Hello,
I have a part of my adventure coming up where the party must get past a sphinx that is guarding a treasure trove of knowledge that they need to get to.
I'm not a huge fan of riddles in game, so I want to stay away from the classic, "Answer my riddle or I shall devour you." I do want there to be some kind of challenge though, but at the moment I'm drawing a blank.
Does anyone have any advice on some non-riddle challenges that a sphinx might give?
Thanks in advance.
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Looking at the monster description for inspiration I'm seeing the following line
Though sphinxes have a reputation for loving riddles, in truth, only gynosphinxes truly enjoy them. Androsphinxes prefer lofty philosophical discussions, while criosphinxes prefer worldly topics or fawning praise. Hieracosphinxes rarely converse at all, and respond only to threats from creatures more powerful than they are.
right away I can see that knowledge: religion, knowledge: local and intimidate would all be appropriate checks for a skill based challenge depending on the type of sphinx. Conversely it might even demand a perform check of some kind.
Another approach would be for it to require a gift of some kind. Relating back to the previous skills these could be things like.
- a relic that relates to a particular philosopher and/or priest that is long dead.
- An autograph from a well known performer.
- A horn from a fearsome beast.
A puzzle of some sort might also be presented to the group and the sphinx only considers those clever enough to solve the puzzle to be worthy of having access to it's knowledge.
I would highly suggest reading up on the creature, not every sphinx is into riddles so it's not unreasonable for yours to present a different kind of challenge than just solving a riddle.
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Criosphinxes values, in descending order:
1. The chance to, er, "get it on" with a gynosphinx
2. Money, dear PC
3. Praise
4. Everything else
They're quite handy if you don't want to bother with riddles or navel-gazing.
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Pants off dance off.
Maybe the sphinx is bored and demands something to entertain them after the PCs leave. How the PCs solve that is up to them, but something like a big ol' pile of books could work. Or maybe they insist on something immortal to keep them company.
Or perhaps the sphinx already has a big ol' pile of books and is a total fanboy/girl of a particular author and wants their autograph. Said author may already be dead.
Arm wrestling.
Wrestling wrestling.
Thank you for the advice. :-D