Need help crafting a D&D campagin

[unumarma]

Im DM'ing for a friend of mine and wanted to theme it around dungeon crawl, we played our first little session last night and it was a good proof of concept that it would work out without too many problems but i would like help populating the dungeon.

Specifically I was looking to see if by sheer number of responses i could form a bit of a statistical distribution of what enemies show up where, how often unique enemies spawn, how far down theyre likely to be located, and things like that.

Since i just started if people could simply, play crawl and give me a breakdown of the enemies they find in the dungeon before the lair.

How often do you see rats bats and other enemies that are minor annoyances more than any sort of fight.

When do orcs start grouping up with mages and priests and the like?

When do you see your first ogre?

What is the first unique enemy you find and what dungeon level were they?

When do gnolls spawn?

How many traps do you come across?

How many potions or scrolls do you get on average per dungeon level?

Answering any questions here will help me greatly.

Thanks in advanced

[duvessa]

These questions are better answered by objstat.

  Code:

./crawl -objstat -iters 100

will tell you where monsters and items generate and how many.

[tasonir]

This could best be answered by looking up the actual spawn tables in the source code, which if I recall correctly work something like this: you can specify a range of floors, and also specify how the distribution over that range works, ie, they can first appear on d:1, last appear on d:4, and get more common as you go down. Or they start on d:5, and end on d:9, but are most common on d:5 and decrease as you go down.

But off the top of my head, the rough answers are this: Rats/bats and other popcorn are rather common, and occur throughout the entire game. Rats and bats are only not popcorn to a level 1 character, but quickly become non-threatening.

Orc packs (with mages/priests) can start on d:3 but are more common around d:4 d:5, and later on can appear with orc warriors as well.

Ogres are usually first on D:3 as well, I'm not sure if they can spawn on d:2, but I think it's possible.

Uniques are fairly random, there are none on D:1, but several are possible starting at d:2. Early game uniques that are well known for being dangerous are Grinder and Sigmund, some other early ones are natasha, terrance, Jessica. Full list here: http://crawl.chaosforge.org/Unique (not all of those are early, of course).

Gnolls can spawn on d:1, although I think there's some restrictions on their weapons until d:2. They're pretty common for the first several floors and eventually get gnoll shamans/sergeants included in their packs.

Traps seem to less common these days as a number of them have been removed, but random teleport/shaft traps are still a thing.

Potions and scrolls: Quite a few, of each. I'll let someone else go over the object statistics if you want precise values, but generally speaking identify/remove curse scrolls are the most common, and for potions curing/heal wounds. I'm not sure if you'd want to try to include 10+ scrolls and potions into a D&D campaign, so I might limit each to just the 3-4 main ones. That's subjective, of course, but I'd vote for scrolls of identify/remove curse/blinking/teleportation, and maybe enchant armor/weapon. Then potions of curing, heal wounds, might and agility. If you want to get really involved you could include mutation, but that's a lot of weirdness to handle. It would also be rather easy to cut out identify/remove curse if you want to keep things simple.

[unumarma]

thanks a lot i wasnt sure if there was a source where i could look at the distribution through the code. appreciate the help

[NhorianScum]

Misposted.

Shame counter +1

Tele/shaft traps are not uncommon but I'd avoid using them heavily outside of full party railroading or a treat for the obligitory power gamer because split party is a sin but traditional traps are absolutely everywhere in ossuary's, zot lungs, and tomb.

Digging through the vaults/portals would help loot management, add some plot if you're into that, and save a lot of work. You could probably get away with something like standard random encounter list + slightly edited vault + uniques and OCDNS crap and knock out a passable WIP campain in about an hour Edit: This is Asuming you're sketching this out the sane way with party CL +/- arbitrary number as the pacing device rather than a strict floor system.

[unumarma]

Im thinking of making some unique enemies at least start out as non combat encounter. Since some of the early ones can be rather hazardous and it seems like a nice way to naturally incorporate things like that, oh shops thats something else id like to know about, how often would shops spawn and how often do they actually carry anything useful like randart weapons or something. Gotta have something for them to spend gold on

[TrumpTrain]

would love to see this streamed on twitch!

[NhorianScum]

Im thinking of making some unique enemies at least start out as non combat encounter. Since some of the early ones can be rather hazardous and it seems like a nice way to naturally incorporate things like that, oh shops thats something else id like to know about, how often would shops spawn and how often do they actually carry anything useful like randart weapons or something. Gotta have something for them to spend gold on

The following information is probably not 100% accurate.

You're pretty much guarenteed 1 set of shops in D and Orc while snake, shoals, Elf, and Vaults all seem to have high shop spawn rates.

[TonberryJam]

If you want help with the food mechanic i'd suggest giving this a read: Dungeon Meshi Manga.

It's how crawl should be with food.

The game is not that different from dnd challenge ratings. The first 3 dungeons are as newbie friendly as the game gets though.