To start off, I ought to mention that the party is level 11, with a Gadgeteer with a 7th level Astral Construct used for the crafted companion, Tome Fighter (named Justin) with Curator cohort, Tome Samurai (named Akito). Both the fighter and Samurai have the Tome Blindfighting. We're running a steampunk adventure with guns (which use crossbow stats), where Justin is the king of the country.
At the start I read the group this:
Twas the night before Christmas,
and all through the home,
Not a creature was stirring,
not even a bone.
With his tremorsense tingling,
Justin rose in the night,
And was joined by Akito,
the keen Eastern knight.
They picked up their swords,
and also a gun,
But left off their armor,
to alert ears of none.
They woke up their friends,
and descended the stairs,
Knowing not what they'd find,
but with little cares.
They entered the foyer,
and what did they find,
But the Christmas tree lit,
with such lights as to blind.
And surrounding the tree,
the piles rose high,
Of boxes with wrappings,
and ribbons and twine.
They were presents of course,
and in front of the tree,
Was the largest of all,
to his majesty.
In front of the gift,
a large creature rose,
With a fluffy old cap,
and red and white clothes.
He was tall and quite thin,
and when he turned 'round,
They could see his small head,
was really quite round.
He wore a big smile,
with lots of white teeth:
A skeleton's head
and body and feet.
"Now go back to bed,"
the creature advised.
"When you wake in the morning,
your gift wishes arrive!
"Or perhaps seeing your weapons,
you'd prefer a good fight!
Do you dare challenge me,
who is king of the night?"
and all through the home,
Not a creature was stirring,
not even a bone.
With his tremorsense tingling,
Justin rose in the night,
And was joined by Akito,
the keen Eastern knight.
They picked up their swords,
and also a gun,
But left off their armor,
to alert ears of none.
They woke up their friends,
and descended the stairs,
Knowing not what they'd find,
but with little cares.
They entered the foyer,
and what did they find,
But the Christmas tree lit,
with such lights as to blind.
And surrounding the tree,
the piles rose high,
Of boxes with wrappings,
and ribbons and twine.
They were presents of course,
and in front of the tree,
Was the largest of all,
to his majesty.
In front of the gift,
a large creature rose,
With a fluffy old cap,
and red and white clothes.
He was tall and quite thin,
and when he turned 'round,
They could see his small head,
was really quite round.
He wore a big smile,
with lots of white teeth:
A skeleton's head
and body and feet.
"Now go back to bed,"
the creature advised.
"When you wake in the morning,
your gift wishes arrive!
"Or perhaps seeing your weapons,
you'd prefer a good fight!
Do you dare challenge me,
who is king of the night?"
Anticlimactically, the group had trouble deciding what to do. They weren't really interested in a fight, or quitting the adventure, so I offered them a third option. Jack took out a gift from his bag and gave it to Akito. Akito gave it to Justin, and Justin opened it. It was a trap, DC 25 reflex for everyone around to avoid being sucked into the box and imprisoned there. Justin and the gadgeteer made the saves (with evasion to boot), the other 3 were sucked in.
Jack (scratching his bony chin): Well this is unexpected.
That still didn't start a fight, so Jack picked out another present and gave it to Justin. Justin opened this one too. Trap: Living manacles flew out at the two remaining party members, DC 30 reflex to avoid, both failed their saves and were bound up. Jack threw them and the trap gifts into his bag and headed back up to the roof to get on his sleigh.
The next thing the group knew, they were being deposited into a stone dungeon room with grey stone walls and pale luminescence. I generated two random dungeons with the help of donjon's random dungeon generator (dagger dungeon layout), and reclassed everything christmassy, while one of my players played video game christmas music like Super Mario's Sleigh Ride from nerdsontherocks "25 Days of Christmas: Video Game Music." Red and white striped paths lead the wrong direction to rooms with Ettins with Santa hats and giant candy cane clubs, "Caramel" hounds (Nessian War Hounds), and Twizzler spider swarms.
The dungeon lead down into Oogie Boogie's torture room, a large area with at least 100' ceiling. Here they found Santa hanging from his manacled wrists by a hook coming down from the ceiling. As the group approached, Santa started rising into the air and Oogie Boogie himself appeared behind them, throwing a switch that caused Santa to rise above their reach (temporarily, since the gadgeteer could fly). We watched the Oogie Boogie song on youtube for kicks.
The characters battled Oogie Boogie KH2-style. He won initiative, and started pulling switches:
Trap: Box pit, DC 30 reflex to avoid. 4 walls split the party into 4 groups, then ceilings extended 10' overhead to prevent escape, then the floors split open to cause the characters to fall 20' onto spikes (1d4/character, +16 to hit, 1d4+5 damage each, in addition to 2d6 fall damage with tumble and possibly jump checks applying).
Further trap: In later rounds, Oogie would pull a switch to cause the spikes to retract into the floor and spring back up, for repeated spike damage.
Only the gadgeteer saved, so he ended up on top of the new box. He Spring Booted up to free Santa, who I decided had about 60 HP, which took a hit when he fell 20 feet onto the box ceiling. Oogie pulled another switch.
Trap: The ceiling starts coming down above the Box Pit. Retreat within 1 round or ???
I never figured that one out, because in order to save himself and Santa, the gadgeteer stuck an immovable rod in the ceiling. Gears behind the walls started making loud noises, and the stone ceiling started breaking, causing rocks to fall (no damage), but the broken ceiling stopped.
Oogie called for Lock, Stock, and Barrel, to come into the room and they got into little boxes that could move along the walls and fire bullets (+16 to hit, 1d6 damage), and started taking shots at the gadgeteer in addition to making good conversation.
Meanwhile the group inside the box trap was working out how to escape. Justin and Akito were together, but the curator and construct were in other sections. I had ruled that the Samurai could use his Blade of Devastation to destroy a 10'x10' section of ground or wall (as a standard action, just like force effects), and he used it to reach the construct (which could fly 40' average with giant wings) in order to reach the ceiling and bust their way out. After the spike traps didn't work, Oogie tried an Acid Spray in the boxes (trap: DC 25 reflex, 3d4 acid damage) that started filling up the boxes. The group managed to escape before being submerged (10d6 acid damage).
Back on top, the gadgeteer had used his Cog Staff to create a Resilient Sphere around Santa, and was using it for cover while working out what to do. Justin jumped over to Oogie's platform, but Oogie was behind a force box (4 walls of force plus a ceiling of force) and untouchable from the sides or above. The gadgeteer decided to crawl into the walls and see if he could wreak havoc on the traps and maybe cause the power to fail to Oogie's force wall. The Samurai decided to save Santa and wrecked his Resilient Sphere with a Blade of Devastation in order to carry him out.
We were running short on time, and I didn't want to carry over to next week (after Christmas), so I said the gadgeteer found a hole in the wall and crawled in. It was an acid trap, though, and he took 10d6/2 acid damage (evasion not working due to being inside a pipe just big enough for him). He survived though, and with a DC30 disable device check, cut the power to the whole area, allowing Justin to drop onto Oogie and rip him to shreds with his dual swords.
That ended the adventure. Jack showed up, as in the movie, to make amends, and return everyone where they came from. Lock, Stock, and Barrel ran away. Santa was mighty pleased and handed out presents. The group saved Christmas, and got some exp for it (Merry Christmas!)
