Making a dungeon for a party of 10 players that are level 15. I am looking for story ideas, puzzles, traps, tricks, monsters, unique loot, anything! :D Thank you in advance I appreciate all ideas! :D <3 There are some fighters, a bard, a mage, and a couple that are fighting and spells. :)
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10 players? level 15? Oh boy...
well officially...everything is on the table.
A dungeon is kinda vague...is there some kind of story to it? Level 15+ dungeon comes with a lot of history , probably unique magic item or even artifacts.
Like, is this dungeon part of your campaign or you are doing an one shot/side trek? Is this the last dungeon of the campaign? is this a dungeon in Golarion? Your own campaign setting?
Depending on the answers...this could be a fortress, a cloud giant flying castle, The home of duke in Nine Hells, An Abyssal realm dungeon, A demiplane, on top of Mount Olympus, Asgard, etc...
I mean...could throw a bunch of random shit, but usually don't think that works very well.
On top of the usual traps and creatures I always liked to draw out a labyrinth they need to map through and at there level I would include atleast one random teleport encounter. Possibly even split the group
It's our own setting of pathfinder, we have a home drawn map and we are going to cities to gather resources for the this Opal mining town that go ran sacked and everyone but the two leaders were killed so they need people supplies and anything to help rebuild so we're trading opals to cities to get them what they need because they are the biggest trade our main city does, closest ally so we are doing our best to help them out. And each city so far been two have had dungeons that had to explore so something unique like the first u got 1 wish at the end if u made it, the second one they are going through if they beat it in 2 hrs gets the castle of the town and the cities main resource for free.
So this dungeon would be their 3rd and not the last one. And this campaign has whatever we feel like throwing in, the party love unique stuff. So far someone added a rancor syle pit but instead of rancor has 3 giant green hornets that can walk. So that's an example also the current dungeon has a main door with different colored locks and each lock needs the matching key color and so we go to the rooms with the colored door and try to figure out how to get each key. So that's some example I am just newer to being dm and have trouble coming up with more difficult things because they are high level and I am not used to higher levels.
There wasn't a dungeon in the first city we were on our way to the first one and landed on an island that was a dungeon made it to first city and now doing 2nd dungeon for the castle and resources. This is the first dungeon crawl we have done in a while and one of the players made over 100 modular hand painted dungeon tiles, so that's why there's dungeons alot in this particular campaign, I wouldn't mind unique dungeon items for any part you might come up with. I can tell u everyone's class if needed. We do have a fair amount of tieflings and mixes for races lol. ^_^
Here is an idea: the dungeon is actually a huge cave complex under an old ruined castle that leads to The Darklands. A wealthy merchant has contacted a large city containing Duergar (or some other race) hidden deep underground. The Duergar are interested in trading gems and other treasures for goods that can only be found on the surface (timber, wool, preserved foods etc.). The merchant is looking for some powerful adventurers to lead a caravan safely through the hazards of the Darklands to deliver the goods and return safely.
Unfortunately Drow spies from the most powerful of the Drow noble houses have discovered the plan and believe a trading partnership between the Duergar and surface dwellers would be a threat to their underworld supremacy. These Drow are determined to ensure that the mission fails. But those Drow are unaware that the second most powerful noble house is in league with the Duergar and have also made a temporary alliance with a group of Aboleths. The Drow from the second house are intending to use their alliance as leverage to become the dominant noble house, but otherwise don't care if the mission succeeds. The Aboleths are keen for the mission to succeed in order to obtain exotic spices and other rare reagents from the surface for some unknown and alien experiments. Aboleths are known to honour their agreements but the Drow are not, the adventurers will need to quickly determine who they can trust, who can be negotiated with and who their real enemies are, whilst at the same time negotiating a caravan through the natural hazards of the Darklands.
Here is my idea: miners from this town dug into a strange chamber that was defended by fiends (demons, devils, or whatever) which drove the miners from the mine. The characters are asked to clear out the fiends and investigate the ancient ruins.
The ruins actually cross into the Abyss/Hell (or wherever) and were built very long ago to imprison a good deity (or some other powerful good entity). The god was imprisoned by an evil wizard/cleric/fiend (or whatever) who has become an arch fiend by draining power from the god. If the characters defeat the fiendish guards and free the god, then the arch fiend will realize that the source it's power has just disappeared and come to personally investigate. The god and arch fiend will fight each other while the characters fight the arch fiend's soldiers, or work to unseal the god's power as the arch fiend tries to bind it again.
If the characters are successful they may gain mythic tiers, or chains capable of binding or harming a god, which could be turned into a chain weapon, or the path to the arch fiend's other worldly strong hold, which they could take control of.
Good luck making a fun dungeon. =)
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Alright what about this, assuming a party with an APL of 17 due to 10 people:
A Rakshasha Rajadhiraja (Better version of Maharaja) of Pain , for entertainment likes to invite adventurers to challenge his servants and deadly dungeon. The dungeon would be a demiplane, with exotic creatures and strange landscape and enemies.
Denizens and various enemies:
Consider Bandersnatch, A demon Marilith, An Ancient Void Dragon, A Nemesis Devil, Grendel.
Possible Ally:
A Pit Fiend loyal to Mephistopheles (Most likely needs somebody to remove him from a contract or seal with the Maharaja, see below for more info)
Grunts/cannon fodder:
Rakshashas (Have a bunch of them, give them class levels, templates or use the various versions of rakshasas.)
The twist:
The Rajadhiraja possesses an artifact that a Duke from hell needs
to help in capturing Mephistopheles (Archdevil Soul), so feel to have an elite squad of devils supporter, or rival adventuring party/company competing in the Rajadhiraja games.
Wow these are all awesome ideas! Dungeon definetly coming together wonderfully and I can put these ideas to use in this dungeon and next one if they survivie! Lol feel free to leave any other ideas or unique items or puzzles :) ♡
Tiling puzzles are good because they are generally easy to invent and are difficult solve, unlike riddles which can take ages to write and are usually solved in a flash of inspiration by at least one player (at least that has been my experience). Also you can make tiling puzzles as easy or difficult as you like. In most cases you simply increase the number of pieces to increase the difficulty of the puzzle.
An example of a ridiculously difficult tiling puzzle is the Eternity Puzzle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_puzzle
A tiling puzzle of similar design and size as the Eternity Puzzle makes for a good campaign long puzzle because it is so difficult to solve that the players have no real chance of solving it prematurely. It also has the weird property that you can give a few clues and the puzzle actually becomes more difficult to solve rather than easier, although the players won't realise that and they will think they are making progress. In the case of the Eternity Puzzle you need to solve about two thirds of the puzzle before it starts getting easier to solve rather than harder. By that stage you should be towards the end of the campaign. The website below explains why clues initially make the puzzle more difficult.
https://plus.maths.org/content/os/issue13/features/eternity/index
Sweet thanks definetly going to look into that I have had those cases of spending time on riddles to only get solved quicker than I would have liked. So the puzzles sound great :)
Anyone have any tips or tricks to making unique items?
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Depend what your goal is.
You can even take an item that is already made and just add a bit of history:
For example, let's pick a Holy Avenger:
Revenge
Revenge was to be the Longsword of a Solar who fought against a demon lord and has been passed down to an order of paladin since the fall of the Solar after defeating the Demonlord and taking a mortal wound. Now any paladin who wields Revenge can hear the choir of angels or even do some other stuffs like some kind of a holy aura around the paladin, which appears as a Halo with angel wings.
With that you can even decide that there is only one Holy Avenger in your campaign or maybe more, just by twisting and adding history to it, + a power here and there.
Oh ok so I can take wondrous and or other magical weapons and just add stuff or take stuff away and add a backstory. How do I know if the weapon is too powerful? How do I determine the limit and types of abilities?