Encounter: Scramble Atop Crumbling Pillars

[Riastlin]

Ah, thanks for the description. I figured I was misunderstanding it. So, in the OP's setup, these are basically 100ft pillars holding up the floor to this room. I would think that a 100ft pillar that ends in a 10ft x 10ft top surface would be very heavy. If the pillars actually crack, then anyone down below would surely be dead, and most likely that would bring the whole lot down.

Ah well, I'm glad the encounter worked out and was fun.

Not sure it would necessarily bring the whole lot down, but it would certainly have the potential to do so. I would again point to Fellowship of the Ring as the example. When the staircase finally fell, it crashed into the other section that was standing, but the other section remained standing. Not a perfect example I realize as there were larger supports, etc., but yeah you definitely would not want to be under the pillars when they fell.

 

[MortalPlague]

I have to admit I didn't understand the setup. If there's no floor what are the pillars standing on? What was "below" this room such that it created a hundred-foot drop? That sounds quite bizarre. Also, how can this be "beneath" a monastery of the pillars don't have anything above? Why are the pillars top-heavy? That sounds like an incredibly bad engineering design. All in all, this encounter reminds me of the chomping room in the Galaxy Quest movie. "This episode was badly written!" I realize that you're just trying to create an interesting encounter, but either I can't understand it at all or it's just too much of a stretch.

It works like this. The monastery is built on a mountain. There's a ruin carved out of the mountain below. So to enter the ruin, one must break into it via the monastery's cellar.

This is one of the early rooms in the ruin, below the monastery. This room would've been about 40 feet tall. There would normally be a floor. Except it's so old that the floor has crumbled away.

There is a room directly beneath this room, which is 100 feet tall and full of pillars. It would look like the Mines of Moria room from Lord of the Rings. These pillars once supported a ceiling, which formed the floor of the above room. That ceiling is the floor that collapsed.

So:

MONASTERY
--rocksrocksrocksrocks and a tunnel down--
ROOM
--collapsed floor, top of pillars--
LOWER ROOM 100 FEET TALL (featuring pillars)
--floor of lower room--

Make sense?

 

[Infiniti2000]

Yes, thanks!