Doors

[Lord Zardoz]

I was wondering how often the rest of you use doors as obstacles worth considering? As in say, having a villian close and lock a re-enforced door behind him with a high lock DC and a high break DC?

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[Gregor]

Not often, but it seems like a perfectly logical thing for a BBEG to do when he is clearly outnumbered or outmatched and has decided to flee.

Cheers,

 

[Mark]

Always a good idea, as is this...

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1703

 

[Crothian]

That is a very good book. It really covers an area that needed to be dealt with. Books that take the common, mundane things, like doors, and make them interesting and suprising are always a good thing.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I see..

Sometimes, but not often does appear to be the case.

It occurs to me that tactical exploitation of doors in combat can go a long way towards making any given humanoid monster much more troublesome. Especially in situations where the monster in question can strike the players but the players cannot strike him because of the door.

To put it another way, doors that keep players out simply slow things down. But doors that keep players in are great fun.

The players can typically find a way through doors that they can destroy in short order. Doing so will only cost the players a suprise round, or at worst, trigger a very lethal trap. If there is no immediate reason to go through the door, it is a non issue.

But if the players are in a room where some very bad things are happening, and need to escape in short order, a strong door can make things much more intresting.

Example:

Lets say that the players are in a room with few hostile combatants, and that the room has some sort of magical effect that causes the players damage each round that they are in the room. Lets call it 2d10 damage, Fort save for half. On top of that, your combatants are immune to this damage.

Now, in this case, the players can simply flee the room if the combatants are doing too well, and get out of the damage. Not being in the room negates the combatants advantage. Knowing you can leave the room when you need to makes this fight intresting, but not especially dangerous.

Now, lets let the door to this room be firmly locked after the players enter. Also, lets have a non trivial DC to get by, for both breaking and picking the lock. The situation is a bit different now. First, the players cannot wait until the last minute to try to escape. If they do that, they will likely be killed by the magical effect. Also, getting the door open means ignoring the two combatants. This could provoke sneak attacks, or permit a bonus to hit for the combatants. It also means one less person inflicting damage on your combatants.

Has anyone else tried this sort of thing on their players? If so, how large an impact would you say it had on the fights in question?

I ask because not only am I a bit bored, but an adventure I plan on running will likley use several situations where the players have to make a similar choice. However, I dont want to TPK my players all night long, so now would be a good time to figure out if how much I should account for this.

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[Renaissance Man]

Possible Spoilers

I'm in the middle of the first installment of the Shackled City adventure path - a very well-written adventure, IMHO. I didn't expect the doors of Jzadirune to be as challenging to my party of 1st and 2nd level characters, but they are. And it's great! The look of surprise on my players' faces to be stymied by something as mundane as a locked door! It's really forced them to think outside the box.

 

[Wormwood]

Sunless Citadel:

Earlier tonight, two characters were killed on a trapped door.

They just wouldn't leave it alone.

It may not count, but it was amusing nonetheless.

 

[ConnorSB]

I always had a cool door idea.

a 10 by 10 room has 162 doorways in it, each one five feet wide and lining up perfectly with a battlemat's gridlines. Each square has 4 doorways (except for walls and corners), created by 4 posts at the 4 corners.

Now, there arn't as many doors as doorways. Say, only 60. But they are magical doors, and lack hinges. But they are also magically powered. Just a touch will set them swinging exactly 90 degrees in the direction of choice (logically, pushing on the left side sets it swinging right, and vice versa (as with any real door, the hinges are on the opposite side of the knob).

Doors can only swing away from the touch.

In any case, once the door swings 90 degrees, it becomes a barrier between two completly different spaces, and therefore can again swing either direction. So, for example, a door could be swung left, right, left right, to move it diagonally. That is to say, the doors dont actually have hinges, and so can move around (they arn't tied to a single post).

now, this by itself is interesting, but what makes it cooler is when doors hit each other.

If a door is opened left, but there is a door in that frame already, that door gets "bumped" into its next doorframe, opening the same way as the first. So, for example, if a post had four doors, pushing one the corect way would cause all of them to swing 90 degrees, pushing you into the next space (and pushing all the other people nearby in the same sort of way).

Now, this room is a bit boring if every doorframe is filled. But if a whole bunch are empty, it becomes a room with what are essentially movable walls (which move in predictable ways as explained above).

Alone, this makes a pretty good puzzle room, especially if one door is unmovable, making it impossible to budge doors that would want to take its frame.

But if you put a combat in it, it is a really easy way to split the party, and keep them in the dark as to where the enemies are. Combine this with soundproof doors, and suddenly everyone is incognito. Party memebers could accidentlly work agaisnt each other, pushing each other back as they move forward. and they get attacked to boot.

Add some pit traps, and your friends can accidentally shove you into thin air and a long painful fall.

The possiblities are endless.

Although I don't think i explained this very well. If you want i'll draw up some pics and post them to explain better. Its a bit tricky to visualize.

 

[grodog]

Ed Greenwood wrote a fun article about magical doors in Dragon 106 (February 1986)---"Open them... if you dare." Good stuff, with some mundane as well as magical ideas on how to make doors more interesting!

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Ed Greenwood wrote a fun article about magical doors in Dragon 106 (February 1986)---"Open them... if you dare." Good stuff, with some mundane as well as magical ideas on how to make doors more interesting!

Since I am fortunate enough to own the Dragon Magazine Archive, I may do just that.

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