Today’s session was a 3-hour delve in to the seventh level of Joseph Bloch’s “Castle of the Mad Archmage“, which I’ve been using as the basis of my Castle Greyhawk campaign.
For the seventh level of the dungeon, there are some seriously underpowered monsters here. I know it’s an old school dungeon, but even so, you’d expect better foes than “1 zombie” or “2 skeletons”, as some of the rooms have been.
So, I’ve been replacing creatures with monsters from either Wizards of the Coast products or, more commonly, Kobold Press products.
In the three hours we played tonight, there was one wandering monster (a chain devil), plus a lot of rooms explored, with many a monster fought. It was a little light on interesting tricks to find – we found more last session – but the XP and treasure flowed well.
The group is about 10th level. Three players with five characters – a fighter, a paladin, a druid, a wizard, and a bard.
Here’s how the combat encounters played out.
- 1 chain devil (CR 8, Monster Manual) – surprised by the party, didn’t get a chance to act before it was killed in the second round
- 2 Nachzehrer (CR 8, Creature Codex). It’s a plague-ridden zombie creature, quite dangerous. It has a brilliant special ability – if you’re adjacent to it, you’re weakened (no save) and have disadvantage on checks, attacks and saves that are strength-based.
- 1 Nachzehrer (CR 8). This one survived to the third round.
- 1 Tveirherjar (CR 7, Creature Codex). It’s an anti-eirherjar dedicated to slaying the warriors taken by the Valkyries. Or the characters, since it couldn’t find other foes. This lasted into the third round.
- 1 Deathwisp (CR 7, Tome of Beasts). A wraith-like creature that could drain lifeforce to an absurd extent – like 50 in a single hit! And could shadow-jump. That ability allowed it to survive to the third round.
- 3 Swarms of Bats (CR ½, Monster Manual). This was an amusing encounter with each room having another weak swarm of bats… before the final room had just a dead body with no treasure. The party were very disappointed not to find a vampire.
- 1 Shadow Demon (CR 4, Monster Manual), 8 Shadow Mastiffs (CR 2, Monster Manual), 1 Sword Wraith Commander (CR 8, Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse), and 2 Sword Wraith Warriors (CR 3, MP:MoM). I had the groups turn up in waves, which was enough for the party to not be overcome – and the party finished them all off in the fourth round.
Compared to some recent sessions, none of these fights was anywhere near too difficult for the party, though they did use a lot of spells – and the fighter was knocked down to single-digit hit points on more than one encounter.
In my adventure conversions, the zombies became Nachzehrer, skeletons became Tveirherjar, a wraith became a Deathwisp, and a shadow became a Sword Wraith Commander. Not all of these were exact conversions, but were made to make more of a challenge, while still keeping some speed.
As you can see, we had seven combats in three hours, plus some exploration as well – fun items like an amulet of the planes, a ring of protection and a potion of healing(!) were looted from the crypts – which are under the influence of a cult of Orcus that the party discovered last session.
You can see the section of the crypts we explored in this photo – I’ve drawn out this level on Roll20 and I reveal sections to the players as they explore. It’s a lot easier than having them draw the map… badly!
I think the difficulty of these encounters was a little low – which is good for the majority, but I needed one more hard-hitting encounter. Time enough to see what I can do next session!