Encounter: Any views on this puzzle combat?

[RavenBlackthorne]

Hi there guys,

I'm hoping to run this encounter in my game for five 4th level characters this weekend and was wondering if the eagle eyes of the ENworlders might be able to spot any pitfalls I could avoid.

The idea is that the statue in the upper right corner of the attached map is the old "how do you get exactly 4L from a 3L and 5L bottle?" In this case the statue needs to be fed exactly 4 gallons of blood in one go and there are two buckets (3 gallons and 5 gallons) on the altar in front of it.

"LEST WE FORGET. HERE IS DELPHUS, TRAITOR OF FAMILY, SLAYER OF GODS. HIS THIRST FOR DESTRUCTION AND BLOOD LIMITLESS. SO MANY LOST. SO MANY. ELF, HUMAN, HALF-ELF AND HALF ORC BROUGHT HIM LOW. EVEN NOW HE DEMANDS A GALLON OF EACH RACE'S BLOOD TO SATE HIS APPETITE. FOR NOW."

The catch? The blood is in the font in the lower left corner of the map and the team can only pick up one bucket at a time (the other fuses temporarily by magic when you pick one up. Trying to pick both up fuses both.). So in short they have to get the blood and bring it back at least twice (depending on how clever they are!) before the puzzle can be solved.

Of course as soon as some blood is scooped from it, all hell breaks loose. Whilst carrying a bucket full of blood, that person is magically slowed. Then from the piles of skulls rise Decaying Skeleton minions, from the two yellow sarcophagii appear two Dread Zombies, the two larger piles of rubble manifest two Gravehounds and a Poltergeist from out of the statue. (These have all been made level appropriate for a 4th level party).

The Dread Zombies can grab, the Gravehounds knock prone and the Poltergeist pushes so there should be movement fun galore in conjunction with the pits and difficult terrian. If a character carrying the bucket is knocked prone, they spill the blood. Destroying a skeleton means another rises the round after next (so 1 round's grace), Dread Zombies rise unless you nail them with fire or radiant.

To possibly help them, the runes on the floor are teleporting circles. Stepping on one teleports the person randomly to one of the other circles. They are only activated when a living person steps on it, so the undead are at a disadvantage and no placing the bucket and hoping. The braziers can be used to cause fire damage in stunt style.

The enemies will obviously try to stop the person holding the bucket but I can envisage a fun game of CTF mixed with american football as the "ball" is passed from person to person to get it to the "goal" as the rest of the team act as blockers and harriers.

As soon as the puzzle is completed, the undead fall apart and are destroyed. I'm hoping that the sheer number of enemies will prompt the team to want to finish the puzzle rather than try and destroy the undead.

Any tips/hints to make this run the way I want?

Thank you in advance!

 

[Cor_Malek]

What are the players character classes/races? It might help foresee some problems. Possible ways to temper with this so far:

• bag of holding ftw.
• sanctuary+shield of hope and they're set. Good thing they don't have access to consecrated ground, or else it'd be a lot easier.
• mage hand ftw once more. Just fly it over undead monsters.
• keep to the letter of prestidigitation, as to imperial system instead of metric. If you'd change pounds to kilograms, it's an instant way to solve the puzzle
• They might screw up the puzzle by over-thinking it, and count only humans, elves and orcs (not counting cross-breeds), what happens when they pour 3liters? (maybe dwarven causalities could come in place of half-elves)

As to the monsters - maybe they could teleport, but simply wouldn't? As in - they wouldn't willingly step at the circles, but if moved into them by players - they are teleported. I doubt it'd be an encounter breaker, and would add a possibility to interact with enemies.

All in all it looks like a fun encounter, with a lot of ways for various characters to shine.

 

[RavenBlackthorne]

Thanks Cor!

It's amazing the things you miss when you're focussed!

I've got a wizard, rogue, fighter, ranger and cleric. It's the first characters for all of them, so they're all nice and simple builds. Fortunately they don't have the bag of holding and the cleric has avoided sanctuary. I haven't heard of Shield of Hope. What am I missing out on?

Fortunately I've just looked up weight of gallons and the imperial measure is 10lbs per gallon (And the US is 8.35lbs) so even the 3 gallon bucket is too much for the mage hand to use and definitely out of presdigitation's remit. But I wouldn't have thought about it if you hadn't mentioned it, so thanks. I may let the wizard use it as a stunt at the expense of an action point since it's clever thinking, but maybe an attack on the wizard will break her concentration and she'll drop it. Could be fun, though.

As for not counting the half breeds, I really never thought of that, so thanks for that pick up. I'll either rephrase or let them suffer depending on how nasty I'm feeling!

A wrong answer causes an attack which (necrotic) damages and weakens those in a close blast 4 as their blood is drained.

Thanks so much for all of those, they really helped!

 

[Nichwee]

Arcane Gate may spoil your fun a bit. Or just two range 10/hand-off teleports.

 

[Bungo_Underhill]

Wow, awesome encounter design I may well be pinching this.

One possible concern, is there any reason the PCs won't search this room before attempting the puzzle? They could perhaps burn, or otherwise dispose of, the corpses/bones before activating them. Perhaps tampering with other things in the room could activate the Undead too.

If they animate without the players finding/reading the riddle perhaps the statue reads it out to them...

 

[RavenBlackthorne]

Nichwee, you're dead right. I'm lucky that the group don't have any of these but if I were designing for a group that did maybe I'd do something like the magic of the teleport circles being so strong it forces them to one of them randomly rather than where they wanted to go. Still may help them out but less encounter breaking.

Thanks Bungo. I hadn't thought of my group being so destructive! But it could happen. I suppose broken undead bones knitting together and burnt flesh rejoining would be a fairly evocative scene! I may give the undead an attack penalty to represent them being made of destoyed bits. Hopefully they won't though. I didn't mention (and maybe I should have!) that the adventure is taking place in a tomb of a well loved hero. They're kind of fighting through the traps designed to keep evil guys away. So I don't think they'd want to desecrate a tomb of a hero. But you can never trust anything when adventurers are involved! So at least I have a back-up plan now. Thank you!

And as an addendum, I want to give you all experience for helping me out but it doesn't seem to want to let me. As soon as I can, I will rectify this.

 

[RavenBlackthorne]

And yes to the statue reading it to them! Great idea. Might be worth doing even as they read the plaque. Just to scare them.

Maybe I should kick off the undead as that happens? Get them thinking under pressure.

 

[MarkB]

One thing worth noting is that, as it stands, your puzzle text doesn't include an "exact change only" clause, and I can't imagine a god with "limitless" thirst taking offense at being given more blood than he asked for. That being the case, were I a PC in this encounter, I'd just fill the 5-gallon bucket to the brim, plonk the whole lot on the altar, and say "Here you go. We even threw in a tip."

 

[the Jester]

If they are creative enough to burn the bodies in advance, I'd say reward them- when the monsters animate, have them start off at bloodied.

About the puzzle- it doesn't seem all that hard to solve at a glance, and that's an encounter winner. Which is fine. However, here are a few thoughts:

A 5 gallon bucket is big. That's like the tank of a water cooler. You might consider making the sizes smaller. Are you telling them how big the buckets are exactly? It might be cool to tell them that there are 2 buckets, one bigger than the other, and let them try to estimate the sizes via Intelligence or skill checks (though I'm not quite sure what kind of skill would apply off hand).

Anyway, you might do something to make the puzzle part a little bit harder. Then again, the monsters have tons of movement abilities, so...

 

[RavenBlackthorne]

Thanks guys. Both really great points.

Mark, is there a better way you reckon I could phrase it? I've obviously read it so many times that it makes sense that he demands one gallon of each, that I can't fathom wanting to do anything else! So good catch. Although I think I might be ok with them getting it wrong once: there's a price you end up paying and it'll ramp up the panic "We thought we got it right!!"

Jester, I was hoping the buckets would be big so that it wasn't easy to cart them around, much like in CTF games the carrier is penalized in someway. I'm not going to make them lose combat actions so I thought slow was harsh enough and represents carrying a huge liquid carrier. The checks to work out the bucket size are a cool idea that I'll definitely use. Maybe Insight? (It doesn't get that much love!) Or a much higher Perception to spot the dried, faded blood in the shape of a 3 and 5? Plus the maths works with the 3 and 5 nicely.
I'm definitely up for giving the players a boon if they destroy the remains (although that's really naughty of them). I hadn't thought about it at all until you guys brought it up. I'd prefer to have some kind of fun complication rather than just making them a little easier to kill. Maybe a minus to hit or some effect like any hit pushes them back 1 as their fragile bodies can't withstand the hits as well? Any better suggestions?

Ultimately I didn't really want the solving of the puzzle to be the main thing (the puzzle is an age old one [it was even in a Die Hard!] and some of my group are hardened puzzlers) but more the excecution. "We know HOW to do it but these stupid undead are in the way!"

These are all FAB ideas, guys. Thanks for taking the time. Appreciated.