Paldemar and the Bronze Warders

Here we are, two thirds of the way through Thunderspire Labyrinth, and the module's Big Evil has yet to show himself. It's a sad state of affairs - so sad I've barely posted for a week (or at least that's my excuse).

It's time for that to change, though. When players return to the Seven-Pillared Hall after trouncing the Duergar, they learn that they've finally got someone's attention. That someone is Paldemar, master villain of Thunderspire, and he steals a page from Kalarel's book in order to set one of the lamest traps in the history of archvillainy.

I've spoken a little about Paldemar before. He's a Mage of Saruun - one of only two still residing in the Labyrinth - and he's gone rogue. He's dropped out of contact with his colleague Orontor and retired to a hidden structure called the Tower of Mysteries, where he's begun to dabble in the forbidden worship of Vecna, god of secrets and undeath.

Paldemar's plan is pretty straightforward mad sorceror stuff. He plans, firstly, to seize control of the Labyrinth. That's kind of a strange goal, seeing as the Labyrinth isn't exactly a palace of wealth and luxury. For the most part, if Paldemar wants to rule over crumbling minotaur ruins and spiderwebbed tunnels he's welcome to it. Of course, in typical villainous style he won't be content with Thunderspire, and plans to extend his domination to "surrounding lands".

The key to Paldemar's plan are the Bronze Warders. The Warders are giant bronze statues of minotaurs, presumably constructed by the original inhabitants of Saruun Khel and now left scattered throughout Thunderspire's tunnels and chambers. Each Warder is bound to a control amulet; when someone who possesses the right amulet speaks a certain set of mystic words, they become the master of the Warder and can command it to come to life and serve their bidding.

The Mages of Saruun, during their early explorations of the Labyrinth, uncovered several of the control amulets and used their magic to ferret out the control words for them (each amulet requires different words). The Warders now serve as the Mages' elite enforcers, called upon whenever the Mages need a show of overpowering force to keep the rabble in its place.

Paldemar's plan involves the creation of an "infernal machine" which will override the command amulets and bind every Warder everywhere in the Labyrinth to his will. With an army of giant bronze soldiers at his command he aims to wrest the Seven-Pillared Hall from his fellow Mages and rule the area with an iron fist. In a loose attempt to tie Thunderspire in with its eventual sequel, Paldemar's long term goals also include attempting to unlock the power of a vaguely-described "Pyramid of Shadows".

So what does Paldemar have to do with Hobgoblins and Duergar? Really, nothing. The module states that Paldemar has been urging the Bloodreavers on to "new heights of depravity" in an attempt to "sow the seeds of confusion and unrest" within the Labyrinth but exactly how this helps him is unclear. Certainly depravity seems to be business as usual in the Labyrinth. The same Mages who didn't blink at the Duergar running a slave-trading ring out of the Seven-Pillared Hall are unlikely to be worried by a handful of goblinoids getting up to mischief in an old minotaur temple. As for the Duergar, Paldemar doesn't seem to have any connection to them whatsoever.

In any case, despite the fact that the PCs have no dispute with Paldemar, haven't impacted on Paldemar's plans and indeed may not have even heard of Paldemar, Thunderspire's resident Mad Mage eventually decides that they constitute a threat to his plans and forms a half-baked plan to send them to an early grave.

The plan has more in common with a Saturday-morning cartoon than with the genius-level intellect that Paldemar supposedly represents. A kobold named Charrak delivers an unsigned letter to the players offering them some vague and mysterious assistance and asking for a meeting in an out-of-the-way cavern.

It's so obviously a trap that it's more than a little insulting. Paldemar could have at least made the effort to suggest a location that didn't scream "ambush" so loudly, or used a messenger that wasn't of a race famous for its evil and treachery. Plot-wise, it's important that players attend the ambush in order to learn more about Paldemar, so really at this point the module is relying entirely on the players' morbid curiosity to get them turning up for Paldemar's ham-fisted treachery.

Mechanically speaking, the encounter is an introduction to the Bronze Warders. Players who arrive at the meeting site get ambushed by one of the giant metal statues, along with a pair of tieflings who bombard the PCs with ranged attacks from a set of high ledges.

The battle teaches players the key attributes of the Warders - namely, that they have a lot of hit points, they resist damage, and they can knock enemies prone just by moving through their space. Taking one down is an epic process, and the Warders easily win their place as Thunderspire's most powerful and iconic enemies.

The Warder will eventually die, though, and once players mop up the tieflings they'll be treated to the roleplaying cliche of a damning note on their attackers' corpses. The note reveals Paldemar as the instigator of the attack, and goes on to suggest that Paldemar is in league with a group of gnolls who are even now engaged in nefarious business at a part of the Labryinth known as the "Well of Demons". Paldemar, always helpful, provides a map.

Horrifyingly generic ambush aside, the introduction of Paldemar marks the beginning of the "good part" of Thunderspire Labyrinth, so after a quick look tomorrow at the results of the last Eleven Foot Poll we'll get started on the Well and the memorable set-pieces it's home to.

Improvements:

[1] Paldemar may not be introduced until late in the module, but that doesn't mean his plan must be a similar slow-starter. Show off the Bronze Warders early; let the players see Orontor using one to break up a fight, and then highlight more of these giant metal hulks tucked away throughout the Labyrinth - at the entrance to the Chamber of Eyes, for example, or gathering dust in a Duergar storeroom. Paldemar's intention to activate all the Warders should feel epic, and the more of them you've shown off, and the more locations you'e shown them in, the more effective that's going to be when players learn about it - and possibly see it happen.

Murkelmor

There are two ways to get to the Slave Pits; one involves taking the passage through the wights and the empty crypts to reach the Slave Pits through a secret door.

The other involves fighting the ogre at the south gate and then stumbling into the chambers of Murkelmor, commander of the Horned Hold.

It's interesting that you can completely bypass the Horned Hold's "boss fight" - and, in fact, my players did, so I've got no direct experience of how this battle plays out. (That worked out fine, though, as it allowed me to keep Murkelmor around for a role in my substantially modified finale to the module.)

Presuming that you actually run this encounter, though, Murkelmor's a bit of a beast. He's a level 7 elite, with the hit points to match, some absolutely savage at-will powers and a rechargeable heal that can be applied to either himself or his allies.

Once again, though, having a name doesn't make Murkelmor a character. He gets a couple of lines of textbook villain rant when the players breach his room, and then enters battle. This is theoretically the climax of the Horned Hold, but the players can't be invested in defeating this guy because they may well have never heard his name prior to getting here. At the point where players run this encounter, they've got a more meaningful relationship with Brugg than they do with any of the Duergar of the Hold.

Just to make absolutely sure that this isn't a satisfying showdown, it turns out Murkelmor is a runner. If he starts losing, he'll use a secret door to flee to the slave pits, and then double back looking for allies through the rest of the Hold. The dramatic clash of wills teased when the players first enter can devolve into a tedious running battle through a series of rooms they've already cleared.

Improvements:

[1] Forget about the secret door and forget about Murkelmor fleeing. There's nothing he'll find outside this chamber that'll be more satisfying for players than seeing him get beat down where he stands.

[2] Give Murkelmor the chance to show off either his strength or his villainy prior to the battle. Possibly have him visit the Seven-Pillared Hall and throw his weight around before players start the Hold. Maybe have him in the process of murdering one of the captives when the PCs burst in on him. At the very least have the other Duergar tell the players how scary he is. There's just no fun in defeating someone you've never heard of.

The Slave Pits

NOTE: Sorry about the lateness; Blogger seems to be having trouble with scheduled posts lately. Any solutions appreciated!

The Slave Pits is an important encounter, but there's not a lot to say about it.

This is, in a way, the culmination of the Horned Hold. The room holds three pits, once intended as cisterns. One is still filled with water, but the other two have been emptied out to serve as makeshift slave pens. The captives that the players have been searching for ever since they came to Thunderspire are chained up within the pits.

All the captives? No; two of them are missing, sold onwards to a band of rogue gnolls. The goalposts have moved again, and the PCs are going to be dragged by their nose to yet another dungeon to find the last slaves.

But before the players can start planning their next move they need to survive this encounter. The slaves are guarded by a group of Duergar and a couple of Spined Devils.

The Spined Devils are awkward. Sure, the Grimmerzhul Duergar are aligned (as we'll shortly discover) with Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine Hells, and sure, I guess they can summon up some devil guards. That said, one wonders about a Duergar outpost that uses extraplanar monstrosities to guard its helpless prisoners while leaving a gaping hole in a critical line of internal defence. The real reason they're here, of course, is not for reasons of flavour but simply to provide some variation to the rotation of Duergar we've been seeing since we got to the Hold.

Once we've all suspended our disbelief and accepted the Devils, they actually work quite well here. They fly, which lets them hover above the slave pits and avoid melee. They provide a sense of accomplishment to reaching what should, by all rights, be a rather anticlimactic jail cell at the rear of the fortress.

On the other hand, once everyone stops being impressed by seeing their first Devils, it's all a little underwhelming. The Devils are backed up by only three Duergar; with no option to engage the Devils in melee, the party will swarm the dwarves and neuter them before they can do anything memorable. It's then a simple matter of picking off the Devils from range (providing the party can't immobilise them or otherwise put paid to their flight). The encounter does PCs an accidental favour by forcing them to focus fire.

Questions:

[1] The captives include Gru, "a goblin who was sold by his fellow Bloodreavers to the Duergar." Gru "can provide no useful information about the Horned Hold or the fate of the other two slaves", and he's not foreshadowed during the players' earlier visit to the Chamber of Eyes. What is this oddly specific named NPC doing here? Is he an attempt to replicate sidekick characters such as Splug or Meepo from other modules? Or is he the remnant of a layer of detail that hasn't made it into the final adventure?

Endowment Effect

Thunderspire Labyrinth must have been getting sick of Duergar (I know I was) because suddenly we get a Ruined Chapel full of wights.

This is the Horned Hold's "secret passageway". Once players have reached the western guard post, they can choose to come here via a neglected and disused corridor as an alternative to fighting through orcs, ogres, and a very grumpy paladin of Asmodeus.

The Duergar apparently avoid this area because they're too lazy to clear out the undead that infest it. The undead in question are wights, described here as "long dead human warriors in tattered black mail".

This, of course, doesn't make a lick of sense. In case we've somehow forgotten, the Horned Hold used to be a minotaur fortress. More recently, it's been run by Duergar. How armed undead humans managed to make their way to this single room of the complex is a mystery mortal minds were not meant to solve. The obvious improvement is to make the creatures here either Duergar wights (meh) or minotaur wights (highly awesome).

Players of previous editions know wights as monsters to avoid. That's because of their energy drain, also known as "level drain". That is to say, by merely touching you they could strip you of a character level. Recovering that level by any means other than re-acquiring the XP called for one of several medium to high level cleric spells. Those are spells, naturally, that PCs don't get until many levels later.

The level drain was scary. It was a longstanding tradition. It was one of the memorable things about fighting undead.

But, importantly, it was bollocks. Losing things is not fun. We hate it. In fact, we hate it disproportionately.

In 1980 a man named Robert Thaler noted that, contrary to standard economic theory, people seemed to place a higher value on items that they own than an equivalent item that they didn't. That is to say, people would ask for more money to sell an item that they currently had than they would pay to buy an identical item. He called this the "endowment effect".

In 1990, Tversky and Kahneman went on to demonstrate this as a result of a specific form of cognitive bias called loss aversion. Humans, they argued, are essentially averse to loss. We find losses more distressing than equivalent failures to gain. We are much happier about missing the opportunity to gain $100 than we are about losing $100 we thought we had.

What does this mean for game design? It means that taking things away from players is a big stick. It is a disproportionately big stick. It means that people will make bad decisions when a loss is a possible consequence. It means that people will get irrationally upset when a feature or resource of their character is deleted.

You only need to look at the forums to see this. People hate having their favourite class nerfed. They're not nearly so worried about missing out on being buffed, though. People scream loudly about cancelled D&D Insider features they thought they were getting; they're not quite so vociferous in requesting additional features that haven't already been offered.

D&D 4th Edition has taken loss aversion to heart. Classic "progress eating" game mechanics have been dramatically changed. The Rust Monster, for example, no longer deprives players of thousands of gold worth of magical items without offering commensurate reward. Enemies with "weaken" powers no longer lower stats, and being raised from the dead won't permanently erase a point of Constitution.

And the wight, our feature monster here, doesn't drain levels. He instead knocks off his victim's healing surges. A horrifying permanent loss has been replaced by a temporary elimination of the PC's ability to regain hit points.

It's an improvement. I can tell you, I am absolutely never going to miss having one of my levels drained. That is an experience I am overjoyed to see in the past.

But at the same time, I kind of miss knowing that there were things out there that could steal levels. How are DMs going to terrify low level players now?

Poll Result: Mind Flayers

A day late and a dollar short; Tycho and Gabe at Penny Arcade have already declared open season on mind flayers. I'm coming in after the first shots have been fired, it seems.

I'm actually a bit blown away by the poll result; the good old illithid was my pick for victor but I'd expected the drow to be running a close second, lavender eyes flashing in the darkness. Possibly it's time for Bob Salvatore to start up a new series about a good-hearted mind flayer living in self-imposed exile, tortured by the brain-eating ways of his kin?

I'm a bit baffled by the two guys who voted for Derro (or possibly one guy on two computers). Really? Derro? I'd love to hear a compelling argument for their awesomeness; I've always considered them the also-rans in the evil dwarf marathon. I guess this is why we have polls; to establish that Kuo Toa are scientifically three times as popular as Derro, despite apparently not even having a Wikipedia page my incorrect spelling of their name.

But let's look at why the mind flayer wins.

Mind flayer and illithid are interchangeable terms; I'm not sure if they're used in connection with each other as far back as the mind flayer's original appearance in 1975 but certainly by the late 80s and the birth of AD&D 2nd Edition they're inseparably pinned together.

Mind flayers are notable for their humanoid appearance, topped by a squidlike head festooned with writhing tentacles. These tentacles burrow into the brain of the mind flayer's victim to feast on the goo inside. They are deeply intelligent, often displaying genius-level cognition, and are naturally psionic, able to deploy a devastating mind blast from which they partly derive their name. In addition, many illithids are accomplished magic-users and they make use of cutting edge magicpunk-style technology (culminating in the titular extraplanar vessels of the Spelljammer campaign setting).

I think the reason the mind flayer has become so iconic is the way it straddles so many horror and fantasy tropes so effectively. Not only is an individual mind flayer a mastermind-level campaign villain, it comes from an entire civilisation of such beings. It's a deadly psion, able to turn your own thoughts against you, and at the same time it's a powerful archmage (some mind flayers ascend to undeath to become a ridiculously-named illithilich.) Its humanoid appearance lets it fit any number of regular character roles, but at the same time it's a Lovecraftian abomination, a Thing-That-Was-Not-Meant-To-Be. 4th Edition has mind flayers once again hailing from the Far Realm, which is in keeping with their whole Elder Gods flavour.

There's also the ongoing theme of penetration and invasion. The mind flayer is one of the horror genre's rape-surrogates. The illithid invades your thoughts; its tentacles drill into your brain; and its spawn, the repellant illithid larvae, grow to adulthood by entering a parasitic and ultimately lethal relationship with a living human host.

Mind flayers are a huge number of successful horror monsters rolled into one; and if the basic illithid doesn't completely meet your antagonist needs you can graft an illithid larvae onto any number of other monsters to create a ridiculous mind flayer hybrid - anything from the half-svirfneblin "mozgriken" to the beholder-illithid "mindwitness" through to the too-awesome-to-be-silly "brainstealer dragon".

Personally the image that stays with me of the mind flayer is of an illithid, its arms folded within its voluminous robes. It doesn't need to unfold its arms to kill you. It doesn't need to move. It controls your brain, and you walk towards it, and it feeds.

Man, I love those guys.

Duergar Workshop

The "delve format" of official 4th Edition adventures creates some odd quirks.

Under the delve format, each encounter is completely self-contained. All the information relevant to the encounter is printed on the same one or two pages, including battlemaps, terrain features, and the complete stat blocks of every monster that appears in the encounter. Very important encounters sometimes get a third page.

The method by which page counts are allocated appears to be this: the encounter is given the minimum amount of space required to accomodate its map and its monster stat blocks. Any remaining white space can then be filled with description of the encounter and additional flavour text.

The first encounter in the Horned Hold ("The Portcullis") had a small map and only used one type of monster ("Orc Beserker") with a very simple stat block. As a result, it fit on a single page. We got almost no information beyond the monster tactics and the terrain rules, turning the encounter into a puzzling and almost insurmountable roadblock with no hints on how players should overcome it.

By contrast, "Duergar Workshop" uses three enemy types, including a named Controller, so it just spills over onto a second page. The authors are left with a lot of white space to fill, so they use it to provide a pantheon of utterly irrelevant background to what's almost certainly going to be a tank-and-spank slugfest.

A little primer: this encounter is home to Urwol, Master Smith, commander of the northern mini-fortress (one of three minor buildings comprising the Horned Hold). Urwol's a Duergar, and as his title suggests he's responsible for forging the Horned Hold's weapons. As a Controller, he's got a whole pile of unique forge-themed powers, including the ability to heat opponent's weapons to hand-burning temperatures and unleash a trinity of vicious area-burst debuffs. Players might have to be reminded that Duergar are psychic dwarves in order to understand Urwol's near-wizardly manipulation of molten metal.

The encounter description includes a big heading, "Roleplaying Urwol", and three paragraphs of notes thereunder. We learn that Urwol is a bully, that he's impatient, that he has a hatred for surface-worlders and particularly dwarves. We hear about his attitudes to his superiors and to the Mages of Saruun. He's vain and confident and proud of his work.

That's all great. DMs should really take the time to pack as much of that into Urwol's first free action as possible, because that's all the time they're going to get between the players bursting into the room with the blood of orc guards still fresh on their weapons and the moment when they identify Urwol as a Controller and focus-fire on him. Urwol has 64 hitpoints and an AC of 20; an un-buffed level 6 Ranger hits him on a 9 and can kill him in two standard actions.

When, exactly, was Urwol intended to be roleplayed? Was it before players murdered the sentries in the next room? Or is he going to have a quick chat with the armed surfaceworlders after they come strolling into his supposedly secure military smithy? Players can get into melee with Urwol on the same action that they enter the smithy; it's entirely possible to eliminate him before he even acts.

In cramped quarters where the players are maintaining momentum from the last encounter, this is going to be a massacre. The Duergar have no room to manouever and they're going to be cut down like wheat by any competent party. It's a complete waste of a named opponent and an incredibly poorly-planned introduction to the Horned Hold.

On the plus side, Urwol had that scepter that Gendar was looking for. Quest XP, anyone?

Gendar the Drow

Gendar is the Seven-Pillared Hall's resident information broker. He's a dark elf, but, as is the fashion among drow these days, he's abandoned the Lolth-worshipping ways of his people in order to live a solitary existence as an exile.

Characters who took the "Trade Mission" fetch quest prior to coming to Thunderspire will find that Gendar is their quest destination; he'll take their delivery off their hands and introduce himself as a dealer in "old treasures from the Labyrinth". It's unclear whether that's code for "magic items", but it probably is, as there isn't otherwise an item-seller in the Hall.

Gendar's also got a side-quest for the PCs. It's entitled "Treasure Seeker", and it has Gendar tasking players to "recover" an ancient skull scepter from a Duergar in the Horned Hold. It's one of Thunderspire's better side-quests, because (a) it occurs somewhere that the players were going anyway, and (b) "skull scepters" are an item thematically linked to Orcus, which again ties players to what will eventually be the overaching plot of the module series.

I'm actually more than a little frustrated that my players missed Gendar entirely, and never picked up this quest.

The Forgotten Realms conversion for Thunderspire in Dungeon #156 fleshes out Gendar some more and gives him a handful of extra treasure-seeking sidequests. To be honest, Thunderspire didn't need more quest hooks - it's already got way more than the players can meaningfully interact with, given the pacing and XP budget - and these ones are particularly unhelpful, as they send the players to places that aren't detailed in either the module proper or the supplementary Dungeon Magazine material.

Finally, Gendar sells information. In return for big wads of money, or as payment for quests completed, Gendar will hand out information about the Labyrinth and its denizens. Exactly what information he might give out isn't detailed, but you can imagine it might include the back route through the Horned Hold, the location of the Court of Bone, the solution to the Proving Grounds, and maybe even Paldemar's surprising secret master.

Players who decide not to fight at the Trading Post, or who forget to leave some Duergar alive for interrogation, can pay Gendar in order to get set back on track towards the Horned Hold. Sacrificing money in order to not have to fight is the closest Thunderspire gets to a non-combat problem resolution, so anyone who goes this route should take a bit of time to bask in it before moving on into the next round of Duergar-killing.

Duergar

Duergar are silly.

There is the germ of a good idea lurking in the Duergar soul, but they are in essence, concept, and execution silly.

It starts with their name. Duergar (pronounced "DWER-gar") hardly rolls off the tongue; that's not really their fault, though. Although the Duergar mythos seems more akin to the Norse "Dvergar" (dark dwarves), the particular D&D spelling is lifted straight from the Northumberland dwarf-men of English mythology.

The silliness continues in their concept. Dark Elves, their spiritual kin, have a strong hook - they're backwards elves. They live in caves instead of forests, they worship evil instead of good, and they have dark skin instead of fair. Everyone can get on board with the idea of things having an evil twin.

Duergar don't quite make the cut, though. As "backwards dwarves" go, they're sub-par. Their "evilness" largely amounts to living underground, being relentlessly mercenary, and having a fundamentally grumpy disposition. An untrained observer might find it tough distinguishing them from the good version.

It gets worse. Time and subsequent editions have not been kind to the dark dwarves.

D&D 3.5 established that Duergar were naturally psionic. Possibly it was hoped that "evil psychic dwarves" was more memorable than mere "evil dwarves". Among the inherent powers of these psychic dwarves was the ability to increase their size, becoming giant dwarves. (As Order of the Stick points out, an oxymoron.) Evil psychic dwarves have many excellent roles in literature, all of them played by Michael J Anderson, but the ability to "hulk out" defeats any aspirations the psionic Duergar had to pulling off "creepy" rather than "ludicrous".

4th Edition delivers another savage beating to Duergar self-respect. Says Thunderspire Labyrinth: "Duergar beards and hair conceal long, stiff spines that carry a burning venom. They can pluck and hurl these quills like daggers."

Apparently so ubiquitous is this quill-plucking that the Monster Manual 2 defines it as their racial trait. Dragonborn breathe fire, Eladrin teleport and Duergar throw their hair at people. This is in addition to their psionics, apparently - the Duergar Champion is still kitted out with his super-growth hormones, and will not hesitate to deploy a Large miniature base the second he gets bloodied.

These, then, are the theme enemy for the second of Thunderspire Labyrinth's mini-dungeons. As players get ready to explore the Horned Hold, they'll be looking forward to a whole mess of fighting against size-changing mind-reading hair-throwing little people. The stuff epics are made of.

The Mages of Saruun

Thunderspire's Seven-Pillared Hall is governed by the Mages of Saruun, the arcane order who tamed this section of the Labyrinth half a generation ago.

They're clever enough that they've subverted several of the ancient minotaur magics to their own use, including the giant Bronze Warders that they use as guards, and they're powerful enough that both the Drow and Duergar are wary about angering them.

The mages have a secret, though - they're not actually present. Regardless of how many Mages might once have dwelt in the Labyrinth, only two remain. One, Paldemar, has gone rogue, and takes the role of Thunderspire's final villain. The other, Orontor, remains in the Hall, trying to keep things ticking over despite the absence of his peers.

The disappearance of the Mages is never explained. The module offers that Orontor "keeps the fact hidden that he is the only one of the Mages of Saruun currently in residence in the hall". It also seems that the Mages have been gone for some time, as Paldemar went rogue "while the Mages were away", and, as we'll eventually see, his schemes have been in motion for an extended period.

Where did the Mages go? The preamble to the Tower of Mysteries area suggests they "departed Thunderspire to engage in the various arcane studies that often occupy their time", although wherever they've gone it seems that Orontor can't contact them, as he ends up needing to hire adventurers to check up on Paldemar.

Given the central role of the Mages in Thunderspire's setting, it's baffling that we aren't told their whereabouts.

It may have been a smart choice, though. It's important that events in Thunderspire can only be solved by the players. The Mages represent a potential deus ex machina that the developers have wisely taken off-stage. Their uncertain whereabouts sends a clear signal that summoning them back to the mountain is not an option, and that whatever salvation is ultimately achieved will come through the direct action of the PCs.

Questions:

[1] Despite there being no current information on the Mages, the backstory gratuitously volunteers names for three of the order's founding members - Hasifir, Niame and Samazar. It's a suspicious abundance of information, given that the three aren't referenced anywhere else in the module. Are these an in-joke - possibly holdovers from one of the developers' previous campaigns?

Surina

Surina doesn't work.

The Thunderspire Labyrinth developers obviously think she does. They give her half a page and a stat block, making her the most fleshed-out character in the Seven-Pillared Hall. But as printed, she's just not a success.

Surina is a female Dragonborn Warlock, on something of a crusade. She's apparently the veteran of past campaigns against gnolls and suchlike in other parts of the world, and she's brought her war with her into the Seven-Pillared Hall. The module describes her as agitating for aggressive action against "the evil factions within the Hall" (the duergar and drow) and she's engaged in an attempt to turn the Hall into a kind of armed base-camp for military expeditions into the Underdark.

Her story arc is a traditional tale of corruption. She's letting her zealotry guide her into some fundamentally bad decisions involving violence and intolerance, and eventually someone's going to get hurt as a result. It doesn't help that she's picked up an Imp companion somewhere who's giving her some mischievously terrible advice.

That's a great character, but it just doesn't fit Thunderspire Labyrinth. The players can't get involved in her story. The module has the players scheduled to fight the Duergar in Act 2, before they head off to the Horned Hold. If they get into a fight early, they're going to significantly complicate things later, and when it is time to take on the dwarves they don't need any encouragement.

On the flip side, the players aren't likely to want to stop her, either. She's right. The Duergar and Drow are vile, malevolent slavers who bring pain and misery to everyone they meet. If Surina announces an intention to declare war on the entire Underdark, the best the players can do is pat her on the back and say, "Go get 'em, tiger!"

Much like Brugg, Surina is ultimately an accessory character - to be used or ignored as your particular game demands - but the problem really is that she has an arc. If you want her to help the players when they attack the Duergar, or confront the players if they get too friendly with the bad guys, then it really works best if you introduce her early. On the other hand, if you do introduce her early, you're in danger of your players jumping straight on her Duergar-slaying bandwagon the moment they meet her and picking a fight they're not ready to win.

This is the problem with the Obvious Questgiver model of adventure design. Both Keep on the Shadowfell and Thunderspire Labyrinth are replete with random strangers who have tasks they'd like someone to do. So when a basically well-intentioned Dragonborn idly mentions that it'd be swell if someone murdered the entire Duergar race, players are all too likely to obligingly note it in their quest logs.

Brugg

I love this guy.

Brugg is one of the many denizens of the Seven-Pillared Hall. He's the face of the non-magical enforcers employed by the Mages of Saruun. He's your typical brutish, aggressive ogre, and players will likely butt heads with him several times over the course of the adventure.

His job is to "keep the peace", "collect protection money", and "act as muscle for the mages". It doesn't require the DM to read far past his Chaotic Evil alignment and his devastating Greatclub attack to know that Brugg isn't going to be buddy-buddy with the players.

In the ordinary course of events, this is the kind of bully players would swat in the opening act as a warm-up to getting down to the real dungeoneering. However, his status as an employee of the Mages puts him in a unique position.

There's no question that the Seven-Pillared Hall only exists by the grace of the Mages of Saruun. It's fear of their power that keeps everyone in line, and lets halflings, tieflings, duergar and drow commingle without murdering each other in the street. If a little rough-and-ready hired help is the price of that peace, it's a price most of the Hall's merchants are willing to pay.

As such, Brugg is a nuisance that players are going to have to put up with. Getting physical with the ogre may well have dire Mage-related consequences, which means that the DM can play Brugg as loud and swelteringly obnoxious as he likes for much of the adventure before the big thug finally gets his comeuppance.

It's good drama. Brugg brings a sense of tension to the Hall, and helps define its rough-cut frontier charm. He's the physical face of the Mages' magical muscle, which (as we'll eventually see) is critical in maintaining the Mages as a real, active presence in the story.

It's also good roleplaying. When players see Brugg threatening their new friend Rendil, they're going to have to resolve the situation without combat. When Brugg demands an "entrance tax" from newcomers, they'll need to pay up or do some fast talking. Brugg is a first step towards reversing Keep's "all combat, all the time" game philosophy, and if he'd been followed up with more of the same, Thunderspire could have been a memorable and compelling adventure.

What Brugg represents, of course, is the rival. He's the perpetual challenge to the players' superiority, a challenge that can't simply be erased by violence. Ideally, there'd be a Brugg in every adventure of every campaign. He's a spur that keeps players striving to be better, in the knowledge that their every mistake lowers them to the level of the peanut gallery.

I think, though, that the best part of Brugg was getting to put the awesome ogre miniature above on the table.

Poll Result: Beholder

I've closed the current Eleven Foot Poll early because I'd accidentally set it to run for an absurdly long period. Luckily we've ended up with a clear winner, with the Beholder pulling ahead of the Gelatinous Cube over last night and claiming a whopping 34% of the vote.

You two guys who voted for the Carrion Crawler, I feel your pain.

The Beholder is a mainstay of Dungeons & Dragons right from its earliest editions. It's been a regular foe of mid-to-high-level adventurers, it's headlined multiple sets of the D&D Miniatures line, and it's been the star villain of its own computer game in Westwood's excellent Eye of the Beholder (and to a lesser extent the two mediocre sequels).

It's hard to get a handle on what makes the Beholder so memorable. Its it merely that it is an abomination, a thing-that-should-not-be? So too are the Galeb Duhr, the Xorn, the Gibbering Mouther and the Otyugh, and none of those creatures have reached the Beholder's level of celebrity.

Possibly some of what makes the Beholder memorable comes from the way we react to faces. We have a natural talent for identifying human faces; we are so naturally inclined to react to our own kind that we can see faces in the grills and headlights of cars, in the gnarls of tree trunks, and in the random scatter of rubbish. What's more, we react strongly to vulnerable faces. The reason we regard large eyes as "cute" is because we are reacting to a perceived newborn; the eyes of a baby are disproportionately large compared to its skull and it is only with growth that the proportions align to adult norms.

The Beholder subverts those expectations; it uses the shape of a human face, complete with "hair", to create something wholly aberrant and unnatural. Its large main eye and plethora of secondary orbs are not its vulnerability but its strength, able to fire beams that bring death or debilitation.

Part of the charm of the Beholder, too, is its versatility. Much like the Dragon, who is able to fly, claw, use breath weapons, spells, and a fear aura, the Beholder is not bound to any single tactic or method of offence. Each eye delivers a different yet potent attack, and an enemy of the "eye tyrant" can never be sure exactly what being hit by a Beholder's beam will do, other than have a surety that it will not be pleasant.

The move to 4th Edition has not left the Beholder unscathed. 4th Edition puts an end to "save vs death" effects. As a result, the Beholder can no longer kill or petrify enemies with a single attack. How does it compensate?

4th Edition offers Beholders in all flavours and level ranges, but the Beholder Eye Tyrant is the most archetypal version on offer. As a level 19 solo, this monstrosity is well suited to act as an endgame adversary for the Paragon Tier of play.

The Eye Tyrant packs 900 hit points, gets a free beam attack on each and every enemy that starts its turn within 5 squares of the monster, and delivers a further two beams on its turn, increasing to four when it gets bloodied.

The Death Ray's still there, but like most death effects it's now a track, with the target needing to fail two saves without passing one in order to actually die, and getting weaker along the way. The Petrification Ray works much the same. There's a Charm Ray that causes characters to make a basic attack against their allies, and a Sleep Ray that sends characters unconscious until they make a save.

The star of the show is the devastating Disintegration Ray, dealing 2d10+9 followed by an ongoing 2d20 untyped damage. Making your save against the ongoing doesn't end the effect - you'll just be dialling it down to 2d6 ongoing, requiring another save to escape completely.

Unfortunately like all 4th Edition solos the Beholder Eye Tyrant is disproportionately affected by debuffs. Despite being theoretically as tough as five equivalent level monsters, it still only takes one successful hit to leave it dazed, stunned, or paralysed. Wise DMs will give the Beholder favourable terrain and an array of minions to make sure it presents an appropriate challenge.

Still, the Beholder retains its charm and flavour in this new edition, and I'm personally looking forward to running my players into one at the first opportunity.

Corridors of the Cube

It seems like a safe bet the Gelatinous Cube will not be winning the current Eleven Foot Poll, so I'm going to go ahead and talk about it in the context of my favourite encounter in Keep on the Shadowfell, the Corridors of the Cube.

Ten foot square corridors are a staple of D&D. I love them dearly, but they don't make the slightest bit of sense. After all, excavation is hard, expensive work. It is not cost effective to make tunnels any wider or higher than they absolutely have to be.

Here in what is ostensibly a military keep you might have expected cramped passages, maybe four foot across, only just wide enough for two people to move quickly in opposite directions - but no, the builders have decided what is good enough for Gygax is good enough for them. You see it, too, in dwarven architecture, where the stubby little diggers have allowed themselves enough headroom to give each other piggy-back rides. Hell, the corridor in my house is only three feet wide, and it seems to get the job done.

One of the things I love about D&D is that these kind of mechanical cliches are not just prevalent, but so prevalent that entire ecologies have grown around them. In the Corridors of the Cube we encounter the Gelatinous Cube, a transparent ooze in the precise shape of the corridor. It is a ten foot invisible cube, with its edges exactly scraping the corridor walls.

Let's point out this isn't just a monster specifically evolved to live within a standard RPG dungeon. It's a creature specfically evolved to hunt adventurers in an RPG dungeon. One of the Cube's biggest advantages is its transparency. You can see right through it, which means that, like a particularly fine spiderweb, you can not even notice it's there until you've already walked into it.

That only works on humanoids. Creatures with heightened hearing - like, say, anything naturally living underground - won't be fooled by transparency, and will hear it coming a mile away. Anything that can see in the infra-red will notice its distinctive heat signature. It's only humanoids, with their reliance on traditional light sources and edge-recognition, who'll fall prey to its camouflage.

In Corridors of the Cube, we find the Cube in its natural habitat. Players enter from the north and then have the choice of heading east or west. The Cube waits in its alcove to the east, and won't be detected unless players specifically walk into that space. Once players have picked an end of the corridor to walk to, the Cube emerges and gets between them and the exit.

If they've gone east, the Cube will take a leisurely ooze down the corridor and engulf the players at its leisure. Once engulfed, players take 10 ongoing acid damage and become dazed, and have to make an escape check (Acrobatics vs Reflex or Athletics vs Fortitude) to get out. It can engulf multiple players on a single turn, and characters who escape end up back next to the Cube with their turn used up, so actually getting away from the thing is next to impossible.

If players go west, they're in for even more problems. The room to the southwest holds two Corruption Corpses, a disgusting kind of zombie that throws pieces of its own flesh from range and deals aura damage to anyone who gets close. The Cube will literally drive the players into the corpses, until they're taking the zombies' aura damage even while engulfed.

When players eventually triumph over Cube and Corpses, they get the chance to ransack the room to the east of the zombies. Here they find a collection of children's toys belonging to Ceinwein and Drystan Keegan. Reading between the lines, it's not hard to draw the conclusion that the two zombies outside are intended to be the resurrected bodies of Sir Keegan's murdered children, which potentially makes for a poignant, yet disturbing, moment.

Alternatively, if you're not keen on your players beating up child zombies, a second possibility is that the children still rest in their graves, and the zombies are the knights set to guard over their corpses. Although one has to again wonder where Sir Keegan found time to build coffins and set guards during his busy schedule of slaughtering every man, woman and child in the keep and then killing himself.

This is a nearly perfect encounter. It's mechanically sound, it's tactically interesting, it's clearly explained, it surprises the players without being unfair, it ties in to the backstory, and there's worthwhile treasure at the end of it in the form of a safewing amulet +1.

Questions:

[1] Where did the Cube come from? The door into the area has been hastily boarded up and marked "Closed", but it's unclear whether this is hobgoblin work or an act of the keep's original inhabitants. The ecology of the Gelatinous Cube is something that does not bear much scrutiny.

The Dead Walk

During a visit by the party back to base while clearing the keep's first level, they run into one of Keep on the Shadowfell's interlude encounters, entitled The Dead Walk.

The encounter starts with returning PCs discovering Winterhaven's gates securely locked. When they question the town guards, they learn that undead have been sighted in the village graveyard to the south, and despite the village having a 20-something strong militia, a barracks, a siege supplies warehouse, a reasonably competent local wizard and a Fighter's Guild, the town have decided to stick their heads in the sand and wait for the players to come and save them.

When the players bow to the inevitable "fight some undead in a graveyard" cliche, and head down to the cemetery to check things out, they find to nobody's particular surprise that the shambling skeletons in question are headed by Ninaran The Obvious Spy.

The Dead Walk takes place on another of Keep's legacy maps, recycled from an earlier Dungeons and Dragons product, which explains the odd setup. There's a large tomb in the west with some suspicious coffins, which has absolutely nothing to do with the encounter, and there's another of the glowing magical circles which Keep is so fond of. This time around the circle is described as powering the necromantic ritual which keeps all the skeletons fighting, and enterprising players can break the circle with some Religion or Arcana skill checks to bring a swift end to the encounter.

It's a stupid set-up, plot-wise. Having the skeletons milling aimlessly in the graveyard is as far from dynamic as you can imagine; there's not even any time pressure in the module as written - it's assumed the undead will stand around until the players get around to killing them. A more interesting scenario would have seen the undead assaulting the town directly, with players scrambling to save hapless NPCs from the ravening horde. Indeed, several of the Keep conversions floating around the internet make this precise change.

Also, it's unclear exactly what Ninaran is up to. A note found on Ninaran's body, when defeated, suggests this was a plan to kill off the players to stop them meddling in Kalarel's plans. Indeed, Ninaran, like almost every other enemy in the adventure, sets an ambush, having her skeletons burst from the ground once the adventurers reach the centre of the graveyard. It's not a particularly great plan, seeing as the players have already been told that the graveyard is full of undead, but at least she tries.

It's a pretty crappy attempt, though. She could have led her undead to the keep to reinforce Kalarel, or attacked the players while they were sleeping at the inn; you get the feeling that the only reason things play out as they do is because the developers had a "graveyard" map that they wanted to get some use out of.

Plot-related gripes aside, the encounter is tactically interesting. The players enter the graveyard from the gate in the northeast. The defender-type characters will probably proceed first, thus triggering the skeleton ambush and getting swarmed with undead minions. At this stage, arcane and divine characters are likely to make a bee-line for the magic circle, correctly guessing that it has something to do with what's going on.

I've seen this happen personally in two games, and write-ups online suggest that this kind of party split occurs fairly reliably. It's great, because the minions are fluff, dispatched in only a couple of rounds, and the real threat is the pair of Gravehounds waiting by the circle. As soon as the squishy undefended caster-types get near their destination, the Gravehounds strike, deploying a nasty bite attack that deals ongoing damage and knocks its target prone. Without defender support, it's likely the casters will spend most of the battle rolling around on the ground trying to keep the zombie wolves away from their throats. It's a sharp wake-up call to a party that may have grown complacent killing goblins, and it's a quick reminder of the importance of working as a team.

The low point of the battle, though, is Ninaran. Despite a reasonably meaty bow attack, she's poorly armoured and doesn't pack a lot of hit points. In the end result, she's less threatening than either Balgron or Irontooth. After what for Keep on the Shadowfell is a relatively long build-up to her big moment, she goes down in moments once any of the party's strikers get her in their sights.

The Living Dungeon

Keep on the Shadowfell assumes players will head back to Winterhaven for their extended rests, rather than camp in the dungeon. That's not a well-founded assumption, but at least it's a good intention. Regular trips back to Winterhaven help build it up as a home base, and allow for further interactions with its anaemic residents.

The problem comes, however, from mixing the "home base" philosophy with the idea of the "living dungeon".

The "living dungeon" theory of D&D suggests that dungeons and other monster lairs are not just static environments stocked with loot-bearing fleshsacks. The dungeon residents do not rest eternally in their designated rooms, twiddling their thumbs while waiting for heroes to come and slay them. Rather, they roam naturally throughout the available space, forming a kind of ecosystem, and respond intelligently to incursions into their domain. If players enter a dungeon, and then leave and come back later, they will find the denizens waiting for them and well-prepared.

Living dungeons can be great in a campaign that's tailored for them. This kind of realism can very effectively build immersion. However, 4th Edition is not well built for it, and in Keep on the Shadowfell in particular it would be a mistake to run the game this way.

Keep is presented in the "delve format" first pioneered by Wizards of the Coast late in the lifespan of D&D 3.5. Each encounter is set out over a double-page spread in the adventure booklet, with only the largest and most important encounters getting a third page. Each room is presented as a self-contained encounter, with the monsters for that room set out in full. It's a great format for easy DMing, as everything you need for the encounter is in one place, without requiring you to access the Monster Manual or flip back and forth between multiple pages. On the downside, it means many monsters are reprinted several times in a single adventure and comparitively little space is available for descriptive and roleplaying support.

This means that encounters really are linked to the physical space in which they're intended to take place. The geography of each encounter is as integral to its setting as the creatures which populate it.

Keep recommends that if players engage the goblins on the first level of the keep and then leave without finishing the rest, when they return they'll find the remaining goblins waiting at the stairwell ready to ambush them.

This is terrible advice; you're cheating players out of the much more interesting encounters in the Torture Chamber and Chieftain's Lair, while simultaneously making them replay the Goblin Guard Room, an encounter that they've already beaten once. Plus there's a good chance that "all the goblins at once" is an encounter significantly tougher than they can handle.

4th Edition encounters are, in general, carefully balanced affairs. Moving a group of monsters from one room to another or, worse, combining them with another encounter, is tempting a total party kill, and at best will be a frustrating experience for your players.

Speaking personally, the feeling of "clearing" a dungeon, room by room, is one of the more satisfying aspects of dungeoneering. It may not be realistic, strictly speaking, but when you look at gelatinous cubes sharing space with zombies, and ghouls just down the corridor from hobgoblins, there's already a certain suspension of disbelief necessary in accepting these deadly creatures living harmoniously in close proximity. A further abstraction is a worthwhile sacrifice.

Let the dungeon stay put. Let its malevolent residents twiddle their thumbs as they wait to be slain. It may not be realistic, but - and this is what's important - it's just more fun.

Sir Keegan's Tomb

Sir Keegan's Tomb is the climax of the first level of Keep on the Shadowfell. Keegan is the last commander of the keep, who went mad and slew his soldiers and his family. Here the players encounter his undead remains, and after a tense conversation, they are rededicated to their mission to defeat Kalarel and close the rift.

The room at first appears to be empty save for a single coffin; however, when players investigate the coffin or attempt to leave, the coffin pops open and Keegan's bones jump out. Keegan is initially suspicious of the intruders, and the players must complete a skill challenge to convince him of their good intentions.

If they fail, Keegan goes into combat mode, and as a level 4 solo brute he's a convincing challenge to a party who at this stage are presumably level 2. It turns out he has a "necromantic burst" power, for unknown reasons, which he can fire off every turn once he's bloodied for 2d6+3 damage against everyone within close burst 3. Ouch.

In the more likely event that the players pass the skill challenge (and with a reasonably generous GM, it would take some hard-headed players indeed to fudge it), Keegan will decide to place his trust in the players, at which point he becomes surprisingly chatty.

If you're playing the module as-written, this is the first chance players will get to learn the true history of the keep. In fact, it may even be the first time they've heard Keegan's name, as although the module spends a couple of pages telling the DM the guy's life story, it doesn't trouble to give the players the same scoop.

There are some valid criticisms to be levelled at Sir Keegan's tomb as a whole. For example, if Keegan slew all his men, and then came down into the crypts to die, who the hell built him a tomb? One poster on ENWorld.org offers the compelling vision of Keegan himself being the architect, post-death, and refers to him painstakingly crafting the crypt "with his cold dead hands".

Keegan rewards players who pass the skill challenge by giving them the undead-slaying longsword Aecris. This is a great moment. Like many players, I love named weapons, and it's even better when they have a history. Not only does Aecris trace its descent back to King Elidyr of the fallen Empire of Nerath, but it is also the very weapon with which Keegan struck down his family and those under his command. It's a tangible link to the campaign world that will stay with the players long after they leave the Keep.

It can fall flat though. In our group, Keegan's dramatic presentation of the sword was followed by a silence, and the players exchanging glances for long moments, until eventually someone asked, "So, does anyone here actually wield longswords?"

Luckily D&D is a world of inexplicable magic; when our fighter grasped the weapon's hilt, the blessing of Bahamut transmuted Aecris into a much more useful bastard sword. Praise Bahamut.

Grab... And Then What?

Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 was infamous for its esoteric and befuddling grappling rules. 4th Edition wisely makes grabbing your opponent something exceptionally simple, and the Crypt of Shadows encounter takes the chance to show it off.

Not to great effect, though.

The zombies in the Crypt of Shadows can attempt to grab the players. Their "zombie grab" is a +4 vs Fortitude melee attack; success immobilises the victim, and they can sustain the grab as a minor action. (Players can achieve the same effect with a Str vs Reflex attack.)

So what?

Immobilisation isn't paralysis; an immobilised character is merely prevented from taking move actions, and can still disembowel nearby zombies. In the unlikely event that some fancy swordwork is insufficient to fix the situation, you can escape a grab with a successful Athletics vs Fortitude or Acrobatics vs Reflex attack.

Grabbing is a tanking move; it pins the target into contact with the grabber and prevents them from going after more important enemies. In the Crypt of Shadows, there are no targets that are more important than others. Zombies who grab in this encounter are wasting an action.

This is a problem that has haunted roleplaying systems since the dawn of time, for one very simple reason. There is little reason to grapple an enemy if you are holding a weapon. If you are not holding a weapon, there is little reason to grapple an enemy rather than picking up an improvised weapon. In the unlikely event that unarmed combat actually occurs, there is no good reason not to resolve it using the normal combat rules.

The tanking uses of grabbing are interesting, but every class who is intended to tank has more effective ways of achieving this effect. A common theme is dealing damage as well as pinning the enemy. Players (but not zombies) may also drag a grabbed enemy up to half their speed with a further Str vs Fort attack, which might have some rare tactical use but is made mostly unhelpful by the sheer number of ways you can fail the attack or have your target escape before you reach your destination.

There is an example in a later encounter of the grab rules used well, as part of a monster special ability, but by and large, in an exception-based rule system, this is an exception we did not need to have.

Questions:

[1] Would the grab rules be substantially improved by allowing a grabber to deal their STR modifier in damage each time they apply or sustain the grab? Or does this just make it clearer that grabbing is an unnecessary exception to the regular combat rules?

Kruthik Lair

In my couple of games through Keep on the Shadowfell, I've never seen the Kruthik Lair played, either as a player or a DM. That's probably because it's an unappealing dead end tacked onto the back of the Maze of Caves. There's absolutely no reason to come here, and the general atmosphere conspires to subtly hint to the players that they're going the wrong way.

I've always felt that if you want to subtly hint that the players are going the wrong way, a brick wall barring their passage is more effective than making them fight bugs for 40 minutes, but clearly the writers of Keep are of a different persuasion. At least it's a reasonably decent encounter, if anyone ever finds it.

Kruthiks come from the long tradition of D&D monster design that involves taking two unpleasant animals and jamming them together. In this case, they're "six-limbed reptiles with insectlike traits", so a kind of ant-lizard, if you will. This encounter involves the players taking on a hive of the little buggers on what is unquestionably their home turf.

Apparently the players aren't the first humanoids to come this way. Kalarel's goblins have had a go at containing the kruthiks (although I'm not sure how they got past the rats and the ochre jelly to do so). They've dug some concealed pits to try and trap the ant-lizards, but all they've succeeded in doing is making the lair even more deadly. The kruthiks avoid the traps, but the players will have to dodge them.

I've talked before about Keep on the Shadowfell being a kind of player tutorial; we've seen where the bull rush was introduced, and a variety of split-level combats establishing the principles of Athletics and Acrobatics as skills. Here we're seeing a new type of combat action - the squeeze - and a new monster ability - the aura.

As you'll see on the map, the kruthiks are initially separated from the the players by a selection of narrow tunnels. The kruthiks can move up and down these crallways without significant difficulties, but if players want to use them they'll have to squeeze through. Squeezing involves moving at half speed, granting combat advantage, and making attacks at -5; a squeeze move also provokes opportunity attacks. This is really a sucker-test for players; as soon as someone tries it, the kruthiks will block off the exits from the narrow tunnel and take turns ripping the trapped player to shreds.

The other new mechanic is the aura. Kruthiks have the ability: "Gnashing Horde: aura 1; an enemy that ends its turn in the aura takes 2 damage." This isn't a big penalty; that's less than 10% of a first-level character's hit points. In addition, the Monster Manual reveals that similar auras don't stack, so there's no particular horror in being surrounded by these things. (Pity the group playing this module as envisaged though, without the then-unpublished core rulebooks.) The relatively small penalty is a good sign this is intended more as a learning experience than as a real threat in the encounter.

Players who overcome the kruthiks will be able to loot a small pile of gold, and a potion of healing. They'll likely be left wondering what the point of the whole encounter was, which puts them in exactly the same boat as me.

The Maze of Caves

The Maze of Caves area in Keep on the Shadowfell is an example of monster redesign in 4th Edition. Unfortunately, it's a bad example. Monsters are now supposed to be able to co-operate with unlikely allies to create a combined threat to the party. The Maze of Caves combines a pack of Giant Rats with an Ochre Jelly, with disappointing consequences.

The rats are nicely atmospheric. This is the first area of the keep that isn't lit by goblin torches; players have only as much illumination as they have brought with them. The rats hide amongst debris and stalagmites, scuttle across the ceiling, and swarm players who become isolated from their allies. They're minions, though, so every player is likely to kill at least one a turn, and rangers, fighters and wizards will probably slay two or more.

The weakness of the rats is supposed to be rounded out by an Ochre Jelly, which is a fairly credible threat to a second-level party. The Jelly moves very slowly though, so if the encounter triggers early the rats will probably all be dead before the Jelly shows up. In the game I ran, I started the battle while the players were in the north-east area of the caves; in retrospect, I should have waited until they were almost on top of the Jelly before revealing the rats. (There's no indication in the module that this is a good plan, and in fact the starting rat layout seems to specifically contradict it.)

The Jelly is an interesting creature. It has 102 HP and the following ability:

* Split (immediate reaction, when first bloodied; encounter)
The ochre jelly splits into two, each with a number of hit points equal to the ochre jelly's current hit points. Effects applied to the original ochre jelly do not apply to the second one. An ochre jelly can't split if it is reduced to 0 hit points by the attack that bloodied it.

I took this to mean that each of the halves was no longer bloodied and had the encounter power refreshed; therefore my Ochre Jelly kept dividing again and again. The players seemed to really enjoy this rather brutal interpretation, so in this instance it was a success, but it became clear that in order for second level players to win against this mechanic the Jelly would have to split into no less than 16 component parts (possibly more) all hitting as hard as the original. That can't have been what was intended so I'm guessing the Ochre Jelly halves do not get their Split power refreshed.

The last element to note is that the centre of this map contains a secret room, designed as a hidey-hole for Balgron the Fat. This is established as the location Balgron flees to if he escapes the Chieftain's Lair, although how he avoids the rats and the jelly is a mystery. The module has him rather unexcitingly remain hiding here until the PCs leave, whereupon he rallies the remainder of his goblins and sets an ambush for them in the Goblin Guard Room.

This is a stupefyingly bad plan, given that there are only 24 goblins in the dungeon, of whom all but three must be dead for Balgron to be here in the first place. (If the PCs took the secret tunnel to Balgron's chamber, he has no way to flee, so they must have come through the Guard Room, the Torture Chamber, and Balgron's guards.) The Goblin Guard Room is also a terrible place to set an ambush, given that the PCs will already know about the room's sole trap and it is the only goblin area with absolutely no cover or defensive emplacements. DMs taking this route can expect a weak and unexciting death for Balgron.

A much better solution is to have Balgron emerge from his secret chamber and wade into battle at the height of the player's fight against the rats and the jelly. It gives Balgron his best chance to do some damage, and to some extent compensates for the positioning problems of the other monsters in this area.

Questions:

[1] Balgron's loot is in a chest in his room back at the Chieftain's Lair, rather than either (a) on his body, or (b) in his secret hideaway. As a result, killing Balgron doesn't feel particularly rewarding, as the players receive their treasure prior to earning it. Was this a deliberate decision?

Balgron the Fat

Once players clear out the Torture Chamber, it's all but a foregone conclusion that their next stop will be the Chieftain's Lair. This encounter should be the culmination of the goblin encounters in Keep on the Shadowfell but it oddly fails to pack the punch of the module's other boss-level fights.

The centre of this encounter is a goblin called Balgron the Fat. This chunky villain heads up the Keep's goblin contingent and can present a reasonable challenge for a first-level party. His presence (and the fact that he warrants a distinctive name) suggest to players that this is the conclusion of a small-scale quest line, and the drama is upped accordingly.

The players can reach the Chieftain's Lair in two ways; either by proceeding directly east from the Torture Chamber, or by using a secret door located on a corridor adjoining the Goblin Guard Room. They're unlikely to discover the secret door by their own investigations and will really only find it if they interrogate Splug at length.

Using the secret door takes the players right into Balgron's bedchamber and lets them kill him in his sleep. That's neither heroic nor climactic but it's the kind of thing that some players are in the game for. I'm not a fan of this kind of conflict resolution. The theory is that by brains and cunning the players have overcome what would otherwise be a significant obstacle, although really it's more like by avoiding heroic behaviour they've opted out of the inherent challenges of being a hero that define high fantasy as a genre and D&D as a game. Ultimately it's a matter of play style, though.

If the players come in through the front door they'll be facing what is theoretically a hard encounter. Two guards near the entrance sound an alarm, summoning the remaining goblins in the area. The party may be initially swamped if they've charged into the front room, but the profusion of choke points will soon let them re-establish control. Also, Balgron doesn't enter the battle - he instead waits to see how it goes, and then flees through the secret door when things turn against him.

Balgron's escape is frustrating from a encounter standpoint; it can leave the players feeling robbed. However, it's necessary from a dungeon design standpoint. The developers have unwisely tacked a series of dead-end caves onto the first level of the crypts (which we'll come to in due time) and it is to these caves that Balgron flees. Were Balgron not to enter the caves, there would be no reason to visit them, and three significant encounters and a sackful of loot would thereby be entirely missed. Probably the better option would be to delete the caves, have Balgron stand and fight, and shift the cave loot to his corpse, but for the purposes of this exercise we're seeing how the adventure runs as printed.

In the end, aided by terrain and an absentee villain, the players will end up making pretty short and unsatisfying work of Balgron's guards, so DMs who'd hoped to use this fight to cap off a play session will probably wind up feeling shortchanged.

Questions:

[1] The whole purpose of the goblin series of encounters seems to be for the players to kill Balgron. However, there's really no reason to kill Balgron other than to loot his corpse. Added to the cave system, it makes a total of six encounters that can be completely bypassed without the players even noticing. Why are these encounters in the module? Or alternatively, why are they not placed down the main spine of the adventure?