Need ideas for populating a dungeon


Advice


So I'm creating a dungeon for my homebrew game, and where's what I know so far: It's an abandoned tower that was built by a wizard over a hundred years ago. The tower is located on an island in the middle of a large lake. The Wizard used his tower as a base of operations in a struggle with the neighboring country but was eventually defeated. Said country has up until the current time in the game forbidden anyone from claiming the island, but recently a magician's guild had garnered enough resources and influence in order to purchase the island & tower and convince the government to allow them to use it as their new guildhall. The magician's guild will hire the PCs to clear out the tower of any monsters or dangers.

So, what unfriendly inhabitants should I put in it? Here's some more pertinent information:

1. The PCs just reached 11th level.
2. I want this job to be a stand-alone dungeon crawl, so I'm not going to integrate it into the larger campaign storyline.
3. Verisimilitude is important to me, so any inhabitants would need to be the kind that could logically co-exist in a tower together.
4. The PCs have been fighting a lot of humanoids with class levels lately, so I'm for straight-up monsters.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

What kinds of PCs?

Maybe a mixture of constructs, elementals, oozes, outsiders, and undead.

A berserking guardian construct?

A summoned group of a mixture of elementals? Maybe set up in an environment where they can be manipulated into fighting each other?

A ginormous black pudding that can be split into colossal, gargantuan, and huge remnants?

Summoned outsiders? Or a demon/devil trapped in a summoning circle and seething/desperate to escape?

A dread wraith using hit and run tactics? Maybe in a maze or series of small chambers or mess of pillars?


An arcane Giant Flytrap. Like a normal Giant Flytrap but the arcane energies in the area give it the effects of an electric version of Fire Shield or another 4th level spell.

An arcane Giant Slug. Each time it is hit it unleashes an Acid Fog spell, it is immune to this acid. Additionally the fog is hallucinogenic and induces confusion as per the spell. Saves are con based so DC 18 for the confusion.


I would really play up on the arcane-ness of the place. Have magic infused bad guys. This will throw your players off as well because they will not know what they are fighting. (No more "oh it's just a _____, I know how to fight it.")

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

MichaelCullen wrote:

An arcane Giant Flytrap. Like a normal Giant Flytrap but the arcane energies in the area give it the effects of an electric version of Fire Shield or another 4th level spell.

Or Giant Flytraps with giant frog tongues in them to suck in the PCs! With EXTRA ACID in the Giant Flytraps!!!!

But if your party is made out of a lot of sneak attackers, maybe don't pick what I suggested up-thread.


What is your party composition and how much are they power gamed? This may help us be more precise with ideas?


A strange forest where the plants grow bits of metal and are tended to by rust monsters that have evolved to the "make homes" stage due to residual magic.


How about the tower is a giant maze? So the wizard who used to inhabit it set a mega-maze deathtrap as a deadman's switch, so if you somehow managed to crawl your way up to the top, the rest of the tower locked down and turned into an extra dimensional (or maybe just regular) labyrinth that ensnared anybody who entered (and prevent teleportation in/out). However, if you find the off switch (somewhere in the Wizard's study), you can disable the maze so the tower becomes usable. Sometime in between when the wizard died and now, monsters, treasure hunters, and such filtered in and maybe bred in there.

I'd say a group of dungeon-resistant, perhaps magic-resistant humanoids would be able to survive, although they would need to be fecund and would only exist in small numbers. Kobolds or goblins would fit this role fairly well, especially since goblins have been known to eat virtually anything. A number of oozes or slimes would be reasonable, since most are some combination of dangerous to touch, hard to kill, and good at disposing of trash/waste. I suppose they could be remnants of the Wizard's trash disposal system or lab experiments, grown out of control. They're not terribly effective or efficient predators- they would just be some sort of invincible scavenger somewhat removed from the food chain. There would probably be a number of rats, dire rats, or similar pests that eat goblin waste, then slimes that eat rat waste. I guess the goblins would survive off of rats, each other, and mutagenic wizard waste lying around. Some sort of mutated template on your monsters wouldn't hurt. There might be a few other mutated regular creatures that found their way in. Maybe the Wizard had a garden that was (surprise, surprise!) also mutated? Also, consider peeking through the aberration section of the bestiaries. There are some pretty wonderful previous edition callbacks of strange monsters that would pretty much only exist in dungeons. I suppose it wouldn't be unreasonable to say the Wizard summoned an outsider or two, or maybe an aboleth to his lab. This would make an effective end boss if accompanied by worshipful or dominated minions. Giant plant creatures in one area, mutated gutter monsters lying around, goblin society for a few floors (complete with goblin dogs), some predator aberrations mixed in, outsider/aboleth on top?

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Maybe a vampire or other kind of monster that can't cross running water.


A group of devils, or intelligent aberations, has taken ip residence, alomg with their pets/ gaurd animals and such. They are desparatetly searching for something they think the old wizard had, a true name, weird artifact, whatever. Some areas are still protected by the old security system of comstructs and magical traps.


Some options:

1) Entirely under water dungeon, populated by sea creatures and housing a small cabal of grindylow witches.

2) A mysterious tower on the Shadow Plane with each room magically connecting to a random other room so when you exit the room, you get to a random room following it. Eventually, they meet a Shadow Minotaur who can guide them through it after they befriend it.

3) A dungeon among the clouds - basically, a dungeon created with permanent walls of force floating among the clouds, home to a cloud giant and populated by flying creatures.

4) An ancient mechanical dungeon populated entirely by clockwork creatures protecting a central tomb where the master of the tinkerers was laid to rest along with his most potent marvel.

5) Icy lair, white dragon, kobold followers. The dragon's ability to reshape the dungeon as they're in it combined with the kobold traps is NASTY.


A severe kobold infestation - with dozens of traps and collected oddities. Give them class levels and numbers appropriate to challenge your group.

At the very bottom of the dungeon, their god. The dragon who has been amusing himself watching the party the entire time.

Given an intelligent, well informed commander, don't allow the party a chance to rest. If they leave and come back, traps have been resent and rearranged, new obstacles have been erected, etc. If they spend too much time searching, use hit-and-run tactics to lure them into traps.

Once they reach the dragon, he's already seen their tricks and has a plan.

Use decoys, deception, trickery. Nothing is obvious, nothing is what it seems. They are matching wits with something that has centuries of experience and enjoys playing with its food.

Dark Archive

I'm not that familiar with what constitutes a CR appropiate encounter, but I'll give it a shot.

*Since the island has been forbidden territory for a while, the tower and the surrounding might have been overrun with plantlife / plant creatures. A Bodythief might have created his society of duplicate creatures here (bit high on the CR though). The Fungal Creature template could also be used to create a vast amount of different creatures that don't attack each other, as these tend to just sit around until another creature shows up.

*Undead are a way to go (although not very imaginative, has been done before a lot). Ghosts,Spectres and Poltergeists are usually site-bound.

*Maybe the Wizard never really left. Maybe he has been biding his time as a Soulbound Shell, building up an army of other constructs like the clockwork creatures. Or maybe when he died, he rose again as a Worm that Walks, still doing wathever the wizard was up to during his former life.

*Depending on how far the the tower / large lake is from civilized areas, it might have gone unnoticed that it has become occupied again. Maybe harpies have settled here (harpies with class levels are very nasty). Or Formians or Thriae have decided to colonize the island/tower. They could even be both there and hold a silent turf war.


Mature adult Blue dragon got here a year ago and made the tower his. He just wants the library witch he has yet to access.


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I want to play through all of these dungeons.

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

While a lot of those ideas sound super cool, I believe the OP does not want to use class levels for this particular dungeon.

Leucrotta might be fitting. Maybe some lamia with jackal-were minions.


Xexyz wrote:

So I'm creating a dungeon for my homebrew game, and where's what I know so far: It's an abandoned tower that was built by a wizard over a hundred years ago. The tower is located on an island in the middle of a large lake. The Wizard used his tower as a base of operations in a struggle with the neighboring country but was eventually defeated. Said country has up until the current time in the game forbidden anyone from claiming the island, but recently a magician's guild had garnered enough resources and influence in order to purchase the island & tower and convince the government to allow them to use it as their new guildhall. The magician's guild will hire the PCs to clear out the tower of any monsters or dangers.

So, what unfriendly inhabitants should I put in it? Here's some more pertinent information:

1. The PCs just reached 11th level.
2. I want this job to be a stand-alone dungeon crawl, so I'm not going to integrate it into the larger campaign storyline.
3. Verisimilitude is important to me, so any inhabitants would need to be the kind that could logically co-exist in a tower together.
4. The PCs have been fighting a lot of humanoids with class levels lately, so I'm for straight-up monsters.

So, my first question is what happened to the wizard?

Did he escape, and in his bitterness, transform his former home into a cats' cradle of vicious magical traps and hazards?

Was he utterly destroyed, and the tower is a true ruin overrun by wildlife with a few lingering magical features, perhaps...

Was he never truly defeated and never left? Perhaps the destruction of his home was only some kind of illusion, that the wizard only pretended to be destroyed or something, and retired from the political stage and endured all these years as some sort of undead: a lich, perhaps, a demi lich by now? Perhaps, the local government(s) knew all along that the destruction of the wizard was a hoax, but they allowed the hoax because it gave them the appearance of victory and political legitimacy. Perhaps the wizard, perhaps now undead (not necessarily a lich), has continued being a political player all along, manipulating things behind the scenes to some end or no end. Undead monsters don't require motivations that make any sense to mortals, or perhaps make sense only to ancient memory.

Since it is your intention that this dungeon not feature prominently in your storyline, much of the last paragraph would not be the case, but some of it might, and the party might emerge from the dungeon with historical records that could be potentially very politically embarrassing for the local power brokers or something, who might be sending competing groups of adventures or assassins to stop the party.

In general, the answer to this question tells us how populate your dungeon with verisimilitude. If the tower is a true ruin, then you create an ecosystem logical to the climate. I'm imagining temperate wetlands, so a variety of dangerous plants and oozes, some large and small animals lairing in abandoned rooms, crawling around old bones and abandoned treasure. Maybe a Druid lives there now. Maybe a fairy community is drawn to the place. Or maybe it is just infested with goblins, kobolds, derro, mycinoids, or vegepygmies. Perhaps the basement is flooded and a large monster lives there now: a Froghemoth (that explains the bad fishing!), a black dragon who found and has been studying the wizard's library, and has been perhaps sending bizarre magical experimental creatures out into the wilderness, or a giant snapping turtle.

Perhaps the tower was destroyed just as the wizard was summoning a powerful Outsider who is still trapped in some room, waiting hundreds of years for the forces of nature to overgrow the room and besmirch the pentagram he is imprisoned in, or for a party of adventurers to blunder in, scuff the floor and let him finally raise Hell!

If the tower is magical trap left behind by the wizard, there is little need for verisimilitude. Evergreen crossbows with magically replenishing poisoned bolts fire whenever a certain tile is stepped on. Every door is sealed with a Glyph of Warding that Summons a Monster. You walk into the room in the center of the tower--whatever that even means--and the party is instantly teleported to some other random part of the world. Perhaps this is how the wizard escaped, and the party is left wondering if they ever make it back to that room, if they will find a room full of gold, or just get teleported again, or find the demilich of the wizard, you know, like the Tomb of Horrors.


Looking through the thread, I see a lot of my specific ideas have already been represented!


A Medusa cult leading spellcaster, an old rival of the dead wizard, has led her followers on an expedition to take this ground as their new temple. Her followers could be humanoid, demonic, abberations, a legion of undead held under her control by a powerful Maguffin.

I like using Medusas as arch villains

Grand Lodge

Xexyz wrote:

So I'm creating a dungeon for my homebrew game, and where's what I know so far: It's an abandoned tower that was built by a wizard over a hundred years ago. The tower is located on an island in the middle of a large lake. The Wizard used his tower as a base of operations in a struggle with the neighboring country but was eventually defeated. Said country has up until the current time in the game forbidden anyone from claiming the island, but recently a magician's guild had garnered enough resources and influence in order to purchase the island & tower and convince the government to allow them to use it as their new guildhall. The magician's guild will hire the PCs to clear out the tower of any monsters or dangers.

So, what unfriendly inhabitants should I put in it? Here's some more pertinent information:

1. The PCs just reached 11th level.
2. I want this job to be a stand-alone dungeon crawl, so I'm not going to integrate it into the larger campaign storyline.
3. Verisimilitude is important to me, so any inhabitants would need to be the kind that could logically co-exist in a tower together.
4. The PCs have been fighting a lot of humanoids with class levels lately, so I'm for straight-up monsters.

Each brick of the guildhall is: a soul trapped earth golem...blocks which when taken apart and rebuilt from the defeated/released souls/elementals now form the entryway to the tomb of Maigus...


Thanks for the responses so far, guys! Here's what I'm thinking so far:

1. I like the idea of some evil outsiders having taken up residence. To answer Scott's question, I think I'm going to do with the idea that the wizard used bound evil outsiders as minions, but then lost control and was betrayed and killed by them. They have since then been using the tower as a foothold in the material plane to enact their own evil schemes. So which outsiders to use is the question? The PCs have already gone through a dungeon inhabited by devils, and I have plans for demons later in the campaign, so I'd like not to use either of those. Thinking Oni or Asura; leaning Oni since I've never used those monsters before.

2. The PCs consist of an invulnerable rager barbarian, bladebound magus, blasty sorcerer, archer inquisitor, and 2 clerics; one vanilla and the other an evangelist buffer. They're all fairly well optimized.

3. The tower is going to be fairly large and intact; it's a circular column with a 50ft. radius and 10 floors high. There's also going to be a walled courtyard with some other small buildings likely in various states of ruin.

4. As I said before, the last several fights & dungeons the PCs have gone through have been against PC races with class levels, so I'd like to move away from that to both give them something different and make my life easier.


Open a Paizo module and run it.


Xexyz wrote:
It's an abandoned tower that was built by a wizard over a hundred years ago.... evil outsiders... They have since then been using the tower as a foothold in the material plane to enact their own evil schemes.

It certainly would be a big surprise to find the abandoned tower is actually a fortress manned by an army of demons. How do you intend to reconcile that? Are you abandoning the idea that the tower appears deserted? Have the demons only recently begun escaping their magical prisons? Have they been fighting amongst themselves and so been largely unable to enact their schemes? Or are their schemes very, very subtle?

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

I would suggest using a variety of monster types.

For zest.


Scott Wilhelm wrote:
It certainly would be a big surprise to find the abandoned tower is actually a fortress manned by an army of demons. How do you intend to reconcile that? Are you abandoning the idea that the tower appears deserted? Have the demons only recently begun escaping their magical prisons? Have they been fighting amongst themselves and so been largely unable to enact their schemes? Or are their schemes very, very subtle?

I've decided the tower is on a small, uninhabited island on a large lake (about 1.5 times the size of Lake Erie) in a difficult to navigate area, so there wouldn't be a lot of visitors poking around to keep an eye on the place. But now that I think about it the monster infestation would have to be somewhat recent, otherwise you're right in that they'd likely have been found out by now, even with the island's remoteness. So what I'm leaning toward now is that a non-guild wizard learned of the guild's plans and decided to claim the tower for himself, and in the process of trying to claim/fortify it he summoned/released some or all of the monsters which now inhabit it. He was killed at some point (I don't want a wizard to be the dungeon boss) so is out of the picture; now only the monsters remain.

I still like the idea of it being infested by fiends, but the oni are likely a no-go since they're large and the tower was built to accommodate medium sized creatures. I'll keep looking.


Several simalcra of the previous owner acting as lab assistants.

A couple simalcra efreeti left over from a wishcrafting operation.

A permanent gate to the elemental plane of !!fun!!

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Yugoloths? They're notorious back-stabbers.


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The players meet a talking cat on the island. The dead wizard's old familiar is hanging around, and might,, or might not, be willing to feed the players accurate information.

Being a shape shifting quasit or imp, he's got his own goal in mind - the wizard's soul is still somewhere in the area and he wants the players to release it so he can grab it and take it home. But he'd rather not die in the process... and he's not averse to becoming the familiar of one of the players, if things should chance that way....


Maybe some Qlippoth? They hate basically everything ever. Daemons are generally to stupid to act out any sort of complicated plan, and if Devils and Demons are out the the picture, then they seem a logical choice. Maybe some monsters from the Plane of Shadow? A force of owbs and dark folk led by an Umbral dragon might be a fun force to do battle with. Dark folk are technically from underground, but eh, they're generally associated with the Plane of Shadow as well, same with Umbral Dragons.


How about the wizard enjoyed making monsters out of those he defeated. So you have things like gibbering mouthers, otyughs, and rust monsters in different parts of the tower. The Mouthers in the old torture chambers/labs, the otyugh in the midden and kitchen/dinning room areas. Rust monsters wandering around the crafting hall and living areas. Or some cloakers or mimics in the bedrooms (or in you have indoor plumbing, the garderobe).

Outside you might have a froghemothe in the lake, which keeps most of things on the island and would be one of the big fights to get to the island if they can't just fly there. There might be a small group of manticores and maybe a chimera which have been altered so they cannot fly, but have "other, muwhawha" abilities. Or even a big, nasty hydra. Or a pack of girallons with unusual properties.

Dark Archive

Xexyz wrote:
So what I'm leaning toward now is that a non-guild wizard learned of the guild's plans and decided to claim the tower for himself, and in the process of trying to claim/fortify it he summoned/released some or all of the monsters which now inhabit it. He was killed at some point (I don't want a wizard to be the dungeon boss) so is out of the picture; now only the monsters remain.

Asuras might be what you are looking for. When the non-guild wizard entered the tower, it was just an empty tower (most of the arcane thingies have ceased to function). In order to fortify the place for if the guild would sent an early group, he summoned various asura's (they are known to sometimes be mercenaries). He started small (say Tripurasuras and Adhukaits). Later, to have an even stronger army, he also summoned Vayuphaks and Upasundas. His luck finally ran out when he summoned an Aghasura and offended the Asura with his arrogance/payment/something. The Aghasura then killed the non-guild wizard and took control of all the other Asura in the tower.

All mentioned Asura are medium creatures, except for the Aghasura, which is huge. Might not be that much of a problem if he stays on the top floor or something. Them staying in the tower is also not so strange, as Asura are usually looking for a place to call their own, for they don't have their own realm. They also contemplate and meditate long and hard on how to bring down that which the Gods have created in the most spectacular way (would explain why they haven't left the island/tower). Their Elusive aura also gives them and everything near them the benefit of Nondetection, so that also might be a reason why nobody has noticed them yet.

You're party can also shine with these opponents, while they also pose a challenge. Most of these have DR/Good and Regeneration/Good, which could make the clerics and inquisitor shine as they can put them down permenantly. The Barbarian's DR will help a lot with most of the lower Asura (CR 7 and below), as they do not hit that hard, just many times. Create some encounters with a LOT of Tripurasuras, so that the blasty sorcerer can shine as well.

Most Asura's are also very mobile, Spiderclimb is not uncommon and all of them can teleport. Scare the bejeezus out of the casters when the Adhukait use their Dance of Disaster to literaly dance around the barbarian and magus. Upasunda's have Spring Attack and Improved Evasion. The Aghasura is a serious threat, as it has the Attraction aura and poisonous weapons. Even your Barbarian will have trouble with that one.

The Exchange

How about the outsiders being subject to a Hedged Prison version Binding spell with a release condition they only realized they needed the tower's master to trigger after they'd killed him? Now they're stuck... until the PCs show up and the outsiders see an opportunity to convince/trick one of them into 'claiming' the tower (thus fulfilling the role of 'master of the tower' and being able to release the binding).

Maybe something like 'must serve the master of the tower for a year and a day before release' - but they killed the 'master' early, so need a new master to serve for whatever time remains (maybe only a day or so) if they ever want to get out. The outsiders act like overly-polite and dutiful fawning servants when the PC's arrive - offer them lovely bedrooms to sleep in, lay out a banquet dinner, crack open the best vintage from the cellars, etc... and casually ask if any of the PCs are the tower's new master..? Nothing in the binding actually stops then acting against the PCs (hence the original master's fate) and once a 'master' has been declared they may try to eliminate his support network (the other PCs) whilst still striving to fulfill the condition of 'serving the master'. Obviously, once the clock ticks that last second and the binding finally breaks, the gloves come off...

Another idea: the whole tower is one Colossal Animated Object. This wouldn't have to be obvious, at least to start, but could be a nice dramatic ending to the adventure (you've beaten the denizens of the tower... now fight the tower itself!). Could even be combined with the idea above so that some formal claiming of the position of 'master of the tower' is needed to animate and control the thing... but it all goes horribly wrong somehow.


lots and lots of gargoyles?

The Exchange

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Due to a mishap with a Bag of Tricks the entire tower is filled to the brim with little animate balls of fur... (Just had a flashback to 'The Trouble with Tribbles') :)


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

How many levels do you want?

Either way, I'd think at least 1 of them should be heavily trapped, either the first or the last.


Was the wizard evil? Perhaps his tower is populated by former good outsiders who have become corrupted (perhaps by some artifact). They have stayed low in the interim out of fear of being hunted by their old kind. Their leader could be a fiendish Monadic Deva or Ghaele. It may throw your player for a loop fighting what are normally good guys. Or depending on the party's disposition they may try to redeem the creatures.

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