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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Croesus" data-source="post: 7117847" data-attributes="member: 35019">A couple hazards I used in a "Journey to the Center of the Earth" side-trek:1. Descend a shaft deep into the earth. The party used rope and pitons, but were set upon by a horde of stirges part way down. They came up with multiple options, such as fighting the stirges while hanging onto the ropes (not a great option, but workable), readying actions to cut the ropes, then have the wizard cast feather fall and hope they reached the bottom in 1 minute (a really bad option, given how deep the shaft was), or the evoker wizard saying "heck with it" and casting fireball, excluding the party members (simplest option). There were other options, but those were the ones they thought of and it made the encounter a bit more memorable. It also used up some resources, which was important because...2. After several encounters, they reached the ancient city with the McGuffin. A dense evil fog covered the area. The fog made it impossible to rest and recover (it caused terrible nightmares and hallucinations). The party had to choose whether to backtrack out of the fog, losing an entire day during which the bad guys might beat them to the McGuffin, or push forward with fewer resources. Neither choice would stop the mission. If the bad guys got the McGuffin first, then the party could still try to track them down or otherwise interfere with their plans. If they fought and lost, the bad guys would have just taunted them, grabbed the McGuffin, then left. If the party won the fight (which they did, barely), they get the McGuffin and get to taunt the bad guys. Another one used in the same campaign: Lake of lava, bad guy performing ritual at the end of narrow stone path through the lava. Blocking the stone path were dozens of flaming skeletons. How do they get to the bad guy and stop the ritual in time? The wizard cast fly on the rogue, who flew over the skeletons. Another character cast water walk on everyone, which allowed a raging barbarian to run across the lava (taking half damage). Another barbarian found an unblocked path to the bad guy and raced through, taking multiple opportunity attacks. The rest of the party occupied the skeletons. Oh, and there was a red dragon swimming in the lava, popping up now and then to breathe on everyone. Great fun! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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