Dragon egg help

[londoncalling]

playing in about 2 hours, just a quick shout for help re the black dragon egg.

When it breaks how many worms are we talking about inside? Just trying to figure out the rate of infection of lizard folk eggs. I dont wanna spend all night on it just create a sense of fear etc. I was thinking of creating a few spawn and have the remainder of the worms die shortly after.

Any other advice/hints anyone can get to me in t-minus 2 hours???

The clock is ticking........

[Xuttah]

Since there was the potential to face literally hundreds of spawn, I planned for a spawn swarm instead. There's a link to the Giant in the Playground thread on this list. I'd link to it, but my forum-fu is not very good. Good luck!

[Guy Humual]

The best advice I can give you is the worms should affect as many eggs as you figure the PCs can handle. If the PCs are badly beaten maybe only one or two eggs start hatching with worm spawn, if the PCs are in great shape maybe half a dozen start hatching!

Once the PCs realise what's happening they're going to start smashing infected eggs. Gauge this encounter carefully.

[Peruhain of Brithondy]

I'd allow for creative solutions on this one, too. My player failed a balance check and fell when carrying the egg. I rolled object damage and came up just short of smashing the egg, so I ruled it cracked and some worms spilled out. Enough to infect three or four eggs initially. My player quickly used mending on the egg--but the shock value of the worms transforming the lizarfolk eggs was good even though the ensuing combat was quickly over. The point of this encounter is to freak them out--the climactic battle in this adventure was against the lizard folk chief.