Foot Problems

Bet you didn’t know you’ve had foot issues in your DnD life this whole time! Let’s explore the why and the where all in the name of good health!

We’ve got a wild dynamic unfolding between our home game and work campaign! DM Ben is swamped for time these days but he still wants to roll dice with all his favorite folks. Consequently, he’s loosely running the free D&D Beyond module Acquisitions Incorporated twice.

And why not?! He already prepped the encounters initially, so now he gets to circle back and make all those subtle tweaks and 3D Prints that he simply ran out of time on the first go around.

So, today’s new and improved encounter is Area 7: Stomp, a large circular chamber inside a mysterious Fissure within Waterdeep’s streets. This encounter oddity is tailormade for our 3D printer, so let’s see what sorta magic it cooked up for us here.

The encounter description text reads, “This enormous chamber is roughly circular with a high ceiling. A huge granite block is suspended near the ceiling in the center of the room, carved into the rough shape of what looks like a giant foot.”

Previously, we found a foot file that some doctors were using on Thingiverse and just scaled it to size while mounting it onto a Hirt Arts Cavern Floor tile. Then, we glued a couple of scatter rocks around to give this oversized foot that stone-carved-granite vibe. So, no changes here for that piece.

We’re using one of the see-through stands to help demonstrate that this oddity is suspended in the middle of the room. DM Ben made the overall room much larger to allow for better battle tactics. The bone piles, which represent the hundreds of dormant feet, are also from Hirst Arts. DM Ben will replace these bone markers for actual feet monsters upon activation.

There are also two activation rune walls on the north and south walls of the room. The carved rune-graven footprints power the magic of the Big Foot. These were from Dwarven Forge and the Forsaken Temple set.

The players can succeed on a DC 14 Intelligence (Arcana or Religion) check to understand how these runes work. Alternatively, a character who places their own barefoot on the wall inside the rune-marked footprint automatically succeeds at deactivating them as well.

If the players move to the halfway point of the room, the intensity level of the encounter explodes as many of the once dormant, smaller individual feet spring to life and start attacking.  Yes, we could have just used those same bone piles above but we had some more time to liven the encounter with actual severed feet!

Thankfully, Schlossbauer had another free download for us to utilize (making us wonder aloud if he made this STL for the module). We sliced a whole plate of ’em (14 in all).

We sliced each Stomping Foot to take up a d20 square (so we upsized the original file by about 30%). DM Ben doesn’t like tiny miniatures, let alone trying to paint ’em. For the colors, we did the following:

• Slapchop primer.
• Army Painter Speedpaint Crusader Skin (layered two coats).
• Army Painter Fanatic Opal Skin dry brush.
• Citadel Skeleton Horde layered on bone.
• Blackwash

That color combo gave us that creepy aged skin effect. So gross!

Here’s a quick wideshot showing how DM Ben will intermix the bone piles with our brought-to-life-feet! DM Ben wants to keep his players guessing on which ones will animate and if they’ll come in waves. The players might even attack the dormant piles because they’re so spooked about what the heck is happening in this room.

One other cool effect here is at the very start of the encounter, the players will actually see a pair of feet suddenly materialize in midair at the center of the room and plop to the ground. Meaning the Water Deep serial murderer terrorizing the streets has just struck again!

We ultimately want to create an actual villain here and have the players hunt him down! There’s still one more room in the Fissure (the Shrine of Destruction encounter) for the players to get a better understanding of what on earth is happening with these severed feet. We’ll be sharing our build for that room sooner rather than later.

Until next time!