D7: The Armory Tower

 

We've finished the week out! I mean, only 51 to go, but that's still something.

Our next room, out the southeast door from 1-07, is the base of the first tower we're designing. This one was apparently used to store armor once upon a time. There is another door to the SW, and for our first time, stairs - one set leading up (the north) and one leading down (south). And there's a locked door in the north wall, which is opened by Key 1a at last.

This room has more colorful mosaics which have stood the test of time on the west, NW, and north walls, depicting water flowing around mangrove tree roots.

Encounter (Moderate 1)

One of the decrepit suits of armor (the SW one) is actually an animated armor. It will leap into action and attack anyone who touches either door to leave the room again, ignoring anyone who didn't attempt to open the door until they attack it.

Encounter (Moderate 1)

The northern stairs have become worn with time, and are unlikely to manage the weight of someone climbing them.

Unstable StairsHazard 2

Mechanical Trap 
Complexity Simple
Stealth DC 25 (expert) - a player may also notice the unstable supports with a DC 20 (trained) Crafts check or appropriate lore.
Description The stairs are likely to collapse, crushing anyone nearby in falling stone
Disable Athletics DC 18 (trained) to carefully climb the stairs keeping your weight from triggering the collapse, or Thievery or Craft DC 18 (trained) to reinforce the stairs
AC 18, Fort +11, Ref +3
Hardness 8, HP 32 (BT 16); Immunities critical hits, object immunities, precision damage
Collapsing masonry (attack); Trigger Someone attempts to climb the stairs. Effect The stairs collapse; a crash of masonry (from above as well as the stairs themselves) spills out over the ground. Anyone within a 10ft radius must takes 2d6 + 6 damage (DC 18 Basic reflex save); if the party is not explicit about positions, assume 1d4 members are caught (including whomever climbed the stairs)

Treasure

The armor suits are mostly decayed, but there is enough good material to assemble one suit of half-plate. A DC 20 Craft (trained) or DC 18 appropriate Lore check is enough to recognize this.

Musings

I'll just say this was a room where I didn't have much idea how to populate it--I knew what function and layout the room had in the map, but I didn't know what could be interesting about it to the players. Browsing through my list of enemies the party is likely to face, however, lead me to think of something that wasn't just going to come out of my brain while I sat down to just think about this. So it's a reminder on days when I'm not feeling creative that it's not just on me to produce content; there's a lot of existing content that's "plug-and-play," and I just have to think to browse that rather than go in circles in my own head.

As I said at the introduction, wow, a whole week done! Congratulations to everyone doing #Dungeon23 or similar for hitting this milestone. Because I haven't shared it yet, here's everything we've completed so far (ignore the extra walls and such; that's mostly me futzing with DungeonScrawl and will be overwritten soon enough)



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