D&D General I hate five-foot passages!

[Greenstone.Walker]

It doesn't work that well. When the door is closed, both sides just sit there looking at it. When it opens, often you just have to reroll initiative.
…
It doesn't lead to fun play.

Keep the initiative running - don't stop and reroll.

If the players have their characters just look at the door, not opening it, have the characters hear muffled voices, moving furniture, sounds of running, and so on. Just because the characters stand in the passage doing nothing does not mean the monsters are doing the same.

As for fun play, I'd argue that the rogue opening the door and retreating isn't fun play. If the players want fun play then they need to do fun stuff for the GM.

However, I think the best answer is not to use large creatures in a medium sized complex. If there are large creatures then there should be large passages. Which is a clue to the players.

GM: The passage you are standing in is wide and tall, much taller than something built for humans or elves. Whatever uses this passage is twice your height, maybe more.

 

[el-remmen]

The thing about "fun" is (and this is no revelation) that what is fun one group or player may not be for another, thus (for me at least) it, someone saying "X is not fun" is a useless criticism, whether or not "X" is fun has a lot more to do with the context in which it arises (and how often) that cannot necessarily be reduced to particular design features. The dynamic of the people playing is at least (if not more) to do with it, for example. I do agree that excessive repetition can be the death of fun (though as Prince once sang, "There is joy in repetition"), but I know in my games some of the most memorable combats have involved confined spaces, cul de sacs, withdrawals, détente, etc. . . because of everything else going on and the way the characters (and their opponents and allies) are played.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I hate it. It is so frustrating when you run a published adventure and you decide to trust the designers to do this right, and then as soon as the door opens, you realize that they can’t possibly have tested this.

Heh. At least that means they're staying consistent with their design methods.

In Roll20, if you set the cell width parameter to 0.5 it haves the size of the grid squares, and hence doubles the scale, without having to change the map.

Wouldn't that quadruple the number of squares? Each side is halved, so the area is quartered.

From the combat encounter angle though, I can see it being a problem. If it's just one encounter PCs might feel good using smart tactics to defeat a challenging enemy, but if keeps coming up, it can make things dull.

Sadly, there is a quite vocal faction which seems to believe that no price is too high for squeezing out even the smallest gains in "verisimilitude"—and, conversely, that no sacrifice of "verisimilitude," no matter how small, is ever worth gains in any other area. (Except all the traditional abstractions, those get a free pass, natch.)

The bigger game play issue for me with the 5-foot is that there's often room for one melee fighter, so if the party has several of them, some have to sit in the back and throw javelins.

Who cares about them? They aren't casters!

(For real though, I completely agree. The classes that should be getting the most options for creative combat tactics all too often get saddled with boring, ineffective gameplay instead.)

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Sadly OP, there's not much that can be done, other than the "scale up the map size" option if you're on a digital platform that can do that.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Wouldn't that quadruple the number of squares? Each side is halved, so the area is quartered.

Of course. But Roll20 doesn't care about how many grid squares there are on the map, it's only the number of pixels that affect performance, and setting the squares to 0.5 halves the number of pixels per square (from 70x70 to 35x35 by default), so the performance remains the same.

 

[Hussar]

?

"fun" is overly nebulous imo, but i get what you're getting at. i still don't know why you're saying it to me, though.

Started with you then moved on to the larger point.

 

[Hussar]

It works so much easier when things become more approximate. A square is approximately 5 feet. So a 2square wide corridor count actually be only seven or eight feet. Which isn’t that big in many places.

 

[Maxperson]

But yeah, why would large creatures ever live in a place that is just too small for them? It doesn’t make sense.

This.

Although, the chaotic/random nature of Slaadi could explain this particular encounter. In general, though, large creatures would live in an area where they could freely move about.

 

[Maxperson]

I’m pretty sure the rogue decided to backtrack and hold the corridor after the fact. Not sure how you can redraw the map after the combat has started.

I much prefer 5.5 grapple. Monsters getting ability score bonus vs PCs getting to add Athletics or Balance is a joke. Making even level 1 characters better at grappling than an ogre. Very annoying. Not to mention grappling lasting until someone breaks. You never know they may not change it but I really hope they do.

Why not just add proficiency to the monsters' rolls?

 

[Oofta]

Why not just add proficiency to the monsters' rolls?

I do this sometimes. If I think it's logical that a specific individual monster would be proficient they are. That, and the number of monsters that have proficiency in anything but perception and stealth is negligible. I've always assumed the DM should add proficiency when it made sense.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm working up a level 18 adventure and they'll be facing a few CR 5 creatures. According to TCE, two CR 5 creatures are an appropriate challenge for one 18th level character. I was extremely surprised by this, so we'll see how it goes.

According to the DMG it's not even close. Two CR 5 creatures is like 2700xp which is still an easy encounter for 1 18th level PC. At 4200 for a moderate encounter the 18th level PC is still expected to win and you need like 4 CR 5 creatures to hit that number.