I'm relatively new to Pathfinder, but am confident enough running my own stuff now.
I came across an idea for a dungeon that seems like it could be fun to run on Reddit recently.
The premise was based around a dungeon that was balanced on a spire above a pit. It was created by a mad Druid that was obsessed with the laws of good, evil, chaos and order. The wizard believed that understanding the nature of these balancing primordial forces led to true enlightenment.
Put a group of magically trapped monsters of good, evil, lawful and chaotic alignment in four corners of a single-floor dungeon. Have a piece of a four part key placed in each of the rooms, which they need to unlock a chest in the centre of the room.
If they kill a monster, a hole opens beneath the body and it falls into the pit. The weight loss changes the weight balance of the dungeon and the whole dungeon tilts (as it is balanced on the point of a spire).
If it tilts too far, it will fall into a bottomless pit. They can restore the balance by killing something of the opposite alignment.
I really liked the idea, and am planning on running it in a couple of sessions.
I was hoping for advice from the community for how to fill the rooms for each alignment. I have a couple of ideas but I'd like to see what other directions other people could take it in.
(Oh, almost forgot, I'm planning on making four level 3 / 4 characters for the players, so you have an idea of the difficulty of what to include)
Harduk wrote: The premise was based around a dungeon that was balanced on a spire above a pit. It was created by a mad Druid that was obsessed with the laws of good, evil, chaos and order. The wizard believed that understanding the nature of these balancing primordial forces led to true enlightenment. The two classes are generally pretty different, fluff-wise and spell-wise. Personally, I would end up approaching the problem differently depending on the base class.
It's a minor thing.
ANYways, couple things spring to mind:
First, this isn't really a dungeon, it's a gauntlet arena. Nothing wrong with that, but it changes the dynamic of the necessary party elements (don't need no trapsmith and can actually have a legitimate 15-minute day).
Second, dumping the body isn't particularly relevant to the weight balance of a structure strong enough to support people, so the "fall off the edge" would be magically-induced. Nothing wrong with that either, but it means you don't need to dump the body out the bottom (unless you want to for the coolness factor) and you can do other things. Perhaps that entire section of dungeon crumbles away slowly and the party has to run quickly or fall out. Perhaps the dungeon itself becomes mildly or strongly aligned with the opposite alignment until balance is restored. Perhaps there is actually a time limit as the good dungeon collapses and the evil dungeon has to be completed before the good one finishes disintegrating. This alignment can be as simple as a -2 to charisma checks or as serious as "all spells with the wrong alignment descriptor stop working, period."
Third, and working with previous, make the whole thing part of a demiplane. The pit is a great big super-smooth and perma-greased funnel with whipping winds that sends anyone and anything falling whirling downward into one of the 4-8 different portals at the bottom which lead to any number of horrible, "do not want" planes. This also means it's hard for the PCs to just jury-rig some escape plan from the insane druizard's monster party or kick in the door of the Hound Archon(?)'s room and just cut a deal to free him and escape.
Which neatly segues into point number 4, good PCs don't kill good-aligned critters, as a general rule. And if you want a "pure alignment" concept-critter it's usually going to be an outsider. You can make the gang all True Neutral, but even then they might be more inclined to deal with the lawboys or the goodies since those types tend to keep their words, and even the evil critters can make tempting offers from time to time. Maybe Mr. Wizard wants a quasit familiar.
Monster-wise, you're spoiled for choice, there are a LOT of outsiders with pure alignments that are still in the CR 3-4 range. On the flip side most of them are really weak and kind of boring. Daemons, agathions, modrons, etc. they tend to be tiny or small, they usually have spell-like abilities but aren't that challenging in themselves, and they aren't necessarily all that interesting. Also, most of the ones who are Neutral-X or Y-Neutral instead of XY are lesser-known, which can be good or bad. As for an exhaustive list of all the possible critters...this lovely tool may not be perfect, but it's the best I have found that has the advantage of being free.
Good luck.
Thank you so much for your incredibly detailed response. It's given me a lot to work with.
(I love the idea of the dungeon being part of a demiplane, and it beginning to crumble away once you complete a section.)
With regards to point number 4, about good vs good, I was considering having a Hound Archon in the 'Good' room. If they choose to turn against it so be it, but I will have the Hound Archon offer a deal to the PC's.
In the evil room, the key will be accessible on the main floor. However, if I were to include a lower level in which there was a BBEG that is strong enough to be a challenge to both the PC's and the Hound Archon working together. If they help him to defeat this BBEG he will allow them to take the key from the 'Good' room.
So the PC's can have a way to access the key from the 'Good' room without going against their alignments.
Do you think this would work?
And do you have any ideas for the Order/Chaos rooms?
I was considering having a fountain inside the door of each of the rooms that would allow 1/2 drinks and would heal people if their alignment matched that of the room, and it could allow for some recovery between battles.
(Also that monster search is a god-send, it saves so much time)
Might work. Have a custom-brew Wraith that is True Neutral and missing various undead vulnerabilities (the preliminary fruits of Mr. Druizard's labors) that carries a scythe and represents the neutrality of death. Wraith itself is CR 5, not sure the best way to upgrade it to balance out with a hound-archon-backed party, but as a neutral player it doesn't upset the balance and can still show up when the party "breaks the rules" by teaming-up with the good guy*.
Law is easy, you've got a law-based outsider (maybe a Formian? I like Modrons but they never got ported) is contractually obligated to fight you and a chaos-based outsider who is just too CRAZY to deal. A Gibbering Mouther may technically be Neutral but it's pretty clearly an essence of chaos critter.
And on the topic of crazy, technically you can have to goody just be convinced that the PCs are "tainted and must be cleansed" but it's always harder to accept that murder is the ONLY solution when the target is literally a part of the host of heaven. I suppose this just delves into the inherent challenge of playing with alignment, and brother, that is flame-tastic topic that has burned across more forums than I can count. Feel free to search "alignment questions" right here if you want to know more about how much internet rage can flow from that topic.
*of course that means it's acting as an agent law and HEY LOOK WAVING HANDS OF DISTRACTION! *runs away*
A Psychopomp would be pretty miffed if you passed them over as a neutral party in the ways of Death. Especially if you did so in favor of an Undead, a very distinctly Evil part of Death.
Logistically, you'll want to limit anything in the dungeon from flying, as a flying creature will alter the weight in that part of the dungeon. You'll also wont a permanent Dimensional Anchor effect around the place, unless you want the PC's to simply be able to Banish the good Aligned foes.
Another cool idea for this that I had for this is to replace the balancing tower with an actual planar 'balance' between good vs evil and law vs chaos.
Let's say the first room they enter is the Chaotic room. The bad guys are a little easy to defeat, and killing one makes the others less powerful, but killing them also elevates the power of the bad guys in the Lawful dungeon (and vies-versa if they kill Lawful guys first. If they alternate clearing the Good rooms and Evil rooms, it remains balanced and neither get more powerful.
If you want to elaborate on that, you could put something to guard the middle room, say a regenerating monster that can't be killed (much much much less powerful tarrasque), or an incorporeal creature that escapes beneath the floor. Anyway, it repairs itself with its fast healing before going back to guarding this adjoining room. If one alignment is elevated above the others, it gains a specific ability or a bonus against the opposite alignment, with half the bonus applying to characters who are neutral and no bonus against the same alignment (or even a penalty).
You could even make this centre-guarding creature be VERY powerful compared to the PCs level, but if a character dies in this dungeon they come back once the party has escaped the dungeon with their alignment changed towards the alignment that was powerful when the PC was killed.
There was also a cool idea I read on some thread somewhere where the PCs stepped into a room where there were two other parties of the same characters as the PCs, but they evidently had two other alignment sets than the PCs. If the PCs characters died, they would come leave the room playing the alignment version of the character that survived for the rest of the campaign.
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