An invisible maze

[gamerprinter]

4e has 'daily' rests which are 8 hrs down time. These are easy enough to discourage/plan for. My players are usually reasonable about when or if they are taken. There are also 5 min breaks which restore HP and some powers (including healing spells) These are harder to discourage, and they are the bane of small traps, and single wandering monsters.

5 minute breaks give you spells and hp!?

My problem player has come up with some fairly ingenous ways to ensure that the party gets these breaks, including carrying nails of sealing, fixing a mine-shaft elevator so that it was stuck in the shaft, vigerously running away or using enough diplomacy (a crit, for 42 total@ level 5) to get the guards to make them sandwitches, once even blowing a time pressure mission.

Although we still laugh about the sandwitches, it was thrown on top of a more reasonable argument once he saw the roll/total.

At least your problem player is being creative in trying to break your dungeon - and the group is having fun, though it might be better if he would use that creativity to overcome obstacles, rather than delay to overcome.

Stick your party in a dungeon with no doors to nail shut, or a cavern system, so you don't have to look like a dick in trying to prevent their rest breaks, and see what they come up with...

GP

 

[fireinthedust]

The players first order of business was to find out where there were some pit falls were, they proceeded to unload a handy haversack worth of items onto the floor Indiana Jones style. They used sandwiches instead of rocks however.

Sandwiches? In D&D? That's... well, I suppose they could have them, but it just seems so... out of place?

EDIT: I mean, my old DM who cared about this stuff, insisted we'd have beef jerky and wineskins; real food was for Inns and Taverns, but at least our rations would never go bad. I guess pepperettes aren't much better than sandwiches (and I recall hearing of a Roman centurion who took slices of bread and between them put stuff... but that was my dad telling me, and he said the Centurion's name was "sandwich", which immediately sends up red flags. Also that the moon is the size of a quarter (hold them up for comparison) and that he's got my nose, and I can't have it back).

 

[Davachido]

Sandwiches? In D&D? That's... well, I suppose they could have them, but it just seems so... out of place?

EDIT: I mean, my old DM who cared about this stuff, insisted we'd have beef jerky and wineskins; real food was for Inns and Taverns, but at least our rations would never go bad. I guess pepperettes aren't much better than sandwiches (and I recall hearing of a Roman centurion who took slices of bread and between them put stuff... but that was my dad telling me, and he said the Centurion's name was "sandwich", which immediately sends up red flags. Also that the moon is the size of a quarter (hold them up for comparison) and that he's got my nose, and I can't have it back).

Yes I know sandwiches is a bit strange, though the only reason why they were there was the time setting was further ahead than most D&D settings so not so medieval. The cleric had a thing for sandwiches and would always 'eat a sandwich' for his short rest. He ordered the insane wizard in the party to fill up his handy haversack with sandwiches, this was taken quite literally so there was something like 2000 lbs worth of sandwiches in the bag.

 

[fireinthedust]

In the Walls of Eryx = win.


Question: how would you present an invisible maze to the players? You'd have to make a gamed of having them feel out the walls round by round. Otherwise what do you do to eliminate the banality of rolling search checks before the GM just draws the map for the players?

Mazes don't have rooms, so you're describing the halls hallway by hallway,.


I've used a maze in a 4e game. Master Labyrinth board is almost mini-squared, counting each tile as a total of four squares. By pushing a row of tiles along, inserting a tile on one end and pushing out one on the other, I could shift the labyrinth easily. The whole map was visible to the players, so the challenge was navigating on their move where they would go; or fighting (relatively weak) minions or other obstacles. There were "rooms" to explore, but these are extra-dimensional spaces that are placed on particular tiles, so the players had to reach them as they moved about the board. The walls were all magical thorn bushes that attacked anything that touched or crossed them.

Good dungeon crawl, all told.


Basically, presenting the maze in-game is important. Do something that gets the whole party working on the issue in some form good for them. Don't just get them to wander halls for no reason, or sit there doing nothing. Someone will map while the others go "I stay with them, so increase the map-making by my share; I'll go back to reading my book and not playing".

 

[MarkB]

If you have a battlemat and erasable markers, it becomes fairly easy to draw out the maze. You just keep your master copy, on graph paper, tucked away behind the DM screen, and draw it onto the mat as they explore.

If someone is doing map-making chores, then you leave the mapped lines on the mat, and it becomes both map and territory. If they're not bothering to map, you erase it behind them.

 

[frankthedm]

Navigating the maze probably should be done based on stat /skill checks, with creative / inane plans granting bonuses / penalties to the skill check.

 

[TarionzCousin]

What challenges do you plan to throw at the PCs as they negotiate the maze? Mazes on their own are phenomenally boring as a rule.

This is the question you really need to answer.

The interesting mazes listed above are much more than simply empty mazes. An empty maze is a boring session.

There is some great stuff here that you should steal. Heck, I never would have thought about running an invisible maze until I read this thread.

 

[Evilhalfling]

Im writing an invisible maze for next week.
I think I can explain why it is floating in the air, otherwise it will be stone.

it has 4 ranged monsters, 3 melee monsters, 5 pits (30') regularly spaced, so they can be anticipated. 6 walls that are actually 1' lattices (like a portcullis)

It breaks down into 2 fights, one at the entrance, one at the exit. PCs will have 5 minutes to navigate it. So that while resting isn't possible, actually solving it can be handwaved. I do need some fresh ideas for the second fight, as PCs will encounter most of the tricks (invisible walls, pits and caster friendly walls) in the first fight.

the PCs have no flight or teleporting, except for a dragon familiar that does both. Hitting just makes it go inactive for 5 min. So that will happen at some point if its used in combat, or goes to far away while exploring.

Any more suggestions?