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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 8684887" data-attributes="member: 63">You could make a whole 'death trap' sorta scene out of it, making the threat more environmental than just a raw combat. The party goes into a basement of a book-binder (who works for all the wizards of the Lyceum, obviously) to investigate, and they see a lot of paper, plus rare alchemical reagents for use in creating enchanted inks. It's a bunch of valuable stuff. The owner waits upstairs.They spot a rat that's smoldering, follow it into a cramped tunnel that leads to a warren. A pair of flaming dire rats are the brood mother and father of the swarm, currently sleeping surrounded by hundreds of their children, nestled against some sort of glowing crystals that can function like alchemist fire but better (if you want there to be treasure). Invariably the PCs spook the swarm, which flows past them and sets the whole basement full of paper aflame, while the dire rats attack the intruders.There's all the precious books and other materials worth rescuing, and the owner upstairs who's crying for help as the swarm attacks him. Does the party just flee? Do they try to save valuables? Rush to save the owner?The basement is a 25-ft. by 25-ft. room, with stairs at the north leading up, and the entrance to the warren to the south. The whole basement is difficult terrain for non-swarm creatures, due to all the furniture and clutter. The warren is bigger, maybe 50-ft by 50-ft, with several chambers ranging from narrow tunnels to small rooms that interconnect in odd ways, and maybe a couple areas of lower or higher elevation.In the first round of combat, two of the swarms move from the warren entrance to the base of the staircase, so getting out means running through them. The five squares they moved through catch fire. The other three swarms remain in the warren complicating the fight against the dire rats. The swarms are CR 1/4 each, so for the dire rats, use the stats for an ankheg (CR 2) except it breathes fire instead of spraying acid.If you enter 1 or more burning squares on your turn, you take 1 fire damage, and if you end your turn in one of those squares you take 3 (1d6) fire damage. If you spend an action or bonus action, you can shove some of the clutter and furniture into another square (even doubling up), so that you clear a space. If the stuff you move is on fire, you take 1 fire damage, but it means that the clear space has no fuel to burn, so it's safe to move through or stand there.One round later, the fire spreads to two more squares with flammable fuel, and the basement fills with enough smoke and embers to require a Con save to avoid being blinded.One round after that, the fire spreads to another two squares. The stairs leading out are burned to the point that anyone larger than Tiny who tries to ascend them causes them collapse. Getting out now requires climbing 20 feet of burning debris while rats clamber over you.One round after that, the fire spreads two more squares and a few ceiling beams start to crack. The warren is now filled with smoke that can blind, and the basement is filled with enough smoke that anything beyond 5 feet has concealment. Unless you're prone, you have to make a Con save at the end of your turn or else you take 1 nonlethal damage.That's turn 4. After that, things don't get much worse environmentally, and if the dire rats aren't down by that point, they retreat into their warren and then disappear through tiny tunnels to be a problem elsewhere later. The challenge then becomes 'how do we get out of here?'If any PCs get stuck down there, on turn 10 you can have some refugee bystanders come to their rescue. A low-level cleric happens to have create water prepared, and heard the commotion, so ran into the store. He extinguishes the flames in the basement. Other bystanders can help pull PCs up with ropes.</blockquote>

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