Conversion Crawl Classes 18: MERP: Moria

Moria is not the earliest example of a megadungeon in Appendix N literature. It is not even the earliest example in J.R.R. Tolkien’s work – the goblin tunnels in the Misty Mountains certainly qualifies, and the dwarven hold beneath the Lonely Mountain arguably does as well, both from The Hobbit. Nevertheless, Moria is probably the best known. When gamers think of megadungeons, the Fellowship’s days-long check through the fastness of Moria probably comes to mind.

Because good depictions of demihuman strongholds are rare, the discerning judge may well wish to use this product to reproduce the dwarven kingdom of Khazad-Dûm before its fall. However, I am going to assume that the judge is interested in Moria in its later state, ruined and deserted by dwarves…and ripe for adventure. I have already talked about converting MERP in this post, so I am going to shift focus here. As with Palace of the Silver Princess, I am going to provide a number of creature statblocks, but I am also going to look at some of the other materials which have gone into this product.

Things That Heal and Harm

In The Lord of the Rings, much is made of athelas, and with it the healing power of herbs and herb-lore in general. The writers of MERP clearly took that to heart, and expanded on it considerably. On page 8 of Moria, there is a section on growing things that might either heal or poison you to be found in the vicinity.  Since your PCs might actually have “herbalist” or “dwarven mushroom farmer” as an occupation, it might be useful to convert some of this material.

For the first example, we will look at “lothfelag”, which has both a healing and a toxic effect. Name, form/prep, and cost require little adjustment. In the case of prep, you may wish to assign a DC based on Intelligence, remembering that those with unrelated occupations roll 1d10 instead of 1d20. Failure by 5 or more indicates that the ingredients are ruined.

Looking at “Codes” we see that lothfelag is “t-U-7W”.  So, the flowers are found in temperate underground regions and is extremely hard to find (-30%). Lothfelag is found on the western part of the continent, if that matters to the judge (for example, if you are using ICE’s version of Middle Earth as a setting rather than filing the serial numbers off and presenting Moria under a different name). Because we don’t want to look anything up in the rulebook, we need to set a period for the search (say, over the course of 1 day) and a DC. If we assume a base DC of 10, we could set this at DC 16 (30 divided by 5 + base 10). The judge could also place the herb in specific locations.

Effects-wise, we have this as an herb:

Cave-flowers will preserve and protect a wounded Dwarf for up to seven months in a “Lifekept” state and will give life (as “Lifegiving”) to a Dwarf who has died within the preceding seven hours. Others who eat the enchanted flowers will immediately be relieved from any effects from concussion hits or stunning blows. Proper preparation requires removal of toxic resin (see Poisons below).

And the toxic effects are:

(Lvl 1) Victims failing by 01-50 fall into fall into an unwaking sleep for 1-10 hours. RR failure of 51+ results in a coma for 1-7 months.

Putting this together in DCC terms, we can say:

Lothfelag (Int DC 16/day to find 1d5 doses; Int DC 16 plus successful Handle Poison check to properly brew; Handle Poison check to prepare as poison); 1d20+10 rounds preparation): When a properly prepared dose I administered to a dwarf, this brew prevents ongoing damage for 1d7 months, although the dwarf has a -2 penalty to Initiative during this time. Administered to a dwarf who has died within the last seven hours allows another chance to recover the body, even if the dwarf is 0-level. All recipients (including dwarves) gain 1 HD of healing, up to ½ damage taken.

As a toxin, Fort DC 10 or fall into asleep for 1d10 hours (cannot be wakened without magic). Failure by 5 or more results in a coma for 1d7 months.

This isn’t exactly the same as the MERP version, but it is playable in DCC terms and doesn’t require looking at the MERP core rules to do the conversion.

Special Minerals

Dwarves mine, and Moria was famous for its mithral deposits. On page 34, Moria offers a table for game effects related to various substances mined here. I would largely ignore this, giving some weapons instead the ability to avoid breaking from fumbles or crits if they are made from special metals. Likewise, a sword made from tin might have a -2d penalty to attack rolls and damage, breaking on any natural “1” or “20”.

Traps

Pages 46-47 describe traps that can be found in the ruins of the dwarven city. Luckily, the DCC core rulebook offers some help in converting these traps, because the thief skills include sample DCs.

Detection Difficulty: Using the Find Trap skill, “Medium” difficulty is DC 10. “Hard” is DC 15. “Very Hard” is DC 20. “Ext. Hard” is DC 25.

Disarming Difficulty: Using the Disable Trap skill, with the same DCs. “Light” is DC 5. Remember that a natural “1” triggers the trap.

Avoidance Difficulty: This helps determine the DC for any save to avoid the effects of a trap. In the case of “Dart Traps”, it is better to make these act as attack rolls. Seven darts with +10 to hit (+75 in the text would be +15 if you are feeling cruel).

Effect: To convert these effects, you need to apply common sense. In DCC, falls do 1d6 damage per 10’ fallen, with each “6” indicating a broken bone. If there are spikes in a pit, the judge could offer a save to avoid falling on (say) 1d7-1 spikes, each of which causes 1d4 or 1d6 damage. Spike traps, as described in the text, might cause 3d6 damage with a save for half. Steam traps could cause an additional 1d6 damage, plus 1d6 per round until the PC escapes. Wheel traps can be set at 5d10 damage with a successful DC 20 Fort save, or death on a failure.

Some Statistics

I am not providing statistics for giant bats, orcs, goblins, or other creatures which could easily be extrapolated or taken directly from the DCC core rulebook. I will strongly suggest that, unless the judge’s goal is to set play in Middle Earth, they follow the advice to Make Monsters Mysterious.

Chamber Bird Swarm: Init +5; Atk swarming bite +3 melee (1d4); AC 12; HD 4d12; MV fly 40’; Act special; SP Attack all creatures in 20’ x 20’ area, swarm (½ damage from non-area attacks), echolocation; SV Fort +2, Ref +10, Will -2; AL N; Crit M/1d8. For additional thoughts on crits from swarms, see this post.

Cave Bear: Init +3; Atk claw +5 melee (1d4+5) or bite +3 melee (1d6+5); AC 18; HD 8d8+16; MV 40’; Act 2d20; SP Maul (if both claws hit the same opponent, free bite attack); SV Fort +8, Ref +2, Will +5; AL N; Crit M/1d4.

Death Shrew: Init +2; Atk bite +4 melee (disease); AC 24; HD 1 hp; MV 20’; Act 1d16; SP Disease (Blue Hand, Fort DC 10 or 1d3-1 Agility damage per day, blue skin discoloration, boils, bleeding ears and nose); SV Fort -4, Ref +10, Will +0; AL N; Crit n/a. Blue Hand doesn’t result in death, but can lead to permanent paralysis. Agility damage heals normally, but if the disease isn’t removed natural healing can only delay, not overcome, the long-term effects.

Red Jaw: Init +3; Atk bite +1 melee (1d4); AC 16; HD 2d6; MV swim 50’; Act 1d20; SP Light-producing organs make surprise virtually impossible; SV Fort +0, Ref +3, Will -2; AL C; Crit M/1d8.

The Balrog

I suppose we cannot take out leave of Moria without encountering the balrog. The Fellowship of the Ring certainly could not. And here we have to accept that MERP and DCC are very different beasts. Within the context of DCC, the balrog can be seen as a Type VI demon, which will certainly color our conversion.

Init: MERP stats include Ag: 99, which I think translates to a 17 Agility (+2 bonus). A random Type 6 demon I created at Purple Sorcerer has a +12 bonus to Initiative. Nothing in the text of The Lord of the Rings suggests to me that the balrog was superfast, so I am willing to give it a mere +8 bonus to Initiative.

Atk: The balrog attacks with a sword and a whip. MERP adds a spear and a thrown rock, but I don’t think that this is necessary. We will definitely add a claw attack if the creature is disarmed. The random stats were +21 to hit with 1d6+6 damage. I am going to raise the sword to 1d10+6 damage (in line with a two-handed sword, which the balrog uses one-handed). Claw damage can be 1d6+6, but we can reduce the attack bonus to +18 to make disarming the thing meaningful.

AC: DB 60 is presumably a Defensive Bonus equivalent to +12. Our random demon is AC 24. I will make the creature AC 24.

HD: Our random demon has 15d12 hp, which seems adequate to me, but the MERP version has 420 hits. I am therefore tempted to raise my balrog to 18d12 hit points. After all, this is a creature which strikes absolute terror into those who encounter it.

MV: The balrog is huge, and our random demon has a move of 40’, so we can use that. The balrog can also fly (we will say 60’), but has special rules to this movement which we will convert from MERP.

Act: Our random demon has 4d20, but the balrog in the novel and MERP should probably have 2d20 (one for his sword and one for his whip).

SP: In addition to standard traits for a Type VI demon, we want to include some special abilities taken from MERP’s version of the balrog:

Clumsy Flight: The balrog can only move 10’ on his first round of flight, 20’ on his second, 30’ on the third, and only reaches full flight speed on the fourth round.

Immolation: The balrog can sheath himself and his weapons in fire at will, doing +1d6 damage per attack, and doing an automatic 1d6 damage per round to any creature engaged in melee with him. Complete submersion ends and prevents further use of this ability for 3d6 hours.

Presence: Upon sighting the balrog, all creatures must succeed in a DC 20 Will save or lose their next action. If they fail by 5 or more, they are unable to act for 1d6 rounds.

We are also going to add:

Entwine: When he hits with his whip, the balrog may entwine the lashes around a foe, pulling him up to 10’ each round unless they succeed in an opposed Strength check vs. +6. An opponent may escape with a DC 20 Agility check (requiring an action) or a Mighty Deed of 6+.

In The Lord of the Rings, we never see the balrog cast a spell, but it does oppose Gandalf when he is trying to hold a door shut magically (casting ward portal in DCC terms). So we can add another power:

Counterspell: The balrog can engage in spell duels with a +15 bonus to his spell check, but is limited to casting dispel magic for this purpose, which has no effect other than cancelling an opposing spell.

We are also going to want to remove the standard projection power. Although we are using a Type VI Demon as a basis, this power makes no sense for the balrog.

SV: We can just take this from our sample demon: SV Fort +16, Ref +14, Will +17.

AL: Creatures of Morgoth, including the balrog, are Chaotic.

Crit: Following the table on page 385 of the core rulebook, we get a result of DN/1d20.

Put altogether, our balrog becomes:

Balrog (Type VI Demon of Morgoth): Init +8; Atk two-handed sword +21 melee (1d10+6) or whip +21 melee (1d6+6 plus entwine), or claw +18 melee (1d6+6); AC 24; HD 15d12; MV 40’ or fly 60’ (special); Act 2d20; SP Demon traits, entwine, presence, immolation, counterspell, clumsy flight; SV Fort +16, Ref +14, Will +17; AL C; Crit DN/1d20.

Demon Traits: Telepathy, infravision, cast darkness (+20 to spell check). Immunities (weapons of less than +4 enchantment,natural attacks from creatures of 9 HD or less, fire, cold, electricity, gas, and acid), crit range 16-20.

Entwine: When he hits with his whip, the balrog may entwine the lashes around a foe, pulling him up to 10’ each round unless they succeed in an opposed Strength check vs. +6. An opponent may escape with a DC 20 Agility check (requiring an action) or a Mighty Deed of 6+.

Presence: Upon sighting the balrog, all creatures must succeed in a DC 20 Will save or lose their next action. If they fail by 5 or more, they are unable to act for 1d6 rounds.

Immolation: The balrog can sheath himself and his weapons in fire at will, doing +1d6 damage per attack, and doing an automatic 1d6 damage per round to any creature engaged in melee with him. Complete submersion ends and prevents further use of this ability for 3d6 hours.

Counterspell: The balrog can engage in spell duels with a +15 bonus to his spell check, but is limited to casting dispel magic for this purpose, which has no effect other than cancelling an opposing spell.

Clumsy Flight: The balrog can only move 10’ on his first round of flight, 20’ on his second, 30’ on the third, and only reaches full flight speed on the fourth round.

Conclusion (With Apologies to Laura Branigan)

 

You really don't remember

Do we just turn left or right?

Wandering in eternal night, Moria

Moria, now Gandalf's fallen

If the balrog wants you

At least the orcs are stalling

You don't have to fight them

Gandalf said to fly fools fly

Oh-oh, down in Moria

 

Moria (Moria)

I think your wizard's spent now (Moria)

I think those orcs are coming (Moria)

And they have your scent now (Moria)

You really don't remember

Do we just turn left or right?

Wandering where it's always night, Moria

 

Next: The One Ring: Tales From Wilderland (1): Don't Leave the Path