Fighting in narrow tunnels

[warpmind]

Last saturday I was DMing an adventure in which my players had a not very friendly experience with some ghouls and ghasts in a very long 5 feet wide corridor. When the action began I realised that I had an annoying lack of rules for fighting in such narrow areas.

I found it rather strange for fighters to wield two-handed battleaxes, or for archers to use bows in narrow areas (I think crossbows should be far more appropiate for tunnels, ask dwarves and drows if you want ). I didn't know also how to made ghouls and ghasts exchange their positions in these tunnels. I house-ruled that it takes a full round action for any creature (which hasn't got the tumble skill) to exchange his position with another in one-square wide tunnels but I would like some "official" rule on this.

I haven't found anything in the DMG and I wanted to know if there exists any supplement covering these rules.

Help please!

If not I'll have to make a journey to the House Rules forum.

 

[Crothian]

Actually, this is one of the topics that is covered in Book of Challenges.

 

[mikebr99]

You can freely move through an allies square. One Ghoul is in melee with one of the PCs... the 2nd Ghoul charges through the 1st Ghoul and Bullrushes the 1st PC to knock him out of his square to allow the 2nd Ghoul a free square to stop in.

 

[0-hr]

You can freely move through an ally's square but you cannot stop in it. Archers trying to fire past people in a narrow tunnle would be suffering some serious cover penalties from their fiends in front of them. House rules are really only needed if two people try to occupy the same 5ft space and do anything other than fall prone.

Also, check under "Move Through" in the PHB. That disucsses how to charge your way past bad guys.

 

[shilsen]

Archers trying to fire past people in a narrow tunnle would be suffering some serious cover penalties from their fiends in front of them.

Sounds like my party

 

[kreynolds]

I found it rather strange for fighters to wield two-handed battleaxes, or for archers to use bows in narrow areas

Well, all you need is an empty 5-foot square to be able to properly wield a non-reach weapon, such as a battleaxe or greatsword.

(I think crossbows should be far more appropiate for tunnels, ask dwarves and drows if you want ).

I can promise you that dwarves would staunchly diagree about battleaxes not being effective in tunnels.

 

[dcollins]

There are penalties for being entirely prone on PH p. 132, Table 8-8. (attacks at -4 melee, no bows except crossbows; defense at -4 AC melee, +4 AC ranged). Under "Favorable and Unfavorable Conditions" on the same page, the DM is directed to judge other penalties using this table as a guide. Half the prone penalties (-2/+2) sounds reasonable and matches the sitting/kneeling/climbing/off-balance modifiers. Perhaps that could be waived for light weapons.

 

[Pax]

Dcollins, light weapons and thrust-only toys like spears, IMO. For example, light or not, a rapier or short spear is largely a poke-and-prode weapon, and needs very little lateral room to operate at full efficiency.

Alternately, people could try and find equivalent weapons in 1E/2E (I seem to recall good rules for this in UA), where IIRC there were rules on space needed for each weapon to be used correctly.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Actually, I would imagine bows being quite effective in narrow tunnels--it's the short tunnels with low roofs that would cause a problem for bows.

Similarly, while it might be difficult to use a viking style lonsword, a scythe or a saxon greataxe in such an area, a two handed sword could be used to thrust quite effectively (as it was often used in real life). I don't imagine that a cut and thrust style sword would have too many problems either. A warhammer or heavy pick would probably be usable as well. Even so, a longspear would be better than either of them.

I suppose that's the difficulty with creating rules for this kind of thing based on size category or perceived damage type. Rather than going for realism in such instances, I'd just have straight categories: "you can't do that" (greataxe in a 3'x3' tunnel), it'll be difficult, -4 to hit for using a weapon in a way it's not supposed to be used (greataxe in the 3'x10' tunnel), and "no problem; I'm not going to worry about that level of realism" (greataxe in a 5'x8' tunnel).

 

[boothbey]

A five foot by five foot square is the standard area for a medium sized character to occupy in combat. A character should have no problems fighting in this tunnel. That character would be blocking the hall for anyone behind him though.

I would impose penalties for two people fighting side by side in the hall and would only allow thrusting weapons to be used in this instance.

Smaller creatures could be quite effective in this situation, they occupy less space and could double team the player character serving as the party front line. When one of the little critters is killed could be plenty more to reinforce the gap. aaaand if a couple of the critters behind had a box or something to stand on, he could easily fire missile weapons over the heads of his allies and hit the taller players.