps designed to harm intruders rather than to prevent access to treasure, for example.

Given the original occupants – valiant knights – I don't see them much as trap-makers. And given the current occupants – skeletons, wights, ghasts, revenants warriors/spellcasters, death knight – they don't seem like the types to be great trap-makers either. That suggests to me that either these traps were introduced by Xaggyth the Demi-lich, or they are more like ambient hazards connected to the curse on Ajantis.

And that means these should probably be MAGICAL traps (not mechanical).

One idea is to design the interior like an ossuary with macabre alcoves along the walls lined with skulls, and the skulls would be the source of the traps. There could be subtle variations in skulls hinting at which ones are trapped. Finding ways to "fool" the trapped skulls or become "invisible" to trapped skulls could be interesting...and might play off the presence of an illusory wall too...

-Also, the unmarked room outside the HQ is a bathhouse. Because people wash themselves.

Even if it's "empty" (meaning there are no monsters, trap/tricks, or treasure), you could still put some clues here.

 

[RoiC.]

Dude, that's probably the most thorough comment I could have ask for, I'm basically speechless. Thank you so much! I'm going to sleep right now, but I'll reply when I get up. Thank you for your thoughtful, detailed comment. That's just amazing.

 

[aco175]

Great commentary and breakdown. My comment is to fit the number of rooms into the length of time you normally play. I roughly plan 1 room per hour of play. I may go with 5 rooms/ encounters for a 4 hour night of gaming. I tend to spend some time just talking and setting up before some roleplay and getting into actual play. Pacing becomes important if you do not want to continue the next week, or worse if next week there is only a little left and you try to stretch it.

Another thing I like to do is to group encounters to make the dungeon larger. You can combine all the guard rooms and sleeping quarters in a mountain fortress into 1 encounter. A few monsters come from one angle and a few join the next round from another hall or room. It makes the dungeon make more sense while keeping the encounters down.