Escaping a collapsing tunnel

[Asmor]

In the off chance one of my players is reading this, STAY OUT!

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I'm planning a scene for my game tomorrow where the PCs are in a cavern, and when they take the load-bearing MacGuffin, the whole place starts to collapse.

It's a party of 7 people, with at least one wearing full plate (one player just joined last session and I'm not sure what kind of armor he's wearing), so unfortunately I can't be too dastardly in my rules or else he's pretty much a dead man.

Basically, here's what I intend to do:

The place immediately begins to rumble. 3 rounds after the MacGuffin's taken, the place starts collapsing. I mark off a 20-inch line on the battlemat, with every inch representing 50 feet. Basically just used as a visual indicator of progress for the players, I'll be keeping track of their actual progress on paper. Every round, 2d4x10 feet of tunnel collapses.

Now, if it were just a straight "run run run" affair, it wouldn't be terribly fun, now would it? So I've got two rules to keep things interesting.

1: Due to the shaking, anyone running at greater than 3x their normal speed has to make DC 10 balance checks every round or trip. This here is also to throw a bone to the plate PC, since he can't run more than 3x his normal speed anyways.

2: Every round, for every character, I roll a d% to see if they need to avoid falling debris with a reflex save, DC as follows:
1: DC 30
2-5: DC 25
6-10: DC 20
11-20: DC 15
21-100: No save required

If a save is failed, the character takes 2d6 damage and is knocked prone.
If a save is failed by 5 or more, the character is also pinned and requires a strength check to be pulled free, DC 5 less than the original reflex save.
If a character fails by 10 or more, he also makes a fortitude save or is knocked unconscious, DC 10 less than the original reflex save.

Example: I roll a 3 for Sobek and he has to make a DC 25 reflex save. He rolls 12. He takes 2d6 damage, is knocked prone and pinned by falling rock requiring a DC 20 strength check to be freed, and must now make a DC 15 fort save or be knocked unconscious.

The party is comprised of characters in the 6-8 range, mostly rogue and fighter types (only caster is a druid/ranger). Do you think this sounds like a good challenge, too difficult, or too easy? Worth noting that I'd like at least some of them to be able to stay well ahead of the collapsing tunnel, because I have... complications of the land-shark variety planned at the end while it's still collapsing.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

That sounds pretty good..

One thing I did in a recent game that worked *very* well... we had the standard 'wall of fire moving in during combat'. problem. The wall was listed with a move of 30' per round, supposed to close in on the good guys. I had 5 players and 1 set of bad guys, so I gave the wall a 5' movement rate *per initiative action*....

Someone would move, the wall would inch forward

Despite the fact that the Wall was a Red Twizzler and was often at risk for being eaten... this mechanic added alot to the encounter.

So, my suggesting is to have your falling ceiling drop on a similar rate, perhaps each iterative action roll 1D20 to determine the number of feet that collapse.

This may seem like really fast, but your group will have at least a 2 round head start... thats 120' that the ceiling needs to catch up on before being dangerous.

For the falling debris, I would probably go with a single roll for the entire group.. way too many dice rolling for everyone.

You could do this on a map, allowing for various terrain issues, by 'recycling' a map sheet. Track the overall location on a strip near your side where each square = the width of the map you have, then the PCs wrap from one side to the next.. people just have to remember that they may be right next to each other on the map and still be almost a hundred feet apart.

The overall location strip gives your players a feeling of how far the 'finish' line is.

Add in a sprinkling of special terrain, like a partially blocking rock fall, fallen pillars, or chasm... test out those Jump/Climb/Balance skills.

Not too many cause, like I said.. thats a lot of dice rolls
Oh, and be prepared to slightly fudge the rock fall distances a couple round before it gets to squich your PCs to death... close is one thing, TPK is another!

JMHO

 

[Asmor]

I like the inching idea... 1d20 is a bit too much (averages out to around 75 feet per round), but 1d12 is pretty good (averages out to 45 feet a round, which is pretty close to the 50 feet you get from 2d4x10).

I do find it mildly ironic that you're looking for so many ways to streamline the number of dice rolls and your first suggestion is changing one die roll to 7, though.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Umm.. Ya I guess I did

But in my defence, the suggested 7 rolls per round is a straight 'roll this and move the marker' as opposed to the falling damage of 7 rolls to determine the DC of up to 7 more rolls... a bit easier to adjudicate


And yea, D12 would probably work better

 

[Felnar]

why streamline the rolls?
do you streamline rolls for combat too? do the 8 attacking orcs share one die roll?
its encounters like this that let the rogues/monks shine, and make the wizard consider Lightning Reflexes

generate some rough terrain and let those chasms open up
let the barbarian sunder/knock-over a stalagmite to make a bridge

and for more variety, have a large stone block most of the path and use squeezing rules to get past (give small characters a bonus?)

also, note that falling debris could be considered a trap (several are presented in the DMG) which could give some use to the barbarian and rogues trap sense ability
and your 1) ground shaking/balance checks rule is covered by the hewn-stone floor requiring checks for running charging

encountering debris piles and falling stone traps on the way into the cavern could be foreboding
overall it sounds like a very interesting encounter and a good change of pace
if you have spare time you could do a practice run of a couple hundred feet, see what happens

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

why streamline the rolls?
do you streamline rolls for combat too? do the 8 attacking orcs share one die roll?

I assume this was in reference to my comment that one roll for falling debris should be made?

That suggestion was in reference to the option #2 of rolling % every round, for every character to determine the REF Save DC for that character. Smoother, IMO, to roll for the entire group instead of each character.

But yes, Trap-finding and Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Dungeneering.. and even stone-cunning should provide a bonus to the REF save... perhaps a simple synergy-like bonus of +2.