Hi all,
I'm running a campaign with a dangerous library-themed dungeon. I'm looking for some good library or book monsters or even weird traps to put in there. I suspect the players will be back here a lot, so I need quite a bit of content of any level.
Some thoughts so far:
crazy traps
ghosts (i.e. http://paizo.com/PRD/monsters/ghost.html) of former visitors
spiders and worms in wet corners of the library
air elementals (because fire and water ones have no place in a library)
But I really want some more, I dunno, explicitly library-themed monsters. I was thinking a mimic that looks like a magical tome instead of a chest but not sure if that's too cheesy.
Ideas?
Clockwork guardians?
"Bookworms" that are actually nagas with glasses. <g>
Flying books that function like bats or stirges, with some INT or WIS draining powers
Animated chairs, tables, bookshelves, lecterns, statues.
Undead librarians of various flavors.
Animate spells that fly out of books or scrolls & attack intruders.
Seems like I've seen animate spells and animate books in somepublished material, but can't recall where.
Dragons, Sphinx of several kinds.
The library is in the magical university my characters attend. They're about to explore it for the first time.
It's very old, and known to be dangerous. But the creatures aren't going to be evil, just true neutral in a very scary way.
These ideas are great.
Origami golem, if you can find the 3.5 stats.
dont forget theres several dragons who very much enjoy literature (greens and... bronzes, i think? are big on knowledge-hoarding)
Goblins with torches set on destroying the place which is full of written words?
Origami golem, if you can find the 3.5 stats.
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Some ideas for non-combat weird encounters/events (red herrings) that I've used before.
- Strange Cryptography Homunculus with paragraphs and odd sentences written across its hide; it passes another marked in the same way, but the text is in an unfamiliar language. Following either homunculus leads to a non-hostile undead apprentice ceaselessly translating manuscripts. The apprentice wears a single green-tinted lens (the monocle only functions for the undead wearing it) that stores a certain amount of information written with a certain ink. The apprentice glances at the homunculus, the lens plucks the text from the construct's skin, the apprentice pricks the homunculus' now-blank skin and translating the text store within the lens. As the apprentice translates, the homunculus' skin recieves a new set of text to be sent somewhere...
- The Cursed Section This series of bookshelves contains blank spellbooks bound in the reanimated flesh of failed apprentices. On each cover a stretched, hairless face silently screams, swears, and weeps as long as it is touched by a living creature. This area was meant to only frighten new supplicants and none of the fleshy tomes are worth a copper (their binding bleeds if anything is written into the books, eventually rotting the pages). It should also be noted that reanimated flesh is mindless and holds no soul to rescue.
- What the hell is that? Within the library exists a strange 1/6 CR outsider that can somehow draw nourishment from silence. Should a character approach without making a sound, they see what appears to be a pale, wingless, three-foot high coachroach with more than seven pairs of hairy legs. The creature reaches almost five feet when standing on its lowest pair of legs. If attacked, startled, or spoken to, the oddity flees before shifting to another plane. As it shifts, the creature emits a low-pitch noise that sounds both like a chuckle and a murmur.
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Orang-utan.
Origami golem, if you can find the 3.5 stats.
Dragon magazine #341 - the paper golem can be found in the Lesser Golems section on page forty three. Small construct at CR1.
Also includes a number of construct familiars...definitely worth picking up.
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Pathfinder Society Scenario 5-11: The Library of the Lion is set in a secret library, with some fun stuff. The scenario itself is either loved or hated (I'm in the former group, it's one of my favorite ones). It features a Book Swarm for one (animated swarm of books that attacks the PCs if they disturb the wrong thing).
It would probably be worth looking at, as it can easily be adapted for non-society play.
I second this. The PDF is on sale right now, so even more cheap then usual.
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I third the Library of the Lion. I played it and liked it a lot. It is where I got the idea to mention Book swarm. Only thing that made me sad was I was playing a Combat Ranger and had nothing to do because the Scenario was talked/bluffed/diplomacy through and we had like 1 fight. But it would give you a creature for the library.
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Conan the Librarian
Stained glass golems are kinds cool for this kind of place.
Demons
Devils
Nagas
Unscrupulous explorers (ie; The Seekers in Greyhawk)
About any undead you can think of
Medusa
Night Hag
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Have you ever seen the Pagemaster? A wonderful little movie from a while back that involved a boy going to the library, and getting sucked into his books... literally. As he wanders around the place, famous characters from books meet him, including Captain Ahab and the White Whale, Long John Silver and his crew, a Dragon, and Doc Jekyl/Mr. Hyde. One of the Hounds of the Baskervilles even begins to chase the boy around.
In the same fashion, you could go with ghostly apparitions of famous characters in their world, for good or evil. Perhaps the tales of Geoffrey, Conqueror of the Highlands, sit on the shelves, with a ghostly Geoffrey walking around, showing off his military prowess in a ghostly fashion. I think Illusions should be the main point in the library. Whether the entity is real or not should be the question, not what is there.
This way, depending on what part of the library the party is in, you could use different enemies. I'm a big fan of Owlbears. Imagine if one of them comes from the biology section? As the party fetches a book about Fire Elementals, Apparitions of Fire Elementals attack them. Simple and fun!
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"bookworms" that are actually rot grubs.
Mimic wasn't a bad idea.
Paper Golem.
Maybe a Sphinx, reading up on more riddles.
An awakened dinosaur named Roget.
I less-than-three this so much. : D
Conan the Librarian
Don't you know the dewey decimal system?
I once used the Animated Object rules (particularly the ranged attack option) to create a bookshelf that shot the books it held at the party. This also has the benefit of being readily scalable to whatever CR you need.
Caulborn - Bestiary 3 p48
Ugly-ass neutral telepathic historians that travel the planes setting up camp in places of interest until they have absorbed all the knowledge there is to gain from said place.
Perfect library encounter.
One could go with familiar-like creatures. Mephits, augmented Homuculi, talking ravens and crows, a few simple comstructs and animated objects (animated scrollrack that uses scrolls stored in it)... and a rust monster, just for fun.
Giant Crawling Hands could make interesting librarians!
Hey all,
Just to follow up on this, this Library was a huge hit.
There were many levels, each successively harder and each with new monsters. Lots of magical siderooms with weird magical settings - lakes, mountains, crypts, etc. The players loved it - kept trying to go back for more without good reason.
Thanks everyone for all your help!
animated objects. (like statues and suits or armor)
carytid columns (sp?)
an order of the tome cavalier who is a venerable elf (kinda picturing the elven version of the knight from indian jones and the last crusade)
Naga
Vermin
molds
spores
oozes
Chokers
a mimic
and the most horrible relic from any library ever… The Dewey Decimal System!
Make the head librarian a mythic lich that is lawful neutral, his/her goal could be acquiring as much knowledge as he/she can. Shadows that roam the book shelves, constructs/clockwork assistants that help run the place. Maze traps, suggestion, confusion, paralysis, and teleportation traps. add some neutral based outsiders. and maybe a dragon and a sphinx or two. depends on how deadly/dangerous you want it to be. and alarms on some of the restricted works. and a teacher only section that has a barrier they can try to overcome to get the real good boos.
I think Baelnorn is what the good liches are called. Elves that became liches to guard knowledge.