New houserule: Dungeons and caves are absolutely full of things that will hurt unwary adventurers, easily avoided when moving at dungeon exploration speed. If moving faster than that, a hazard is encountered every 100 feet. 2-in-6 chance that it activates, starting with the person in front and repeating until someone is affected. 1d6 damage per dungeon level seems appropriate.
yeah, that's a pretty intense level of specificity even for a houserule.
This is similar to a problem that emerged while domains at war was being developed. People noticed that carniverous mounted units were way more expensive relative to their power. Alex pointed out this is a realistic portrayal of the cost of feeding them, and this led to a series of increasingly specific rules for the riding wolves to eat captured foes, but causing a morale if those eaten were of the same race as other troops, etc. etc.
Each campaign is a law unto itself. This means that the Judge has the purview to allow things to happen or not happen based on what kind of world they're trying to create AND how they're players play. In my campaign, I've been able to just roll random encounters a little more often, be vaguer with descriptions whenever my players choose to run, and always trigger traps. That's been enough for them to just stick to exploration movement. Other players might push that premise a bit harder, in which case the judge is going to need to make rulings that make sense for the kind of game they're looking to run. Maybe the kind of dungeons they make are such that, after you clear enough of it out, it actually DOESN'T matter if you run all about, so I'd say let the players if it's that important to them.
The important thing is to understand the intent of why the rules exist, and this much we know: slower movement drains resources in one form or another, either from expiring torches, spells running out, or increased random encounters. Once you understand the mechanical purpose, you can decide if you want to try to enforce the game's assumed norm or what the impact will be if you let it slide. For example, if you, say, let players hustle and cover distances in 1 minute instead of 1 turn, spells that last 1 or more turns become better and fewer torches will be needed.
One of the challenges of newer editions of D&D, especially ones with a focus on organized play, is that things have to be balanced around what the most min-maxy of powergamers will do with a corpus of mechanics, and it ends up making a lot of cool effects unusable because they need to be adequately balanced against something not everyone is going to do. Similarly, the rules for exploring a dungeon would be interminable if they were built around what the most abusive groups could do with enough thought. Each rules-set has to pick a point where they hand things off to the judge and let them decide how to handle situations that arise that don't necessarily make sense.
Anyway, that's my 2 coppers. TL;DR: knowing the mechanical purpose of the rules should be enough for individual judges to make up their own set of outcomes when players run in the dungeon.
Very sage advice, Jard. I very much agree.
[quote="tire_ak"]
New houserule: Dungeons and caves are absolutely full of things that will hurt unwary adventurers, easily avoided when moving at dungeon exploration speed. If moving faster than that, a hazard is encountered every 100 feet. 2-in-6 chance that it activates, starting with the person in front and repeating until someone is affected. 1d6 damage per dungeon level seems appropriate.
[/quote]
Does it work the same while in combat or all these "things that hurt" magically disappear when you start to fight someone and have to move around?
Jard, agreed and I appreciate the in-depth response! I tend to reach for the "2-in-6 that your plan works fine" when I don't have any better idea of what to do.
Ulfhrafn, no idea! I'm just trying to create a rule for every possible situation to make Alex's second ruleset easier.
[quote="tire_ak"]
1d6 damage per dungeon level seems appropriate.
[/quote]
On a game standpoint, I think this seems like a reasonable way of keeping the incentive relevant, but from the standpoint of the guy who has to narrate this,... What sort of ABSURD TRASH is hanging out on the floor that's worse than being stabbed four times?
You descend into the sixth circle of the dungeon. The walls are lined with eldritch runes and pictograms showing supplication to demons, the beauty of which brings a tear to your eye. Some of them menace with spikes of obsidian. There's a small pool in the crevasse formed by a missing brick that's attracted a swarm of skeletal wasps. A discarded Eldritch Soupcan rolls gently on the floor, its sharp Octiron lid constantly rotating, ready to slash the unwary.
[quote="susan_brindle"]
1d6 damage per dungeon level seems appropriate.
-tire_ak
On a game standpoint, I think this seems like a reasonable way of keeping the incentive relevant, but from the standpoint of the guy who has to narrate this,... What sort of ABSURD TRASH is hanging out on the floor that's worse than being stabbed four times?
You descend into the sixth circle of the dungeon. The walls are lined with eldritch runes and pictograms showing supplication to demons, the beauty of which brings a tear to your eye. Some of them menace with spikes of obsidian. There's a small pool in the crevasse formed by a missing brick that's attracted a swarm of skeletal wasps. A discarded Eldritch Soupcan rolls gently on the floor, its sharp Octiron lid constantly rotating, ready to slash the unwary.
[/quote]
If one were to insist on going down this path, it's probably better for it to not be constant but to be a constant risk. IE: there are eldritch runes etched into roughly 25% of hallway intersections, which create a pillar of hellfire if you step in them, dealing 12d6 damage. As long as when you run, you don't bump into it, you're fine. Still pretty hacky, and i think not something that lends itself to a codified system. Better to come up with a naturalistic and specific explanation when it's appropriate and spring it on the players. Maybe they successfully run through the dungeon (no doubt already a CCR parody song) without consequence several times, but then one time you lay a real brutal gotcha on them, and make it clear it could only happen because they were bumbling around at top speed. Now they understand that being incautious gives you permission to do much worse things to them than normal.