Tissue-Paper Dungeons?

[Family]

That's funny because I was once a member of a party that colapsed a wizards tower...the whole thing...less loot and experience, but the memory was worth it.

(DM just used the same floor plan and other prep (inverted) as our next dungeon, but boy was he gobsmacked by our plan).

 

[FadedC]

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.

I didn't even realize basic attacks had power readings, but apparently they do and you are correct. I'll take that to mean that you shouldn't necesarily even use an attack system to resolve breaking down walls, although I'll be the first to admit that it's more likely that they didn't think it through that far .

 

[redwulf25_ci]

Question is, how 'cinematically/dramatically appropriate' is spending 10 minutes to bypass some nonimportant door using Knock ?

If it's not important then why was the lock too difficult for the rogue to pick?

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Really, I'd think the big problem is that knock takes ten minutes.

Also, while telling the party there's monsters coming from the sounds is fine, telling them "Oh, and SUDDENLY THERE'S TEN MILLION MONSTERS BECAUSE YOU GUYS BROKE MY RULES D:<" is not.

Lastly, yeah...yeah, what happened to "REAL WORLD? PSH MORE LIKE BORING WORLD, WE'RE FANTASY HEROES, HOOOOOOOOOOOO!" there, eh? So I can kill a towering and murderous dragon who was powerful and wise decades before I was even born, a veritable avatar of destruction, but...I can't quite handle a door?

 

[Eldorian]

Knock isn't for doors. Thieves picks and axes are for doors. Knock is for vaults.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

Well...to tell you the truth most dungeon walls should be able to be tunneled through. The problem is that it would take a really long time. Stone can be tunneled through with picks, hammers, and such, but it takes a while. I don't see why an arrow or sword would perform this task more quickly than tools that were specifically designed for the task, even if those swords deal 5d10+x in a player's hand. The fact is, the sword itself still only deals 1d10 damage. Think about that.

The reason PC powers do more and more damage is because they are attacking things that take relevant damage from those attacks being more practiced and precise. Arrows aren't suddenly hitting harder, they're hitting better, but that doesn't apply if a ranger is trying to bow a stone wall to death.

Oh, and:

Player: "I blast down this wall with magic missile, lol."
DM: "No."

 

[Ydars]

Weapons can't be used to demolish solid stone; period. They break rather nastily if you hit a tree with them (I have seen this a few times now) let alone something more solid.

Hitting a stone wall with a sledgehammer is not the same as hitting solid stone; the mortar crumbles very easily with any wall whereas the solid stone just throws all the energy back at you and severely damages the obkect attacking it.

Also, metal weapons are made of very brittle steel along the edges whilst the "blades" tend to be flexible; hit something hard with them and you would ruin them permanently.

Before explosives, some stone materials were virtually IMPOSSIBLE to cut through by hand (for this read so difficult that it was not worth bothering). Therefore most mining was through softer rocks. The rock stone-henge is made out of (sarcen) is SO hard that the only way to dress it was to get a head-sized lump of sarcen in an A frame and just spend all day banging it against the big stone (for MONTHS if not years).

I can't see that this is possible for adventurers.

I think that there are many occasions, no matter what WoTC would like, where the DM has to adjudicate and overule the rule set where players are trying to take it into places where it breaks down.

So only let "mining" happen if you want it in your game; it is NOT realistic, but hey, this is gaming!

 

[Incenjucar]

That's funny because I was once a member of a party that colapsed a wizards tower...the whole thing...less loot and experience, but the memory was worth it.

(DM just used the same floor plan and other prep (inverted) as our next dungeon, but boy was he gobsmacked by our plan).

Pick of Earth Parting in 2E.

<3

 

[Baron Opal]

Well, it took me about three hours to bust up and cart away a two-brick thick shell about 3' x 6' x 2'. It was pretty fun, actually. Now, the brick does crush more than stone, but I figure that someone in better shape and with a magical implement could do a pretty good job on a foot thick stone wall.

That said, I certainly wouldn't allow any serious mining to occur in a dungeon without attacking a lot of monster attention. It takes a lot of time, particularly without modern tools. Or, magic.

 

[Grazzt]

When players try hacking through dungeon walls in my game, weapons start breaking.

This.