D&D 5E A Maze that works in actual play?

[Li Shenron]

Just speaking to your comment about the right spell eliminating the challenge of a maze completely, if you're referring to find the path, I'm not convinced.

[SECTION]This spell allows you to find the shortest, most direct physical route to a specific fixed location that you are familiar with on the same plane of existence. If you name a destination on another plane of existence, a destination that moves (such as a mobile fortress), or a destination that isn't specific (such as "a green dragon's lair"), the spell fails.[/SECTION]

What if a hypothetical maze...

• was on a plane you weren't familiar with?
• had enchantment magic that messed with the familiarity rules, making creatures inside the maze treat things outside of it as unfamiliar?
• offered a short direct physical route that was certain death?
• has walls mortared with gorgon's blood and the direct physical exit is a giant adamantine door that is sealed with an ancient dweomer and melted lead?
• had goblins that stole your 100 gp divinatory tools needed for the material component?
• had monsters that broke the spellcaster's concentration before they found the route out?

Obviously, these are contrivances that don't fit every scenario. After all sometimes find the path should work to overcome a maze. But there are totally scenarios that keep a maze as a relevant challenge in spite of find the path.

Indeed those are good ideas, but even the spell text itself contains the main limit: "a specific fixed location that you are familiar with".

If you are looking for the way back then it's reasonable enough for the DM to allow it, on the ground that the Wizard might be considered to have "familiarized" enough with the entrance of the maze, just by having been there very recently. Or maybe you can choose "home" as the location of choice (I don't remember if there's a range limit in the spell) to backtrack to the entrance.

But as a way to find either a target location within the maze (which is most often the reason why you went into the maze) or an exit beyond the maze, I don't think it's easy to make it work since the Wizard can't really be "familiar" with a place she's never been. I wouldn't count "reading about it", arcana-checking or even clairvoyance as valid ways to make it "familiar".

 

[Imaculata]

I am of the opinion that an ordinary maze is more exciting on paper, than it is for your players to crawl through. So for my own campaign I'm planning to introduce a maze in the form of a grid of tiles. Each tile represents an abstract section of the maze (and thus countless of tunnels and dead ends), and the players simply expend time to navigate from one tile to the next. As they enter a new tile, I turn the tile over, and reveal where it leads to, or if it contains something of interest (monsters, puzzles, treasure, npc's, traps, mystery doors).

But the players can also randomly run into special encounters, which I will play out with them in real time. Because each section of the maze will be represented by a tile, I can also move the locations of the tiles around, and thus represent the magical nature of the maze, which is always changing. In other words, the focus is on the discoveries within the maze, and not on the lay out of the maze itself. I skip the boring empty tunnels that come with a classic maze, and get straight to the interesting bits; encounters, traps, puzzles.

Water is an important aspect of my campaign, so in the maze the water level can gradually rise or be lowered (either deliberately, or by accident), which will pose additional challenges to the players.