D&D General Orcs on Stairs (When Adventures Are Incomplete)

[Lanefan]

I know the thread has moved on, but as I said before, what does it matter if the fall is 500 feet of 5000 feet or exactly 2271 feet? That's a deadly fall, period, doesn't matter how much HP the character has. All falls of 500 feet or more can be simply handled as 275 points of damage (because there's no point in rolling 50d10), which is more than nearly all characters will ever possess. A fall from that height is effectively deadly, and there's no reason to specify further.

Does falling damage not cap out in 5e, to simulate reaching terminal velocity?

 

[pukunui]

I wrote a module based on this very idea - that the room inhabitants appeared to be completely random and made no sense e.g. some of the monsters literally could not have fit in through the doors and hallways to access the rooms where they were found, and that there was a reason for it.

I've lost count of the number of times I've come across encounters in 5e adventures where it's obvious the authors didn't consider the size of the monster or the squeezing rules.

There's an early AL adventure involving a prison guarded by a minotaur. The stairs and corridors the PCs encounter the minotaur in are all 5 feet wide, meaning the minotaur has disadvantage on all of its attacks because it has to squeeze to fit into the encounter areas. (The third-party Odyssey of the Dragonlords adventure has the same issue - with the PCs encountering a Large minotaur in a labyrinth of 5-foot-wide corridors. In this case, I ruled the labyrinth was magical so while the corridors were only wide enough for the PCs to move single file in, the minotaur could move through them without squeezing due to some magical size distortion effect.)

Whoever converted the Against the Giants adventures to 5e (Yawning Portal) doesn't appear to have realized that giants are Huge in 5e rather than Large, so they didn't change the scale of the giant lair map. This means that, as written, the giants have to squeeze through all the hallways and doors in their lairs. I solved this by increasing the map scale. (There's another encounter in Odyssey of the Dragonlords involving a Huge size giant in a cave with a 5-foot wide tunnel leading to it. Going by the squeezing rules, there is no way a Huge creature can fit through a 5-foot-wide corridor, so there's no way the giant can get in or out. My players justifiably decided to leave the giant where it was since it wouldn't be able to come out and get them.)

 

[Lanefan]

Something I've found is that there's a world of difference between reading an adventure and running it. So many times, I've read through an adventure and thought "Wow, this is really cool! I want to run this." And then, later, when I sit down to prepare it, all sorts of issues pop up that I just didn't see/think of when I was initially reading it.

Very true - some adventures read much better than they play.

I've also found the opposite now and then, to my pleasant surprise: some adventures play much better than they read.

For example, when I first read through the Acq Inc book's adventure, Orrery of the Wanderer, I thought it looked like a helluva lot of fun. But when I sat down and was actually running the first episode, the nonsensical nature of the opening scenario suddenly became glaringly obvious - the 1st level PCs are tasked with tracking down two missing city guards in a series of tunnels beneath Waterdeep. At least one of the guards has made it all the way to the end, and yet there's hardly any evidence of the guards having passed through each encounter ahead of the PCs. As an experienced DM, I was able to add some details (footprints in the dust on the floor, for instance) and determine on the fly that the traps reset themselves or that various monsters only showed up after the guards had gone through. But a new DM might struggle a bit with the whole premise.

When I come across nonsensical stuff like this in the middle of the game, I like to talk to my players about it, and we all have a bit of a laugh.

I do the same.

 

[Dausuul]

I know the thread has moved on, but as I said before, what does it matter if the fall is 500 feet of 5000 feet or exactly 2271 feet?

If it's 500 feet, you're dead. If it's 5,000 feet, you get 9 rounds in which to save yourself. If it's 2,271 feet, you get 4 rounds in which to save yourself. (I just looked it up, 4E uses essentially the same rules for "time to fall" as Xanathar's, except 4E has them in the DMG rather than an optional sourcebook.)

Does falling damage not cap out in 5e, to simulate reaching terminal velocity?

Yes, but in 4E, the cap was 50d10 after falling 500 feet, rather than 20d6 after falling 200.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Does falling damage not cap out in 5e, to simulate reaching terminal velocity?

I mean, it may, but the module in question was 4e according to the OP, so I used its rules (which cap out at 500 feet/50d10). Past that, it doesn't matter how far one falls. Even well before that, a fall is essentially always fatal. 30d10 is 165 damage in average. A typical 10th level Defender (say 16 Con) has 17+16+9×6=33+54=87 HP. To roll less than 87 on 30d10 is much less than a 1% chance (I could figure it out using Anydice, I just don't care enough to do so).

If 5e has analogous rules then...great? Not super relevant but a good tool to have.

If it's 500 feet, you're dead. If it's 5,000 feet, you get 9 rounds in which to save yourself. If it's 2,271 feet, you get 4 rounds in which to save yourself. (I just looked it up, 4E uses essentially the same rules for "time to fall" as Xanathar's, except 4E has them in the DMG rather than an optional sourcebook.)


Yes, but in 4E, the cap was 50d10 after falling 500 feet, rather than 20d6 after falling 200.

And if it's literally not possible to do so (e.g. you have no potions or the like)? Besides, the exact distance doesn't matter nearly so much at that point. It is just as easy to say "you have a few rounds to try to save your life," and be done with it. This, again, does not require the exactitude of which you speak. It's just not that deep man (somewhat literally).

 

[Lanefan]

Yes, but in 4E, the cap was 50d10 after falling 500 feet, rather than 20d6 after falling 200.

Ah. Got it - thanks!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

1) The module gives no information whatsoever about the tentacled horror. What's its AC? Hit points? Attack modes, types, and number? Damage per attack? Special defenses? It just seems so obvious that one or more PCs might go for it rather than the caster, and try to kill it while it's stuck in the gate and vulnerable.

If something has a stat block, it means it can be fought. If it does not, it's invulnerable. The attacks have no effect.

 

[Lyxen]

I really like ToA as well. I'm most of the way through a second run-through of it.

Indeed. not perfect but with enough material that most groups can focus on what they like best.

Madness at Gardmore Abbey seems to be pretty well regarded. I own it but haven't run it. (When 5e first came out, I started to convert the adventure but ended up running other things instead.)

Really disliked it, but it might have been in large part because of the focus on the Deck of Many Things, which is for me the one item that breaks campaigns. I know that, in that module, it's a bit about controlling the thing, but I remember struggling with it all the same. Gambling your character on the roll of a dice or the drawing of a card is silly to me an actually to most of us at our tables where the story and the characters are at the center of our games.

Dragon Heist is like a "how to" of how not to write an adventure. It's got all the things you're not supposed to do in it, including forcing your players down a railroad and having uber-powerful NPCs show up to resolve the climax while the PCs watch and all that jazz.

That's a great summary indeed.

The "Great Upheaval" opening adventure was not included in the playtest packet for SKT, and I think it shows. The connective tissue between it and the rest of the adventure is really weak. That said, Storm King's Thunder itself is a solid adventure that doesn't need a lot of tweaking to run with minimal prep. I really enjoyed both playing through it and DMing it.

STK is a good adventure, but I've seen with my own eyes an experienced group flounder when coming to the sandbox part. It's not unmanageable, but even experienced players should be warned and agree.

 

[pukunui]

Really disliked it, but it might have been in large part because of the focus on the Deck of Many Things, which is for me the one item that breaks campaigns. I know that, in that module, it's a bit about controlling the thing, but I remember struggling with it all the same. Gambling your character on the roll of a dice or the drawing of a card is silly to me an actually to most of us at our tables where the story and the characters are at the center of our games.

Fair enough! Truth be told, I’ve never actually experienced the Deck of Many Things in play in my 30-odd years of gaming.

STK is a good adventure, but I've seen with my own eyes an experienced group flounder when coming to the sandbox part. It's not unmanageable, but even experienced players should be warned and agree.

Another fair point. It’s reminded me that I did indeed let my players know that there would be a large, open-ended section in the middle where they would be free to explore as they wished. Luckily it appealed to them so it wasn’t an issue. (If it hadn’t appealed, I would have tightened that section up more.)

 

[Lyxen]

Fair enough! Truth be told, I’ve never actually experienced the Deck of Many Things in play in my 30-odd years of gaming.

I've had a few bad cases a loooong time ago and it left me traumatized, even though at the time there were a number of "gygax-type" fountains with random effects.

Another fair point. It’s reminded me that I did indeed let my players know that there would be a large, open-ended section in the middle where they would be free to explore as they wished. Luckily it appealed to them so it wasn’t an issue. (If it hadn’t appealed, I would have tightened that section up more.)

It's good that you warned your players, in our case the DM did not, and when the players found themselves with nothing at all scripted to do, they spent a long time trying to go through their notes and ideas and found nothing, and still the DM said nothing because to him it was a bit of an experiment. Turns out that it was a failed one, but in the end a good lesson for our tables. In particular, when I turned by BG-DiA campaign into a large sandbox in Avernus, I did it only after asking the players whether it's what they wanted to play.