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5 months ago ::
Jan 29, 2013 - 5:31PM
#1
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Date Joined:
Feb 24, 2007
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You guys are usually pretty helpful, so I come to you for ideas again!
I have a recurring villain who i'm designing a dungeon for. He is not a main villain in the game, more of a fun side quest. He serves as the foil to a main NPC though. I'm hoping you'll help me flesh out this dungeon, because i'm having a little bit of trouble. So here's the guy's information:
-Gernak Ironside, Hobgoblin Rogue/Fighter, brewmaster.
-Brews Dead Man's Brew, who's key ingredient is dead guys.
-Also brews Elven Absynth, an illegal version of alcohol that can drive you insane.
-His motives are greed, not evil. That being said, he's quite the accomplished fighter.
-In combat, he's devious and brutal. Strong and limber. He's large sized, and a common tactic he uses is to send his minions in while he fires his large heavy crossbow (tipped with poison) at someone. Then he casts darkness and uses the cover to get his sneak attacks with a light mace and brass knuckles.
-His minions are commonly lesser goblinoids, and his "face" man is Mitch, a middle aged human rogue (quarterstaff / dual weapon specialist) who had his achilles tendon cut by a party member and now moves at 20ft.
And here's what I've got for the dungeon so far:
-The (brewer) Npc who this villain serves as a foil for is selling alcohol on the black market of a country which prohibits it, so that he can finance an underground railroad opperation to free slaves of the same nation. He's concerned because a lot of the alcohol on the black market is killing people and driving them mad, and being a cleric of the god of drinks, that's not ok with him. He sends the PCs to investigate.
-The dungeon is going to be circular in shape, with the outer ring being a series of dungeon rooms they have to trek through before they get to the middle circular room where Gernak will be waiting.
-At some point in this dungeon, I plan on him summoning a demon of inebriation which will take the form of a massive Beer elemental. It will, of course, get the characters drunk as they fight it. I'm debating making the players take a drink every time their characters get hit as well. As i said, this is supposed to be one of those fun dungeons, not hair pulling, teeth grinding, dungeon crawls from hell.
Now from here on, I'm a bit at a loss. Any room ideas, encounters, or general fun suggestions you can come up with would be great.
ps: we're all over 21 and have a lot of booze. It's totally fine to include that.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 29, 2013 - 6:11PM
#2
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First up, this sounds like a fun side-trek.  A few things to keep in the theme of this: Have a few of those big huge kegs being stored in one of the rooms the pc's go through in order to get to him. Maybe there is some kind of trap or trigger or something that causes one to break open and a (medium) beer elemental pops out. This could be fun and provide some foreshadowing... Also, if you really wanna go over the top, you need an Pretzel Golem in there somewhere. Also, i have to mention this reminds me of a game i ran a few years ago that had a Calzone Golem (he splurted molten sauce and cheese on anyone that hit him!). Anyway, I actually made 6 calzones and arranged them into a humanoid shape. After the combat, we ate him.
FWIW [4e designer] baseline assumption was that roughly 70% of your feats would be put towards combat effectiveness, parties would coordinate, and strikers would do 20/40/60 at-will damage+novas. If your party isn't doing that... well, you are below baseline, so yes, you need to optimize slightly to meet baseline.
-Alcestis
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5 months ago ::
Jan 29, 2013 - 6:17PM
#3
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Captain Buzzkill and his loyal sidekicks, Prohib ("pro-heeb") and The Teetotaler, arrive on the scene.
Captain Buzzkill is a famous paladin (you'll know it because he tells you so, loudly and often) and he's here to make sure Gernak Ironside is prohibited from continuing his brewing operation. They plan on shutting it down themselves, not because they know anything about Gernak's nefarious plans, but because they think ending the "scourge of alcohol upon the land" is a "moral imperative." They advise the "amateur" PCs to leave it to the "professionals." The thing is, Captain Buzzkill and his two inept sidekicks are completely and obviously inadequate to the task, even if they don't know it (and certainly deny it).
Use them as your punching bag, putting them into horrible situations that only the PCs can get them out of, as a complication in the PCs' well-laid plans, or as eventual hostages that Gernak can use as leverage against the characters.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 29, 2013 - 6:31PM
#4
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Date Joined:
Feb 24, 2007
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First up, this sounds like a fun side-trek.
A few things to keep in the theme of this:
Have a few of those big huge kegs being stored in one of the rooms the pc's go through in order to get to him. Maybe there is some kind of trap or trigger or something that causes one to break open and a (medium) beer elemental pops out. This could be fun and provide some foreshadowing...
Also, if you really wanna go over the top, you need an Pretzel Golem in there somewhere.
Also, i have to mention this reminds me of a game i ran a few years ago that had a Calzone Golem (he splurted molten sauce and cheese on anyone that hit him!).
Anyway, I actually made 6 calzones and arranged them into a humanoid shape. After the combat, we ate him.
The beer elemental was a blatant and unashamed rip off of a world of warcraft boss. Luckily, none of my players play WoW. I'd had Gernak as a foil for a year or so, and i thought it worked great. The NPC he serves as a foil to is my old PC before i started DMing, named Godrick, who is a reluctant chosen one of the god of drinks, home, and merriment. He frequently gets dragged around by his god, so it seemed only fitting that Gernak should have some divine connection. In this case, it's the opposite. In order to gain more power, he's contacted and summoned a demon of gluttony and excess drinking. I'm taking a lot from primative drinking civilizations' gods of alcohol, such as the egyptians and etheopeans, to create this Demoness.
Iserith, that's a great idea! One of the players glories in torturing me with a famous adventurer who steals all of my pc's credit in a different game. I may have to return the favor and have Captain Buzzkill be a regular...
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5 months ago ::
Jan 29, 2013 - 6:38PM
#5
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Iserith, that's a great idea! One of the players glories in torturing me with a famous adventurer who steals all of my pc's credit in a different game. I may have to return the favor and have Captain Buzzkill be a regular...
Thanks, though I can't recommend trying to steal the credit unless the players find that interesting and fun. I envision these hapless sorts arriving at just the wrong time to make a tense situation worse or to heighten the drama by needing to be rescued when the PCs are pressed for time. Stuff like that.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 29, 2013 - 8:24PM
#6
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Date Joined:
Feb 24, 2007
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Just in brainstorming, I've come up with another encounter:
Grog, the Goblin Alchemist.
Using Pathfinder Alchemist rules, this guy's going to be molotov crazy. In addition to standard bombs, he's going to have a couple of fun ones, like:
-Drunk Dog Bomb: characters directly hit by this bomb take -2 to attack rolls and +1 to damage rolls. The player must drink.
and
-Blind Drunk: Players must declare if they wish to move. Measure the distance of their intended target square. Roll a random direction (1-8). The character moves the intended distance in the random direction, taking attacks of opportunity as normal.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 30, 2013 - 9:12AM
#7
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Date Joined:
Oct 11, 2010
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The beer elemental makes them drunk? Fort/Endurance checks to avoid penalties to hit/movement/whatever.
Puzzles/Challenges like drinking games. A gold coin bounced into a fancy chalice unlocks something. Or something. They must beat some goblins in a game of pong or flip cup to get past.
Wizards of the Coast can suck it.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 30, 2013 - 10:37AM
#8
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Date Joined:
Oct 23, 2008
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I ran an adventure where the PCs were trying to rescue a dwarven brewmaster (Evil Dwarf Ale) after his caravan had been attack by a black dragon. Once they found the brewmaster (during the fight with the dragon) they were given some beer (potions) from the brewmaster that he had made from some of the fungi found in the dragon's layer. -2 to attacks, 1/round they could reroll any attack roll.
Do something like this, in some of the rooms they find a stash of a few small batches of beer that never made it to production because of the rarity of the ingredients, and drinking it does some great stuff! Keep track of how many drinks the PCs have and determine of there is a penalty if you have drank to much. Maybe drinking these potions make you more vulnerable to the beer elemental's attacks. Give them incentive to drink the potions, maybe some of the earlier guards ignore those who are drunk thinking that they belong instead of seeing them as intruders - this all works out until they find the beer elemental.
"The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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5 months ago ::
Jan 30, 2013 - 3:37PM
#9
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Date Joined:
Feb 24, 2007
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Great ideas, guys! Keep them coming.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 30, 2013 - 4:20PM
#10
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Date Joined:
Jan 16, 2013
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Crazy thought but could be in keeping with the spirit of things. I don't know about your group, but when ours gets together we usually play for about 8 to 10 hours and have dinner together during the session. If you do something similar perhaps you could make a ton of chicken wings.
When the party enters one of the rooms (it turns out to be a kitchen) they find a ton of chicken wings that have just been prepared for the BBEG and company's dinner. Bring out the wings you made at this point for any/everyone to enjoy. Encourage them to eat the wings. Give them some kind of incentive like they provide temporary HPs or some cool effect. Keep track of which members eat the wings.
Now as the party continues on, they come across another room. In this room there's a Giant Chicken. Any of the party who ate the wings are immediately attacked as the Giant Chicken can smell the wings on them and is pissed that you ate its kin.
Kind of silly, but it might be something that would group might find fun based on what you've already laid out as your adventure concept.
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