Get to the Point!

We recently had a wild chain of events in our work campaign where a simple improv scene by the DM spiraled out of control in the worst way for the party. Now we’re in between sessions, and some trap terrain has to be rushed into service. Read on but for the love of Pelor, be careful where you step!

Let’s start by briefly explaining what initially seemed innocent but quickly sent the group into a tailspin. Our party was finally in a position to take out the Night Hag kidnapper, who was hiding in The High Forest under the illusion of an old woman. There was a lot on the line here, as Omin Dran promised them the deed to her Cabin if they permanently “removed her.”

After all, a pinned Night Hag against a level four party of six adventurers shouldn’t be too much trouble, right? Welllllll. They lost the element of surprise thanks to her Scrying Stones. She also surrounded herself with numerous Mimics. The players also had to balance this frontal assault with saving two captured children.

The players started by scouting the front yard, where they saw the witch in her old woman’s form putzing around outside. She then went inside and changed to her beautiful woman form (which she could do temporarily, thanks to those precious kiddo tears). The witch knows the group is at her doorstep, so she’s trying to confuse them about the total number of cabin occupants.

Well, the beautiful woman goes to a nearby tree (see red arrow above) and picks a few flowers before retreating inside. Several players approach the door and charm their way inside. However, our dwarf approached but suddenly decided to try and grab some of those same unique blossoms. DM Ben knows the group has been reckless and rarely checks for traps, so he thought placing a simple pit trap here would be a good learning lesson. This is where things got out of hand fast.

Initially, DM Ben wasn’t too worried. He sets a low Athletics DC 10 save for the Dwarf to avoid falling into the pit trap. Of course, the player blows the save and drops 20 feet below (but at least makes an Athletics DC 12 reflex save to avoid the spikes). Our Wizard was at the back of the line and saw the Dwarf take the plunge. He approached the pit but didn’t check the ground around it, so he had to make an Athletics save to avoid falling. And you guessed it, he fell!

So now we have four players inside the Cabin (with the door quickly locked behind them by a Mimic) and two outside the cabin, stuck in a narrow 20-foot pit trap! Say it with us now, “Never split the party!”

DM Ben was utterly flabbergasted by this series of unfortunate events for his players, but here we are. As you can imagine, things got even worse. The group mistakenly thinks the Mimics will be dispelled if they try to kill the Night Hag. However, this was a bad strategy as she has one of the highest ACs, the most HP, and a healing potion/spells to get her out of trouble. Even worse, they’re taking her on shorthanded!

The session ended with three unconscious players, only the traitor Bard standing, and the other two adventurers slowly digging out of the pit trap. Since we had some terrain time before the next session, DM Ben printed this Spiked Floor Trip from The Dungeon of Despair set by Crippled God Foundry.

Since the Pit Trap will be the focus point for the next session, we wanted to lay down some matching terrain to better set the mood. Again, the DM thought avoiding the trap would be a cakewalk, so we had been doing theater of the mind until now.

We’re huge believers in getting DnD 3D prints on our game table as quickly as possible, so novice painter DM Ben did a down-and-dirty paint job. The mini is shown here to help you better see the scale of the trap terrain.

We’ll place these pointy spikes on a few of our Milestone Heroes Dungeon Ruins floor tiles to better illustrate the confined space and their poor decisions. Even better, we produced a step-by-step, easy-to-follow paint guide for these cavernous tiles so you can make your own.

Milestone Heroes also has a slick Dungeon Barrows set but we’re still painting those and didn’t want to rush ’em into the wild. Those particular 3D tiles will fit better in a future encounter.

This scatter terrain also fulfills our reusability requirement, so we wanted to rescue these from our Pile of Shame as quickly as possible! Still, this series of unfortunate events just highlights how fast an encounter can fly off the rails and go in a completely different gaming direction. Oh, those players – how we love them so. 😉

Until next time!