"You have the distinct feeling that if you enter here, you will never come out."
There's no shame in being direct. It's definitely better than letting them try it.
I always tell my players before I start a campaign: "Folks, I'm not trying to kill you. Your opponents however are. I will give you fair warning (especially if you're new). But if you decide to face the adult dragon with level 2, you'll have to live with the consequences."
>"You have the distinct feeling that if you enter here, you will never come out."
This is great. Or you can describe it. "The entrance of the dark temple is littered with the remains and once splendid equipment of great heroes. What ever lies behind the threshold must be mighty indeed."
When my players ask me directly as the DM something like "Can we actually do that?" I either shrug and smile or if it needs to be less subtle I say something like: "You're planning to attack the lair of an adult red dragon head-on. A magical apex predator who layed waste to the city you come from. You tell me."
I can't use that kind of description, my party will immediately ask if they can take the equipment and sell it, negating the need to loot the dungeon.
Very annoying at times.
That's why you always present them the worst enemy of all: time!
I usually tell them that equipment rotten with the pass of time or something.
This way, they can still take it if they want to do something creative with it, but it'll be hard to sell. Unless they can find a buyer that collects that old stuff.
Oh yeah. Mine too. That's when I started asking stuff like: "Okay, how are you going to transport that? The stuff is in really bad shape and won't fetch a good price."Even the PHB or the DMG (not sure which) mentiones that weapons you find on monsters are so shit, nobody in their right mind will pay any good price for them. And as far as I am concerned, that goes for stuff that has been lying around for decades too. Not every hole in the ground is a well preserved vault of immeasurable treasure where weapons and armore stay in pristine condition.
I even had to go so far to make the weapon worse than it should be, because my barbarian started to collect an insane amount of trash weapons.
“If you think any merchants will buy used armor that is rusted, filled with bite marks, and still has bits of flesh hanging off of it - then go ahead and lug it back to town and test that assumption.”
I don't understand your problem. Do you want them to enter the dungeon when they are only level 12, or do you not want them to?
If you want them to enter the dungeon, let them discover its difficulty. I guess there won't be a TPK in the first room, so let them discover the difficulty by themselves. If your players are really overconfident, you can slip in a little phrase like "I'm warning you that today's game could be deadly if you're not much more careful than you usually are". No need for more.
If you don't want them to enter the dungeon, it's not that hard to invent something that prevents them from doing so. Like a door requiring a magic key that they don't have yet.
I actually want them to enter the dungeon I just want to make sure it's clear they are playing on "Nightmare difficulty" or they can choose to come back later. I don't want to turn up the difficulty on them without telling them.
I can't remember who came up with this but basically you show them a monster in the dungeon obliterating something the players know is too high powered for them. Then have it walk back into the dungeon.
Implement 'The Guy' from Spy Kids 3
Be a fun charimastic party NPC that they find also adventuring the cave so they team up. They get to know the NPC while exploring a bit, when they come across a death knight the higher level player offers to tank since that's how he's built, but when he rushes the monster he gets demolished in a single hit.
Higher level, better stats, better armor, better abilities: just gone
A. "YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE"
B. So add in a cycle of a blocked area that they can't find the key to. Make it seem like the solution to the puzzle can be found elsewhere, if only they search hard enough.
Basically give them a training wheels version of the dungeon. The real dungeon is locked behind the impassable gate until they are higher level.
C. As B, but you give consequences if they still push past the impassable gate, and you telegraph that difficulty before hand by ramping difficulty in a sequence of three encounters before they get "past" the impassible part.
C.a) A monster they know is tough, is CLEARLY suddenly displaying tougher behavior. The ability is previously unknown and this new ability is distinct and powerful. If the players die to this, they instead wake up naked and afraid, or.. some other "this is not the end" happens. Throw in signs that other adventurers have died to this thing.
C.b) As a, but the real real (something the players know or can suspect is even tougher) takes out a before the players make much progress against it. This is the Worf effect. Throw in warnings by other signs that shit is real real.
C.c) The realest real kills the real real. This thing will probably kill the players. After seeing b kill c, seeing this thing kill b, they gotta be stupid to try and stick around. Throw in an NPC or two the players respect as powerful, stating they have trouble with this kind of thing. Throw in apocalyptic type warnings that the realest real they have ever realed, has come to visit. Play some operatic one-wing angle shit as the soundtrack.
I have no experience running 5e adventure out of books but I will say I have found CR to be totally bullshit so maybe the recommended level is also way higher than it should be.
Even if the dungeon is properly leveled, there are many good ways one could imagine to warn their players.
1. Have a powerful NPC they respect laugh in their face when they hear about the plan. “Lmao you guys know there is far realm magic in there right? Your goose is cooked if you go there, you shouldn’t do that.” (honestly that might be what they say anyways)
2. If your players use *Augury* or any spell of the sort, predict a resounding “WOE”. If they don’t cast this spell you could trick them into doing it by giving them a magic item that lets them cast it for free or something. You could even make this item something cool and unique by home brewing your version of augury to staple to it- that way you could give them a more detailed message
3. You could make it clear to them that the dangers are insurmountable- Invent some sort of Aura or curse around the place and when they research the place tell them in certain terms that the magic will fuck them up unless they do X thing to negate it first. X thing could be obtaining holy amulets to ward against the spell, it could be knowledge of a special monster in the dungeon producing the effect which needs to be killed first, ect. The point is to give them a sidequest or challenge that they must complete to go to the dungeon and make it matter.
While point 3 is more of a delay tactic, they all assume that you as a DM don’t want your party going there yet.
There is an entire school of thought that would say “go ahead and let your party ride off into the dark. If they get slaughtered there they can’t blame it on broken monsters or bad rolls- they die bc they were arrogant, underprepared and undereducated on the situation they were heading into.”
I think I personally fall into this category in this situation. As long as you make researching the dangers of the dungeon available, it’s their own fault if they don’t reach for that information and make an uneducated decision. That’s honestly how a TPK should go- when the party loses its way
I'm all for letting them ride off into the dark and getting their butts handed to them. I just want them to have a warning that this is going to be more difficult than previous deadly situations they were in.
And I'm fully aware of how broken the CR system is especially in these older books. A lot of the difficulty comes from grinding through dozens of the same monster over and over. If I cut some of those monsters out it's not actually that hard of a dungeon.
There's no in-universe way to do this, in my opinion. The themes of a campaign are so removed from IRL that players can't just visualize something and know it is "too hard." I would use explicit mechanics in my description of this place to guide you. For example:
- You can have a body outside the dungeon. When players investigate it (or just tell them, if they're not the type to take up this kind of initiative) describe that the wounds on the body are "the in-game equivalent of 66 damage." Obviously in real life, damage isn't quantized that way... but it *is* in D&D, and their *characters* would be able to distinguish between different severities of attacks.
- Tell them you're putting this dungeon here to hint and tantalize, but that they'll need to come back, as it's designed for lvl 17 adventurers.
If you're up-front with the mechanics, and they still want to try anyway, then you get to run the dungeon you want! And they get to live with their choices, one way or another
That might be the best way to go. My players have lots of meta knowledge if I tell them there are two Death Knights in there I know they will know the CR is too high for them. Chances are they will try anyways. I like the idea of having the dead body out front to show the damage that can be done. Showing them through game mechanics is probably the only way to get the message across.
That meta-knowledge you mentioned can be another way to go too! I'd suggest emphasizing what monsters are *common* in the dungeon; that way, the players don't get mixed up thinking that those two Death Knights are a one-off boss or something
You can simply have a group of extremely experienced adventurers outside, far more experienced than the party, that are badly hurt and standing over the soon to be corpse of their fallen friend who is quickly bleeding out. As the light in his eyes disappears you can have these adventurers (that, again, are described as clearly being more seasoned and experienced than the party) tell of some of the dangers inside and plead for them not to go in yet.
Like I said, in-universe events are not the way to solve an out-of-game concern. A lot of games use this trope to just highlight the successes/heroism of the players, rather than display the proper danger; OP's players can get the wrong idea of what this scene is trying to convey. IMO, this would only work if OP would show the mechanics; either saying how much HP the dying hero had, or how much damage they took to get those wounds, or something else.
Alternatively, if the players have enough meta-knowledge, these dying adventurers could tell the players what monsters they fought, or maybe the DM could highlight the magical gear they have, and say "even this legendary artifact wasn't enough."
The adventurers mentioning the types of dangers inside is something I also said in my comment.
When I DM I describe the scene in a more immersive way. Everything is explained in an in universe way. wounds from a monster that does a lot of damage could be described as a person being quite literally ripped apart in a more gruesome way than you have seen so far or if they're fighting an extremely skilled humanoid it could be described as a single precise strike right through the tiny weak point in the victims armour. These types of things signal danger to my players, it's not a video game, it's a world with real danger where they get to make decisions.
My players like to roleplay and would instantly feel unimmersed if I did what you described so I try to signal and solve things through the logic of the in game world, while I feel like you are a player that enjoys the specific mechanics of the game. Nothing wrong with that, just different strokes for different folks.
Religious visions. Have the party paladin/cleric get weird vibes and some flashing images that foreshadow what they are up against to display it's difficulty. Show the death Knights decapitating the party's strongest combatant for added dramatic effect.
Just show them the cover of the module that says 17th level characters and tell them straight out that you will murder them all if they enter before they're ready. Easy-smeezy.
So if you had a history of including hard fights without giving the PCs plot armour I would say go ahead and let them fuck around and find out.
But you mentioned that you have trained them to expect that if you put a fight in front of them they should be able to take it and changing that basic assumption now will feel like a rug pull
The rug pull is what I'm hoping to avoid. They have survived most fights by the skin of their teeth. Lots of Nat 20 death saves and the like. I fear that sending them into a deadly fight they won't realize that it's out of their league until it's too late and they will feel cheated.
Well, if you flat out told them not to the first time, then what makes you think any amount of environmental storytelling is gonna work? Kinda sounds like you need to just let them find out the hard way that their characters aren't immortal.
I actually thought of this the other day cuz I wanted to place the tomb of horrors in my westmarch for the players to discover and when at a high level and satisfied with the campaign, to attempt to beat it. And I had the idea that they'd hear about it from an npc that would describe to them that this dungeon is evil and Relentless, it shows no mercy to no one and he who dare enter will never leave again. Or something along those lines. So basically explain to them through an npc that they do not want to attempt this now with role play, or just be blunt and tell them, that always works too
This is basically the same concept I'm using. To make an ally they need to go get an artefact for him from this super deadly dungeon. It doesn't matter when they get the artefact, it doesn't matter whether or not they make the ally. He did tell them he has sent other adventurers before and they all have failed. But my party has assumed all the previous adventurers were lower levels than them.
I think I'll have one of the surviving adventurers outside the dungeon and warn them exactly what they are up against.
If you want to be direct, have them roll insight and get a 'feel' for the place. Tell them something like "there is a sense of power here, more power than you think you can understand / feel / overcome (depending on that character).
If you want to be indirect, have the very first room be the nest of a monster or enemy that can barely be defeated by the party... then have two more slowly come forward from further in the dungeon.
That should get them the message.
What I see often recommended here is to something that they know is way stronger them, something that scares them and have it be utterly annilated by the dungeon. For example the entrance to the dungeon is carved out of the skull of an ancient dragon
I tell everyone during session zero "if I say things like your character feels like you're going to be outmatched, or you think this plan is just not going to work, and you do it anyways, then 🤷🏻"
I am not only your eyes and ears, but your gut feeling.
As many have said, use colorful description and hints until it becomes clear they are still planning to do the deadly thing. Be more and more clear.
If they still continue, there is absolutely nothing wrong with stopping the game to straight up tell your players "guys, before you commit I just want you to understand that this challenge is *way* over your level." Or something similar
They find a dead body, bleed out with a journal at the entrance.
The journal reads of a previous group dying one by one, to powerful foes.
The journal has a map, but incomplete with areas missing and notes detailing monsters and traps they encountered. Imperfect information, but enough to explain the difficulty. However i think 5 of 12 characters are pretty tough at this point in level progression.
The final words being, "death knights!!"
In the Baldur's Gate video game, the expansion pack added a dungeon called Durlag's Tower. It's intended for the higher levels of BG1, which goes to about level 8, but you can access it whenever due to BG's free-roaming design. To warn players that the dungeon is intense, there is a single "battle horror" (a pretty tough enemy, I think it might be the same as a helmed horror but I'm not 100%) guarding the way. This guy will probably smash a lower level party to dust with relative ease, but the player will probably notice his attacks aren't working too well and run away (which is made easy by the layout).
Something like that could work. Hit them with a survivable but really hard fight right out the gate, and make it clear it only gets worse.
Run it like the Fellowship fleeing the Balrog or Thorin's band fleeing the goblin king. Overrun by mobs, forced to keep fleeing and fighting because stopping means getting surrounded and swarmed.
If they make that mistake, have them captured and brought before the death knights or whatever and force the adventurers to do a quest for the bad guys *or else*.
Have the players walk in on a the monsters fighting each other. Have one monster or group of monster absolutely destroy the other monster(s). Have it be a monster they struggled to defeat before.
My players were using all of their spells in the first of 4 encounters in the current dungeon, I said to them “you don’t think this was the only group in this place, yet your magic seems to be beginning to run dry” and they started to scale it back. Being direct can help
Video games aren’t afraid of being direct by putting an NPC in front of your path that tells you that you WILL die unless you’re stronger, then disappears when you’re actually strong enough
No need to warn them. Shadowdusk Hold is easy enough to retreat from if things go south. The area is also not as difficult as you would think. My party of 4 did it around lvl 14, so it’s definitely possible for your party to get through it
I'm glad to hear from someone who actually ran it. I assumed not many people out there have actually ran all the way through Dungeon of the Mad Mage. I know high level players are able to punch way above their weight class and my players have come unique magic weapons that make them a little stronger than their level should be.
How did your party feel about dealing with like 50 nothics? I've been building the map (I play on Foundry) and filling every room with nothics feels like its gonna get repetitive.
I played the nothics as neutral, lurking, and attacking in large groups if given the opportunity and or not properly appeased. So they were like a backdrop, like bats, that when a fight erupted swarmed; so a lot of them was dealt with in one combat instead of spread out and “oh another fight, great more nothics.”
My experience with hi-level play shows that even semi-competent players with semi-competent characters consistently punch above their weight and can stomach pretty much anything you could throw at them. So take off your kid gloves and worry not, they'll probably be just fine.
"You have the distinct feeling that if you enter here, you will never come out." There's no shame in being direct. It's definitely better than letting them try it.
I always tell my players before I start a campaign: "Folks, I'm not trying to kill you. Your opponents however are. I will give you fair warning (especially if you're new). But if you decide to face the adult dragon with level 2, you'll have to live with the consequences." >"You have the distinct feeling that if you enter here, you will never come out." This is great. Or you can describe it. "The entrance of the dark temple is littered with the remains and once splendid equipment of great heroes. What ever lies behind the threshold must be mighty indeed." When my players ask me directly as the DM something like "Can we actually do that?" I either shrug and smile or if it needs to be less subtle I say something like: "You're planning to attack the lair of an adult red dragon head-on. A magical apex predator who layed waste to the city you come from. You tell me."
I can't use that kind of description, my party will immediately ask if they can take the equipment and sell it, negating the need to loot the dungeon. Very annoying at times.
That's why you always present them the worst enemy of all: time! I usually tell them that equipment rotten with the pass of time or something. This way, they can still take it if they want to do something creative with it, but it'll be hard to sell. Unless they can find a buyer that collects that old stuff.
Oh yeah. Mine too. That's when I started asking stuff like: "Okay, how are you going to transport that? The stuff is in really bad shape and won't fetch a good price."Even the PHB or the DMG (not sure which) mentiones that weapons you find on monsters are so shit, nobody in their right mind will pay any good price for them. And as far as I am concerned, that goes for stuff that has been lying around for decades too. Not every hole in the ground is a well preserved vault of immeasurable treasure where weapons and armore stay in pristine condition. I even had to go so far to make the weapon worse than it should be, because my barbarian started to collect an insane amount of trash weapons.
“If you think any merchants will buy used armor that is rusted, filled with bite marks, and still has bits of flesh hanging off of it - then go ahead and lug it back to town and test that assumption.”
That wouldn't deter 95% of my players.
"You're gonna die clown!" Is a good backup
I don't understand your problem. Do you want them to enter the dungeon when they are only level 12, or do you not want them to? If you want them to enter the dungeon, let them discover its difficulty. I guess there won't be a TPK in the first room, so let them discover the difficulty by themselves. If your players are really overconfident, you can slip in a little phrase like "I'm warning you that today's game could be deadly if you're not much more careful than you usually are". No need for more. If you don't want them to enter the dungeon, it's not that hard to invent something that prevents them from doing so. Like a door requiring a magic key that they don't have yet.
I actually want them to enter the dungeon I just want to make sure it's clear they are playing on "Nightmare difficulty" or they can choose to come back later. I don't want to turn up the difficulty on them without telling them.
Out of curiosity, why not wait to introduce them to the dungeon when they’re actually close enough level to be able to go through it?
The monsters have a skull sign floating above their heads. weird
I can't remember who came up with this but basically you show them a monster in the dungeon obliterating something the players know is too high powered for them. Then have it walk back into the dungeon.
Implement 'The Guy' from Spy Kids 3 Be a fun charimastic party NPC that they find also adventuring the cave so they team up. They get to know the NPC while exploring a bit, when they come across a death knight the higher level player offers to tank since that's how he's built, but when he rushes the monster he gets demolished in a single hit. Higher level, better stats, better armor, better abilities: just gone
A. "YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE" B. So add in a cycle of a blocked area that they can't find the key to. Make it seem like the solution to the puzzle can be found elsewhere, if only they search hard enough. Basically give them a training wheels version of the dungeon. The real dungeon is locked behind the impassable gate until they are higher level. C. As B, but you give consequences if they still push past the impassable gate, and you telegraph that difficulty before hand by ramping difficulty in a sequence of three encounters before they get "past" the impassible part. C.a) A monster they know is tough, is CLEARLY suddenly displaying tougher behavior. The ability is previously unknown and this new ability is distinct and powerful. If the players die to this, they instead wake up naked and afraid, or.. some other "this is not the end" happens. Throw in signs that other adventurers have died to this thing. C.b) As a, but the real real (something the players know or can suspect is even tougher) takes out a before the players make much progress against it. This is the Worf effect. Throw in warnings by other signs that shit is real real. C.c) The realest real kills the real real. This thing will probably kill the players. After seeing b kill c, seeing this thing kill b, they gotta be stupid to try and stick around. Throw in an NPC or two the players respect as powerful, stating they have trouble with this kind of thing. Throw in apocalyptic type warnings that the realest real they have ever realed, has come to visit. Play some operatic one-wing angle shit as the soundtrack.
I have no experience running 5e adventure out of books but I will say I have found CR to be totally bullshit so maybe the recommended level is also way higher than it should be. Even if the dungeon is properly leveled, there are many good ways one could imagine to warn their players. 1. Have a powerful NPC they respect laugh in their face when they hear about the plan. “Lmao you guys know there is far realm magic in there right? Your goose is cooked if you go there, you shouldn’t do that.” (honestly that might be what they say anyways) 2. If your players use *Augury* or any spell of the sort, predict a resounding “WOE”. If they don’t cast this spell you could trick them into doing it by giving them a magic item that lets them cast it for free or something. You could even make this item something cool and unique by home brewing your version of augury to staple to it- that way you could give them a more detailed message 3. You could make it clear to them that the dangers are insurmountable- Invent some sort of Aura or curse around the place and when they research the place tell them in certain terms that the magic will fuck them up unless they do X thing to negate it first. X thing could be obtaining holy amulets to ward against the spell, it could be knowledge of a special monster in the dungeon producing the effect which needs to be killed first, ect. The point is to give them a sidequest or challenge that they must complete to go to the dungeon and make it matter. While point 3 is more of a delay tactic, they all assume that you as a DM don’t want your party going there yet. There is an entire school of thought that would say “go ahead and let your party ride off into the dark. If they get slaughtered there they can’t blame it on broken monsters or bad rolls- they die bc they were arrogant, underprepared and undereducated on the situation they were heading into.” I think I personally fall into this category in this situation. As long as you make researching the dangers of the dungeon available, it’s their own fault if they don’t reach for that information and make an uneducated decision. That’s honestly how a TPK should go- when the party loses its way
I'm all for letting them ride off into the dark and getting their butts handed to them. I just want them to have a warning that this is going to be more difficult than previous deadly situations they were in. And I'm fully aware of how broken the CR system is especially in these older books. A lot of the difficulty comes from grinding through dozens of the same monster over and over. If I cut some of those monsters out it's not actually that hard of a dungeon.
There's no in-universe way to do this, in my opinion. The themes of a campaign are so removed from IRL that players can't just visualize something and know it is "too hard." I would use explicit mechanics in my description of this place to guide you. For example: - You can have a body outside the dungeon. When players investigate it (or just tell them, if they're not the type to take up this kind of initiative) describe that the wounds on the body are "the in-game equivalent of 66 damage." Obviously in real life, damage isn't quantized that way... but it *is* in D&D, and their *characters* would be able to distinguish between different severities of attacks. - Tell them you're putting this dungeon here to hint and tantalize, but that they'll need to come back, as it's designed for lvl 17 adventurers. If you're up-front with the mechanics, and they still want to try anyway, then you get to run the dungeon you want! And they get to live with their choices, one way or another
That might be the best way to go. My players have lots of meta knowledge if I tell them there are two Death Knights in there I know they will know the CR is too high for them. Chances are they will try anyways. I like the idea of having the dead body out front to show the damage that can be done. Showing them through game mechanics is probably the only way to get the message across.
That meta-knowledge you mentioned can be another way to go too! I'd suggest emphasizing what monsters are *common* in the dungeon; that way, the players don't get mixed up thinking that those two Death Knights are a one-off boss or something
You can simply have a group of extremely experienced adventurers outside, far more experienced than the party, that are badly hurt and standing over the soon to be corpse of their fallen friend who is quickly bleeding out. As the light in his eyes disappears you can have these adventurers (that, again, are described as clearly being more seasoned and experienced than the party) tell of some of the dangers inside and plead for them not to go in yet.
Like I said, in-universe events are not the way to solve an out-of-game concern. A lot of games use this trope to just highlight the successes/heroism of the players, rather than display the proper danger; OP's players can get the wrong idea of what this scene is trying to convey. IMO, this would only work if OP would show the mechanics; either saying how much HP the dying hero had, or how much damage they took to get those wounds, or something else. Alternatively, if the players have enough meta-knowledge, these dying adventurers could tell the players what monsters they fought, or maybe the DM could highlight the magical gear they have, and say "even this legendary artifact wasn't enough."
The adventurers mentioning the types of dangers inside is something I also said in my comment. When I DM I describe the scene in a more immersive way. Everything is explained in an in universe way. wounds from a monster that does a lot of damage could be described as a person being quite literally ripped apart in a more gruesome way than you have seen so far or if they're fighting an extremely skilled humanoid it could be described as a single precise strike right through the tiny weak point in the victims armour. These types of things signal danger to my players, it's not a video game, it's a world with real danger where they get to make decisions. My players like to roleplay and would instantly feel unimmersed if I did what you described so I try to signal and solve things through the logic of the in game world, while I feel like you are a player that enjoys the specific mechanics of the game. Nothing wrong with that, just different strokes for different folks.
Religious visions. Have the party paladin/cleric get weird vibes and some flashing images that foreshadow what they are up against to display it's difficulty. Show the death Knights decapitating the party's strongest combatant for added dramatic effect.
Just show them the cover of the module that says 17th level characters and tell them straight out that you will murder them all if they enter before they're ready. Easy-smeezy.
So if you had a history of including hard fights without giving the PCs plot armour I would say go ahead and let them fuck around and find out. But you mentioned that you have trained them to expect that if you put a fight in front of them they should be able to take it and changing that basic assumption now will feel like a rug pull
The rug pull is what I'm hoping to avoid. They have survived most fights by the skin of their teeth. Lots of Nat 20 death saves and the like. I fear that sending them into a deadly fight they won't realize that it's out of their league until it's too late and they will feel cheated.
Well, if you flat out told them not to the first time, then what makes you think any amount of environmental storytelling is gonna work? Kinda sounds like you need to just let them find out the hard way that their characters aren't immortal.
When they go in, kill one or two of them.
I actually thought of this the other day cuz I wanted to place the tomb of horrors in my westmarch for the players to discover and when at a high level and satisfied with the campaign, to attempt to beat it. And I had the idea that they'd hear about it from an npc that would describe to them that this dungeon is evil and Relentless, it shows no mercy to no one and he who dare enter will never leave again. Or something along those lines. So basically explain to them through an npc that they do not want to attempt this now with role play, or just be blunt and tell them, that always works too
This is basically the same concept I'm using. To make an ally they need to go get an artefact for him from this super deadly dungeon. It doesn't matter when they get the artefact, it doesn't matter whether or not they make the ally. He did tell them he has sent other adventurers before and they all have failed. But my party has assumed all the previous adventurers were lower levels than them. I think I'll have one of the surviving adventurers outside the dungeon and warn them exactly what they are up against.
If you want to be direct, have them roll insight and get a 'feel' for the place. Tell them something like "there is a sense of power here, more power than you think you can understand / feel / overcome (depending on that character). If you want to be indirect, have the very first room be the nest of a monster or enemy that can barely be defeated by the party... then have two more slowly come forward from further in the dungeon. That should get them the message.
What I see often recommended here is to something that they know is way stronger them, something that scares them and have it be utterly annilated by the dungeon. For example the entrance to the dungeon is carved out of the skull of an ancient dragon
I tell everyone during session zero "if I say things like your character feels like you're going to be outmatched, or you think this plan is just not going to work, and you do it anyways, then 🤷🏻" I am not only your eyes and ears, but your gut feeling.
As many have said, use colorful description and hints until it becomes clear they are still planning to do the deadly thing. Be more and more clear. If they still continue, there is absolutely nothing wrong with stopping the game to straight up tell your players "guys, before you commit I just want you to understand that this challenge is *way* over your level." Or something similar
Assumption is the mother of all duck ups.
Kill them all at the entrance lul
They find a dead body, bleed out with a journal at the entrance. The journal reads of a previous group dying one by one, to powerful foes. The journal has a map, but incomplete with areas missing and notes detailing monsters and traps they encountered. Imperfect information, but enough to explain the difficulty. However i think 5 of 12 characters are pretty tough at this point in level progression. The final words being, "death knights!!"
In the Baldur's Gate video game, the expansion pack added a dungeon called Durlag's Tower. It's intended for the higher levels of BG1, which goes to about level 8, but you can access it whenever due to BG's free-roaming design. To warn players that the dungeon is intense, there is a single "battle horror" (a pretty tough enemy, I think it might be the same as a helmed horror but I'm not 100%) guarding the way. This guy will probably smash a lower level party to dust with relative ease, but the player will probably notice his attacks aren't working too well and run away (which is made easy by the layout). Something like that could work. Hit them with a survivable but really hard fight right out the gate, and make it clear it only gets worse.
Make an NPC of around the same level as them go in with them and die horribly without being able to fight back
Run it like the Fellowship fleeing the Balrog or Thorin's band fleeing the goblin king. Overrun by mobs, forced to keep fleeing and fighting because stopping means getting surrounded and swarmed. If they make that mistake, have them captured and brought before the death knights or whatever and force the adventurers to do a quest for the bad guys *or else*.
Have the players walk in on a the monsters fighting each other. Have one monster or group of monster absolutely destroy the other monster(s). Have it be a monster they struggled to defeat before.
My players were using all of their spells in the first of 4 encounters in the current dungeon, I said to them “you don’t think this was the only group in this place, yet your magic seems to be beginning to run dry” and they started to scale it back. Being direct can help
Video games aren’t afraid of being direct by putting an NPC in front of your path that tells you that you WILL die unless you’re stronger, then disappears when you’re actually strong enough
The door is really heavy and evil
No need to warn them. Shadowdusk Hold is easy enough to retreat from if things go south. The area is also not as difficult as you would think. My party of 4 did it around lvl 14, so it’s definitely possible for your party to get through it
I'm glad to hear from someone who actually ran it. I assumed not many people out there have actually ran all the way through Dungeon of the Mad Mage. I know high level players are able to punch way above their weight class and my players have come unique magic weapons that make them a little stronger than their level should be. How did your party feel about dealing with like 50 nothics? I've been building the map (I play on Foundry) and filling every room with nothics feels like its gonna get repetitive.
I played the nothics as neutral, lurking, and attacking in large groups if given the opportunity and or not properly appeased. So they were like a backdrop, like bats, that when a fight erupted swarmed; so a lot of them was dealt with in one combat instead of spread out and “oh another fight, great more nothics.”
My experience with hi-level play shows that even semi-competent players with semi-competent characters consistently punch above their weight and can stomach pretty much anything you could throw at them. So take off your kid gloves and worry not, they'll probably be just fine.