Afternoon Community,
I'm working on building an adventure scenario that mimics the great Battle of Wits from The Princess Bride. I could use some help getting the situation to have the proper feel, with the right blend of lethality and logic.
Here's the visual: Player's roll into a cave after several fights. The cave has the BBEG ( a toad-person, based off a Slaadi), who has the item the Players are after. He could simply escape using said item, but instead he challenges them to this battle of wits.
My current path I'm thinking of using is thus: There are a dozen or so potions scattered about the room on various tables. Six different types of potions, each its own color and in a unique bottle. The bottles contain the following potions/poisons:
Players will need to select potions for themselves to drink, a potion for the BBEG to drink, all will consume, and the results will play out. I plan on doing max critical damage for the Alchemical Fire when consumed, and use the Drowning rules for anyone that drinks a Tanglefoot Bag. After all has been settled, There most likely will be a fight between those still standing.
What do you all think? How would you alter the scenario to make it more thematic, without flat out "save or die" rolls? Anything you think would make this more memorable? Thanks for the advice!
-Jhaosmire
Personally, I'd reverse the movie... the "toad-person" has spent the past 500 years building up a tolerance to the various options in the room. Otherwise, why would he want the contest rather than just escaping?
That said, players being able to use spells and skills to identify the various items DOES tend to reduce this to a 'roll well or die' type situation.
If your players are good they might be able to come up with a 'non roll' solution... say give toady the 'tanglefoot potion' and then throw a dagger at it just before he drinks. If the McGuffin item is located in such a way (e.g. worn pendant) that this would cover it in sticky goo and prevent toady from using it then they've truly outwitted him. Otherwise, they're just playing a rigged game and he can always escape if things aren't going his way.
Depending on how good your players are at that sort of thing you might want to include two or three different options that YOU can think of that could work. Try to remember that the players don't know everything you do and can't be certain you'll agree that any given plan would work out. On the other hand, if your players routinely think of ways out of things that you didn't leave as options for them then you might only need to leave them one clear out because they could come up with something you didn't expect.
Well, in the movie it's the hero that proposes the wager which begins the battle of wits. What if you gave the BBEG some kind of plot immunity; simply attacking him again will cause him to disappear because reasons.
If the PCs have no way to defeat him physically and he boasts that they're no match for his brains, maybe they'll take the bait and challenge his wit instead?
If you don't want to count on the players following suit, remember that anyone can ID a potion with a Perception check DC 15 + Spell Level. A PC with Craft: Alchemy might ask to attempt a similar check to ID any alchemical items as well.
If you allow these identification checks AND they succeed, you may see your battle of wits turn into a fight as 2 of the PCs whip fire and a tanglfoot potion at the BBEG while the other 2 pull weapons and jump him.
The advantage to Iocaine is, of course, that it's tasteless, odorless, and dissolves instantly in water. ID'ing that would be nigh impossible for the PCs.
One last thing you could do though; make it a challenge for the PLAYERS, not the characters. Make a point to call out a specific color throughout all of the fights, sometimes putting special emphasis on it: "you pass a mural of a RED sky", "the RED blood oozes from the fallen foes", "the entire room is painted RED" and so on.
When the PCs get to the bottle room the McGuffin is hidden in one of the bottles. The villain boasts that they can choose any vessel and drink from it, as he will, and all will suffer their fate. While there are dozens of bottles and a veritable rainbow of colors that repeat... there is only ONE red bottle.
Don't TELL them, show them. Draw it out, make miniature bottles, scatter cups of liquid around the room, whatever, but give your players some kind of physical image to inspect and see if they're picking up what you're putting down. Set an egg timer or an alarm on your phone or something so once a minute is done they have to choose or else the slaadi reveals he secretly lied, had the McGuffin the whole time and poofs out.
Jhaosmire wrote: My current path I'm thinking of using is thus: There are a dozen or so potions scattered about the room on various tables. Six different types of potions, each its own color and in a unique bottle. The bottles contain the following potions/poisons:
Players will need to select potions for themselves to drink, a potion for the BBEG to drink, all will consume, and the results will play out. I plan on doing max critical damage for the Alchemical Fire when consumed, and use the Drowning rules for anyone that drinks a Tanglefoot Bag. After all has been settled, There most likely will be a fight between those still standing.
What do you all think? How would you alter the scenario to make it more thematic, without flat out "save or die" rolls? Anything you think would make this more memorable? Thanks for the advice!
-Jhaosmire This seems less like the duel of wits between Vezzini the Scicilian and the Man in Black and more like the Potions Challenge created by Professor Snape near the end of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. He set up a line of unlabled potions and a logic puzzle.
@ CBDunkerson,
You're right, i should definitely give Toady some resistance to the potions, maybe a simple +2, but something. The McGruffin is a Flying Carpet that Toady is sitting on. The Players have killed off all this evil Druid's "pets," so now he wants some degree of vengeance, but is going to use this contest to try and get the upper hand. I'm sure they'll find a way around the situation, they're very good at coming up with alternate scenarios.
@ Mark Hoover 330
His having the Magic Carpet will be his plot immunity. If they try to attack, he can just fly away. But he wants revenge. I love the idea of adding in a familiar tone to clue them off, I was trying to think of something (as this is the second part of an adventure they already began) and I know exactly what I can do.
@ Scott Wilhelm
You're right, that is a better comparison. The rest fo the adventure has had several "Princess Bride" tones, so I think they'll excuse the ending being not a perfect match.
Alright, so: boss has an escape route and there are clues to indicate which potions are positive, which are negative (to the perspective Player). Any other ideas?
Not exactly what you were thinking, but it could work.
BGs and the PCs are after the same item. Clues and rumors indicate the item was stolen by a dragon over 100 years ago. A network of caves was recently discovered and the PCs know the BGs are heading there.
The party rushes into the caves and rapidly catches up to the BGs...who throw a Wall of Stone to block the passage. Or go through a teleportation trap that doesn't reset. Anything that forces the party to take a separate path and hope it meets up with the BGs later.
After various twists, turns and inconveniences the party finds themselves on the shore of a massive underground lake. The BG group approaches from a different tunnel. Just before the two groups close...a massive dragon raises from the lake. It needs to be intimidating enough that the party does not want to fight it.
The dragon makes an opening remark: "Explain to me why you have all invaded my lair. Also explain to me why I shouldn't kill all of you. The best answer will receive a prize."
It strikes me as funny if there were a monster with a gaze attack that comes into the room as the potions are drunk, so that the party thinks they are totally boned when they solve the puzzle, drink the potion and go blind, and the bbeg, cackles maniacally as he gains all-round vision, then screams as he starts having to make multiple saves against the Medusa (or something), and there's no way to avert his all-around gaze.
@ Meirril
Very cool premise and you definitely have the right tone down. Would add it if I could.
@ Scott Wilhelm
Heh, I will definitely keep that one in my back pocket. If all the cards fall into the right places, this will happen.
I feel like the Man in Black's puzzle was overly simple. His goal was to kill Vezzini and run off with the girl, so the answer to the puzzle was that the goblets were a diversion, and choosing either goblet was the wrong answer. Vezzini almost got it: he kept saying, "I cannot choose the wine in front of you.... I cannot choose the wine in front of me!"
I guess the hard part is creating the logic puzzle or go online to find one and use that.
I guess an easy puzzle to set up would be to make them measure out 2 exact amounts of water and pour each into 2 different containers and give them the wrong size measuring cups. That's a classic.
The party sees 2 bowls of dry potion ingredients. The bowls are in statue holders: 2 identical armored warriors. A sign reads, "The Paladin will save you. The Blackguard will curse you. Pour 3 gloops of water into the Paladin's bowl and 1 gloops of water into the Blackguard's bowl.
You may ask each 1 question. The Paladin will tell you the truth. The Blackguard will lie."
The party sees 2 measuring cups: a 9 gloop cup and a 5 gloop cup. A basin kept full with a trickling font is nearby.
If the party guesses correctly, both bowls bubble up and release clouds of gas. The Paladin's gas will Blind the whole party. The Blackguard's gas will give the BBEG All Round Vision. As the players are still arguing about how they got the puzzle wrong, and the BBEG laughs and gloats, that's when the Medusa walks in...
Not very original, but GM puzzles don't have to be.
Based on this group, they've definitely all seen Die Hard 2, so won't be much of a contest there. Good ideas though.
Jhaosmire wrote: Based on this group, they've definitely all seen Die Hard 2, so won't be much of a contest there. Good ideas though. Yeah, but you shouldn't make your logic puzzles too hard, anyway. Also, you can change up the numbers. They will immediately know the idea for solving the problem, but they will still have to do the work. They'll be like "Oh, wait! I know this one!" But that's what Samuel L. Jackson was like, too. The whole point of heroic fantasy is so your players can feel like they're so cool, they have to played by Samuel L. Jackson.
They'll have probably also have seen the Labyrinth as well, so they will know about the Knight & Knave puzzle, too. But now you'll be layering the puzzles.
But it doesn't matter which logic puzzle you use. Make one up, or go online and find one.
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The point of the Man in Black's riddle was that either choice between the goblets was wrong. For this reason, you might try a riddle where the answer is essentially "heads I win... tails, you lose." In this kind of situation, the real "answer" is to grab the bottle and drink from it, not either of the goblets. In other words, the only way for the PCs to succeed is to subvert expectations.
Say they enter a chamber. There's a murky puddle on the floor and hundreds of bottles all around. The riddle master (Magic Mouth, evil villain, disembodied voice, etc) commands that the PCs must "slake their thirst so that truth can be revealed" and everyone in the party is hit with a curse that makes them incredibly dehydrated.
Of course the answer is to drink the milky mineral water in the puddle but some of the PCs may choose to drink from one of the bottles. This might be because the riddle tells them to choose a bottle, or perhaps the bottles are labeled with good effects or even just out of sheer panic. Whatever the case, any of the bottles consumed will in fact cure their thirst but then also deliver some negative effect on the drinker.
The only answer is not to choose either of the goblets, y'know?
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