Your Friday DnD Dilemma!

Poor DM Ben has the makings of a great encounter but without any of the mechanics. Let’s see if we can break the mind block.

The biggest upcoming encounter is our home-brewed Night Hag confrontation. DM Ben always had the encounter conundrum: a moral dilemma of killing an evil enemy versus saving the captured children. However, to this point, he just didn’t have the details quite flushed out.

To catch you up: Several children have recently gone missing in Waterdeep and rumor has it a Night Hag inside The High Forest is behind it. The party has mission secured a quest from Omin Dran to rescue them and eliminate the enemy.

There are three children in total:

• A small human boy named Shamus.
• A young dwarven boy named Adrik.
• And a little human girl who comes from a commoner family.

But how do we set it up so that the characters more or less have to painfully choose one series of actions over another when combat starts to heat up?!

The Internet is such a blessing to our beloved DnD hobby! When you’re stuck, always consider hopping onto Discord and asking the extremely friendly and kind patrons to help you brainstorm! The real-time banter can really cook up some slick ideas. Some adventurers will throw out tantalizing slivers that you can unpack and others will talk the whole thing out with you!

So Ben frequents the Milestone Heroes Discord quite often as they’re such a kind group of souls. Patrons Mark (Darque) and Bret started mixing it up with DM Ben to help flush out the rescue scene and supporting mechanics.

Our villain knows the jig is up and that someone will be storming her woodside cabin soon. While the dwarven boy manages to slip away and is now in a full-on sprint toward the adventurers, the Witch has placed the remaining two children in harm’s way to help buffer her ultimate escape. Sure, she could simply run now but she wants to meet her attackers so that she can ultimately plot her revenge for their meddling.

The commoner girl will be in the backyard of the cabin and suspended in a locked metal cage above a magic flame. The human boy is in the basement locked behind some see-through glass that is starting to fill with toxic gas. Time is of the essence!

Our dastardly Witch will also summon several mimics inside the cabin (a rug, a kettle, even a bookcase) to defend her so between those monster freaks of nature and the child-saving conundrums, she should have ample opportunity to slip away and live another day.

To start, the group is likely to talk its way inside her lair as they want to see if they can learn the fate of the children or obtain any clues of where any survivors might be on the property. As the conversation heats up, Bret suggests she grabs a mittful of keys (five in all) from her pocket and starts tossing them around the room…each one giving a blood-curdling twitch as it falls on the cabin’s hardwood floorboards.

In terms of the saving mechanics, the group will only have so many rounds to find the right key and unlock the basement chamber and hanging cage. Each round, the children will take 1d2 points of damage (behind the DM screen) from either the heat or poison. Immerse the group in the encounter by having them roll the current hit points of each child: 1d6+10. Ideally, the damage to number of rounds will fall somewhere around 8 – 10 rounds.

A rogue could certainly attempt to pick either lock but a quick intelligence roll will make it obvious that these aren’t bike locks and their best move is to quickly locate and utilize the keys.

For added hijinx, DM Ben is going to make five random key item cards (each with a number on the back of the card). The correct two keys will be predetermined as shown below. DM Ben will shuffle the five cards and then randomly assign one to each part of the cabin floor. Luck, as it should, will play a true factor in finding the right keys.

Each key does indeed open something in the cabin: the front door (key 1), a small chest (holding the scarecrow’s soul bag | key 2), the glass room lock (key 3), the cage lock (key 4), and the key to her broom (key 5). Meaning, that some post-combat antics will ensue.

Pretty solid, right?! So what do you think your group would do? Kill that evil Night Hag once and for all OR save the two children! Let us know on Facebook or Instagram! And thanks again, Mark and Bret!