D&D General I hate five-foot passages!

Fanaelialae · Feb 26, 2024

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. I'm not familiar with SO, so I can't speak to it directly, but I do think that if a dungeon was created by or taken over by large sized creatures, they would build it to an appropriate scale or widen the passages (if possible). On the other hand, if they're simply exploring the area, then they have to deal with it (which will likely knock the encounter difficulty down a peg).

You could give them a potion of reduction for situations like these (if you use the house rule that potions are a bonus action, it doesn't even cost them much in terms of action economy). Overall though, two slaad against 5 PCs with 75ish HP seems like it's meant to be an easy fight anyway, so I wouldn't sweat it.

I do agree that it's annoying when the dungeon isn't appropriately sized for it's inhabitants.

Wolfram stout · Feb 26, 2024

MerricB said:
From "The Shattered Obelisk" (roll20 port).

The rogue (who opened the door) won initiative and moved back so that the slaad had to squeeze to attack.

Why do people keep doing this?

View attachment 348430

I hear ya. It can be not so fun for players as well, especially the slub stuck in the middle of the marching order.

aco175 · Feb 26, 2024

It is like when the PCs enter a kobold warren and find 5ft high ceilings and 3ft wide tunnels and now they are the proverbial slaad. It might be ok once in a while, but boring/unfun if all the time.

Also, the large slaad dying in the hall might close off moving forward if the PCs cannot get past it to the room. Slaad might disappear being an outsider, but a ogre wouldn't. Might be a tactic since I keep removing the ogre mini from the table after it is killed. Maybe I should leave it blocking the hall.

Lord Shark · Feb 26, 2024

Wolfram stout said:
I hear ya. It can be not so fun for players as well, especially the slub stuck in the middle of the marching order.

Yeah. In situations like this it's all too common for martial characters who don't have reach weapons to get stuck with no way to engage the monsters, leaving them with little to do beyond plink away with a javelin or bow.

TheSword · Feb 26, 2024

the danger with VTT is that the appearance of tokens can trigger instant combat mode, even cases where the creature might not be visible or hostile straight away.

My preferred practice is to hide all monster tokens and then determine at what point PCs see the creature not the token and then reveal it.

It’s worth saying that a corridor like that is constraining PCs as well as the slaad. Time for a wandering monster with a line attack. They’ll soon get out of the corridor then!

TheSword · Feb 26, 2024

Lord Shark said:
Yeah. In situations like this it's all too common for martial characters who don't have reach weapons to get stuck with no way to engage the monsters, leaving them with little to do beyond plink away with a javelin or bow.

Wait, thats on the PCs. If they want to hold a narrow pass that’s their call but they are free to move through into the room if they want.

billd91 · Feb 26, 2024

Sulicius said:
I hate it. It is so frustrating when you run a published adventure and you decide to trust the designers to do this right, and then as soon as the door opens, you realize that they can’t possibly have tested this.

But yeah, why would large creatures ever live in a place that is just too small for them? It doesn’t make sense.

Ultimately, it depends why they're there. Squeezing through the corridors to occasionally transit areas isn't really all that burdensome when you consider real people have put up with that kind of thing as needed for ages.

And as far as supporting game play, sometimes you should put PCs in situations where their optimal attacks and actions are harder to deploy and they're forced to try something else in order to do so.

Oofta · Feb 26, 2024

If a location is used by large creatures, it will have large hallways. I even go to the point of monsters having enough to pass each other comfortably (15-20 foot wide hallways) if the space is used by a large number of creatures. Think the difference between a private home where you may walk by someone now and then and a public place where you're regularly sharing the hallway with traffic going both ways. Of course, if you aren't in combat you don't really occupy the entire space, but high traffic areas have wider hallways for a reason.

If it's a location that just happens to be currently occupied by large creatures I'll still generally make wider hallways or open encounter areas just for ease of play. In addition, I start asking things like "What are the walls made of and how easy for a large monster to punch through?" Because every once in a while it's fun for the guy who thinks they're hiding safely in the back to have the wall adjacent to them busted down by a monster that weigh half a ton.

Paul Farquhar · Feb 26, 2024

Sulicius said:
In some situations on Roll20 you can make the squares 10’, and that can solve some problems, but everything else on the map then doesn’t make sense. Stretching the map and using double the squares can sometimes slow the whole thing doen if you use dynamic lighting.

In Roll20, if you set the cell width parameter to 0.5 it haves the size of the grid squares, and hence doubles the scale, without having to change the map.

Umbran · Feb 26, 2024

Oofta said:
If a location is used by large creatures, it will have large hallways.

I don't know the module in question, but traditionally slaad aren't known to be builders or designers. They probably didn't build the place to their own specifications.

And, with all respect, if you are working with slaad, for whatever imbecilic reason you'd work with violent natives of Limbo that are considered largely insane by the rest of the multiverse, you don't want them moving around free and easy. Keeping them in a room that's awkward for them to leave seems smart in a "I don't want everyone else here getting implanted with slaad eggs" kind of way.

D&D General I hate five-foot passages!

Fanaelialae

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Wolfram stout

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aco175

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Lord Shark

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TheSword

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