I'm trying to do a whole draft for the d20 adventure here, but its not completed. More later...NOTE: There are at least three ways into the lair (troll's, door from guano pit, and chasm canyon boat ramp).
Treasured Princess, a D20 adventure/dungeonhack for the smaller races of good alignment.
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Characters are gnomes, halflings, dwarves, or brownies. Humans and elves can be played, but they require a Ring of Halfling Size which reduces STR by 2 when worn. The Characters are Level 3 with enough magic or special advantages to raise them to ECL 6. It is highly reccomended to NOT give them means of warping the dungeon by spells.
This is a Thieves' Dungeon with traps, riddles, and some clever tactics by the foemen. Blindly charging is not reccomended for survival. However, instant death traps are largely avoided as well by the designer.
Area and History:
The Minyow Clans of Halflings have lived on their lands since the end of the Alustra War between the Light and Dark Elves which is generally regarded as the beginning of history. Two thousand years later, humans came to to what they called Minnow in the Great Ships, and one Captain Houslan went to the Halfling Clans and bought rights to some of the surface lands. And so the humans built the city Minnow.
Eventually this became the Dual Monarchy with the High and the Low Monarch. Each race (human and halfling) developed a royal family. The halflings royalty came from their most prominent clan, and the human royalty came from descendants of Captain Houslan. One race puts up a Low Monarch, and the other a High. Then the High dies or abdicates after twenty years, and the Low becomes High, with the other race nominating its Low.
With humans came many other races, but they don't get representation. There is a gnome college of experimentalists, and a dwarf mine (which led to the Deep Mine War, three hundred years ago, when orcs and kobolds tried to invade the Minyow area from underneath.)
Enough history...
The halfling princess, Merrybelle, had her father, the Low Monarch die but weeks before he was to ascend to the High Monarchy. Now, in but less than a day, she has to ascend to the Throne of the High Monarchy to claim her right, or see it be given to the humans. As part of her duties, she has to complete an audit of the Dual Monarchies' Treasurehouse. Its kind of like being a cashier at McDonalds, you count the money in the change box when they give it to you, add the money you're receiving, and at the end of the night, the manager counts it. Same thing here.
A: Table at the Brass Knob pub in Minnow. The adventuring party, the Purple Falcon Company of Bonded Adventurers, is on retainer to the Brogan, Halfling clan chief. They're waiting, and passing the time eating, and drinking the watered ale as it rains heavily outside. Yesterday, they had to clear a house out of huge rats which the owner thought were were-rats, but weren't. (CLUE.)
The Brogan comes in, breathless, and demands help. Sends them to the Treasurehouse Vault. The Princess Merrybelle has been abducted from the Vault.
Cut straight to the Vault without wasting time verifying your credentials to the guards as that serves no purpose. (It could be used to show anger between humans and halflings, but the two races get along well.)
Establish the scene in the vault. Three humans, the Lord Treasurer, and two knights are there, and so are two halflings. One is the Crownkeeper who tells them that they must rescue Merrybelle in five hours. Another is Magnus, the high priest Level 7 (who does not have ressurection magic and is the highest cleric in the area) who blesses them.
A box of scrolls was taken, and so was a Kingly Wallet. The Scrollbox holds nine scrolls, and at least two of the scrolls are death traps. The KW is what the High Monarch carries. It allows her to reach inside and directly draw from the Vault. Unfortunately, all the gold in the Vault is spelled so even if the gold is moved, the KW thief can still take the gold at will. It seems a bag of gold doubloons was taken as well.
There is a two foot wide by three foot tall hole in the wall.
B.
The narrow passage goes down 45 degrees for one story. The tripwire which releases a rock inset in the ceiling is tied and knotted with a bow to the ceiling is raised by a silent pressure pad downhill from it. It crushes the third or fourth in line, and then rolls downhill to possibly hurt anyone in front of him. Forty pound boulder, semi-spherical.
C.
Two stories down, a passageway down a tiny staircase two feet clearance to the left, and a spiral tube to the right. The tube traveller gets gilled by 1st level Kobold on level below him who is armed with a barbed spear. This blocks the passage.
A charmed by the Con Troll, and made invisible by a scroll Human F1/F1 above them, on the ramp down, kicks over a bucket of oil to make the ramp 'grease' with less DF than magic spell, and starts rolling down several twenty pound stone balls a turn.
The stone roller is a charmed 1st level Farmer/Fighter who got kidnapped by the kobolds from his fields outside the city.
D1.
The stairs are numerous and painted white and black, alternating. At the bottom of the stairs is a set of chopsticks set in the keyhole of a solid wooden door two feet tall. It refuses to open until the riddle is solved or until the PC's dismantle the door or until the PC's manage a very difficult pick lock skill.
The riddle solution is to dance 'Chopsticks' on the staircase as if the staircase were a piano.
D2. If the PC's are able to enter the room at the bottom of the tube, they find one Kobold F1 armed with one barbed spear and one Kebab Spear +1, and leather armor. One spear is a Kebab Spear without barbs +1. A Kebab spear makes those speared on it to be weightless, and pierces through the target so that another target can be speared on it. It may hold up to five humanoids before full. It also has +4 Fortitude saving vs. Fire for the spear, not for the spear-user.
The room is a small cavernous space three feet tall. On the far side is a Fat Man's Squeeze which requires two Dex Checks to get through if you're a Halfling, but one if you're a Gnome. As you squeeze and belly crawl through the mud of the eight inch high space that is twenty feet or so long, there is a 20% chance each turn that you may encounter a 1)Rat 2)Snake-non-poisonous 3)Snake-poisonous 4)Undead skeleton of a Rat 5)Shadowbane (a tiny one. Shadowbanes are made of animate shadow and desire lifeforce. They are immaterial and may only be banished by fire or magic weapons (they have 1 HP). They do 1d4 hp per turn if successful in latching on as Level 1 Fighter.) 6)All of the above.
D1-E.
The Barracks Room. Bunk beds (20) hold (10) sleeping kobolds. On the far side of the room, through the passage right between the kobolds, the central 'hallway' is a door. It needs to be picked, very quietly.
Next to the exit door are several coins embedded in the dirt partially. It looks as if someone were playing a game of using coins as darts to throw at a wall. A crudely cut target surrounds all the coins. The character can pry easily three silver coins from the clay wall of this cavern. Another one glints in the wall, and its harder, but it turns out to be gold. And there is another fully coverd in the clay in the wall.
If the pc removes this one, and scrapes off the clay which comes loose very easily, he will find that the coin is enchanted with Continual Light, thus waking up all the kobolds, and the pet something really nasty, a Porcuzard, which is sleeping under a bed on the floor in the far corner.
The kobolds will leap up,and tip over the bunk beds to use them as cover to throw javelins at the pc's. The beds will tend to pin the pc's in a confined area near the exit door. The exit needs to be picked or it needs to be riddled.
Riddle: What's up? There is a spinner with three spots for letters, and the letters run from 'no letter' to 'a' to 'z'. The answer is 'U' 'P' 'Null'.
D2-E.
After leaving Fat Man's Squeeze, the PC's enter a cross tunnel a foot and a half tall of dirt. To the left is a staircase that runs down. To the right is a very well-fitted door of wood with a lock and a riddle.
Riddle: What's good with BBQ sauce? The answer is eight letters with each having a spinner ranging from 'no letter' to 'a' to 'z'. The answer is 'halfling'.
D2-Ea.
Once the door is opened, it becomes immediately obvious why it was well-fitted. A reek that combines the worst features of sewage and manure gushes out. It acts as a minor stinking cloud spell while the door is opened or the players are in the Bat Guano Pit Room.
There is a five foot high cavern, about forty feet in diameter. The pit is about thirty-eight feet in diameter on the sides, and thirty on the two door ends. The floor goes down in ragged steps at a forty-five degree angle to the pit. On the left is a difficult climb around the pit, on the wall. On the right, its even more difficult.
Ropes are strung across the pit and they droop down to near the guano in the center. Large wooden buckets are obviously slid out to the miners in the water-filling from a crack in the right wall (which has turned the guano to sludge)
There are 2x the number of players of Kobold Miners. They are armed with tridents and small shields and guano shovels. As Miners, they are not +3 on Dex vs. the players while both are in the guano pit. They are skilled with their shovels, and skilled with guano flinging skill to blind the enemy.
There is a twenty foot deep sinkhole in the left quadrant of the pit where miners do not go.
Upon gaining the other side, there is another well-fitted door, and a ladder which goes down through steam from cracks in the walls to a T-passage. To the right is the Lair. To the left is the Kobold village after a winding passage, obviously heavily travelled, of two hundred yards. There are thirty warrior kobolds in the village.
Getting into the Lair is much like the passage from the boat ramp.
F1.
The Chasm Canyon. A fireballed and mostly destroyed wooden bridge leads across the canyon. The bridge will collapse on the return side when the last PC gets halfway across the bridge. He will have to hang on as it swings him down into the rock face. He then has to climb up 15-20 feet. This makes it more likely for the PC's to return by one of the 'water' routes.
To the left is a steep staircase going up. This leads to D2-E. If the pc's go across the bridge, they meet the Con Troll, an escaped prisoner from the Dark Elves. He lives alone in a cave on the far side which guards a passage down to the Dark Sorceror.
He has a gem grafted into his chest by the Dark Elves. If its broken, he dies. He also may be killed by ordinary methods. The gem allows him to charm twice per day. It also renders him more susceptible to charm with a -8 penalty to his resistance. The PC's may remove the gem and use it as a charm monster 2/day item.
At the back of his cave is a door which is locked and trapped. If the trap is triggered a spring-loaded grabber in the very large door handle with grab the thief's hand, and a Pit and the Pendulum style Pendulum will begin swinging back and forth, once per round. It will take three rounds before it reaches ten inches off the floor, and it will drop two inches every round after that. It is very heavy (four hundred pounds).
Beyond the door is a stone staircase with eight foot ceilings that curves down to the Dark Sorceror's Lair. From the base of the steps, you can see the 'dragon'.
F2.
Upon facing the Chasm Canyon, and the damaged bridge, and the staircase up to their left, they also notice a climbable cliff and a rickety ladder down the side of the cliff. Halfway down the cliff is a shack attached to the ladder with light coming out of cracks inside it.
If they choose to climb down the cliff face, they can. Its not difficult, and it is about forty feet down to thick, soft, sand. If they fall, they will yell, unless they make a Will save. Dwarves do not need to make this save.
F3.
Climbing down the loose, and shaky ladder attached to the cliff face by inadequate holds leads them right past the guard shack which is twenty feet above the sandy canyon floor. As you approach, you'll smell a sweet, meaty scent that leaves you feeling lightheaded. Upon getting closer you can hear kobold giggles and conversation between two kobolds. You can also clearly smell Magic Mushrooms being burnt which has an effect similar to marijuana on kobolds and halflings and for gnomes tends to make them stare dreamily at walls, and for dwarves does nothing at all.
This leads to a moral dilemna for the players. Kill two stoner kobolds who are close to helpless? Tie them up and risk them hitting the alarm bell? Sneak past?
F2. and F3 sequel.
One 'random' monster encounter. In the dry sand canyon, a giant scorpion is spotted ahead of the players. If they wait, or if they do a good enough job sneaking past (+10 because the scorp is not paying attention to them, its focused on something else), they can get by this problem with no loss of HP.
This is one of the ideas I want in the game. Not every encounter requires a fight.
If they wait, it will suddenly skitter up the canyon wall and leave (because its sensed the oncoming water.)
G.
In the Lair...
The entrance from the canyon is a wide boat ramp with a tied up boat on dry stone. The passageway is tall, but it narrows to only one at a time before looking out over a cavernous room with a ten foot stairs down to the floor and then a gentle rise to the center of the room. There is a corner of the pasageway you can hide behind, and from it the 'dragon' on the wall looks like a dragon on the ledge with internal heat. There is also the smell of vinegar so the adventurers should be thinking acidic dragon.
Hopefully, they waste their first attack on the 'dragon'.
The cavern is dimly lit.
High ceilings to allow humans full height.
Stone carving of dragon as furnace seemingly perched on ledge.
Bucket of vinegar and other nasty stuff being stirred by 0 level Kobold Potstirrer. Its part of a magical experiment to use bits of princess to make a very strong magical healing potion.
Princess turned to stone in princess crushing trap. I'm thinking a giant hammer on an axis set above the ground ten feet. Axis is fifteen feet from Princess. (hammer haft is twenty feet long, and hammer head is giant wooden mallet about eight feet tall and five feet through). There is a rope attached to the Princess that runs to the far end of the haft and into a locked box at the haft end.
Inside the locked box is a double set of gears (my mechanical skills are not up to this, but I'm sure its possible.) which if the rope is tightened will unhook the rope and drop the hammer, and if the rope is loosened, it will do the same.
Now the PC is going to think of one of two things. 1) Knock the Princess flying. 2)hold the rope taut, neither less nor more. 3)Brace the haft some other way. OK, three things.
There should be at least one trick for each easy way to stop the trap.
1)The Princess is surrounded by a glass box. This box is locked. The trick is, there is no way to unlock the lock. The lock is actually a trigger for the box. The box when triggered, explodes sending glass shards scything across the room, and knocking everyone down. One round passes, and then it rebuilds itself. To get thru, cut your way in, or eat the damage and do the dive tackle.
2) The ropes are banded in colors. They are actually stretchy snakes. Each snake is malicious, and if it sees or senses someone trying to meddle near it, it will unhook its jaws, attempt to bite with poison, and unleash the trap.
3)Not sure yet...
F2S3 Dark Sorceror by the name Wilthak. "I am Wilthak the Dragonblooded! You cannot defeat...err, what are you lot doing here?"
This is followed by a kobold leaping up from the table to light the oil channel afire which divides the room. other kobolds will flip over the table and two of them will hide behind it to use it as cover to throw javelins from behind it. One of the last two kobolds will run to stand with shield out in front of Wilthak. The last kobold will hide behind the barrel of vinagar stuff.
If enough PC's breach the wall of flames, the barrel will be tipped over and it will spread across a sizable section of floor. It is an acid. The room slopes downhill toward the entrances (the canyon entrance or the staircase from the troll's cave.)
The Kobolds are armed with two javelins, one black egg with one of ground glass OR one of the other of pepper juice, a net and a trident, and a small shield, and leather armor. The small shield is typically carried on the back.
Monster File:
The Kobolds....most are Level One warriors, and perhaps the squad leaders can be Level Two sorcerers, and the Dark Boss can be a Level Two warrior, Level Three Sorceror. I want to give the Kobolds clever enough tactics that they scare the party despite being inferior in strength.
Typical Kobold Javelinist
Typical Kobold Sorceror
Wilthak the Dragon-blooded
Controlled Human Knight in Plate Mail Armor with Longsword (non-magical)
Con Troll
Porcuzard aka Spiny-Back Lizard: Any attack on it provokes a reflex raising of its yard long needles all over its body. These attack with the same skill as the attacker, and do 1d4 + Str bonus of attacker plus Save vs. Fortitude for paralyzation of hand. There is obviously something magical about this counterattack. The creature may also bite with its incredibly septic mouth for 1d6 damage and save for Fortitude against disease. When not attacking, the needles serve as steel-reinforced leather equivalent. Its HP is 20. Its length of the main body is ten feet, and its tail is another ten feet, but the tail is too skinny to attack and not flexible enough to wrap around someone. It attacks with a bite as a 2nd level Fighter.
Crownkeeper (a Halfling) (ultimate villain who intends to kill all the candidates and then as of legal right take the throne himself. He is armed with a device to control humans. He lusts after the Crown and despises the 'immature idiots' or the Monarchs.)
