Obsolete Your Idols

In the unlikely event you ever need a spreadsheet cell to tell you what level someone’s 3rd or 3rd-and-a-half D&D character is based on their experience points, this should do it (in Google Docs Spreadsheet):

=FLOOR( (SQRT(ABS(-1 - (8 * CELL-CONTAINING-XP/1000) ) ) + 1)/2, 1)

You’re welcome.

This is TSR 9177 REF 3 The Book of Lairs by James M. Ward and Mike Breault p5.

Don’t worry.  If you’ve no idea what that means, this post isn’t directed at you.

1. Door
   • Animated two-handed swords (2)
2. Weapon forge
   • Animated hammers (6)
   • Animated spears (6)
   • Animated long swords (6)
   • Animated two-handed swords (6)
   • Animated morning stars (6)
3. Armor forge
   • Suits of animated armor (2 * characters)
4. Resting place
   • Iron golems (2)

If I ran this in 3.5 edition d20, the system I use most of the time I’m running these days, here’s how these four encounters might be converted.

Door:  Animated Object, obviously.  I’d make them Medium Greatswords, presuming them to be weapons crafted for Medium creatures and being two-handed, the same size class as the wielder.  Hardness 10 and flight seem appropriate additional special defense and special quality. I’d let them do Greatsword + 1 damage and leave their attack modifier at +2. I’d bump up the CR for these to 3 each instead of the CR2 for an ordinary Medium Animated Object monster.  So EL4, overall.

Weapon forge:  More Animated Objects.  The softer version considers the hammers to be light warhammers and thus Tiny, otherwise Small for the non-light version.  If the spears are short, Small.  If longspear, Medium.  Longswords are Small.  The two-handed swords become Medium Animated Object Greatswords, like the ones at the door.  The morning stars are Small. Again granting them Hardness 10, flight, and normal damage +1 for weapons of their type at +2 to hit over conventional Animated Object monsters bumps up the CRs.  The lowest range I’d use would be 6 + 12 + 12 + 18 + 12 and the high end would be 12 + 18 + 12 + 18 + 12.  Either way this is EL9 or EL10 territory.  If the party got clever and split up the attackers somehow, controlled terrain to only let a few come at them at a time, I’d award the full xp for an EL10 encounter.  Perversely if they went in against all the weapons at once, only EL9 xp.  I’m mean that way.

Armor forge: Surprise.  More Animated Object monsters.  I’d make them unmodified Medium.  At 2 suits per character, that makes this one EL (party size + 4).

Resting place:  Straight up pair of by the book Iron Golem monsters.  The only thing unusual about them is that these are chatty and being chatty isn’t a special attack.  EL15.

Given all that, I’d run this scenario for a party with an average character level of 10 or so.  Slightly lower would probably be okay if they are good at managing terrain or willing to back out when they hit the blade storm in the Weapon Forge.