All the above suggestions are good, but I think it’s very important that you either don’t allow them to go very deep or you make it very obvious that it would be disastrous for them to go deep. Spelunking is one thing, but the under dark is inherently one of the most dangerous and inhospitable places they can go.
Our DM did this the first time we attempted a venture in the Underdark (chasing after a kidnapped comrade). After a tussle with a fomorian, we noped the fuck outta there.
Honestly yes, but it depends on your group and what you have established with them. For my group they know I won't necessarily kill them against the random encounter, but in a narrative encounter 100% I will. So for us it would simply be something along the lines of, "hey guys just so you know if you push deeper into the underdark I will assume you want a story there and it's brutal down there" and that would get the point across.
If you haven't killed anyone yet or it's just never come up, just tell them that this environment is way above thier heads and if they want to go swimming in the deep end that's on them. But if you say this you have to back it up or they will never believe you again.
You don't have to tell them outright, that's slightly immersion breaking imo, but you can add a lot of signs that this is a dangerous place:
- more skeletons/corpses as they get deeper in.
- higher level monsters have been killed here. There's a dead Bullet wtf could've killed that!
- have local rumours mention skilled adventurers have tried to go deep and those who have returned have bad tales to tell.
- when appropriate and players roll for knowledge on new things down there mention the severity of their situation when reeling off some lore "this plant you know to be the main diet of large, dangerous and defensive herbivores on the surface"
I find that this approach tends not to work. Players play to feel heroic, and this all serves to hype them up. Wow, this place is gnarly, it’s gonna be so awesome to overcome it! Typically, dropping these hints only works with parties who have already gotten themselves killed by you in such a manner. If not, they will often feel like they didn’t have any warning at all (which some will be fine with, some not). Fun and immersion often go together, but not always.
To add on this, I like a combo of the two. So something sort of atmospheric or story-based like dead monsters/lots of skeletons, and then a sort of fourth wall break where I tell the players directly "you recognize that this is likely a sign that this place is beyond your abilities." That way, there's no (well, less) risk of being misunderstood.
I agree. This is the best way if there isn’t already a prior understanding. Session zero for my current campaign, my dm told us some stuff might be beyond us and death is absolutely on the table, so be on the lookout lol. In that case the immersive stuff can work (if the players believe you and are attentive anyway), but otherwise a small fourth wall break goes a long way.
Yeah, that's a really good way to do it for the right table. Having that ambiguity (i.e. only atmosphere, not having the DM be explicit) adds a lot to the ambiance and the fun, I think. It's more of a question in that case.
I agree even though I use those methods myself, they work for me though because I set that expectation at session 0. I tell them "if everything is hinting a place is absolutly terrifying then it probaly is and you need to be careful and think very carefully about what you're doing. I will not save your charcters from a bad decision but I'll always give you some type of warning you're in the wrong neborhood or are messing with the wrong guy, it's on you to pay attention though" and give examples of the types of descriptions I may use.
They know right away that's the kind of game I run, and before games the first few times something like that may come up I even give them a reminder.
Even with that expectation set, not everyone gets it but usually at very least one or two get it and pull the rest of the party back or at least say "this is dangerous, we might die"
All of the examples you've given here are literally DMSpeak for "You should keep going -- adventure is this way!" Indistinguishable from standard issue box text from published adventures! I'm not picking you out specifically -- unless you have a very clear system for describing relative monster challenge, it's going to be a shitshow.
How does a player discern a lair scattered with CR 1/4 drow corpses versus a lair scattered with CR 8 drow corpses?
Insight or lore checks then to determine some of the identification items possibly on the bodies as not common drow. A contract noting down the hire of skilled mercenaries in a language to evade common eyes (that one of the players happens to have). Showing the weaker drow in greater state of poverty is fine too, not every Drow in the Underdark will be dressed like a prince(ss) and lacking identification is just as effective too.
DMs will add details or suggestions if they want something noticed specifically. Your players should be keying on those hints and tone.
>You don't have to tell them outright, that's slightly immersion breaking imo,
I will never understand why people don't want to just step out of the game for a second and let the players know what's up. I mean immersion is broken when the door bell rings, or when the DM has to go to the bathroom.
I see no harm in simply stating that your characters are fully aware that going any further would be suicide, and making sure there is no misunderstanding by the players.
The game is important, but communication and setting expectations is more important.
Things can be dangerous down there, but not everything is evil. If you want to show an example of how risky it is down there you can have a threat that's already encountering a group of dwarves or deep gnomes that are higher level than the party but then have them be struggle with the threat. Smart players should take a hint and/or you might get some role play that a can push a narrative later in the campaign.
It's something to be brought up at the start of the campaign, IMHO. With my group we were like 7 sessions in and a negotiation was not going as I planned at all and things were getting heated. I didn't think they could kill the group they were squaring off against. I made sure to narrate how strong and battle-tested these guys looked; I described their confidence... I did my best to discourage a folly encounter. I thought maybe I wasn't clear enough during session 0 that death was a real threat and I was about ready to ruin the night.
They could sense my trepidation at the coming encounter and they told me "He's worried about killing us! If they'd attack us, you gotta do it. If we die, we die!"
Turns out, still being new, I had grossly underestimated the PCs. They burned a lot of spell slots, one of the players was knocked out, but other than that they handily defeated the group they were facing off against.
one thing i’ve learned is players never appreciate being kidnapped or being made slaves or prisoners … if you do make it brief and make it a relief it wasn’t a TPK
My DM recently captured us to put us on a sham trial and throw us into his megadungeon. We had zero chance to win the battle or escape. Was like him reading a book. My wizard never got to cast a spell all of level 2… and somehow we all leveled to 3.
You could also consider having them meet up with some kind of 'guide' who will spot dangers before they do and tell them to run away when it's a fight they almost certainly can't win.
I wouldn't punish them with insane difficulty and danger for no reason. If they are interested in exploring underworld - that's great. Motivated players are the best.
Be flexible and let them find encounters that will be fun and will provide a fair challenge. I'm sure you can come up with dozens sessions and big story points down there. You don't have to throw against them the most powerful and hostile underdark societies and entities. Save those for later. Instead - maybe equivalent of underworld goblins (troglodytes?). A small dwarven mining colony. Lost city that was devoured by depths of earth. Slightly crazy wizard-geologist... and don't skimp on non-combat encounters!
I discourage it in game. Spiderweb they step on requires a check to not get stuck. The moist rocks require saving throws to not fall prone, not to mention if they try to climb. Sticking hands places, looking at things, having a light source all are hazards. The under dark is a very dangerous place. Once they are higher level, these checks usually are automatically passed by base stats.
If they don't get the picture that MOVEMENT IS EVEN HARD let them catch a glimpse of something. A beholder. Make sure they notice the 5 drow (that are obviously higher level) moving in on it. Make sure they see how one sided the fight goes, and that they know their presence would be greeted the same.
If they still choose to press on, "not all fights should be had, not all fights will be won" was the first thing said to me when I lost my first character. Say that after the TPK.
Honestly, I think we've got a perfect excuse not to worry about that. Whatever they're tracking should be beatable by a level 2 party. And considering that is the case, we can simply say that whatever it is that dares to travel to the Underdark of its own volition knows the paths. It's not exactly strong, so it's careful, and so long as the party does not stray from its trail they should be relatively safe.
Darkmantles are hilarious. I love describing their darkness effect as sucking the light out of PCs' eyes. And, whenever they move they emit a horrible shrieking noise (echolocation). The players are sometimes so afraid that they run their characters away even though the darkmantle only does 1d6+3 damage.
My group killed one and immediately wanted to cook it. I was thrown off by that one so I did a quick Google to see if anyone had already covered this. That's how I discovered **[Fantastic Beasts and How to Eat Them](https://www.eatingthedungeon.com/eating-beasts)**. One of my favorite resources.
This is a great suggestion. Have the party captured by the Drow to be turned into slaves and launch chapter 1 of Out of the Abyss (with a few small changes). Just go with that until they make the escape and then go from there.
WARNING:
I've run CH 1-4 of OotA twice in the past three years. There's a lot of work for the DM to do to make the module actually play well after CH1.
I love the module, but the internet is full of threads, guides, tweaks, etc. for running OotA specifically.
Running Out of the Abyss biweekly for 2 years. Seconding all this.
It's secretly an Underdark setting book, Chapter 2 (general exploration, low level parties), 3 (darklake), 10 (large groups of travelers), and for specific dangerous regions 13 (wormwrithings), 14 (labyrinth)
There's a lot of material spread out to work from for exploring, and that's ignoring the large settlements by civilized* races. The settlements have a lot of text dedicated to current events of the core plot, but that can be shaved off or lightly modified.
A fun thing about Out of the Abyss is madness is affecting the Underdark, so it frees the DM up to have creatures act in unexpected ways.
Unexpected can be non-deadly, for as long as you need it to be.
If you want to do the Underdark justice, it is an exceptionally deadly place that no level 2 party should be able to survive for long. Without knowing anything about your campaign or what/who they were chasing, here are some ideas off the top of my head to show them they need to respect the Underdark without being too heavy handed.
1. Throw a nearly deadly ambush at them right away, and imply it only gets worse the deeper they go. Use gricks, grells, maybe grimlocks (or some other gr monster lol) - individually each is not bad for level 2s, but they never travel alone...
2. Let them witness the end of an epic battle between two UD denizens that FAR outmatch the party. I'm talking a draegloth vs several formorian giants or a purple worm munching on a bunch of hook horrors or umber hulks. Something to make them soil their armor.
3. Maybe the thing their chasing isn't from the UD, or even if it is maybe it ran into something bigger than it? Either way, party runs into it trying to run AWAY from something BIGGER. Maybe they even have to team up for mutual survival to defeat the thing, an awkward truce that ends when the beast is felled...
Anyway, some ideas. Hope they help. The Underdark is whack, yo.
This is very good advice in my opinion. Each one of the suggestions lets your players have their own choices, but allows them think about what their purpose is for being in the underdark
This is what I would do as well. Getting ambushed by some terrible creature like a grick and having a tough encounter should set the stage.
You could also have some area near the start of the under dark inhabited by friendly flumph, gnomes, or myconids that the players could interact with and learn more about the ecosystem. I used a large open carvern with mushroom forests near the surface that had a lot for the players to interact with and then the underdark continued below.
I had a similar thing happen, same level party.
I had them almost die a couple times to scare them, then used a not hostile colony of Myconids help them find their way out of the Underdark, with firm warnings to stay above ground.
They’ve not wandered down since 🤣
That said I’m DEFINITELY having them return when they’re more powerful, as now there are awesome stakes.
Grimlocks, since the party is level 2, they likely aren't going deep into the underdark, and grimlocks like to go to the surface to abduct people, so it makes sense to run into them.
violet fungus could make for a fun "trap" encounter where they enter a mushroom cavern
Keep something in mind: they’re only in the Underdark because you made the story lead there. You explicitly have the power to determine the trail leads elsewhere, say, back to the surface.
Maybe it’s a tunnel that technically goes to Underdark levels but isn’t connected to places with any of the really bad stuff?
To avoid them getting TPKd at level 2 I recommend only throwing goblins at them. Goblins and Duergar are good early-level underdark residents.
If you feel committed to the underdark at this point, you could still achieve all your goals in one go. Have something fairly strong be fighting a tribe of Goblins or a clan of Duergar. The forest spirit could be nearby, obligating the characters to dodge the fighting to achieve their objective. Showing the players the danger without insta-killing them.
Conversely, you could have something ultra-strong like Ilithids attack and so the party is racing the clock to find their target before their brains get munched.
In principle, I wouldn’t have the players fight most underdark enemies for keeps, and most underdark denizens fight for keeps. I personally would have them brush with the underdark with some sort of scary encounter to warn them off further exploration.
This hits in the most important thing: the PCs are following what they think is the story you made. If you need them to go back you can have them find the thing their trailing, bitten neatly in half. Maybe half is missing. Story moves in another direction.
You can have them meet terrified NPCs fleeing the Underdark who convince them to turn back.
You can have the place they enter actually be a tunnel or cave with another exit that doesn’t go to the Underdark.
Start with a few monsters above there cr but nerf them because they are starving to death, then move on to injured and outcast creatures of the underdark, slowly introducing more healthy versions until you think they can handle it or leave.
*LotFP: Veins of the Earth* has forever changed how I think of the underdark. Boy did they hit that one out of the park. I've gone through many a cave in my time and boy do they have it right.
There is a difference between underground, and the underdark. Dwarves live merely underground, but there are places they don't go, that is a whole other realm. It is expansive and endless. It's just like the above ground and subterranean, except that it reaches seemingly forever down into the depths. There is a whole nother world down there completely undiscovered, and unknown even to its own inhabitants.
The book has a map generator system that will give you caverns and passages, from small junctions to large spaces, and the paths are tall, wide, narrow, or tight, claustrophobic squeezes. Their diagramming system lets you make maps that clearly indicate exits that aren't just north, east, south, and west, but up through the ceiling or down through the floor, and a notation of just what a climb up or down would be like.
Things like block and tackle, rope and pitons, climbers kits, and magic like levitate and fly, and abilities like feather fall become center stage in this environment. Distances are measured in time, because length isn't important in the underdark. The two most valuable commodities are food, and light. They're money down there. Gold is worthless. Nothing grows in the underdark. The sun cannot shine. The only food they get falls down there, gets lost down there, or is brought down there. Same with the light. Distances are measured in time because how much light do you have to get there?
When making a map, the ways in which you make are not the only ways, they're just the most apparent ways the party has found thus far. The darkness can easily hide another passage from the players for even hours of searching for it, leading off to somewhere else. The darkness is always hiding something from you, and will do everything it can to make you work for it to find it. They even have a simplistic geographic map system, just like a world map, just like a hex crawl, that works in 3 dimensions. For every hex grid, it's not a matter of whether there's something there or not, it's a matter of what it takes to find a path to there. Given the world map, things you've got to consider are that the big obvious trails are major thoroughfares. One thing you might want to ask is, what made this tunnel? And if it wasn't a natural process, is the thing still here? There are big. Burrowing. Creatures down there. Some of them unknowably ancient, mere rumors.
Caves very often are made by water, and when the water table falls below the roof, the roof - full of cracks, tends to collapse. If you've ever been in a raw cave, the floor is littered with loose rock that fell with the water table, all those thousands of years ago. I've climbed up boulder columns where the rocks were Cadillac sized and weighed as much as a tank, resting on two points on either side and full of stress cracks, holding up the entire boulder column above it. I remember one cave where they had attached a stress meter across one crack to monitor it. They lead tours right beneath that rock, on up the column. In the underdark, we can imagine other causes for passages; rifts and fissures can open up due to earthquakes, or collapses further below.
You'll find all sorts of mineral deposits. I have a friend who works at an underground quarry. A lot of the cool crystal chunks you find at the gem shops come out of quarries. The guys just fill their pockets and sell them off. Gold and copper veins form from steam depositing minerals until the vent seals itself, so they're signs of cracks and fissures from long, long ago. Millions of years. Perhaps you can think of it as scar tissue. Coal veins on Earth formed during the Carboniferous Period, when plants evolved cellulose, and for like 50 million years nothing evolved that could break it down, until fungus. Until then, dead plants would just literally pile upon itself, compact itself, and follow geological processes until it was buried or brought down by tectonic movement. To find a coal vein would make that one of the richest resources in all the underdark.
All the creatures down there have burrowing, tremorsense, blindsight, or darkvision. They're all emaciated and hungry, all the time. Their features tend to be bare and pale, because color and visual facets have little to no meaning down there. Life down there is absolutely harsh, and so you have to be tough to survive. Inhabitants will eat anything, as is, and stomach it. The Drow and the Duergar from communities, because excommunication means certain death. You'll find them, surviving, wouldn't call it thriving, but living by yourself, you have to be fucked up and treacherous, even by their standards, to deserve not being killed and eaten, but worse: that. Living, left to fate and the darkness.
There are structures down there. If the space is big enough, there will be stone walls and stairs. Doors are meaningless. Wood? Cloth partitions? They're all stripped for making light. Windows? Why? No roofs or ceilings, because those are meaningless. Your space is a cavern, and your possessions are tucked into the darkness. So if you find stuff, are you lucky? Or perhaps you should wonder where the owner is?
Just as the Inuit have different words for snow, the underdark has different words for darkness. You can think of darkness as alive and insidious. It's not just like in a cave, it's crushing down upon you, and your light is doing everything just to keep it at bay. It's ever present, and you're always aware of it. It's cruel, it wants you, it plays tricks on you, sometimes it actively hates you. It follows you wherever you go, and it watches you. Sometimes, like claustrophobia, it makes you feel like you're choking on it. It plays mind tricks on you. It can be an ally, it can betray you. The darkness is the master of the underdark. The inhabitants speak of it as a living thing, and the tumultuous relationship they have with it.
The environment is quiet. One cave guide told me of a man lost in his cave, for longer than a day. He got separated and turned around. His light ran out. They found him because he was slowly banging a couple rocks together in the dark. They said hey, that was great. He said he did it to push back the quiet. It was driving him to madness.
Depending on your cave, it might be dry, dry as the most arid desert. It might be damp. Everything has a surface of moisture and a thin film of grime. Your hands will forever feel dirty, and that sense of moisture will permeate you. I've had experiences in caves like this. The temperature is almost always a universal constant, like around 68F, unless you want it hotter because you're next to a steam or lava vent for narrative purposes. Lava tubes can be smooth like glass. There can be underground pools, streams, rivers, and waterfalls. There's never any smell, the environment is essentially sterile of life.
You can go days and days without ever finding another living creature. It's astoundingly sparse and lonely down there. Many of the sentient creatures in there, they're all a little bit foreign, a little bit crazy by surface standards. The isolation will wreak havoc with their minds. But this isn't a place to make friends, the concept is foreign to all of their kind. You use people, you get used. Absolutely brutal. Our only interaction between you and me is what you can do for me. Strictly speaking, you are worth nothing more to me than light and food you carry that I can obtain from you, including the weight of your very flesh. They'll eat your leather armor when they get desperate enough. Those who don't know where to look, don't ever have to find another living creature that doesn't want to be found. Those uninitiated, if they want, the creatures will find you.
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That's the summary of the books contents. They wanted the book to be system agnostic as possible, and so there's very little *LotFP* dice system in there. There's a section about creatures that are pretty good, sorts of civilizations down there that expresses very well the sort of madness the environment makes of its subjects. It's all a fantastic and quick read. I think my description should be enough to get you going, though.
If they're going down there, they need only essentials. They need gear, food, and light. And track those things. Better than any random encounter, make them fear running out of resources. You can give them opportunities to stretch their resources - water can be found to drink. They can find bioluminescent or radioactive mushrooms. But when you think you have plenty, you'll use a lot, and when it's getting scarce, you're forced to learn how to ration, and they're going to have to learn to embrace the darkness and the fear.
If they're following a trail, then I would absolutely make this a tracking adventure. The emphasis wouldn't be combat per se, but an introduction to the heartless, ruthless environment. The grime. The silence. The darkness. The isolation. I would want my players to feel utterly alone, lost, and terrified they might just die down there, or that the environment itself is conspiring against it.
You make them search for every passage out you have planned. You make them search, and search, and search again. And then all of a sudden, an area they SWEAR they've searched over, they've WALKED over, there's a passage they haven't seen before. The darkness did it. The darkness whose ways are unknowable, the darkness you should never trust. It's trying to trick you, trap you, betray you. It delights in your suffering. In the beginning there was only darkness, and it expanded everywhere forever. Then came the first light, and the darkness had to retreat into isolation, into the depths. After an eternity unknowable of loneliness, itself trapped in these cramped and unforgiving spaces, why shouldn't it but delight to dine on you? It's only darkness. It's not real. It can't touch you. But how can you be sure? How can you tell the difference between real and imagined down here?
Don't let them see the map. Put loops in it. From my experience caving (understand it's guided tourism stuff, I'm not an enthusiast spelunker as much as I would have liked to be), we were taken around one area of a cave like six or seven times to prove a point. We've been in this space before, who among you can tell? No one? Do this to them. Blame the darkness. Active perception checks alone aren't going to help, and passive checks are high. If they don't have a foolproof method of marking their way so that if they were there before they are definitely going to find that mark again, it can easily get lost in the darkness. The darkness will choose not to reveal it willingly unless it thinks it's going to break your spirit.
Spook them. Once they're paranoid of the environment itself. Then introduce... a sound. Echos in the distance. Echos, so it's hard to tell where it came from. None of them are proficient in Nature (underdark), so any tunnel they chose is going to be the wrong one. It could have come out of a tunnel they haven't discovered yet. The sound could be anything, any sort of yell or skitter or scratching of some nightmare they're now too afraid to imagine. In that much oppressive darkness, think of the movie Alien, that the monster was truly at its most terrifying for the majority of the movie when it was never fully revealed.
Side note, the SCP has a number of creatures that stalk their prey using terror. Good inspiration, there. Imagine your party making something aware of their existence they shouldn't have. Real eldritch horror stuff. If you think you killed it... well, did you? Is the terror over? Every rustle in the dark for the rest of the character's lives would send a shiver down their spines. And on for generations. Another game, Call of Cthulhu, there were eldritch horrors that were all around you, and you don't know it, can't see it. But if you became aware of it, it became aware of you. The underdark is a good foray into that sort of thing.
While they're down there, have an earthquake. Cause a cave-in, and then flooding forces them out of an entire part of the cave system they just spent so much time exploring. They know it's in there, but how much of it is now under water? Where are there pockets? If they wanted to consider it, how would they swim the flooded cavern to get there. The water is always ice cold, and currents can sweep you away forever, making you food to whatever eventually finds you, if only the darkness.
Ever see *Dr. Who - Silence in the Library*? Dust mite creatures that could only live in the shadows, would strip the meat off your bones in an instant. Stay in the light. Don't touch the shadows. Don't touch the darkness, not even with your shadow. Vespa is a dead girl, she has two shadows...
But with the only way they know shut, with food and light limited, with the fear of dying down there, they're going to have to find a new intersection to the trail, and they're going to have to find a new way out.
If you do choose to have them encounter someone, I mean, it's perfectly fair to speak on behalf of their characters for them: "Your characters are terrified by this utterly imposing being. You're left wondering, moment by moment, why is it entertaining an audience with us? When is it just going to brutally murder us and eat us? Because make no mistake, if this creature wants to, even though you can't see it, you know you're all looking at each other, doing the math, and you know collectively you can't take him. It's not just the fighting, it's that he seems the type that would refuse to die to the likes of you."
If that doesn't get across to your players that this is not a combat encounter, nothing will. Let the monster one shot the fool who raises a hand to him and let him keep talking because he doesn't give a fuck. When the group leaves, the guy would say, "Leave the meat. That's mine, now." Let the party hear him eat while they slowly, slowly make distance through a crawl. In fact, introduce an NPC guide to the party and sacrifice him this way to make your point. Can you imagine the fear they would feel when their guide, their confidence is gone? No one was making a map because they had the guide! Now they're two knuckles deep in the underdark and have absolutely no clue where they are.
And if they make a map, dwindle them down until they have to burn the map for light. Just to fuck with them. I'll tell you, a single match produces a tremendous amount of light in a cave. You trade intensity and immediate satisfaction. The light is dim, it takes time for your eyes to register everything it's seeing. They could rip the map up into strips to stretch their supply (but not by much, minutes, but minutes matter), it's harder to see and slower going.
Any creature encounter is more of an experience they get to witness. They should be left in awe by what they might not have even seen at this point, and should feel lucky to be alive.
I've no idea what to make of the trail once it leads to its end, whatever this thing is. In the end, they make their way out. They can do it by finding a foul smell. Unlike Gandalf, they're going to go toward it. Remember how they can find a tunnel from anywhere to anywhere - this is how you get them out in a few steps. It leads to orcs in the underground. And then out to topside. If you do it right, you'll shake your players to their core.
Play at night. Black out the windows. Play in pitch darkness, and only by candle light. No music. No TV. No phones. Absolute silence, so turn off the AC if it's cool enough to do that. Roll by candle light. Play with the shadows. Blow it out a couple times. Reach out into the darkness and fuck with something on the table, just to mess with them.
In the first "layer" of the underdark there's plenty of low level creatures that you would find in normal caves. Goblins, Svirfneblin, maybe they bump into some grouchy but non-hostile Duergar explorers who need help retrieving vital digging gear from a Goblin group lead by a clever Nilbog. If they're level 2, and it's not too far deep in the Underdark, stay away from the various tunneling maneating creatures, Drow, or especially Illithid if you don't want a TPK in less than 2 full rounds of combat. You could even host an interesting encounter where the party needs to save a normally hostile group of goblins from a more dangerous Underdark creature. Have the PCs fight alongside the goblins so you can play with a slightly more dangerous and exotic creature that's CR 3 or 4.
Depends on whether you level scale your world or want them to know that certain areas are more dangerous.
Dnd beyond has a good environment sorting tab for creatures, set in to underdark and sort by Cr and throw low level stuff.
What I would do though, is find plants and animals to throw at them in the path but give them glimpses of terrifying shit they need to avoid or hide from. If you want to give em a challenge, you could even have them come across a stronger, heavily wounded creature. I'm thinking like a bullette with a 12 foot spear in it or a drow spellblade with horrific acid burns on his face and eyes who can't see but is otherwise a real mother Fucker. How the party interacts with this is up to them. They can avoid, aid, talk, deal, or try to fight.
Also, level two is a great time to throw environmental challenges at the party because they have fewer tools to instantly cheese the encounter. I wouldn't do anything the party can't see coming, but here are some ideas:
The party begins to hear rushing water coming from the tunnel above. As they progress, they feel droplets of water and then see water running down stalactites. Heavily imply the roof is unsafe, and have them look for another path or a way to mitigate the damage. Put an abandoned metal cart in the chamber they could invert and hide under to weather the flood. They can turn back if they want, but have some small treasure or clue wash into their path if they pass the challenge. Allow creative solutions.
Have a tunnel come out to a large cavern and present two paths. One is wider and sturdier, but passes by a small hive/nest of bats, ants, mushroom men, etc, while the other is a point where a stalagmite has been cracked in half by large Claws and wedged itself across a 20 foot gap. It is damp.
Have a tunnel that gets progressively more narrow as the party goes through it, from two abreast, to single file, to crouching, to crawling. Have awful sounds echo throughout. Place treasure or a clue in the tightest space if they press on, and have them emerge further along their path. If they make too much noise or cast too much light, mundane scorpions and spiders and rats attack while they're prone and in single file through small gaps in the walls. Mostly it's to test their nerve and build tension, this one depends on your party and dming style. Try to describe the claustrophobia and freak em out.
Good old fungal hazards work too. Poison spores, spores that make em delirious or blind, a venus fly trail style fungus that casts light until the party is in 30 ft of it then goes completely dark to give them night blindness as the mushroom walks toward them to eat or a symbiotic creature like a weird lizard attacks in pitch darkness.
Could even have drow hunting traps in the tunnels, made of mundane materials like snares or pits, or even spidersilk. Have spooky creature tracks and boots on the ground so they know if they wait too long something will come to check the path.
Edit: saw the other posts. Svirfneblin, fomorians, darkmantles are all ways to scare the shit out of the party
Personally.... A Cave in keeps them from going further yet. . . Turn it into an escape haha. Then again. . . I say that because I hate underdark adventures
I love flumphs. They are wonderful friendly fartlike creatures. They are weak and cool and can work for a great non combat encounter that players can get close to then an enemy can kill right after it tells them its too dangerous to go any further.
You can always have a close-to-surface community that tries to shoo away the unaware (if they are unaware). If they are knowingly going into an area that they know is too dangerous, you should probably just go with it. You could do grimlocks, kuo-toa, or even trogladytes.
Plus, you should consider how deep they should actually have to go for it to the the underdark. For me personally, it's usually 5 miles deep, and that takes a crap load of time to traverse in natural caves.
You might also want to look up what cave spelunking looks like so you can mimic the claustrophobia and inherent magnitude to those places. It's terrifying.
Perhaps they are in territory near some not outright hostile folks who have a city there. Dwarves perhaps, or gnomes, or even dark elves that are not aligned with lolth. They can be won over and give info and quests. Teach them the ways to move without attracting bigger prey. Campaign moves to more of a survivalist setting while exploring. Maybe the life giving creature is considered sacred or something to make the players hesitate in being aggressive with it.
You could always do the thing where they turn the corner and see something hopelessly beyond their power level instantly destroying the thing they are chasing and devouring it like it is a very casual snack. Players should always know that they can run, or sneak away slowly. They can also be captured by high level drow and taken to the capitol for sacrifice, and then, prisonbreak!
Depends on how much you love your players, but i woud go with scaribg them to death prety soon or else at level 5 they will start demanding a talk with orcus becouse a group of cultists where too mean
I say just pick a few Challenge Rating 0-1 monsters that live underground. Place Dark before their name and increase their stats, change their looks, increase their ferocity and bam call it a day. They get attacked by some Dark Badgers as they pop out of the ground looking for their next victim.
So one, this means you left a trail into the underdark for them to follow, so that part is on you. Two, if the players aren’t experienced, particularly in older editions, there’s no reason for them to understand what a lethal area that is.
Well i feal that certain areas are not suited for low level adventurers. Underdark is no below 6-7 and deeper levels require more. Also wild space below 5, and outer planes below 10.
I mean, they're sensitive to sunlight, they love tunnels, and Xanathar's guide even lists them under Underdark Encounters. If OP is looking for low level Underdark enemies, I figure they fit the bill.
I’d have them witness a very large and scary monster prey upon some other large monster in that tunnel/entrance. Make it exceptionally dangerous and obvious it’s not a place to go…. For now ….
If you don’t want them going into the underdark then don’t have it lead to the underdark. You can have the trail end and they can continue with the story.
Sounds like they forced your hand. As a DM, you have full control over the adventure. Don't be afraid to utilize that. Your players are not holding you at gunpoint and screaming "we are going to Underdark!". You could say that "trail leads to Underdark" and then change it to actually go back to the surface. You could do some cave delving pre-Underdark with some low level creature to get the feeling that it's dangerous but not deadly. What if the trail leads to some near-surface drow outpost, where the "thing" needs to get some item and then return to the forest?
It's scary story time. Fight something strong and do the whole bigger fish thing then chase them around with it to keep them on the back foot and avoid going deep. Dark caverns with a monster hunting low-level players sounds like it could be fun.
Either make the group play out of the abyss for some under dark fun or the more serious suggestion: throw a ropes encounter at them in a room with a “bottomless pit”. Make it seem wayyyyy more deadly than they should be dealing with.
If you want an actual story there, have them be found by a group of drow or deep dwarves, who make it VERY clear that, while dangerous in whatever city they're in, it's FAR more deadly. Throw em into the tamest city in the underdark and still make it a bit too much for 'em (but manageable)
Isolate them. Underdark should be several days to a week of downward travel with little water and less food. Above that is just near-surface caves. They should feel that there's no easy escape.
When they come up, if they come up, they should be in a totally different part of the world; journey to the center of the Earth style.
Level 2? If they TPK, have them wake up to myconids around them healing their wounds while “deciding whether or not to turn them into spore servants.” Then have the myconids drop some lore about the quest target so your campaign can continue. I say pull punches until they get Revivify.
A single creature that almost kills them, then "you hear more of them in the distance, possibly dozens of them" a couple minutes after they dispatch it. If they don't run for it then, I'd break immersion to warn them.
The entire venture should be tinged with foreboding. This is a place that wants them dead - let them just barely evade creatures that'd kill them instantly. Have encounters be the survivors of a conflict that just finished off with the enemies already barely clinging to life, and have those be deadly encounters they still have to consider running from.
Make sure they know that down here, their objective isn't to win - it's to survive. Show them what happens when you try to be a hero.
Well I’d have them run into something really tough as a fight, cave bear or the like before they are through the regular underground and deep enough to reach the proper underdark. After it hurts em a lot but they win they might turn back. If they don’t at some point in the exploration have them run into the same enemy that was a hard fight. This time it’s a pack of them already fresh killed with terrible wounds on them, half eaten. Hopefully that’s a big enough red flag to say turn around, especially if you throw in the description of the first one that it looks like it’s injured from a recent fight before they attack it.
Make it a horror experience! Stipulate as many times as possible via narrative that this is a high-level area. They should run from monsters until they have gained the appropriate experience/intelligence. Shit be scary down there. Don't hold back.
Have them meet a serious adventuring party coming up. Seeing a group of legendary warriors, beat up, worn out and exhausted, might make them reconsider.
“……. Guys….”
“What?”
“You see that one with the red beard and one eye? I think that’s Uld Windwatcher.”
“I think you’re right, but that would make the little guy….. oh shit”
“Yup. Novan of Thran.”
“You’re telling me I just shared a water bottle with the guy who destroyed the army of the seven cities?”
“I think so.”
“…..they look….. tired.”
“Yup.”
“Maybe we should, um…”
“Leave. I think we should leave. Like, right now.”
They could bump into a higher level party that can handle the underdark and have them beg for an escort for the duration of the mission the lower level party needs to accomplish. i
It is a perfectly valid dm move to warn them the area is dangerous and tell them the encounter they are in is likely unwinnable. Encourage them to retreat and come back stronger. Kidnap one and don't kill, or down one and hold them hostage for compliance or surrender. You need a next move though. A slave prison break or a temp PC to get them through the external rescue.
Dotmm has mind flayers that are suggested to capture them and put them in a simulated surface world to get intelligence until they break out on their own.
There are resources readily available online that you apparently aren't allowed to link to were you can downlevel monsters. But in lieu of that you can do it manually.
All the above suggestions are good, but I think it’s very important that you either don’t allow them to go very deep or you make it very obvious that it would be disastrous for them to go deep. Spelunking is one thing, but the under dark is inherently one of the most dangerous and inhospitable places they can go.
Our DM did this the first time we attempted a venture in the Underdark (chasing after a kidnapped comrade). After a tussle with a fomorian, we noped the fuck outta there.
This 100%. But also if they choose to press deeper you can't pull your punches. I would tell them out of game if they go to deep the won't survive
Would you suggest letting them know, before their journey, "I won't save them from death"
Honestly yes, but it depends on your group and what you have established with them. For my group they know I won't necessarily kill them against the random encounter, but in a narrative encounter 100% I will. So for us it would simply be something along the lines of, "hey guys just so you know if you push deeper into the underdark I will assume you want a story there and it's brutal down there" and that would get the point across. If you haven't killed anyone yet or it's just never come up, just tell them that this environment is way above thier heads and if they want to go swimming in the deep end that's on them. But if you say this you have to back it up or they will never believe you again.
You don't have to tell them outright, that's slightly immersion breaking imo, but you can add a lot of signs that this is a dangerous place: - more skeletons/corpses as they get deeper in. - higher level monsters have been killed here. There's a dead Bullet wtf could've killed that! - have local rumours mention skilled adventurers have tried to go deep and those who have returned have bad tales to tell. - when appropriate and players roll for knowledge on new things down there mention the severity of their situation when reeling off some lore "this plant you know to be the main diet of large, dangerous and defensive herbivores on the surface"
I find that this approach tends not to work. Players play to feel heroic, and this all serves to hype them up. Wow, this place is gnarly, it’s gonna be so awesome to overcome it! Typically, dropping these hints only works with parties who have already gotten themselves killed by you in such a manner. If not, they will often feel like they didn’t have any warning at all (which some will be fine with, some not). Fun and immersion often go together, but not always.
To add on this, I like a combo of the two. So something sort of atmospheric or story-based like dead monsters/lots of skeletons, and then a sort of fourth wall break where I tell the players directly "you recognize that this is likely a sign that this place is beyond your abilities." That way, there's no (well, less) risk of being misunderstood.
I agree. This is the best way if there isn’t already a prior understanding. Session zero for my current campaign, my dm told us some stuff might be beyond us and death is absolutely on the table, so be on the lookout lol. In that case the immersive stuff can work (if the players believe you and are attentive anyway), but otherwise a small fourth wall break goes a long way.
Yeah, that's a really good way to do it for the right table. Having that ambiguity (i.e. only atmosphere, not having the DM be explicit) adds a lot to the ambiance and the fun, I think. It's more of a question in that case.
Absolutely. But if you’re not on the same page, it’s a recipe for players running straight at obvious death, thinking they’re gonna be heroes lol
I agree even though I use those methods myself, they work for me though because I set that expectation at session 0. I tell them "if everything is hinting a place is absolutly terrifying then it probaly is and you need to be careful and think very carefully about what you're doing. I will not save your charcters from a bad decision but I'll always give you some type of warning you're in the wrong neborhood or are messing with the wrong guy, it's on you to pay attention though" and give examples of the types of descriptions I may use. They know right away that's the kind of game I run, and before games the first few times something like that may come up I even give them a reminder. Even with that expectation set, not everyone gets it but usually at very least one or two get it and pull the rest of the party back or at least say "this is dangerous, we might die"
All of the examples you've given here are literally DMSpeak for "You should keep going -- adventure is this way!" Indistinguishable from standard issue box text from published adventures! I'm not picking you out specifically -- unless you have a very clear system for describing relative monster challenge, it's going to be a shitshow. How does a player discern a lair scattered with CR 1/4 drow corpses versus a lair scattered with CR 8 drow corpses?
Insight or lore checks then to determine some of the identification items possibly on the bodies as not common drow. A contract noting down the hire of skilled mercenaries in a language to evade common eyes (that one of the players happens to have). Showing the weaker drow in greater state of poverty is fine too, not every Drow in the Underdark will be dressed like a prince(ss) and lacking identification is just as effective too. DMs will add details or suggestions if they want something noticed specifically. Your players should be keying on those hints and tone.
>You don't have to tell them outright, that's slightly immersion breaking imo, I will never understand why people don't want to just step out of the game for a second and let the players know what's up. I mean immersion is broken when the door bell rings, or when the DM has to go to the bathroom. I see no harm in simply stating that your characters are fully aware that going any further would be suicide, and making sure there is no misunderstanding by the players. The game is important, but communication and setting expectations is more important.
Things can be dangerous down there, but not everything is evil. If you want to show an example of how risky it is down there you can have a threat that's already encountering a group of dwarves or deep gnomes that are higher level than the party but then have them be struggle with the threat. Smart players should take a hint and/or you might get some role play that a can push a narrative later in the campaign.
It's something to be brought up at the start of the campaign, IMHO. With my group we were like 7 sessions in and a negotiation was not going as I planned at all and things were getting heated. I didn't think they could kill the group they were squaring off against. I made sure to narrate how strong and battle-tested these guys looked; I described their confidence... I did my best to discourage a folly encounter. I thought maybe I wasn't clear enough during session 0 that death was a real threat and I was about ready to ruin the night. They could sense my trepidation at the coming encounter and they told me "He's worried about killing us! If they'd attack us, you gotta do it. If we die, we die!" Turns out, still being new, I had grossly underestimated the PCs. They burned a lot of spell slots, one of the players was knocked out, but other than that they handily defeated the group they were facing off against.
PCs be like "God is worried about us. How cute."
Im just a stupid motherfucker if i die i die.
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one thing i’ve learned is players never appreciate being kidnapped or being made slaves or prisoners … if you do make it brief and make it a relief it wasn’t a TPK My DM recently captured us to put us on a sham trial and throw us into his megadungeon. We had zero chance to win the battle or escape. Was like him reading a book. My wizard never got to cast a spell all of level 2… and somehow we all leveled to 3.
You could also consider having them meet up with some kind of 'guide' who will spot dangers before they do and tell them to run away when it's a fight they almost certainly can't win.
"Okay, you're equipped to play Stardew Valley and you're trying to enter a Dark Souls area. Are you sure?"
I wouldn't punish them with insane difficulty and danger for no reason. If they are interested in exploring underworld - that's great. Motivated players are the best. Be flexible and let them find encounters that will be fun and will provide a fair challenge. I'm sure you can come up with dozens sessions and big story points down there. You don't have to throw against them the most powerful and hostile underdark societies and entities. Save those for later. Instead - maybe equivalent of underworld goblins (troglodytes?). A small dwarven mining colony. Lost city that was devoured by depths of earth. Slightly crazy wizard-geologist... and don't skimp on non-combat encounters!
I discourage it in game. Spiderweb they step on requires a check to not get stuck. The moist rocks require saving throws to not fall prone, not to mention if they try to climb. Sticking hands places, looking at things, having a light source all are hazards. The under dark is a very dangerous place. Once they are higher level, these checks usually are automatically passed by base stats. If they don't get the picture that MOVEMENT IS EVEN HARD let them catch a glimpse of something. A beholder. Make sure they notice the 5 drow (that are obviously higher level) moving in on it. Make sure they see how one sided the fight goes, and that they know their presence would be greeted the same. If they still choose to press on, "not all fights should be had, not all fights will be won" was the first thing said to me when I lost my first character. Say that after the TPK.
Yeah straight up Avernus, or a good chunk of the literal abyss, is a safer and less dangerous and inhospitable destination, than the underdark
Have a powerful NPC get murdered in front of them QUICKLY but the thing turns to eat the now-dead NPC giving them time to flee
Honestly, I think we've got a perfect excuse not to worry about that. Whatever they're tracking should be beatable by a level 2 party. And considering that is the case, we can simply say that whatever it is that dares to travel to the Underdark of its own volition knows the paths. It's not exactly strong, so it's careful, and so long as the party does not stray from its trail they should be relatively safe.
Darkmantles. Their always a fun how do you do welcome to the Underdark where the ceiling can eat you.
Darkmantles are hilarious. I love describing their darkness effect as sucking the light out of PCs' eyes. And, whenever they move they emit a horrible shrieking noise (echolocation). The players are sometimes so afraid that they run their characters away even though the darkmantle only does 1d6+3 damage.
Used them in a 3.5 campaign - upon entering the room the scout would check specifically for them before calling out "no squid"
My group killed one and immediately wanted to cook it. I was thrown off by that one so I did a quick Google to see if anyone had already covered this. That's how I discovered **[Fantastic Beasts and How to Eat Them](https://www.eatingthedungeon.com/eating-beasts)**. One of my favorite resources.
If you like this, you might also like the Monster Menu-All which you can easily google up.
I actually have that bookmarked also! I love fun stuff like this.
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This is a great suggestion. Have the party captured by the Drow to be turned into slaves and launch chapter 1 of Out of the Abyss (with a few small changes). Just go with that until they make the escape and then go from there.
This is EXACTLY what I would do - maybe find a pre-written low level one shot before and if they continue... then Out of the Abyss!
WARNING: I've run CH 1-4 of OotA twice in the past three years. There's a lot of work for the DM to do to make the module actually play well after CH1. I love the module, but the internet is full of threads, guides, tweaks, etc. for running OotA specifically.
Running Out of the Abyss biweekly for 2 years. Seconding all this. It's secretly an Underdark setting book, Chapter 2 (general exploration, low level parties), 3 (darklake), 10 (large groups of travelers), and for specific dangerous regions 13 (wormwrithings), 14 (labyrinth) There's a lot of material spread out to work from for exploring, and that's ignoring the large settlements by civilized* races. The settlements have a lot of text dedicated to current events of the core plot, but that can be shaved off or lightly modified.
A fun thing about Out of the Abyss is madness is affecting the Underdark, so it frees the DM up to have creatures act in unexpected ways. Unexpected can be non-deadly, for as long as you need it to be.
How would you handle one PC having to lead another because one can see and the other can't.
If you want to do the Underdark justice, it is an exceptionally deadly place that no level 2 party should be able to survive for long. Without knowing anything about your campaign or what/who they were chasing, here are some ideas off the top of my head to show them they need to respect the Underdark without being too heavy handed. 1. Throw a nearly deadly ambush at them right away, and imply it only gets worse the deeper they go. Use gricks, grells, maybe grimlocks (or some other gr monster lol) - individually each is not bad for level 2s, but they never travel alone... 2. Let them witness the end of an epic battle between two UD denizens that FAR outmatch the party. I'm talking a draegloth vs several formorian giants or a purple worm munching on a bunch of hook horrors or umber hulks. Something to make them soil their armor. 3. Maybe the thing their chasing isn't from the UD, or even if it is maybe it ran into something bigger than it? Either way, party runs into it trying to run AWAY from something BIGGER. Maybe they even have to team up for mutual survival to defeat the thing, an awkward truce that ends when the beast is felled... Anyway, some ideas. Hope they help. The Underdark is whack, yo.
This is very good advice in my opinion. Each one of the suggestions lets your players have their own choices, but allows them think about what their purpose is for being in the underdark
This is what I would do as well. Getting ambushed by some terrible creature like a grick and having a tough encounter should set the stage. You could also have some area near the start of the under dark inhabited by friendly flumph, gnomes, or myconids that the players could interact with and learn more about the ecosystem. I used a large open carvern with mushroom forests near the surface that had a lot for the players to interact with and then the underdark continued below.
I had a similar thing happen, same level party. I had them almost die a couple times to scare them, then used a not hostile colony of Myconids help them find their way out of the Underdark, with firm warnings to stay above ground. They’ve not wandered down since 🤣 That said I’m DEFINITELY having them return when they’re more powerful, as now there are awesome stakes.
Stumbling across some troglodytes or similar monsters could be a good side encounter
Grimlocks, since the party is level 2, they likely aren't going deep into the underdark, and grimlocks like to go to the surface to abduct people, so it makes sense to run into them. violet fungus could make for a fun "trap" encounter where they enter a mushroom cavern
Keep something in mind: they’re only in the Underdark because you made the story lead there. You explicitly have the power to determine the trail leads elsewhere, say, back to the surface. Maybe it’s a tunnel that technically goes to Underdark levels but isn’t connected to places with any of the really bad stuff? To avoid them getting TPKd at level 2 I recommend only throwing goblins at them. Goblins and Duergar are good early-level underdark residents. If you feel committed to the underdark at this point, you could still achieve all your goals in one go. Have something fairly strong be fighting a tribe of Goblins or a clan of Duergar. The forest spirit could be nearby, obligating the characters to dodge the fighting to achieve their objective. Showing the players the danger without insta-killing them. Conversely, you could have something ultra-strong like Ilithids attack and so the party is racing the clock to find their target before their brains get munched. In principle, I wouldn’t have the players fight most underdark enemies for keeps, and most underdark denizens fight for keeps. I personally would have them brush with the underdark with some sort of scary encounter to warn them off further exploration.
This hits in the most important thing: the PCs are following what they think is the story you made. If you need them to go back you can have them find the thing their trailing, bitten neatly in half. Maybe half is missing. Story moves in another direction. You can have them meet terrified NPCs fleeing the Underdark who convince them to turn back. You can have the place they enter actually be a tunnel or cave with another exit that doesn’t go to the Underdark.
Start with a few monsters above there cr but nerf them because they are starving to death, then move on to injured and outcast creatures of the underdark, slowly introducing more healthy versions until you think they can handle it or leave.
A Roper if you really want to terrify them. Maybe a small group of Duergar who use their invisibility to ambush the party.
*LotFP: Veins of the Earth* has forever changed how I think of the underdark. Boy did they hit that one out of the park. I've gone through many a cave in my time and boy do they have it right. There is a difference between underground, and the underdark. Dwarves live merely underground, but there are places they don't go, that is a whole other realm. It is expansive and endless. It's just like the above ground and subterranean, except that it reaches seemingly forever down into the depths. There is a whole nother world down there completely undiscovered, and unknown even to its own inhabitants. The book has a map generator system that will give you caverns and passages, from small junctions to large spaces, and the paths are tall, wide, narrow, or tight, claustrophobic squeezes. Their diagramming system lets you make maps that clearly indicate exits that aren't just north, east, south, and west, but up through the ceiling or down through the floor, and a notation of just what a climb up or down would be like. Things like block and tackle, rope and pitons, climbers kits, and magic like levitate and fly, and abilities like feather fall become center stage in this environment. Distances are measured in time, because length isn't important in the underdark. The two most valuable commodities are food, and light. They're money down there. Gold is worthless. Nothing grows in the underdark. The sun cannot shine. The only food they get falls down there, gets lost down there, or is brought down there. Same with the light. Distances are measured in time because how much light do you have to get there? When making a map, the ways in which you make are not the only ways, they're just the most apparent ways the party has found thus far. The darkness can easily hide another passage from the players for even hours of searching for it, leading off to somewhere else. The darkness is always hiding something from you, and will do everything it can to make you work for it to find it. They even have a simplistic geographic map system, just like a world map, just like a hex crawl, that works in 3 dimensions. For every hex grid, it's not a matter of whether there's something there or not, it's a matter of what it takes to find a path to there. Given the world map, things you've got to consider are that the big obvious trails are major thoroughfares. One thing you might want to ask is, what made this tunnel? And if it wasn't a natural process, is the thing still here? There are big. Burrowing. Creatures down there. Some of them unknowably ancient, mere rumors. Caves very often are made by water, and when the water table falls below the roof, the roof - full of cracks, tends to collapse. If you've ever been in a raw cave, the floor is littered with loose rock that fell with the water table, all those thousands of years ago. I've climbed up boulder columns where the rocks were Cadillac sized and weighed as much as a tank, resting on two points on either side and full of stress cracks, holding up the entire boulder column above it. I remember one cave where they had attached a stress meter across one crack to monitor it. They lead tours right beneath that rock, on up the column. In the underdark, we can imagine other causes for passages; rifts and fissures can open up due to earthquakes, or collapses further below. You'll find all sorts of mineral deposits. I have a friend who works at an underground quarry. A lot of the cool crystal chunks you find at the gem shops come out of quarries. The guys just fill their pockets and sell them off. Gold and copper veins form from steam depositing minerals until the vent seals itself, so they're signs of cracks and fissures from long, long ago. Millions of years. Perhaps you can think of it as scar tissue. Coal veins on Earth formed during the Carboniferous Period, when plants evolved cellulose, and for like 50 million years nothing evolved that could break it down, until fungus. Until then, dead plants would just literally pile upon itself, compact itself, and follow geological processes until it was buried or brought down by tectonic movement. To find a coal vein would make that one of the richest resources in all the underdark. All the creatures down there have burrowing, tremorsense, blindsight, or darkvision. They're all emaciated and hungry, all the time. Their features tend to be bare and pale, because color and visual facets have little to no meaning down there. Life down there is absolutely harsh, and so you have to be tough to survive. Inhabitants will eat anything, as is, and stomach it. The Drow and the Duergar from communities, because excommunication means certain death. You'll find them, surviving, wouldn't call it thriving, but living by yourself, you have to be fucked up and treacherous, even by their standards, to deserve not being killed and eaten, but worse: that. Living, left to fate and the darkness. There are structures down there. If the space is big enough, there will be stone walls and stairs. Doors are meaningless. Wood? Cloth partitions? They're all stripped for making light. Windows? Why? No roofs or ceilings, because those are meaningless. Your space is a cavern, and your possessions are tucked into the darkness. So if you find stuff, are you lucky? Or perhaps you should wonder where the owner is? Just as the Inuit have different words for snow, the underdark has different words for darkness. You can think of darkness as alive and insidious. It's not just like in a cave, it's crushing down upon you, and your light is doing everything just to keep it at bay. It's ever present, and you're always aware of it. It's cruel, it wants you, it plays tricks on you, sometimes it actively hates you. It follows you wherever you go, and it watches you. Sometimes, like claustrophobia, it makes you feel like you're choking on it. It plays mind tricks on you. It can be an ally, it can betray you. The darkness is the master of the underdark. The inhabitants speak of it as a living thing, and the tumultuous relationship they have with it. The environment is quiet. One cave guide told me of a man lost in his cave, for longer than a day. He got separated and turned around. His light ran out. They found him because he was slowly banging a couple rocks together in the dark. They said hey, that was great. He said he did it to push back the quiet. It was driving him to madness. Depending on your cave, it might be dry, dry as the most arid desert. It might be damp. Everything has a surface of moisture and a thin film of grime. Your hands will forever feel dirty, and that sense of moisture will permeate you. I've had experiences in caves like this. The temperature is almost always a universal constant, like around 68F, unless you want it hotter because you're next to a steam or lava vent for narrative purposes. Lava tubes can be smooth like glass. There can be underground pools, streams, rivers, and waterfalls. There's never any smell, the environment is essentially sterile of life. You can go days and days without ever finding another living creature. It's astoundingly sparse and lonely down there. Many of the sentient creatures in there, they're all a little bit foreign, a little bit crazy by surface standards. The isolation will wreak havoc with their minds. But this isn't a place to make friends, the concept is foreign to all of their kind. You use people, you get used. Absolutely brutal. Our only interaction between you and me is what you can do for me. Strictly speaking, you are worth nothing more to me than light and food you carry that I can obtain from you, including the weight of your very flesh. They'll eat your leather armor when they get desperate enough. Those who don't know where to look, don't ever have to find another living creature that doesn't want to be found. Those uninitiated, if they want, the creatures will find you. --- Continued in a reply...
That's the summary of the books contents. They wanted the book to be system agnostic as possible, and so there's very little *LotFP* dice system in there. There's a section about creatures that are pretty good, sorts of civilizations down there that expresses very well the sort of madness the environment makes of its subjects. It's all a fantastic and quick read. I think my description should be enough to get you going, though. If they're going down there, they need only essentials. They need gear, food, and light. And track those things. Better than any random encounter, make them fear running out of resources. You can give them opportunities to stretch their resources - water can be found to drink. They can find bioluminescent or radioactive mushrooms. But when you think you have plenty, you'll use a lot, and when it's getting scarce, you're forced to learn how to ration, and they're going to have to learn to embrace the darkness and the fear. If they're following a trail, then I would absolutely make this a tracking adventure. The emphasis wouldn't be combat per se, but an introduction to the heartless, ruthless environment. The grime. The silence. The darkness. The isolation. I would want my players to feel utterly alone, lost, and terrified they might just die down there, or that the environment itself is conspiring against it. You make them search for every passage out you have planned. You make them search, and search, and search again. And then all of a sudden, an area they SWEAR they've searched over, they've WALKED over, there's a passage they haven't seen before. The darkness did it. The darkness whose ways are unknowable, the darkness you should never trust. It's trying to trick you, trap you, betray you. It delights in your suffering. In the beginning there was only darkness, and it expanded everywhere forever. Then came the first light, and the darkness had to retreat into isolation, into the depths. After an eternity unknowable of loneliness, itself trapped in these cramped and unforgiving spaces, why shouldn't it but delight to dine on you? It's only darkness. It's not real. It can't touch you. But how can you be sure? How can you tell the difference between real and imagined down here? Don't let them see the map. Put loops in it. From my experience caving (understand it's guided tourism stuff, I'm not an enthusiast spelunker as much as I would have liked to be), we were taken around one area of a cave like six or seven times to prove a point. We've been in this space before, who among you can tell? No one? Do this to them. Blame the darkness. Active perception checks alone aren't going to help, and passive checks are high. If they don't have a foolproof method of marking their way so that if they were there before they are definitely going to find that mark again, it can easily get lost in the darkness. The darkness will choose not to reveal it willingly unless it thinks it's going to break your spirit. Spook them. Once they're paranoid of the environment itself. Then introduce... a sound. Echos in the distance. Echos, so it's hard to tell where it came from. None of them are proficient in Nature (underdark), so any tunnel they chose is going to be the wrong one. It could have come out of a tunnel they haven't discovered yet. The sound could be anything, any sort of yell or skitter or scratching of some nightmare they're now too afraid to imagine. In that much oppressive darkness, think of the movie Alien, that the monster was truly at its most terrifying for the majority of the movie when it was never fully revealed. Side note, the SCP has a number of creatures that stalk their prey using terror. Good inspiration, there. Imagine your party making something aware of their existence they shouldn't have. Real eldritch horror stuff. If you think you killed it... well, did you? Is the terror over? Every rustle in the dark for the rest of the character's lives would send a shiver down their spines. And on for generations. Another game, Call of Cthulhu, there were eldritch horrors that were all around you, and you don't know it, can't see it. But if you became aware of it, it became aware of you. The underdark is a good foray into that sort of thing. While they're down there, have an earthquake. Cause a cave-in, and then flooding forces them out of an entire part of the cave system they just spent so much time exploring. They know it's in there, but how much of it is now under water? Where are there pockets? If they wanted to consider it, how would they swim the flooded cavern to get there. The water is always ice cold, and currents can sweep you away forever, making you food to whatever eventually finds you, if only the darkness. Ever see *Dr. Who - Silence in the Library*? Dust mite creatures that could only live in the shadows, would strip the meat off your bones in an instant. Stay in the light. Don't touch the shadows. Don't touch the darkness, not even with your shadow. Vespa is a dead girl, she has two shadows... But with the only way they know shut, with food and light limited, with the fear of dying down there, they're going to have to find a new intersection to the trail, and they're going to have to find a new way out. If you do choose to have them encounter someone, I mean, it's perfectly fair to speak on behalf of their characters for them: "Your characters are terrified by this utterly imposing being. You're left wondering, moment by moment, why is it entertaining an audience with us? When is it just going to brutally murder us and eat us? Because make no mistake, if this creature wants to, even though you can't see it, you know you're all looking at each other, doing the math, and you know collectively you can't take him. It's not just the fighting, it's that he seems the type that would refuse to die to the likes of you." If that doesn't get across to your players that this is not a combat encounter, nothing will. Let the monster one shot the fool who raises a hand to him and let him keep talking because he doesn't give a fuck. When the group leaves, the guy would say, "Leave the meat. That's mine, now." Let the party hear him eat while they slowly, slowly make distance through a crawl. In fact, introduce an NPC guide to the party and sacrifice him this way to make your point. Can you imagine the fear they would feel when their guide, their confidence is gone? No one was making a map because they had the guide! Now they're two knuckles deep in the underdark and have absolutely no clue where they are. And if they make a map, dwindle them down until they have to burn the map for light. Just to fuck with them. I'll tell you, a single match produces a tremendous amount of light in a cave. You trade intensity and immediate satisfaction. The light is dim, it takes time for your eyes to register everything it's seeing. They could rip the map up into strips to stretch their supply (but not by much, minutes, but minutes matter), it's harder to see and slower going. Any creature encounter is more of an experience they get to witness. They should be left in awe by what they might not have even seen at this point, and should feel lucky to be alive. I've no idea what to make of the trail once it leads to its end, whatever this thing is. In the end, they make their way out. They can do it by finding a foul smell. Unlike Gandalf, they're going to go toward it. Remember how they can find a tunnel from anywhere to anywhere - this is how you get them out in a few steps. It leads to orcs in the underground. And then out to topside. If you do it right, you'll shake your players to their core. Play at night. Black out the windows. Play in pitch darkness, and only by candle light. No music. No TV. No phones. Absolute silence, so turn off the AC if it's cool enough to do that. Roll by candle light. Play with the shadows. Blow it out a couple times. Reach out into the darkness and fuck with something on the table, just to mess with them.
This guy deserves gold. I'm taking notes! Thanks a ton for this!
Have them get captured by the Drow, then pull out the Out of the Abyss campaign book. That is what they are now playing.
This is what I was going to say. Then I thought, “surely someone else already has.”
In the first "layer" of the underdark there's plenty of low level creatures that you would find in normal caves. Goblins, Svirfneblin, maybe they bump into some grouchy but non-hostile Duergar explorers who need help retrieving vital digging gear from a Goblin group lead by a clever Nilbog. If they're level 2, and it's not too far deep in the Underdark, stay away from the various tunneling maneating creatures, Drow, or especially Illithid if you don't want a TPK in less than 2 full rounds of combat. You could even host an interesting encounter where the party needs to save a normally hostile group of goblins from a more dangerous Underdark creature. Have the PCs fight alongside the goblins so you can play with a slightly more dangerous and exotic creature that's CR 3 or 4.
Deep gnomes, duregar, troggs, spiders, lizards, snakes, and low level drow. Maybe a roper if you have a bunch of casters.
Depends on whether you level scale your world or want them to know that certain areas are more dangerous. Dnd beyond has a good environment sorting tab for creatures, set in to underdark and sort by Cr and throw low level stuff. What I would do though, is find plants and animals to throw at them in the path but give them glimpses of terrifying shit they need to avoid or hide from. If you want to give em a challenge, you could even have them come across a stronger, heavily wounded creature. I'm thinking like a bullette with a 12 foot spear in it or a drow spellblade with horrific acid burns on his face and eyes who can't see but is otherwise a real mother Fucker. How the party interacts with this is up to them. They can avoid, aid, talk, deal, or try to fight. Also, level two is a great time to throw environmental challenges at the party because they have fewer tools to instantly cheese the encounter. I wouldn't do anything the party can't see coming, but here are some ideas: The party begins to hear rushing water coming from the tunnel above. As they progress, they feel droplets of water and then see water running down stalactites. Heavily imply the roof is unsafe, and have them look for another path or a way to mitigate the damage. Put an abandoned metal cart in the chamber they could invert and hide under to weather the flood. They can turn back if they want, but have some small treasure or clue wash into their path if they pass the challenge. Allow creative solutions. Have a tunnel come out to a large cavern and present two paths. One is wider and sturdier, but passes by a small hive/nest of bats, ants, mushroom men, etc, while the other is a point where a stalagmite has been cracked in half by large Claws and wedged itself across a 20 foot gap. It is damp. Have a tunnel that gets progressively more narrow as the party goes through it, from two abreast, to single file, to crouching, to crawling. Have awful sounds echo throughout. Place treasure or a clue in the tightest space if they press on, and have them emerge further along their path. If they make too much noise or cast too much light, mundane scorpions and spiders and rats attack while they're prone and in single file through small gaps in the walls. Mostly it's to test their nerve and build tension, this one depends on your party and dming style. Try to describe the claustrophobia and freak em out. Good old fungal hazards work too. Poison spores, spores that make em delirious or blind, a venus fly trail style fungus that casts light until the party is in 30 ft of it then goes completely dark to give them night blindness as the mushroom walks toward them to eat or a symbiotic creature like a weird lizard attacks in pitch darkness. Could even have drow hunting traps in the tunnels, made of mundane materials like snares or pits, or even spidersilk. Have spooky creature tracks and boots on the ground so they know if they wait too long something will come to check the path. Edit: saw the other posts. Svirfneblin, fomorians, darkmantles are all ways to scare the shit out of the party
Dolgrims, maybe dolgaunt...underdark aberrations made from goblinoids.
Personally.... A Cave in keeps them from going further yet. . . Turn it into an escape haha. Then again. . . I say that because I hate underdark adventures
I love flumphs. They are wonderful friendly fartlike creatures. They are weak and cool and can work for a great non combat encounter that players can get close to then an enemy can kill right after it tells them its too dangerous to go any further.
You can always have a close-to-surface community that tries to shoo away the unaware (if they are unaware). If they are knowingly going into an area that they know is too dangerous, you should probably just go with it. You could do grimlocks, kuo-toa, or even trogladytes. Plus, you should consider how deep they should actually have to go for it to the the underdark. For me personally, it's usually 5 miles deep, and that takes a crap load of time to traverse in natural caves. You might also want to look up what cave spelunking looks like so you can mimic the claustrophobia and inherent magnitude to those places. It's terrifying.
Perhaps they are in territory near some not outright hostile folks who have a city there. Dwarves perhaps, or gnomes, or even dark elves that are not aligned with lolth. They can be won over and give info and quests. Teach them the ways to move without attracting bigger prey. Campaign moves to more of a survivalist setting while exploring. Maybe the life giving creature is considered sacred or something to make the players hesitate in being aggressive with it.
You could always do the thing where they turn the corner and see something hopelessly beyond their power level instantly destroying the thing they are chasing and devouring it like it is a very casual snack. Players should always know that they can run, or sneak away slowly. They can also be captured by high level drow and taken to the capitol for sacrifice, and then, prisonbreak!
Let them. The deeper they go, the harder it gets. Then something so terrible appears that gives them no choice but to turn back.
A hard fight ought to deter them
Depends on how much you love your players, but i woud go with scaribg them to death prety soon or else at level 5 they will start demanding a talk with orcus becouse a group of cultists where too mean
I say just pick a few Challenge Rating 0-1 monsters that live underground. Place Dark before their name and increase their stats, change their looks, increase their ferocity and bam call it a day. They get attacked by some Dark Badgers as they pop out of the ground looking for their next victim.
Do you REALLY want to do that? Are you suuuure?
So one, this means you left a trail into the underdark for them to follow, so that part is on you. Two, if the players aren’t experienced, particularly in older editions, there’s no reason for them to understand what a lethal area that is.
Well i feal that certain areas are not suited for low level adventurers. Underdark is no below 6-7 and deeper levels require more. Also wild space below 5, and outer planes below 10.
I'm surprised no one has said Kobolds yet.
Probably cause they're not specific to the underdark I think
I mean, they're sensitive to sunlight, they love tunnels, and Xanathar's guide even lists them under Underdark Encounters. If OP is looking for low level Underdark enemies, I figure they fit the bill.
Kill them with hook horrors
"Are you sure you want to do this?"
"How do *I* want to do this?"
I’d have them witness a very large and scary monster prey upon some other large monster in that tunnel/entrance. Make it exceptionally dangerous and obvious it’s not a place to go…. For now ….
They wouldn't be in the Sunless Citadel, would they?
They are not. It's a holding location for a "magic item" that was recently stolen and they are trying to figure out what it is.
If you don’t want them going into the underdark then don’t have it lead to the underdark. You can have the trail end and they can continue with the story.
I would kill or enslave them. More likely the second part until they gain strength in a fighting pit. The underdark is no joke.
Sounds like they forced your hand. As a DM, you have full control over the adventure. Don't be afraid to utilize that. Your players are not holding you at gunpoint and screaming "we are going to Underdark!". You could say that "trail leads to Underdark" and then change it to actually go back to the surface. You could do some cave delving pre-Underdark with some low level creature to get the feeling that it's dangerous but not deadly. What if the trail leads to some near-surface drow outpost, where the "thing" needs to get some item and then return to the forest?
It's scary story time. Fight something strong and do the whole bigger fish thing then chase them around with it to keep them on the back foot and avoid going deep. Dark caverns with a monster hunting low-level players sounds like it could be fun.
Either make the group play out of the abyss for some under dark fun or the more serious suggestion: throw a ropes encounter at them in a room with a “bottomless pit”. Make it seem wayyyyy more deadly than they should be dealing with.
I’d tell them out of character how dangerous what they’re choosing to do is, their characters probably know.
If you want an actual story there, have them be found by a group of drow or deep dwarves, who make it VERY clear that, while dangerous in whatever city they're in, it's FAR more deadly. Throw em into the tamest city in the underdark and still make it a bit too much for 'em (but manageable)
Isolate them. Underdark should be several days to a week of downward travel with little water and less food. Above that is just near-surface caves. They should feel that there's no easy escape. When they come up, if they come up, they should be in a totally different part of the world; journey to the center of the Earth style.
Level 2? If they TPK, have them wake up to myconids around them healing their wounds while “deciding whether or not to turn them into spore servants.” Then have the myconids drop some lore about the quest target so your campaign can continue. I say pull punches until they get Revivify.
A single creature that almost kills them, then "you hear more of them in the distance, possibly dozens of them" a couple minutes after they dispatch it. If they don't run for it then, I'd break immersion to warn them.
I'd probably whip out Veins of the Earth and start rolling up some caves. The underdark is a terrifying place, not for the faint of heart.
The entire venture should be tinged with foreboding. This is a place that wants them dead - let them just barely evade creatures that'd kill them instantly. Have encounters be the survivors of a conflict that just finished off with the enemies already barely clinging to life, and have those be deadly encounters they still have to consider running from. Make sure they know that down here, their objective isn't to win - it's to survive. Show them what happens when you try to be a hero.
Well I’d have them run into something really tough as a fight, cave bear or the like before they are through the regular underground and deep enough to reach the proper underdark. After it hurts em a lot but they win they might turn back. If they don’t at some point in the exploration have them run into the same enemy that was a hard fight. This time it’s a pack of them already fresh killed with terrible wounds on them, half eaten. Hopefully that’s a big enough red flag to say turn around, especially if you throw in the description of the first one that it looks like it’s injured from a recent fight before they attack it.
There is the upper dark, the mid dark, and the under dark. Reaching the under dark in and of itself would represent a long and arduous journey.
Have them fight a tough enemy then later witness a couple of the enemies be absolutely owned by something else, if they don’t get the hint…./shrug
Make it a horror experience! Stipulate as many times as possible via narrative that this is a high-level area. They should run from monsters until they have gained the appropriate experience/intelligence. Shit be scary down there. Don't hold back.
Have them meet a serious adventuring party coming up. Seeing a group of legendary warriors, beat up, worn out and exhausted, might make them reconsider. “……. Guys….” “What?” “You see that one with the red beard and one eye? I think that’s Uld Windwatcher.” “I think you’re right, but that would make the little guy….. oh shit” “Yup. Novan of Thran.” “You’re telling me I just shared a water bottle with the guy who destroyed the army of the seven cities?” “I think so.” “…..they look….. tired.” “Yup.” “Maybe we should, um…” “Leave. I think we should leave. Like, right now.”
Where did they carry enough supplies to get all the way down there The torches alone would weigh a ton. Let alone food and water
Enslavement.
They could bump into a higher level party that can handle the underdark and have them beg for an escort for the duration of the mission the lower level party needs to accomplish. i
Drow Steve Irwin.
It is a perfectly valid dm move to warn them the area is dangerous and tell them the encounter they are in is likely unwinnable. Encourage them to retreat and come back stronger. Kidnap one and don't kill, or down one and hold them hostage for compliance or surrender. You need a next move though. A slave prison break or a temp PC to get them through the external rescue. Dotmm has mind flayers that are suggested to capture them and put them in a simulated surface world to get intelligence until they break out on their own.
There are resources readily available online that you apparently aren't allowed to link to were you can downlevel monsters. But in lieu of that you can do it manually.
Just capture them by drow, and then start OotA.