Tissue-Paper Dungeons?

[Aria Silverhands]

Your house is made of stone?? My house isn't made of stone

Anyone know of a stone wall we can go take our mauls to for some ... er.... research....

Actually, mining picks to break in the stone and then mauls to diminish the cracked rubble would work better.

 

[Leatherhead]

Now, is waiting for the rogue to open locks or the wizard to use Knock a worse alternative than fighting multiple threats on two fronts?

Yes, if you are pressed for time, you shouldn't wait for knock ritual.

Here is something people may not yet realize:

Knock can fail. If it does, that is 10 minutes waisted and there is no indication that the ritual is discreet in the slightest. The denizens of the dungeon now have an additional 10 minutes, at the least, before you can open the lock with Knock to set up.

It takes only a standard action to break down a door, with a STR check as opposed to hacking it apart with a weapon. Not quite enough time to set up an ambush from scratch. Granted, it is a bit harder to break down some doors than others so this will not always work. The next tidbit should be more interesting however.

It only takes a standard action for anyone to pick a lock, that includes people who are not trained in thievery.*

In fact, with aid other, Jack of all Trades, some thieves tools, a good DEX mod, and two minutes time: You stand a good chance to pick any appropriate level lock without skill training. And only need two of the four are required for the heroic tier, but only against reinforced locks. There are also some magic items that help with this check.

As most people here know already, 20 rounds takes approximately 120 seconds. Someone who attempted this is probably going to fail many times before they finally get it. But even if they have to roll 50 times in order to get a high enough number to pass, it is still twice as fast (in game time that is) as trying to cast the ritual.

The use of thievery without nice modifiers is not practical for a skill challenge. On the other hand is it quite possible to attain a decent modifier without skill training, and a full blown skill challenge is a bit odd for simply bypassing a lock.


*: The default rules do not require skill training in thievery to pick a lock, however the rules explicitly state a DM may require training for some uses of thievery. I am considering requiring it, or at least jack of all trades, for this use myself.

 

[Aloïsius]

Your house is made of stone?? My house isn't made of stone

Anyone know of a stone wall we can go take our mauls to for some ... er.... research....

I know some (that's the advantage of living in Europe...). There is a reason why this kind of things has been created :

Unless there is some kind of defect in the wall, a good old wall of stone will laugh at the sledgehammer.

 

[Amurayi]

Casting "Knock from a scroll only takes 5 minutes btw.

 

[azarias]

Kraydak - good lord.

I hadn't clocked that the lack of 'target: object' went beyond the casters' power lists. But yes...by the book, Force Orb and Disintegrate are the only ways of smashing a wall I can see on second reading. Probably missing some, but the powers seem almost exclusively 'target: creature(s)' or area.

Dwarven Fighter: 'I hit the wall with my maul. My mighty maul, Brickduster! Brickduster, Reaver of Walls! No wall shall stand before her!'
DM: 'Okay. You attempt to hit the wall, but somehow...you just can't bring yourself to do it.'
Dwarven Fighter: 'I can't?'
DM: 'Nah. It's just...too easy. The wall is so defenseless...'
Dwarven Fighter: 'What is this, a wall or a bunny?'

It's a shame, actually, since it throws into doubt the 'target: object' listings for Force Orb and Distintegrate.

One for the errata, this, in several regards.

 

[FadedC]

Kraydak - good lord.

I hadn't clocked that the lack of 'target: object' went beyond the casters' power lists. But yes...by the book, Force Orb and Disintegrate are the only ways of smashing a wall I can see on second reading. Probably missing some, but the powers seem almost exclusively 'target: creature(s)' or area.

Dwarven Fighter: 'I hit the wall with my maul. My mighty maul, Brickduster! Brickduster, Reaver of Walls! No wall shall stand before her!'
DM: 'Okay. You attempt to hit the wall, but somehow...you just can't bring yourself to do it.'
Dwarven Fighter: 'I can't?'
DM: 'Nah. It's just...too easy. The wall is so defenseless...'
Dwarven Fighter: 'What is this, a wall or a bunny?'

It's a shame, actually, since it throws into doubt the 'target: object' listings for Force Orb and Distintegrate.

One for the errata, this, in several regards.

Well presumably you can always use basic attacks on the wall. It doesn't seem so unreasonable that you wouldn't be able to for example cleave a wall and kill the minion standing next to it, or trigger a healing surge by smacking the wall.

 

[Filcher]

Two words:

Mine. Collapse.

 

[NMcCoy]

Also, are there really adamantine doors in the DMG? What's the price of adamantite these days? In 3.5, at least, it really wasn't a good idea to make doors out of something worth tens of times its weight in gold. You'd be hard pressed to come up with anything valuable enough to put behind them...

There was a certain large and popular adventure that featured a large adamantine gate at one point. After we'd defused the traps...

Me, the sorcerer: "Wait, you said the gate itself isn't magical? SWEET! (To the Hulking Hurler in the party) What's your maximum load?
Ahem... Fabricate!"

Cue much entertainment from the 500-pound Adamantine Spiked Ball Of Doom, and a resolution to come back for the rest of the gate once we'd dealt with the dungeon. (Out of character, the DM didn't want to give us access to several billion GP worth of adamantine, and we reluctantly agreed, for now.)

"But... why would they put something like that in a dungeon if they didn't want us to take it?"

 

[azarias]

FadedC - haven't got the PHB handy, but if you look up the power reading for basic attack (it's in there), I reckon it says 'target: creature'. Happy to be corrected.

 

[jadrax]

"But... why would they put something like that in a dungeon if they didn't want us to take it?"

I once had a set of players, who having dispatched the evil wizard and the denizens of his tower, then spent a month patching the tower up and putting it on the property market.