Magic Item: Blessing of the Beast

H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth is one of the better written 4E adventures to come out of WotC's offices. That said, it has a number of flaws and many areas that had a lot of potential that weren't fully realized. I've done a few things here on DMG 42 to tweak that up, not to mention the excellent work by 11 ft. Pole and The Demon Prince of Undeath. Taken all together, it's pretty top-notch.

One of the background elements to the adventure that I enjoyed was the theme of Baphomet the Horned God and his presence on the extinct culture of Minotaurs from the labyrinth. To help reinforce this idea on the dungeoneers, I added a Divine Boon to a few shrines in the adventure. Dungeoneers paying their respects at several strange altars were rewarded with a lasting reminder of the story of the dungeon and how it came to be, who passed by here before them, and why this place was unique.

Lastly, the boon has a mechanic to discourage the 5-minute adventuring day. This boon in and of itself would probably never make a dungeoneer think twice about taking a needed rest, but the design philosophy extended to multiple items and coupled with magic rings and the like which gains benefits from milestones, starts a growing incentive to make the difficult decision to keep pushing forward into the dungeon despite a dwindling supply of healing surges and daily powers.

Labyrinth of the Underdark

from the movie Labyrinth (1986)

Many times in D&D, I have tried (or read an adventure that tried) to create a scenario with the dungeoneers trapped in some sort of maze which they must find their way out of. Time and again, however, the adventure idea has fallen on its face. I've had boring, uninspired implementations one after another. I've done timed pan and paper maze puzzles, skill challenges, complex dungeon tile setups; you name it. While helping out on some work on a Project That Shall Not Be Named, I was inspired by the author to create a card-based mini-game to represent the maze that is the namesake of H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth.

Magic Item Black Market

from http://www.travelpod.com 

Recently, I was presented with the exciting opportunity to start up a new D&D campaign from scratch. I generally enjoy this aspect of the Dungeon Master’ing experience. I’m an organized, planning-ahead kind of person by nature, and the start of a new campaign gives ample opportunity to put those tendencies to good use.

One of the complaints from this group of players during the last game we had was the overall lack of magic items and loot. During that campaign, I opted to use the inherent enhancement bonus option from DMG2 and use a handful of very special, powerful, almost artifact-like magic items through the entirety of the game world. I also banned the enchant magic item and disenchant magic item rituals, and the related martial practices. This allowed me to keep magic rare and special in the world, to give it a sense of wonder and mystery. My efforts fell on deaf ears, however, as the players preferred to haul away barrels full of loot. They missed the +1 magic longswords, having some sense of nostalgia for their prior adventures in that style. Being the manager of this dog and pony show, I acquiesced to my audience and went back to Rules-As-Written magic item distribution. I would even let the dungeoneers (gasp!) buy magic items.

Terrain Power: Chained Beast

Here's another example of progressing a terrain power through the three tiers. From a tiger, to a displacer beast, to a ragng demon; an iconic and dangerous beast is presented where appropriate for the power level of the heroes that face off against it.

This started with my attempt to add some interesting effects to the Chamber of Eyes finale in Thunderspire Labyrinth. In it, the heroes storm the lair of Hobgoblin slavers and end with a climactic duel, which also happens to link some new participants in the battle into the next phase of the plot. In the description of the scene, there are chains pinned to the floor and an angry Dire Wolf pet of the Hobgoblin chief. I felt that these two great tastes would taste together, and so chained down the pet onto the floor, removing it as a standard combatant per se, and creating a dangerous terrain feature that could be exploited by clever thinkers on either side of the DM Screen. I've also included a similar setup for a chained down wild boar, which also appears in Thunderspire Labyrinth.

Picture from http://www.dougsirois.com/FANTASY%20ART.html

NPC Ally: Terwin Azaer

Terwin Azaer is an NPC from the NPC-filled H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth. In the adventure, Terwyn has a bit of a lycanthropy problem, in that he turns into a werewolf. The PCs are given a quest to help him out and break his curse. When I ran this, Terwyn needed to acompany the PCs on their quest. It makes a lot of sense, I think, to have him there. Not only should he know the way to the curse-breaking location (it is the same spot where he got cursed to begin with), but having him present for the curse to be broken just feels right. With this in mind, I wanted Terwyn to be dangerous and a burden on the group. In media outside of D&D, the audience is often shown that travelling with cursed companions, whether they are werewolves or what have you, is dangerous. To reflect this idea, I have Terwyn turn into his werewolf form when he is dropped. In play, the group will be faced with the decision to either take a hit for the NPC, or let him change into a new (elite) combatant. This isn't much of a choice at all, since it will always be worth it to take this hit. What it does do, however, is esure that at least one PC is always adjacent to him and always soaking up his hits via Guarded by Heroes. By the end of this short quest, the PCs will be very excited to see his lycanthropic curse dispelled away.

Mining Cart Chase Scene

This picture from a product sold here.

Continued fom Part 1, here is the second half to creating an awesome mining cart chase scene. Now that we have the basic building blocks of the encounter down, we need to spice things up a bit and add in some elements to the encounter that force the players to change up their tactics round to round. It keeps them thinking and rewards (presumably) good choices. That is what keeps them engaged with the game and hnging on the edge of their seats.

For a typical N+0 Mining Cart Chase encounter, I like to break the action up into 5 distinct parts. The first four parts last precisely 1 round each, representing different areas and obstacles that the mining carts and their occupants traverse through. The last part is the end destination. This is a more standard area where all of the occupants are dropped off to finish the fight, and any occupants of destroyed carts can meet up in.

For this example, and what I wrote this for, is taken from the Demon Prince of Undeath Conversion of H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth. It replaces the chase scene through the ruined Dwarven fortress on foot with a chase scene of enemies racing against the PCs via mining carts that crisscross through vast underground caverns and the crumbling remains of a long-abandoned Dwarven outpost buried deep in the earth. In this encounter, there were both enemies in mining carts chasing after the PCs, as well as a Shadow Dragon racing after them.

This encounter features three (3) seperate tracks that the PCs must choose to go down in. Typically, players will split up their PCs into at least two different carts going down in different tracks. And really, that's he way to do it. It's pretty exciting to have a two-front battle like that unfold. Eventually, the players start getting wise to the system here, and will switch tracks so as to get all of their enemies on the middle track and then they have a cart on each of the outer tracks. It's not technically "flanking", but it does a great job of hitting the middle guys pretty hard.

This encounter really starts when it clicks for the PCs to start racing down the mining cart tracks. At that poin, describe in general terms what is down each track. In this case, there are tracks leading through the upper towers of the Dwarven fortress, there aretracks leading right through the center of the fortress, and there are tracks running through the deep underground parts of the citadel. It is assumed that the tracks crisscross and come back together enough so as to make the premise of the tracks being seperated by only a square (as described in Part 1) still plausible.

Each track then has different obstacles handed to it each round, small changes and checks that make shake up the battle. These effects, and any related skill checks or attacks, are done at the beginning of every combat round as free actions.