Warlock of Firetop Mountain - Dungeon Structure 2

This is my second post looking at the structure of the dungeon presented in "The Warlock of Firetop Mountain", and how this structure fits into a D&D adventure. In this post, I look at the sections of the dungeon that come after the underground river, comprising the area leading into the maze, the maze itself, and the final boss area in the dungeon

Section 3 - Up to the Maze

Compulsory Encounters (Path 1):

The Zombies (Medium)

The Crypt (Medium/Hard)

The Ghoul (Medium/Hard)

Optional Encounters (Path 1):

The Werewolf (Hard)

The Animated Tools ( - )

The Portcullis ( - )

Compulsory Encounters (Path 2):

The Werewolf (Hard)

The Boathouse (Medium)

The Wight (Hard)

The Ghoul (Medium/Hard)

Optional Encounters (Path 2):

The Portcullis ( - )

This area is fairly short, with some very interesting encounters. This section does't really need much of a rework at all, as the paths available to the players each have comparable difficulty and loot. Additionally, there are plenty of compulsory encounters here, so it's impossible for the players to miss too much. The only change I would make is shifting the Animated Tools encounter so that it comes off the same corridor as the Portcullis, so that players that choose Path 2 won't have to miss out on this fun little encounter.

Section 4 - The Maze

Encounters:

The Dwarves ( - , or Easy)

The Minotaur (Hard)

The Mazemaster ( - )

As I discussed in a previous post, I don't intend on running the maze as you might run a typical dungeon scenario. However, I will be supplying a map for this section eventually, so that option is totally viable. I also plan to add several encounters to the maze which I removed from earlier in the dungeon - specifically The Helmets, The Gas Trap, The Pit Trap and The Troll. As this section is a maze and is by design hard to navigate, I will be largely leaving the structure alone and merely adding the encounters in empty areas of the maze.

Encounters:

The Dwarves ( - , or Easy)

The Minotaur (Hard)

The Mazemaster ( - )

The Helmets (Trap: Setback)

The Gas Trap (Trap: Setback)

The Pit Trap (Trap: Setback)

The Troll (Medium)

Section 5 - The Final Stretch

Encounters:

The Dragon (Medium/Hard)

The Warlock (Hard/Deadly)

The Treasure Room (Puzzle)

This final stretch really doesn't have much to rework, and is fairly small. The encounters in this section have an extremely variable difficulty. With the Dragon, your players could easily get through totally unscathed if they have the spell, but if you do include a full-size dragon here and they don't have the spell, they're basically only gonna survive if they can run fast. Currently, I'm leaning much more towards replacing the Dragon with a Guard Drake that has an additional fire attack. In this instance, the players could still use the Dragonfire spell to make the battle easier, but I wouldn't cause it to instantly win the encounter. Additionally, the Warlock battle will be very hard unless the player's have access to helpful items at this point, like the Invisibility Potion or the Eye of the Cyclops, or if they successfully destroy his deck of cards.

Regardless of all this, I'm pretty much going to leave the structure of this section as-is.

Bringing it all Together

OK, wow, that's a lot of encounters. At my count, your players are going to go through somewhere between 12 and 20 encounters over the course of this dungeon, with quite an even spread between encounter difficulties (although this can be difficult to judge with all the boons the players can find inside the dungeon). This means that without any intervention, this dungeon is going to take at least 2 adventuring days, if not 3. This brings up the question of resting in the adventure. There are a number of places in the dungeon players could conceivable have a Short Rest, but with a dungeon of this size your players are probably going to need at least 1 Long Rest at some point on their journey, which they could conceivably do within the dungeon, although of course this will have it's risks. Alternatively, they could leave the dungeon to go rest at a town or village, provided there is one close enough. Regardless, I would definitely encourage my players to rest at about the halfway mark through the dungeon.

Well that's everything for the dungeon structure so far! In the next post, I'm going to go through all my prototype statblocks for creatures without a decent Monster Manual counterpart in the dungeon. See you then!