[Poll] Tougher Monsters, Deeper Levels

[Piper]

This poll is identical to the one I posted over on MeWe's T&T group, but I thought I'd ask here as well.

T&T v5, Case 2.4 discusses how to increase the challenge of "low level" monsters encountered on deeper levels of your dungeon, then tells us: Pick a method, try it, consistently use the one you like. I'm happy to do that, but I'm curious as to which one you like. Help out a new GM, if you're so inclined, and answer the poll below. Comments also welcome.

[zanshin]

Monster Rating is simple enough to increase. Adding special attacks triggered by spite is a way of spicing things up and increasing difficulty as well.

[mahrundl]

Here are half a dozen or so ideas for the 'Other' category:

• Give them armour, natural or manufactured.  They don't hit any harder, but they will take longer to put down, and who knows what will happen in those extra rounds...
  
• Allow them some potions, scrolls, or other temporary magical effects that they can use to their benefit - and that the characters don't get to keep afterwards!
• Give them a bonus for 'home ground advantage' - the goblins dodge behind pillars and re-appear from behind different ones, because they know where the hidden tunnels are.
• Let at least the leaders try stunts to gain an advantage (generally it will be the characters rolling to see if they avoid the effect, rather than the monster rolling to see if they make it).
• Add more monsters - visiting in-laws, a (somewhat friendly) rival sports team from another dungeon, a mobster and thugs collecting payment for a protection racket, whatever.
• Environmental hazards that are more dangerous to the characters than to the monsters.  The salamanders aren't concerned about stepping in molten lava, but Frederico the Stupendous needs to watch where he puts his feet.
• The monsters are mounted on other creatures, and the mounts don't like the characters any more than the riders do...

What do other people use in the 'Other' category?

[khaboom]

I voted for 'other' and that amounts to whatever I can think of in the heat of the moment that will throw the players off balance, scare them and make them think creatively and beg beseechingly!

[dungeondevil]

I greatly favour a system proposed by Dave Arneson in the First Fantasy Campaign (Judges Guild, 1980, p. 30) employing what are termed "Protection Points": a numerical value is assigned to the entire dungeon level representing the total toughness (Hit Dice, or here, Monster Ratings) of antagonists dwelling therein, and that value is increased for each successively deeper dungeon level. E.g.:

1st Lvl...P
2nd Lvl...P*1.5
3rd Lvl...P*2
4th Lvl...P*3
etc.......etc.

Naturally, other progressions can be used.

The allocation of portions of that given PP total can be ad lib or by some other system (e.g. dice rolls keyed to a matrix, etc.)

[gaptooth]

dungeondevil, are the "Protection Points" just a bonus to their Monster Ratings? Or do they do something else?

[Piper]

Jan 10, 2019 22:40:18 GMT -5 gaptooth said:

dungeondevil , are the "Protection Points" just a bonus to their Monster Ratings? Or do they do something else?

I'd like to know that, too.

[dungeondevil]

Monsters "protect" a dungeon from those horrible, disruptive, gold-hungry surface-dwellers (=the Heroes).

Translated into T&T terms, in short, "Protection Points" are the sum of all the monsters' ratings in a given dungeon level. For example, a Referee decides that the first subterranean dungeon level composed of, say, forty numbered (and/or lettered) chambers, halls, caves and their manifold connecting passages warrants 500 "Protection Points". Those 500 PP would be the sum MR of any hypothetical monsters (and/or traps, tricks, illusions, etc.) to be allocated to any number of discrete areas in that level.

What chambers are "protected" by monsters? That can be determined by Referee fiat, or by a random system, e.g.:

Roll 1d66:
11...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
12...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
13...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
14...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
15...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
16...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
21...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
22...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
23...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
24...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
25...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
26...no monster in this chamber, passage, area, etc.
31...one monster of 1-10 MR in this chamber, etc.
32...one monster of 5-20 MR in this chamber, etc.
33...one monster of 10-30 MR in this chamber, etc.
34...one monster of 20-40 MR in this chamber, etc.
35...one monster of 30-50 MR in this chamber, etc.
36...one monster of 40-60 MR in this chamber, etc.
41...one monster of 50-70 MR in this chamber, etc.
42...one monster of 60-80 MR in this chamber, etc.
43...one monster of 70-100 MR in this chamber, etc.
44...two monsters each of 10-60 MR in this chamber, etc.
45...two monsters each of 30-80 MR in this chamber, etc.
46...two monsters each of 50-100 MR in this chamber, etc.
51...1d6 monsters each of 15-30 MR in this chamber, etc.
52...ten monsters of 25 MR in this chamber, etc.
53...a deadly gas trap here (L3SR vs. LK to neutralise).
54...chamber is closed off and slowly fills with ice-cold water (L2SR vs. LK to escape).
55...a trap-door in floor opens; a chute conveys all in the chamber down to 2nd dungeon lvl.
56...poison dart trap (L1SR vs. LK or die) targeting first person in chamber.
61...swinging axe-blade of death (L2SR vs. LK or get bisected).
62...part of ceiling-block collapses (L2SR vs. LK or get turned into pancake).
63...magical alarm set off; one MR 50 monster lumbers angrily into room to investigate intruder(s).
64...teleportation chamber relocates first person into another room.
65...one monster of 50 MR in this chamber, etc.
66...one monster of 100 MR in this chamber, etc.

Obviously, an inventive Referee can come up with a plethora of more creative tables, perhaps based on a percentile roll instead of 1d66.