Help with minefield room + the Deadly Detour!

playthrough
inspiration
#1

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AlyK6ROGmb0PjiVgHiHsiPPhu2_g?e=DgZ6ag

Hey there, guys! Looking for inspiration & help for a minefield encounter I wanna run! They’re gonna be meeting the “Yoshi” which I am slowly building for this battle.
Here are my notes, I hope people can read 'em! Just poke me with some ideas or if you see glaring issues for it! Thanks!

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AlyK6ROGmb0PjibiyLuBC9I5acJP?e=GuDILg

With that said, here’s the Deadly Detour from the video on YouTube!
My players took three hours to clean it at level 2! We play D&D 5e.

I made every stair you see require a DEX check to climb up and down. Otherwise it was just impossible to move without taking damage. I presented the spikes in this manner to get to the crates: fortunately, no one took damage.

I still don’t know how to explain to my players, in the fantasy, how creatures are immune to things so, if you’ve got any suggestions please do tell!
But I warned my players of the immunity of the insects which attacked every 1d4 rounds… they didn’t get to do much: the lamb PC is a Druid and she befriended all of the giant mosquitos! Even the bigger one! For the other magic player, they had an AC of 20.

By that time, the half-Orc had scouted the barrier and the archers by leaving their patron to cower in his cart: yes, I made it an escort mission! Mwuahaha! And yet, the players really enjoyed this by the end! Thanks Hank!

The players learned about cover as intended and shot down the archers. The next batch came in with a rocket, blew the wizard from her cover before Taldak came in, roaring! He began to hit the barrier down while they readied their actions… aaand it was a short fight because I did not plan for them to make that much damage!! :sweat_smile:

Then they looted the place and got plenty of mysterious items that’ll drive the story and a lovely level up!

I’m gonna say, as a GM, I’ve been starting to use Ready Action & Wait a lot to make battles more dynamic instead of legendary actions: it’s a whole lot more of fun and it makes players think more about their strategy!

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this retelling of our last session! Peace!

#2

Sorry to bump this, but, in fact, I may have forgotten to specify with what I needed some help with! Haha! :rofl:

So, here’s my problem: the game mat is 20 square to 30 square and I would like top be able to remember easily where I placed the mines and the clamps. They are left overs from a nasty fence war between two families of farmers.

The problem is, as you can see in my notes, is that there are A LOT of mines and I don’t quite want to track them all at all time. Plus, I would love to be able to allow multiple ways for my players to detect the mines like using perception or moving slower to accomplish that. In my notes, I call he whole mat ‘‘Difficult Terrain’’, but I think that might not be enough or they may not understand too well, mechanic-side. So, what do you suggest? Perhaps a quick way to generate mines through the perception check, maybe?

And for the Yoshi himself, the encounter has the creature running from one lair to the other and lashing its sticky tongue at the players to pull them in its mad run into the mines then disappear into the lair! The goal is to have players use Ready Action a lot, this time around. Or the Wait Action. Anyway, that’s what I’ve got. Is it too straight forward? Is there a better way to go at it for the monster’s strategy? Maybe I should give it a ‘‘second form’’ to make things interesting?

And, yes, I do plan on making death to that monster quite scary: you know in the Mario games when Yoshi lays an egg of enemies he eat? Well, just like some Witcher monster, this creature turns his preys into his babies, literally laying a fleshy egg from which another one hatch! Mwuahaha! Disgusting but awesome, to me, anyway! XP

#3

In a swamp encounter, I decided that the water would always be too deep three squares from dry land. This let me eyeball every movement to see if the pcs walked into too deep water.

You could also place mines and clamps according to some pattern, like every 3 squares.

However, another possibility is to only specify where they are not, and otherwise give it a percentage chance. So for example,

  • Each normal movement = hard Wis check or step on a mine
  • Normal WIS check to sweep the area for mines = no move, all mines within NEAR are marked on the map (2d6 in total). Moving in this area requires no roll to avoid mines, you step on them if you step on them
#4

I’m too drunk to answer in a coherent fashion.