Dungeon Design 101

[Maxus]

After re-reading and against marveling at the Dungeonomicon, I've been thinking about some stuff.
First, Gygaxian traps get on my nerves. Frank and K are right. People are not going to put something like THIS (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0036.html) in their living room, even if they are really evil and don't want company.

I only really see traps being appropriate for tombs and the classic 'testing grounds', which made me realize there really are different kinds of dungeons. Here's a sketchy list...

1) The Fort. It's inhabited, and it's designed to be hard to invade. More emphasis on living enemies and less on traps, because those living enemies have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, too. Pretty much covered in the Dungeonomicon.

2) The Tomb. Not meant to be home to anyone except whatever undead or other monsters could be kept around as guardians, but your main threat is coming from the traps left behind to explain to people that they really don't want to try looting this place.

3) The Testing Grounds. Pure Legend of Zelda--it's meant to be a place that someone sufficiently clever and skilled and properly equipped can get through. It's also reasonable to have a nice balance between traps, monsters, and puzzles. After all, you only make a puzzle so it can be solved by someone clever, right?

The Testing Grounds is what's currently interesting me, if only because I've played so many Zelda games that designing one could easy be done by borrowing some ideas about how you move on.

Oh, and I found a spell, the effects of which are fun to consider. Aqeuous Air. http://www.planewalker.com/entry.php?in ... br][br]Yes, I really am trawling through Planewalker to see what I can find. It's a big site. I expect it to keep me busy for while.

[Koumei]

So the entirety of Raccoon City is one big testing ground. That makes sense. Because I always wondered why someone would build a city so that, to leave your own house, you needed a collection of six keys, each with their own individual puzzle to find.

[Maxus]

Actually, there's no telling why Racoon City was made as it was. I haven't even played any Resident Evil all the way through, but some of the stuff just makes me go, "...Why would people have actual puzzles in their city design?"

Really. Who actually sits down and decides they're going to, in your example, hide six keys and design an elaborate system of puzzles to restrict access to them?

I mean, yeah, if Mensa decided to found their own city or something to show off.

Traps are for keeping people out. Period.

But puzzles mean you want smart or otherwise worthy people getting in.

That's why I think of them as being part of the Testing Grounds concept. The person being tested proves his or her worth and gets something for making it through, whether it's divine approval or an item being guarded or access to some place. Whatever works in your campaign.

[Username17]

Here was a section that Keith and I wrote before we moved to other countries and signed up for constant school:

Location CRs: Quality and Quantity
"Why check the door? Maybe because there was a trap on every single other door in this entire complex?!"

To a limited extent an area can become more dangerous by making traps more ubiquitous. We say a "limited" extent because there is a profound sense of diminishing returns when the chance of encountering a trap equals one. Our classic example is the Citadel of Fire, the castle that is the home of the Efreeti King. It's on fire. Every square is on fire. Every door is on fire. And if you go there, you'll be on fire. To an extent, that means that the kind of dangerous area that you might have seen in the Lizard Temple when you were 4th level is now every square on the battlemat. That's… bad. But it's not unconquerably bad. It doesn't take a whole lot of Fire Resistance to survive in that kind of environment, and you don't have to be amazingly high level to get your grubby mitts on that kind of fire resistance. The fact that every single doorknob and chair is on fire in the Citadel essentially just means "Only Adventurers with Fire Resistance can Adventure here" or even "You must be at least as tall as this sign to attack the Citadel."

And the effect would be pretty much the same if you just had to wade through a moat of Fire. There are literally dozens of rooms in the Citadel of Fire that are on fire without this increasing the difficulty of your assault in any way. And that's OK. In fact, people would be slightly offended if large amounts of the Citadel of Fire were not in fact on fire, which would be the logical way to do it if you were handing out XP or construction costs on a per flaming room basis. It adds to the immersion to have some relatively homogenous fantasy environments.

Practically speaking, this means that by the time you have put in enough of a single type of difficulty that the players will not plausibly be able to complete their quest without taking appropriate precautions, the CR of the location shouldn't rise any more by adding more of the same difficulty. And that goes for more than just places being on fire. If there are enough pressure plates linked to arrows that the PCs aren't going to get through alive without the Rogue taking 20 on her Search checks, throwing in some more arrow traps (or tripwires, or anything else that the Rogue can find and bypass by just taking the time to search thoroughly) doesn't make the area any more difficult. A cave at the bottom of the sea isn't any more difficult when it's completely full of water than when it's mostly full of water – you still need water breathing just to get there.

WWMD? Disabling Traps.
"A paperclip can be a wondrous thing. More times than I can remember, one of these has gotten me out of a tight spot."

The Disable Device Skill is extremely powerful and amazingly bizarre. You don't need it to bypass a trap, there are dungeons full of Kuo Toans who have no more Disable Device than you do who bypass traps every day. What Disable Device does do is allow you to interfere with the mechanisms of mechanical and magical devices such that they don't get in your stuff when you don't have access to the special catch or magic word or whatever it is that you're supposed to have. In short, any fool can press an off switch or simply not step on an on-switch; Disable Device allows you to shut things down without access to those things.

Once you have found a trap with the Spot skill, it requires no skill roll at all to simply walk around it. If you discover a pressure plate, you can normally expect to simply step or jump over it without even making a Disable Device check. What Disable Device let's you do is set the plate to not trigger if you do walk on it. Often that's pretty pointless, but sometimes it's pretty useful, especially if you're up against a "trap" that is a siege defense or hostile spell (such that its normal deactivation trigger is far away). Remember however, that you can still activate traps by any of a number of means without actually being in harm's way. Summoned monsters, tossed barrels and the ubiquitous 10' pole have been used by generations of adventurers to activate traps from 10' or more away. Again, that totally works and requires zero ranks in disable device. However, sometimes you don't want a trap to go off at all or a trap can go off virtually limitless numbers of times – that's where disable device comes in.

So what counts as a device? Well… everything. Every mechanical or magical effect is a device. A Wall of Force is a device as is a giant stone block that is set to fall down on a foolish intruder who breaks a trip wire. A character with sufficient Disable Device can successfully turn off any magical effect or prevent virtually any cause and effect chain from occurring. You can stop an avalanche (DC 15) even after it has begun (DC 35). You can remove any permanent magic effect, even curses like Cause Blindness (DC 32). What you can't do is disable instantaneous effects. Flesh to Stone, therefore, is out of bounds for disabling, as is Wall of Stone. Sorry, once an instantaneous effect has gone off, there's nothing left to disable.

How does that work? I have no frickin idea. Rogues, Thief Acrobats, Ninjas, and Gadgeteers are capable of simply turning off Geasa and there's no physical explanation for how it is that they do it. The fact is that most of the devices in D&D are beyond my understanding. I don't know how a symbol of death works, I don't know how the magical energies stay in place for weeks or years until activated, so I don't know how a Ninja goes about making those magical energies dissipate harmlessly without entering the kill zone. I do know that he can do it, and if required I can make something up that sounds cool. That's a DM's job, after all.

• Item Spotlight: Bag of Flour
  The bag of flour can be used to disable any rune or sigil without meaningful risk. A magical rune can only detonate if it is uncovered. So if you throw some flour on it, the symbol can't ever explode and is now completely safe. You may want to put the flour on the end of a pole because moving your hand close to a rune may trigger it before the flour lands.

I live here: Setting off Traps.
"How did those gnolls run through that hallway if the whole thing collapses when people are in it?

The common conceit of trap placement is that they automatically go off against player characters who don't find them and automatically don't go off against Team Monster. Needless to say, that's ridiculous, and it actually harms the game when you implement it. While there are magical traps that are virtually guaranteed to go off against certain kinds of creatures and are nonetheless bypassable with something as simple as a command word, those are not PC/NPC selective. A command word bypassed Symbol will go off against any creature that doesn't say the magic word. That means that creatures without language capabilities like bears holding sharks or remorhazz will set those traps exactly as PCs who don't know any better would. It also means that any player character in the correct position can simply listen for the command words that Goblins use when safely passing over the danger zone and use it themselves. The base DC is only 15 so the challenge here is actually getting into position to observe enemies bypassing magical traps rather than the replication of the technique itself. The bypass words on magical symbols are pretty forgiving, they can be spoken by blink dogs, Sahuagin and Xorn without serious risk of misunderstanding.

But what of other traps? Mechanical traps go off mechanically, which means that to make them go off you have to do something to make it go off. And that means that there is a chance that even someone who doesn't have a clue what they are doing might simply happen to not set off the trap. Life is filled with Mr. McGoos and if there is any path to walk across an area without setting off a pressure plate there is a chance that people will happen to do so. And yet, if there isn't a way to move past a trap, there's a whole area that the residents of an area have to avoid altogether (or just be immune to the effect of the trap). Here are some common trap triggers:

• Opening a Door This is a common and fun one because unless someone decides to go through the wall (and sometimes even then) the trap will go off any time the door is opened. This can either be placed on "fake" doors that the occupants have no intention of ever opening, or it can be put on doors that are used frequently if there is a separate switch to deactivate the trap (be sure to get buzzed in). The important part about this is that an opening trigger will go off any time the door is opened normally. If you cut a hole in the middle of the door and squeeze through it, you're probably safe. After all, the door itself is acting as a switch in this case, methods of entrance that don't literally involve turning that hinge often don't involve pulling the switch.
  
• Tripping a Wire Strings and wires can be strung in walkways at anything from ground to eye level. A trip wire sets off a trap when it is broken or pulled upon, and thus won't go off at all if creatures shorter than the wire run underneath it (barring polearms and the like). A tripwire lower to the ground is more likely to be randomly stepped over than is a higher tripwire, but less likely to be seen. Several trip wires can be run in tandem across a walkway to virtually guaranty that a passerby will sever them, but in doing so they become a lot more visible. In general, a trip wire can go off 25% of the time when someone moves through its space and have a spot DC of 20, go off 50% of the time and have a spot DC of 15, or go off 100% of the time and have a spot DC of only 10. A trip wire can be severed without triggering the trap by holding both ends of the wire and slicing out the middle – but this requires a Disable Device check (DC 20). Failure triggers the trap. A tripwire can be triggered from range by throwing a chair at the problem, or with an arrow (against projectile weapons a tripwire has an AC of 13, against a larger object such as a barrel or a couple of cabbages tied together the AC is negligible).
  
• Pressing a Plate Bizarrely complex mechanisms can be hidden inside of walls and a pressure plate is as good a manner as any to get those mechanisms up and working. I seriously don't have any idea what the mechanical pieces under the floor look like, and neither do you. And that's generally OK. Mostly players won't respond to pressure plates by breaking the floor or walls open to get at the clockwork (though that is a viable option), mostly players will gamely accept whatever fate the pressure plate has in store for them. Without tearing up the scenery, characters can disable a pressure plate with a Disable Device check (generally DC 20, though more awesome plates exist). Pressure plates can be disguised as regular floor and are often quite difficult to spot (DC 16-30). A pressure plate can be as small as a single out of place brick or floorboard and may go off quite rarely (1-5 times out of 20 when someone moves through the space), this has the advantage that characters "in the know" can step over it (though enemies are presented with the same option). Alternately, pressure plates can cover entire squares, being triggered automatically if any creature heavier than a specific cutoff enters the square. In any case, characters can fly over a pressure plate or climb along the wall and simply never activate it.
  
• Getting Stabbed The old ones are the good ones, and many a trap has been simply to put pointy bits on areas that a character might step on, touch, or fall into. One can with exaggerated care simply step over such things, but in the heat of battle this may be pretty difficult. A single caltrop or blade is rather unlikely for someone to step on (a 1 on a d20 unless the character is crawling or otherwise stepping on more of the square than one might expect), and can be quite difficult to find unless one is specifically looking for it (DC 18 to spot). An area covered with spikes, caltrops, or blades is generally pretty obvious (DC 5 to spot), but it is generally assumed that anyone who moves into a covered square will step on one unless they take some sort of precautions. Caltrop covered terrain is difficult terrain, and characters who move through it at faster than a ½ speed walk are going to step on something they'd rather not unless they make a Reflex Save (DC 20). Characters standing in an area covered with caltrops or the like are denied their Dex bonus to AC unless they have 5 ranks in Balance or allow themselves to step on something every time they are attacked.
  
• Offending a Glyph Magical runes have at times been implied to have the power to determine a character's alignment, their level, their class, even what they've eaten recently. That's not good for anyone, and we cannot suggest that it be allowed. So here's what Runes do: first, they are constantly taking 20 on a Listen check. That means that you need to make a Stealth check DC 21 to sneak past one. It also means that they will generally speaking hear a command word to turn off or turn on. A Magic Rune can also have a detection spell imbedded in them, which last until the rune triggers. So a rune might be set to go off as soon as a source of "Good" was brought to within 10 feet of the Rune. A Rune might also simply be set to go off whenever any creature moves through its area while it is active (being activated and deactivated with command words set when the rune is). The parameters of a rune can be determined with a DC 20 + Spell Level Knowledge Arcana check.

Facing the Architect: The CR of Locations

When you adventure in a dangerous or exotic location you are essentially encountering the architect of that location. Each trap, obstacle, and danger of the region can be looked at as the contingent spells and attacks of the force that put that together. Sometimes a devious maze is engineered by a mad architect or fabricated by an elusive wizard and this is in fact literally true. Other times the Forest of Dread is just really dangerous on its own lookout and the only "architect" involved is just the DM.

The importance here is that an individual firetrap isn't really an encounter. It's a single attack, and a pretty ineffective one at that. When the wizard tries to soften you up with his explosive runes, that's a lot like the same wizard softening you up by conjuring some celestial badgers and sending them around the corner to engage your forces.

So while we definitely do not suggest doing something dumb like giving out XP for each trap bypassed, we do encourage you to consider the traps in an area to collectively be an opponent. An opponent that spends a lot of time hiding and taking opportunistic attacks. The Kobold Warrens, for example, have a number of trip wires set to launch crossbow bolts at anyone tall enough to pass through them. In an ideal world, the trip wires would be fairly visible, but in the heat of battle characters may feel compelled to chase after kobolds through the strings.

Structuring Encounters in a Day

Challenge Ratings have a real utility as a DM, but do not substitute for having a decent idea of what your party is capable of. We're going to go back to the Giant Scorpion a few times, because it's a very poignant example, but we could just as easily be talking about Fairies or Elementals. The Monstrous Scorpion comes in a variety of CRs based on its size and overall awesomeness. Don't be fooled: in reality a monstrous scorpion is essentially of identical difficulty regardless of size based entirely upon what the players are capable of tactically. The Monstrous Scorpion has no intelligence, no ranged attacks, and no interesting abilities – it's just a biological construct that happens to be exceptionally tough in its one-dimensional way. If you can simply get to longish range (or fly) and use ranged attacks, you win. It'll take a while, but you will win. It doesn't really matter what level you are, or how strong your ranged attacks are, victory will be yours. On the other hand, if the Scorpion is presented as a closet troll, it'll mess you right up.

What the CR grants you as DM then is a basic idea of how much "resources" an encounter is liable to use up. The Scorpion, for example, will use up a lot of arrows and not a small amount of time. It probably won't cause any damage if the players play it smart, but it will drag things out for a bit. Higher CRs will take a bite out of the arrows of higher level parties and so on. Still, the fact is that in no way will facing an appropriately CRed monster use up the 20% of your resources specified by the DMG. Not at any level. What kinds of resources will be used up will depend upon the types of opposition:

• Traps: Trapped locations of an appropriate CR are generally speaking time sinks more than anything else. At levels 1-6, the characters will normally Search regions that are known to contain traps, which reduces the character's speed through the area to 5' per 6 seconds (about ½ MPH or 0.9 KPH).
  
  So even though we're looking to completely toss the idea that players should actually get anything for necessarily killing "Ogre Thug #2" that doesn't mean that he shouldn't be there.
  
  As player characters become higher level they can take on more opposition. This does not necessarily mean they should be confronted with more powerful opposition, but they should certainly encounter more of it. A Lunar Ravager and a Sand Giant are basically two large sized men with funny colored skin and a bad attitude. The fact that one is massively more powerful than the other is a staple of the DnD system, but doesn't make an extremely exciting story. Having just looked up the stats of a Lunar Ravager and a Sand Giant I am confident that defeating a Sand Giant is a more difficult feat – though of course it is not a more impressive feat since as previously described both opponents are just 3 meter tall dudes with funny colored skin and a sword. Taking on 45 bug bears, which is something the stronger party could easily accomplish is however much more impressive than defeating 15 gnolls, as would be a light romp for the party who might otherwise face the Lunar Ravager.
  
  It is therefore important to note that parties should generally speaking not run into level appropriate opposition until quite late in an adventure. It's fine for a boss to be a True Fiend, Wizard, or Androsphix who is 2 or 3 CRs higher than the average character level in the party, but the vast majority of opposition should be several levels lower and a crap tonne more numerous than the PCs. This isn't just because this sort of thing keeps cleaving and fireballs as reasonably viable tactics, but because high level combats really do involve lots of participants on both sides of the combat kicked out of the battle from time to time and if there's only one enemy it gets really anticlimactic.
  
  What's that Noise?! Playing at Low Level
  
  There is a reason that the XP charts in the DMG completely fudge character levels 1-3. That is because those levels genuinely don't have a good consistent rubric for how powerful things are. There are damn few first level PCs that wouldn't go down if they took a lucky crit from a kobold's small light crossbow, and a first level Wizard has a pretty reasonable chance of taking down an orcish warrior by hitting him with a club. At first through third level, combat really is anyone's game and it is strongly advisable that the PCs outnumber their foes in the majority of confrontations at this level of conflict.
  
  The TPK (Total Party Kill) is a very real concern for 2nd level characters, because the success or failure of actions is so very random. A run of bad luck can quite plausibly wipe out even a well-played low level team of adventurers quite easily and it is recommended that DMs use discrete encounters at these low levels in order to minimize the effects of having characters getting dropped by allowing the remaining characters to consistently revive fallen comrades.
  
  The Rigors of Command: Playing at High Levels
  
  A high level party isn't really "adventuring" in the traditional sense any more, or at least they probably shouldn't be. Instead, they are playing a whole different game – a strategic game. Characters who make it into the Epic landscape can in fact become gods according to long standing D&D tradition. Along the way it behooves you to conquer and administer stuff in order to propel yourself to victory.
  
  More detail will be gone into in the Tome of Virtue, as the high level world is a really strange place. Almost all the source material from Arthur and Beowulf to Theseus and Ulysses involves characters who are somewhere between 1st and 6th level in D&D terminology. Stories which involve a 10th level adventure are extremely rare. Perseus killed Medusa (CR 7), and Bellerophon killed Chimera (also CR 7), but they both pulled some fancy equipment and cheesy tactics to pull it off (Bellerophon seriously had a flying mount that was faster than Chimera and shot arrows at the beast until it died).
  
  If one insists upon continuing with powerful characters in an adventuring role, there is a primary conceit which must be embraced: all adventures must be timed adventures. A 14th level Wizard can, with sufficient preparation, kill any challenge in D&D without exception. And while sitting around planning the perfect murder of a red dragon or the perfect heist of a major artifact is interesting as an intellectual exercise, there is no way that represents an "adventure" in the way we use that word to describe 4th level characters breaking into pantries and stabbing people in the face for money.

[angelfromanotherpin]

In the Batman/Resident Evil crossover, the Riddler is head of Umbrella Corp security. That explained an enormous amount.

There's also the dungeon which is 'trapped' because it's not designed to have actual people passing through it, like the deadly nightclubs from Frank's insanejournal; or that level in Portal which had been replaced by a live-fire course... designed for military androids.

That kind of scenario might involve raiding the body of a fallen bronze colossus for the extremely valuable components that serve as his organs, but it's full of sporadically activating mechanisms, random coolant releases, semi-autonomous 'cleaning' subunits, etc. etc.

[Maxus]

The Riddler in charge of security? Ye gods, that does explain a lot...


Okay, here's a question for Frank:

How many of these sections are you currently sitting on? As befits a smart (I hope) newbie, I've been using the Search button to look through the forum to see if any questions are already answered.

I've noticed you periodically break out some setting with amusing quotes and ideas and explanations that make sense and make me laugh. I appreciate that you just slapped another one up for us, but I again have to wonder:

How many of these things do you have?

[Judging__Eagle]

Check around for a thread called: "Unsorted Material"

It's on the first page or the next of IMHO.

[Maxus]

Many thanks.

[Judging__Eagle]

The link and no problem

[tzor]

First of all before we get into a discussion of bad and good dungeon design we need to go into the way back machine and remember who it was who started all this vile stuff and no it wasn't Gary Gygax, it was nullJack Benny. Actually it was best indicated in the Warner Brothers parody of the famous vault which included a number of deadly traps before reaching the vault alarm and the infamoud Ed the guard.

There are a lot of problems with dungeon design in the early 80's under 1E AD&D. When dungeons were literally drawn with walls literally the thickness of a #2 pencil on the map and when you could measure each room so exactly that a 5' secret room could easily be mapped by a hole in the map, most traps made equally little sense.

The basic principle of traps should be that of misdirection; commonly used in the tomb scenario. The principle is simple; most people want to rob from me, most people are morons, therefore traps should be disguised as the most obvious way to do something and the proper way should be known only by my closest friends. Such traps need to be resetable because the supply of morons is almost infinite.

Actually my favorite trap was always a room full of poison gas. I loved filling in a room with a green pencil.

[Koumei]

I like underwater mazes consisting of walls of force, with Aquatic Medusae floating around to piss people off with gaze attacks.

[Voss]

I've never been a fan of the 'testing grounds' concept. Oops, your students/aspiring heroes/chosen ones are all dead. So sorry, try again.

Mind you, I'd give a lot to rip the fucking 'chosen one' concept out of the genre. Stupid unimaginative designers...

[Neeek]

1194242357[/unixtime]]I've never been a fan of the 'testing grounds' concept. Oops, your students/aspiring heroes/chosen ones are all dead. So sorry, try again.

Mind you, I'd give a lot to rip the fucking 'chosen one' concept out of the genre. Stupid unimaginative designers...

I dunno. I think that the most interesting dungeons tend to be the "testing grounds" type.

[Koumei]

Agreed. As a supporter of Sigil Prep, I enjoy having testing grounds that are seriously testing grounds, complete with actual grading. It's a pass/fail system based on whether or not your hit points are positive at the end.

Best of all, they can seem as artificial as you want them to.

"Wait, okay, so that corridor had lots of arrow traps, with sponges soaked in honey instead of arrows. And the door activated a trap which dropped seeds and crushed nuts on us. And this room had a swarm of squirrels. And the room ahead has an acid pit, with acid sharks in it. Why?"

"Same reason the walls are wooden but painted to look like ancient stone: It's a test."

[Voss]

But who set them up and why? And what benefit do they get out of potentially killing the test-takers?

Plus... it doesn't really feel like it fits the genre. I could see a challenging but non-lethal test in a modern or sci-fi setting for some school or training program with powered-down weapons and traps, but in fantasy it feels rather stupid and forced.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Well, there's the old Deathtrap Dungeon scenario, which is basically reality television of lethal dungeon-crawling. You offer a big prize to anyone who can make it through your horrible doom-maze. Then you fill a stadium with ticket-holders to watch the hilarious misadventures.

The XCrawl setting pretty much took that idea and ran with it.

[Username17]

1194277296[/unixtime]]But who set them up and why? And what benefit do they get out of potentially killing the test-takers?

Plus... it doesn't really feel like it fits the genre. I could see a challenging but non-lethal test in a modern or sci-fi setting for some school or training program with powered-down weapons and traps, but in fantasy it feels rather stupid and forced.

In Sparta every child was required to go out and "live like a werewolf" for a year. They were required to live off the land or steal for food, and were allowed to kill slaves who got in their way. If they were caught during this period, they would be killed, and they were not allowed to talk to anyone.

This resulted in the citizens of Sparta being hard core mother fuckers with no regard for human life. If that's your goal, these sorts of things are somewhat reasonable.

-Username17

[Voss]

Which in no way involves going into a 'dungeon' full of traps to prove you are 'worthy' of the macguffin or being sent to find it...

[tzor]

Actually I can think of a number of reasons for testing ground dungeons, but in general the people who made them are either arrogant bastards or totally insane.

The idea is you take the massive mother of a prize. (The prize of Rassilon in the five doctors for example was immortality, there is a case of a Lankhmar story of this noble placing all his wealth in the center of the test dungeon.) The prize must be so powerful that everyone will have some degree of temptation to try to get it.

In effect the testing dungeon is like a venus fly trap. It is designed to eliminate any possible potential rival. The fact that no one can survive to the end also allows you to not actually have the prize in the first place. Or you could design the prize to in and of itself be a curse. (As was the case of Rassilon.)

[Maxus]

I've always thought the testing ground serves as, well, a test of the abilities of the participant, where the participant is agreed to have the abilities if they do pass.

It's more or less saying, "Well, you figured out the rotating bridge puzzle, deduced the correct mixture of solutions to melt the door, arrayed the mirrors correctly in the Room of Light, survived combat with three summoned fiends and an angel bound especially for the purpose, and made it down the Hallway of Dramatic Danger without taking a scratch. Okay, kid, you're in. You can claim the Weapon of Insertgodhere in the name of...er...your chosen deity."

To turn a joke into an example, the Weapon of Insertgodhere could be just that. A lump of shapeless material that if claimed in the name of a specific deity, turns into a peerless example of that deity's favored weapon. It also has the side effect of somehow increasing the god's appeal to mortals.

Naturally, it was squabbled over immediately after its creation, and after it passed between hands several times, eventually an agreement was reached. It'd be put in a demiplane that could be accessed at certain points and conditions, only in the same place twice at rare intervals, and whoever's followers claimed it, got to keep it until the follower who claimed it died. At which point it'd poof back to the Hall of Insertgodhere, to await the next mortal who'd claim it in the name of a deity.


And here you have a decent adventure. You could make it solo, or have the whole party cooperate, as along as they agree what deity they're claiming it for. And the payoff is a very shiny weapon that stands a decent chance of striking someone blind if they cast Detect Magic at it.


THAT is an appropriate situation for a testing ground. It's a series of arbitrary challenges, yes, but it's one that's more or less agreed to work for whatever the payoff is.

[Voss]

Eh. There isn't any reason why Insertgodhere wouldn't look at his followers, pick one who is worthy, and say, 'Here kid, take this ultimate manifestation of your faith'. Killing off a hundred of his faithful, but not quite as nimble, followers in the process of finding the worthy one doesn't make much sense.

And tzor, your example makes more sense if there isn't actually a prize. Or a test. The crazy fellow just sets up a situation that kills people off. CrazyGuy certainly doesn't want someone to actually benefit from the 'test'

[Maxus]

I'd say the various gods let it be known that the Weapon of Insertgodhere is out there, and it'd be worth a lot of afterlife cred if some mortal manages to pick it up, and then let the mortals do the finding, risking of lives, and claiming on their own. If you're a god, you know there will always be adventurers who worship you, so you figure you might as well let them know they can do stuff specifically for you.

After all, adventurers are all about doing stuff, slaying monsters, and surviving traps and puzzles. And since they're going to do that anyway, why not tell them about the Hall of Insertgodhere? Heck, it might be better if they do stuff in your service, because when they inevitably get killed, you, or your administrative assistants in charge of evaluating someone's case to see if they belong in the afterlife you provide, will be in a position to go, "Oh, hey, you're the one who claimed that artifact ten years ago! Because of that, the worshipper base increased by 7.23%! Come on in!"

[CalibronXXX]

1194295548[/unixtime]]Eh. There isn't any reason why Insertgodhere wouldn't look at his followers, pick one who is worthy, and say, 'Here kid, take this ultimate manifestation of your faith'. Killing off a hundred of his faithful, but not quite as nimble, followers in the process of finding the worthy one doesn't make much sense.

Because it doesn't belong to any single god, it's a powerful artifact somehow connected to the nature of Divinity itself. The gods themselves don't fight over because, while it's pretty shiny, it's not nearly shiny enough to merit the risk of fighting another, or several other, deities. So Maxus' scenario actually does make a good bit of sense.

[Crissa]

I always liked the traps that went off when the sigil wasn't provided... So, you paint your logo all over the dumb monsters and when the heros waltz in, they're wondering why all the traps mysteriously trigger when they kill the monsters...

Ahh, the structurally important bad guy ^-^

-Crissa

[SunTzuWarmaster]

Think of it like this: the gods themselves are scared of the power contained within the Weapon of Insertgodhere. The gods were not able to destroy the Weapon of Insertgodhere, and instead they did their best contain it's power such that no god may ever touch it.

However, the gods are greedy. Although the Hall of Insertgodhere was enchanted against the power of the gods themselves, a heroic worshipper would be able to slip past the first line of defenses (warded against gods) and wade into the Hall. No god knows more than one part of the Hall, and each god knows only one part.

There you go, it is built so that a worshipper of <insert god> will have one edge that others don't, but only one. Also, the adventurer isn't supposed to survive.