Reviewing the Lumber Mill Delve, Part 1

It's been about a week since I posted my rough attempt at a lumber mill delve, and it's time to go back and review it. Since I didn't post them in my last entry, this is a good time to put down what I'm hoping to accomplish with this delve. First, some working parameters:

• I'm using a format similar to the one in the Dungeon Delves book, 3 encounters, starting at a level equal to the players and increasing by 1 level each encounter. Thus, a delve for 1st level characters will include encounters at levels 1-3.
• Game mechanics over story. Most of the delves in the book provide some story hooks in case you want to include them in a normal campaign, but overall, I'm not going to worry about developing a story line too much.

This last one is particularly important. While I'm not going to worry too much about tying the delve to a longer story arc, the delve itself should be memorable in its own right. That means one of my criteria will be judging how much each encounter, monster and trap reinforces the theme, in this case a lumber mill. For me, that meant conveyor belts and saws. Wanting to focus a bit more on the fantastical, I made it a mill run by gnomes.

With some guidelines for the feel that I wanted and how I wanted to accomplish it, it was time to create the first encounter. It made sense to me that they would start in the room where the logs would be debarked and cut into manageable chunks. I tried to think how gnomes might accomplish this. A few of them with a tool for debarking, along with a ceiling mounted saw seemed like a good idea.

Updating the Debarking Gnomes

There are a few things that I could do to make this better, playing up the tension and increasing the difficulty a bit. First, let's throw out the bit about the gnomes being surprised. Given that they just kidnapped some local children, I'm sure they are all going to be on high alert. If the group wants to try to sneak in, we should have the member with the lowest stealth modifier roll a group stealth check. We will use the difference between the stealth and perception to determine the starting action:

• If they succeed, the gnomes are surprised.
• If they fail, the gnomes hear the PCs approach and have the chance to hide themselves. One of the gnomes will run over to start the bucking saws before the PCs enter the room and the other two will start under the conveyor belt and attempt to hide.

Now that we've evened out the start of the encounter a bit, let's work on the gnomes themselves. Gnomes have low-light vision, and there isn't much of a need for bright light in the room. Let's add in some terrain elements that provide dim light for the gnomes to see by, since they won't use fire based sources on the account of the sawdust. With that added in, I should add back the "Reactive Stealth" power.

Also, I want to update the damage from the attack. The updated damage from MM3 would be 1d10+6. However, I'm thinking 2d6 + 4 instead. The extra dice might make the players feel like the little gnome is tougher, but the average damage is about the same.

Simplify and Strengthen the Bucking Saws

Now that we've reworked the gnomes and environment, it's time to simplify the saws. For story reasons, let's have one of the gnomes turn on the saws as soon as a PC enters the room. This is done via the control panel and the doors to the next room lock at the same time. If the PCs somehow take out the gnome near the control panel before it can turn the machine on, the next gnome will try to do that first.

The current mechanics for running the saw are a bit too complicated and really need to be simplified.

So those are some of the changes I would make to the encounter. Next time, I'll look at the second encounter. In the meantime, what changes would you make to this encounter?