Dungeon Master Help (Dungeons and Dragons v3.5)

[HavokSCOUT]

I'm running a homebrew campaign right now, and the party is right in front of the scary ethereal mansion where something's been taking the city's kids (and the party's halfling rogue). I want to go for the semi traditional haunted house, with some stipulations:

• The main culprit is a female ghost sorceress who was sly and manipulative in life, but only to benefit her child.
• She lost her child, her life, and her estate in a fire. She is level 4 and favors illusions and enchantments.
• The party is 5 level 1 characters with some divine magic capabilities. They are there mainly to rescue their comrade as well as the Duke's son
• She has a wand of charm person

Some ideas I've scrounged up include:

• Skeleton children under her control
• One of the PCs looks into a mirror to see his/her reflection, which then slits its own throat. PC looks down and sees a bloody knife in their hand.
• Mood music >:D

Any help would be appreciated :)
(I like lists)

[Western-Knight]

-Possessed dolls/toys
-Use of the wand of suggestion to force the characters into a childlike state of mind. (Fear/irrationality/temporary alliance with the spirit)
-Her child's urn is somewhere within the mansion, perhaps tampering with it harms/enrages her.
-corpses of concerned parents found dead, killed in some gruesome way. Heads splattered with their own hammers, impaling themselves on pitchforks, etc.
-drowned children in bathtubs and other such gruesome things... If she has skeleton children they've gotta be dying somehow, right?

[TheGreatIntelligence]

I quite like Knight's idea of Ash-filled Urns that harm the sorceress. The first thing that I thought of was when I read about the sorceress were Wispmothers from Skyrim, which are ethereal beings in the shape of women that use illusions similar to Will-o-the-Wisps to lure travellers. Maybe the sorceress could have some abilities similar to Wispmothers like ethereal clones, summon wisps/skeleton children and life draining.

[HavokSCOUT]

Sorry, she really has a wand of Charm Person, not Suggestion. I only needed to hold the rogue happy long enough to possess him. I like the gruesome death idea, and it would be easy to have a few people who wander in looking for the children to be there, but another idea I have is that she uses the children as a cabbage patch battery until they wither away to bones. Then she gives a little back.

[Rawny]

Ouch, such an encounter with my DM would wipe the party out completely and hastily. He's harsh and uses the enemy's powers at their fullest.

DMG(p48) "A monster’s Challenge Rating (CR) tells you the level of the party for which that monster is a good challenge. A monster of CR 5 is an appropriate challenge for a group of four 5th-level characters." and a single opponent of character level 4 is a CR 4 encounter. Add more it would be a slaughter.

He was a min/max'er and we had to be in order to try and survive. Let's say we don't play much with him any more though the challenge was interesting for a time. Felt like The Walking dead, everybody dies.

Your story sounds fun and creative. My favourite thing in playing was believing there was a threat of dying without there being one (unless players did absurd things). With my killer DM we knew death was imminent. I've played with other DMs where I WANTED to play a gully dwarf (Weak Forgotten Realms race with many stat penalties) using the NPC class of "Commoner" (DMG:p109), because I knew I'd not only survive but be endlessly victorious. Striking a perfect balance between both is important; keep that illusion and it won't matter what you do behind the screen.

EDIT: Sum speling misstakes

[eternal8phoenix]

Here's my two cents:

-children's laughter and/or screams being heard
-shadow puppet monsters/shadows being monsters
-monsters from under the bed/in the closets
-Walk in, see a kid under a sheet with eyeholes cut out. The sheet comes off. Nothing is there. Cue hoarde of skele-kids coming in from behind.
-A kid runs past/through the party, bangs desperately on a door that isn't there, and bursts into flames.
-A kid dancing in fire, calls for party to join him/her.
-A "bedroom" for the children too decomposed to be successfully reanimated. All dressed up in moldering clothes, with teddy bears clutched in what's left of their hands.

[HavokSCOUT]

-Walk in, see a kid under a sheet with eyeholes cut out. The sheet comes off. Nothing is there. Cue hoarde of skele-kids coming in from behind.

Very Paranormal Activity. I like it.
@Rawny: I've already tried throwing them the "proper" level of challenge, in the form of 5 pyromancers, but one person (the warrior w/ 18 strength) ripped through them. I wanted to have something to whet the cleric and paladin's whistles, as well as stick it to the physical classes.

[eternal8phoenix]

If the party is too powerful, then try adjusting your attack strategies.

-If they're good at taking on enemies solo, then pit them against the masses.
-If they clear crowds well, then space things out.
-Add ranged enemies to try and force them to plan around and work out which target to take out first.
-Also make the enemies target smarter if things are getting easy. Make them target the squishy players, or incapacitate the major damage dealers. At the same time don't go too far the other way and completely murder them every time. Make them play smart.

The more variety there is to an encounter, the harder it can become for the players to work around. An additional idea could be to use spells to daze/confuse the battlefield, so some of the enemies on the battlefield aren't really there, and the warrior now has to wrench his axe from the floorboards or whatever.

Forgive me if that is all a bit obvious. It's just stuff I've learnt from my own (admittedly limited) time DM'ing.

[TheGreatIntelligence]

16 dragons coming at the party all at once. *laughs maniacally*

[Battlecat]

I found the concept of proper level to be quite meaningless when DM'ing 3.5. Too many balance issues. Here are a couple tricks I found with crafting encounters in that system:

- If you have an item intended for the party as treasure, arm your npc with it instead of it being in a box. Nothing like a goblin wielding a flaming sword or a ring of true seeing.
- Diversify your npc's (ranged, mage, melee) instead of just having a single enemy type. Harder book keeping but better encounters. Honestly, that's one thing the design of 4th got right, even with all it's other flaws.

As for your haunted house adventure, mind games are crucial. A couple fun ones that I played with:

- Anything that creates an Escher (impossible) environment. Such as walking through the door of a room just in time to see someone leaving the room. Chasing the figure through an impossible number of identical rooms only to realize it was the same room and the figure was wearing remarkably similar gear to you. Perhaps inescapable unless a condition is met, something like a trap but more of a mental puzzle.

- If you really want to mess with your players and you have access to internet/speakers, this ambient audio mixer might be fun. It contains a mixing board for randomly playing short audio tracks and it's got some neat horror appropriate sounds. Put it quietly in the background when they enter the house and you could put your players really on edge with the right audio choices and timing. Especially if they don't know it's on. :-) There are lots of good presets on the site but you'll probably want to tune it for the setting.

Good luck, sounds like a fun session you've got planned.

[HavokSCOUT]

Thanks for all the tips. Two general rules for scariness that I've found so far is that normal objects in abnormal situations are always a good standby, and to rely on the player's imagination, as they are almost always more likely to scare themselves than you are.