Temple of curses

[Brokenbane]

I looking to make a dungeion called the Temple of cures. The playes will be hit with a curse that they gain no save aginst. The temple is planed to be a party killer. Any suggestions?

[Create Mr. Pitt]

Having a lot of backup players for when the first set quit the game?

[Pseudos]

The idea itself of a temple being able to 'tpk' total party kill, can breathe life back into a stale group, letting your players know that they can definitely die. The important part here is can; having a rigged die, impossible puzzle or unfair trap set without warning is cheating. The most you should really be able to do is give hard, fair encounters, with fair loot, according to:

Rules: (as raw from memory, feel free to disregard)
1. It's unfair to have a meaningful for combat curse with no save befall the heroes; there's always a 5% chance, and even then that's pretty unfair. Having a curse that does not effect combat statistics is okay.
2. Party encounters;
At least half the encounters per day must be the APL, unless you have very few encounters.
The highest boss encounter you can give is APL+3, or its cheating.
You can't add more than 2 templates either, and they must be different, or its cheating.
Too many small CR enemies in an encounter at lower levels is cheating.
High DR at low levels is cheating. (no cacodaemons)
Bad loot generation is cheating.

Having too many encounters without 8 hours rest is cheating (not to say you can't challenge your pc's or interrupt their rest, but it counts towards the previous day's encounters)

Start with 8-13 encounter points; for every 1 an encounter is above the average party level, it doubles; so an apl+1 is 2 points, +2 is 4 points, +3 is 8 points. APL-1 encounters count as 2/3 or an encounter.

These are some good baseline rules if your intent is to challenge your players and make sure there's a chance for death. I think you REALLY need to read the gamemastery guide, as your short want of a 'party killer' is in itself flawed.

[Pseudos]

That being said my players min-max enough their party of two regularly gets cr+5 encounters. Sometimes they party wipe, but it's because something terrible happened (like multiple failed saves for suffocation that pc's had a 25%chance to fail), not because I gave encounters designed to kill them.

[Brokenbane]

Thanks for all the help. It might be a little flawed but I wanted to make a tough dungeon as a party tends to mash through it.

[Val'bryn2]

Find out what they are strong against, and don't use it. Find out what they are weak to, and do use that. The party's an absolute killer in melee combat? Go ranged. The wizard has very powerful spells? Bring in a party where the sorcerer uses his every turn to counterspell the wizard. Take a good, long look at their strategies, and find weak points in it that your people can exploit. But, above all, play by the rules. Do not simply have a curse that affects all the PCs as a way of saying "ha ha, I got you, I win" As others have said, that way leads to losing your party, and word will spread that you are a jerk GM, whether you usually are or aren't.

[Cyrad]

I always wanted to run a campaign through a megadungeon of mostly transformative curses (both mentally and physically). As the PCs explore and dive deeper through the dungeon, they gradually accumulate curses they have to live with. Some of them might actually be beneficial or ones the PCs might want to keep. By the end of the campaign, the whole party has become powerful and monstrous, likely becoming the dungeon's next denizens.

[Brokenbane]

Val'bryn2 wrote:

Find out what they are strong against, and don't use it. Find out what they are weak to, and do use that. The party's an absolute killer in melee combat? Go ranged. The wizard has very powerful spells? Bring in a party where the sorcerer uses his every turn to counterspell the wizard. Take a good, long look at their strategies, and find weak points in it that your people can exploit. But, above all, play by the rules. Do not simply have a curse that affects all the PCs as a way of saying "ha ha, I got you, I win" As others have said, that way leads to losing your party, and word will spread that you are a jerk GM, whether you usually are or aren't.

I will see what I can do then.

[Brokenbane]

Cyrad wrote:

I always wanted to run a campaign through a megadungeon of mostly transformative curses (both mentally and physically). As the PCs explore and dive deeper through the dungeon, they gradually accumulate curses they have to live with. Some of them might actually be beneficial or ones the PCs might want to keep. By the end of the campaign, the whole party has become powerful and monstrous, likely becoming the dungeon's next denizens.

This sounds fun.

[Val'bryn2]

Once you see what the party's tactics are, post them up here and we can see a few different suggestions for counter tactics.