oErasmaso's page

Before I get fully into this, I want to say that this is not intended to be a Pathfinder campaign, it is a 1st edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign (and will also be converted into a 3rd edition one as well). Now, before everyone gets all up-in-arms about this being in the wrong forum... I choose to post this here because I am not interested in strictly mechanics-based ideas, but rather in thematically-based ones. And in this regard, I did not feel that the two games were mutually exclusive. I can crunch the conversions pretty well on my lonesome.

Now that that is cleared up - I am making this campaign, as you may have guessed, based off of the Seven Deadly Sins. There will be a one week period of time where the party will be subjected to a dream per night... one themed upon each sin. There will be a 'main boss' villain in each that epitomizes their particular sin, as well as lower monsters/NPCs, magic items, traps, etc. that are all focused around the same idea. As well... there will be a moment (or several) in each dream where the party will be 'tempted' with each sin, where they must test themselves against the part of their nature that might give in (Wrath should be particularly entertaining).

So, what I need from you guys (if you are willing) are ideas on these things. Lust I have down pretty well already - there is no shortage of that underlying thread in gaming materials. And while I have SOME ideas on each of them, by no means are there enough to fully capture what I want to with this campaign. How do you represent Pride in a magical item? What is the best trap/effect/test to run in the dream of Sloth? What monster/villain should sit atop the 'mountain' of Envy? These are the kinds of questions that I truly need your help with. Any and all ideas are welcomed and I sincerely appreciate anyone taking the time to lend me a hand!

Say that someone (like a rogue) slinked up behind an unsuspecting enemy (such as a patrol of guards) and wanted to put a dagger to one of their throats as a hostage?
The rogue calls for the remaining guards to, "Hold it; or your counterpart will have another hole to breathe through!", thus threatening that if they move towards them, he will slit his captive's throat.

I would imagine that it would play out as a grapple check first, with the unfortunate target taking some kind of penalty to his opposed grapple check. And secondly, the rogue would have to ready an action for if any of the guards move (trigger), he coup-d-grace's the guard his has captive (recourse). However, you cannot grapple and ready an action in the same turn because both are standard actions. If he simply grapples and threatens in his first turn... he must endure not only an attempt of the captured guard to break free, but also the potential attacks of each other guard before he is ever able to deliver on his threat!

So, my question is... how would our rogue accomplish this task?