In the second in a series of how I changed the encounters in Dragon of Icespire Peak….I talk about changing Gnomengarde, and why I made the changes I made. The changes to Gnomengarde were few in number, but vast in their scope. You can read about how I changed Dwarven Excavation if you’d like.
Why I Moved the Kings (and the timing of the attack)
This is the change that most anyone can (and, imo, should) make to Gnomengarde. Move the kings into the store room where the mimic was originally placed. I believe is that it is anti-climatic to find the kings after dealing with the mimic. So, I moved them. It also seemed odd to me that the attacks were not super recent, but that all the gnomes were still there and had not gone to Phandalin for help…..so I had the attacks starting a day or two earlier.
The one king was still “mad”, and had erected a barricade of gears and wood and doors in the hall leading to the store room. When the PCs got to the room they first freed the other king, and that one told them the his partner was mad, but that he would be able to control him.
If you don’t change how the mimic can move (and even what it is), I’d probably have the mimic be in the room with the spinning blades, or with the two gnome guards somehow. Read below for what I actually did…..
Why I Changed the Mimic (and how it moved)
My players had just come from dwarven excavation, where they thought a large chest I placed in the last room was a mimic. I feared this would make them realize the thing in Gnomengarde was a mimic, and I’m not sure if they did or not. I had a gnome meet them inside the entry, and take them to the kitchen. There, while they talked to the gnomes, one of them was attacked and killed by the mimic. Now, that could have been the end of the mimic. After all, once it is in a room, it is pretty much trapped.
To avoid that, I added an invention to the caves…..pneumatic tubes the wizards had built that allowed them to send notes and small items room to room! Of course, the mimic had found those, and was using them to move from room to room without being noticed. These were magical in nature, but were mostly pneumatic tubes.
I also changed the mimic to a gibbering mimic, a combination gibbering mouther and mimic. This allowed it to have a ranged attack…..and to decrease the number’s advantage the PCs had on it. The action economy of five PCs versus one monster can be brutal. I wanted to reduce that advantage. Lastly, I let it take the shape of humanoids, which probably isn’t how the monster is meant to be used……
Allowing it to move from room to room really changed up how the battle had to go. The PCs were constantly on the lookout for sconces that allowed access to the tubes, and always had 1-2 of them watching them, waiting of the mimic (which, now that I think about it, is horror, so I guess that worked). Since we were playing a Roll20 game, I also used sound effects for the monster to great effect. The group really loved that. I think I used copywrite protected sounds, but mostly they were roaring type sounds of monsters.
Where the Mimic Attacked
- First, it killed a cook, and went into the tubes. This created the initial “what is that” suspense. Also, they PCs had to figure out how it moved out of the room.
- The mimic attacked them when they went and found the barrel crabs, but got back into the tube right away since only two PCs were in the room. It also attacked them in one of the halls.
- It did NOT attack anyone in the king room, I wanted that to be about the roleplaying…..but I did play the sound effect, as if it was attacking someone else, somewhere else…..
- That attack was on the gnome sitting in the crossbow platform, and since it could take humanoid shape, I had to be two things….it was both the box holding the apparatus, and had a hand(s) so it could fire the crossbow. It’s gibbering managed to shut down 2 or 3 of the PCs in this encounter, but the monk landed some serious blows, and it fled through a hole it had created in the bottom of the apparatus (heck that isn’t part of what I designed, but keeping the fear going was fun).
- It changed shape to one of the gnomes they recognized, who led them across the bridge. They were pretty sure the bridge was a mimic by that point, but that seemed to predictable to me.
- They got to the most dangerous room in the place, and the mimic went ahead and shut off the blades. One of the characters pretty much ignores obvious danger, and went in (along with two others trying to stop him, or just playing along, not sure their motivation, since they were very afraid of the spinning blades). Of course, the mimic turned them back on, but all three made their saves! The described how they moved like action heroes in movies avoiding lasers and whatnot.
- The mimic was then fighting the mages in the next room. That was the final battle, as the monk landed a crit, and the warforged cleric cast its most powerful spell and got pretty much max damage.
Summary
All in all, I think the key to gnomengaarde is allowing the mimic to move from room to room, and to get the players paranoid about it’s movement. I wish I had put more doors or things in the descriptions, so it could change shape, but I also feared doing that would get it killed too quickly.
I hope you are inspired by some of these ideas!