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Burning doors with firebolt
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7143566" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>The ideal place for a DM to put a locked door is when there is some kind of time pressure, whether that means "roving patrols of guards" or "you're trying to get out of the killbox but one of the bad guys locked the door on his way out." Remember that locks are only ever designed to delay entry, not prevent it. Think about why car alarms exist: they're trying to scare off a would-be intruder by summoning help before he can manage to break into the car.</p><p></p><p>Locked doors in dungeons should be similar in some way.</p><p></p><p>BTW, I don't understand what you mean about "no shiny moments for barbarians breaking the door." The barbarian can destroy doors just as easily as the wizard can, obviously.</p><p></p><p>One final comment: if you reduce a creature to 0 HP, it doesn't disappear. It just dies, leaving behind a corpse. When you reduce a door or a wall to 0 HP, I guess that means it "dies"--but it doesn't disappear. Something is left behind. Dealing with that something may or may not be inconvenient for the players. A door is probably fine to just be blasted off its hinges, but if he or the barbarian starts smashing walls into rubble, one of two things is likely to be true: either they're smashing above-ground walls, some of which will turn out to be load-bearing (i.e. "killing" a wall can result in a collapse right on top of you), or they're smashing below-ground walls like cave walls, in which case "killing" a wall is likely to just turn a solid wall into a wall of rubble which still has to be excavated before you can move through its space, and may also cause a collapse.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 7143566, member: 6787650"] The ideal place for a DM to put a locked door is when there is some kind of time pressure, whether that means "roving patrols of guards" or "you're trying to get out of the killbox but one of the bad guys locked the door on his way out." Remember that locks are only ever designed to delay entry, not prevent it. Think about why car alarms exist: they're trying to scare off a would-be intruder by summoning help before he can manage to break into the car. Locked doors in dungeons should be similar in some way. BTW, I don't understand what you mean about "no shiny moments for barbarians breaking the door." The barbarian can destroy doors just as easily as the wizard can, obviously. One final comment: if you reduce a creature to 0 HP, it doesn't disappear. It just dies, leaving behind a corpse. When you reduce a door or a wall to 0 HP, I guess that means it "dies"--but it doesn't disappear. Something is left behind. Dealing with that something may or may not be inconvenient for the players. A door is probably fine to just be blasted off its hinges, but if he or the barbarian starts smashing walls into rubble, one of two things is likely to be true: either they're smashing above-ground walls, some of which will turn out to be load-bearing (i.e. "killing" a wall can result in a collapse right on top of you), or they're smashing below-ground walls like cave walls, in which case "killing" a wall is likely to just turn a solid wall into a wall of rubble which still has to be excavated before you can move through its space, and may also cause a collapse. [/QUOTE]
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