Villsvins Castle

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chiisu81
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Re: Villsvins Castle

Post by chiisu81 »

I really dig the premise for this. But I would maybe hide the hint/fact that a (blue) dragon lives there from the players. More along the lines of "I sent men in and they killed hobgoblins. But they heard something else, something further down." Yeah we all know the lower levels have bigger baddies, but it's more fun when we don't know what it is. :)
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chiisu81
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Re: Villsvins Castle

Post by chiisu81 »

Map links no longer work. Still wanted this in AA2?
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Solomoriah
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Re: Villsvins Castle

Post by Solomoriah »

Map link is fixed. I drew it before I redesigned the MapMatic +2 front end.

Regarding your previous suggestion... no, it's great the way it is. The blue dragon isn't the most dangerous part of the adventure. :D
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Re: Villsvins Castle

Post by Solomoriah »

So I've got this lair of hobgoblins. Let's build it:

First of all, I roll 4d8 for the number in the lair and get 23. Now that's combatant hobgoblins, not all hobgoblins, so I'm going to assume that's the contingent of males. I don't care to watch PCs slaughter noncombatant monsters, so I'll give them a way out... probably a trap door to the dungeon with a clear route to the escape tunnel/sally port.

One in six hobgoblins are leaders; this group is one shy of qualifying for four of them, but what the heck. One in twelve is a 5 HD chieftain; this time I'll round down and just have one of them. The lair isn't big enough to qualify for a bigger leader, so we'll leave it at that.

So we have 18 regulars, 4 leaders, and 1 chieftain. Let's mix things up a bit and throw some urgoblins in there. I didn't include any guidance as to numbers appearing when I created the urgoblins, leaving it up to the GM... hey, that's me. I'll replace three of them with urgoblins, and to make it interesting, one of them will have 3 HD instead of the usual 2.

Here's the lineup:

16 regular hobgoblins
2 regular urgoblins
3 hobgoblin leaders
1 urgoblin leader
1 chieftain

I'm going to place 20 females (I just rolled that) and 27 juveniles (5d8 because it sounded good) in the castle, as indicated above. The females will fight as regular hobgoblins (because why not?) but only in defense of the young, and will attempt to escape rather than risk their young being killed. I'll even say that the females will sacrifice themselves to allow the juveniles to escape.

Y'know what, that's not enough toughness. To the combatant males described above I will add some pets. How about 13 wolves? Sounds good to me.

A quick trip to the Tools page and I hit the treasure roller, giving it D and K as treasure types. I don't like the first one, so I try again a few times until I get this:

600 Copper Pieces
1600 Silver Pieces
2500 Gold Pieces
Greatsword +1/+2 vs. Spell Users
Map to Type A Treasure
Potion of Speed

That sword sounds like a good thing for the chieftain to wield... and a bonus against spell users is cool too. I plan to publish this, and I don't like putting treasure maps in published adventures, so I hit the treasure roller again and put in SCROLL and out pops:

Scroll of Three Magic-User Spells: Darkvision, Detect Magic, Wizard Lock

Finally, I'll randomize the coinage amounts with some d100 rolls. Here's the final result:

516 Copper Pieces
1598 Silver Pieces
2440 Gold Pieces
Greatsword +1/+2 vs. Spell Users
Potion of Speed
Scroll of Three Magic-User Spells: Darkvision, Detect Magic, Wizard Lock

Now to go put all that into a document... will upload something soon.
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Solomoriah
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Re: Villsvins Castle

Post by Solomoriah »

Let's do a little more.

A young adult male blue dragon lives on the upper level. Praxanimus is a beautiful monster, his blue metallic scales always polished to a high sheen, and he is vain and loves to brag.

He's age category 3, so 8 hit dice. Normally blue dragons of that age category only have a 20% chance of speech, but seriously, in my mind he's a braggart, so he must be able to speak. I will roll to see if he can cast spells (same percentage)... rolled a 41, so no, he doesn't cast spells.

I roll 8d8 and get 44; average is 36, so he's tough too. Good. The other stats are all standard, but of course he has a dragon's treasure. Let's start with a basic, random type H treasure:

4400 Copper Pieces
28000 Silver Pieces
11000 Electrum Pieces
4800 Platinum Pieces
Anklet 1500 gp
Belt 900 gp
Bowl 800 gp
Bowl 1400 gp
Bracelet 1000 gp
2 Bracelet 1100 gp
Brooch 300 gp
Brooch 1100 gp
2 Brooch 1400 gp
Brooch 1600 gp
Chain 500 gp
Choker 1500 gp
Clasp 1000 gp
Comb 1100 gp
Comb 1300 gp
Cup 900 gp
Earring 600 gp
Goblet 900 gp
Goblet 1100 gp
Knife 800 gp
Letter Opener 800 gp
Necklace 300 gp
Necklace 700 gp
Plate 700 gp
Sceptre 500 gp
Sceptre 700 gp
Map to 3 Magic Items
Potion of Delusion
Potion of Longevity
Stone Commanding Earth Elementals

Now, this dragon is age category 3, so not fully mature yet. Hatchlings have no treasure, and category 4 has "average" treasure, so I'm going to say that this one should have 66% of the normal treasure amount. Rather than figure it all out to the last copper piece (seriously, that's a lot of work), I'm just going to pare down the list a bit. Here's what I came up with, broken up by type of treasure:

4316 Copper Pieces
17435 Silver Pieces
7255 Electrum Pieces
2335 Platinum Pieces

Okay, in the money arena I left all the copper (why not?), 2/3 of the silver, 2/3 of the electrum, and half of the platinum. I then randomized the round amounts with d10's as I did with the hobgoblin treasure.

Now, for the bejeweled items. I decided here to just eliminate about a third of them, and just for good measure to pull the top valued third. There are 28 items total, so that's 9.24 I'm removing. Make it 10. Here's the result:

Anklet 1500 gp
Belt 900 gp
Bowl 800 gp
Bracelet 1000 gp
Brooch 300 gp
Chain 500 gp
Choker 1500 gp
Clasp 1000 gp
Comb 1100 gp
Cup 900 gp
Earring 600 gp
Goblet 900 gp
Knife 800 gp
Letter Opener 800 gp
Necklace 300 gp
Necklace 700 gp
Plate 700 gp
Sceptre 500 gp

I decided to remove items there were multiples of, rather than strictly taking the highest valued items.

Finally, the magic items. There are four of them, but one is actually a treasure map, and another is a Potion of Delusion (yay, a cursed item!) So I'll drop the treasure map and call that good.

But what sort of potion of delusion? The treasure roller says:

Potion of Speed

... and now I get an evil gleam in my eye.

Here's the full final dragon's treasure for Praxanimus:

4316 Copper Pieces
17435 Silver Pieces
7255 Electrum Pieces
2335 Platinum Pieces
Anklet 1500 gp
Belt 900 gp
Bowl 800 gp
Bracelet 1000 gp
Brooch 300 gp
Chain 500 gp
Choker 1500 gp
Clasp 1000 gp
Comb 1100 gp
Cup 900 gp
Earring 600 gp
Goblet 900 gp
Knife 800 gp
Letter Opener 800 gp
Necklace 300 gp
Necklace 700 gp
Plate 700 gp
Sceptre 500 gp
Potion of Speed
Potion of Delusion (appears to be identical to the Potion of Speed)
Stone Commanding Earth Elementals

Note the substitution. It just now occurred to me what fun it would be if there appeared to be two identical potions in a hoard but one was just delusion...

Well, I said that's the full final treasure, but that last magic item is bothering me. A Stone Commanding Earth Elementals is a pretty powerful item... this is looking a lot like an adventure for 3rd to 5th level characters, and perhaps I don't want to hand out toys quite that powerful. Let's hit the treasure roller one more time for a different MISC item:

Broom of Flying

Okay, THAT stays!

More later...
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Solomoriah
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Re: Villsvins Castle

Post by Solomoriah »

Posted the first release in the first post of this thread.

I've gone through and rolled up general room contents for the ground and upper levels. No dungeon map as yet, so no key either. The general contents will be changed a lot, though, so don't think they're graven in stone or anything.

I've decided to document my creative process with this one for the edification of anyone who has never really done this before. The actual process is not exactly what I wrote in the rulebook... it's an expansion and generalization of those rules.
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chiisu81
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Re: Villsvins Castle

Post by chiisu81 »

Solomoriah wrote:I've decided to document my creative process with this one for the edification of anyone who has never really done this before. The actual process is not exactly what I wrote in the rulebook... it's an expansion and generalization of those rules.
I like that you are! Between this and your RPG Primer, it's a nice refresher for those of us (extremely slowly but surely) working on our own creations.
YnasMidgard
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Re: Villsvins Castle

Post by YnasMidgard »

Care for some personalised treasure?

The sword from the hobgoblin lair:

Bane of Arcana (Greatsword +1/+2 vs. Spell Users): Forged in the depths of the Underworld, Ukathan the Red-Eye won many a battle wielding this azure blade. Realising his father would rather die than let him succeed, Ukathan's traitorous son, Ezekiel, stole the magical sword. Unfortunately, his carriage was attacked in the midst of the night. Neither him, nor the sword has been seen since.

Possible additional powers for that extra oomph:
* gleams in the presence of spell casters
* when a spell caster is hit, a random memorised spell is erased, its magic being channeled into the blade; the wielder of the sword may use it as if he had memorised the spell

I have some ideas for some of the items in the dragon's lair, as well, but I have to come back to those later.
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Solomoriah
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Re: Villsvins Castle

Post by Solomoriah »

Sounds good! When I get back to this adventure, I'll see if I can fit that in.
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chiisu81
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Re: Villsvins Castle

Post by chiisu81 »

How many PC's of what level range are you aiming for?
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