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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr_Ruminahui" data-source="post: 5077786" data-attributes="member: 81104">I've done a few, with varying degrees of success. First was an abondoned grain silo full of rats with a slide going from the top to the bottom. Didn't play much of a roll - the dwarf was the only one who tried to walk down it, the others simply used ropes. Second was the group waterwalking over a bunch of zombies, then needing to dive down to unlock the door. It was pretty fun, though unfortunately I felt I railroaded the PCs a little, as they really wanted to figure a way around the door instead of diving into the murky water, and I didn't let them. Still, the fear of drowning (they were all used to 3rd ed. drowning, not the much less lethal 4th ed. system) and the reduced visibility made things quite tense. Third was a rope bridge over a chasm (water at bottom, to keep falling damage level appropriate), but I suffered a moment of stupidity where I got the boss monster stuck on the bridge instead of having him try to cut the bridge. Still, it was essentially a 5ft wide corridor, which made things work differently than normal, and the fact that the parties light sources couldn't cover the whole bridge made things interesting. Later, in the dwarven hold (captured by goblins) they freed a bunch of slaves from a rock crushing room, with conveyor belts and rollers and big cruching blocks. The party largely avoided the conveyor belts, so they didn't play too large of a role in the combat, though the wizard got dropped below zero HPs by being pushed into a set of rollers a few times. Fleeing from the rock crushing room, the party fled down a huge set of gears, jumping from one gear to the next, and being chased by the goblins. I was hoping that the players would have fun pushing goblins off the gears, but our thunderwave wizard wasn't there that week, and the one other guy with a push power for some reason didn't use it until he was down on the ground. It was interesting, but not enough to justify the huge amount of prep work that went into it. Most recently was a battle against a fire resistant solo where there were 5ft walkways with 5ft canals of burning oil in them - didn't do a lot of damage to the players, but enough to help the solo stay mobile and largely avoid flanking. So, my experience with terrain has been mixed - I think I've had some good ideas, but for the most part they haven't had the effect that I felt they would. That said, I'm getting better at it - and part of it is that my group's playstyle is pretty conservative. That said, I agree with the original poster's position that terrain is one of the first things one considers - each time I've chosen terrain, its for some thematic reason as much as a tactical one, and is most often the jumpin-off point for designing the encounter. I should also note that I'm not a big fan of the more "fantastic" terrain, but prefer more mundane features.  Its a matter of style - I tend to DM more of a "low fanatsy" game, and reserve the more overtly magical terrain for those specific circumstances which I find justify a more magical feel.</blockquote>

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