I’m obviously biased towards interesting equipment over interesting character abilities, but both work here. If your wizard spell list is «fireball, magic missile, lightning bolt, sleep» then you could have an okay heist, but it’s probably going to be more of a head-on assault. If it’s «charm person, floating disc, summon toads, change weather» then you’re going to have to get clever, but the result will be more fun. Likewise, if you’re running Into the Odd then make sure the players have access to weird, non-obvious tools. Oddities are great here, but make sure you’ve got shops selling all sorts of specialist items.
- Chris McDowall “Encourage Scheming”
I recently splurged and picked up all four back issues of Knock Magazine. Totally worth it. So much great writing. When I read the above passage in issue #1 I had to smile because it reminded me of an incident we had a couple weeks ago in our Shadowdark campaign. I posted this as a BlueSky thread at the time so if I know you there sorry for the rerun.
I’ve been running the adventure "The Keep at Koralgesh" written by Robert B. Giaccomazzi and Jonathan H Simmons for Basic D&D in Dungeon Magazine #2, 1986. My wife's Priest of Ord, Whisper has been leading forays into this ancient keep since our Schadengard campaign began last October. It's been her life's work. The adventure includes an original monster called the Tyrannabyss (pictured). Rather than try to convert it to Shadowdark stats I took the purple worm and watered it down (literally!) into this amphibious creature. Less HP, less size, no burrowing, but all the other nastiness.
Despite correctly deciding they shouldn't mess with the fetid bathing pool with rotting body parts floating in it, the wizard just had to poke his staff in. Tentatively, of course. Just checking. Several rounds later the 7th level priest lay dying, so was the 5th level Pit Fighter who somehow managed to fail like five CON checks in a row. And the 4th level Sea Wolf? Being digested alive deep in the worm's belly.
“But Mark, how could they have survived that?"
I'll tell you. It was all thanks to the 3rd level wizard and 2nd level priest. Yes, really.
The wizard kept up focus round after round on his acid arrow spell, while cleverly using doors and corners to keep the worm just out of reach. The priest ran back to the supply room down the hall and grabbed the barrel of industrial strength degreaser I had cheekily described being in there. Pouring the degreaser on the worm did no damage, but I ruled it played havoc with the mucus membrane that allowed it to stay out of the water, so it turned tail and fled for its pool. With the sea wolf still inside. Barricaded in a room they finally healed the Priest and Pit Fighter and began mourning their lost friend, when the door busted open.
It was Hjalmar the Sea Wolf.
"But Mark, how?!?"
Shh, let me finish.
As the worm fled ... as the survivors hid ... the wizard made one last focus check on Acid Arow. The beast was out of sight, but not out of range. The wizard succeeded. The worm had one hit point left. I fucking love this game. (No dice were fudged in the making of this story.)
I have no idea if my player thought I placed the degreaser there for him to find for just this purpose – I didn’t. It’s actually a stupid long-running inside joke only my wife would get (I have this crazy good purple degreaser show up somewhere in all my campaigns). Honestly, the only solution I saw to this worm was fleeing. And I roll all my dice in the open so there was no fudging to help the players along. They just took their chances, thought up crazy solutions, and had great luck. And it was epic.