Pathfinder D&D Puzzles #24 - Save the Queen

[@RussNo1]

Queens can move diagonally. Move her 2 spaces south east (or just south) then east to the edge.

[@WallyDM]

This, I believe, is also an acceptable solution. Looking back, I wish I would have made the solution one straight line for the Queen to move across rather than all of the zig-zagging. But I have been very pleased with the subscribers leaving great feedback and suggestions on this puzzle. :)

[@colegaynor3638]

I completely understand wanting the pieces to be magic resistant, and to some degree I would agree with that. But one of the examples you gave, Stone to Flesh, I would allow. I mean, if a player thinks to themselves, what if these were real? and casts that spell, that should be possible, if only because the creator of this puzzle would likely not take into account stone to flesh unless this was the only thing in the dungeon.

[@WallyDM]

Hi Cole! Thank you for commenting on my video. Of course! There is always room for fantastic thinking outside the box. Absolutely, I would also allow Stone to Flesh to bring the 8 queens to life. That would be amazing here. As a DM, I would have the Queen or Queens, that are turned to Flesh are programmed to destroy the others. Armed with their specific magical attack that is Thunder, or Fire, or Acid, etc. bringing a few of these to life could be a fun, magic sling-fest in real life! Thanx again for the great discussion! :)

[@biffstrong1079]

I might say " Please move her twice to get her to safety " so if you take three moves you get attacked before you get her in place.

[@WallyDM]

I think that is a valid way to do it too. Absolutely. In the written version of this puzzle (coming soon in my new book), I changed the solution to one move in a single diagonal line, which could make this a bit easier to run. Thanks for watching!

[@biffstrong1079]

@@WallyDM Much more obvious if it's one move to safety. That probably works better.

[@matthewhughes1950]

the damage on those queens is freaking narly. I LOVE it.

[@WallyDM]

Awww yeah. Thank you for the awesome comment and welcome to the channel! :)

[@jonwooldridge3766]

I don't think chess players will get the solution without some sort of prefaces; such as, you can move your queen more than once as long as you do not remove your finger until your queen is in her safe square. Most players will be confused and maybe see a solution as untenable based on actual chess piece movement. A queen can move in any direction, any number of squares on your turn, but she can not be moved, redirected and moved again. Still, I like this puzzle. I'm going to try it out with the preface I mentioned.

[@WallyDM]

You are 100% correct on this Jon. The additional movements to get the Queen out of danger is one of my biggest regrets on this puzzle. When I include this in my next book, it will simply be one move... a linear movement in a horizontal line as if moving the Queen on one turn. Nice and simple. Welcome to the channel. Cheers!

[@Sentinel851]

I thought of a few variations of this puzzle. the first is that, instead of a door, the bishop from earlier might say something like "Oh thank you kind friends, you have brought my queen to safety, allow me to show you the way forward" and then he'll open up a door that was behind him, disappear, or shine a light at somewhere, something cool. the second is to have different pieces, none of which are threatening each other the way they are, but in such a way that the queen can be positioned to take each out in sequence. ie, goes diagonal to a rook, forwards to a bishop, diagonal into a knight, straight into a pawn, etc, and only once all the pieces are gone, does the way open. you could even have a cool effect for each, like a bolt of lightning from her hands obliterates the knight, and then she appears in it's place. the pcs should get out of the way though, because each piece blasts with magic the squares it threatens. (ie, the knight blasts 2 up on left and right, 2 right on up and down, etc, the pawn blasts the two facing diagonals, etc another cool variant could be in a pokemon/megaman style, the queen she takes out gives her the power, so she'd then use frost after taking out the white one, etc, and it'd be positioned that she'd be immune to another one with that (ie, frost beats fire) and the same idea as one before happens, take out the various pieces. so many chess options exist, but i do quite like this one.

[@WallyDM]

Those are fantastic variations. I dig it! Heck, we may need to incorporate a couple of these ideas on a future video. :) Thanks again for taking the time to comment on the puzzle videos! Sincerely appreciated!

[@Foerick]

you could do it on a 6x6 board, 5 chromatic dragon statues and a gold dragon statue that can be moved. otherwise its the same.

[@WallyDM]

Interesting thought Foerick... Hmmm. I'll hafta look into this variant 6x6 idea.

[@Foerick]

The only issue with the 6x6 is that there is only 1 solution with 4 rotations that is easy to visually solve. But 7x7 has 6 solutions excluding rotations and reflectiongs, so if you add in Tiamat as the 6th chromatic dragon then it would work.

[@Pifman]

@@Foerick Personally I think the biggest issue with dragon statues is that actual Queen pieces informs the players how the pieces can move. They would have no idea on the movement limitations of a dragon statue and simply telling them they move like a Queen piece on a chess board would be weird.

[@ishmiel21]

Nice to have you back. I just got finished with my pathfinder session tonight and it was awesome. I scared the shit out of all my players and the whole party could've very easily gotten killed and it was just amazing.

[@WallyDM]

Thanks. :) Sounds like a great edge-of-your-seat session. Any cool highlights you can tell?

[@ishmiel21]

Man, is was so awesome and a great expertise as well. The PC's are on a mission to free a town about a 2 week journey from their current location. As they travel I use the Random Encounter charts on the Pathfinder SRD. Last session started on there 8th day of travel and so the party had to roll for the possibility of a random encounter. 25% chance of no encounter, 25% chance of a low level encounter, 25% chance of a mid level encounter, and a 25% of a high level encounter. One of the PC's rolls it and Rolla a100, high level encounter. Now they have to roll on the high level chart. The whole party is giving the guy shit for rolling a 100 nd won't let him roll again so the the next guy pics up the dice and rolls a 98!!! This results in some sort of encounter with a Chaotic Evil 19th level wizard. The PC's are all 7th level. Now I'm scrambling. How can I make this encounter meaningful but not end up in a TPK. I put the wizard in a tower that can teleport from place to place and is known for always being at the center of bad events and that no one who has ever entered before has ever escaped. The ask a bunch of quwrions and do a little investigating and all my answers and signs all point to the tower being way out of their league and way too powerful for them. 2 of the group vote to go for it anyway and the other 2 vote to GTFO. The foolishly brave team wins out. As they scout out the outside of the tower the doors open as the parry passes in front of them and a fog beings to billow out. The parry then hears the sound of heels clicking on stone and the footsteps sound they're getting closer. The PC's debate about what to do but by the time they decided to leave they all have to make WILL saves. Long story short. They failed a much of WILL saves, never even saw the BBG and now I have mind control over the party that they don't know about. It's AWESOME!!!

[@WallyDM]

Wow! That's an intense game night for the 7th level PCs... they lose to the fate of die rolls... now, their fate lies in the hands of the Dungeon Master!

[@ishmiel21]

The PC's had every opportunity to avoid the tower and they had plenty of information about knowing how evil and strong the wizard was. I even let them know that the tower was radiating 8th level magic One of the players even asked me how bad of an idea it would be to go into the tower on a scale of 1-10 and I told her 11. Not my fault at all :)

[@Ebonzai]

I think my players would hate that it isn't a legal chess move. I know as a player I'd feel that was unfair, however, this still inspires me to try something like this so I really do thank you and I'm glad the google spies suggested you to me. (Seriously I was searching for puzzle tips off of youtube and suddenly you were suggested to me I need a tinfoil hat.)

[@WallyDM]

Glad that the spies lured you to my channel, thanks for joining us! :) I hope you can use this idea in your game. You could definitely set this up for the Blue Queen to simply slide horizontally or vertically into place with one legal chess move. Let me know how it goes if you use it and hope you like the rest of the videos on my channel. Thank you taking the time to comment! :)

[@DMVoidKitten]

Alternatively, you could have the evil queens facing in random directions, specifically having B7 Queen facing north (Green), and when the players let go of Blue, the queens use their first turn, to turn as well as "ready" their spells. Start off with the orbs glowing softly, and then if they players let go of the statue, glow brightly. This gives the players 1 chance to realizing that letting go, causes the Evil Queens to do something. The Placement would have to be altered slightly, so that it requires a minimum of 3 moves to complete, currently it only takes 2 moves. Blue Queen to B3, wait for evil queens, then Blue Queen to H3, door opens. You could instead start Blue Queen at C6, above Orange Queen. Have Orange facing West, Green facing North, Purple facing South, and Red facing East. This way, if the players move Blue to F6, the Queens will turn to face it, allowing the players to move and hold at F5, push to H5, then pull down to H3 to safety.

[@cameronf5893]

I was thinking the same thing. My players would have shit a brick that it wasn't a legal chess move. Lol

[@Pifman]

If the Blue Queen's original position were D7 (right beneath the Gray Queen) it could make one big diagonal movement to safety. It's only one move so possibly "easier" to solve, but at least it's both diagonal and a long distance making it less obvious. Plus once they figure out the puzzle it's probably the same difficulty whether it's one movement or several. And starting on D7 would have the bonus of being a legal move! Cool puzzle.

[@AresiusMajere]

Is nobody gonna mention that the puzzle "in the dungeon" and the puzzle "in the board" have a different configuration?

[@WallyDM]

Interesting... what do you mean by this?

[@PaladinArchives]

@@WallyDM The pieces on the actual board are not in the same configuration as the Qs in your dungeon. I was setting this up while watching, but when I got to the solution, it didn't work for some reason. Then I realized your pieces aren't where they should be according to the dungeon map. Your Pink Q is your White Queen, and they are one space off.

[@TerminallyNerdy]

Excellent work as always. Once you said the bit where as long as they are touching it they are safe I figured it out. Till that moment I was confused lol

[@WallyDM]

Thanx my friend... I knew you wouldn't stay confused for long. :)

[@Awenky]

This is great except from my understanding of chess queens can only move in one chosen direction per turn...I mean then again you also don't have 8 queens

[@WallyDM]

You are correct. For some reason, I made this puzzle a bit harder than I should have. Honestly, I should have positioned the Blue Queen in a position where she only had to be moved horizontal or vertical once and in one direction. Easy to fix though! :) Thank you for your comment! It means a lot to me that you took time to watch the video and discuss. :)

[@MattViviani]

This would be a bit more satisfying if the queen only moved once, rather than sliding all over the board. It might make the solution stand out more, but it could also keep the PCs from making false assumptions, or trying to move the piece out of the room. It could even be on a track or something to give them some direction if they are clueless.

[@WallyDM]

Thanks for the comments Matt! I definitely agree with you on this. Having the Blue Queen only move once does sound like a less complicated solution. The good thing is... we can place the Blue Queen anywhere on the board, so we could easily do that. I did contemplate having the Blue Queen on some sort of track system or have it where she "floated" or more evident that she must be moved. But, when I recorded this, I wasn't too sure how to explain it as an option, so I left the idea out. I definitely like it though... Having a track system across the chess board should show she can be moved anywhere. Thank you again for the comment! I always enjoy discussing how to improve the scenarios or include different ideas! :)

[@EpixxGames]

Really cool puzzles!!! You are great! Keep doing your great job!!!!!!!!!!!! THX

[@WallyDM]

Rock on. Thank you for this awesome comment! :) New Puzzle video should be out in a couple of weeks! Stay tuned!

[@sonictheultimate]

nice I figured it out without having to pause but it still seems rather fun and would tie into my games well, and I already have ways to use their orbs after the puzzle is completed

[@WallyDM]

Glad you got it right away! Interesting.... maybe the orbs will end up being a gems that could be imbued into the players weapon or armor?

[@sonictheultimate]

Wally D.M. I was thinking that to or orbs containing spells similar to scrolls/potions

[@WallyDM]

Scrolls and potions are a great idea too. :) You got me thinking... I may just make this a treasure room. Each of the 7 queens have two orbs, giving them two times to fire off their magical blast. Once their magical effect is used, the orb is gone or crumbles. Once the players solve the puzzle, the orbs turn into gems that the players can go around and collect from the Queens. If they solved it correctly the first time, and none of the Queens were triggered, then they could collect 14 gems.

[@sonictheultimate]

Wally D.M. that's cool see in 3.5 there were alternative means to contain spells, craft potion and scroll are the easiest, but I prefer scrimshaw where you crave the runes into bone, and gem weaving where you store the spell in gems who's base cost is that of the spell time 100 plus 100 for a level 0 it's 100 gp, while level 9 spells are 1k

[@sonictheultimate]

Wally D.M. another cool thing about the crafting gems is magical traps can be made with them using permanentcy I'm actually in a game set in eberron, and me and the other pc's are trying to make our own air ship using gems like this

[@AllisonIsLivid]

I don't normally like chess puzzles. I find that generally, they either assume a player's knowledge of chess is on par with an actual chess player, or they assume the most basic level of knowledge, and the puzzle is actually all about figuring out how the rules of chess have been translated into the puzzle, and thus are easily solvable once you realize it's chess. But this one is really good, and I'm totally going to use it. You don't actually have to play chess to get it, and even once you understand how the moves have been translated into the D&D setup, that isn't the solution to the puzzle. You still have to think about it, just enough that you can solve it, and it won't take too much time. I think with a flock of gargoyles overhead, and a pressing need to rescue the blue queen, I could get my players motivated to do this, but maybe just pressured enough to make a mistake or two.

[@WallyDM]

You are definitely not alone in your dislike for chess puzzles. Seems most GMs/Players either love them or hate them. Your feedback on this is outstanding, thank you! I am super stoked that you will be using "Save the Queen" in a future game. The flock of gargoyles to add pressure to the situation is a fantastic idea. Be sure to stop back by and let me know how it goes. :)

[@AllisonIsLivid]

It'll be a few levels before I run it, but I'll try and remember to!

[@WallyDM]

Sounds great! Thanx again for the fantastic conversation! :)

[@justinmichael9043]

I like the concept but dislike the starting position for the blue queen. I immediately saw the safe square but knew that it would be impossible to reach with one legal chess move. There is no reason to assume that the other queens wouldn’t attack after the blue queen changed direction, if you are assuming that these chess pieces behave like chess pieces.

[@WallyDM]

I absolutely agree. Given the chance, I would go back and correct the video to one, simple straight line movement. In fact, when I include this puzzle in my next book, I already have this adjustment in place. But... I am glad that you saw a better way to structure the puzzle and appreciate you watching and taking the time to talk about it. Thanx again... cheers! :-)

[@VioletDeliriums]

Thank you for doing these videos. They give me ideas to work with and shape! You know what would be really cool is if you could do a video that discusses how you come up with them. Is there some method or a bunch of little tricks you use?

[@WallyDM]

Hi Violet! I am glad you are able to use the ideas for your campaign. What an awesome comment, thank you! :) You bet... I may do a video that shows a little insight to my madness. haha. BTW... great guitar covers. Definitely enjoyed Jack White and Cake, two of my favorites. May I request a Black Keys tune in the future? Gold on the Ceiling would rock! Thanks again!

[@VioletDeliriums]

Thanks! But I am done with making cover vids for a while -- I did those a few years ago to get back into playing the electric guitar after focusing on other instruments for about 15 years... I would really like that insight into your creative process. :)

[@WallyDM]

You betcha! Let me put some thought into my creative process and I'll post an answer in a future video. I have a few different methods and influences, so definitely need to get my thoughts in order. :) Thanks again for the awesome conversation!

[@inoxur9968]

Maybe it could also go where the red queen is destroying it in one move

[@WallyDM]

Now that would be an interesting development! Take out the red queen. Nice!

[@DnDnBeer]

Take the red queen

[@ThePontificatingAHole]

I like this one.

[@WallyDM]

Hmmm. Me too! Thank you for watching. :)

[@Addicted2Xbox77]

I honestly thought the solution was going to be either taking out the yellow queen's spot, (aka they were only invincible to player damage), or nothing because you said the queens were invincible. Still this is a great puzzle! May I ask how you come up with these?

[@WallyDM]

Interesting solution to the puzzle! That is what is great about adding puzzles to a D&D game... there can be multiple solutions. If one of my players rationalized an answer like that, I would accept it and reward them, for sure. :). As far as coming up with puzzles... some, like this one, are old classics that I put a D&D type spin on. The majority of the ones I built from scratch I usually create the answer first and then work backwords. It is kind of hard to put into words... but I do plan on answering this question in a future video. Hopefully coming soon. :) Thank you for the fantastic comment!

[@ALJessica]

I must admit that I don't like that you have to move the queen in what I would call an illegal manner. As per chess rules she can move in a straight line or diagonally, and the solution being moving her as a knight, I just don't like that.

[@WallyDM]

This is definitely one of my videos I wish I could redo. I am in 100% agreeance with you. I hate that I made the solution two moves. When I produce this in my next book, it is going to be a single movement in a straight line from one spot to another. Great call on this!

[@eleanorbrushia]

You have a lovely beard and room! keep up the good work! :D

[@WallyDM]

thanx my friend!

[@eleanorbrushia]

:)

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

...again I ask:wouldn't this fantasy world have its own strategy games reflecting its own military history? How does my fantasy character know anything about chess? At least rebrand it to something setting appropriate! Then there's the matter of who made this puzzle and why.

[@WallyDM]

Once again... Chess is a popular game in the D&D world I created. It is referred to as "The Game of Kings" but all of our real world rules for Chess exist. Why create something new, when the medieval game of chess already fits perfectly into my world? Besides... Players are already familiar with the rules and how the game works and their characters are familiar with the game. Take a look at the history of Dungeons & Dragons. There are articles, modules and rules for including Chess in your game. Dragon Magazine #70 has an article written by Tim Grice that helps you run a simulated game of "The Game of Kings" or "Chess" if that is something you want your PCs or NPCs to do. Thank you for taking the time to watch my video!

[@notoriouswhitemoth]

There are three things I feel like I need to mention here. 1. I tend to nitpick. 2. I find it a bit annoying that so many of the puzzle recommendations I come across require metagaming, especially when players tend to regard metagaming so negatively, 3. I criticize because I love. The very fact that I'm pointing out flaws in something means that I see in it the potential to be much, much better than it is. If my comments come across as negative, please bear those three points in mind.

[@WallyDM]

No worries at all. Glad that you found my channel. :) Definitely nothing wrong with some nitpicking and constructive criticism. I appreciate you taking the time to watch the videos and leaving comments. Thank you for starting some interesting discussions!

[@DMVoidKitten]

If a true stickler.. you could alter up Dragonchess to fit your confines, if so desired.. The Great Gygax did afterall, make a D&D chess variant, within the world(s) of D&D for a reason! :D - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonchess