Dungeon Article

Dungeon article

A common complaint from DMs is that fights can get stuck in doorways and become static. How do you encourage movement into a room? How do you involve the ranged characters who often hang back, then say "I didn't even get touched in that battle."?

This article contains ‘complications’ a DM can add to his/her encounters that strongly encourage players to move into a room. Although these complications can increase the difficulty, they do not add to the Experience Point total of your encounters. The aim is to put players into situations where they can’t apply the same old combat tactics over and over again. Hopefully, your players will have fun formulating their own strategies to overcome these complications!

Can the magic of great encounters be broken down into base parts? Can these parts then be used like ingredients in a recipe? This article sprang from the premise that it is possible. A warning though: like seeing how sausage is made; it can be unpleasant to see fun broken down into a formula.

“There is nothing more disenchanting to man than to be shown the springs and mechanism of any art. All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the surface; it is on the surface that we perceive their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to pry below is to be appalled by their emptiness and shocked by the coarseness of the strings and pulleys.” -Robert Louis Stevenson

It is very helpful when reading this article to have a copy of the Dungeon Delve book at hand. There are many references to specific encounters in that book.

24 complications for encounters (in no particular order) 1 skirmish rooms 2 moving hazard 3 spring up in back 4 run for something 5 dangerous hazard 6 usable attack object 7 hard to cross divider 8 split the party 9 boost area 10 change in elevation 11 control box 12 disable a trap 13 superior cover 14 pull/push 15 Forceful abduction 16 stop the destruction 17 spawning 18 innocent in danger/hostage 19 bait 20 don’t stand still 21 slowly worse 22 surprise 23 accomplish in time/in place 24 special movement feature

1 skirmish rooms Turn the one room you were imagining into two or three rooms connected by halls that form a big circle. Similarly, you can add large blocking terrain to the center of a large area. This allows monsters to retreat around corners, which encourages the players to chase them. Skirmishers especially, will have somewhere to fall back to, or ambush from, or take cover around lots of corners. Monsters can circle around and attack from behind. Outdoors this can be achieved with huge tree trunks or even a wagon. Examples: A perfect example is 2nd encounter in the dungeon in Keep on the Shadowfell. Dungeon Delve 23-3

2 moving hazard Add a trap that can make one area very dangerous to remain in, that also moves. One example is a fire blast that hits every round but in different place. Making it predictable is better than random. Have the fire blaster spin each round, targeting a quadrant of the room, so the players know where it will hit next and can plan accordingly. Several geysers that explode in sequence each round, but in a way the players can determine the pattern. A rolling boulder is perfect, falling ceiling, collapsing floor, electrified floor, a chained beast, sphere of annihilation. All of these encourage movement. Have them start from one side and progress to a different side or in a circuitous route. For example, in an 8x8 room whose walls all shoot darts. In round one, every creature in the top two rows of the room would be shot by darts, then in round two, the two rows below that, and so forth until it repeats. You could have pendulum scythes swing down from the ceiling, row by row. Examples: the rolling boulder room in DMG Kobold Hall adventure.

3 spring up in back Have an unseen monster spring up in the middle of party or in back ranks. Burrowing creatures work well: umber hulk, bulettes, etc. Monsters that were extremely well hidden, don't allow passive perception checks to find them: Chokers on walls above entryways, Carrion Crawlers on ceiling, Scythejaws, Zombie jumping out of a box. Have a caster summon something big in the back, have something burst through a wall, or be hidden behind a tapestry, or invisible. Have a shape-changer be disguised as a harmless NPC. Have an undead monster lie on the floor unmoving. Even certain skirmishers can get to back lines instantly (deathjump spiders, shadowsnakes) etc. Examples: Umber Hulks in Dungeon Delve 14-1, the Deathjump Spider in Keep on the Shadowfell.

4 run for something Have an enemy run for reinforcements, or run to press a button, or to ring an alarm bell. Have a thief steal something and run. It's important to make it clear what the enemy is running for. This is actually quite difficult to pull off. Some parties will win with a simple immobilization or stun spell. Other parties won't have the right powers. You need a group of monsters for the party to contend with as they try to stop the runner. Hopefully one or two of the players will run straight into the fray. The running monster probably will be stopped, but at least the combat that takes place immediately after will start with the players enmeshed with the enemy. Examples:

5 dangerous hazard This is just a simple but dangerous hazard that monsters and players can use to their advantage or struggle to avoid. A pit, burning brazier, or a fire in the middle of a room as something to push people into. A hazardous wall of fire/electricity, a hazardous magic symbol, a thorny hedge, something that flares up when creatures get too close, or a hazard that reaches out and attacks people, like an animated statue, undead arms reaching from the ground, hidden spike traps, animated furniture, etc. Make sure you include monsters that can push or pull players, or even bull rush. It shouldn't be deadly, or something that puts a player or monster out of the fight, like an extreme fall or a stunning trap, just very dangerous. Examples: Lots of examples here, pit in Dungeon Delve 2-3, Dungeon Delve 7-3, Dungeon Delve 12-1

6 usable attack object Include something that PCs or monsters can use to attack others. A statue to push onto people, catapult, ballista, tippable bookshelf, stack of crates or rocks, a big burning brazier that can be tipped, a boiling cauldron, unstable magic object. Most often it should require a skill check to trigger, like athletics to push something over, but it could be thievery to trigger a switch etc. Make it obvious or it will get ignored. Examples: statue in Dungeon Delve 1-2, cauldron in Dungeon Delve 3-2

7 hard to cross divider Add a deep pit blocking all access to part of a room or a huge chasm separating two parts of an outdoor area. Possibly include a treacherous way to cross like an unstable bridge or tightrope walk, a wet fallen tree, a dangling rope to swing across. Require a jump check or a balance check that would give a thrill to any daring adventurers. Allow a small creature to squeeze through a hole. One of the first things people do in war is erect dividers and put ranged creatures on one side of the divide. Use this to keep people from charging into the artillery, or the controller. The divider could also be extremely dangerous lava/ooze, a wall of fire, a moat, swiftly moving rapids, caltrops, a trap, wall of spears, haybails, overturned furniture, a barricade, pile of rocks, quicksand. One commonly used divider is a large portcullis as the front gate of a stronghold. Guards shoot arrows or poke spears through the gate. Make sure to keep in mind ways to stop teleporters or flyers if you want to maintain the difficulty. Never put all the monsters on one side, only some of them, because not every player will be able to cross the divider. Try to include a way that eventually everyone will be able to cross, since it sucks to get permanently stuck on one side. Examples: Scales of War#1(mag#156) had pits with ropes you could swing across in the second encounter in the dungeon. Dungeon Delve 22-2 has magic crevasse. Encounter H1 in Thunderspire Labryinth, Gatehouse encounter in Scales of War Lost Mines of Karak (mag#159), encounter W1 in King of the Trollhaunt Warrens

8 split the party Have a wall that appears and cuts off areas or splits the party. A falling portcullis is perfect. It can also be a door that closes and locks after only some of the party has gone through. A wall of fire or ice. Things can be triggered by time, a pressure plate, tripwire, or activated by a monster. A turnstile, or trap like a rotating wall. Teleportation trap. Make sure to leave danger on both sides so no one feels left out of the fight. Examples: Dungeon Delve 13-3 is a perfect example. Pyramid of Shadows has a turnstile trap.

9 boost area Add a magic circle that either grants a bonus to: attack, damage, AC, or recovers HP, increase critical chances(blood rock). You have to make it extremely obvious that players can use it or that monsters are using it. Then people will fight to be in it. It can start a game of king of the hill. You can add a pillar or altar that recharges encounter powers. The area can be anything like a magic cloud, blood rock, holy or unholy altar or symbol, a magic tree. A magic fountain that adds fire damage to weapons etc. Examples: The regenerating circle in the final Keep on the Shadowfell encounter vs. Kalarel. Dungeon Delve 2-3. The water in Dungeon Delve 15-3, pillars in RotG final encounter. Dungeon Delve 18-3

10 change in elevation This complication is actually related to the "divider" complication because a change in elevation is really just a different divider, but most people think about elevation differently. Try adding a balcony around a whole room, or a high ledge or other raised platform. You can force people to use inconvenient stairs or ladders to reach the top, or you can allow people to use climb checks. Outdoors, add a large hill or hard- to-scale slope, a rock cliff, a ruined tower or wall, rampart, a tree branch, or building roof. Putting artillery on high ground falls into this category. If you add ladders and or ramps you can make access movable or destroyable to add even more fun. Monsters on high ground usually have the advantage; players must struggle upward while soldiers or hazards below keep them occupied. It’s also fun to have monsters with push powers up high. It's a challenge to climb up a hill while a huge giant is pushing you back down with a swing of its club. Also consider the opposite; having the party start on high ground with monsters below. The drop makes it difficult to engage things immediately. Examples: Menace of the Icy Spire (dungeon mag#159) the 1st encounter had goblins on top of an icy hill, Dungeon Delve 15-2 was a very interesting use of a change in elevation. One excellent example is the excavation room in Keep on the Shadowfell. Dungeon Delve2-2

11 control box Add a control box in part of the room that controls a trap or other powerful part of an encounter. Consider a blaster trap that affects a certain part of a room, and have a ghoul pulling the levers of that trap to ensure the trap always blasts the most players. The party will enter the room quickly to deal with that ghoul. You could combine almost any trap with a control box. It is also fun to let the players eventually gain control of the trap. Examples: in DMG the Kobold Hall the skull-skull boulder on a rope was essentially a trap controlled by kobolds. In Dungeon Delve 5-3 there are levers that the main guy uses to blast the players with. In Dungeon Delve 1-2 the kobold wyrmpriest pulls a string to drop a tapestry on players. You can also have the control box be an item, which is movable or steal-able. For example the Talisman of the Sphere controls the Sphere of Annihilation. Have the monster run with it or hand it off. The control item could also be an NPC with its own motivations. Examples:Dungeon Delve 21-3 is an excellent example.

12 disable a trap Add a trap caused by an object, like fire shooting turret, or a dominating altar. Make the trap have to be defeated physically, or skillfully, meaning players must be adjacent to it. It directly encourages movement into the room, often by someone other than the defender, because they must be skilled in arcana, thievery, or religion. Examples: Dungeon Delve 12-2

13 superior cover Add something in the middle of the encounter area that grants superior cover. Monsters behind cover encourage quick entrance into a room or area. Indoors you can use portcullis bars, arrow slits, pillars, corners, alcoves, crates, tables, webs, even curtains! Outdoors there are magic clouds, fog, webs, waist- high water, darkness, thick foliage, waterfalls, and rocks. Even a simple 4 foot tall wall can grant superior cover. Superior cover/concealment is great for lurkers who can hide. Consider several lurkers in an adjacent room shooting through arrow slits with combat advantage every round. Players will rush to find an entrance to that area very quickly, pound furiously on locked doors, and run headlong into awaiting guardians. Examples: in Dungeon Delve 3-1 an orc hides in a dark tower with concealment and cover, in DD17-1 quicklings take cover under a platform, in DD14-2 drow use darkness and webs to hide. DD28-1 uses a cloud. Just adding a goblin hexer can provide cover. In Keep on the Shadowfell there are many uses of curtains.

14 pull/push Add a trap or area feature that pulls or pushes. This can be hard to pull off without seeming artificial. You want to move the battle around, creating dynamism, without forcing things. Some ways to do this are a rocking boat that pushes people who fail an acrobatics check 1 square each round in opposite directions. Running water is a common way to achieve a push effect if the battle takes place in a stream. You can have chaotic energies escaping from a portal that push random people. Magic wind that pushes a player 2 squares at the end of any movement. A slippery slanted floor or ramp that if you take damage while standing on, you must make acrobatics check or fall and slide down. You can have teleportation areas that make a player show up elsewhere in the encounter. A magical backfiring portal that pulls everyone 1 square closer every round. While any movement away from the portal costs 2 squares. Add an icy or slimy floor that whenever someone moves more than 3 squares they must make an acrobatics check to not keep moving in the same direction or to not fall down. Examples: there is a pushing sand trap in Dungeon Delve 4-1. Dungeon Delve 19-3 has elaborate wind trap. Whispering Cairn (3.5e) has an insidious wind trap. Tomb of Horrors has a magic wind trap.

15 forceful abduction At the start of a fight have a single player snatched away from his allies and thrown into the center of the entire battle, where they must be saved. There is a zombie in the computer game left4dead called a Smoker who lashes onto a player and reels him in. There are several options in D&D that accomplish that. A Harpy achieves that with her song. You can have a tentacle snatch and pull the player. There are several spiders and even a Drider that can web-reel players. The monster called a Roper does a great job. A portal drake, a magnetic trap, and Babau demons can all abduct players. Try to factor in the target player's ability to teleport, escape, or even use an interrupt. In the interest of drama; as DM you can even force the pull before combat even begins, with no roll required. Examples: there aren't many because this complication is very scripted and difficult to make happen.

16 stop the destruction Have an enemy ruining something that must be stopped. One example is an enemy cutting the ropes of a bridge. This complication can add a time limit and sense of urgency to an encounter. The players are not likely to sit at the edges if they witness an Orc destroying a bridge they need. You could also have a large amount of treasure in middle of room whose value gets destroyed over time by a rust monster or ooze, a fire that burns a valuable object, a magic portal that sucks away a pile of gold, a mad man who tries to keep the players from having any of his valuables. Have an assortment of monsters between the party and the destroyer. A nice twist is to have the thing being destroyed attack back; a malfunctioning artifact that has defense mechanism, but can’t distinguish between party and monsters. An insane person could be harming himself and need to be stopped. Example: In an RPGA module CORE1-10 a lizardman saws a bridge. A special RPGA module, SPEC1-1 had a unique twist on this complication; you had to capture a hostile Ettin who was being eaten by Stirges. You had to stop the stirges and deal with the Ettin.

17 spawning Add a spawning monster. You can have a portal spewing out devils or far realm monstrosities. Of course, closing the portal requires a skill challenge while adjacent to it. You can have a monster spawn more monsters, like a Pod Demon. A necromancer can raise skeletons that need to be defeated. A gnome can create phantasmal illusions. A more mundane idea would be to have guards coming through a door that must be closed, or attackers pouring through a castle gate. Closing the door would require teamwork and skills as well as combat. Examples: Dungeon Delve 22-1.

18 innocent in danger/hostage Have a damsel in distress or injured captive. This doesn't always work too well. The person, animal, or object in danger can be too fragile. Sometimes players will not be motivated enough to even try, especially if the people in danger are not crucial to the story. Players will not take huge risks just to save some commoner prisoners that have a high chance of dying anyway. You can tell the players that each person they save grants EXP or if they fail they lose X EXP and they will do anything you say. A drowning person adds a nice time limit. A person over a flame also adds pressure. A person could be bleeding out, but with no surges left. A commonly used theme in the RPGA is an innocent being corrupted by a ritual. This complication is good to use if you want to intersperse lots of minions and don't want a controller killing them all with one huge area spell. Examples: Dungeon Delve lvl 30-3?, Chaos Scar “Coppernights Salvation” Dungeon#178, CORE1- 2 Radiant Vessel of Thesk had a woman giving birth and dying.

19 bait A Gygax favorite; in this complication the DM presents an obvious target or targets. The targets draw fire away from the real threat. Sometimes the real threat can be in an adjoining room. Sometimes the real threat can be disguised or hidden in the same room. Either way, the real threat will show up after battle starts. One use of this is a horde of minions that become the target of opening spells while reinforcements come from a room away. Another use is the illusion of a powerful wizard. A statue animated and disguised to look like a wizard. A doppelganger that was paid to impersonate the leader. Think of ways to bait the players. Examples: Vampire puppet Dungeon Delve lvl 10-3?

20 don’t stand still This complication creates an effect that harms a player who stays in one place or doesn’t move. It is hard to come up with something that harms players for standing still. Most likely it will be something to do with the floor that makes standing still hazardous. Another idea is quicksand, mud, or loose rubble that a player can sink into. Other ideas could include grasping undead hands, freezing cold floors, static electricity that builds, vampiric fog, an animated carpet, cracking ice or fragile floor, etc. A trap with a magic guidance system that takes a long time to lock on. Examples: Very few examples here. There is a Far Realm Star Trap in DMG2. There was a 3.5 edition adventure “Expedition to the Demonweb Pits” that took place in Lolth’s Demonweb. In it, one battle took place on webs which were covered in tiny biting spiders. If you stood still, they would climb all over you and bite for damage. Moving would shake them off.

21 slowly worse In this complication make something in the encounter that gets worse slowly over time. The classic two are water filling a room and a spreading fire. Both can make life very difficult and impose a time limit. A spreading fire can push players and monsters out of certain areas. You can also use poison gas, an electric floor that gets more damaging. You can have several monsters casting a ritual that rises to a crescendo of life draining energy; have walls closing in (a la Star Wars Trash Compactor), a portal opening that spews damaging energies. You can even give players ways to stem the tide, for example stuffing their helmet into the spout that water is pouring from. Examples: A water filling room combined with a change in elevation is done with brutal efficiency in an RPGA Challenge adventure with Trolls. “Heathen” in (Dungeon Mag#) has a spreading fire as well as smoke.

22 surprise Surprise! Have the enemies all wait in hiding and spring an ambush. Only people who beat a set perception or insight check get to act on the surprise round. Examples: The second kobold encounter in Keep on the Shadowfell. An alley ambush by assassins in Scales of War #3 “Shadow Rift of Umbraforge”

23 accomplish in place, within a time limit This complication makes the players accomplish a set of actions within a certain area within a certain time period, with consequences if they take too long. It could be to insert a key into an object, deliver something timely and make sure it stays there while adversaries try to remove it. The delivery could be a magic explosive or magic key item. The party could have to perform a ritual in a hostile place within a time limit or under duress. The party could try to break open a vault. Open a draw-bridge within a castle so an army can come through. Build a structure while it is being attacked. This complication also covers a set of hoops that players must undertake before an enemy is defeatable. A demon could be invulnerable until a certain set of sigils is aligned in four corners of a room, while it attacks them with impunity. This is extremely hard to estimate the difficulty. You can easily wind up killing players if they don’t get it. This complication requires a lot of on-the-fly adjusting, and the DM must make it very clear that there is an objective. Examples: In Dungeon Delve lvl23-3: the Lich was not beatable until the party put out fires in two magical braziers in opposite corners of the room. Not only were the braziers defended by two dragons, but the dragons could re-light the braziers.

24 special movement feature This complication can be very gamey, like Mario brothers, but also very fun and exciting. Add an area feature that grants a superior mode of movement. If you explain to the players how it can be used, and it’s advantageous to them, the players will make moves into the encounter to use it. The modes can be granted by: floating platforms, swinging ropes or vines with Acrobatics DC. A spinning statue that launches people. Magic spring boards for jumping, teleportation circles, a magic carpet. Even something as simple as a wooden plank, which can be used to cross a chasm, is a movable form of transportation. A boat on a water encounter. Icebergs floating down a rapid river. Moving rocks on a river of lava. A banister that can be slid down. A magic pillar that grants a fly speed for one round if you touch it. A large spinning floor that players can jump onto. Conveyor belts (magic of course). Have an enemy cast dimension door, and both players and monsters can fight over it. Examples: In the Eberron adventure “Seekers of the Ashen Crown” there is a spinning statue.

The End

Potential ones Xxx slippery floor, difficult terrain, but never entire area, make acrobatics check to ignore it? Xxx a control item that controls a trap or other powerful thing, take control like capture the flag, you can move it, like powerful sword, or sphere of annihilation, Xxx platforms, must be jumped across, or teleported to, this is difficult to create and still make fair, try doing it in astral plane or in reversed gravity area, or area with water, sewers with canals. Warning this can be unfair to certain players that don't have athletics trained so don't make things impossible for them, just inconvenient.

The aim is to prompt players to: Part of the fun for players can be figuring out for themselves their own optimal strategies their characters can use to overcome complications. and formulating strategies. The aim is to prompt players to have fun formulating their own optimal strategies to use to overcome these complications. There is a tendency for players to “kill everything first, then deal with the non-monster problems afterwards”. You have to shock them out of that. I’d like to think these complications are all encompassing. Dare I say, anything you can do to spice up an encounter will fall into one of these categories… For example: one of the simplest complications would be to put artillery on high ground that takes a skill check to get to, most likely a climb check. They try to make your encounters dynamic. These complications make encounters more than just: X monsters in a room, fight! Think outside the box, these complications can be achieved by terrain, traps, or even just from adding a certain monster. “Still the less they understand, the more they admire the sleight-of hand.”