Hi, I've never DMed a game in my life but, ive been playing for about 7 months and know most of the rules through and through .
I was asked to DM a 1 shot homebrew dungeon next week for a group of 4 level 3 characters who are being played by 4 of my friends.
The requirements are sewers-like area under cheliax (city of devils and general wrongness for anyone who hasn't played CoT) and not terribly hard.
So I am requesting any suggestion or mechanics to make this a fun experience for them and challenging as we have pretty much steam rolled up to this point. Also any amount of "clive barker effed up ness" (i.e. "babies clawing their own eyes out for no apparent reason") is bonus points.
Also any monster combinations that produce awesome effects in group together would be appreciated.
Thank you all in advance and I look forward to it.
Hi, I've never DMed a game in my life but, ive been playing for about 7 months and know most of the rules through and through .
I was asked to DM a 1 shot homebrew dungeon next week for a group of 4 level 3 characters who are being played by 4 of my friends.
The requirements are sewers-like area under cheliax (city of devils and general wrongness for anyone who hasn't played CoT) and not terribly hard.
So I am requesting any suggestion or mechanics to make this a fun experience for them and challenging as we have pretty much steam rolled up to this point. Also any amount of "clive barker effed up ness" (i.e. "babies clawing their own eyes out for no apparent reason") is bonus points.
Also any monster combinations that produce awesome effects in group together would be appreciated.
Thank you all in advance and I look forward to it.
If you want specific monsters/encounters it would be helpful to know A why are the characters in the sewers? Or do you have to put them there? Are they fleeing hellknights?
Is this 1 shot independant of your general campaign? Or is it in the middle of it to get the characters up a level or something? Are you in the middle of council of thieves?
Next and really important, if you want to challenge a party you need to look at what they can do. What are the 4 characters? Give as much info on class/race/stats/play style/favorite tactics or abilities. The more we know about that, the better the encounters will be. If you dont have that info, ask your friends for it. It's important for a DM to know his party if he really wants to make his adventure/campaign exciting and challenging.
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City sewers can go a number of ways. For a party of your level, you don't want anything too exotic, otherwise you get questions (why doesn't the giant black pudding just ooze out of the sewers and eat everyone in town?) that are hard to justify.
Some critters can be fun, and are classic sewer monsters:
Gelatinous Cube (if the players are new to the game, and haven't seen or heard of one)
A Carrion crawler paired in a location with Stirges flying overhead can be a challenging encounter.
A swarm of rats always works
An alligator or crocodile lurking in murky, knee-deep water.
Patches of green slime falling from the ceiling in one area
There are a few off the top of my head...not unusual...but in keeping with the theme.
Owner - Johnny Scott Comics and Games
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Here's a few ideas for you:
Sewers + Wererats (with appropriate Rogue Levels) = Fun! But then, I'm a sucker for Lycanthropes...
Your party acquires a map that indicates there is an ancient, undiscovered entrance to catacombs that existed during the time of the Rune Lords and have been built over during the current incarnation of Cheliax (although this would be more appropriate if you were doing a series of adventures or a campaign). Who knows what ancient evil lurks therein?
For a one shot, maybe an old tomb of an ancient threat is discovered, but the denizen isn't quite yet dead (Wight? Mummy?).
Maybe the local Thieves' Guild is using the sewers to move between targets and your party has been hired on to discover their identity and stop their looting.
Svirfneblin from the Darklands have inadvertently tunneled into the sewer system and have become a bit of a nuisance.
A rogue wizard has opened a gate to the Abyss, and has been unable to effectively close it. As a result, demons have begun appearing above the city. Needless to say, the devil-worshipping Chelaxians are anxious to discover the location of this nexus and seal it off...
The slimes and oozes used to dissolve the waste products of the city have escaped their containment. The powers that be want them rounded up and returned before this becomes known to the general population.
Hi, I've never DMed a game in my life but, ive been playing for about 7 months and know most of the rules through and through .
I was asked to DM a 1 shot homebrew dungeon next week for a group of 4 level 3 characters who are being played by 4 of my friends.
The requirements are sewers-like area under cheliax (city of devils and general wrongness for anyone who hasn't played CoT) and not terribly hard.
So I am requesting any suggestion or mechanics to make this a fun experience for them and challenging as we have pretty much steam rolled up to this point. Also any amount of "clive barker effed up ness" (i.e. "babies clawing their own eyes out for no apparent reason") is bonus points.
Also any monster combinations that produce awesome effects in group together would be appreciated.
Thank you all in advance and I look forward to it.
If you want specific monsters/encounters it would be helpful to know A why are the characters in the sewers? Or do you have to put them there? Are they fleeing hellknights?
Is this 1 shot independant of your general campaign? Or is it in the middle of it to get the characters up a level or something? Are you in the middle of council of thieves?
Next and really important, if you want to challenge a party you need to look at what they can do. What are the 4 characters? Give as much info on class/race/stats/play style/favorite tactics or abilities. The more we know about that, the better the encounters will be. If you dont have that info, ask your friends for it. It's important for a DM to know his party if he really wants to make his adventure/campaign exciting and challenging.
They are in the sewers to kill a were-rat monk (splinter lol), this is in the same setting and timeline of CoT just after delvehaven but not with the characters we used for delvehaven. No they are not fleeing hellknights.
Party wise 1 human cavalier likes to challenege his foes and ride his house in mounted charges which he will be discouraged to bring the mount in the sewers as it will be near impossible to use effectively.
1 gnome bard likes to sing and shoot arrows. no melee weps. and 2 unknowns, they will be making them this week before next tuesday.
Thanks hope this helps.
Party wise 1 human cavalier likes to challenege his foes and ride his house in mounted...
... So, new DM, new adventure, you have a cavalier, and your first adventure is one where he can't use any of the abilities he likes or bring his mount.
I'd, uh... reconsider your concept.
They are in the sewers to kill a were-rat monk (splinter lol)
I think you might have solved your own problem with the Splinter joke. The party could fight turtles! And they're teenagers! But not ninjas or mutants, just turtles with zits and girl trouble.
I haven't played in Golarian yet, I don't know setting specifics right now, so anything I say might be worthless. If you're in the sewers of a devil-worshipping city, might there not be some underground good organizations or good creatures that use the sewers as hideouts? All sorts of "undesirables" make the sewers their home, so there could be small leper communities (or some similar disease) or just plain poor folk who can't afford even the most flea-ridden flop house. The PCs might have to fight past these people, or they could talk their way past and make some friends in the lowest places, it's up to you. Like Cuchulainn you don't want to go too exotic with a low level party.
The otyugh is a classic sewer monster. I don't think I've ever run a sewer adventure without one.
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ninja turtles just great...
on a serious note, remember traps. use moot minions to lure into traps. Most players charge, what a great place for a pit trap, you can use d20pfsrd.com for premade traps. if the players start steem rolling your encounters have them way through some cheep poison to drops some stats. pit traps to use up some healing.
also a innocent victim who turns out to be an enemy who undermines the group
-sending from mobile
The sewers underneath Cheliax, eh? And bonus points for things others would find...unsettling? Let's get to work.
And that's all I got right now. Good luck!
ninja turtles just great... on a serious note, remember traps. use moot minions to lure into traps. Most players charge, what a great place for a pit trap, you can use d20pfsrd.com for premade traps. if the players start steem rolling your encounters have them way through some cheep poison to drops some stats. pit traps to use up some healing. also a innocent victim who turns out to be an enemy who undermines the group -sending from mobile
Tip Number One: buy real blue line graph paper a draw a careful map. See the floor from directly above, not in perspective or slanting with a gradient. You don't have to write a description for every square foot, just the basic character of the light, the walls, and the air. Always tell the group when something significant changes, if you don't cue their checks someone woill start scoping, this means to move one square at a time and roll a handfull of dice. It is a gameable tactic, but your game can flow easily. Don't draw a huge map and lay it out (unless that is the way you play). This is something I like about tiles, you can lay them down board by board. And on sewers in general, unless it is raining they are dry, when it storms they fill quickly.
The sewers underneath Cheliax, eh? And bonus points for things others would find...unsettling? Let's get to work.
It's the sewers underneath CHELIAX. Lord knows what Devils eat and excrete. If you've watched Dogma, you know what direction I'm going in. If not...** spoiler omitted ** Similar to the first one, you never really know what alchemists pour down there anyway- there may be a lot of magic-based pollution. Check the Eberron books to see what that can look like/do to a party. A sewer system is really its own little ecosystem, which, since this is a very magic based world, can lead to a lot of interesting versions sprites, pixies, grigs, and nixies showing up to..ah..enjoy the ambiance. Picture something close to the ** spoiler omitted **mentioned above but more endearing, almost like ** spoiler omitted ** Cheliax used to be a very different place in days of yore, when the god Aroden ruled the roost. PCs might find a secretive cabal of twitchy(read: HE'S COMING STRAIGHT FOR ME!) holdouts in the "nicer" parts of the sewer that could double as an Aroden-based dungeon that only wish to be left alone to mourn. Finally, on a disturbing note, there are some devils, dretches mostly, that are associated with muck, mire, and darkness. A portal leading to some rarely-used corner of one of the Hells could be found down here and closed- or exclusively administrated- by PCs. And that's all I got right now. Good luck!
The Golgothan!? Oh that's just evil... :)
I don't know if you have access to CityScape, but it lists some cool urban encounters like alchemical miasmas that can Baleful Polymorph a passerby and so on. Not that I suggest THAT specifically, but if you can take a scan through that it might be a help.
General idea might still help you come up with some interesting hazards... I am not deeply familiar with Golarion, but Cheliax sounds pretty unique, so weird alchemical wastes in the sewers (FLAMMABLE alchemical waste in the sewers...), all manner of oozes, weird gases or clouds... could all be interesting things to try to bypass. (this is all already covered by Freehold DM I realize, so... echo... echo...)
Also even ordinary sewers have some things to keep in consideration--usually part of a sewer tunnel will be filled with water and muck that will halve movement to walk through, smells that require a save-or-be-nauseated, and slippery floors that need Acrobatics checks to pass, lest you fall into the water and muck and then need to make a save vs. nauseation.....
As for adventure idea:
A sleazy Department of Sewers boss hires a couple of dwarven stone masons to fix some cracked pipes. Rather then going to the Masons guild, he hires a couple of guys who claim to be the best but will work cheap, then spends the rest of the payroll moneys on booze. Turns out the guys he hired were not dwarfs, but Derro. The Derro promptly botch the job, demand more money, and take several laborers hostage. The PCs must find the Derro, and either bribe or kill them, without alerting the authorities to the payroll scandal. They must also free the labors held hostage, who may or may not help them deal with the derro. Finally, you could also throw in a reason the pipes broke in the first place, and even have PCs with relevant knowledge, craft, or profession (subterranean sanitation engineer) finish the job, or hire someone who can.
OK, so your probably thinking of having a few mook encounters with the finally being a fight against some big boss monster. Classic, but not good for D&D/Pathfinder. I would recommend a few warm up encounters vs animals or vermin. Then an encounter with an aberration or magic beast. The PCs could then face a Mook encounter or two - in this case something like 1 derro with two evil dwarfs (each level 1 warriors) or maybe a derro and a derro with a level of sorcerer. For the final fight, you could have the party face 2 derro and 3 evil dwarfs. In the middle of the encounter the party (or an NPC) can free the laborers, who could run or help the PCs.
Keep in mind that encounters can go VERY differently depending on terrain, surprise, creature types, number of encounters per day, and of course luck. I would set things up to be a little on the easy side, so that you can make it a little tougher if you need to. It is easy to add enemies to a fight (or improve those enemies) but difficult to "rescue" the party if they get in too deep.
Oh yeah, one more thing. As you don't have much time, I would just say at the start that the characters all know each other, and have been adventuring together for years. This will keep the party focused on the adventure, not backstabbing each other.
Remember to involve the PCs backgrounds if you can -
Eg-someone's sibling or cousin could be kidnapped and for not paying protection money to the were-rats or thieves guild
(this is a great way to get the cavalier down there, they have to rescue them)
- the cavalier is still an armoured and armed warrior, and not useless just because they are not on their horse)
Maybe there is some undead cursed being who only haunts there area every so many years due to planetary-stars alignment? and someone in the party has to avenge their slain father/great uncle etc
Perhaps there are revolutionaries down there plotting against the current evil rulers? or spies from another land helping the good people of the city. Evil powers of the city wants these people found, good people want to help them, the PCs can work for one or the other.
Don't forget giant rats, bats, spiders and beetles. You don't need to go over the top with magic when you can have hordes of large animals in a slippery and stench ridden area. Balance checks for slipping over, will saves to ignore the stench, cover and concealment for the locals...
Great ideas all. I am definitely gonna use some of the Alchemical pollution ideas.
Fecal-Elemental made me lol hard.
I like the storm idea for giving them a time limit.
Definitely using blue lined graph paper. (Free time in college is great.)
Traps galore since Im the only one who ever plays a rogue. >:)
