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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psychotic Jim" data-source="post: 5773033" data-attributes="member: 547">Another idea is to use your fellow scavengers and looters as a resource.  Thieves searching for unknown riches might be willing to trade knowledge or resources, and you'll occasionally find the odd mage or alchemist rooting around dungeons for various material components or alchemical reagents and such, or to capture experimental test subjects (once had a member of the Monster Hunter's Association pop up in one of my games and proceeded to hire the PCs to capture a beastie for him). Also, remember many natural scavengers may not be interested in a fight. You might be able to make alliances of convenience with an otyugh, for example. Although they are ugly and tactless, they eat the stuff nobody else wants to deal with and have been known to act as garbage disposals from time to time. Adventurers have a bad habit of racking up the body count, so sometimes they need to have a way of doing something with all those enemy carcasses, especially when trying to conceal their presences. In a similar vein, sometimes other creatures met in the dungeon will be raiders with hostile intent to the owners of the dungeon.  The Underdark is filled with feuding parties who all hate each other (drow vs. duergar, for example)- so depending on how much the other raiders hate the dungeon owner as compared to the PCs, they may be willing to parlay for a time.Also, remember many dungeons have a long history, and those who occupy the dungeon now may not be those who originally inhabited it.  The displaced spirits of the previous dungeon dwellers may not rest easily, and these ghosts could serve as important sources of information. Similarly, some dungeons themselves may be living- whether it be the tattered AI of a fallen spaceship or an animate genius loci.  Sometimes these living dungeons will be able to be negotiated with, and perhaps turned against the "parasites" that infest the living dungeon's body. Finally, remember depending on your PCs class and level, they can often use magic to communicate with things that are normally not able to.  Speak with Animals/Plants should work underground too (bats, rats, underground fungi) and stone tell will let you talk with rocks.</blockquote>

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