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muri32 days ago

hey! I was reading The Monster under the Tower and a lot of questions showed up in my mind from the intention of the adventure.


the statblock given to the mage is that of an Archimage (a level 10 wizard), which seems quite strong for level 2 characters, and could easily kill the two werewolves. 

how are the players supposed to beat the mage if they wanna save the child? or if the players are supposed to be the meat being sent down there to feed the beast? did your players manage to beat him when you tested the adventure? seems like they'd go out with at least one dead (if not all, from a fireball)

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Sarah Angell32 days ago

Fair criticism; I never really ran the wizard as a combat obstacle, only as a social encounter who locked the party in the cellar and ran away when they smashed open the trapdoor (he's less of a battle mage in my mind and more of a deranged scientist). If you want to go the combat route and have him "defeatable", the mage statblock would probably be a much better fit. Or, hey, use an apprentice statblock. The dude captured a child to experiment on, he's not necessarily strong.

So, yeah, totally fair. Don't know if I thought more than two seconds about that stat reference. Sorry ^^

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muri31 days ago (1 edit)

that's okay! I wasn't planning on using him as a combat obstacle either, but the statblock got me thinking about why he would send the party down there and I could only think of him wanting them to be monster food, and I couldn't imagine a compelling argument for him running away with the ability to use death rays and the like.

that said, I enjoyed the thought experiment of a very strong wizard passing himself off as a weak one to lure adventures downstairs as meat for his experiment, and the doom that would come in their minds if the experiment tells them that they've been tricked and the guy upstairs is too strong for them to handle!

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Sarah Angell31 days ago

That's also a really cool idea, and makes me wonder how my players would've handled that... As is, they just made sure Ikram's village knew he was an evil dude and that they wouldn't support him anymore. If I'd played the archmage angle, he might've turned into a recurring Big Bad, even!

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