Dungeon: Mahin'drazal article is up

[mneme]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (The Mahin'drazal)

Wow. Totally gross, and entirely possible for (particularly inexperienced) GMs to end up with a TPK (particularly as the obvious way to introduce the encounter is at the end of a long day).

OTOH, I find myself liking it. In the hands of a good GM, this promises to be a memorable and interesting encounter.

 

[Aegeri]

It's not really an encounter as the DM has to make it, but I must highly approve of Rodney's monsters. He just makes some of the most devious and well "themed" monsters in the magazine. These are also creatures that would easily scale up into upper paragon as well, because their abilities are pretty strong and won't degrade easily - just need new maths. I feel level 10 is pretty appropriate for them as well, especially compared to the fact I felt his Broken Builder's from a while ago were too low level at 1ish.

 

[Mummolus]

The whole "possibility of TPK" is a good thing, though, really - this is a Dark Sun article. The entire point is that everything can and would like to kill you.

All in all a pretty good article, I think. The location is suitable for a quick insert into any DS campaign, the monsters scale well, and thematically it's a wonderful fit for the setting.

 

[mneme]

On reflection, I do have some problems with it as an article. As presented, I could totally see a GM using it as an excuse to kill off the entire party as a death, no saving throw. If the PCs don't get Inisght rolls (not mentioned in the article) or blow them and the players let their characters be separated, they can trivially be permapoisoned and dispached unless they're built to be immune to such tactics (eg, Dreadnaught). A good GM will give the players enough clues for at least -some- of them to slip the trap, and likely give them a fight at a huge disadvantage rather than a slaughter even if they walk into the trap eyes wide shut, leading to an interesting v.hard encounter (that -still- might result in a TPK, but an interesting one), taking advantage of the fact that the poison wears off when you're bloodied. Without more pointers, a poor GM might very well not see the avenues present for the PCs to escape and rule that the party was mercelessly slaughtered/enslaved if they fall into the trap, which is both not the intent and not really very interesting.

 

[Dice4Hire]

That's two things I would like to read in dungeon recently. Good going WOTC!