Looking to pick the collective brains of the community on building a themed dungeon.
My tabletop group's potentially committed to exploring the aquatic sections of an ancient ruined castle. The backstory for this castle was that a mad nobleman decided to build a castle in a swamp. It sank into the swamp. He built a second one. That sank into the swamp. He built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. Eventually the mad noble and his family were slaughtered by a passing adventurer on his son's wedding day.
They've already found and cleared the first section of the castle. I still have potentially three more levels to create, and can theme each as I please.
I'm considering going some form of Cthulhu style madness as the source of the nobleman's obsession with building a castle on this location. Plenty of aberrations in the book that are aquatic too.
Any suggestions on the themes of each level? Underwater is fun for one, though dry levels deeper down might be even more interesting. Any other strange effects or features you can think would be good ambience for a madness themed underwater swamp castle dungeon?
The group is 5 persons all at level 10, so CR 10+ are suitable difficulty ranges.
Well, i'm not a GM, so i'll throw some ideas as a player:
For themed monsters, some gricks and aboleths could help.
This one, if you read his Hibernation, could really fit the place imho
Maybe a homemade Beholder adjustement could fit the castle, i really like that monster.. you can also keep it for higher levels.
I would place there some kind of cult, maybe some adept trying to call a god of nowhere or serving a bigger creature doing sacrifice of some sort, could be cool.
I would add a room (extradimensional or whatever you may like) where air is there and no water allowed. I think could be really cool to see opening the door the water flowing but not entering in the room.
A some kind of treasure room with a Mimic inside is something i would like to see.
Maybe making a PC "disappear" and using a Doppelganger (or something-like) in his place could be fun too.
An illusion of a Cthulu's Hand big as the room is, trying to catch em? Crazy XD!
Just some ideas, i hope to help in some way!
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Well, obviously the Sisters of Chastity should make an appearance at some point, and I was always fond of The Enchanter.
Slime and mold for weird terrain hazards?
Chuul are fun. Maybe ice traps that freeze the PCs in place? Confusion and fear-based Will saves.
Dealing with a dispelling black tentacles effect could be a challenge. It could remove water breathing effects to challenge the PCs that are trapped underwater--with or without an air chamber.
Definitely emphasize 3D terrain features in the underwater bits.
Use different-sized and different-shaped rooms for encounters. Have some encounters occur in many rooms at once, moving from room to room, and mucking up action economy by having lots of doors to open.
I once had a mad king that was obsessed with stairs. Basically his castle entirely replaced all corridors with stairwells. Even if you wanted to go to a room on the same floor you had to go up and down and around again.
I'm a big lover of constructs. Some metal golems might be in order. Take an iron golem statblock, reduce dr/ac etc to represent corrosion then add rust poison
Once ran an underwater dungeon where it was mainly populated by a savage race of now unidentifiable humanoids. Basically they had been trapped down there for a huge amount of time. Unable to breath air they had survived by harvesting air from a strange weed that grew down there. For your dungeon they could be the descendants of his servants that went down with the buildings, mutated by generations of living in this hostile environment.
Large currents of water are interesting combat terrain. They can be used as speed boosts, knock aways, cover, escape routes you name it
An air filled room with screwed up gravity vectors. Bonus points if you add waterfalls
Check out grimstooth traps book series. A ton of those traps are perfect for a madman's lair