The Gaming Den

[OSSR] Book of Challenges
So I've decided to take a look at this book. The intended purpose is to create difficult encounters of CR 1-20. We'll be looking at every individual challenge and seeing whether they succeed or fail. I'd do a drunken review, but I don't drink, so...

So we start off with the cover, showing Lidda, Krusk, and Ember under a rain of arrows, in water, while tentacles approach them.




Anyways, inside, we get a page of credits. I don't know who any of these people are, and I don't really care, so moving on.

The book opens in a way that seriously made me burst out laughing the first time I read it. It's an (awfully bad) example of play. One of the players sees a wizard floating over a chasm, and somehow jumps to the brilliant conclusion of invisible bridge, and proceeds to charge straight off a cliff. I am not shitting you. And this is the first paragraph!



Anyways, the DM does a spit take, and hastily retcons that to never happen. This section is called the DM's Dirty Secret, and faps to the idea of the DM as omnipotent and omniscient, but is actually for realslies on the players side, while the players are regarded as complete idiots who can't survive without DM pity. It then says that this is really stressful on the DM and that the DM should let of steam by coming up with devious encounters to make the players fellate him.

Before we get to the actual challenges, there's some advice in this book about how to create encounters. All things considered, it's actually fairly decent advice. Play monsters intelligently, and take advantage of their abilities, placing them in environments that cater to them. Other things like surrounding PCs to prevent easy maneuvering, playing with their expectations and assumptions, It even give advice on how to split up the part, with the caveat to not do this too often, because it messes with the cooperative nature of the game, detracting from fun. There's even advice on how monsters do value their own lives and sometimes will flee (often with flight abilities). It says that PCs should still get EXP even if the monster retreats.

Some examples give are orcs with crossbows standing at the opposite side of a chasm to the PC's preventing easy access. An illusionist making hill giants look like iron golems to trick the PC's into avoiding magic initially.

It tries to give some advice on puzzles, and it's mostly okay, telling them that the DM should practice their puzzles first, until they have one type they can both solve and run. Also keep in mind that a DM should consider if they would want to solve the puzzle should another DM present it to them.
The puzzles mechanics should make sense in the setting, and perhaps PCs with the appropriate knowledge skills can get a hint.

There's even some decent advice on traps. It offers the idea that traps should often come with bait of some sort to lure their victims in. (Like treasure, an opportunity to advance the quest or dungeon faster, ect.) It also mentions that almost any effect can be considered a "trap". Raise Dead traps, anyone?

There's also some good advice about spells that PCs should use to survey and avoid danger, like Clairvoyance, Detect Magic, Dispel Magic, Gaseous Form, Fly and so forth (though it still seems to think that magic missile is worth something). It even instructs that the DM shouldn't be upset, but rather happy and proud when players use these effects, since it means that players are invested in the game they've made, and actually taking the time to think about things.

Interestingly, it also gives advice on how to scale challenges down. It first talks about reducing HD or size of monsters, but acknowledges that this is probably pretty ass to figure out. There are other simpler things (ettin looses it's greatclubs, titan loses warhammer). There's advice about having limited use abilities already used up, and instructs that it's a good idea to hint at this before hand. Players seeking out an ogre mage happen upon an owlbear that's frozen solid, indicating it's already used up it's cone of cold. There's other things, like putting creatures in environments that are disadvantageous to them, or even acknowledging that even smart creatures sometimes make dumb decisions. At the most basic, you can simply reduce a creatures hit points. Say it got into a fight earlier, and hasn't had time to recover. It does recommend using this judiciously though.

So finally, we get to the meat of the book, the sample encounters.

A Familiar Situation (EL1)
Setup: A wizard commissioned a pet store to bring her 5 animals for her to choose from as her familiar and have them delivered to her dungeon. The staff member who delivered them to her lair tripped as he was setting things up in a dungeon room, and ended up releasing the animals. (specifically, a hawk, bat, cat, rat, and viper). He's now frantically trying to get them back in to their cages as the PC's encounter him.

You had one job.
Encounter: The book lists several methods of coaxing the animals back into their cages. The PCs can
deal nonlethal damage, use handle animal checks, wild empathy, or just be dicks and kill them. It mentiones that if the door to the room is left open, some of the animals may flee through it, leading to a humorous chase sequence. If I ran this, I'd be sorely tempted to play this song during the scene. Additionally, it comes with a reward of 100 gp.
Thoughts: As low level encounters go, this is actually a pretty good one. It introduces the players to the concept that not every encounter need be violent or have high stakes to be interesting.


Close Quarters (EL2)
Setup: The players encounter a room in a dungeon where they encounter a wyrmling green dragon. Beyond the room is a small tunnel.
Encounter: The dragon uses it's size to it's advantage, using cramped tunnels beyond the room to restrict it's enemies movements and giving it 3/4 cover. It forces the party to engage it it melee one at a time. If they don't go for it, it uses it's breath weapon repeatedly.
Thoughts: Not really much to say. It's a decent strategy, and the wyrmling has 37 hitpoints, so it's not going down easily.

Here Kitty Kitty (EL2)
Setup: A bunch of svirfneblin have a community that's guarded by a krenshar. One day it got married and moved away, and now like the controlling mother that it is, the gnome community wants their kitty back. There's some basic stuff about the community, and they're offer a reward of free lodging at the inn if they help.
Encounter: The krenshar couple can be tracked with a DC13 wilderness lore (this was 3.0 apparently) check. Once found, they are sleeping. if woken, they'll use their scare ability, but don't attack unless the PCs attack first. They can attempt to attack non-lethally, or use diplomacy on the male (the one who guarded the village) at a -4 penalty to bring it back to the village. There's a travellers pouch in the cave that contains 2pp, 13gp, 25sp, and a garnet worth 100gp.
Thoughts: So I had to look up what a krenshar even was. Other than that, it's nice to see encounters that don't have to be solved violently.

Temple of Draxion (EL2)
Setup: Apparently this was once a temple of Erythnul. It's mostly collapsed, though bandits have made it their home. They're trying to form a bigger gang, though they've only managed to bring in a few kobolds.
Encounter: After a few empty rooms and a free everburning torch a gong sounds as they come to the main room. One of the bandits replaced a crumbling statue of Erythnul with a giant wooden statue of a red dragon. Unfortunately, they don't know what a dragon looks like, and it comes off looking like a snake. Regardless, the statue is basically an attempt at a ruse. It has peepholes to look out from the inside. It has coal for generating smoke to surround itself in, can shoot alchemists fire, and can even move a little. Also has a built in bullhorn for loud voices.

Basically this.
It requires a spot check of DC15+1 per 10 feet of distance to see through the ruse. If the PC's approach, a mechanism is triggered releasing two flasks worth of alchemists fire in a 20 foot cone, simulating the "dragon" breathing fire. (1d6 damage, reflex dc15 half). Hilariously, the operator must succeed on the same save or the statue catches on fire.
Also more hilariously, the bandits actually have no idea what to do if the PCs surrender. If the pc's attack, they flee down a set of hidden stairs, taking the alchemist fire, and dropping caltrops. The Kobolds appear at this point keeping out of melee with ranged combat.
If captured, the kobolds claim they were duped by the bandits (they weren't). If the human bandits are captured they claim they're slaves of the kobolds (they aren't). Of note is that the bandits are a human expert and human commoner.
Thoughts: This sounds like a fun, creative, encounter to run, and there's plenty of opportunity for jokes here.

It's getting late now. I'll go over more challenges another day.

I remember this book, and yeah it was many good laughs at incredibly bad ideas for what players are supposed to be, but strangely less shitty advice than most books.

huh, actually a somewhat decent book thus far. should have been part of the DMG, don't remember that book giving advice how to build and run encounters that is useful to beginner MCs.

Looking forward to more invisible bridge segments of this book

Wiseman wrote: Anyways, the DM does a spit take, and hastily retcons that to never happen. This section is called the DM's Dirty Secret, and faps to the idea of the DM as omnipotent and omniscient, but is actually for realslies on the players side, while the players are regarded as complete idiots who can't survive without DM pity.

*cough* There is a degree of truth to this. In addition to the general accuracy that players will always do the unexpected, they are often possessed of a complete lack of self-preservation in certain situations, while displaying overdue caution in others. It can be...exasperating. And occasionally brutal.

Ancient History wrote:

Wiseman wrote: Anyways, the DM does a spit take, and hastily retcons that to never happen. This section is called the DM's Dirty Secret, and faps to the idea of the DM as omnipotent and omniscient, but is actually for realslies on the players side, while the players are regarded as complete idiots who can't survive without DM pity.

*cough* There is a degree of truth to this. In addition to the general accuracy that players will always do the unexpected, they are often possessed of a complete lack of self-preservation in certain situations, while displaying overdue caution in others. It can be...exasperating. And occasionally brutal.

Somewhere, there is a player who'd manage to get his pc killed in the "help me round up these potential familiars!" challenge.

Somewhere, there is a player who will assume that challenge is a ruse, and they're really all shapechanged demons.

If there's any justice in the world, these two players are in the same group and we will never have to deal with either of them.

I actually got players to chop their hands off and try to jam a fake Hand of Vectra onto the bleeding stump, so I can't really throw stones.

Also, even good GM's aren't perfect at communicating exactly what's important. Six people round a table are going to have six different reads on a situation, with different supporting assumptions... even the "invisible bridge" one could just be a guy assuming the description would've been different if the wizard were flying.

Like I always raise an eyebrow when GM's are all "I described a scene and all four of my group focused on the wrong details, man, they are so dumb because I am so good at describing things".

One idiot can easily convince three non-confrontational others to accept his interpretation of events with a single confident statement. The reaction of "I was pretty sure the wizard was just flying, because wizards can totally do that, but he seems pretty confident and I don't want to look stupid so I'll just roll with his interpretation" is at least as plausible as "all four players simultaneously and independently came to the conclusion of an invisible bridge due to sloppy description." That's not to say that your party unanimously coming to the wrong conclusion shouldn't be cause to pause and reflect on how you depicted things, but "my players talked themselves into doing something stupid" will sometimes be the correct conclusion to that reflection.

I find that players take details I don't expect them to to be more important than I had ever considered them to be. I usually just roll with it if I find it entertaining enough or at the very least immediately attempt to unfuck them if it is just a bit of miscommunication.

For instance, I rolled up a troll encounter early on in the Kingmaker campaign. I went with it, the players lost the fight and immediately retreated and came to the conclusion that "there are a bunch of fucking trolls out there in the wilderness somewhere and we're going to aim to make a military state as soon as possible to raise an army to totes genocide those bastards!". And that's what became the campaign's entire focus and the thing that got them through debates about how to govern, leadership, and (surprisingly) a long discussion about racism and how to handle turning a populace on to being more multicultural.

Now all instances aren't like this, but rarely do I have incidents like players misunderstanding a situation so profoundly that I have to undo what they've decided to do. I've had it happen before but usually the players that instigate it are new/stupid.

Ancient History wrote:

Wiseman wrote: Anyways, the DM does a spit take, and hastily retcons that to never happen. This section is called the DM's Dirty Secret, and faps to the idea of the DM as omnipotent and omniscient, but is actually for realslies on the players side, while the players are regarded as complete idiots who can't survive without DM pity.

*cough* There is a degree of truth to this. In addition to the general accuracy that players will always do the unexpected, they are often possessed of a complete lack of self-preservation in certain situations, while displaying overdue caution in others. It can be...exasperating. And occasionally brutal.

The reason for this is quite simple. Players and GMs aren't aren't necessarily thinking the same way. And since the world exists entirely as imagination and words, there are a lot of sensory cues that can't be conveyed by the GM and a lot of details about his actions that can't be conveyed by the player.

Realistically, the guy who assumes "invisible bridge" wouldn't just run across it. He'd walk up to the edge and test it with his foot, to see if it feels solid. And it wouldn't because its not there. No need for the GM to reverse time. But those aren't details that the player is going to remember to convey. If he thinks about them at all he'll assume that they're part of the action.

And, of course, there are dozens of sense details that would tell the player that there is no bridge, but the GM probably won't mention them, because they're extraneous and difficult to remember.

Likewise, the player can derive information from the GM's description that the GM did not intend to convey if the GM decides to use flowery prose rather than a simple list of facts.

Ancient History wrote:I actually got players to chop their hands off and try to jam a fake Hand of Vectra onto the bleeding stump, so I can't really throw stones.

Only a hand. You are quite merciful. It could have been a head.

Back.

Bugbear Fight Pit (EL3)

At first I thought this, but not really.
Setup: A bugbear out to rob people, challenges them to a one on one fight in an underground abandoned arena. Unsurprisingly, this is a trap, and once the fight starts, goblins come out of hiding on the balcony above and start raining javelins down at the victim. It doesn't really give a strict reason for the PC's to accept Jeeshank the Bugbears claims, but offers a few vague suggestions.
Encounter: There is no light in the entire area, as the bugbear and goblins rely on darkvision. Above the arena are 8 balconies where the goblins hide (base DC16 spot to notice them). The staircase the leading down to the arena has water dripping around it, making the arena quite slippery (balance DC5). Opposite the entrance is another gate operated by two sickly non-combatant goblins which the bugbear will use to try to escape if the attempt goes south. If the PC's don't want to enter the arena, the Bugbear attempts to bullrush or grapple them in then attacks. The goblins attack at this time, targeting Jeeshank's victim. If there are other PC's the goblins attack them.
Total rewards for this encounter are 45+8d12 GP, 60+24d6 SP, 24d6CP and a 100gp ruby, 3 75gp earrings, a gold tooth (eww...) worth 1gp and a masterwork dagger carved from a dragons fang (with "redfang" carved in draconic on the side.
Thoughts: Apart from not turning out to be hobgoblin fight club like i initially hoped, it's another interesting encounter. Also, it says that if the bugbear escapes he could become a recurring villain, gaining levels at the same rate as PCs.

No Loose Ends (EL3)
Setup: An ogre and his two orc minions lair near an underground river. The path to the river has humanoid tracks (wilderness lore DC11 to notice) The rope bridge crossing the river is rickety and looks like it could easily fall. Heck, the planks aren't even secured by anything. A search check (DC10) reveals that the rope bridge is actually a single rope looping around. This rope is actually a rope of climbing.
Encounter: One of the orcs stands in a cave mouth on the opposite side of the river, using his darkvision to see the PCs. If a spot check (Base DC17) is made, they see the orc. If they beat it by 5 or more, they see that he's holding one end of the rope. If they attempt to cross the bridge, the orc pulls it out from under them.

They fall 20 feet unless they make a reflex save (DC15), where they grab the falling rope, and slam into the wall, instead taking 1d6 damage. Climbing out of the river chasm is DC25.
After this, the other orc and the ogre attack, and it's a fairly standard fight.
Thoughts: Honestly, not a very interesting encounter. The use of the rope bridge trap is interesting, but it kinda peters out after that, or if the PCs don't even get caught in it.

Pool of Endless Froglings (EL3)
Setup: In a dungeon, the party happens across a puzzle that serves as the security system for the dungeon. In this room there are four large doors (that slide shut when the party enters). On each door is a column of four octogonal images of an animal (fish, lobster, whale and eel). The animal is in a different position each image. In the center of the room is a pool with four cyllinders, each containing a depiction of one of the animals.
Encounter: By entering the cylinders into the slots in the right shape, the doors will open. With intelligence checks, players can gain hints into the puzzle.
Also, after remaining in the room for a minute, tiny frog shaped water elementals begin to spawn infinitely from the central pool. They're not that threatening, save for the fact that when slain, they disperse into a poisonous cloud that deals 1 con damage (fort DC10 negates). Purify food and drink cast on the pool will prevent the froglings from spawning for 1 round, the same will happen if a vial of holy or unholy water is poured in. Targeted dispel magic supresses the spawning for 1d4 rounds (against CL5). Protection from evil prevents the froglings from making contact.
The reward is a masterwork dwarven axe, and 500gp.
Thoughts: This is a pretty interesting puzzle, though like all puzzles, it makes one question why it's there in the dungeon in the first place.

Capstan Water Trap (EL4)

I had to look up what a capstan was. Turns out I already knew what it was, just not what it was called.
Setup: A trap in a dungeon room that fills up the area with water.
Encounter: The room has two capstans in it. Turning them causes the doors to shut and water to begin flooding into the room from gargoyle mouths. Turning them again, causes the water to flow in twice as fast. Turning them a third time generates a darkness effect. Turning them a fourth time shuts off the water and causes it to drain. If both are in the third position, four small fiendish vipers are summoned. The gargoyles can be destroyed, though it will take destroying a lot of them (there are 23 gargoyles) to affect the water flow significantly.
Thoughts: Not much to it. It sort of runs the violation of common sense thing, where you have to do the thing that's causing the problem to solve the problem. Otherwise, not too impressive. If I ran this trap, id simply make it so that no matter how much the capstans are turned, it doesn't shut off. About 10 minutes after the room fills up, then it automatically drains.

Curse of Iron (EL4)
Setup: A door says: A GREAT TREASURE LIES HERE UNDER A CURSE AND ONLY THOSE MAY ENTER WHO PROVIDE THE CURE
Encounter: Each letter is pressable. The encounter is solved by pressing down the "S" in CURSE, turning it into the word CURE. Touching the wrong letter causes a shocking grasp effect.
Thoughts: Simple but effective. Not much more to say.

Mimic Madness (EL4 and up)
Various encounters involving mimics.
Weapon Rack (EL4)
Setup: A mimic imitates a weapon rack.
Encounter: The weapons are real, though the rack is a mimic.
Thoughts: Enticing trap, but otherwise meh.

Home Improvement (EL4)
Setup: Mimic pretends to be an intelligent piece of furniture, using it's ability to speak common. It tries to get the PC to take it home with it.
Encounter: Suggestions to have guests disappear from the PC's home. Perhaps the mimic attacks the PC in their sleep.

Thoughts: This assumes your players aren't murderhobos. If they aren't, this may be a strong motivation for them to become one. Still, there's plenty of potential for hijinks in this.

Mimic Mouth (EL5)
Setup: "Greetings! Step up and hear my riddle! Great treasure awaits! Step up one and all!"
Encounter: A Mimic attempts to bluff the PC's into falling into a pit trap, and then jumps in after them to eat them. If the PC doesn't fall for it, they instead attempt to use their adhesive grip to pull them in themselves.

Mimic Mirror (EL7)
Setup: Mimics in a 20ft. hallway opposite each other take the form of frames around mirrors of confusion (1/day, anyone who sees their reflection becomes confused, will DC16 negates).
Encounter: Once a PC is confused, the mimics attack. Breaking the mirrors deals an additional 1d6 damage to the mimics.


Overall, these don't feel as interesting as the earlier ones, even if they're actual challenges. Probably because most are traps instead of encounters. That's all for today folks!

I have to admit, I sorta used one of the challenges from this book in a Den game once. I'll tell you when we get there.

Gold cylinder?

Ancient History wrote:I have to admit, I sorta used one of the challenges from this book in a Den game once. I'll tell you when we get there.

Please link to it here when you do!