Downtime amusement : design a raid

[MeliCat]

Heya... idle amusement during downtime... design a raid.

That's 12 people... doing something for a certain period of time and level of challenge to achieve something... and get rewards...

Write up how it would work - anything goes This is imagination only.

Serious. Stupid. Amusing. Small. Neat. Epic. Huge. Complicated. Simple. Thematic. Totally off the wall. Lore-abiding. Chaotic nonsense

I've posted a few random ideas in my next few posts

Edit: or suggest loot or other ideas on someone else's post ... this is just for fun.

[MeliCat]

Raid exists in a lot of tree houses and you're climbing up and up during the raid - you've got to walk across vines. Climb ladders. Jump and featherfall to platforms. None of it's very hard except you've got a lot of fairy trash (those fairies from house P) that is annoying. Mini bosses are plant based. Final boss at the top of a really large tree with a lot of vines that come up from the floor and whip at you and multi stage killing cycles. Lots of flowers and green stuff - dire death doesn't have to come in doom and gloom and fire. In deference to all the monks who have to wear cloth....anyone meleeing in cloth takes zero magical damage of any type. Everyone else will have a problem.

[MeliCat]

Zergling raids - tons and tons of.. idk frogs or bees or something? Just everywhere the entire raid. Swirling around... with a funny mechanic that if you try to kill a lot at once at least half will replace itself immediately... so the best mechanic is to kite it ... but if you do it all sticks to you like you're covered in bees so you need to be able to survive it (lots of little bites). So you need a number of people who can act as stickiness to this zergling trash escorting everyone else around who doesn't need it. Final boss is a huge mass of these zergling bees and somewhere in that mass in the 'queen' that you have to try to extract - the queen will stick a lot of these bees to her though to make herself tougher to beat and the bees will have different effects that you have to work out in order to ultimately finally find and kill the tiny inner queen bee.

[MeliCat]

Raiding for little people ... and big people... and sneaky people and bold people... first room.... a barrier at tall people height on either side of a corridor means that little people get hits in and after that everyone else has to try to angle with ranged attacks or splash damage.... second room.... barrier means little people have problems (sorry gnomes and halfling) and same deal... third room any sneaking or hiding behaviour gets immediate severe aggro ... requires racing across the room aggravating?* mobs as you go to do objectives - say 6 objectives at once - which someone can try to range aggro to remote tank - and any flying or leaping will immediately stick you to the ground and bring mobs on you (ie don't do that). ... fourth room... you drop into complete darkness with only the sound of dripping water. If you move or don't sneak you bring in severe bright light magic attacks... people sneak around the room looking for damp rocks to disturb which brings moss to light up (hopefully not disturb a mob... if you do it takes a bite out of you but don't run or jump or badness ensues)... as more moss lights up it becomes easier to see but will be very very dark until you do... and eventually find the way out ... fifth room a huge castle battlement.... fighting into the inner castle and throne room to depose an evil king.

[Tyrande]

Raid exists in a lot of tree houses and you're climbing up and up during the raid - you've got to walk across vines. Climb ladders. Jump and featherfall to platforms. None of it's very hard except you've got a lot of fairy trash (those fairies from house P) that is annoying. Mini bosses are plant based. Final boss at the top of a really large tree with a lot of vines that come up from the floor and whip at you and multi stage killing cycles. Lots of flowers and green stuff - dire death doesn't have to come in doom and gloom and fire. In deference to all the monks who have to wear cloth....anyone meleeing in cloth takes zero magical damage of any type. Everyone else will have a problem.

Isn't this look a lot like Donky Kong or Jack the Beanstalk? Also DDO ladders are buggy and I am not certain you want buggy ladders in a laggy environment except Wayfinder which doesn't really have raids.

[Tyrande]

My idea of a raid is a cool mountain on an island for a summer hike.

After going through the passport agency; the PCs checked into a fancy hotel spa like Altaraxia's.

There are cruise ships excursions to circle around the island chain for attacks by sea monsters like sharks.
There are underwater excursions and scuba diving excursions for attacks by sea monsters like electric eels.
There are jungle cruises through the wild for attacks by pixies, fairies, bing dogs, Will O' Wisps and wolverines (shifters).
There are safari excursions where PCs were attacked by dinosaurs, raptors and crocodiles.

There is a giant splash mountain where players ride on boats or canoes on rivers/waterfalls formed by snow melting in the mountain. Monsters and savage monsters attacks with ranged spears on the PCs while splashing down.

Final encounter with a big bad boss of a kraken (or big white shark) in the bottom of the lagoon that was splashed down.

Successful completion wins a free roundtrip ticket flight back to Stormreach for future trips; otherwise, head back to the resort.

[janave]

Years ago, i started writing a troll raid (literally) for DDO, inspired directly by "Stopping the Sahuagin" quest's ending and a little bit by "The Pit".

The base outline of the quest was a broken underground Cannith facility linked up by a couple of tunnels, as far as i remember the idea was to hunt down and destroy a super gigantic Troll ( kind of a super mutant, exposure to "experimental stuff in the factories...just the usual stuff")

Plot, the Troll found a way to break into one of the still maintained Cannith tunnels, slowly breaking its way to the parts of house C, that could quickly become a problem on the surface as well.

Concept included a couple of checkpoints, the Troll is basically unstoppable (unkillable, fast regen) by the players, but can be slowed down, and damaged to low health.

Lose condition: After the megatroll reaching the final checkpoint and making its escape ( see any tower defense).
Win condition: Defeat the troll before the last checkpoint, which can be conveniently submerged in fresh high grade Cannith acid. Defeat/player win conditions would depend a lot on what is the state of the boss when reaching the final -1 checkpoint.

Along the path there would be a lot of different stuff that players could use to debuff, slow, and damage the Troll, but each option would be exclusive and a little random so no perfect strategy or protocol could be achieved, each run would be a thrill if you can stop the thing from escaping.

Players could either run along the beast or choose to place members strategically along its path, deploy cannith cannons, traps etc, call in for npc cannith titans, allied npc warforged parties, etc.


That is a very short summary, i had maps and writeup somewhere too about the functions and checkpoint specs, also a couple of allies for the main boss to keep things interesting and a little more chaotic :P.


Extra chest if the boss is stopped 1 checkpoint earlier.

[Gljosh]

There is a moment in Assault on Summerfield that mentions a battle against Droaam.

So I would make two different pathway Raid;

1) you can set up, maintain, and use siege weapons (Ballista, Cannon, Catapulting PCs) to attack a Droaam compound, just full of Orc/Ogres/Gnolls/Kobolds with large battlements

2) just straight up attack the compound-smash down walls, use ladders, pick sewer grates, etc.

Think of it like a larger version of Storm the Beaches but with different options to complete the Raid.

[Question2005]

Combine the best aspects of all end game raids into one.

Phase 1 : Party has to spend about 15 mins climbing stairs with traps (that ignore evasion and do damage that cannot be mitigated). Mobs will keep spawning to annoy them during this time. If anyone falls, they will die and someone will have to grab their soul stone from the bottom and climb the stairs again.

Phase 2 : When the party reaches the top, they get teleported into a room with lots of doors. The party has to open each door to find five levers that have to be activated in the correct order to proceed to phase 3. Mobs will keep spawning to annoy them during this time, including a boss that cannot be damaged.

Phase 3 : The party is teleported into a maze, to proceed, the party has to first destroy cannith power crystals that have very high fortification and HP. Mobs will keep spawning as long as a crystal is alive and they too, have high hp and fortification.

Phase 4 : After escaping the maze, the party has to solve several tile puzzles. The puzzles are locked as long as mobs are alive, and mobs keep respawning so you have to time the mobs to die at the same time. The mobs all have high hp and fortification.

Phase 5 : The party has to fight several bosses at the same time, and they must be killed in specific spots at specific times. The bosses all have mechanics that only affect melee players, one boss is immune to melee attacks and another will move out of the kill zone if attacked in melee. Occasionally, some trash mobs will spawn to give melee players something to do during this time.

Phase 6 : Players have to solve several puzzle, if they take too long, a massive DOT will start damaging them and eventually kill everyone. Trash mobs will spawn, but have to be killed in a very specific manner or red named mobs will spawn, so most players can only sit around and wait for puzzles to be solved before they have something to do. Everytime the puzzles are solved, the players can damage the boss for a while before the puzzles are reset and the players have to start over. Repeat till the boss dies.

Caster mobs in this raid will all cast high damaging AOE spells that ignore evasion and elemental absorption such as Horrid Wilting. Trash mobs with ranged attacks will also constantly spawn in areas that make it difficult or impossible for melee players to reach them.

[Tyrande]

Combine the best aspects of all end game raids into one.
[...]

This sounds a-lot like the shroud redesigned with some of the puzzles from the Hut From Beyond (Housekeeping) quest; except the non-damaging boss and non-evasive traps part.

Well, mind traps like the Strahd's and Party-crashers ones are non-evasive, but still avoidable.

Question though, would such a raid be fun? Personally I only prefer one type of puzzle or maybe two. More than two puzzles in a raid while monsters repeatedly spawns trying to attack? No thanks. Your sorcerers and alchemists in your party will hate your character leading them into such a raid.

[Question2005]

This sounds a-lot like the shroud redesigned with some of the puzzles from the Hut From Beyond (Housekeeping) quest; except the non-damaging boss and non-evasive traps part.

Well, mind traps like the Strahd's and Party-crashers ones are non-evasive, but still avoidable.

Question though, would such a raid be fun? Personally I only prefer one type of puzzle or maybe two. More than two puzzles in a raid while monsters repeatedly spawns trying to attack? No thanks. Your sorcerers and alchemists in your party will hate your character leading them into such a raid.

I think you are missing that what I described was the worst aspects of strahd, baba, thth and pn combined into one raid...it was a sarcastic post.

[Tsutti]

This sounds a-lot like the shroud redesigned with some of the puzzles from the Hut From Beyond (Housekeeping) quest; except the non-damaging boss and non-evasive traps part.

His part one refers directly to Strahd's staircase, part two refers to Strahd crypts, part three seems like he amped up shroud part 2, part four is Baba hut once you reach the puzzles, part five is project nemesis, part six is the main part of THTH. He just took everything he didn't like from different raids and mashed them together because he's unhappy with raids having annoying parts or something. Either that or he's actually trying to be silly rather than grumpy but the basic idea is he just carbon copied a bunch of things from other raids (or for the last two, nearly the whole raid) and put them into one big raid that would probably take over an hour to run on normal for many groups.

A really long raid would be cool tho, only problem is that if it's too long some people might be somewhat unable to run it due to time constraints on their playing time.

EDIT: I see he intended to be grumpy lol

[Talon_Dragonsbane]

A large wildnerness like Necro4. The mission is to collect 1000 rare ingredients randomly hidden throughout. Roaming mobs, maybe a boss.

[Gljosh]

A large wildnerness like Necro4. The mission is to collect 1000 rare ingredients randomly hidden throughout. Roaming mobs, maybe a boss.

Make it Devils Battleground, you have to find the parts of a Warforged Titan to help with a powerful demon that is being summoned.

One part gathering pieces, one part defending builder, and one part decreasing the ranks of the demon horde.

[AbyssalMage]

Write up how it would work - anything goes This is imagination only.

Serious. Stupid. Amusing. Small. Neat. Epic. Huge. Complicated. Simple. Thematic. Totally off the wall. Lore-abiding. Chaotic nonsense

I've posted a few random ideas in my next few posts
... this is just for fun.

Challenge accepted.
Map use: Underdark
NPC's: Cultists, Drow, Umberhulk's, Shadow's, Purple Worm's, Undead (variety), Slaves (Random Humanoid's), Sharda-Kai anything I am missing.
BBEG: Dracolich, Named Sharda-Kai (?)

Basically a spinoff from Fire on Thunder Peak and Temple of the Deathwyrm. The players have thwarted the cult, the cult is in disarray, and the once uneasy alliance between the Cult of the Dragon and the Shadowfell has descended into a war in the Underdark. The only reason the players are getting involved is that the war is spilling onto the surface.

Three faction of enemies. Drow, Cult, and Sharda-Kai. NPC's should attack each other. They will attack PC's if Diplomacy, Intimidate, Bluff, and Persuasion checks have multiple fails (3). On success the two groups attack each other. Failure cause one or both groups to attack the PC's. This allows raids to choose XP or "stealth"/speed.

Final battle is just a straight DPS fest so everyone can feel good about their Min/Max PC's.

[Tyrande]

Make it Devils Battleground, you have to find the parts of a Warforged Titan to help with a powerful demon that is being summoned.

One part gathering pieces, one part defending builder, and one part decreasing the ranks of the demon horde.

Why does this sound like "Weapon Shipment" where the quest have hordes of devils and the quest can drop a Bauble for a re-usable major mana potion, a crippling arrow head or a mad lute (rhymes with loot for bard)?