#Dungeon23 #CommunityEdition - Level 1 (January)

[Solomoriah]

You posted while I was typing... a sealed door with a key buried around level 5 or so would be a good option.

[coureur_d_bois]

I 100% agree with you. We either need to nerf the encounter or find a way that a first level party won't run into it during their first cruise in the dungeon.

[Solomoriah]

Okay, so looking over the room description, Bhusher the vampire doesn't seem to need the power of the repair spell. The other monsters are described as undead monsters with the stats of earth elementals, so I had copied the stats over. Simply removing their resistance to non-magical weapons reduces their power substantially, though they are still pretty tough.

[Solomoriah]

11,300 pp seems a bit much too. And non-coin items should always be valued in gp, not pp.

[Solomoriah]

Okay, so I'm about to upload the manuscript. I have worked on the throne room somewhat (and to be fair, many rooms got some editing, as is entirely normal). I'm not considering the throne room "done" yet, and may roll back some changes if it turns out I've taken the wrong road.

The February map is in there (at least, before you guys change all the set dressing... ) and I'll post it in the new thread as well.

[lars_alexander]

This may be the first level of the dungeon, but it could be one that players come back to to explore, and finish later.

I made sure to create some encounters, that do need require combat (Mirfa, the skeleton in room 8), and that could turn into companions (One-hand-eye of room 22, the root crawlers, the elementals of the gnomish cube-device of room 16). The chameleon rats, even the giant ones, generally pose no threat to players, and can support in a few fights - they've got a job to do, too.
There are a few dungeon devices, that can be used to build traps to defeat deadly enemies: think of the secret door at intersection 6. That's what it's there for. For players to come along, and find that out.

Mountain-Mother despises evil, and the vampire in room 30. She might just have a few root crawlers block the corridor to keep innocent characters, and creatures from getting hurt.

There are a few scared orcs, who'd rather live, than fight. Redcaps with their own agenda, a demon cat with a scheme. Otherwise it seems to be mostly zombies, and skeletons.

And, for being the first level of a megadungeon: it has to be regularly refilled with new zombies, and skeletons, aka former player characters. And there are plenty of non-combat encounters on the first level to let players get into the feel of old school gaming.

I'm quite fond of the Severity of Situation rules presented with the intersection 6: use it. Some groups may get ridiculiously lucky...

[Solomoriah]

I've not had to change much in your rooms other than to adjust the English a bit, which I'm doing anyway to standardize on American English. Per Style Guide rules, English should either be consistently American or British throughout a book, with the primary author(s) preference being the deciding factor. As there was no obvious choice here, and the materials submitted swing both ways in terms of spelling, I chose my own preference.

Your materials are tightly integrated with each other and I could see how you had thought about making encounters less tough; no need to change a thing there.

[qwertle]

I have addressed this. Removed the resistance, made the throne valueable, the pit trap along with the repair spell.

I 100% agree with you. We either need to nerf the encounter or find a way that a first level party won't run into it during their first cruise in the dungeon.

The logic for the repair spell is that the vampire could reverse it to break a magic item.

[Solomoriah]

Ah, so you were trying to give him a power akin to a rod of cancellation. I did not understand that from the text.

I'll review your updates and revise the manuscript, probably tomorrow. In the meantime everyone needs to jump over to the new February thread and start posting rooms and encounters!

[Solomoriah]

qwertle, I went ahead and took a moment to review your entry. You're presenting a first level group who share a total of perhaps 4 to 8 hit dice with 22 hit dice of undoubtedly hostile monsters with a high armor class and good attack bonuses. I don't want to rain on your parade, but really man, this is too much.

If a party of 8 first level fighters with 8 hit points each wearing plate and shield and bearing longswords walked in, they couldn't harm the vampire at all (as it's immune to non-magical weapons). Even if we armed them all with Longsword +1, the vampire could hit their AC of 18 with its AB of +6 on a roll of 12 or better, or 45% of the time. Your version doesn't give damage stats, but I assumed in my writeup that the scepter, being metal, could count as a warhammer (doesn't seem large enough to be a mace) so I figured 1d6 points of damage per hit. Fighting just the vampire, it does an average of 3.5 x 0.45 or about 1.575 points of damage per round; meanwhile, the fighters with an AB of +1 (and I'll grant them +1 for the magic sword) are hitting on 15 or better (30% chance) and doing 5.5 x 0.30 or about 1.65 points per round.

This doesn't seem so bad; the vampire will fall after an average of 27 points of damage, so it will take about 17 fighter-rounds of attacks to slay it. But the vampire can kill any one fighter in right at 5 rounds on the average. Fighting them one at a time, the vampire will kill three of the party members before falling.

Of course, the party can gang up on the vampire. If it gets its back against a wall, at most maybe five fighters could attack at once, getting 6 hits per round and killing it in three rounds with a fair likelihood of no casualties (though the averages don't tell the whole tale).

But the vampire isn't alone. It can activate the undead monsters, which are AC 18 and 8 hit dice; they average 36 hit points each, hit the fighters on a 10 or better (55% chance) and do 1d12 points of damage (average 6.5 per hit) for a per-round average damage of 6.5 x 0.55 or 3.575 points of damage. Each of the generals can thus kill a party member in 3 rounds, while receiving 5.5 x 0.25 (16 or better to hit at AB +2) = 1.375 points of damage per attacker per round. A general thus requires just over 26 rounds of attacks to fall.

Were I the GM running the vampire, on seeing a large party enter it would activate the generals as soon as the party began to advance, and back up against the wall with the generals on either side. At most the vampire could be attacked 3 times per round, which means it would take 6 rounds to slay it. In 6 rounds the generals would each kill 2 party members, and the vampire would kill 1, so more than half the party would fall while fighting them... and the generals are still standing. Assuming the party have been concentrating their attacks on the vampire, each general has been subjected to perhaps two attacks per round, or 12 fighter-rounds of attacks total; they can still sustain another 14 such rounds of attack before falling. Being basically mindless rage-creatures, it's hard to figure out how many characters can attack one of these monsters each round, but as of this point there are only three fighters left. Computing the generals as an aggregate, they have 28 fighter-rounds left in them, and each can kill a party member in three rounds, so the remaining party will take 9 rounds on the average to be slain by the generals.

And I have not even employed the vampire's charm power, which could turn party members against each other or at least stop them from fighting so that the vampire could direct its attacks more effectively and kill the party without being slain himself.

Statistically, I just don't see how we can have this encounter area on the 1st level.