I wonder if this is also emblematic of what you're talking about
@Beoric :
4: Lost Library. Shelves stacked with books and scrolls, reading desk.
Omalwera, spurned first wife of Thresimund lives on in unlife as a Lich.
She broods here in the Library 80% or manically experiments in her Lab (4b) 20%.
She is very lonely but has been driven insane by the rage of abandonment.
She will talk for a while but eventually she will snap.
She uses scrolls (see below) as a
free action, summoning them automatically to memory 1/rnd.
And the books themselves fly off the shelves to distract spell casters and people using missile weapons (DC (Avg)
Concentrate).
DC (Hard) Perception; she is missing the ring finger on her left hand.
A rambling journal on the desk reveals centuries of hatred towards her niece Brghilde, her husband’s failing love, her
scheme to match Brghilde with Wamba and help them run away together and her subsequent imprisonment in this wing of
the palace as punishment.
The journal also disguises her spell book in a hidden cipher (DC (Avg) Perception + DC (Hard) Int to decrypt.
The library contains many arcane treatises (+5 Knowledge Alchemy/Arcana)
Including a bookmarked page (DC (Hard) Search) describing how a spell to remove the 'Devilish Curse of the
Wastes' (fiendishness) may be found in the Canyon of Fire, but only a god can make it stick.
Also, Arcane scrolls cast at 9th lvl: 3rd: Displacement, Halt Undead, Haste, Stinking Cloud; 4th: Dimension Door,
Hallucinatory Terrain; 6th: Summon Monster VI (caster lvl 11); 7th: Finger of Death (caster lvl 13); Cursed Wish
(Explosive Firetrap 3d6 force +3d6 fire, 5' Radius*)
*(Omalwera suspects the curse and invokes the Wish only when she is at the brink of death).
I like Omalwera. Spurned wife of the duke and powerful wizard. She's been bricked up in her lab for centuries and gone quite insane. If the PC's can work things out with her by (for example) finding her wedding ring, she can become a powerful (undead) ally, but in the description she just snaps and if you hit this room before finding the missing finger bone without its ring in her bedroom, or the ring with her initials at the family shrine, there's really no clue that she could be anything but a threat. Maybe that's just how it's got to play out in that case?
I really shouldn't generalize until I have read the whole thing.
Also, worth noting here that the editor here has lost all of
@The1True's formatting, the PDF is much easier to follow than this.
"She will talk for a while but eventually she will snap." I see this a lot in adventures and have a personal dislike of it. First of all it makes combat inevitable. Secondly, there is no guidance about what she is interested in talking about, or what sets her off. I don't (yet) know enough about the rest of the module to know if her history with Brghilde and Wamba is gameable, or if there are indications elsewhere abut how this relates to her instability or her triggers, but it may bear mentioning here.
Also, there is no indication as to what she wants that the PCs could provide, and what she has (short of treasure) that the PCs might want to bargain for (I consider this a must for any named NPC).
When she broods in the library, what is she doing, just sitting behind the desk? What is she working on in the lab, and could it be at all tactically relevant or interesting to the PCs?
What is the relevance of the missing ring finger?
I think the Omalwera section is a good example of where prose beats point form. I think the exercise of constructing a paragraph, with transitional devises and the whole bit, can help flesh out the personality of the NPC.
I would put the position of the desk on the map (actually, I can't see it on the map at all), along with bookshelves, and the furniture in the lab; all of these are tactical hazards or potentially tactically useful.
I think the scroll use and book-missiles should be broken out of the Omalwera section and given their own (tactical?) section. The Scroll should either be at the top of the treasure section (since it is immediately relevant) or moved to the tactical section. Other than that, I actually prefer what you have done with tactics here, since it is general preferences as opposed to laying it out round by round. And on that note:
hmmm how about this:
1: and a: I think already establish that this is a place where domesticated animals are kept. Specifically domesticated insects. So PC's with animal handling skills should hopefully be primed.
Rnd 1: It shudders to its feet chittering menacingly. -the change of wording from flavour to clear threat, plus the act of rolling initiative should warn the PC's that they have one round to back away, use their animal handling skills or get ready to fight.
Rnd 2: It charges, knocking out pillars and fences. The roof creaks alarmingly. -the added sentence clearly broadcasts that the beetle is doing structural damage and that if PC's stay and fight they will have to contend with a falling roof.
Re: establishing it as an insect barn, again I don't think point form works well here for conveying flavour. That information is contained in both the top, unnumbered line and the second line #1, but they don't look like they should be read together. In fact the top line, which calls it out as a barn, looks like information for the DM, and the next line, as point form, looks like information you only get after investigation. The point form leads to certain assumptions, you see?
So perhaps, without doing too mush editing, "High walls, tall roof. Large wooden doors bang loosely in the breeze. The interior is dominated by pens, and an alkali reek (from the beetles) and the funk of fetid meat."
Also, why is it automatically taking out the pillars? If the PCs enter from the north, it can see them, and could conceivably take out that one pillar when it crashes through the fence. If they enter from the south, it would naturally go through a different fence and take out a different pillar, with potentially a different area filled with debris (and being difficult terrain). But in neither case is there any reason for it to take out more than one pillar, and the pillar would be in the north section of the building. If anything, the north section of the building should go first.
Also note that it is lurching to its feet in the first round after the PCs have entered. I interpreted that as being the end of the round, since the PCs entering was their action. So when broken into rounds like this, it looked to me like there was no opportunity for the PCs to do anything.
So maybe, "If a door is held open long enough for a party of adventurers to ender the building, the light will awaken the beetle. The beetle can see most of the barn through the slats of its pen. If it perceives the PCs, it shudders to its feet, chittering menacingly. If the PCs remain in the building and do not immediately take actions to placate it, it will charge, destroying any fencing (and connected pillars) that is in its way. Debris will fall around the pillars in a 10' radius, making it difficult terrain, and the roof will being to creak alarmingly. Thereafter there is a 25% chance per round that the entire roof will collapse [insert damage stats]."
Although honestly, giving it a few rounds to get increasingly (and audibly) agitated would be more interesting to me. Maybe with it starting to bang against the fence. Because the PCs will likely make the reasonable assumption that a pen constructed for the purposes of holding a bug will be capable of holding a bug, and because of the rising tension and the longer period for the PCs to get themselves organized (if the players don't panic).
EDIT: Now that I have my head into it, I want to run this encounter differently. The beetle is being territorial, so if the PCs enter from the north (where the bug is) they should have little time to address the situation, but if they enter from the south and are careful not to draw attention to themselves or aggravate it, they should have more time. If they enter through a hole in the roof, it will really depend on which hole. None of that lends itself well to a timer, this really starts out as a social encounter with too many variables to break down into mechanics.
So maybe, "If a door is held open long enough for a party of adventurers to ender the building, the light will awaken the beetle. The beetle can see most of the barn through the slats of its pen. If it perceives the PCs, it shudders to its feet, chittering menacingly. If the PCs remain in the building and do not take actions to placate it, it will grow increasingly agitated, and eventually it will charge, destroying any fencing (and connected pillars) that is in its way. Debris will fall around destroyed pillars in a 10' radius, making it difficult terrain, and the roof will being to creak alarmingly. Thereafter there is a 25% chance per round that the entire roof will collapse [insert damage stats]."
