If you were to make a pyramid dungeon how many floors/rooms would you have?

5e.
I'm still fairly new to D&D. Can you explain why the edition would matter?

>flesh-to-dust mummy curse is not to keep you out
>it's to keep the monsters IN

7 levels.
49, 36, 25, 16, 9, 4, and 1 room respectively.

I was planning on also having an inverted pyramid underneath the original after the PC's find the switch and trigger it. Would you keep the same room count?

I would remember that the pyramids were surrounded by a complex of smaller tombs, shrines, maintenance buildings, priest's quarters and so on. Those make up most of the "dungeon", the pyramid only has a few chambers that hold a few guardians and the goal of the adventure.

Unless of course the adventure was taking place in the earlier Step Pyramid of Djoser. Then there's a whole series of catacombs to explore.

Or I could send them to the later sacrificial animal tomb complexes, those are pretty dungeon-y. The Serapeum was full of mummified bulls sacrificed to Osiris-Apis.

What's in these 70-ton granite coffins? Oh look, a gorgon with the mummy template applied to it. There's nine of these coffins in the complex, how many do we dare to open?

1. It's hollow. When the players enter, it seals itself and the top begins pouring water filled with scorpions.

6

A large lower floor for grain storage. Two floors above that, one a lush tropical grove, and the other a garden for crops. Two floors above that, one for the storage of chickens and other farm animals, while the other is a dark room used for aging cheese. The last floor sits on the very top of the pyramid, and contains a variety of sweets and delicacies that have been collected from across the world.

After a slog through an expansive tomb, this was the map of the final four chambers.
It wasn't until afterwards, when they were leaving and I mentioned they could see the raising sun cresting over the pyramid did any of them finally work it out.

Well, five chambers. I had a secret room down the well shaft connecting the lower and upper chambers but the party didn't explore it so I just shoved the specific items they were supposed to find in the Kings chamber instead.

n * (n + 1) * (2n + 1) / 6
for some positive integer n

1e and 2e were mostly games of logistics. Did you bring the right tools for the job? Can you identify the problem and thus the solution? Dungeon for these editions, as well as BECMI, were frequently huge marathons or multi-expedition workouts.

3e and 4e are tactical and aerobic by comparison. Resource allocation is important but because combats are frequently longer to play out even if they are shorter in turns, dungeons tended to be smaller. More coherent support for downtime activities also encouraged this. 4e differs from 3e in the overt structure of encounters and thus dungeons.

I'll be honest, I have no idea where 5e falls, but the chosen and perceived emphasis in the rules will affect the size and approach of dungeon design again.

Can i use impossible space? This is all off the top of my head, if it were for a real game I'd research everything and polish it.

Hallways that take you to the same place no matter which direction you go, climbing to the top of a huge spiral stair case and ending up back in the foyer, the doorway ceasing to exist behind you.

Rooms that overlap but are two separate places, if Person A is in room A, and B likewise, they can see each other but not the other room. The rooms don't overlap neatly, person A might seem to be stuck in a wall to B.

Switches that change which doorways connect to each other. Doorways which only go one way, into the room you just left.

Everything follows rules, nothing is random. The layout can be learned and mapped.

I'd fill it with blurred cultures, latin graffiti on a solid gold sarcophagus (as in not hollow), a room filled with broken stone sculptures of greek goddesses, and a single copper statue of Buddha far too large to have come through the doorway, and missing his nose and ears. A sperical room with a sonnet written in english covering the walls, broken by unfinished haikus written in japanese and decorated with delicately painted flowers. Each flower is unique, and has it's common name written beside it in barely legible french.

A stone statue that breathes as though asleep, watched over by a faceless jade sphinx. A set of roman legionnaires armor decorated with celtic symbols, made for a man who was two or three times the height of a normal man, and half as thin. A perfect stone carving of a gorilla skeleton, with the remains of mummified flesh on the bones, cradling a small blue plant with lapis lazuli hanging like berries from its branches.

1/3

All the enemy encounters would be primate in armor which is a mixture of multiple cultures, other adventurers, men and women of stone, metal, or precious gems, many of which are humanoid but don't fit into any of the races on the planet. Not aliens, but slightly different, arms too long, mouths too wide, that sort of thing.

The plot regarding the dungeon would be something like it suddenly appeared, but was always there, and the local ruler is offering a reward for anyone who can comprehensively map the dungeon. In theory any riches you find belong to the monarchy, but part of the reward is being able to take up to 10 kilograms of items from the dungeon, excluding rare stones and metals.

The endgame would be the final room, behind a door which can't be opened without having entered certain rooms and completed zelda style puzzles, ones that sometimes rely on impossible space or ignore the laws of physics.

2/3

In the final room is an enormous hall with piles of random items spread throughout, some touching the ceiling. The floor can't be seen. In the centre of the room is a large doorway, easily half the height of the room and a quarter the width. It leads into the same room from both sides. Once you enter the room the door disappears, and from the outside you seem to disappear. From the outside the room seems filled with riches, on the inside it looks like stone, but feels like bare skin, hairless and smooth. This room is the defense mechanism of the dungeon. The dungeon is 'alive' and intelligent. It moves from one dimension to the next, luring in living creatures to collect them, their possessions, and their culture. The centre room is a kind of trap, anything living that enters will trigger the departure of the dungeon. It's also a kind of magical kiln that turns flesh into materials seen as valuable by the world it's in. This does several things, the person becomes immune to disease and aging, becomes much heavier, but still able to move easily, and finally it gives the victim a reason not to leave, fear of being killed for their valuable flesh. The dungeon also fills many chambers with water and removes many doorways, ladders, and stairs.

It takes a 3 days for the dungeon to leave, the final part of the campaign is escaping.

It's surreal bullshit but that's what i like to make.

3/3

This sounds like fun

Thanks user.

Prettty crazy.

Put a tesseract in there somewhere.

That tesseract dungeon was definitely an inspiration.

A perfectly equal amounts of rooms with enough room space up until I hit the top and do the rest underground