HYPERBOREA / The Most Dangerous Game: Monster Hunt in an empty dungeon

**Posted by Yora** 8/03/2014 5:40 am

In our last game, the party pretty much cleared out a dungeon, which has a curse that makes everyone who goes inside unable to find the exit. The PCs however, got possession of a talisman that allows them to find the exit again. The big fight at the end was against an Oni, a reasonably smart ogre with magical powers, but he was able to escape badly injured. And now the players have decided to return next time and slay the monster for good.

The Oni knows they have a way out and suspects they might come back. Instead of just relying on his limited magic, he's also going to set a lot of traps. But since he does not know the secret of finding the exit, he needs to make sure that he can take one or two of them alive, so anything that could whipe out the whole group is out.
His magic powers allow him to cast invisibility, darkness, and fly at will, and to turn into the shape of a human. He also can cast cone of cold, wraithform, and charm person once per day. In addition, he regenerates 1 hp per round, which provides him with effectively unlimited healing between fights.

The cave is pretty much empty other than some small animals and lots of bones and monster corpses. Among those are giant centipedes whose poison deals damage, and subterranean worms who paralyze creatures for several minutes, and he can use the poison from their corpses in his traps.

Do you have any cool ideas how he can prepare the battlefield for when the party returns a few days later?
I'm probably going to watch Predator again and the Stonehenge Battle from Conan.

**Posted by Blackadder23** 8/03/2014 9:33 am

Baskets or sacks full of giant centipedes dropping from the ceiling comes immediately to mind.

**Posted by Yora** 8/03/2014 10:43 am

Even better:

Corpse of an ogre placed like taking a nap, hollowed out and filled with centipedes!

I really wanted to use those two dead ogres for something, this is perfect.

**Posted by joseph** 8/03/2014 12:28 pm

Lacking wood (no pun intended), he could use the bones (still no pun intended, really) to fashion various traps, and sharpening them into stakes.

Too bad he doesn't have any rot grubs...

**Posted by Yora** 8/03/2014 12:54 pm

He does have 1 foot long leeches, though. Completely forgot about them, since the PCs didn't want to step in the water. Would those also work for what you have in mind?
There's also a cave covered in bat dung, which is the primary fuel source in the cave. But I have no idea how to make that into traps.

**Posted by joseph** 8/03/2014 1:18 pm

He could make a slimy, flammable paste with the bat guano, paint the walls, floor and ceiling in a room with it and somehow lure the party into the area before setting it alight.

Alternatively, he might coat his bone spike traps with the substance to cause infection and disease the wounds.

He might make a lasso trap to encircles a character's leg, before dragging that character into the leech infested pool...

**Posted by Yora** 8/03/2014 2:56 pm

Or put corpses into the water as leech bait. When a character catches an underwater line, it yanks on the corpse, causing the leeches to feel threatened and attack.

Guano lights can be great lures to trick PCs into walking into a trap.When they see a small flame ahead, they are going to investigate, concentrating entirely on spotting its owner.

**Posted by Blackadder23** 8/07/2014 10:07 pm

Here are some ideas for hit-and-run attacks that should drive your players crazy:

1) From a safe distance, the invisible Oni hurls a rock into their midst with darkness cast on it. While they blunder around blindly, he takes potshots with an oversized Japanese bow whose arrows are coated in toxic and paralyzing venoms. When the PCs seem to be about to escape the darkness, he turns invisible and flies away.

2) The Oni dresses one of the ogre corpses to look just like himself and props it in a shadowy corridor while hiding behind it. When the PCs turn the corner and see the fake Oni, the real Oni nails them with a cone of cold from behind the decoy. He then flies away invisibly while the PCs spend a round wasting missiles and (hopefully) spells on the decoy.

3) Once the players are good and aggravated, and have burned most of their spells, they round a bend to find the Oni standing in the middle of a hall, challenging them to combat. The hotheaded ones will probably charge in immediately. Unfortunately, the Oni is actually floating just above the lid of a covered pit, and would-be attackers plunge ten feet onto punji sticks coated with toxic and paralyzing venoms. (Or the pit could be filled with water and giant leeches.) The Oni of course turns invisible and flies away laughing.

And so forth. Think "fantasy Vietnam" and just go for it!

Things I Worked On · **Posted by Ynas Midgard** 8/08/2014 2:54 am

@ Blackadder23
Cruel - and awesome

**Posted by Blackadder23** 8/08/2014 8:39 am

^
Thank you.

After the Oni tortures the players for a while, you could add insult to injury by having him assume the shape of a human "prisoner" (maybe a beautiful woman in a ripped dress) and beg the PCs to escort him to "safety" outside the dungeon. It depends how gullible you think the players are.