Frequency of Squeezing

Rechan

Adventurer
Has the rules for Squeezing through an area come up in your game at ALL?

I've seen powers for monsters and a few powers/magical items for PCs that address squeezing, and I"ve never seen it become relevant in a game.

Perhaps in terms of a small race forcing the players to fight in a small tunnel, but otherwise?
 

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Funny thing. I was just going to add squeezing opportunities in the "White Wyrms" encounter in the War of the Burning Sky Adventure "The Scouring of Gate Pass." It takes place in a very large warehouse, where there's islands of bunched-up boxes & crates. I was going to add some thin passage channels through these island of inventory where people can squeeze through if they want.

There was a great opportunity to include some squeezing opportunities in the H1 Keep of the Shadowfell adventure; in the Kruthik Lair where the kruthiks have burrowed narrow tunnels through the solid walls separating different parts of the area. But instead they have it so the kruthiks can move through these openings at full speed, but PCs cannot move through the tunnels at all. In the free download for the adventure, they have at least added that small PCs can squeeze through the tunnels. But when I ran the adventure the first time, I provided the option for PCs to squeeze through with a successful DC 10 Acrobatics checks, and the same check for a small character to move through the tunnels with no squeeze penalty.

You know, I like 4th ed and I prefer it to 3e, but I hate this new design principle to provide terrain that the opponents can use greatly and PCs can't use at all. And I don't mean things that just make sense, such as fighting amphibious creatures in an area covered by two feet of water. But these contrived situations which would be a great opportunity for PCs to be able to take advantage of their skills, or a wacky magic item, or by using a power in a new way, and instead they're just shut down completely. No DC to shoot for. Not even a hard one. For example, declaring that PCs simply can't swim in two feet of water, whereas lizard folk can swim and hide in it just fine.

Okay. Rant over. How about more squeezing scenarios? They're pretty easy to include in natural caverns. And, of course, for scenarios involving hunting small opponents in their lair.
 
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Has the rules for Squeezing through an area come up in your game at ALL?

I've seen powers for monsters and a few powers/magical items for PCs that address squeezing, and I"ve never seen it become relevant in a game.

Perhaps in terms of a small race forcing the players to fight in a small tunnel, but otherwise?

Being as it is environment specific it will only happen if the DM puts it there.
 


Our group doesn't do much "confined space" adventuring (mountains, dungeons, etc) -- we have more outdoor wilderness encounters and RP encounters, so in the entire year of 4e (playing about 7 hours every other week, on average), we've had squeezing come up once because we were in a building in a narrow corridor and someone asked about it (since they saw the word in the phb once) and wanted to get through. But it never actually got used.
that's all i can remember anyway.. there may have been some other random similar situation i guess.

but, yeah, it is very environment dependant. so if your pcs adventure a lot in stereotypical dungeons (or even unstereotypical ones, just based on situation) then i guess it would come up more often.
 

I've pretty much just used Squeezing when PCs are trying to navigate tunnels made for smaller creatures. Although i have to say the squeezing penalties are quite debilitating, and having monsters that grant combat advantage at the same time can truly scare some players. I about killed the druid in the goblin tunnels with just a few lucky arrows.
 

It's come up in probably 5% of our gaming sessions. Sometimes it's because we're indoor, a cavern, or heavily wooded area.

One of our guys is always mounted but it's usually a monster that squeezes, not a player.

They're trying to maneuver into a better position or get a player in back.
 

In a my conversion of the Seeds of Sehan module from Dungeon magazine, there are a few narrow tunnels that the PCs will have to squeeze through.

One particularly nasty one is a 80ft relatively straight tunnel that has two arrow slits from a much bigger cavern. If the monsters are aware of the PCs, the ranged focused monsters will attack the PCs through the arrow slits. Why this is nasty, IMO, is in addition to the squeezing penalties, the terrain description for arrow slits (DMG pg 66) says that the firer gets superior cover and determines the target's cover from the square just outside the slit. So, unless I am interpreting wrong, the PCs would have a -10 (-5 for squeezing, -5 for superior cover) to attack the monsters behind the arrow slits and only move half speed (so they can't get away quickly). The monsters would have +2 to attack (from CA due to squeezing) and could attack anyone in the tunnel (within range) as the tunnel is straight and they use the square outside the arrow slit to determine if the PC has cover.

The PCs can use other tunnels to bypass this small tunnel, but I kind of hope they use the small tunnel. :devil:
 


In my experience, there's too little room for them. I've seen these scenarios nearly occur, but in the end they are narrowly avoided. I suppose that it wouldn't be difficult to modify an encounter to explore these rules in a pinch.
 

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