Summary
Dungeon crawls are one of the most fun and unique types of sessions you can create in aDungeons & Dragonsgame. While these types of encounters are great for lower-level tables too, there’s a lot more fun you can have as a Dungeon Master when it comes to crafting high-level dungeon crawls for seasoned DND players, full of monsters, traps, and more.
But if you’re preparing to run a high-level dungeon crawl for your table, you might be wondering what you need to know. That’s why we’ve created this list, with the best tips and tricks for creating a dungeon crawl for expert players.
10Change Things As You Go
Be Flexible
One of the best things you can do to make your dungeon crawl feel more dynamic is to make alterations to the space as players traverse it. This may sound complicated, but it’s actually simpler than it sounds. For inspiration, you can look at dungeon design in The Legend of Zelda series.
As one example, consider designing a dungeon that has a large circular room at its center. The longer players spend in the dungeon, the more doors appear, leading to previously undiscovered rooms. However, the longer players spend, the more monsters appear as well, meaning too much random exploration is going to prove more hurtful than helpful.
9Tailor Resistances
Buff Your Monsters
One of the most important aspects of combat, random encounters, and dungeon design is making sure that you tailor your encounter to your party’s damage types. While you don’t want to be too punishing, making big bads or other creatures that have resistance to your party’s chosen damage types can really help to balance encounters. The same goes for dungeon crawl design.
For example, if you have a lot of party members who can fly, consider making a dungeon that exists in a gravity well, meaning players can’t necessarily fly all that far. Alternatively, ifyour high-level playershave a lot of teleportation spells in their arsenal, consider creating wild magic surges in the dungeon every time someone teleports in the party.
8Deceive Players
Make An Insight Check
Trickery and deceit are a DM’s best friends, particularly when it comes to designing a dungeon. One of the most dynamic things you may do when designing a dungeon crawl is to fill the space with lots of deceitful information to throw players off the scent.
For example, perhaps there’s an NPC in the dungeon who has placed deceitful ‘helpful’ signage everywhere, instructing players where to go. Alternatively, considerhaving a DMPCbetray the party after leading them to a dangerous locale within the dungeon’s structure.
7Split The Party
Not Recommended, But Forced
This next tip is great for high-level parties of all kinds, but also especially useful for large parties. While this can prove difficult to run in sessions, expert players will appreciate being split up in interesting and unique ways for a larger challenge in the dungeon.
Use a trap of some kind to split the party up when they first enter the dungeon, subsequently running two dungeon crawls at once. This is great for expert players and for keeping them on their toes. This can also prove useful if you want to run separate sessions based on different players' availabilities for games.
6Escape Is Part Of The Challenge
How Did We Get Here?
While there are plenty of dungeons you can create or run that allow parties to explore at will, you might want to consider trapping the party inside. This adds a sense of stakes that is highly compelling. Plus, it adds multiple goals for the party to contend with: finding treasure and loot, and also finding a means of escape.
You can even use time limits if you want for parties to attempt to find an escape route out of the dungeon. This will force expert players to use every tool in their arsenal in order to survive. This type of challenge is great for high-level players, who tend to hoard their resources unless provoked specifically.
5Impose Environmental Threats
Dungeons Can Have Weather Too
While not limited strictly to weather, you should considerusing environmental threatsthroughout your dungeon to add an extra layer for players to contend with. For example, one section of the dungeon could be flooded, meaning players will have to traverse through water. Or, they might encounter a series of rooms that have been burnt to a crisp by a mysterious monster, meaning they might risk fire damage by crossing.
Additionally, you can use unique environmental effects like antimagic fields, gravity wells, or wild magic zones in various rooms of the dungeon. Just be careful not to place an entire dungeon under zones like this, as this might stifle players a bit too much.
Combat Can Come Second
Just because players are traversing through a dungeon doesn’t mean that every single room has to involve combat. Having every encounter that players come across be combat-focused can prove to be a bit tedious.
So, throughout your dungeon, you should consider using NPCs and building roleplay encounters in various rooms. This can help break up the pace of the dungeon and can catch expert players off guard, who might be expecting mostly combat. You can even use NPCs to fill in players on the lore of the dungeon, or have players meet rival adventuring groups who are after treasure and loot themselves.
3Use Treasure And Traps Equally
Risk Versus Reward
Treasure and lootare a really important part of any dungeon crawl. After all, if there aren’t tangible rewards for your players in your dungeon, then there’s not really much of a reason for them to stick around.
However, for expert players, you want to carefully counterbalance the amount of treasure in your dungeon with the amount of traps you have scattered throughout. If you have a decent balance of both, you’ll tempt players in meaningful ways by enticing them with treasure, but also be able to punish them should they get too greedy. This balance is tricky to walk, but well worth it if you may pull it off. Try starting with more treasure toward the beginning of the dungeon, and more traps toward the end for a nice pace.
2Discourage Too Many Rests
Keep It Movin'
Expert Dungeons & Dragons players know how to game the system and aren’t afraid to find ways to take short or long rests, even in dungeons. However, as a DM, if you let your players take too many rests, then they’ll easily be able to handle whatever you have planned for them later on in the dungeon.
Part of the challenge of a great dungeon for high-level players is working to carefully manage resources, so that you don’t blow through all of your abilities, leaving you helpless when you need them the most. As a DM, part of your job in running high-level tables is to force players to exhaust their abilities. That’s why you’ll want to make sure you don’t let players rest too often. Make a random encounter table to roll on whenever players take more than one short or long rest while in a dungeon.
1Conditions Are Your Best Friend
This Dungeon Is Not Unconditional
Conditions can last a long time, depending on whether you’re going by the rules laid out in the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide or using your own homebrew rules. Forcing a condition like poisoned or blinded on a player in a dungeon can prove to be a real challenge to overcome, especially if players are out of spells like Lesser Restoration.
Alternatively, if you impose a condition on a player early on, even when the healers in the party still have access to restoration abilities, this can still be useful as it forces players to burn spell slots to help their allies. Whatever your exact methodology, finding ways to impose disadvantages on players that they will either have to burn resources to overcome or deal with long-term is great for creating high-level dungeon crawls.
