agamoto
Youth
Minister of the First Church of Cheesecake/Urak
Posts: 42
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Post by agamoto on Jul 2, 2009 0:04:05 GMT -5
Thanks for the input on my sodium room!! Any comments about the round room?
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Post by grond on Jul 2, 2009 8:33:32 GMT -5
In RP concept it's great, but the trouble is the super intelligent wizard, played by a less than witty role player, would struggle with it, while a smart player running a stone dumb barbarian could figure it out in a snap. While player intgelligence should be a factor, the characters should have a life of their own. My opinion is that the round room needs some sort of a check with a set DC. I think it sounds like wisdom, so a DC 21 wisdom check. As long as their are no enemies, a character could take 20, but doing so would take a long time, representing the philosophical challenge placed by the round room. As always, the DM can and should require RP interaction, but the dice and the character's defined abilities should be a major factor.
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agamoto
Youth
Minister of the First Church of Cheesecake/Urak
Posts: 42
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Post by agamoto on Jul 5, 2009 14:23:44 GMT -5
Thanks, great thought.
Um, no offence intended, but I play 2E and that sounds 3E, could I plaese get a 2E translation?
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Post by grond on Jul 5, 2009 18:06:21 GMT -5
A 2e wisdom check, I think, is still a D-20 die roll. Success is indicated if the roll is lower than the character's wisdom score. In other words, my fighter has a wisdom of 8. I make a wisdom check, I roll a 12 on a 20 sided die. I have failed the wisdom check. The wizard of the party, who has a wisdom of 17, makes a wisdom check. He rolls a 14. Because the 14 is lower than his wisdom, he succeeds. Taking 20 means that the character takes his time and goes about it in a manner that will acheive the best possible results. This can't be done under stress, and in the case of this wisdom check would represent a sort of revalation achieved by mulling the problem around in your head until you come up with the best possible answer. Since taking 20 in 3e is done by using the highest die roll result (a 20), which would guarentee failure at the check the way I described it, we have to do something different. Instead of using the highest result, we will use the lowest, a 1, since that will all but guarentee success. To make to make the check more challenging, you could have all players making wisdom checks for this purpose add 5 onto the die roll. Under these conditions, the wizard in my above example would fail, and a character with a 5 in wisdom (barely sentient) could never figure it out un-aided. I hope that this has helped you, and that you understood it. Also, no offense was taken, unless you meant by your words that 3E is somehow worth insulting. If that was your intent, then face my fiery wrath #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil# #FIREdevil#
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agamoto
Youth
Minister of the First Church of Cheesecake/Urak
Posts: 42
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Post by agamoto on Jul 8, 2009 15:29:26 GMT -5
Thanks for the clarification. What I meant by "no offence" was that most here are 3E or later, I still use 2E because I lack sufficient documentation for the others, and some might be offended by my asking for a translation.
Also, would a high intelligence (17 or higher) alow any modifiers? A really smart person would know that a circle is an infinite number of lines and has the same number of corners.
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Post by grond on Jul 8, 2009 16:12:49 GMT -5
I don't think so, I really didn't play 2e though so I'm not sure. I think the main benefit for a high intelligence like that is that on a basic check anything 17 or below would be a success (which would be 85% of the time). I don't think it would work the way strength and attack bonuses and dexterity and armor bonuses do.
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Steve
Braggart
THAT'S A STATISTICAL ANOMALY!
Posts: 148
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Post by Steve on Nov 19, 2009 17:16:24 GMT -5
I have to admit, I pilfered this idea from a friend, but it's brilliant.
The Exhaustion Chamber The group enters a 20ft by 20ft room. When the fourth person enters, the doors slam shut and disappear, leaving the room featureless except for a single lever in the center of the room. Spikes slide out of the ceiling and begin to descend at a rate that will reach the ground in about one minute. The group immediately becomes frantic, trying everything to get out (all efforts, including magic, attacking the walls, and searching for the doors, fail). Eventually, though, they have to try the lever. The lever resets the spikes to the top, but they continue to fall at the same rate immediately after. This can persist for hours upon hours, the group using up all their resources. Eventually, the players either give up or the characters will collapse from exhaustion. This is when the room reveals its true nature: About 4 feet from the ground, the spikes stop and recede and the doors reappear, unlocked. I recommend wearing kevlar under your T-shirt if you try this room in an offline group.
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agamoto
Youth
Minister of the First Church of Cheesecake/Urak
Posts: 42
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Post by agamoto on Nov 28, 2009 13:08:02 GMT -5
Insidious!!! I LIKE!
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agamoto
Youth
Minister of the First Church of Cheesecake/Urak
Posts: 42
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Post by agamoto on Nov 28, 2009 13:27:28 GMT -5
I just reread page 1, The one with the boulder poses a slight problem. If played with 3E I think psionics are treated as magic, but in 2E it is not, a simple disintegreat would take care of the rock. Unless you are on Athas, where psi's are common.
Of course I could be wrong about 3E, I don't know that much about it.
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Post by grond on Jan 7, 2010 20:46:29 GMT -5
Responding to agamoto's response to my boulder- While there are bound to be short sights, that is what play testing is for. The second time you run any complex trap, it is likely to have fewer kinks. You could solve the problem of annoying spell casters or psions by having a magical source somewhere playing aggrevating music that forces a concentration check, or just a howling wind. Generally, because of the great magical effort assumed to be made by the creators of this challenge, it is safe to say that they would have been prepared to frustrate psions as well as wizards. After all, while a psion might be fairly uncommon, a +5 colossal morning star is likely very rare as well. Another possible defense against magical shortcuts would be to have a contingency fog or solid fog spell activate when it "hears" verbal component to casting. The disintegrate would happen, but it would have a 50% miss chance and it would leave the party hampered and blinded. Like I said, this is supposed to really force characters to think hard about whether the thing they are looking for is worth the trouble, and it is supposed to make treasure more rewarding and memorable.
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Post by grond on Jan 7, 2010 21:14:44 GMT -5
Dueling doors-
Each door of this room (which has an arbitrary number of doors) has either a very detailed image of duelist of some form on it, or it has a manequin hanging from it bearing weapons and armor. At the bottom of each door is a possibly cryptic phrase explaining the nature of a challenge. Attempting to open any of the doors triggers the guardian to activate and challenge the person opening the door. The person attempting to open the door must defeat the guardian in its specific contest, at which it is competent, or the door simply will not open. Example; The party rogue begins to open a door with a figure armed as a swashbuckler on it. The base of the door says "In my hand is the key, I dare thee take it from me, then will I open". The guardian upon the door springs to life and announces the challenge. The party must successfully disarm the guardian to open the door. If the party destroys the guardian instead, then the door disappears and becomes sealed by a number of challenging magical effects. Alternatively, if the guardians are paintings, then the challenge could be carried out inside the painting, in extra-dimensional space, shunting a loser or a cheater out. The painted guardian could emerge from the painting to fight, in which case it would reappear in the painting if someone should improperly meet its challenge.
Sorts of guardians could include 1) a jester competing for crowd appeal (opposing charisma based checks) 2) a wrestler fighting to the pin 3) the duelist (above, duhh) 4) A wizard demanding a duel of spells (must hit with hostile spell without wizard countering it) 5) A magician with a card game (its slight of hand versus challenger's spot) 6) A "strong man" competing in feats of strength (destroy block of stone before it does) etc. The guardians are all constructs. Also, each one is fairly able to win its own challenge. Some consequences for losing the challenge could include being trapped the painting the guardian came out of, trapped in a painting somewhere further in the dungeon, turned into a lifeless straw replica, or a statue, or simply becoming frustrated. I picture this room an a victorian mansion owned by a moderately powerful conjurer, or at least trapped by this powerful conjurer. A macabre version would have the guardians as corpses (undead) and be managed by a necromancer.
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Post by grond on Jun 3, 2011 22:12:21 GMT -5
The Twisted Temple- This is a nightmare of an idea, I think, both for the players and the DM. At the end of a long cavern passage is a wide arched door, ten feet after which is a perfectly flat verticle wall. Around five feet above the ground, a largish urn appears to be glued or stuck to the, perpendicular to it. Resting within the urn is a set of torches. To the right of the archway the floor slopes up at a 45 degree angle and is paved with smooth flagstones, to the left of the archway the floor stops abruptly giving way to a square cut 10X10 opening plummetting straight out of sight. Along the walls are tracks of dull gray colored substance seeming embedded into the stone. The mechanics- The above described area is the entrance into a dungeon with subjective directional gravity, meaning that down is the way you most believe it to be, provided you can force yourself to actually believe it. A DC 15 wisdom check allows a character to "adjust" which way is down. The dull metal tracks are specially polarized to a pair of shoes and gloves that magically "stick" to the metal, allowing a less wise traveller access to some parts of this dungeon. The dungeon could be a special trick entrance to a stronghold, or one twist in a larger maze, or it could be an entire dungeon using these gravity mechanics. However, any large complex designed on this principal would be an awful lot of trouble to actually map out (for players and DM). Note, unattended objects experience gravity in the direction of the last being to touch them, allowing for some interesting traps like falling ceilings (the last thing to touch the block saw the cieling as down and the block has a handle within reach of a player). Additionally, the urn in the entryway, if touched, will fall, and could be filled with acid or something else that might hurt.
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