Help! My players are spooning apart my campaign!

[-=Xar=-]

My campaign is being devastated by my very own players! Why? Simply because I was stupid enough to let them stumble upon the long-lost adamantine warhammer of a dwarven hero. They used it to great effect against the various animated objects encountered but upon finishing the adventure they decided to maximize it's usefulness: they went to the best smith they could find, one equipped with magic tools, and let him hammer it into a dozen... spoons... they also let the smith make a big corkscrew and the halfling ordered a teaspoon, which he hid into some interesting parts of his anatomy "for the case he would get captured".

Now, each PC equipped with two of these deadly implements, they started to devastate my carefully designed dungeons: with adamantine ignoring object hardness up to 20 they are spooning themselves though every imaginable obstacle. No heavy treasure chest is safe anymore, no lock needs to be picked, not even huge iron gates can stop their advance... dual wielding the spoons they can even manage to tunnel around heavily trapped parts, or carve steps and ledges into sheer surfaces. The corkscrew they use to bore peepholes into doors and check the walls for secret passages and the halfling escaped even the most secure prisons and manacles with his teaspoon...

I once made an entire dungeon out of Walls of Force, but that turned out to be boring pretty quick. Then I made a huge safe out of adamantine, that would be impervious to their spoons. They decided to chip away the walls around the safe and hauled the entire thing back to the village where the smith turned it into... you guess... even more and bigger spoons... Now the fighter and barbarian can use their Power Attack feats to bring down huge wallsections and even dig their own rooms to spend the night in... They are now planning to get more adamantine so they can equip miners with adamantine tools, so they could dig out huge mines to find even more, you guessed again, adamantine.

My complete campaign seems to be derailed, I have truly no idea how to regain control. I allready tried to introduce enemy parties with the same tactics, but the players won and got their hands on even more of the stuff. They invest all their money into the prospect of getting more adamantine, and even now they are thinking of untiring hordes of undead or constructs digging out vast amounts of minerals, which they can use to pay a mage to contruct even more powerful minions, which could mine out even more stuff. And then they have plans of digging out huge dungeons which they could sell to evil overlords and such, so later on, when these have amassed enough money and magic the party could assault and slaughter them.

Any advice how I could stabilise the situation? I have tried everything!

 

[EricNoah]

An adamantine-crazy delver (advanced fiendish dire half-dragon of legend, no less) and wave after wave of minions attack the party repeatedly until they give up the spoons.

Or just ask them if they're done forking up your campaign and then take the spoons away!

 

[Shade]

Couldn't an adamantine dish just run away with them?

 

[Drowbane]

Rust Monsters. Lots of Rust Monsters.

 

[billd91]

While they're spending all this time digging through everything in sight, where are the wandering monsters? Bring on the wandering monsters!

 

[Montague68]

Adamantine: This ultrahard metal adds to the quality of a weapon or suit of armor. Weapons fashioned from adamantine have a natural ability to bypass hardness when sundering weapons or attacking objects, ignoring hardness less than 20.

Last I heard spoons and corkscrews are not weapons. Also last I heard cliff faces, stone floors, walls, etc are not objects. There's no mention of tunneling anywhere in this rule either.

Your players had their fun but an adamantium spoon and corkscrew is not a lightsaber. Could they cut through some padlocks, manacles, etc? Sure, given time. The next time they try to corkscrew through a one-foot thick solid iron door though, let them. Then remind them once they've bored through that door that being able to cut through an object is one thing - having the strength to dislodge said corkscrew from the door is something else entirely.

 

[Sandain]

Imagine a steel teaspoon. Imagine a solid piece of timber. The timber has no DR against a steel teapsoon - but how long woud it take to tunnel tghrough it?

Apply the same thinking to Adamatium and Rock or Steel.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Okay, spoons can't really do that. Adamantine weapons can cut through things with hardness less than 20, but that doesn't mean that everything becomes butter underneath adamantine. What they should have are pickaxes of adamantine. It works out to the same problem, and you look less silly trying to spoon your way around.

There are two main problems with tunnelling through dungeons. First, tunnelling takes time, and, secondly, unless you have some kind of Profession or Knowledge to use, you're probably going to be collapsing tunnels in on yourself due to creating very unstable areas.

The time problem is one that has been discussed often on these boards. From creating time sensitive adventures to random monsters, there are many ways to handle PCs picking their way through adventures. The cavein problem is fairly straight-forward, but remember if the Players start working on Knowledge (engineering) or Profession (mining) or something like that where they could avoid the issue, remember to allow them to do it with their investment.

You might also want to use site-based encounters that don't rely on blocking the PCs' way but instead making it so that they don't know where they're going next. The easiest way to explain this type of adventure is the city-based adventure that leads the PCs to various locations based on uncovering things slowly. Meeing someone in a bar provokes them to heading to an old temple, which leads them to a millhouse, etc etc. That way they can't just tunnel their way around.

 

[sukael]

Rust monsters.

 

[helium3]

My campaign is being devastated by my very own players! Why? Simply because I was stupid enough to let them stumble upon the long-lost adamantine warhammer of a dwarven hero . . . . . . . and then they have plans of digging out huge dungeons which they could sell to evil overlords and such, so later on, when these have amassed enough money and magic the party could assault and slaughter them.

Any advice how I could stabilise the situation? I have tried everything!

You've managed to create a gaming situation where the players have started spontaneously generating plot hooks and are taking an active role in developing the story. Most DM's would give their teeth for a situation like that.

I suggest you run with it and let the players have their fun until they get bored. Build the adventures around what they're trying to do, rather than trying to get them to do something else.