Dragon Encounters

The empyrean iota is described by the Monster Manual as a deity’s thoughts given form. They are two-dimensional beings in the form of symbols that can walk through walls, with the power to heal and bless as well as blast.

How to Use a Living Tenet

If you think about it, you’ll realize that an empyrean iota is going to be two-dimensional in personality as well as in shape. They do not eat or drink, and have no other physical desires. They do not have childhoods where they slowly form personalities through exposure to different people and ideas. They are a deity’s desire given form, and that is pretty much all they know.

This means that if your players need to interact with them and get their help, standered negotiation rules do not apply. They have to persuade the iota that they are loyal to the iota’s cause, whatever it is. They cannot persuade it to make an exception, and it has enough INT and WIS that they can’t straight out lie either. What they can do is rationalize that what they did, or plan to do, is in fact in line with its stated agenda. I will discuss possible player motivations and give ideas for iota ideals below.

The five shapes this challenge can take are as follows:

• Specific past action.
  The iota questions them about a specific past action, which they will have to frame in a way that is praiseworthy in the iota’s eyes, or at least not negative. Excuses and “greater need” will not work. The action has to be shown to be in line with the iota’s cause.

• Past actions in general.
  The iota questions them about their past actions overall. They have to prove that they champion the iota’s cause if they want to merit help, ridiculous though the cause may be.

• Ultimate goal alignment.
  They have to show that their ultimate goal is in line with the iota’s agenda. Be aware that this one requires the right combination of agenda and quest to be worth it. It can easily end up being ridiculously easy or totally impossible.

• Trial errand.
  The iota sends them out on a small quest, possibly as small as doing a minor errand at a festival. Along the way, they will be tested on whether they conform to the iota’s beliefs. Make sure that the simple way to pass requires doing something with negative consequences to themselves, to their main goal, or with immoral consequences. Prepare a second such scene in case the first is won too easily, and an unrelated event to break things up so you do not have two similar scenes in a row.

• Accompanied quest.
  The iota accompanies them on the quest. They have to fulfill it without doing too many things that it will hate. It has telepathy, so it can object any time it feels they are doing something wrong, even in a situation where speaking would give things away.

You can do two or three of these ideas if you really want. A better idea is to do one, and save the others for later appearances of the iota.

The need for an iota ally

The iota does have some healing and buff abilities, but not enough to make up for the inconvenience. If you want the players to have to bargain with an iota, you need to offer them something better.

A classic is information. It is something that is fairly easy to explain how an NPC obtained it, and that the players always can be made to need. If you’re having the iota come along on the quest, justify it by saying that the iota doesn’t trust them enough to give them everything they need, or simply say that is was commended by its deity not to. This doesn’t stop it from entering the secret password or similar, it just means that it will have to be there.

Another reason they might need an iota is to get past a barrier of some kind. A good-aligned iota is a celestial, and you can say that holy magic was never intended to bar celestials. They’re always good, why would you need to bar them? Whoever did it just didn’t realize that some celestials are idiots.

(If using a fiend iota, you can say that its magic is similar enough to the caster’s that the caster couldn’t keep it out. For more believability, pair it with a separate obstacle against fiends. The players will have to take that one down themselves.)

When running these ideas, have a backup solution in case the players fail to come through. One of my repeating maxims: No matter what challenges you’re using in D&D, always have a backup solution, or you’re going to feel forced to let the players win so that the story can continue.

The council of iotas

For even more fun, have there be several iotas. Even assuming the iotas came from the same deity, and that the deity has only one aspect (many historical deities represented multiple things), there are often multiple ways as aspect can be interpreted. Example will follow below.

The players will have the challenge of having to convince multiple iotas that they’re following they’re path, despite the paths being at least somewhat contradictory. I’d go with three iotas, so that the players can win by getting two out of three. It is more fun if they get all three, so have a bonus prize ready for them if they do so. A small treasure, such as a few potions, works fine.

Examples of multiple interpretations of a deity’s aspect.

I’m going to give my examples by using the four domains in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. I will show four ways to understand each of them.

Life Domain:

• The value of healing, and everything that can be done to protect and safeguard life from those that would take it.
• Extreme pacifism. To kill or hurt others is evil, even in self-defense. This aspect might also hold of vegetarianism.
• Life is precious, and that which pretends to imitate is an abomination that must be eradicated. This could include machines (constructs) as well as undead.
• Life is precious, and we should worship it by seeking to bring new life into being. This could be Jonny Appleseed style, or people taking a harem of wives. (Although the second is unwise in D&D unless you are certain that your players will be okay with it.)

Light Domain:

• The worship of actual light. Seeking to bring light into dark places (literally), and/or surrounding oneself with many lights.
• Light is life, darkness is evil. Places of darkness or evil, and must be avoided, as are the people who live there. This includes anyone who lives underground, such as dwarves.
• A fire of purification. One must burn away all that is evil, and eradicate it to the last drop.
• Figurative light. Be a light in dark places, always seeking to give people guidance and/or hope.

Trickery Domain:

• Intelligence is what matters. All other values are nil. (Because even the strongest can be outsmarted.)
• Possessions are transitory. What one has one can lose in the blink of an eye. All of life is a game of chance.
• A champion of the underdogs. (The weak traditionally use trickery, as that is the only option available to them.)
• Straight out worship of those who play tricks, including spies and charlatans. An enjoyment out of being clever.

War Domain:

• Courage is the supreme virtue. To be afraid to face danger is weakness.
• Right makes might. The strong are tasked with defending those that can’t defend themselves, and such is the highest virtue.
• Might makes right. The world’s way is a cruel one, kill or be killed. He who has the strength is the superior one, entitled to take what he wants.
• Conflict is king. The ideal world is one without laws, where each should struggle constantly, so that all people should be tested and forged stronger and stronger in the fires of battle.

These are examples. I feel that the same could be done with any subject. See also Dryad for more on special themed quests.

Two Time-Pressure Dungeon Designs

Fixing Incorporeal Movement with Time Limits

The empyrean iotas’ have the power to bolster their allies a small amount, most significantly by casting Bless on them (give it a visual effect so that your players will notice it, and exaggerate how much it helps in your action descriptions), but the iota’s most effective power is incorpeal movement, letting them walk through walls and other solid objects to play an endless game of strike from the shadows with your players.

Incorpeal movement is one of those powers that don’t play all that well. Having incorpeal movement means that the monster’s best move is to in and out of walls and pop out randomly to try to take players by surprise. Lacking any good way to fight back, the players will default to readying actions to shoot at them each time they emerge. Then it becomes mostly a matter of rolling dice against each other until the combat ends.

It hardly needs to be said that this is both boring and frustrating. (Frustrating because the players should be the ones doing the dramatic actions to bring the fight to the monsters, not stuck reacting passively.)

I suggested two ways to deal with it in my Shadow Demon article, one of which is by giving the players a different goal aside from defeating the enemy. With the iota, I’m going to go one step further. Given the fact that the iota are so vulnerable, the players should have something pushing them to complete the quest and not spend time on trying to take out the iota first.

Four Rules for a Successful Time Limit

One way is a time limit. They have to destroy the gem before the ritual is complete, or save the prisoner before they die. When using a time limit, I strongly suggest four rules.

1. They should have a decent idea of how much time they have, and how much distance they have to cover. For example, they have to reach the top of a three-floor building. It’s okay to provide some amount of unexpected twists, but the information should be mostly fair. In other words, don’t send them on a trip down into the sewers in order to get the key to the third floor. Without an idea of what they need to do, they can’t plan.
2. Always plan around the fact that they might fail. If your story depends on them succeeding, you’ll end up bending around backwards to make them manage. They will realize, and you’ll lose all your tension.
3. That said, don’t make success almost impossible either. Give them a good chance. In general, 50% more time than you think needed is very reasonable, as they will make mistakes you, with your meta knowledge, never thought anyone could make.
4. Don’t cheat by throwing obstacles so that they just barely manage. I know that it seems more dramatic to win at the last second, but then it isn’t their accomplishment. You’re taking away their agency and their victory in order to have your show, and that’s unfair. Again, they’ll realize.

Four Rules for a Fun Chase Scene

The other way is a chase scene, of the type where they have to run through a building, taking out the occasional guard, before the guards behind them can overwhelm them. In order to pull that off, follow these rules.

1. The guards that they’re dealing with should be very weak, possibly with as little as 1 HP each. This is to stop the players from getting pinned down in a fight.
2. As the players might not feel a need to run from weak guards, their weak HP should be offset by a nasty offence. I suggest having their attack do damage roughly equal to 1/3-1/4 of a PCs HP. Also, to ensure they actually get to use their attacks, at least some of them will need range attacks, such as crossbows.
3. Make sure that the players know that their time is short. Stress it in the mission outline, have an alarm bell go off and reference it several times, let them see guards running up when they pass the windows, have an accompanying NPC who is panicking, and anything else that will fit.
4. Another way that helps build stress is to add some higher HP guards, that they can’t defeat so easily. To allow them to escape these guards, give them a slower movement speed than the PCs. To prevent them from kiting (shooting and backing up, never letting the enemies close the gap), don’t use long hallways, give them range attacks, and/or add in weak but fast enemies who can catch up.
5. Like with a time limit, plan around the fact that they might fail. You can give them extra time by giving them opportunities to block doors, destroy stairways, etc. If your players are experienced enough, you might even set up such scenes. With all that, plan for the possiblity of failure. Have higher HP guards show up, give them an opportunity to flee, and if they don’t have them knocked out and taken captive.

These rules are for a short chase through a building, meant to be played with no rests and only a few very short battles and/or obstacles. For a long chase across a mountain or similar terrain that will allow time for rests and full encouners, see my guide in the chasme article.

Combat Challenges of the Empyrean Iota

I’m going to create five short combat encounters. Two of them are meant as sporadic attacks the iota will make as they try to outpace the guards, one more that can be used as a climatic final battle to a outpace the guards challenge. There are also variants for the first and last, that aren’t meant to be played with a guard chase.

Combat Encounter 1a: Anticipating the Iota’s [Dramatic] Entrance (difficulty 3)

Figuring out where the iota will strike from is the first and most obvious problem your players will face. While the iota is extremely intelligent, it also has a flaw: it is a personification of its deity, and this forces certain behaviors onto it. One of these is its two-dimensional view of the world discussed above. The other is that it always aims to make a spectacular entrance.

The iota will always choose to emerge from narratively dramatic locations. This generally means it will appear directly in front of the party as they go down a hallway or up a flight of stairs. It will favor places where tapestries, arches, pillars, or similar features frame it impressively on either side. It will never emerge from a nondescript wall, and almost never from the floor or ceiling, unless those surfaces are decorated with a striking pattern that can properly frame its appearance.

The only times it might appear behind the party are when the space above the top of a staircase is suitably framed, or when the party deliberately turns away from an impressive-looking hallway.

To make this work in play, you need to keep pressure on the party so they cannot move slowly while constantly readying actions. Having them race toward an objective while enemy guards appear continuously works well. Let them fight some guards while outrunning others, occasionally barricading passages behind them to buy time.

Combat Encounter 1b: Homebrew for Readying Attacks (difficulty 4)

If you want the players to be constantly trying to outguess the iota while keeping the battle contained within a single room, you will need some homebrew so they cannot simply rely on readied actions every round.

It makes sense that the players should not be able to ready an attack against any possible location without knowing where the iota might appear. One option is to require an initiative-style roll against the iota to see whether they notice its emergence in time to strike back.

If you use this approach, the iota no longer needs to follow the dramatic appearance rules described above. It is enough that it is constrained by movement limitations. Since the iota will want to bring the fight to a conclusion within a single battle, it should attack every one to two rounds.

Combat Encounter 2: Luring the Party’s Strike (difficulty 2)

Another tactic an iota might use is to materialize through something fragile, deliberately tempting the players to retaliate and get themselves into trouble.

The iota has no STR, and its attacks do not deal much damage, so it is unlikely to be able to cause this kind of destruction itself. In addition, this tactic fits an iota’s basic personality. A celestial iota will see it as a test of the party’s restraint and judgment, while a fiend iota will see it as leading them into temptation.

Possibilities for Causing Trouble

• A case lined with vials.
  An attack aimed at the iota causes the vials to shatter, spilling their contents and releasing poisonous fumes into the air. The players gain the poisoned condition, possibly contingent on failing a DEX or CON save.

• A room filled with tapestries, carpet, and/or wooden flooring.
  As soon as the players use a fire-based spell, they find themselves fighting inside an inferno. In the unlikely event that they are not using fire magic, provide wall torches, candles, or a candelabrum that can be knocked over.

• Valuables in a non-hostile location.
  If the owner of the building is not an enemy, simply having the players destroy expensive or irreplaceable property is consequence enough. They will have to explain their actions afterward.

• Structural weak points.
  The iota appears through a door the party needs to pass through, or a staircase they must climb. Retaliating risks smashing the very route they need to continue.

Note: This works very well as the second part of a time pressure dungeon. Start with the anticipation game (combat encounter 1a), then use this as they approach the end of the dungeon. Climax with one of the next two combat encounter ideas.

Combat Scenario 3a: The Collapsing Room (difficulty 4)

The final two scenarios assume a council of iotas.

In these scenarios, the players have reached — or are already in — a high-up room studded with pillars or similar structures. Multiple iotas are present, all determined to prevent the party from going any further.

The iotas will spend many of their turns hiding behind pillars. They can telepathically communicate with one another, overcoming the 30-foot limit on their telepathy by passing messages from one iota to the next. They are also quite intelligent, and will coordinate their actions accordingly.

Setting the Scene

Place the room on the top floor — or better yet, on the roof — of a building the players have already traveled through. During the fighting below, the lower floors caught fire and/or took substantial damage. Now the players must deal with this final encounter, complete their objective, and/or escape before the entire structure collapses.

Reaching this state is not difficult. Most players will not think to be careful about their surroundings. That said, players can be annoyed if they feel they were baited into making a mistake, so a different way is if the damage is caused by enemies with fire or destructive abilities. Know your players. Shatter is an excellent spell for this purpose.

Player Goals

There are two possible goals you can give the party here.

• Retrieve or destroy an objective.
  The players must retrieve something or destroy something, possibly to stop a ritual. In this version, there should be several targets, and the players must reach all or most of them. Using “most” gives more flexibility to both sides, since requiring all can result in the villains simply defending a single point, which defeats the purpose of multiple objectives. For extra challenge, embed the targets in walls or protect them with fire, magic, or similar hazards.

• Escape the collapsing structure.
  The players have already completed their main objective and must now escape. They are on a rooftop with a rope, but getting to the ground without the iotas sniping or cutting the rope will be difficult. This is easily the harder option. You can make it slightly more forgiving by giving them multiple ropes, or by letting them succeed if even one character escapes — perhaps to call for help, activate a spell outside the area, or catch the other PCs as they jump — but it remains the more dangerous choice.Problems the Party Will Face

In addition to a time limit, the players will be dealing with all of the following challenges.

• Spread Out: In many areas, the floor will be weak. Having more than one PC standing in the same small area is extremely unsafe. You may want to make an exception if two extremely light or small PCs want to share a space.
• Splintering Floor: Even when only one PC is moving, some areas will already be splintering. If they choose to do so, you can treat these areas as difficult terrain. Otherwise, require the occasional DEX save to avoid falling. Being removed from the battlefield is frustrating, but instead of dropping them entirely, you can have the character fall prone or have a foot break through the floor, leaving them immobilized for a turn.
• Reckless Behavior: Both of these restrictions will spread and worsen if the party fights recklessly. Warn them about using area spells, or about striking an iota standing next to a pillar with a battleaxe, lest they force an ally standing five to ten feet away to make an unexpected save.

Combat Encounter 3b: The Hanging Platform (difficulty 4)

This battle becomes even more interesting if it takes place on a wooden platform suspended by ropes from above.

In this version, the iotas are not necessarily hidden. Instead, by positioning themselves behind the ropes holding the platform aloft, they make the cost of attacking them from a distance extremely high.

As soon as one rope is cut, the platform will be in danger of tipping whenever the party’s weight shifts toward that corner. With only one rope gone, the effect is minor, but as more ropes are severed the danger escalates. Multiple PCs may be forced to make DEX saves at once, with the difficulty increasing in proportion to the number of broken ropes.

The ideal shape for this setup is a five-sided pentagon with a rope near each point. However, a hexagon, or even a circular platform with two ropes on each of four sides, may be easier to justify in-game.

Whichever layout you choose, make the ropes thick enough that the iotas cannot cut them themselves. Otherwise, destroying the ropes becomes their obvious best strategy. You may also want to include a thicker, nearly uncuttable rope in the center of the platform so that fighting remains possible even after many — or most — of the outer ropes are gone.

Six Ideas for the Empyrean Iota

1. As beings born purely from the thoughts of a deity, empyrean iotas are very two-dimensional, both mentally and physically. Any negotiation with them will revolve entirely around whether the players are following the iota’s interpretation of its lord’s cause, with common sense playing no role at all.
2. The empyrean iota is one of the rare monsters with high mental ability scores and a low CR. If you want it to feel like the boss its INT suggests, use it as a presence that emerges from a wall on rare occasions to make brief pronouncements and to heal or bless its allies.
3. Given how vulnerable the empyrean iota is, any effective plan for using it must involve it emerging from a wall, zapping the party, and retreating. To prevent the players from killing it with readied actions, give them something else that demands their attention.
4. When the empyrean iota emerges from hiding to strike and retreat, it places great value on making a dramatic appearance. This gives the players a way to anticipate where it will appear next. It will almost always be framed by arches, curtains, tapestries, or similar features.
5. As a direct representation of a deity’s will, the empyrean iota may not value its own life. Because of this, have it appear in front of objects the players should not break, such as cases of poisonous gas vials, in order to bait reckless retaliation.
6. The most dangerous place to use an empyrean iota is when the party must climb quickly upward or downward. It can snap ropes, hide behind obstacles until the right moment to strike, and ignore the risk of collapsing terrain. It can escape at any time.