|
Animated objects (in Bestiary 1 and in the Carrion Crown AP) would also work well - Low CR, they make sense and they are very PG in rating (unless you have a bloody gibbet attack them) and they count as a construct. So animated brooms, flying candelabra's, even animated books!
Let me pull together a list of monster suggestions and maybe you can build something around them.
|
A crazy old familiar, armed with a wand of magic missile and Shield.
A giant bookworm (also racing with the party for the book)
A giant spider (bonus points for it being a mutated, educated and good giant spider). The book in question is its most prised possession, the party can negotiate with him, kill him, convince him to let them borrow it and make a copy, or promise him to bring more books for 'his' library.
Imps. Lots of imps.
The Goblin De-literation Army, there to destroy the books. With lots of fire.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
To continue with the construct theme, a caryatid column or two. For kicks, make them intelligent. Having been there many, many years, they've read the entire library and are quite bored. Sure, they defend it, but the two of them also argue philosophy, religion, science...
Dot.
You discover the wizards cloning lab with all of his dormant simulacrums.
Not low level in the least...but I recently challenged my bookworm mage favoring player with a bag of devouring in book form.
The "Book Of Devouring" almost got her...but a handy dwarven cleric pulled her free by her feet...close call!
Some other fun things might be:
1. a rival faction (adventurers or sentient, evil humanoids) looking for the same book.
2. vermin using the books as a food source
3. hazards that are actually malfunctioning simple convenience magics such as an unseen servant that somehow CAN attack but only does so if you track mud on the floor; a shower head that used to do Create Water but now sputters, then shoots a hydraulic push
Couple these with the puzzles and homunculi/familiars/animated objects upthread and you'll have a a fun little dungeon.
|
|
We're starting to build the encounter for this. We're talking now about getting into the tower itself. How would you make the entrance?
Know that we could have some people new to rpgs so I'd like to make it more exciting than a locked wooden door that can be broken down or unlocked with a successful check. We're thinking puzzles/riddles here.
Without specifics: I can see a unbreakable door with no handle or lock and a phrase (a riddle) engraved over the archway. If the riddle is figured out they can say a the answer to make a handle and lock appear for one hour.
The actual key to the lock can be hidden behind a stone outside the tower or nearby in a ruined fountain. Maybe they can even find the key first, but of course there is no lock to use it on.
I don't know enough about the background to come up with the riddle (which I would tie to the lore associated with the Wizard or his tower).
Well, c'mon now LH; we're talking a low-level, non-dark one shot to be held in a library IRL. I don't know that you want to throw in a potential non-combat-unless-the-PCs-do-something-foolish encounter of that magnitude. How about subbing in perhaps a single gargoyle.
The gargoyle Bex is known to inhabit the library. He is bound to a single chamber known as the Gallery. This hall spans three floors and surrounds the stacks. It also contains numerous pieces of sculpture and statuary within which the monster can blend.
Bex is treacherous and vindictive but he is also shrewd and covets knowledge as highly as he does food. He is highly intelligent for his race (Int 12) and has learned to communicate with his potential prey. The gargoyle has learned many secrets of the library and it's defenses; since the Gallery is a common entry point into and out of the bookshelves of the library proper a number of entrants have conversed with the creature and bargained with him for passage.
Bex will demand a toll of one book from the library from each PC. He might sweeten the deal by promising to reveal some secret such as a riddle or defense the PCs should expect. If they deal squarely with the gargoyle he might let them live; if they attempt to bluff or deceive the creature and he discovers the trick, his wrath be upon them.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My favorite denizen of magical ruins is the living spell from 3.5. Basically it was a spell given life by a magic accident. It was represented by an ooze that casts the spell on anything it hits or engulfs. My favorite was a living darkness that affects every object it touches with that spell. Scary if the PCs don't have the darkvision.
It also got my pcs to say "I shoot the darkness" in full seriousness :D
Another idea: living grease and some tiny flying animated objects. The grease will make it hard to navigate as it greases the floor, and makes pcs drop weapons while the flying objects will harass them. Incidentally, being affected by the g r ease will make it really easy to escape from its engulf attack, so the encounter should not be super deadly but amusing.
some sort of poltergeist or haunt (you can't go ghost at low levels) that throws objects/books or otherwise makes life difficult but is not necessarily very dangerous.
dangerous tombs (think forbidden section at Hogwarts) that can either do damage if touched or attack like an animated object or cast curse or suck characters into extra-dimensional spaces or just talk and be annoying.
I can imagine an animated book on puns that follows whoever touches it reading itself loudly and refusing to go away.
Perhaps the book has some interesting spells in it if someone actually takes the time to listen to it or read it.
Scooby-Do type architecture where you go in one door but come out on the other side of the hallway.
Animated objects/constructs/undead are all tried and true suggestions. This is a wizard tower so make some fun illusions too. Maybe half of the things that are harassing them are illusions and half actually there. Maybe have some non-lethal traps that cast random summoned monsters or teleports the party into random rooms.
As to the entrance I would go with having a large, elaborately decorated stone door with no key hole or handle. Describe it in a lot of detail and when they inspect it-will save. When someone succeeds it turns out it was an illusion and there is a large stone face on the wall (which has magic mouth on it). It delivers the riddle which leads to a teleportation portal/gate which leads to the bottom floor.
I once ran an adventure in the tower of an eccentric wizard who enjoyed animating objects. It led to the most memorable encounter where they had to fight an animated bathtub. My players never stop talking about it.
Avoiding that trope, have lots of magical devices and books that the players must interact with or potentially trip. If they mess up, something happens to them. It doesn't necessarily have to be monsters or deadly traps. It could be something weird, like a PC growing pig ears for an hour or a PC turning ethereal for 10 minutes.
Check out A Wizard's Fate from Dungeon #37.
It's a ruined tower where the an imp guards the treasure trove of it's deceased master and the secrets of his tragic tale...
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The Proper Way To Trap A Tower
An old article by Ravingdork
Wizards’ towers are absolutely the worst place to be when a trap gets you! This is an example of a wizard’s tower specifically designed to deal with thieves and other intruders:
The tower has four floors with a staircase on each one leading up to the next floor. It had things you would expect in such a tower: living quarters, mini-libraries, potions and scrolls, magical items in the making, and other such things.
You have to have a special token to enter each level of the tower. Each token had an engraved rune for each element: Fire, Air, Earth, and Water. The rooms were set to each token in the listed order with Fire being the first floor. All the wizards’ most valuable experiments and possessions are hidden in an extra-dimensional "fifth" floor.
First floor: Any intruders without the Fire token will trigger a large magical portal to appear in the center of the ceiling. The portal leads to an underground river of lava. The doors, windows, and all other escape routes are all magically locked while lava flows into the room completely filling it in one round (all of the other floors have the same locking effect when the corresponding traps are triggered). All non-living matter on this floor is magically protected from the lava.
Second Floor: Any intruders will trigger the Vacuum trap listed in the DM Guide (with much higher DCs then those listed), which causes all air in the room to instantly be sucked out of the room. The intruder will suffocate without the Air token.
Third Floor: Eight stone golems awake and kill all intruders not possessing the proper token. The golems make a continued assault until either they or the intruder is destroyed.
Fourth Floor: The magical effects in this room are two fold. First, water floods the room (using the first floor portal method) flushing the intruder out one of the many large open windows to slam into the ground in the gardens fifty feet below. Survivors are then eaten by the plethora of plant monsters living there (which also serve to protect from external intruders in the first place). Second, if the intruder happens to have any of the tokens (in the event they were stolen some how), they are immediately teleported directly to the coat pocket of a specially designated coat (the coat pocket or other container is chosen when the tokens are created). Possessing the water token does not prevent this teleportation effect.
Fifth Floor: Their are no traps in this extra-dimensional space, but requires that the person trying to enter it be on the fourth floor, have all four tokens in the coat pocket (this must be the same coat as specified when the tokens were created), say the appropriate command words, and have a good mental image of the area or suffer the same ill effects of an off-target teleportation spell. Any attempt to enter this floor by any other means automatically fails. Any effect that bars teleportation also bars entrance to this floor.
This tower is a defensive marvel (and an intruder’s worst nightmare) because if somebody made it to the fourth floor just to be flushed out, teleported out, or expelled in any other way (and survived), they would have to go through it all over again if they really want the worthwhile treasures. If the wizard himself goes onto the fourth floor the tokens will be teleported to his coat pocket (as is normal for anyone else) so that he may prepare to enter the fifth hidden floor.
If the wearer of the coat is on one of the floors (with all four tokens), that floor and all others below it are “disarmed” of their traps until the bearer of the tokens leaves the tower or speaks the appropriate command word to rearm them. This allows the wizard to have guests in his home without having to fear for their lives. This disarming effect does not take place if the wearer is on the fifth floor, incapacitated (unconscious, asleep, dead, etc.), or not (corporeally) present. If the bearer becomes incapacitated inside the tower, all traps rearm themselves (if disarmed) and trigger if there is an intruder other then the incapacitated bearer of the tokens. In this event, the coat magically protects the body of their bearer from the above-mentioned traps. Except for the above-mentioned conditions, all traps rearm themselves one round after activation.
All of the tower’s traps can be set off manually with a single command word so long as the speaker holds the appropriate token (for the floor he wishes to trigger) in his hand.
All traps, once activated, can be turned off with the proper command word. The tokens are not required for this command word to work, but the speaker must be wearing the coat. Once shut off by this means, all trap related threats disappear immediately (i.e. – the lava or water vanishes, the air returns, the golems are turned off and teleported back to their original positions). This does not undo any damage done before the command word is spoken (the intruder still suffers from lava burns, continues to fall if flushed out the fourth floor window, bleeds from golem bashing, etc.).