Dungeon crawls = narrow hallway combat & door jam combats, ugh!

I'm running a classic dungeon crawl for a short spell. I love the flavor of crawling through a dungeon but unfortunately, so many times now, it turns into a lot of cramped combating!

Does anyone have any DM'ing tactics that help mitigate this unfortunate circumstance? I'm not talking about stocking NPC's and monster with mobility spells and crafty ranged abilities. I'm more interested in using this terrain to the monsters and NPC's advantage.

In our game, the PC's are exploring an underground tomb... lots of mindless undead and very low intelligence monsters. There are winding corridors lined with doors leading into either single or double chambered rooms. I'd like to keep the classic flavor of a dungeon crawl, with the possibility of a monster appearing at any turn in those narrow corridors.

DoorJam combat - it's happened that (because the undead baddies are just standing guard and waiting for interlopers to steal the treasure) when the PC's open the door, BAM! Combat begins RIGHT THERE... and get's cluster-f*(%ed right at the door.

This works to the PC's advantage: they put their fighters at the door and let the ranged spell casters do their work safely from behind, hitting the baddies in melee and the ones behind the lines. Besides sophisticating the monsters with ranged attacks, abilities, and crafty battlefield allies they probably shouldn't have (which I don't want to do), is there any way I can set up this situation to avoid this set-up?

I've tried waiting for the PC's to enter the room before springing the combat, but they can't help meta-gaming and initiating combat on their terms, attacking the undead from the PC's preferred bottleneck position. I suppose I could make the undead cunning enough to withhold attacking until the PC's enter the room falsely believing there's no threat in the room... but again, that seems like more sophistication than simple mindless undead and animal intelligence monsters should possess.

Random encounters in hallways pose the same dilemma. With only 10' width, combat bottlenecks happen frequently. If you can't or don't want to increase the sophistication of the enemy, what can one do? I SUPPOSE I COULD just increase the halls to 20' as opposed to 10'... It seems silly why any architect would build hundreds of thousands of feet worth of corridor so wide... but then again, this *IS* a fantasy game.

Here's a 3.5 rules question that popped up recently... Ranged attacking through a narrow, cluttered battlefield... are there rules to Cover and Concealment that apply to targets that lie 10'+ beyond a line of active combatants? Are they considered cover or are they clear targets?

Thanks folks!

Dungeon combat is cramped. If the corridors and the rooms are small, that's just the way it's going to be. Expect bottlenecks, difficulty maneuvering, and other problems. Powerful attack spells might shake loose a piece of wall or ceiling. Setting a fire on a puddle of oil can be an effective barrier, but it'll make a lot of smoke in a small space. Ranged attacks probably hit the ceiling rather than the target if you aim past three range increments. And you definitely can't shoot arrows or spells through a door blocked by two fighters, not without hitting your friends in the back more than half the time.

But if you want more open combats with lots of mobility, you have to add areas with wide corridors and large rooms. There's nothing stopping you from designing your dungeon that way in the first place, if that's your preference. You just have to make it happen.

Regarding random encounters, I don't know what edition you're playing, but in classic D&D a random encounter without surprise has the enemies appearing 2d6 x 10 feet away, which is usually plenty of room for either side to maneuver around corners, duck into rooms, and set up whatever tactics they might think is most advantageous (accounting, of course, for the particular monsters' intelligence and what they want).

Ultimately, dungeon crawls are games of attrition. The player characters know very well that there are lots of monsters and traps ahead of them, just waiting to wear down their hit points and spells, or even kill them outright. And so they adopt tactics to minimize this problem: they fight dirty. They sneak around, listen ahead, poke and prod, set up ambushes and bottlenecks. If they had grenades and flashbangs, they'd use them just like a SWAT team. It's not sport, it's war. That sort of thing.

So it comes down to making the unexpected happen, just every once in a while. Just often enough that they players have to think twice about over-using tactics that seem to be perfectly effective. If they camp in a doorway at every room and wait for the monsters in the room to come meet them on their terms, well, that's a great time to have a wandering monster sneak up on them from behind. Or to use monsters capable of ranged or area-based attacks. (Critters with breath-weapons are great for this.) If, the very instant that the mage finds his first wand of fireballs, the party now insists on nuking every room smaller than 40' square before entering it, make sure that a few rooms contain only flammable, destructible treasure (and toss in at least one fire-resistant monster, for good measure).

So you're in a tomb full of undead? The undead don't make noise, don't give off heat that can be seen by the demi-humans' infravision, and they can remain perfectly still until they want to reveal themselves (even ostensibly mindless undead like skeletons and zombies can use this tactic). That means that they can hide *anywhere*. A room with 1 foot of water concealing the floor. A burial niche full of soft dirt. Sealed up in a coffin sticking half-way out of the ceiling, hidden from view by soil and dangling roots overhead. Inside of a stone-lidded sarcophagus several tens of feet away from the chamber door, which is also where the treasure is kept. Inside of a small closet behind a secret door that the whole party, squishy wizards in back, just walked past unwittingly. Throw in the odd incorporeal wraith, and the very dungeon walls and floors and ceilings become potential hiding places.

It doesn't sound to me like your players are metagaming; it sounds like they're making tactically sound choices. Remember that in most dungeon scenarios, the PCs are the invaders. The onus is on them to progress. If they bottle themselves up in a narrow corridor or doorway, that's a victory for their opponents.

I hear you saying you don't want to increase monster ingenuity, but I feel like you're shooting yourself in the foot. What you need are smarter monsters. They don't necessarily need to be geniuses, but if your PCs retreat into a bottleneck, have your monsters do the same thing. If the PCs stop marauding through the caverns, the monsters win. There's no reason for a group of reasonably intelligent denizens to follow interlopers into an obvious trap. Put more cover in your dungeon rooms so the monsters can avoid ranged damage.

Of course, at best, that's a standoff. If you want your PCs to change their behavior, you have to show them that their bottlenecks are not safe. Have the monsters circle around and attack from behind, cutting down the casters while the fighters are pinned in their own doorway. Use secret doors. Murderholes. Arrow slits. Remote-trigger traps, like dropping slabs and closing portcullises.

Observe your players' tactics and use them against the PCs. But always remember that the monsters' goal is to stop the PCs from looting their home. If the PCs do that of their own accord by hiding in the corridor, that's as good as driving them off.

Corridor surprises, though, are corridor surprises. I mean, maybe you could design a dungeon where some corridor turns are decorative 20'x20' roomlets? More complex intersections could also help -- more directions mean more opportunities for rear ambushes, but also think in 3D -- air shafts and wells make good inconspicuous hiding places for climbing enemies.

I wrote this article for the forums, no-one gave much of a crap about it, maybe a few.

It should be helpful to you. It is specifically how to encourage non-static fights. It's mostly written from a 4E viewpoint, and it grew from me picking apart what I loved about the 4E Dungeon Delve book.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/454578/Complications - Dungeon article 1.doc

You need to use some intelligent bad guys. Yes, mostly there's zombies but sprinkle in some necromancers and/or death priests so you can use tactics too.

magnusmalkus said:

I'm running a classic dungeon crawl for a short spell. I love the flavor of crawling through a dungeon but unfortunately, so many times now, it turns into a lot of cramped combating!

Does anyone have any DM'ing tactics that help mitigate this unfortunate circumstance? I'm not talking about stocking NPC's and monster with mobility spells and crafty ranged abilities. I'm more interested in using this terrain to the monsters and NPC's advantage.

In our game, the PC's are exploring an underground tomb... lots of mindless undead and very low intelligence monsters. There are winding corridors lined with doors leading into either single or double chambered rooms. I'd like to keep the classic flavor of a dungeon crawl, with the possibility of a monster appearing at any turn in those narrow corridors.

Click to expand...

Do the PCs check every door or just "expect an ambush"? Because if they don't check, walk past a few doors and then zombies emerge from some doors behind them and some in front of them. A great way to threaten the back line. (Why are zombies using such smart tactics? Hopefully the PCs will start looking for the necromancers, if they're not there already.)

Use a greater variety of monsters.

Steal the corruption corpse from 4e. It's a low-Int ranged attacker. It has low regeneration, but frankly that's just flavor text and you can remove it. It rips of bits of itself (which regrow) and throws them at the PCs. It's the equivalent of a ranged touch attack to, so it can hurt the front-line steel-clad guys.

Or if that's not to your liking, give skeletons bows and arrows. I'm not sure if they used weapons in 3e, but if not, well, these have some fancy templates that give a clue as to who made them (and possibly who they used to be).

I'm sorry to say, but a lot of older D&D game monsters weren't varied or fun by themselves. Often the monsters were fun because they appeared in a cool module in a habitat that suited them, but weren't cool by themselves.

DoorJam combat - it's happened that (because the undead baddies are just standing guard and waiting for interlopers to steal the treasure) when the PC's open the door, BAM! Combat begins RIGHT THERE... and get's cluster-f*(%ed right at the door.

This works to the PC's advantage: they put their fighters at the door and let the ranged spell casters do their work safely from behind, hitting the baddies in melee and the ones behind the lines. Besides sophisticating the monsters with ranged attacks, abilities, and crafty battlefield allies they probably shouldn't have (which I don't want to do), is there any way I can set up this situation to avoid this set-up?

Click to expand...

You need to give them those intelligent allies. Otherwise every fight is the same.

Without allies, perhaps you could put two doors across the hall from each other. Each door has a certain number of zombies (or whatever) waiting. When the PCs break open one door and do the bottleneck jam thing, the other door opens and zombies attack the back row too!

The mage shouts "I didn't think I needed to cast Mirror Image!"

I've tried waiting for the PC's to enter the room before springing the combat, but they can't help meta-gaming and initiating combat on their terms, attacking the undead from the PC's preferred bottleneck position. I suppose I could make the undead cunning enough to withhold attacking until the PC's enter the room falsely believing there's no threat in the room... but again, that seems like more sophistication than simple mindless undead and animal intelligence monsters should possess.

Click to expand...

Why is this place filled with so many unintelligent undead? Who made them? Even if it was just a curse, there needs to be a reason why there's so many bodies there.

Random encounters in hallways pose the same dilemma. With only 10' width, combat bottlenecks happen frequently. If you can't or don't want to increase the sophistication of the enemy, what can one do? I SUPPOSE I COULD just increase the halls to 20' as opposed to 10'... It seems silly why any architect would build hundreds of thousands of feet worth of corridor so wide... but then again, this *IS* a fantasy game.

Click to expand...

Have random encounters pop up in the middle of an "established" fight. Zombies can hear. Again, you're trapping PCs between two fires and threatening the back line.

Here's a 3.5 rules question that popped up recently... Ranged attacking through a narrow, cluttered battlefield... are there rules to Cover and Concealment that apply to targets that lie 10'+ beyond a line of active combatants? Are they considered cover or are they clear targets?

Thanks folks!

Click to expand...

I think if there's anything between the shooter and the victim they get cover. Precise Shot isn't needed. If there's no cover and they're 10 feet or more away, there's no ranged attack penalty.

I agree with [MENTION=78752]DMZ2112[/MENTION]. Combat is noisy. Have either monsters in the room the PCs are fighting at circle around and attack from behind or have monsters from unexplored rooms come join the fun! Nothing will scare the pants off your wizard than a big nasty undead walking up behind him and draining his life force away.

If you can, throw an incorporeal undead into the mix. Have it float through the fighters and go right after the casters.

Or if there are intelligent undead, like wights, have them attack and retreat, leading the PCs into an ambush. You can even give them ranged weapons.

Lastly, have a door completely barricaded shut from the side your PCs are on. Chances are they'll want to see what's behind it. After they pry of the barricade and open the door, they can find a tentacled eldritch abomination from beyond space and time. It reaches out, grabs someone and drags them off to a time and place unknowable to mere mortals. Your group may or may not appreciate that.

I can relate. I'm running my second AP and once again, the designers keep putting spellcasters in rooms 30' across and seem to think the caster isn't going to be meleed in the first round.

(I'm running it for pre-teens, so I'm not worried about them running roughshod over the encounters.)

More tricks.

Instead of the zombies/skeletons just standing there, have them come out of the walls when the PCs are in the middle of the room, or when they grab whatever the undead are guarding. Unless the PCs 1) have the Gem of Zub Zub and 2) breathed on it (to prove they're alive) and thus revealed the Incantation of Zub Zub and 3) speak Zub Zub's esoteric Incantation; in that case, the skeletons serve the PCs as the inheritors of Zub Zub's vast and inscrutable fortune.

Before you get to the tricks, though, you need to give the PCs some information to work with first. Maybe the first trick room is a breeze (to reveal what might happen with small consequences for failure), or there are signs of the trick having played out on less fortunate adventurers. The key to the tricks should be nearby but still a puzzle for the players to figure out.

They certainly aren't doing anything wrong. Heck, I remember playing Skyrim, if there was a lot of enemies in a room, no way I'm going to them and letting them surround me, let them come to me in the corridor where they can be dealt with more easily.

That said, yeah, if you do the tactical combat with minis, this could be a problem with a couple larger groups. Wider corridors, multiple ways in egress from the room and intelligent tactics from intelligent foes help make it more interesting. If it's cramped and the foes are dumb, then Battle for the Doorway is kinda how it goes. Intelligent beings versus unintelligent ones are often going feature an advantage to the former.

If I can make a few suggestions, I think that the following ideas might use the cramped conditions to increase fun rather than decrease it:

1) Use ghosts or any other insubstantial creature, they can happily attack through the walls and attack the guys at the back. Especially Banshsees because,
2) Fear is your friend. Include monsters that terrify the PCs and make them flee. For best results, hopefully it only affects a portion of the party, not all of it. Splitting the party in a tactical encounter is amusing. Remember, the ghost could have come in through the wall behind the party, thus sending them fleeing into the room.
3) Fall traps, secret revolving doors, fear, illusions and madness can be used to split the party. As soon as the party is split up, suddently narrow corridors become a terrifying thing, not an advantage. If fighter has to hack his way through a bunch of skeletons to save the mage, he will definitely feel that narrow passages are not all that great for him.
4) A sense of urgency can be very important. The party is doing their normal bottlenecking, when all of a sudden a horde of undead or an overly powerful monster starts making its way towards them. They need to get into the room ASAP or get their butts kicked. Alternatively, they trigger a slow trap, the corridor is filling with gas, the walls are closing in, they can hear a boulder rolling from the end of that conveniently long and tilted corridor.
5) Have other monsters come in behind them in the corridor, have them pincered.
6) The enemies do not reveal themselves until the party is in the room. They can see the sarcophagi, they just know the mummies are going to pop out and attack them, but until they get in the room and try and pick up the treasure they are locked safely away behind their stone slabs.
7) A false sense of urgency works almost as well, just ask what their disease resistances are and start counting turns. Ask them how long they want to spend looking in a room and make a note of it. Ask them what time of day they entered the place. All of this need not serve any actual purpose other than to inspire them to hurry up and inspire a sense of dread.
8) The Super-Nasty-Unkillable-Thing. The tomb/dungeon has a very slow moving but super tough guardian. It only awakens after X amount of time then slowly, methodically walks after the players. This could be a golem, a mummy, a chained ghost or a cthullian horror. The idea is it makes the PCs be constantly on the move and inspires a rush every time they discover they are in a dead end.

I hope this helps, I have used all of these myself and think that they really added to the horror of a tomb crawl.