Bleak Generation

Someone clearly lived in this forsaken place. Someone powerful. But whatever, our planewalkers were determined to rob ‘em of everything that wasn’t nailed to the floor. Laden down with gold, swords, and some undeniably cursed wands, the adventurers floated straight over to the neighbouring room to see what they could nick next. There was no treasure here, though: just a huge machine that filled half the chamber, levers of bone sticking out from control panels of some pale, almost fleshy material. They pondered its purpose for some time. What to do with the helmet attached to it? What might be in the large opaque egg at its centre? M’narr’s curiosity got the better of him again, but he channelled it to less reckless purposes, casting identify on the machine. Discovering the thing’s purpose – to permanently transfer a creature’s consciousness and soul into the construct held within the egg – was enough to satisfy M’narr’s curiosity this time. He quickly set the machine to overheat wha...

Random encounters make dungeons a more tense place, discourage dawdling, and can force players to make tough decisions. The rules below also mean that the dungeon gets more dangerous the longer the party lingers! When to Check for an Encounter I roll a d10 to check for an encounter every time the party stops for 10 minutes or longer, eg to cast a ritual spell (they get to cast their first ritual for free, no roll required). I check for encounters twice during a short rest; consider halving this if you have short rest classes (eg warlocks) in the party. I don't let my party take a long rest inside the dungeon. There is a 10% chance that an encounter occurs. If no encounter occurs, the chance of an encounter occuring on subsequent checks increases by 10%, to a maximum of 50%. This probability is cumulative, i.e. 10% on your first roll, 20% on your second, and so on). Keep track of the encounter probability as the game progresses - I just have a 10 in one corner of the page that coun...

This session would’ve been way more difficult if one player had not digitised his home-made map of the dungeon (I gave him an inspiration point for doing it). Much of the dungeon was run as-is. I simplified the soul-transferring machine by ruling it would permanently transfer a PC’s soul if they used it, fixable with a casting of soul jar perhaps. Gave the construct 20 STR, and planned to take the victim PC’s stats and alter them thus: +3 CON, -4 DEX, -4 CHA. The Temple/Skeleton Circlet Most Important Advice: Don’t make your players roll a skill check to notice the circlet of skeleton control! If they look at the statue just tell them it’s there. It was 12-Bar that had the vision from Anarchocles when the party broke into the Old Church. I've not 100% decided the facts, but I’m making the dead god in Sigil’s Old Church the same berk whose skull makes the Wand of Orcus. I think it was 12-Bar who had the vision, I see now there’s no record of it in past notes. The vision had...

Tri-Flower Frond Beautiful and deadly in equal measure, countless unsuspecting adventurers have fallen victim to the tri-flower frond's captivating yellow blooms, which subdue and slowly digest their prey. Medium plant, unaligned AC 13 HP 25 Speed 0 ft STR 3 (-4) DEX 16 (+3) CON 16 (+3) INT 1 (-5) WIS 9 (-1) CHA 1 (-5) Damage Immunities: poison Condition Immunities: blinded, deafened, frightened, poisoned Senses: blindsight 10 ft (blind beyond this radius), passive Perception 9 Challenge: 2 (450XP) Bottom-Heavy. The tri-flower frond has advantage on saving throws against being knocked prone. False Appearance. While the tri-flower frond remains motionless, it is indistinguishable from an ordinary plant. Multiattack. The tri-flower frond makes three Tendril attacks, if available. Tendril. Melee Weapon Attack: +6 to hit, reach 5ft, one target. Hit: 1 piercing damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 16) and the tri-flower frond can't use the same tendril on another tar...

Xeg-Yi Incredibly rare creatures thought to be sentient balls of pure necrotic energy, residing on the Negative Energy Plane. It is thought that if a Xeg-Yi were ever to see its Positive Energy counterpart, the Xag-Ya, both creatures would be overwhelmingly compelled to collide and annihilate each other. Deeply alien creatures. Some are curious, some are murderous.   Medium aberration, unaligned AC 18 HP 66 Speed Fly 20ft Saving Throw Proficiencies: All (+3 prof. bonus) STR 3 (-4) DEX 16 (+3) CON 16 (+3) INT 10 (+0) WIS 12 (+1) CHA 16 (+3) Damage Immunities: Acid, cold, lightning, necrotic, poison, psychic, thunder; bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing from nonmagical weapons Condition Immunities: charmed, frightened, grappled, petrified, prone, restrained, stunned Senses: darkvision 120 ft, passive Perception 11 Languages: Deep Speech Challenge: 2 (450XP) Explosion. If it is reduced to 0 hit points, the Xeg-Yi explodes. Creatures within 10ft of the Xeg-Yi must make a DEX sav...

This was an in-person megasession spread over 2 days. A dream come true. Planar Rules, Zero Gravity Combat, and Other Basics Spells do maximum damage. Healing spells heal minimum HP. Air, Fire, and Wild Magic spells are diminished, dealing one fewer damage die. Maximum spell level or such spells is 4th. Spells that access the Astral and Outer Planes fail. Matter created here crumbles to nothingness in 1 round. This is basically a space station. Space horror ambient music worked well. Random encounter rules/table for the dungeon.   For zero-gravity combat in the guardrooms, I simplified a 30ft spherical room to 3 circles: lower and upper parts of the sphere, both 20ft in diameter; and a central area 30ft in diameter. 3 simple circular maps, with an X marking the centre line. Squares above/below each other are counted as 5ft apart. It worked well enough for the players. I also appropriated Newton’s Third Law, ruling that shoving things also moved the shover backwards. Could a cr...

The cold black metal of the sphere was the only thing standing between them and the Endless Void. And no known way back, until M’narr divined the portal key. The party passed through the unsettling vacuum of the building’s connecting tunnels, finding a room with huge windows that offered views of the nothingness outside, and some gravity to boot. Trying their best to ignore the scratching noises from the other side of the window, the party continued upwards, past a table covered in weird papers (yoink), arriving at the top floor where a small cloud of vivid blackness eyed them inscrutably. What did it want? What was it doing here? Even with magic, its motives were as alien as its form. M’narr spread some of his newly acquired papers on the ground to show it; the thing lashed a corrosive arm to indicate a particular piece, the paper turning to dust at its touch. Best leave it to an uneasy truce. Back to the lifeless spheres. Progress abruptly halted when a horde of ghouls, hungry for ...