Turning an entire island into a Dungeon

[master_marshmallow]

I'm running a pirate themed campaign which is going to lead to my players needing to go investigate a temple on a specific island. I need to turn this island into a dungeon quick.

The temple itself needs to be a dungeon, so I'm thinking about some sort of grand puzzle for the outside that requires searching the island and exploring it.

Party is lvl 12, 4-6 players expected, high optimization ceiling.
Characters

Spoiler:

[list]

Human Gifted Blade (Soulknife) focused on melee damage

Human Cleric (VMC Cavalier)- the not paladin Holy Knight who follows a custom deity (custom pantheon) who is a versatile channeler who delivers damaging touch spells and uses channel smite to deal extra damage through his warhammer

Half-Elf Bard, he's a knowledge monkey who focuses on Lore Master and Bardic Knowledge and plays a support role in combat with perform Oratory

Tiefling Alchemist- house ruling allows his splash weapons to benefit from his favored class bonus, making him a very potent area damage dealer. Through trait manipulation he can also do magic traps

Elf Wildblooded (Sage) Sorcerer (VMC Wizard - Void Elemental School), this guy is a very interesting role player. He focuses on Disguise, and has a very generalist spell list. Excellent spell selection though.

Half-Giant Aegis, this guy is the weakest link of the party, on both the role playing and mechanical side of things. I helped build his character so I know he can function if he needs to.

Elf Arcane Archery Monster of Doom (Eldritch Archer/Arcane Archer/Eldritch Knight), this guy's elf here epitomizes the arcane archer and has one of the most effective builds I've ever seen. Imbue Arrow is worded in such a way that it functions with Spell Combat flawlessly just as Spellstrike does.

I am thinking about a magical barrier with checkpoints, it's dull and overdone, but it gets the job done. Design like 4 different encounters in different types of environments on the island itself to unlock the actual dungeon.

Feel free to run with the ideas or to trash them, I just need help.

[The Sword]

You could look at 'The Isle of Empty Eyes" for inspiration might need levelling up for a powerful 12th level party but there are lots of potential encounters and locations to explore.

From the skull and shackles AP appropriately.

[tonyz]

You could have the temple itself sealed off, but the keys to enter it are on the island somewhere (maybe pieces of a statue, maybe the keystone of a bridge to cross into the temple, maybe four jewels to open an extradimensional door -- although, honestly, be prepared for level 12 players to EASILY get by almost anything that isn't pure "GM Fiat with whitewall tires" -- they can teleport, plane shift, call outsiders to take them ethereal, etc.

Maybe a REALLY POWERFUL guardian needs appeasing (though, honestly, it would have be like CR 20 as highly optimized 12th level characters should be able to kill anything up to CR16-17 without breaking a sweat, if they have time to prepare for it -- recall that CR is set against a non-optimized party of four standard roles).

[master_marshmallow]

My players have random moments of (apologies if this is offensive) blondeness, and it is in these moments that I capitalize.

Designing an arbitrary number of locks may work, I should throw in a mechanical puzzle of some kind.

[SmiloDan]

How about 4 statues that need to be pointed at different check points scattered around the island.

Like all 4 statues have to be pointed at the archway to activate the bridge. Then all 4 statues have to be pointed at the volcano to cool it off. Then all 4 statues have to be pointed at the waterfall to turn it off. Then all 4 statues have to be pointed at the magic tree to make it grow the magic fruit, which must then be fed to the magic guardian.

Find a way to make the PCs use a whole bunch of their high level spell slots to communicate, teleport repeatedly, use a bunch energy resistance and water breathing spells, etc. That can make an encounter with a guardian more harrowing.

[Mjolbeard89]

Honestly if you're not having them assemble the scattered pieces of a monkey idol a la "Legends of the Hidden Temple," you're really doing it wrong. :P

[SmiloDan]

Or use 3 monkey statues!!! See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil!!!

[Pizza Lord]

Admittedly, the level of your PCs does make certain 'reach-the-temple' obstacles hard to design. Looking over the list I can't tell how much flying power or teleporting power they might have though.

The temple could be sunken into the lava of the active volcano laying at the heart of the jungle rainforest that lays at the center of every island. They may need to slay a beast on the island and place its heart on an altar to appease the fire god, who may raise the temple up from the lava itself. Though it still sits in the middle of the lake of lava in the crater.

Then they also need to find the hidden glen of some wise powerful, bird creature where it asks them to carry one of its eggs someplace for some reason. It gives them a feather which functions as a feather token: boat that creates a boat like a swan boat but able to sail across the lava to the temple without danger from the heat (and also very toxic gases which might hinder just flying straight there.) The temple door is sealed, but not impossible to open, so there's not a lot of lava inside or destruction, also that will have kept the toxic gas out, so they won't have to worry about that too much once inside unless they spend a long time.

Turns out the temple in the lava isn't the real temple. They must solve its puzzles and beat its guardian to open a gate that lets them sail the swan boat from the step landing outside into the center and then they must trigger a massive volcanic eruption that geysers them up into the sky until the island is far below them. Luckily the swan boat spreads its wings and rides the geyser easily and safely.

The swan boat then glides slowly to the ring-like clouds that circle high above the volcanic island. What may have appeared as a typical cloud ring from far below is actually its own rainforest biome ruled by a cloud giant druid who watches over it. The true temple lays somewhere in this new tangle of trees and perpetual fog and only the Cloud giant knows its true location. Of course, he challenges them to prove their worthiness by racing him around the entire cloud ring (which takes days.)

He gives them a map that has several landmarks on it. Clearings in the cloud jungle that have rainwater springs, cloud waterfalls, plateaus where the cloud is thinning and gaps could cause a long plummet, nesting grounds of rare birds. He tells them to retrieve proof that they actually traveled by bringing objects; feathers, a waterskin from the spring or a fish from the cloud pond. These objects are worthless, and he isn't really racing them, but testing them.

If they just fly or teleport (assuming they don't mess up and end up flung off the island by mishaps or the sheer wind currents that stop people from just flying straight here) he sets up encounters between the landmarks to test their worthiness. He either is in a different shape or uses animals or other creatures or allies (although he can also show up at the landmarks to 'prove' he's racing. He can always disappear into the fog and clouds mysteriously if they try and follow or track him with trackless step.)

If he is satisfied, he gives them the location but the key to the temple turns out to be something they learned from the encounters he tests them with. Deep within the temple, rests the very first potion of cure light wounds ever created (CL 5). It's in a glass vial and clearly labelled (in Giant).

[master_marshmallow]

Lots of very good reading there, but I fear I have left out far too many details for me to receive any good advice beyond reading up on the Isle AP book (which I've started).

Story is as goes:

Spoiler:

After the previous episodic adventure, my players were disbursed across the land doing downtime activity. One of my main adventure facilitating NPCs shows up and hands them a message tied up in a bottle (I had an actual prop for this). Within the bottle was a map, with no legend, markings, or words, only the actual cartography itself. By comparing the cartography with the bard's Lore Master ability with Knowledge (Geography) they were able to figure out what the map was of. Detecting revealed that the map has several layers of magic on it.

They otherwise had no means to find a way down to the city on the coast as their teleporter has never been there, nor knows anyone there to scry. He tried anyway and they ended up in the wrong city. Eventually they just paid a teleporter that had already been there. Upon reaching the city they learned about a group of pirates that had attacked the shipyard several months prior, and this particular group of pirates went on to conquer the entire pirate world and took over the three main pirate guilds as the new pirate kings. After striking a deal with an NPC to buy a ship, they then needed a lead to find a way to decipher the map. They tracked down several leads, and while exploring one (meeting a pirate in his room at midnight) they were ambushed by the NPC who is piloting their boat who happens to be a pirate-slaying vigilante whose build is made to pilot their boat so they won't have to. (I had a whole other thread about him.)

After obtaining their ship and captain, they left for one of the big, neutral islands. They got into some ship combat with some Storm Pirates (pirates whose leaders focus on Arcane Magic) and kept their leader's outfit in case someone needs to wear a disguise. (They have two of these Storm outfits now thanks to a prior encounter as well.)

Capt. Blackwater (their vigilante friend) takes them to his lead to try and unlock the map (who looks very similar to this) She reveals herself to have a connection to the spiritual world and discovers an ancient sealing ritual on the map that cannot be dispelled by normal means. Within the map was an entire Mindscape (from Occult Adventures) where they sent in two guys to try and discover the secrets of the map and possibly unlock it.

Inside the map's mindscape was a fully interactive blown up version of the map. Some of the details were muddled by lack of detail (since it's just a map) but others were much more understandable when explored in this way. Biggest thing they noticed, was that the legend was interactive, and they saw a convergence giant glowing cracks underneath a specific spot on Storm Island (home base for the Storm Pirates). Upon flying over to it, they discovered a trap which created an indescribable lack of physical representation in the exact location where the temple was. Interacting with it triggers a magical trap where the one triggering is brought into a Psychic Duel. The Soulknife of the party easily dispatched the Psychic Trap and they were able to finally unlock the map and discover where the treasure they were looking for is, but not before said Soulknife made an Autohynosis roll to systematically memorize the layout of the temple.

Turns out, the map is intelligent, and was created for the sole purpose of helping find this McGuffin treasure (not really a McGuffin once they find it, but right now it is). Now that the map is unlocked, words and symbols magically appear on the map in whatever language the reader identifies as their primary language. Blackwater reveals his Social identity to be the owner of the shipyard who sold them their ship and explains that his family had guarded the secret of the map for generations, but because of the new way the pirates had been conducting themselves once the new pirate kings took over, he purposely sent the map in a bottle to the players and sought their help to defeat the pirates and restore order to the seas.

The island itself is protected magically. If someone had the means to ask the right questions ("how is storm island protected?") then the players would know that the Storm possess an Orb of Storms which they can indefinitely use to protect themselves from incoming ships by creating stormy weather. Ships themselves coming in *could be* subjected to scrying inspection, where someone in charge at Storm would use either the sails or the pirate uniforms of the crew to determine whether or not incoming ships contain enemies or not. I haven't decided on an actual way to prevent telportation yet, other than something like Symbol of Scrying, or Halaster's Teleport Cage (a 3.5 spell I just looked up which I can extrapolate mechanics from to create my own teleportation trap). I've included telportation hindering magic before based on a location, but that spell that redirects you to a random location is kinda awesome.

Since they played cute with the memorization of the temple, I'm thinking of having it be totally moot and simple. A basic temple that leads to the treasure being missing, which leads into them tracking down and fighting the pirate kings on open water. Since they would have the treasure with them, it seems all but appropriate for the ship combat to end with the real BBEG of the campaign sinking their (the pirate's) ship.

BBEG is an Ancient Brine Dragon who calls herself the Pirate's Queen.

The island itself could definitely have a small number of idols which could require collecting. I also think I would like to have the temple be an after thought, since this is a pirate controlled island I want them to fight pirates.

EDIT: Research has revealed that an Augmented Mythic Dimensional Lock or Teleport Trap are both alternatives that are Paizo legal to use on my players.

[Lamontius]

look into the Gloomspires for both lore and mechanics