Monday, August 3, 2009

A simple dungeon


This is the map of the last dungeon my players have run through. As I mentioned earlier this is the first time in 4th edition that I had to put together some encounters and map out some dungeons. In earlier editions of the game there was less need to make an encounter challenging via character mobility. In most cases you had a fighter type standing in front of the rest of the players, creating a "log jam" at a doorway allowing the less armored members to pew pew at the baddies while he held them off being healed by his cleric.

In 4th edition they have emphasized the mobility of the characters and their opponents. Most if not all player classes have abilities that allow them to move opposing monsters as do some of the monsters. The players could just turtle up in a hallway if they wished, though as I'm writing this I suppose a little discouragement by an "area effect" attack could have ended that, though their warlock tries to do this as well by bunching the monsters and dropping his one AE attack on them .

I referred to this dungeon in my previous post. The first area where the players grouped up in the entrance stairway and tried to reduce the amount of attacks they took at any one time is in the upper right hand side of the map. Then they went down the stairs and fought a demon and some gnolls in the lower tomb area. This was where the new player dumped the oil filled brazier. In the upper left side of that room you see a trap door that leads down into some natural caves.

The players decided to go down into the caves, the warlock being all pessimistic and assuming he was going to fall when attempting to climb down, suggested they go down prior to their short rest after combat so that he could recover from the fall. The players used a rope that was spiked into the tunnel wall, As fate would have it the warlock did fall as foretold with a roll of a 1, the other characters made it down successfully. Before the characters started their rest, which I would have interrupted with a gnoll attack, they found some of the gnolls around a corner and a fight ensued.

I had designed this fight as two encounter fight, shortly before they would finish off the first encounter I was going to have one of the monsters call out that they were being attacked. I also hoped the fight was going to be a bit more mobile, I had made the area fairly huge and I had put various ways for the combatants to move around and flank. I had also included some Shadar-Kai, these shadowy humanoids have short teleport movement power that added some chaos to the fight. In the end the characters prevailed ( as they should ) and we ended it there. I have yet to find out if they thought the encounter was interesting and if they felt challenged.

For any D&D 4th edition players that may wander by, here are the two encounters that they ran into in the last room:
6 - Gnoll Raiders ( a minion variety that I created )
1 - Evistro AKA "Carnage Demon"
2 - Gnoll Huntmasters


The second encounter in the caverns was:
1 - Shadar Kai Witch
1 - Shador Kai Gloomblade
6 - Gnoll Raiders ( a minion variety that I created )

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