D&D General I hate five-foot passages!

[MerricB]

The best strategy I've seen for the slaad is the "grappling into the main room" strategy. It wasn't going to be a great fit against this particular party, but I've used a similar tactic at times.

Against this particular party? It's not great. The front-line fighter is sitting at a +9 Athletics check, and the artificer has a reaction he can use (several times a day) to give him an additional +5 to an ability check. I suppose that the artificer could give it to the slaad to make things fair... fat chance!

In general, I like making things challenging for the party. Add terrain features or monster abilities that mean they can't rely on tried and true tactics. These things are great!

But five-foot-wide corridors often make it so some players can't play. It's not an interesting challenge for the players to solve - it's just frustration after frustration. It's very easy to come up with situations where the monsters can damage the party with little threat to themselves. (Just put the party in a 5-foot-wide corridor with a wizard-locked door at the end with a small hole that the monster can cast lightning bolt through). Does this lead to enjoyable play for everyone? No.

And five-foot-wide corridors are tremendously overused. Especially by Paizo, but it's been growing at Wizards as well. And given that Wizards don't seem to understand what size monster are, you now get the opposite situation to the usual frustration for players.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[Lanefan]

Why would the PCs walk thru the door?

One assumes, because they need something that's in there. Otherwise, maybe the wise thing to do is just move on and ignore that room.

Also, if they did, one reaction per round....so multiple PCs could go in, attack, and leave and not get attacked.

At that point I look very sideways at the rules, as they're not reflecting the fiction. The fiction is that the first person through that door is very likely* to get shredded and also probably stuck, meaning it'll be very difficult for anyone else to get in.

Also, move-attack-move where you can't be attacked in return is broken.

* - not guaranteed, and maybe someone could dive through and draw the Slaadi backward a bit; it's the sort of risk-reward move a hero might try.

 

[Lanefan]

If the slaad are adjacent to the doorway, so that they can attack the character in the doorway, the PCs can potentially see them. (Or it becomes Stealth vs Perception - and the Slaad have a +1 and +2 bonus to Stealth vs PC perceptions of a little higher).

The Slaadi are "large", right? That should give them enough reach to be able to attack from a mostly-hidden position, and any PC wishing to attack in return has to step right in.

And sure, the PCs might see bits of the Slaadi poking around the corner, but it would still count as good to great cover vs missile fire and the only PCs that can melee-attack are those one or two who can fit in, and thus be attacked in return.

 

[Lanefan]

It hasn't really been answered with the explicit mechanical rule, so here goes...

Squeezing rules. pulling this from Google on my phone so it could be wrong, but it looks accurate.

While squeezing through a space, a creature must spend 1 extra foot for every foot it moves there, and it has disadvantage on attack rolls and Dexterity saving throws. Attack rolls against the creature have advantage while it's in the smaller space.

The Slaadi don't need to get into the doorway, however. They can stand just inside the room and thus have all the space they need. It's the PCs who are confined such that only one or two of them can be the front line.

My reference to their squeezing was to explain that it was in fact possible for the Slaadi to have got to that room through the halls and door.

 

[jdrakeh]

I hate five-foot passages, too, which is why there's no weird-o standard of architectural tunnel construction in Six-Hack. Underground tunnel warrens are whatever size they need to be as determined by the Referee and movement is measured in inches (nominally using a tape, as was the case in Days of Yore).

 

[W'rkncacnter]

No you don't, you hate survival.

"avengers infinity war is the best crossover of all ti--"

 

[Lanefan]

In general, I like making things challenging for the party. Add terrain features or monster abilities that mean they can't rely on tried and true tactics. These things are great!

Good.

But five-foot-wide corridors often make it so some players can't play. It's not an interesting challenge for the players to solve - it's just frustration after frustration.

Not my problem. After very low level PCs usually have enough resources to be able to negate or bypass pretty much every obstacle you throw at 'em, so my sympathy is limited to near-nonexistence. And to me it's a basic fact of life that not everyone will be involved at every moment.

It's very easy to come up with situations where the monsters can damage the party with little threat to themselves. (Just put the party in a 5-foot-wide corridor with a wizard-locked door at the end with a small hole that the monster can cast lightning bolt through). Does this lead to enjoyable play for everyone? No.

It probably means that after one lightning bolt the PCs are going to (one hopes!) back off and rethink.

Do we need to go down this hallway? Can we send someone invisible and flying down there to see what's causing the lightning? Or a Wizard Eye? Can we plug the little hole up such that the next lightning bolt goes off in the caster's face?

And five-foot-wide corridors are tremendously overused. Especially by Paizo, but it's been growing at Wizards as well.

Truth be told, I usually use 10'-wide corridors as a default; but there's certainly lots of places where 5' corridors - or even narrower! - make sense, and in those cases that's what I'll put there.

The other thing almost never taken into consideration is ceiling height. The default is 10', but having some passages be only 5' high (or less) and filled with short opponents, e.g. Gnomes or oozes, can ruin a party's day in a hurry.

Flip side: I just ran an adventure where the scale was 25' to the square; and many of the corridors were 2 squares wide and 20' high. Walking down the middle of a dark corridor, their light sources barely let them see the walls on either side.

 

[Lanefan]

I hate five-foot passages, too, which is why there's no weird-o standard of architectural tunnel construction in Six-Hack. Underground tunnel warrens are whatever size they need to be as determined by the Referee and movement is measured in inches (nominally using a tape, as was the case in Days of Yore).

Underground tunnel warrens and natural caverns are cool until the players try to map them, at which point increasingly heavy objects start getting thrown at the DM.

 

[Horwath]

And five-foot-wide corridors are tremendously overused. Especially by Paizo, but it's been growing at Wizards as well. And given that Wizards don't seem to understand what size monster are, you now get the opposite situation to the usual frustration for players.

Cheers,
Merric

Digging tunnels without modern drills or magic is extremely difficult, so no one will do the work that is more than absolutely necessary.
Also builders must thing about defensive value of those same structures, if you have 5ft wide corridor only 1 medium size opponent can attack at one time, while at the door, 3 of defenders can attack, 2 of them might suffer -2 attack because of partial cover, but they will also be protected by that cover.

if you want a dungeon crawl in a dungeon that is not inhabited by colossal monsters only, you with have fights in a chokepoint after a choke point after a choke point.



Now, in that narrow corridor, slaad size will count for nothing!
King Leonidas, probably...

 

[jdrakeh]

Underground tunnel warrens and natural caverns are cool until the players try to map them, at which point increasingly heavy objects start getting thrown at the DM.

There's a solution for that in Six-Hack, too! In character, either using chalk or twine to mark one's route (and letting the Referee handle the actual maps) or OCC by drawing lines to represent passages and circles or squares to represent chambers. Some of this is drawn from my own experience as an amateur spelunker.