I'm planning out a dungeon with seven evil trials that the PCs MUST overcome to get to a portal to the Abyss that they are supposed to close. The PCs are not magically compelled tp undertake the trials. The trials I have planned so far are as follows:
Wrath: 20 humans are bound and begging for the PCs to cut their bonds and let them escape. To succeed at this trial, the PCs must execute them all.
Gluttony: a young gold dragon is in a silt of rigging that prevents it from attacking and forces it to accept and eat anything that it is offered. An amount of food equal to 511 times the dragon's weight is supplied in crates around the room, and scrolls that, when cast alongside feeding the dragon, allows it to eat enough food to cause it to grow a size category without dying. To succeed at this trial, the PCs must feed the dragon all of the food in the room without the dragon dying. I'd my math is correct, there should be enough food to have the dragon grow three size categories.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
You're begging for the PCs to walk away and find a new game, you know. Or for the players to find a new GM. Or is the starting premise that the PCs must have an evil alignment?
I might enjoy being a dick to classes with alignment requirements a bit too much.
Why would they take these trials? How are they enforced, and how do they impede progress to the actual goal? How is leaving their mission a failure worse than completing acts of cruelty?
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Sloth: Decide not to do the other trials.
I'm sorry, I'm not the person to help here. If I were a player in your game, I'd promptly release the prisoners, kill or release the helpless dragon (depending on a conversation), and so on. And then I'd go about figuring out the back-door way to fulfill the larger mission.
Yeah, what happens if they cheat?
It sounds like maybe you want to explore what terrible things you can get a party of Good and or Neutral PCs to do for the purpose of stopping some greater Evil, kind of an "ends justify the means" exercise like "would you switch the train from the track with 10 helpless victims to the track with 1 helpless victim?" but nastier.
If the players don't take the moral decisions of their PCs seriously this could likely descend into silliness. If they do it could potentially descend into bitterness. Maybe some people would really like it though. I guess maybe you know your own gaming group best.
If you're going for shock factor I guess you could make some of the trials more graphic, require self-mutilation, etc. I guess at the end the PCs could also find out that rather than stopping Evil from coming into the world their participation in the "trials" actually acted as a ceremony that helped to summon it. I guess that could kind of set up a lecture about how it is "wrong" to break your moral code for reasons of expediency and a "truly" Good PC would refuse to commit Evil acts no matter what.
On the off chance that your players would stand for all that maybe you could have it all turn out to be an illusion created by a Good NPC or deity to teach the PCs a lesson on sticking to their morals no matter what.
As the party converse with the king, a farmer bursts into the room, screaming incoherently about demons (zombies) attacking the city. They came from an abandoned dwarven temple set into the side of a mountain, and the king fears that an army is being amassed by a notorious cult.As the party enters the first room of seven, they are presented with the Trial of Wrath. Failure to complete the trials results in every creature outside of the party decaying to piles of clay and the party suffering from nightmarish hallucinations until they pass out, only to wake up at the entrance, with the trials reset. At the end, the party discovers an old man instead, who wants them to undertake a new quest, which he believes would be impossible unless the e undertakers were willing to commit atrocities for the greater good, and reveals that the creatures encountered were nothing more than fleshy puppets of his creation, and that the zombies were sent merely to entice prospective undertakers. I figure that completing trials without knowing what the failure conditions are, and failing multiple times are evil acts, but completing trials knowing the failure conditions are not, though characters with moral codes will still want to seek Atonement.
Weird. The spell. I cast it on this thread. Save or die. Everybody.
I got 27(d20=16, Will +11). I live?
Sounds awful
No player agency at all.
They can walk away between tries.
Maybe you should structure it more like the suffering game from the McElroy brothers podcast the adventure zone. Spoilers ahead please don't read this if you are not caught up and are planning to later (it's a truly wonderful dungeons and dragons podcast so long as you don't mind that it gets railroad-y at times)
Essentially the suffering game is a dungeon in which the players and by extension their characters have to come to terms with what is worth giving up to continue on in that dungeon. Basically it alternates between a combat encounter and then a game show style wheel of misfortune in which each icon the wheel can fall on asks for a specific type of sacrifice. The sacrifices are things like years out of your character's life, or giving up a limb. There is even a really interesting sacrifice in which the player is given the choice of what to give up, but if it's not enough (as determined by the DM) they have to give up more and still lose whatever they originally sacrificed.
I think generally this would be more compelling than going through "Jigsaw's murder basement" which is kind of what I'm getting from your trials. Rather than being "do all this f**@ed up stuff to get through" it becomes "what are you willing to give up for victory?" Which asks more of a question that the players/characters have to ask of themselves.
You can certainly structure sacrifices based on sins as well. Maybe in the sloth room of the dungeon, time goes much faster, and the characters are asked to give up a number of years of their life, just sitting and waiting there (they would have to be sustained without food and water by the magic of the room) In the envy room two adventurers would have to enter and each confess to each other what they are most jealous of each other, and be forced to give that to the other (even if it's a body part or something intrinsic like an accomplishment, which is then magically transferred to the receiver and henceforth all npcs know that other person for doing that thing.) Gluttony could be a grand feast that forces a player to get obese and lose dexterity points permanently (you could potentially do the size thing too, only this time with the players because that's a cool flavor component I really liked about your original pitch.) Pride could be the opposite and inflate their ego having them lose wisdom points permanently. Greed could force the player to steal a percentage of money from the rest of the party and if it's ever returned it turns to dust.. I actually don't hate the idea of the room for wrath, but I think it could be altered somewhat. Honestly lust is the hardest to figure out, especially if you want to avoid some dubious sexual stuff (maybe sex with a succubus who steals charisma points?). I think my point here is the trials become far more interesting and costly if the players actually have to give something up rather than just killing and torturing random npcs.
How I would personally structure such a dungeon, is that each of trials are all accessible from the hub room. I would also allow that each trial could be taken with however many players they want to send in (minimum 1-2 depending on the trial.) However, the cost of each trial would go up each following room. So, if the adventurers pick the sloth room first, they only lose a year of their life to complete the trial, and if they pick it last it would age them all the way to venerable (you could totally cheat this if you have a lv 17 monk) but if you pick wrath first, you only have to beat one of the innocent up, where as if you take it as the final trial you actually have to magically nuke an orphanage or something similarly horrible. This would also really make the players more inclined to complete the trials because by the end they've given up so much that they would feel that they gave up all these things for nothing if they quit now (much like how if you try to cook a frog you don't just drop it in boiling water or it will jump right out, you slowly turn up the heat until it dies) and oh god would the peer pressure/monopoly style tantrums the players would throw if someone decided to leave would be hardcore. I would spell out the rules of the dungeon/trials for the players as they enter each room so they don't end up confused as to how to move on.
Tl;dr: I'm a sadist.
Hmm what are you a 19 level wizard?
On another topic, gaining sizes already decreaces dex.
On another topic, gaining sizes already decreaces dex.
this is true :0
Hmm what are you a 19 level wizard?
No, level 10 Investigator with Wisdom 18.
There didn't seem to be a magic-free, template-free way to increase size as the story progresses, so I thought that you would have to eat 7 time your own weight to increase in size, but you would probably die if you are that much without magic to alter where the mass goes. Any suggestions?
Bump.
Ummm, maybe you should find a game premise that will, you know, create FUN for your players?
Maybe this one will, but you haven't actually said so. And you're in a room full of people who have explained that player agency -- getting to decide what they'll do in a situation -- is important for fun.
Sounds like his singular concern is the narrative for the campaign. Which is easily in the top 5 worst DM issues. Though it's possible that his players are just on the rails of the story like a video game. In my experience the only players who don't mind that type of campaign are ones who haven't played any other kind.
The campaign is not on rails. The world works interestingly in that acts to abandon uncompleted quests, even those that are simply favors, causes adventuring groups to lose the protection of their enchanted charter, causing them to be attacked twice as often. The protection reactivates when they get back on track.
Yeah "not on rails". "Either you do what i want or die or need twice as much healing". Really "fair" for the players IMHO.
Good, the governor offers you a way out of prison module.
The greed room is full of golden treasures. The next door will only open when someone weighing 500 pounds steps on the plate before the door. Up to 3 can stand on the plate at the same time.
Envy is a crypt where every corpse is clutching the key. Graverobbing is the worst sort of envy.
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Good, the governor offers you a way out of prison module.
The greed room is full of golden treasures. The next door will only open when someone weighing 500 pounds steps on the plate before the door. Up to 3 can stand on the plate at the same time.
Envy is a crypt where every corpse is clutching the key. Graverobbing is the worst sort of envy.
I didnt know that hell knights were necromansers.
I know several Lamias willing to work in the lust room. Ever make out on a desecrated altar?