Staging a Collapse Escape in Dungeons and Dragons?
Something that I've wanted to do for a while in a D&D game was recreate a skin-of-their-teeth escape from a collapsing ruin with my party. We're talking Last Crusade, where Indy and co escape from the temple after the grail crosses the seal. Actually, I think Dr. Jones pulled this one a couple of times.... The floors are literally falling out from under them and they make it out of the temple/mine/ruin/whathaveyou just as it collapses/explodes/implodes.
Here's how I'm thinking of implementing it.
Take a large hallway. Have the PCs have fought through it earlier. Make it fairly long, several times the average move speed of your party, and somewhat wide. Possibly cut it in half with a door or some trap that the PCs have to circumvent, and quickly. Sprinkle some monsters in to give the party some obstacles to over come that are dynamic. Start the PCs off just outside the hall. Just as initiative starts, the whole complex begins to shake. Mechanically, this level of instability causes the party to move at half speed. Really, all creatures should move at half speed unless they have flight/hover. Possibly allow for full movement with hard athletics/acrobatics checks.
After the first round, the floor around where the PCs entered drops. It doesn't completely collapse, but it's definitely down far enough that you'd have to make a good jump to reach the still "stable" ground. During the second round, more terrain drops and the original fall area actually collapses into a chasm. Repeat once more with a larger area. Each subsequent round, instead of dropping the terrain will simply collapse, and each round the loss progressively gets larger. At the "halfway" point, have debris start to rain down that begins to choke the width (reducing by 2 overall each turn) and cause the terrain near the collapsed region to become difficult terrain. Might allow for "islands" that are around/on support pillars that don't collapse until a bit after their surroundings.
I might have the middle of the hallway start to collapse ahead of the bulk, preventing a "straight down the middle" run.
I think this whole escape should take 10 rounds at the most. Given my understanding of a six second round in DnD, although I'm not sure this is still accurate, that means that in roughly a minute your party will have sprinted all out down the corridor. To speed things up, I might have the drop and collapse happen on middle and end initiative counts, roughly cutting a 10 round escape into 5. (1 minute to 30 seconds, a bit more of a time crunch).
I'm thinking about trying this with various sized halls to see how long it'd take a party to make it through. I'll start with a roughly 25-ish square by 6 or 8-ish square area and do a few iterations up and down to see how it plays out in theory.
Anyone out there have any ideas that I could stand to improve with, or does anyone spot any pittfalls in my plan?
Here's how I'm thinking of implementing it.
Take a large hallway. Have the PCs have fought through it earlier. Make it fairly long, several times the average move speed of your party, and somewhat wide. Possibly cut it in half with a door or some trap that the PCs have to circumvent, and quickly. Sprinkle some monsters in to give the party some obstacles to over come that are dynamic. Start the PCs off just outside the hall. Just as initiative starts, the whole complex begins to shake. Mechanically, this level of instability causes the party to move at half speed. Really, all creatures should move at half speed unless they have flight/hover. Possibly allow for full movement with hard athletics/acrobatics checks.
After the first round, the floor around where the PCs entered drops. It doesn't completely collapse, but it's definitely down far enough that you'd have to make a good jump to reach the still "stable" ground. During the second round, more terrain drops and the original fall area actually collapses into a chasm. Repeat once more with a larger area. Each subsequent round, instead of dropping the terrain will simply collapse, and each round the loss progressively gets larger. At the "halfway" point, have debris start to rain down that begins to choke the width (reducing by 2 overall each turn) and cause the terrain near the collapsed region to become difficult terrain. Might allow for "islands" that are around/on support pillars that don't collapse until a bit after their surroundings.
I might have the middle of the hallway start to collapse ahead of the bulk, preventing a "straight down the middle" run.
I think this whole escape should take 10 rounds at the most. Given my understanding of a six second round in DnD, although I'm not sure this is still accurate, that means that in roughly a minute your party will have sprinted all out down the corridor. To speed things up, I might have the drop and collapse happen on middle and end initiative counts, roughly cutting a 10 round escape into 5. (1 minute to 30 seconds, a bit more of a time crunch).
I'm thinking about trying this with various sized halls to see how long it'd take a party to make it through. I'll start with a roughly 25-ish square by 6 or 8-ish square area and do a few iterations up and down to see how it plays out in theory.
Anyone out there have any ideas that I could stand to improve with, or does anyone spot any pittfalls in my plan?