Given that it's a life-leeching artifact, another oldie-but-goodie would be to have all kinds of creepy undead versions of the original guardians running around. The displacer beast (as an example) who guarded the place eventually started falling victim to the artifact, and eventually its life was drained away and all that was left was this hideous undead horror. Heck, the designer of the place may have filled the whole thing up with living guardians, knowing that they would be killed and changed into undead soon so that he would never have to feed them.
Also, you could throw in some Jezra Wagner-like figures who will drain the life from the PCs because they just want to get warm. An added source of creepiness would be if these had previously been innocent people (possibly children, if you don't think that would be too over-the-top) who were dragged to this place until they froze to death, specifically so that they could rise from the dead and become undead guardians.
Just the first thoughts that come to mind.
"I'd really love a cup of tea, but it would be, like, blood or death or evil or something."
~Matteo Brazi, Borcan thief, Day 3 of Bleak House
I really don't mean to nitpick, but I think Ron is best served if we all understand the origins of this place of his. I see some great suggestions that nevertheless don't apply to this situation. If I read the original thread correctly, the Order of the Guardians built this labyrinth and populated it with whatever it might have. The lich is only a squatter. The OOG doesn't strike me as the type to sacrifice men or even monsters to the artifacts they are guarding on the pretext of making them more efficient.
Further, unless the dagger's abilities have changed, its life-draining is pretty weak, and it efinitely doesn't create undead.
Ron, please correct me if I'm wrong, and everyone else, please keep the ideas coming.
Hey everyone, first, thanks for the interest, and the great ideas! I'm at work right now, but when I have some time, I'll be going through them in more detail. I agree, the origins of the place are definately key in figuring out what's in it. DeepShadow's got the gist of it, the Order of the Guardians (CotM, VRA, ToDS, etc...) built it specifically to store the dagger and keep it from falling into the wrong hands, until such time as they could find a way to destroy it.
There is a monastery on the mountain, but the dungeon is further up the mountain, so as to keep the life-leeching taint away from the monks. I picture there is only one mountain pass that leads to the dungeon, and the monastery is built straddling it and blocking it with a portcullis. The monks figure, "anyone who tries to get the dagger must come through us first." Anyone wanting to circumvent the monastery is in for a rough climb. The monks aren't foolish enough to think it's impossible to bypass their roadblock, just very difficult.
Since the monks are Good, on the whole, they wouldn't want innocent or lost travellers to get killed by the dungeon, so the initial defenses would be more deterrent-like. The teleporting trap would be ideal here. "Turn around and leave and no one gets hurt." As you get further in, it's clear you're more determined and less innocent and then the painful traps come in, followed by the deadly ones. Also, since they are Good, that rules out the old "locking people in to die and become undead defenses" idea, as DeepShadow noted.
As for why the traps are only against the living:
1) Out of game: Because my story requires a construct to slip through
2) In game: Because despite being Guardians, the original monks who built it were also Lamordians, and put no stock in supernatural beings. They reluctantly accepted the existance of magic items, chalking them up to unexplained scientific phenomena. But golems and undead were beyond their experiences.
So the timeline is like this:
Long long ago: the kindly monks of the Order of the Guardians found the dagger and built a monastery to protect it. When the (somewhat subtle) life-leeching powers of the dagger were discovered, they built the labryrinth farther up the mountain to keep it safe, but away from them. (I just realized it's possible they built the monastery first at the top of the mountain, then converted it to a dungeon and retreated down the mountain to build the new monastery... this might have possibliities...)
long ago: a lich moved in. He somehow found out about the dagger and became fascinated with it. He basks in it's unholy aura, worshipping it. His plans are a mystery, even to me, but probably involve researching some powerful ritual involving the dagger that would give hime some form of power. (demilichdom? full lich-dom if he's a vassalich?) I figure whatever he's working on, it's the work of decades or centuries, so he's not a very active lich, he doesn't terrorize the local populace, he just wants to be left alone with his dagger. So he added more defenses than the puny ones the guardians put in place, including undead minions. I imagine he may need to leave from time to time to get spell components or books or something, but not often.
As for the dagger's powers, I wouldn't rule out creating undead, but it would be a long, slow process... It's possible that in the course of building the dungeon, the monks were exposed to the dagger's aura enough to become undead after death. But no record could remain of it, or it would be a "dead giveaway" that undead do exist, so the defenses would be bolstered to affect the undead too. Also, if undead Guardians did exist, there would have to be a reason why they didn't fight off the lich. (or die trying).
"We're realistic heroes. We're not here to save the world, just nudge the world into a better place."
If you have access to the Book of Crypts, perhaps a living wall would be appropriate.
Do us a favor Luv, Stick yer 'ead in a bucket a kick it!
So, gentlemen, that's how it is. Until Grissome.... resurfaces, I'm the acting president, and I say starting with this... anniversary festival, we run this city into the ground! :D
Yes, it would, and the Living Wall isn't just from the Book of Crypts. I can see the lich using one to block a major passageway. To make it tougher, perhaps he has a rival somewhere who has been sending minions after him, who have all been eaten by the wall.
Wow! Nice! Your adventure seems realistic so far and interesting. Just avoid the pitfall of the too-much realism.
As for what the lich plans to do with the dagger . . . Is it so important that you know? I believe that knowing that "plans to use it in a ritual, the result would bring sorrow to many people" is enough. Perhaps the lich has more than one plan about the dagger and it may have made it its phylactery.
"You truly see what a person is made of, when you begin to slice into them" - Semirhage
"I am not mad, no matter what you're implying." - Litalia My DMGuild work!
You still need help, Gonzoron? I can come up with more if you need!
Being who they are, I can see glyphs of warding all over the place, and those could be strategically placed to trigger things based on their attack form. A hold person glyph could be disasterous while climbing a wall or crawling through a tunnel, and of course these would not affect a construct or the undead. A fire glyph combined with flammable oil, or lightning glyphs underwater could be potent, though Vir could be affected by these differently (is he affected by lightning?).
Nice ideas with the glyphs, that's just the kind of thing I need, DS. Just got back from Gencon yesterday, so I'll be catching up on this thread soon. I managed to pick up both Traps & Treachery I & II for $11.50 (total!) and might have time for a skim through them... Thanks for the suggestion, kottakinge!
Living Walls are cool, but if I recall very deadly. I'd be wary of putting one in, lest I accidentally kill my whole party. I'll take another look at them when I get the chance, though. Thaks, Manofevil.
Thanks for the complement alhoon, and I agree, I don't need to figure out EVERY detail, but I just want a cohesive seeming whole, without too much random/out of place stuff. (remember the 6 armed statue from FoG where each arm gave a PC a random power or curse? That's the kind of thing I don't like...) Having the dagger be the lich's phylactery might be a good idea too, I have to review VRGttLich and see if it stirs up any ideas like that...
"We're realistic heroes. We're not here to save the world, just nudge the world into a better place."
as a nitpick I think I should add
A living wall would probably be the WORST possible defense this lich could add, if you have the rules, reread them.
First off because a livingwall won't attack anyone that doesn't attack it first, making it more a less of a defense and more of a meta-game punishment for players who shoot first and think later.
secondly because the "won't attack" rule has one exception; THE WALL'S CREATOR!!!. so unless the Bad Guy has a room he never wants to enter ever again the wall isn't even possible, and if he did it wouldn't be effective.
The bottum line is that a lich must be smart, he was a wizard! so he wouldn't create a deadly enemy inside his own home.
I know you said you didn't want to use golems in the origional construction of the dungeon, but it is possible that some of the higher-ups in the organization actually knew more about how the world actually works.
Golems as maze guardians can be very thematic and stylized. The first thing I thought of when I read your post was a large bronze golem crafted in the likeness of a minotaur slowly stomping through the maze. It might be beyond the ability of the party to destroy, making traveling through the maze more exciting as the party has to avoid the golem and solve the maze at the same time.
Flying monsters are also fun in mazes that don't have ceilings.
Actually, I was planning on using golems as guardians, particularly gargoyle golems, and maybe some others. When I said the original guardians didn't know about golems, what I really meant was intelligent golems. They probably knew how to create standard-issue D&D guardian golems, but a Dread Golem with a mind of its own would be considered a foolish dream.
"We're realistic heroes. We're not here to save the world, just nudge the world into a better place."
A couple of Gargoyle golems flying around above a maze with an open ceiling and very tall walls to discourage climbing would maze a reasonable challenge. Although if your party has acess to flying magic they can get around the maze pretty easily.
Maybe some golems marching around on top of the walls of the maze, so they can get at intruders on both sides of the wall.
Maybe an earth elemental in a maze made out of stone. It could freely pass through the walls and floor, while the party would have to go through the maze. Elementals are technically living, but alien enough that they might not be affected by the evil, life sucking artifact. (No blood/organs)
Poison gas traps are very good at targeting only living creatures, and aren't too uber-deadly. Non magic weapon traps (blades, arrows, spears, spikes shoot out of the wall, ect.) also wouldn't pose much of a threat to construct gaurdians with decent damage reduction.
A nasty trick could be that when the party removes the artifact from the center of the maze, they trip a mechanism that resets all the traps they already passed through. I also liked the idea of someone beat the party to the artifact but fell victim to one of the traps on the way out. When the party thinks they are done they find out that they have to search the entire maze for the corpse of whoever got there first. Maybe some minor divination magic could reveal that the artifact is still in the maze.
You could have stonegolems shaped like the walls of the maze moving around, blocking off and changed passage ways.
Incoporeal undead in mazes also is a nice challenge.
The artifact might have animated the remains of prior adventures as skeletons and zombies.
A partially flooded maze that you had to travel by small boat or raft would be different, and allow for some aquatic encounters (zombie fish!)
A chess themed maze filled with piece inspired construct might work, but it might be too tacky.
I am impressed by the general creativity demonstrated by you lot. That has got me thinking now....
If this dagger was perceived as such a dangerous weapon that it had to be concealed within a dungeon (good idea!), perhaps the original builders would create several rooms identical the room which holds the dagger. This would be employed to confuse would-be thieves.
The Lich in the dungeon, assuming he is powerful enough, could set up a teleport trap to have intruders sent to one of the other 'fake' rooms (at random?) when they enter. This is would be a variation on the teleport trap suggested by Van Owen earlier in this topic. Any of the usual trap deactivation methods could be used to disable it temporarily - or maybe there is a secret entrance...
If the effect is subtle enough, the players will only realise what has happened when they leave the room and find that they don't recognise the location anymore.
I'm not much of a dungeon designer, but the Vehrteig monster introduced in "Dark Tales and Disturbing Legends" would love hanging out in a place like your typical dungeon.
Maybe there should be a maiden for the PCs to rescue?
Yeah, you can't go wrong with decoy artifacts that are actually horrible traps.
The teleportation trap seems to me unlikely to be subtle enough for the party not to notice it's effects, unless it manages to affect them all at once. Otherwise the person in front of you suddenly vanishes when they step into the teleportation circle.
A main obstacle to realism is I can't think of a reason that the secret society would want access to the artifact. Wouldn't it be safer to just seal off the entire dungeon? Maybe they wanted to keep it safe until they learned how to destroy it. By the way, why does the party want to get the artifact?
Negative energy is another good way to only hurt living creatures. Undead are healed by it and constructs are unaffected by it.
Cold doesn't affect most undead either, skeletons at least, and magical cold won't hurt golems with spell immunity.
I think that's about all I can think of on the subject of "What fun things can you do with a maze"
If you have access to the Book of Crypts, perhaps a living wall would be appropriate.
