I made some changes to Dwarven Excavation. This was for two main reasons. First, I moved my Phandalin adventures to Eberron, so it made sense to make some changes based on that. Second, I felt like the oozes would have followed the dwarves out of the caves and eaten them. Oh, and if you are going to have a temple to a goddess of trickery and stuff, there should be traps……
It should go without saying, but there be spoilers ahead!
Areas 1-5 I Mostly Changed Monsters
The first change was all about why they went on the dwarven excavation quest, and that was to see if there was room to hide villagers there if they needed to abandon the village if the two dragons attacked (oh, did I forget to mention I’m running both boxed sets, so there is a green and a white 🙂 ). That said, the dragons will not be attacking. Since this is Eberron, they are there to uncover secrets of the prophecy, not to attack the village…..
I made little change to the first three areas. other than ramping up the detailed descriptions into the well in E2. It was dried up and had rubble in it, but some of the rubble looked newly put there (by the two dwarves). The PCs dug around in it some, but there was nothing to find. We had a druid in the game, and my plan was to give her a chance to reactivate the well, but she left the game……. I was going to give here a DC 12 Wisdom check to figure out a way to get it flowing again.
When they encountered the dwarves, I had one badly injured, and in need of help. The monsters in the altar room had recently attacked them, and they had no healing, so they were trying to recover. They were not super forth-coming with details about what they fought or saw. Also, they knew the temple was to a (now dead?) goddess of dwarvern trickery that was corrupted by the daelkyr (Eberron aberration powers) a few hundred years ago, but they failed to mention that.
I placed relief faces of a dwarven goddess of trickery and thievery on the doors. The area North of the entry was too collapsed to dig out in anything less than days. The players did dig around in there, but I didn’t put anything interesting in there.
The oozes in E5 were replaced with two mechanical wolf/dog things (iron defenders) that leaked flammable oil when they were sufficiently damaged. I added the oil without thinking about it being flammable, but the PCs later wanted to burn some oil, so they asked if they could use it that way. Great add by them! I figured that guards that were told not to leave the altar area made more sense than oozes that would pursue the injured dwarves. Using clockwork items that are primitive relative to warforged is part of what I have going on in the more remote parts of the world, so it also made sense from that perspective.
Areas 6-8 the Changes are Largely About Traps!
I made much bigger changes in these three areas.
There is a ghost between the door back to the altar area and the rubble to the East in area E6. Since I was using Roll20, I’ll just copy the text I wrote to myself in the token:
“A ghost of a dwarf appears, and says that you must stick your hand in the dwarven mouth to continue. The ghost fades away, and you see a carved dwarven face in the wall to the north. There is an open mouth.” If they stick their hand in the mouth, needles come shooting from all directions. DC12 Dexterity save or 4 points of poison damage.
Of course, one of them stuck their hand in there, before the others could stop him…..it’s kind of his thing to act without thinking (or to nap when he’s bored). I put a swarm of rats in area 6 because I think swarms are creepy. This was tough for them to manage, since they have no wizard-type to wipe them out without hitting their allies that were swarmed.
There is another iron defender in area 7. This one was hiding in the rubble (as you approach from the North) and surprised the fighter. He was carrying a torch, and lit himself and the defender on fire when he dropped it and damaged the defender (leaking the oil I mentioned earlier).
I placed a lot of spider webs (big webs, from a big spider) in the hall to area 8. The PCs decided to get oil from the iron defenders and light the webs on fire. The large spider came out (on the ceiling, avoiding attacks of opportunity)….but since they had basically readied actions for when the spider came out, most of them got an attack in before the spider could do anything. Inside area 8….another ghost. Here is my note on that one:
“When the door is opened, a ghost greets you, and asks you to pay homage to Zymborg. This is a now-dead dwarven god of evil, who was corrupted by aberrations.” Failure to say something good about Zymborg will activate the pressure plate near the far door. Anyone stepping on that square releases a gas into the room. DC 12 Con Save. Fail: 4 poison.
Areas 9-11 I Didn’t Like the Treasures Much
I don’t think I changed anything in area 9. In area 10, I changed the things by the pile of bones to this:
“A dwarven skeleton is partially buried in the rubble here.” This is just a dead body. There is a potion of healing intact, along with an ring with a small gem on it. The skeleton is wearing archaic armor and robes, from way back in history. The ring is worth 5 gp, though with a history or religion check, they’ll realize this is a ring that dwarven clerics of thievery still wear….DC18 history or religion tells them this was a cleric of an evil dwarven god.
Area 11 almost created a HUGE problem for me. First, I made it so they dug for only 10 minutes…..and then I placed a large chest in the middle of the room. They immediately assumed it was a mimic, and fired arrows at it and did other things to make sure it wasn’t a mimic (this could be a problem, given they were going to gnomengarde next…..). In the chest:
Treasure chest with 500 gp, 50 sp, and three rings. They have similar symbols on them, though no one can read them. They are definitely magical, but you can’t tell what they do. One has a red stone, one has a blue stone, and one has a black stone.
The monk went in alone for some reason, and took the rings without letting anyone know about them. I’m not sure what they do yet……and I don’t think he’s put them on. I’ll take suggestions!
Summary of Changes to Dwarven Excavation
So, what did I change in Dwarven Excavation? I changed up the oozes because they never made sense to me, and I wanted some magical constructs in there anyway. I added traps based on this being a former (?) temple to a (dead?) goddess of trickery. There is different treasure to make more sense to the long term campaign goals. I added another reason to go to the temple in the first place. Finally, I added some more descriptions to the text, to make it seem more “dwarven”, though for some reason those notes seem to be missing from Roll20 right now (note: If I find them, I’ll add them here).
One last thing, rather than import all those monsters in, or create them in Roll20, I used DnDBeyond and Beyond20 to run them. You can see a bit about that on this video YouTube channel…….
Fun changes, I really like the ghost/mouth trap. I’m going to use that in a campaign I’m running.
My change was to keep it pretty much as is, underwhelming final room. Every time they found an item or cloak or anything, one of the dwarves from the front was there to quickly write a receipt and take the item to the front for cataloging.
However, the triggered explosion from the item knocked the party out ( not reduced up, just no everyone) as the dust settled, the dwarves were dead, all the loot was dust. The tunnell in was perminantly sealed while there was the last hint of the days sunlight dancing in the motes of dust. Heading out through the new exit, they find themselves at the top of a canyon, with stairs leading down into the gloom.
I then sidestepped into Sunless Citadel. They get to meet a baby white and the tribe of Kobolds that will be living in and worshipping cryovain at the icespire hold…