Why you shouldn't use 5 ft corridors

[Drowbane]

blahblah...<snip>....blah

Hey, good to see that you're sticking with Paizo for Pathfinder! As to the 5ft corridor thing... it all depends on what type of dungeon it is and what is going on there. I don't know the Module that Merric mentioned (there is no honor?), but if its a den of thieves, then bigger corridors wouldn't make much sense.

When possible, I favor 10ft corridors... but I wouldn't use them just to make it easier on the PCs.

 

[Vigilance]

I'm fine with house ruling when necessary.

However, if you need to house rule to play an Official D&D adventure, then I reckon there's something wrong with the adventure.

Cheers!

Right, but the way you told the story (at least the way I read it), you had two players watching a combat, twiddling their thumbs, because you wouldn't allow four people to occupy two 5-foot squares.

Id say a little more flexibility might be called for. I am willing to flat-out BREAK rules if I see bored PCs, especially when the solution would be to, I dunno, allow them to step into the room?

 

[Odysseus]

Suggested Tactics in confined spaces:


Anything else people can suggest?

Cheers!

My suggestion with a mell orientated party as you described would be to , moon, taunt, and insult the monsters till they chased you into a bigger room. Then fight them

I belive the problem here is not the 5' corridors but the number of encounters in 5' corridors. If you have more than a couple of melee orinentated characters in the party. The party is better at fighting in bigger spaces. So unless the party is good at manipulaing when and where the encounters are fought. Alot of encounters in 5' corridors can get somewhat fustrating.
As Mr Jacobs pointed 5' corridors are realistic. And so should be part of any dungeon design. However that doesn't mean all the encounters should be there, or that the party has to fight all their battle in them.

 

[hoyerhan reborn]

I agree with MerricB, and have had similar experiences (though I have not played this dungeon).

The 5ft hallways are boring in a party with several melee combatants. Some of you have suggested tactics which MerricB have proven to not work at low levels (tumbling, high level spells).

Others have mentioned withdrawing to an advantageous position. While this is a possible tactic, the iniative system discourages this as essentially it causes the group to act on the iniative of the slowest person in the group. Also, it is really bad if everyone flees but the last person is overtaken by the monster (grappled, dying, etc). Moreover, in MerricB's example, the monster would get a "free" attack in an attack of opportunity on the PC in the small room when he withdraws.

In the end a withdrawal might not cause the monster to blindly follow them anyway, and rather withdraw to a strategic position itself, or worse, alert the rest of the dungeon inhabitants.

As a curiosity, hallways usually wasn't used in medieval dungeons in the first place. And really, a lot of the corridors in the map presented doesn't make sense at all. Why have corridors between two rooms? Corridors were invented so that you didn't have to enter all rooms to get to the other end of the castle.

In conclusion I think I'm with Hong in avoiding dungeons altogether

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'm fine with house ruling when necessary.

However, if you need to house rule to play an Official D&D adventure, then I reckon there's something wrong with the adventure.

Or with the RAW?

The ability of two people to fight within a 5 x 5 square, and the inability to have more than 9 people fighting in a 15 x 15 room, is a rules problem, not an adventure problem, IMHO.

I am with those others who have said they have no problem with 5-foot corridors. Not all encounters are supposed to be easy; creatures should be able to use tactics suited to them (and have appropriate lairs).

To me, this is a lot more fun than contrived encounters designed to allow dogpiles.

RC

 

[Derren]

I also have no problem with 5 ft. wide corridors. After all they do make sense from a defensive standpoint and using narrow corridors to create easily defensible positions has been used extensivly in fortress and city design.

And there are enough ways to deal with such corridors besides charging. Lure the enemies out with ranged weapons, smoke them out , etc.
Just because the party does not use all tactics availiable you shouldn't be forced to use certain logical dungeon designs.

 

[Hussar]

Let's not forget something here. The enemies in TINH are intelligent and rogues to boot. Taunting them out isn't really going to work. Why would they bother leaving their nice defensible choke point just because you are taunting them?

Having run into the Large Monster in a Small Room thing a lot of times, I can honestly say that given the choice between small and realistic vs large and freewheeling, I'll take free wheeling.

Heck, for rogues, more space is better anyway. They can much more easily flank if they can move around a bit more.

 

[coyote6]

However, if you need to house rule to play an Official D&D adventure, then I reckon there's something wrong with the adventure.

I'd say there's something wrong with Official D&D, myself.

If I was playing, and we went into a secret thieves' den (which is what this is, right?), and it was big and roomy, with 10 ft-wide corridors, I would probably begin to mock the whole setup. "What is this, the Mall of America? And the locals can't find it? But our first level PCs can? Uh, maybe we should pitch in and buy the locals some scrolls of remove blindness."

 

[Raven Crowking]

Let's not forget something here. The enemies in TINH are intelligent and rogues to boot. Taunting them out isn't really going to work. Why would they bother leaving their nice defensible choke point just because you are taunting them?

So, nice defensible choke points are good for our intelligent rogues!

Heck, for rogues, more space is better anyway. They can much more easily flank if they can move around a bit more.

Or are they?

Colour me confused!

 

[el-remmen]

Who is it that has that sig about the rules serving the game and not vice-versa?

I think this is a perfect example. This is D&D! Make up something reasonable that works and run with it and never worry (or complain) about it again.