Honey I shrunk the Party

[Flamephoenix182]

Hi everyone,

I am prepping a session where the party is going to get shrunk down. I don't want to adjust size modifiers/size ability score bonuses, as I don't want to make the party recalculate a lot for one session. (enemieswise I'll use the "giant" versions as regular size so avoid changing stats). I'm trying to think of some interesting quick changes to make them "feel" smaller without changing a ton. my current thoughts are:

1) Reduce everyones die sizes by 1 step (I'll do the same with enemies)
2) Give everyone the ability to jump higher and lift more (relative to their size) than if they were full size.

Also if anyone has any ideas for interesting or fun encounters/puzzles being shrunk that would be great.

The current premise is one of the PC's is looking for their ancestral keep only to find it had been shrunken down by a vindictive/tricker fey. So they will get shrunk, go through the keep to break the curse. (I'm thinking the boss fight will be they fight the fey at full size while they remain shrunk)

[Casey Taylor]

the rogue having to crawl into a lock to open it with strength checks to move tumblers, or maybe a pole. and acrobatics not to be smashed when tumblers move

[*Thelith]

Depends on how small? Like 1mm like in the honey I shrunk movies? Where a regular ant is huge? Or the medium human is now diminutive, 8 inches tall or such.

You could just divide their total damage by 5 or 10 or whatever makes sense so dice are not affected. And multiply the normal rate dmg by the same amount so it's a real threat.

Just opening a door will be a huge challenge. Climb checks to get up the door, strength checks to turn the knob and pull the door open.

But if the entire thing is shrunken it shouldn't affect anything ??

[Pizza Lord]

Dungeon Magazine #18 had an adventure called Chadranther's Bane involving a powerful magical orb that shrinks nearby creatures.

Dungeon Magazine #18

It's 2nd Edition and would need adjustments, but you might find some interesting interactions and story-devices; PCs find themselves on a tabletop 'hundreds of feet' off the floor, goblin tribe living in the rafters that descend on thread, bandits in the walls riding rats, halflings living in the lawn. Then when they find the object, they need to figure out how to smash it while being about 1 inch tall.

[*Thelith]

Why wouldn't the rats shrink?

[Flamephoenix182]

Hey thanks for all the ideas. I'm loving them. I realized I wrote it unclear. The keep itself is shrunk but they will be shrunk before then so I'm thinking they will need to travel through regular size areas to get there.

And to answer the scale I'm thinking the 1mm like the movies.

[Pizza Lord]

*Thelith wrote:

Why wouldn't the rats shrink?

Doesn't affect animals unless they are closely attuned to humanoids (animal companions, familiars, paladin mounts, etc.) It's a fun read even if you don't have a use for it game-wise.

[David knott 242]

Have you checked out this PDF?

[The Sideromancer]

The scale is too small, due to one massive reason: magic doesn't scale with size. If a human maps to 1mm, a castle wall is only about 6cm. Drop your spread spell of choice (fireball included) on the keep before shrinking and entering. If HP values are anywhere near what they would need to be for nonmagical attacks at Fine size, you've cleared the dungeon already.

[Flamephoenix182]

I'm not too worried about that. The party doesn't actually have anything higher then a 4th level caster.
My assumption going into it anyways is that their magic would scale relative to their shrinking

[Almonihah]

David knott 242 wrote:

Have you checked out this PDF?

I must second this recommendation.

[Brother Fen]

Yeah, Microsized Adventures is the way to go!