Right? If rot grubs or green slimes or those bugs that burrow into your ears when you listen at doors show up in a game, "burn it all down" is the sane, rational, problem-solving response!
D&D 5E Sinister secret of Saltmarsh. THEY HECKING BURNED IT DOWN
Right? If rot grubs or green slimes or those bugs that burrow into your ears when you listen at doors show up in a game, "burn it all down" is the sane, rational, problem-solving response!
Ancalagon
Dusty Dragon
I think every adventure designer/writer should consider "what if the heroes burn the X down" because it's frequently NOT the worse solution. Fire is a huge force multiplier. And they shouldn't necessarily kibosh it either - no raillroading!
(BTW, as a GM, you should remember that some bad guys will think of this too. 6 vanilla goblins who want revenge on a level 5 party? They can't defeat them in combat... but they sure can burn the heroes' base down. )
I remember doing this ravenloft adventure (as a player) when we were teenagers. Our PCs had been captured by these super powerful brain-fluid sucking vampires who ran an asylum. The vampires were messing with us and the other "patients". We couldn't fight our way out, because I imagine we were supposed to "find their one weakness" or something (it wasn't too hard to escape in the hallways, but then the vampires would catch us again, beat us up and re-capture us, and suck on our brain juices a bit, giving us more stat penalties). As a player, I got fed up with this and said, once we had escape in the halls again, "We are burning the place down".
The GM protested "But what about the other people in the asylum, the patients, you will kill them!". My reply was "it's been clearly established that these vampires are way too powerful for us to defeat. The people in here are suffering terribly, and these vampires are growing in power. This ends now".
He was mad, but the asylum burned down.
I should find that adventure one day and read it, find out what we were "supposed" to do. To this day, I don't feel it was "my fault" for this going off the rails. Maybe the problem was the rails.
Celebrim
Legend
Pay attention to the significant verbiage Gygax spends in the 8 page versions of 'Steading of the Hill Giant Chieftain' and 'Glacier Rift of Frost Giant Jarl' to the problem of the players burning down the dungeon.
It's a thing, and DMs have to be ready for it.
Believe me, I've been there. I designed a 'haunted house' adventure, and the players decided to not even go inside - just burn the thing down to the ground.
It's a thing, and DMs have to be ready for it.
Believe me, I've been there. I designed a 'haunted house' adventure, and the players decided to not even go inside - just burn the thing down to the ground.
Paul Farquhar
Legend
I designed a haunted house adventure, and the place had already been burned down in the event that caused the haunting. The whole house was a ghost.
Try burning that, adventurers!
Scott Christian
Hero
I think Danger at Dunwater and Salvage Operation (and the rest for that matter) still work perfectly fine even with the house burned down. You will have to improv some of the NPC motives and/or their allegiance. But overall, the adventure still plays without the house. Just not part two, where they flag down the ship. Make that ship leave after seeing the house burned down, and then start planting the clues for Danger elsewhere. Maybe in that freaking creepy woods with the hag? Have some pirates there avoiding the town after the building burned down.
The Black Ferret
Explorer
Sounds like the Shalebridge Cradle from the third Thief game, Deadly Shadows.
David Howery
Hero
heh. I had to grin when I read this one. "PCs... doing what you least expect since 1975"
