Dragon Heist / Dungeon of the Mad Mage

Many years ago a wizard named Halaster Blackcloak constructed a mighty tower at the base of Mount Waterdeep. Underneath this tower he began construction of a massive dungeon using natural caverns, dwarven and drow settlements and digging creatures to create his magnum opus.

The only known entrance to this dungeon known as Undermountain was a large pit at the center of his tower. Centuries passed and Halaster disappeared from his tower allowing it to fall in disarray.

Not quite as many (but still a lot of) years from present day an adventurer named Durnan entered into Undermountain with his adventuring companions and came out loaded with gear and magical items, he established the Yawning Portal on top of this pit and now charges adventurers to descend into the pit.

Waterdeep's magical institutes can tell you of much strange magic in Undermountain. Not all spells work as they normally do, and some not at all.

Dungeon of the Mad Mage takes place three months after the conclusion of the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist campaign. You will have three months of downtime to play with and can use it as you wish, and any die rolls can be decided with a private “mini session” between you and me only (if you would like to do this the responsibility to schedule it falls on you, I will not make you use downtime if you don’t want to.)

The adventure starts in the Yawning Portal where each of you will be 5th level characters. Think of why your character would be going into a dungeon where most people don’t come back alive…

Despite being advertised as a sequel to Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, this adventure can't be any more different. Dungeon of the Mad Mage not only encourages but requires characters optimized for combat, for a dungeon crawl. Not the intrigue-savvy characters designed to unravel plots and excel at social encounters.

If you would like you can rebuild your character, but still keep it's core, that is possible. So, no changing Gearhart's race, removing Falan's debt, Hom's Faction, Jorn being a thief or Helmer's personalities. Or you can retire it to run the Trollskull Inn, and bring in a new character.

Rebuilding the character will take some downtime. And might require you tracking down a trainer or two.

This adventure is, without all the bells and whistles, a megadungeon crawl, harkening back to the ancient days of D&D. While other published 5E adventures do their best to dispel the necessity of having a dedicated healer and a dedicated defender, Dungeon of the Mad Mage essentially requires it.

Parties that don't follow this paradigm will find themselves in trouble later. The adventurers will be hard-pressed to find the time or safety for a lot of long rests. They may often be forced to travel through one or two dungeon-levels before they can actually rest. They shouldn't expect to begin or finish a new level with the benefit of a long rest.

Thus, a party that is overly-reliant on long rests, as opposed to short rests, will struggle while parties with fighters, warlocks, and monks will fare a bit better.

The Dungeon of the Mad Mage (AKA Undermountain) is, at its core, a massive dungeon crawl, there are 23 different levels each with its own environment, theme, feel and factions to it. Undermountain is very dangerous with unsavory individuals on every level, this does not mean however, that everyone is out to kill you. You do not have to kill everyone if you do not want to and many people have quests with fun items and powers as rewards. Generally if you are not attacked by monsters or people they will probably not attack you, probably…

Undermountain has many interesting secrets, secret doors, locks and magical properties to it, items like thieves tools, rope, torches, healing kits, antivenom and rations are important and spells such as Knock, Identify, Detect Magic, Speak with Dead, Mending and others are important; as are languages like elvish, dwarvish, and undercommon.

There are items/clues/riddles that do not always apply to the same level as the riddle is given on. You should all be making notes. I'll be writing the journal as always. And you can of course have me add clues to the plot-hooks/loose ends list at the bottom of the journal.

Resting in a monster-filled dungeon is not the best idea. Long rests will not come as fast and easy as they did in Dragon Heist.

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I've searched through the entire adventure-text, to see what Checks, Skills and Saves are most used. This does not include standard monsters, not in the adventure appendix, or any spells used by monsters.

The most used raw Stat Check is Dexterity.

The most used Saving Throws are Dexterity and Constitution.

The most used Skills are Perception and Athletics, by far. And at a shared third place are Arcana, Religion and Investigation. Thieves' tools is placed between Athletics and the shared third place.

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As one would expect Undermountain is, well… it’s under a mountain… Darkness is a constant and finding a way to light areas is important. Characters with darkvision have an easy solution but those without have some challenges to overcome, torches last for one hour.

Rations and water are necessities in the dungeon as you can starve or die of thirst if deprived from the precious resources for too long. We are of course still using variant encumbrance.

Madness can occur, that is all that I will say…

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We are no longer using Milestone levelups.

Instead we will be using a simplyfied XP method: Number of Medium Encounters Completed by the Party.

• All XP is awarded to the Party, so that the entire Party levels up together.
• Completing a Medium Encounter will get your Party 1 XP.
• Easy Encounters counts as 1/2 XP. Deadly Encounters counts as 2 XP.
• Up to and including level 9, your characters will need 18 XP to level up.
• From level 10 to level 20, your characters will need 11 XP to level up.

Sometimes completing a dungeonlevel and defeating all enemies will get you to the next level up. Sometimes two dungeonlevels will be required.

But since some parts of the dungeon-levels can be bypassed, you might sometimes need more than two dungeonlevel.

Solving social encounters will also get you XP - normally 1/2 or 1 XP, but as much as 4 XP. You do not need to murder hobo your way through every encounter in order to level up.

(This was first draft. Current version is located in XP - Simplyfied)

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This matches normal XP, but is easier to keep track of.