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I am a GM and have a level 2 adventure where the party is about to enter a dungeon. This is a relatively small dungeon with about 10 rooms, but it is set in a dilapidated 2 story urban building where half the rooms are above the first floor of rooms with a lot of open holes and even missing floors between the rooms. It is a very 3 dimensional dungeon with extensive opportunity for encounters to collapse onto each other. To help offset the lethality of that scenario, the dungeon only has about 6 creature/combat encounters, 2 of which feature enemies unlikely to move, and the 2 most difficult encounters feature creatures that hate each other and can possibly be manipulated into fighting each other if the party is able navigate the dungeon in a certain way without being overly hostile to some of the inhabitants. The environment itself is complicated and full of very low threat hazards/inconveniences likely to present some challenges to the party as well.
Basically, it is a set piece dungeon with 2 factions.
Faction 1 has occupied the building and made it their base. The boss had visions of creating a great criminal empire in the city, but acquired a treasure that makes them appear very strong, but also has occupied their focus so heavily that their ambition is almost entirely gone outside of retaining their treasure. The faction is small and doesn’t have much reason for loyalty, except most of them have no where else to go in the city, are safe, and have treasures of their own in/about the dungeon that keep them happy enough until something seriously changes about their situation. The faction is strong enough, in a poor enough part of town that I am assuming they can send out one encounter’s worth of members about every three days to gather food and have internal access to a way to recruit new/lost members at least one time (might have a percent chance for adding more later if the party stalls out more than once) if the party ends up retreating for the day.
All together the faction is about 300 xp, with the boss encounter weighing in at 120 xp, and the possibility of about 100 xp of the other encounters moving around and stacking on in waves.
Faction 2 is completely outside the dungeon, but wants the bosses treasure. They too can go and get more help, but the present boss of this faction is a sub commander that doesn’t want to look incompetent if they can avoid it. They, as a group are the strongest encounter group in the dungeon, but not strong enough/well prepared enough to beat faction 1 out right, at least not without taking way more risk than the sub commander is interested in taking (basically they are , as a group a 140 xp severe encounter for the party.)
This is a complicated scenario to run, and in the past I would have done it all just by feel as a GM, keeping the tension high with the party having no consequence for retreating, as faction one would just assume they beat off some potential rivals for their turf unless given reason to assume anything else.
Faction 2 is also not in a hurry (their boss won’t care if they don’t come back at all and will just send another group out in about a week if they never hear back), and if they win/get the treasure, their goal is escape, not murder and the whole adventure continues on just fine.
Instead of just winging it though, I think this dungeon might be a lot more fun to run as an infiltration-like subsystem, with each faction having their own awareness level of the Party and hidden level from the party.
The boss of faction 1 can be entirely swayed through an influence encounter if they can be found and reached, with or without concern for how much of the faction has been defeated before hand, but fighting through the faction and the boss is very likely to put the party in a position where faction 2 easily swoops in and steals the treasure at the end, and multiple members of faction 1 can become valuable resources later on in the campaign (granting access to uncommon and rare items and feats) if they are still around too. The players know this is a campaign about accomplishing goals not killing enemies, so I think the General buying will be there, especially if they start to get clues that someone is paying attention to their progress through the dungeon.
With faction one, awareness of the party just means “gather up the gang, retake lost territory and then replace fallen defenses and members as time allows.” I don’t think I would need 8 awareness points, with 8 being the full faction going out to kick out the invaders, 4 being, fall back to the leader’s position and wait and see, and 2 being, send out one low threat group to investigate. Maybe 6 would be enough with each level at 2 then?
Meanwhile, the party can gain recon points that reveal different encounter groups and locations, occasionally interrupted by combat encounters where that makes sense, also boosting the awareness of faction 1 to the party.
For faction 2, they start out across the street from the dungeon building, staking out the dungeon. The party doesn’t know they exist to start, so their awareness level will be less about knowing where the party is, but will be about what they learn about the party as they watch the party progress through the dungeon, and the party will have the opportunity to gain clues they are being followed/observed, and then even figure out who is doing it, and how that information could be used to sway the boss of faction 1.
I am not sure about how I want to dial in the numbers and rewards for faction 2, or exactly how to handle the rewards for the party of infiltrating the dungeon without fighting all of faction 1.
We are still a session or two away from getting to this dungeon, so I have a little time to sort it out. I will report back how it goes and what I did, but if people have ideas, questions or advice related to making this operate smoothly and with more consequence than me, the GM, just arbitrarily deciding when to collapse encounters and reveal faction 2, I’d be happy to consider them!
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Interesting. I like "recon points" as a name. I'd been thinking about what the players might be getting as they get more into the dungeon and start to figure out how it works. That's a good name for it.
I like your description of the environment, but 10 rooms seems very few. Now, 10 rooms that actual encounters/hazards could be in, plus lots of corridors, broom closets etc to put a bit of distance between encounters, that seems better to me.
I'm really interested in how this will pan out. I think the "dynamic dungeon" where encounters somewhat flow into each other but in a balanced, doable way, is something PF2 hasn't really given a good recipe for building yet. But when they accidentally happen and go right, they're often the most memorable dungeon crawls.
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Why are the PCs even investigating this dungeon ?
Is a third faction using them ? Knowingly or not ?
Is the second factions's big boss sending the PCs there to have a better chance at reaching their goal and to test the loyalty/efficiency of their underlings ?
What is your favorite outcome ? Having the PCs realize they are not the only outside party with an interest in faction one's doings and then allying with faction one to defeat faction 2 ?
So this dungeon does come from an old published adventure that I am converting to PF2, but I am being pretty loose with the conversion.
The party is working for a third organization and is also trying to get the treasure faction one is sitting on. Faction one is a splinter faction from both two and three. The adventure only needs the treasure to not be permanently lost. Hence why it being stolen / moved is only a failing forward situation, as faction 2 will be found and confronted later on regardless of what happens in this dungeon, it will just mean that is the faction one boss dies and the faction 2 boss escapes, the party will have to do more information gathering in the city to find out where to go and the circumstances in the faction 2 dungeon will be a little different too.
As per the dungeon being small, it is. With hazards and the faction 2 complications, it’s about 8 encounters in 10 rooms, but several of the second story rooms are essentially just part of the room bellow, so it’s more like 8 rooms in 8 encounters. Some just can’t move and some, like faction 2, don’t want to get involved until they can achieve a specific objective. In many ways, the dungeon is kinda like 3 severe encounters where the enemies are spread out and will take a couple of turns to support each other, and there are multiple motivations competing against each other, even in the same faction.
Obviously, the players won’t know any of that at the start and the dungeon looks incredibly dangerous to just rush and attack. I am thinking the recon point rewards can largely be narrative rewards that help the party learn how different parts of the dungeon can be isolated or bypassed, as well as XP awards that at least equalize out a fighting approach and opportunities for access to downtime awards that will easily outweigh the treasure earned from fighting through most of the non-boss enemies.
If it's such a small location, I don't see how an infiltration system helps. Effects sound immediate and straightforward. Hmm. Plus possibly dynamic thus loud, washing away any infiltration-progress.
ETA: And it seems reactions could alter party info on explored areas too.
The idea of running the infiltration system is to avoid the traditional one character maybe scouts out some paths, but likely the whole party sticks together, triggers the first encounter and then the whole dungeon is triggered right away. The building has its windows boarded up and has two doors. One is to a self contained shed where two guards from faction one keep a look out and yell to shoo off anyone who gets too close, and to alert everyone that people are near. A full fight there will move the alertness of faction 1 to full alert (I’ll probably settle on 6 points). If the party falls back and gives it some time, the alert would drop to 0, the area of town has enough people that that can’t be too uncommon of a situation. Alternatively, between those, the party could try to sneak past, not raising those guards alarm at all, or create a distraction that lets the party move past, raising the alert to 2 at first, but patience would send the alert back down. Past that location, the party could choose either to go in, or to recon the other sides of the building to learn information and not raise alert. I would run that as a skill encounter with multiple options both for gaining recon points and reducing alert points each round to see if they can see what is in the other rooms, through boarded windows, climbing up the walls, or by listening. I think any encounter that breaks out, like if the party decides to try to pry off the boards of a windo and go in that way but gets a little attention, would cause alert to go up 1 per round or two if something obviously loud happens. The party can always choose to run though because faction one is not looking pursue.
Your concerns are valid, but the rooms are unpleasant to move around in, and slow to do so safely, so there is plenty of time to delay collapsed encounters by a round or two.
Well there is the old school tactic of spiking doors.
Or burning down the building for that matter, though with desired items inside maybe just smoke, false cries, illusions, or threatening to light oil (actually water) you've tossed around the door to draw them out, perhaps into a funnel at the front door for easier engagement. Hmm.
And knowing if the gang had a secret way out of the building would be another valuable thing to be able to learn through the recon process.
So I put together the responses for the 3 levels of alertness for faction 1. I changed names and left things vague enough I don't think it would give anything away to anyone until after their group had already completed this dungeon.
Awarness:
Starting 0
Max 6
Levels: 0 - everyone stays where they are.
2 - Faction 1 boss yells out for everyone to check in. One of the outside Guards speak common and say "we're here" from the shed. The creatures at the turrets say "here! Yeah! Here!" with a DC 10 (+5 from outside the building) the party can hear it well enough to make out the words if they speak the creature's language, and with a DC15 (+5 from outside) the observer can tell 2 creatures respond. Lastly the goblins in the sewers bang the metal pipe twice if they are still present. Lastly the beast hisses quietly from its hiding place (DC 12 perception check to hear it in the room, DC 15 from an adjacent room, DC 20 to hear it from outside the building or from more than one room away.
If every group does respond as expected, one of the creature archer guardians prowls through the second floor quietly (Perception DC 15) to look into any room where responses were absent. Their job is to run and raise the alarm. If they spot the Party, they raise an alarm and run, raising the alert level immediately by 3.
4 - If the alert level reaches 4, all members of faction 1 are supposed to return to the floor level of the fireplace room. However, the turret creatures will refuse to leave their turrets, and the other creatures will be pretty slow to leave the tunnels, gathering all their belongings up into a giant sack that requires time to squeeze through the tunnels. It will take them 5 rounds to leave the tunnels 2 to get to room x, 1 to ge to room x, and then 2 to cross room x and take up position in front of the fire place.
6 - If the alert level reaches 6, Faction 1 and their boss begin to complete the other two steps, but if any group engages the enemy before getting to room A 6, then everyone begins moving to the sound of fighting, instead of to protect the boss room.
What has helped me in the past with more dynamic dungeons is to copy the map and write the monsters into their spaces. It's much easier to see the natural connections, the ebb & flow. In this instance I'd add arrows showing their paths, maybe numbered or color-coded for the stages of alarm. Eases the mental load when juggling GM duties.
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The way you make it sound, everything is really close together. Yeah, there's a few rounds in between reinforcements arriving. But a realistically loud fight should alert all enemies in the building.
So to me this doesn't really sound like Infiltration is really the model for doing this dynamic dungeon. Doesn't mean you can't do dynamic dungeon, just that Infiltration isn't the model I'd pick.
It reminds me of a scene from when I was playing Agents of Edgewatch where we raiding a gang hideout. We were police and we got a lot of extra consumables for the raid, but there was also real time pressure. From the moment we ran into the outside sentries (who, in typical PF2 fashion have way too much HP to quietly kill by surprise), it was basically an ongoing encounter. There were a few pauses where you had time to chug potions, but no 10m rest segments anywhere. Because we took out the sentries, then went into the main room, fought the people there, fought the people joining, then went into the boss' room where he was busy burning evidence.
It was a really fun session. Not your typical clean isolated PF2 encounters setup. Also quite nonstandard resource and consumable usage from the party.
There doesn't exist a "Raid" minigame, but maybe there could be something like that. Kind of the opposite of infiltration: you're trying to maintain an element of shock and pressure that allows you to confront and overwhelm enemies before they manage to regroup. I'm not sure how I'd mechanically want to scaffold that. But I think it's a valid concept of how some scenes should play, just needing good mechanics to back it.
(in terms of Raid, I would have the defenders asleep and or/unarmed and unarmored, with a set number to be reached to allow them to: shake off sluggishness of sleep, arm traps, grab weapon and don armor while also possibly needing to reach useful repulse positions)
I am imagining the “infiltration” part of this dungeon being more about opportunities to gain information from the recon points. I agree that it is a small dungeon, which is why I am trying it out here. The dungeon could go a lot of different ways. I just want to be prepared to run scouting in a much better way than in combat encounter mode and pacing as that tends to lead to one character doing everything.
So instead having skill challenges where some party members can take actions to offset alert points while others get the recon points.i am thinking that instead of set levels of points, I’ll just have each recon point reprint a clue about the dungeon.
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Aha, interesting. Yeah, Recon is kinda another minigame-that-should-exist. It exists a bit as the warmup phase that you might get before an Infiltration, but it hasn't really been worked out very much as a standalone thing.
Players actually often want to "scout ahead, see what enemies are there, and then we can come in with the right tactics". But it's quite hard to actually do in a happy way using the regular stealth mechanics. The odds are that halfway through you're gonna be spotted and the rest of the party will be far behind and your scout is on their own in the middle of a fight balanced for a whole party. Or it takes really long and the other players are groaning about one player taking a lot of time while the rest wait.
If the regular mechanics don't manage to model well a type of scene that we want to do, then a minigame makes sense. I don't quite know yet how a Recon minigame might work, but it's something that I think has a right to exist.