Starting a L1 Campaign in the depths of a dungeon, and having fight / sneak their way out.


Homebrew and House Rules


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I'm planning a campaign where the player-characters lived in an isolated community inside an ancient fortress on a plateau, and they're thrust into the adventure when eroded supports in the depths of the plateau (actually an ancient, long-since forgotten, 20+ story tall crypt)give way and a massive sinkhole swallows a festival.

The party consists of the survivors of the fall. There's no way back up, and they'll have to find their way past the various creatures that have made their homes in the crypt between the party and the entrance (their exit).

There's no undead in this crypt. It's a custom setting where necromancy is all but forgotten, so it's a big deal later in the campaign when the dead start rising.

Creatures they encounter will include Rats, a Rat swarm, Fire Beetles, a Giant Black Widow spider, a Rust Monster, and a Gelatinous Cube. The party may try to fight everything, but they also have the options to try to out-wit or out-maneuver these creatures.

There will be a few traps, mostly on the caskets of royals, since these crypts were originally visited, but there were precautions to prevent tomb robbing.

I really like the idea of the party making what they need out of what's there, but so far the only thing I've come up with is the lighting being Lantern Staffs, giving them access to replacement weapons, and to fire-damage.

I also plan for there to be a few unique items in the crypt for them to acquire, that will have large payoffs later if they keep them (such as a Flaming Burst +3 Longsword that deals its fire damage to the wielder every round if the wielder isn't of the correct bloodline, carrying the sword in its sheath would not have a penalty).

Thoughts?

Suggestions?


Flaming burst +3 longsword that deals damage to its wielder unless they're of the right bloodline? Find someone of the right bloodline (or a merchant who's willing to buy the sheath too) and SELL SELL SELL! They'll get 25,000 gold for that thing. :p

Some intelligent enemies, whether monsters or humanoids (maybe tomb robbers who got lost and will try to betray the party) would be a nice change after mowing down hordes of mindless monsters. When I played Kingmaker, I got very, very excited to fight anything intelligent- there are so many animals in that campaign that "move and full attack" got monotonous.

"No way back up" is pretty easily circumvented by a levitate spell, a spider climb spell, wild shape, polymorphing, etc. Giving the PCs a goal beyond "survive" once they get down there would be a good way to keep them from seeking the fastest way out of the place. Treasure is always an incentive, of course, but I'm sure you can think of a few different ways to keep them interested.

Is there a final boss of some sort? Not all adventures need one, especially one as open as this, but a difficult battle at the end is pretty customary.


TheGreatWot,
Thanks for the feedback, though I do have a few points to address.

They're not going to encounter anyone who can/would pay them for the magic sword any time soon, because the closest villages don't have any scholars who'd recognize the sword, and its tendency to burn the wielder would make it incredibly hard to sell for a profit. They may be able to gift it to a goblin chieftain for safe passage through his lands, but if they hold on to it until they reach someone who would know about the sword, they'll get richly rewarded.

I think a dozen floors of crypts collapsing after them produces enough rubble to plug the hole so they can't get to the opening. Also, as a L1 party, they won't be levitating yet.

I have the map set up so the monsters make sense where they are (such as the Giant Black Widow has its web were it will catch some Fire Beetles, but not so close that its web will get clogged and torn up too quickly. There's also a Gelatinous Cube in a different hall, so which paths the players take will actually effect what they encounter. I'm planning a goblin encounter at the entrance that should be an extremely difficult fight.

One of my goals in the campaign is for the goblins to be a legitimate threat. Player reactions should be: "Oh ****, Goblins!"
not "Hey, time to slaughter some more goblins."

One of the things I've given the goblins to make them more dangerous is a custom item I made up, Firesnuff.

A goblin literally shoves some of it up its nose, the shoots out a ball of fire at its target that explodes in a 10ft radius for 3d6 fire damage, Reflex Save to halve damage. It's a full action for a Goblin to use Firesnuff. If a goblin is somehow prevented from shooting the fireball after shoving the snuff up its nose, on its next turn, its head explodes (15ft radius, 3d6 damage, half fire, half slashing).


Kudos on thinking up firesnuff... Owie. Very goblin-y and very gory. I love custom stuff like this.

I'm gonna assume that your players know that their goal is to delve deeper and find the entrance, and that they won't try too hard to leave the way they came (since it's choked with rubble). Rust monsters are... well, I hate them. Destroying players' hard-won gear just annoys me, but that encounter would definitely serve as a warning that not everything in the crypts needs to be fought or even encountered.

Are the players gonna have access to food, water, etc? Most of the time, that sort of thing is overlooked, but in a survival-oriented escape adventure like this one, it would be appropriate to include some foraging and non-combat issues for the players to think their ways around.

If you have it planned out already, can you share some more of the background of the adventure? The region itself, the overarching plot, all that good stuff. I really like the story so far.


TheGreatWot,

The party will be able to make Survival checks to locate safe food and water, but I'm also considering including a magic frying pan that produces food when it is swirled, though they'd have to kill a Rat Swarm to claim it (I figure the rats fighting over the food is active enough to keep the pan skittering across the floor and producing enough food to feed them).

Story:
In the distant past, Dwarves lived on the surface, spreading their influence across the continent and beyond with airships. Their seat of power was the magnificent Blooming Citadel, which as its name suggests appears from a distance to be an gargantuan flower rising above the forest, a sight that wouldn't be out of place in the Fey Wilds.

In truth, each of the "petals" of the Citadel was an enormous balcony serving as a dock for an airship. The exterior was covered in stained glass, lit from the inside so that at night the glow of the citadel bathed the surrounding farms in dim light and made it visible for great distances, the descending and rising airships looking like bees pollinating a flower.

The top of the central column of the Citadel had the palace the royal family lived in, a small lake with a statue in its center pouring an ever-flowing pitcher of water into the lake, a vineyard that produced the only grapes suitable for the fabled Citadel Wine.

Citadel Wine was sold in 3oz bottles, and drinking a dose would magically bestowing advantage on all D20 rolls for 3 minutes.

The core of the central column of the Blooming Citadel was the mausoleum/crypt of the kings and heroes who had served the Dwarven empire since time immemorial.

The day came when a Great Wyrm, a Red Dragon descended from the northern mountains and laid waste to the Dwarven kingdom. The surviving dwarves fled south, and eventually expanded a mountain fortress into their new capital, safely hidden below the surface from the dragon's wrath. The Citaded was ravaged, its many "petals" broken off and scattered across the countryside. The dragon landed on the top of citadel to feast on the Dwarves who hadn't managed to escape, but the force of the landing had cracked the stones and pitched the lake-statue into the water, so that over the following thousands of years, the constantly draining water through the crypts would erode supports, until they finally gave away and a section collapsed.

When the dragon had thoroughly dominated the Northwest, it continued south (not finding the dwarves hiding in what still amounted to caves at this time), and it proceeded East until if found a coastal city, populated by Elves and Humans. The city evacuated as quickly as it could into water-crafts in what would have been a futile effort to escape, if not for the actions of a band of heroes, who harnessed the power of nature, arcane and divine magics to tear the dragon from the sky and slay it. The final battle against the Dragon occured in a hazardous mountain range that would eventually be renamed for the Kobolds that would come to live there to worship the bones of the Great Wyrm.

Upon the dragon's demise, one of the Heroes took a bone and crafted it into five swords, imbuing them with alchemy and magic to make them unbreakable.

When the dragon moved south of the Citadel, some forward-thinking people concluded that it was only a matter of time until it came for them, so they resolved themselves to go where the dragon had already been to avoid its wrath. They eventually fought their way through dangers to the Citadel. They ascended to the top level, saw the good farmland the vineyard had been destroyed by the dragon and the stones of the palace had been scattered across one side of the lake. These refugees sealed off the way they'd gotten in so no threats could follow, and they developed an agricultural society that collectively forgot how they came to be where they were within a few generations, and without any real threats, no one got higher than Level 3 in anything other than farming.

No one outside of the Citadel knew where to look for the refugees, and the Dwarves after having lost so much to the dragon, had no intention of returning to the exposed position of the Citadel.

The Player Characters make their way out through the crypt out to the entrance where the ancient farms have long-since been overtaken by a forest. The nearest "intelligent" (using the term loosely) creatures are a goblin tribe just to the east of the Citadel, whose leader is considerably more crafty than the rabble.

This is running long, but that's the basics of the introductory setting. There's other wars, and four other continents, as well as about a half-dozen immortals in the world who are basically demigods without the worshipers. For the most part these immortals have assigned themselves tasks that anchor them to a location (typically protecting something or making sure something stays lost)


Wait a minute...

"Drinking a dose would magically bestow advantage on all d20 rolls for 3 minutes"

Are you playing D&D 5th edition? :p

Nice story, anyways. I've always been a fan of settings where demihumans have an actual role and are powerful forces, instead of "elves in their little forest, dwarves in their little mountains, humans EVERYWHERE ELSE." RIP Citadel dwarves... add them to the long list of "dwarves that got owned by red dragons". You seem to have put a lot of thought and work into developing the area and world. The whole idea of a reverse dungeon crawl is nice, too- start trapped in, and make your way to the entrance.


I do like 5E's advantage system, so I used the Citadel Wine to to add a little piece of it to Pathfinder.

Thanks, I've put a lot of time into building this setting, and trying to avoid the standard cliches. And like the reverse dungeon crawl, I've done similar with some of the characters.

Ex:
Lich: overthrown in the distant past, he came to the conclusion that he couldn't take over the world by force. So he disguised himself as a priest, earned the trust of a small remote village, and used their dead to create Phantom Armor, which keep keep watch over the citizens, protecting them from bandits and beasts alike. Playing the long game, the Lich is protecting the people, growing their population so he can collect the dead and grow his army without raising the attention of anyone who'd wish to stop him until his army was too big for them to have a plausible chance.
(This eventual reveal is why the initial crypt won't have any undead in it)

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