Thursday, March 7, 2013

At The Table: Breaking Through Walls

Picture this situation: You have a well-prepared prepared boss encounter with nicely-arranged arena and list of tactics the boss will use. The plan calls for the boss to disable the party's main attacker and then flee when his health gets low. Everything goes according to plan until the boss attempts to make his escape. The PCs roll well and shrug off the boss's disabling attack. When he tries to escape instead of being forced to let him go the party pursue. The boss throws open his secret door and dashes out of the building, with the party hot on his heels.... And then what?

In this kind of situation it's easy for a DM to get flustered. Suddenly the action is outside of your nicely-planned arena and quite possibly outside of the dungeon entirely. The PCs are still immersed in the action but any significant break in the pace will quickly break that immersion. What you need to do is keep the action moving, break through the walls of your dungeon, and let the fight break out into the street/woodlands/fire-plains outside.

Here are some things to consider that will make it easier to let the action break out of the dungeon.

1. What's the lay of the land?

This is simply a starting point. Where is the dungeon? Is it a cave on a mountainside or a nondescript townhouse's basement? What kind of weather and terrain might be found outside of such a location? What time is it?

2. What's typically found in that environment?

A carefully-planned arena will generally feature obstacles and random set dressing that provide cover for players and enemies or generally make combat more interesting and dynamic. Adhoc locations outside of your planned dungeon need these things as well. A hillside outside a cave may be wooded or littered with boulders. A city street may have various buildings, carriages, merchant's stalls, and lamp posts. If you're not sure what the environment will look like or have in it I recommend looking online for pictures of similar environments for inspiration.

3. What's going on outside?

Once you've answered 1 and 2 this is easy. A city street in daytime will have random people just going about their business. At night it will be empty save for vagrants and night-owls. For outdoors locations roll a die to determine the weather. In the wilderness you can optionally roll a random encounter to add unexpected monsters to the encounter, saying they were drawn by the noise of battle. 

4. How will people/things outside react?

Wild animals may flee or attack. Rough terrain may shift and slide. In cities the reaction to a battle will vary with the city's lawfulness and general danger level. Citizens in very dangerous cities may regard the party's battle with complete apathy, or possibly even aid the villain.

5. Don't Hesitate

When the party take things off the rails mid-encounter, just start drawing more stuff on your battle mat like it was always there. You can fill in details as you describe them, just keep your tone of voice the same as during the battle, keep using the initiative order from the previous battle, and get back to the action as quickly as possible.

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