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One time when they were abusing something similar to this I had another adventurer group show up and clear the dungeon. By the time the group came out everything was dead and looted. They eventually became rivals with this random group I created, and it became theme where they would try to out do each other. Both groups eventually came together to deal with the big bad, the NPC group I created sacrificed most of themselves holding off a large force of undead while the PC's worked their way through a liches lair. The only surviving member of the NPC group stayed in their keep, an old enemy became a long time friend.
I object to 'using it as it is intended' as 'abuse'. If you don't want the PCs to do it, you don't give them it to begin with. In my books, if the players have it, they're allowed to use it, and I won't punish them for doing it.
@@ChristopherLaHaise Fair point, "abuse" probably isn't the right word. However, players should not expect "video game logic." In this case the players do get to use Tiny Hut as intended -- they got a safe long rest. He didn't even try to pull some Dispel Magic card with a sudden ambush (which might have been reasonable, depending on the situation, but would have been much harsher). There are risks involved when using Tiny Hut in some situations. Time continues to pass. Intelligent bad guys will have several hours to respond accordingly, and other events may transpire in the meantime. Outside of a dungeon, sure, Tiny Hut will almost always mean "no nighttime ambushes." But personally I very rarely pull nighttime ambushes as a DM, anyway. Only if it really made sense in terms of what was going on in the story. E.g., if the players freely choose to camp in an area that they already know, based on clear previous information, is regularly patrolled by bandits / baddies / etc., it would be reasonable to set a probability of ambush and roll dice some dice in secret.
I really like this option as a way to give the player a reminder that the world don't stop working when they rest. It's an annoying consequence without it being deadly.
DM Lair: How long you have DM'ed, is not necessarily an indication of how good you are. Also DM Lair: Hi. I'm Luke and I have been a DM since highschool. 😂
I've been DM since before Like was born My best campaign was nearly 40 years ago. Having good players with similar concept of what the game is about makes a big difference.
@@Danny191 Pretty sure it was on purpose, and unless there have been multiple occasions (which there very well might've been) I'm pretty sure it was: "I've been high school since Dungeon Master."
Definitely depends on the dungeon, obviously. Not every dungeon is occupied by intelligent beings, with organized patrols. Sometimes, one intelligent enemy sets up deep inside, and lets the rest fill with random denizens to deter unwanted guests. As for walking across the map, I’m a nerd. There’s always something happening in most of my world. They’ll stumble across something, no matter where they go.
yeah, its one of those "depending on the situation, you might get away with it." sort of things. a mega dungeons with lots of empty rooms? you might get a random encounter or two. but if it's like a crypt filled with zombies and mindless undead? even if they find you, they won't care.. but yeah, taking a long rest in a temple complex or a hobgoblin LAIR? what did you think was going to happen? (also, I hate 5E tiny hut with the heat of 1000 suns, it was never ever designed to be a bulletproof bunker but a protection from weather spell)
I agree, you'll have some mindless mooks or instinct driven entities roaming around as well as scattered intelligent things that can think and act freely, I'd play it by how bad off the party is, if they're just resting up to regain a couple spells and a few hp, pfft eff that, ambush the hell out of them... if they got roughed up really bad let 'em have the rest
Our first time in the Underdark our GM had a hooked horror crawl across the ceiling and just hang there watching our hut. During one of the watches it came down and slowly scrapped at the dome for a couple hours until it finally moved on... It instilled a nice level of paranoia in us.
Most dungeons would react though. A single intelligent “boss” is going to want to know if enemies are coming or if their minions have been killed. Animals and undead would be curious of new structures and smells. Even a tomb full of traps would probably have a magical means of resetting, else it would have been looted due to attrition. Essentially, the DM can always have a reason if they want one.
The DM isn't restricted by the dungeon, they can make it whatever they want. Even if most of the creatures aren't fully intelligent they may have a basic understanding that alerting the intelligent villain about things being out of place may get them rewarded.
One time, my players barricaded themselves in a room in a dungeon to take a rest. They blocked the doors with furniture from the room. Just to mess with them, when they woke up, the furniture was all stacked in a corner, the doors were all open, and their heads were freshly shaven. They never did learn quite how that all happened.
I don’t see a power tripping DM, as it didn’t seem as if he punished the players from that little bit. It more seemed like him messing with them a bit.
Wow the first/second idea while dealing with tiny hut is amazing 🤣 going to give that one a try for sure. “As a fresh new day sits upon the horizon, once all the party members have rested the magical hut containing the adventures slowly dissipates leaving a faint magical trail as it does.” -Entire dungeon off undead “Good morning”
Alternatively unless the bad guys have a reason to stay in the dungeon they could just pack up and leave while the players are resting.... Then the players wake up to an abandoned dungeon...
@@minnion2871 I would consider that to be the last resort. most dungeons/groups and all that have a lot invested in their lair and are only going to pull up stakes if they KNOW they're going to lose. sure, they smoked small groups of the force individually but send everyone all at once...see how well that turns out.
@@doge8726 Just because they can see though the hut doesn't mean they can necessarily see the enemies preparing an ambush or building traps.... A lot of this boils down to location location location though.... (I also wonder.... Does Tiny Hut protect against plane shift? Like if they're in the dungeon of a powerful mage, and the mage just decides to cast plane shift on the room the hut is in to yeet the entire thing off into the plane of fire or something?)
Have the world move. Oh the players long rest? Ok. Thragg noticed his buddy Thork didnt come to play cards at dinner, so they go looking. Find the dead bodies. Thragg raises the alarm.. etc
I LOVE your point about travel over long distances...my players in my current game want to travel over a long distance that would take them anywhere between 6-8 months to get there and I love the point-to-point of interests suggestion.
Another option after the dungeon realizes that half the crew was slaughtered and there's a black dome in the kitchen, particularly if there's no other dungeon to call for aid, is to isolate them somehow. Collapse the room onto that dome or the doors that lead to it.
I absolutely did this in one of the first adventures for a new party: The party did a rest in a room off of an old mine that kobolds were working. During the night, the kobolds collapsed the hallways ahead and back, trapping the party underground! I placed a secret door that the kobolds didn't know about, for the party to find in order to get an escape route - but what the party actually ended up doing was spending more than a day to dig up and out thru the collapsed roof and escape. Now the party tends to always carry digging tools with them. And they carry extra food and water.
@@devforfun5618 It did happen to be that it was a SECRET DOOR, and it also happened to be that it was in an area with undead that the Kobolds had just closed and blocked the doors to instead of exploring and clearing. The kobolds found the mine, there were undead wandering around in one area that the kobolds sealed off, and the party pursued a kobold raiding party from the settlement back to the mine to explain to them why kobolds should not be raiding the settlement. Normally, absolutely I very much agree with you. Denizens should know the layout unless there are specific reasons they don't.
Another great idea. Gelatinous cube envelops the dome while they sleep and roll to see if they wake up before the dome time is up. If they don’t, battier drops and the cube drops.
In a dungeon, deep underground is the worst place to set up the tiny hut. If the boss is able to identify this and if the place isn't important... just bring in the explosives and burry the hut... Just give them enough wiggle room, after everything has collapsed, to teleport out of there or something.
The hut would protect them from the collapse. It lasts for 8 hours, and you sleep for 6 hours, so they would have time, upon waking, to cast another one, if necessary, while they figure out a way to escape. Unless they cast it from a scroll or other consumable without more charges, they would stay in the hut, indefinitely, especially if they have access to food and water from a spell. They could wait until some other adventuring party rescues them. Heck, you could have them set up their survival, and then say, "OK. Well, until you are rescued, you are stuck, since you have no teleportation magic. Everyone roll up new characters. All set? Great. Your first adventure will be as a rescue party, looking for the adventuring party that was supposed to get the McGuffin out of the mountain, but then the mountain exploded, and they never came back. Also, we still want that McGuffin." Bonus, once they rescue the party, each player can choose between continuing with their old, rescued character or the new character. Half the new/combined party will have reasons to leave, and the rest will continue together, as the new new party, finishing the campaign.
@@AuntLoopy123 We just had a similar experience, only it was at level 1. This campaign is a more difficult homebrew. To prove ourselves, we were to slay a bunch of giant rats in a pit fight. TPK... They were too fast and surrounded us. 1 rolled so low initiative she did not get a turn before going down. The B team was sent in to rescue the fallen. One slipped on the way down the pit and was knocked unconscious. Another tried to go straight in through the crowd and was blocked, having to take a couple of rounds to get in position. One more killed 2 rats and was bit by a couple others. In all, we have 2 survivors from team A and 2 from team B.
Once had a city seige that the players took part in. A high level party leading a very small force against a much larger military force of a enemy city. To get past the wall the druid summoned a Bheur Hag to help deal with the masses of enemies. Wizard used a twinned irresistible dance on the elite squad and the paladin hasted themself and smited from the top down. After that they found the nearest place safe from chaos cast rope trick, then magnificent mansion and took a long rest. when they came back their side had lost most of their army because they were fighting a losing war against a superior force which has in it's employ an adult green dragon, for 17 hours without their greatest asset. The players. Players sometimes forget just how long a long rest is. You can only take one every 24 hours “we’ll wait” I have always done that very popular ruling of "you have to be in a 'safe place' as determined by the dm to take a long rest". I allow magnificent mansion, but that doesn't mean time doesn't pass. Just because a long rest is only 5 words at the table doesn't mean it's only 3 seconds in the world
I started making it a point of "time lapse" during long rest. "As you pack up into your tents/bags you see the stars above you (or see the light of the moon on the tent). As you wake the sun has risen and 8 hours have passed." Im thinking about seting up a fake clock at the table that we can rotate manualy to help with tracking the pasage of time. That also helps to stop players from long resting early in the morning if they had a hard encounter. Or just constantly long rest
Your players decided to, not just take a long rest, but wait most of the day until they could start the rest, DURING A PITCHED BATTLE, and they were surprised to find things hadn't gone well in their absence? Either they're dumb as rocks or you didn't describe the situation clearly. That's crazy.
Idea: surround the hut with traps/hazards "As you wake up you look out and see a bright green hue surrounding the area. As the hut fades away your restful nest is flooded in acid."
oh most definitely!! like "oh cute, they're safe inside there... wait until they come out", set up several contingency spells, trip wires and crap that barrages them with like mini ballistas and spells, all that long rest to be reduced to half hp again, an anti magic barrier so they can't just setup another hut right away or heal or anything.. punish them!
Luke it might help you to know (so tiny hut isn't as op in your games) that spells can't be cast through it. Basically it's run as a dome where no one can do anything unless they leave the hut. This is also advice for other dms who deal with this. Also a strong note is the creatures have to be in the spell area when cast. So one player can't run away and cast it and the others then run into later. Very key with a turn by turn system.
I like the leave option. Bringing the full might of the dungeon down upon your players makes more sense, but also makes for salty players and less fun. If they want to be creative and hide the hut within the dungeon, thats fine, but I'm not going to go nuclear on them if they park it in a hallway. Maybe they have a surprise encounter that will make them think on it more next time, but I am not for overkill options that may get a TPK just because my players thought ths dungeon was static if they didn't move through it.
When my PCs camped in a dungeon for eight hours, I had the temple leader (a water elementalist) flood the dungeon with water to the ceiling. The party ended up in a tiny hut at the bottom of a flooded dungeon facing sharks and a dragon turtle. It made the rest of their dungeon delving much, much, harder than it needed to be.
The long travel campaign can be legit a mini campaign of interests. That's pretty much how the first season of every action show works... Like 'monster a week'
One possibility for the long resting in a dungeon I think is also interesting is the monsters attempting to parley with the party (depending on what they want). It could lead to a tense social encounter and (depending on how loyal the lackeys of the boss are/ how smart they are) could lead even to the party helping the monsters start a coup against their boss.
If I was a weak little Goblin , and I noticed this group literally slaughter an entire army. I would collapse the tunnel on that magical little hut , and run for my life. Or if I had the time and resources build a brick wall
@@davidbeppler3032 you rake a long rest..... and you die because of co2 poisoning Congratulations, you found out how they resupply their skeleton minions
I have a PC at my table freaking out with a threat that their room will get sealed and filled with water by an NPC. 8 hours is a long time for constructive races and diverting a river a doable task.
Ever had a city inside large walls? If you plug the leaks a group of a dozen clerics can drown the whole city in a couple days using create water. As an example.
The color of the leomund's tiny hut is decided by the caster . But yes it can't be seen through . But as usual Luke is spot on with solid DM/GM advice .
I spent 5-6, 3 hour with my players traveling from Pernast to Baldur's Gate. They loved the slow leisurely pace and had a few fun adventures, they got lost, backtracked and they loved every moment of it. They even met a character I had planned for them to meet later but the setup on the one day was just too perfect to let slip by.
When I get this question when I have a dungeon where they are not planned to long rest I ask the following "You can if I get to repopulate the entire dungeon with enemies that all know you are coming". It tend to resolve itself after that.
I evaluate it this way. If the party is having fun, I let a lot of things like this slide. They are just making use of what resources they have. The party still has watches even under the dome. The party has always holed up. The wizard used Mold Earth to dig a burrow at 1st level. (I ruled that it took 10 minutes to excavate the 10' dome space, yeah, I'm nice) Then they bought an extended duration Rope Trick magic item. They used that until they got Leomunds Hut. They color the dome to match the terrain. They still have encounters as they are snoozing in their dome home. Again... If you as DM are tired of the hut messing up your encounter ideas, just have it get dispelled and continue with your planned encounter. Regarding overland travel... My players "hand walk" 20 miles a day everywhere. The random die roll encounters have created so many plot points that I will always prefer the slow road. Get creative with the things they come across. Every idea you can come up with can make the game more intense than you would expect and the long road can be enjoyable as well.
Tiny hut is opaque but can be any color. So while it being perfectly dome shaped might still cause problems, someone could certainly cast it in a place it is somewhat obscured. I'd rule that it would be a passive perception on the creatures or humanoids that are guarding the dungeon and it would be higher or lower depending on what the PCs do to conceal it before their rest.
I use to be fine with players long resting if they were smart about it. Some dungeons has safe rooms that were so horribly trapped or well hidden that the dungeons occupants decided it wasn't worth patrolling that room but when I discovered there were no options to stop players from using liamond tiny hut in the middle of a room they just had a loud combat in I needed this video to give me more ideas instead of just telling my players there were consequences and rolling off random tables that didn't really teach anything.
I'm glad you talked about this. There should definitely be a risk to resting in a dungeon! Don't forget they could dig underneath it or build a fire on top of it and bake them from the inside 😂🔥
I have done the hut in the dungeon rest several times. I always expect to be ambushed when I do. I will usually color it to match the wall color and I will block the doorway to a room if possible which gives us a room to plan the next fight from and teases the DM about having hidden passages in the room. I can also recast it before it fails to maintain the hut and at that point it gives my party members to come up with a different plan than what I have. depending on my spells I may be able to fabricate a way out of the room. I could look for a way to block off the bottleneck route or even conjure a bigger threat than us to distract with. these are a couple of my thoughts on it but that is mainly because I do expect to be attacked in every rest.
I've been playing the pathfinder kingmaker game on pc and in many situatiions I've had to take a long rest inside a dungeon and been like "well, thank god THIS IS a video-game, cause this would not fly in a table game", ppl sometimes don't realize this
1. Surprise attacks while they are casting the hut. Cause they usually do that as a ritual. 2. Have them roll wis or con saves every watch due to strange sounds and nerves during their rest time. If they fail then they don't get any rest and if they fail REAL bad then they get exhaustion. 3. Like someone else further down said, the dungeon lives on while they sleep. Change encounters, bolster the minions, set new traps, etc.
Taking a long rest in a dungeon, done intelligently is fine. Random encounters were written 30+ years ago for this various reason. To add challenge and spice during long rests.
My favorite is the Time Limit restriction. If I know my players are prone to Long Resting in dungeons and will almost certainly try to do it, I'll try to set it up so that resting for 8 hours just won't work out. Whether they're trying to get an artifact before another group, or perhaps a ritual is taking place and they know they have maybe an hour or two at most.
Thank you for putting this out there! I've been struggling to figure out a good punishment for my group taking long rests after a few easy encounters because they want to waste spell slots.
Don't forget that PCs can only take a long rest once every 24 hours. Enforcing that rule will help stem some of the worst abuses, especially if the party is under any kind of time pressure. Even something as simple as the risk of running out of rations can encourage the party to press forward.
For long distances I wonder about, with the group's permission, playing the board game Tokaido. It's like a old historical Japanese road trip - you and your companions compete in a way to relax, be entertained, consume the best local food, and meet interesting people. Distribute some XP and loot for players describing how they fight off bandits, what temple they visit, and the memories and souvenirs they picked up along the way. Drop in some locations or NPCs that might come up later, or develop some based on the players descriptions. Who wouldn't want to go back to that tavern with the challenge of eating a giant steak within an hour and it's free?
The Dungeon Moves. That's how I see the six days between game sessions: time for the dungeon to make its move. As for the wilderness, I find the Tiny Hut comes along at about the moment I've gotten what I can get out of a hungry owlbear jumping the party at night. So I'm as grateful for it as they are. We're moving on to other things by then.
My favorite thing to do is literally something I implemented in mines of phandelver. If they set up camp halfway through a dungeon and not xovering your tracks or intelligently taking care of any signs of entry/assault, and word gets back to the shotcaller. Then the shot caller decides, okay, every except our penal group, the soldiers or adventurers we've captured and their third strongest creature leaves with all the supplies and any artifacts. The prisoners are dressed in enemy garb and left bound in place for the players to come up behind. Almost always ends up they snuff the target and don't notice anything. If they loot the body, make it a mark of about a 19 to notice its a prisoner and not an enemy unit. They left behind just enough scrap and their old stuff that they might have looted a new location to replace or repair. Make it seem inhabited but as though the party is being successfully stealthy/catching the enemy off guard with an occasional group of two enemies ordered to patrol the site in case of animals entering the dungeon, villains in my games often lie to their pawns in order to deceive adventurers, if they have questionable moral goals, they won't care much about losing any troops that showed insubordination previously with what would appear to be a vacation in terms of whatever work they were in charge of before. And at the end, the third strongest unit knows his job is to point the enemy in the wrong direction. If they don't confirm anything their targets say or just assume shit. They've pretty much lost every thread to the actual threat. And they will have to contact their guild or spy network after they figure it out. Villains might have more units/troops or more power by the time time heroes figure it out. .
My players, yesterday during our session, decided to long rest when they could hear enemies in the next room over. Those enemies went into the final room, activated the weird machine that served as the boss for the dungeon. The boss killed those enemies and then went on patrol, noticing the players, a fight ensues. It was fun.
This is exactly the video I needed for next session, which ended with the party tanking and nearly dying to 3 fireballs in a row, barricading themselves in another room, and long resting.
My group took a long rest in the Cragmaw cave but only after we cleared out all the goblins. But just in case, the elf wizard stood watch in shifts with the cleric. After all I did allow for them to prod the bodies of the defeated goblins to see if one was alive ssf o they could interrogate him to learn where the Cragmaw castle was. Then we tied him up and we're taking him with us.
Dispel Magic solves so many of these kinds of problems, and its a fairly common spell for some encounters to logically have at this point. I had players get rudely awakened one evening when their Magnificent Mansion door got dispelled in the middle of the night, dropping them in to the middle of an ambush. It's 3rd level. It's reasonable to be commonly available. It's not over powered. It's so nice to clean up these things. You can even create one-off disposable magic items with this spell. Like a Bead of Dispel Magic. You say the magic word, and throw it (ranged touch attack on a target that tries to dodge). Whatever it hits first gets Dispel Magic cast on it as if it used a third level spell slot, and the bead crumbles to dust. This lets you control how many exist in the world (players can even get a small number) while creating something that could have a reasonable chance to counter these kinds of things if used by the BBEG's minions. Remember, you're allowed to be creative, too.
I like that idea you mentioned, a tower that randomly teleports to a new position in the world. Perhaps it could even be the basis for a whole campaign. Maybe it doesn't move every day, but after some random time, (e.g. up to a month or so). There could be some evil NPC(s) living in the tower who send minions out to pillage the surrounding area, perhaps some minions get left behind when the tower moves, and the more important ones have to use spells or magic items to catch up with the tower. Or maybe there is some kind of countdown or advance warning just before it moves, allowing the minions to be recalled. You could start the campaign with the party hearing reports of a strange tower appearing in a forest nearby, and foul creatures spilling out and going on the rampage. The party could be sent to investigate. Maybe partway through the campaign, the tower relocates itself and the party finds themselves in a hostile area and under siege. The goal of the campaign could be either to disable the tower's teleport ability, destroy it, or take control of it for themselves.
I see a few other overland travel options 1. Don't allow such long trips. Blow up the map and have the campaign take place in a smaller area. I typically keep things in the same province or country, such that day (or weekly) hand waving is fine. It saves issues with this. 2. Shorten the travel time and remove encounters. If they need to make a trip that long, put them on a ship which moves faster (so many only 2 sessions while something happens on the ship or during city stops), or flying mounts, or a wizard's guild to teleport them there. Long travel causes issues. It seems odd in your starting village you have massive adventures, but you hand wave through thousands of miles of wilderness, roads, big cities, etc. Even if you assume those areas are safe, you still need to describe the people, architecture, roads, and have some encounters. Likewise, 2-5 sessions of actual encounters makes the big encounter to the south really boring. I tends to keep it small, do day-by-day recaps of travel (people, stays, inn names, scenery, language, etc.) and then speed it up if they have travelled over it. Small saves so many problems.
One tiny correction. The caster can pick what color the Tiny Hut is. It is possible for the players to put some effort into hiding the Tiny Hut and also disguise its color to mostly match the color of the dungeon walls. Casting it in the back of a room with only one entrance for example.
My group in Pathfinder Kingmaker actually put in the time and money to create a wondrous item called Leomund's Instant Cabin (Think Daern's Instant Fortress, but like, a comfortable looking cabin). They did a lot of this in Kingmaker, like the boots of the Winter Wilderness Stride (Now called the Boots of the Winter Wonderland Stride due to mispronunciations of the players). Cross between Boots of the Winterland, Boots of Wilderness Stride, and boot of Springing and Striding. Springing and Striding was a late addition to the mix because, and I'm not kidding here, one of their horses almost gotten taken out, and they were scared I was going to kill off their horses, so they wanted to move faster, so they could laves the horses stabled (They also began breeding horses later). Kingmaker has a lot more downtime than most campaigns, being built as a sandbox, and the group used it to their absurd advantage. Nothing really broken, but like, they got really into comfort items, like making a magical spice rack that they could use at will (They literally didn't want the rest of the prestidigitation effects on there, JUST the spicing food and drink part. they were incredibly insistent about that part). a "Folding Sofa" modeled after the folding boat item, I suddenly started laughing hysterically at one point, and no one could figure out what I found so funny. Okay, here we have these ragged, tough adventurers who have decimated a troll army, killed a black dragon, and we suddenly cut to them sitting in a precious little cabin in the woods, the wizard laid out on the sofa reading, while the Barbarian, Druid, and Ranger relax in squashy armchairs by the fire. The Bard is making dinner in the kitchen, while everyone is drinking mulled wine, a little tune being played by the Bard's floating player-instruments. Every one of them are wearing their warm comfy shoes.
Some other alternatives - depending on the dungeon: - the bad guys collapse the roof on top of the tiny hut. That would mean the players would need to find some way of getting out of a collapsed cave instead of exploring a dungeon. - there are other adventurers who also explore the dungeon - those might take some or all of the treasure, while the party is wasting time sleeping. This one works really well in our current campaign, as it is already established that different adventurers guilds work in competition to each other and members of different guilds would definitly "steal" others loot like that - the bad guys fill the room with sleeping gas, construct some kind of cage around the hut or similar shenanigans like that. similar to what Luke said, but in addition the party will also be in a bad strategic situation on top of being swarmed by the entire dungeon. - the endboss of the dungeon will take care of this himself. This one works specifically well, if the endboss is something like a dragon which players would typically either avoid or fight under "their" conditions. Well, now they are fighting him well rested, but without any other advantages - good luck.
Thank you for the solution on gathering the entire dungeon around the hut, you help me confirm that I am making the right decisions. Players usually expect that I give them a break for whatever they do, no matter how illogical it appears to me. Sometimes they make something like this that just alerts the entire dungeon of their presence and afterward they get upset with me saying: maybe don't swarm us with creatures next time. For me, it is just the logical thing to do. I like my games with logic. I hate to watch a movie or series and see the script go bunker and illogical. It is a challenge for me to sacrifice logic for fun on the table. I love to have fun and I look to make all experiences fun for everyone, yet players steal a wizard's spellbook and get upset if they are pursued by the said wizard and constantly ambushed by him. One time players went to attack a goblin tribe fortress that was protecting a green hag they were having problems with (this was at level 5) and they got upset that one player died. But guess what, the goblins were nurtured by this hag for a long time and they were very well organized. Not only that, but the players just marched in front of the fortress demanding that they delivered the hag. Well... it didn't go as they planned. The player that died was a fighter who found his fate after jumping the wall alone after a few rounds of combat (which they were winning; level 5 after all) to face a few remaining hobgoblins, bugbears, and two ogres surrounding him.
Concerning the travel. I can recommend the adventures in middleearth 5e rules. They basically combine luke‘s middle way with a ruleset incorporating the preparation the players take.
There we have it, boys and girls, Luke confesses that he hasn't been DMing since highschool! He hasn't provided his resume! Also 100% agree with this video. Either extension to the extremes for traveling.... just sucks. I've done both as a DM and had both as a player. They CAN fit in certain situations and at certain times....but 99% of the time...it's not that time...
In all the dungeon crawls I run I keep a few random encounters on-hand in case of long rests. If they use Tiny Hut, I have the random encounter arrive, the creatures investigate the hut, and then they leave. I then add those NPCs to the next encounter, and they alert the next group that something is up, and to be ready (aka, the enemies cannot be surprised, as they are already on alert). If there are more than one random encounter that should happen, all of those groups repeat this, and all are added to the next encounter. You'd be surprised how many "first encounters of the day" result in, "can we take one of our two short rests" because they opted to get a safe long rest. It adds a level of strategy to spell selection, because they know that they are making the dungeon harder. Bonus advantage of this system: these are random encounters, so even if they win, they aren't draining any of the actual NPCs who guard the dungeon. They're just extra NPCs. So if they do win the encounter they haven't slaughtered everyone else in the dungeon. They just upped a difficulty for themselves.
I really would love my players to use the Tiny Hut, especially if monster are around which can burrow. Tiny hut is a dome not a sphere. It would be really sweet to catch the party off guard during their sleep.
Excellent advice as always. Your intellect rises into the sky and you bestow upon us wisdom of the ages that helps us run our games in a way that we could’ve never imagined. We bow before your insight.
Good advice in this video. I'd just add that the "ticking clock" is a super helpful narrative advice. With the exception of one-shots (sometimes), dungeons don't exist in a narrative vacuum. Usually, the adventurers are diving into the cave / lair / hideout / ruins / etc. because they need to stop the evil ritual, rescue the hostages, or what have you. Even if it is more of a side-quest dungeon... what about the main plot? What are the main baddies doing? What is going on back in town? Or in the surrounding region? A lot can happen in ~8 hours. Things that they left dangling might be resolved in ways they don't like. As with the other tips, you don't need to do this every time. But doing it occasionally, when it makes sense, will at least make the players think twice. I don't think the goal should be to prevent every single unplanned or "extra" long rest. That is railroady. But spending time for long rests when the action is happening (i.e., not downtime) _should_ be a strategic decision, rather than a no-brainer.
@@theDMLair That's fair. But if we assume gas cannot pass through, can Oxygen? (this isn't the point of the fire though). The point of the fire is to 1, blind them, 2, suffocate them with lack of oxygen 3, stop them from escaping.
For the travel I either hand waive it, if it’s somewhere they have been before and know the route. Or if it’s something that narratively makes sense. Or if my players are being extra distractible. For long trips, I mostly use that for new places, if I want the journey to have that feeling of slogging through somewhere, or I have finished planning the main campaign setting and they are still traveling there. Oh I need just one more session then I’ll have it ready. Travel session time.
I like that you added that caveat "unless I planned it to take longer than a day" (paraphrasing)... If we want to instill a sense of realism we have to have that in mind when we have expectations on our players as well. Sending them into a dungeon that is basically just a Mad Mage maze of rooms with dangers, and expecting them to go on for days without resting because it would be unrealistic to rest anywhere is bad planning. In that case I think it is better to have rooms or sections of the dungeon that are unpopulated or scarcely populated that they can find and utilize - low risk zones if you will. Perhaps have a monster occupy a section that the other baddies avoid. If the monster find them there it's a lower stake because they don't alert the whole crew of bad guys they are after, if they get spotted or need to fight their way out in the morning.
For overland travel, there should be ways for the players to take long rests. The top two that I can think of are finding a cave and set up security measures and taking watch (the whole point of sleep 6 hours and 2 hours of light activity), of find small huts that merchants would have set up so that their merchandise would not be destroyed while being moved between locations. The whole 2 hours of light activities to keep watch should be considered for long rests.
Regarding travel, I'm a bit surprised that Luke didn't ask _why_ the players want to travel so far. Of course it could be just something they're excited to try, or it could be because the DM gave them a hook to lead them to that place, but sometimes I think travel can be a sign of either misaligned player expectations (new players who think DnD is Skyrim, usually), or it could be a sign that the players are bored with whatever the DM is doing, and they want to go off and do their own thing. I had players do this to me in the first campaign I ran, and it didn't take me long to realise that both of these things were happening. These were all avid gamers who had never played a TTRPG before, and expected an experience roughly similar to a video game RPG. On the other hand, the plot hooks I was giving them weren't very interesting, and I was acting a bit railroady. So one game they were on the road, and someone asked "what's to the North", and I was like "err... forest." They immediately just went off into the wilderness and I had to improvise a bunch of random encounters. The next session I planned some wilderness things for them to do, but it just wasn't the game I'd wanted to run, and it all felt very disjointed. Anyway I've since learned my lesson. I do have things planned in case players decide to go off-piste, but when I DM for new groups I always try to impress on them beforehand that D&D isn't a video game. And of course, that experience gave me another layer of motivation for creating as compelling hooks and scenarios as I possibly can. I've rarely had players wanting to go off travelling to random places ever since, because they enjoy what they're doing where they already are.
I kinda like the idea of low level grunt forces walking on up, investigating it, they roll an arcana check, realize its Leomunds tiny hut with a DC of 13 (10 + level of spell), know that the party inside can see them but the creature can't see them. The minions then leave for a bit, come back with either a large tarp, or preferably boiling tar to then coat and toss over the dome to then cut off the players abilities to see. If its Tar it would probably cool and leave the party a dome they have to consider what might be on the other side, but for a tarp, it could be weighted down with chains and when the dome goes down, the tarp and chains come down and trap the party
When travelling, what I like to do is roll a 1d6 to see if anything happens ( on a 6 there's an event ). Then I roll evens/odds, evens it's a monster or NPC encounter, odds it's a weather or natural hazard. Then I roll another 1d6 for severity. On a 1 its a good thing, 2 it's ignorable, 3-6 is increasingly difficulty/hard to survive. Once I have those parameters I figure something out.
I had a problem with my PCs traveling across a continent in my first 3rd edition D&D campaign. I mean, it went well. They travelled to different regions, met new people, solved their problems, grew stronger and moved on. But the thing is that they travelled a significantly large enough distance to the point where they leveled up from 1 to 20. And I realized, to my dismay, that they weren't well known. They'd never had the chance to build up much of a reputation (besides their occasional heroics) in any region. It was a great journey, with tons of great experiences... but I inwardly chafed that the fighter never became the lord of his own keep, the wizard never had his tower, etcetera. I did have a satisfying post-campaign narrative montage for them, but the cool stuff that had happened should have happened to them live during a game. It made me tweak my subsequent campaigns to have them more invested in the regions they spent time in, and make it obvious that they built a reputation and even a following. i gave them ways to wander away from hub areas, but reasons for them to come back, while still having obvious benefits to growing in power.
This is why our group still plays a Hybrid advanced AD&D (e1&2). Spells actually work, they don't limit you like they do in 5e. You can cast invisibility on items and they stay invisible until they attack. Leomand's Hut never attacks.
I also play a bard that has Leomund's Tiny Hut. There's a difference on how it's being treated, though. We play in a desert setting, so, the Tiny Hut is a major asset in the sense that it allows us to rest while not being exposed to extreme temperatures. Sure, we can also be safe inside it at night... but we travel with camels. Camels are large, they don't fit inside the tiny hut. So the party still needs to take turns guarding the mounts... which is where the warlock's pseudodragon familiar or my own bard's ability to trance pays off. But yeah, if ghouls come up to us during the night, we need to protect our mounts... so, that's a mitigating factor. I haven't had reason to use the Tiny hut spell inside a dungeon until recently. We were investigating why one of the sultanate's forward posts was being attacked regularily by undead and we identified that the danger came from below, under the well. We first found natural cavern and contended with some of its less friendly inhabitants like skeletons, vampire bats, giant constrictor snake and a Roper. We noticed a Kruthik hive nearby, but we tried to avoid wandering in territory we perceived as theirs because they were probably not to blame for the reason we were down there. However, at some point we ran out of options and we had to go in Kruthik territory if we were to find the troubles we divined were under the fort. Our cleric confirmed we had to go there with an augur, but the Kruthik seemed remotely intelligent and in egg-laying season so I was reluctant to fight them. I asked my party for a chance to negociate, and used the Tongues spell in the hopes that I could speak Kruthik and that they had somesort of language. My gamble paid off, and I was able to get us escorted to the Hive Lord, which postured, discussed their hive's woes with 'chitinless ones' that came from below, forcing them to amp up egglaying to have their hive better able to recover from the latest predations. I managed to convey that our side on the surface were open to coexistence and that we were also having troubles with those chitinless ones, so I managed to get us passage. Knowing we were getting in pretty deep and that we were roughly halfway through our resources (including hit dices, and we only recover half of those per long rest), I was able to negociate with the hive lord to reserve us a place where we could rest between our forays below. So, now, we have a spot to rest in my Tiny Hut... but at least I earned us the right to rest there. So, hopefully, we should be relatively unmolested by the time we get out and continue on with our business below.
At 2:30 he mentions casting through it. The spell stops casting both ways. “spells and other magical effects can’t extend through the dome or be cast through it” JC also clarified that items like arrows ‘moving’ through refers to movement/transport and *not* being shot out. The tiny hut is meant as a total peace center there is no combat from within, i suppose melee combat would work, but not the invincible archer hut many try to use it as!
On the note of travel, I find one of the MOST important things is to make the decision to travel in the first place interesting. If there are 3-4 time-sensitive events going on in the world, then the players need to consider and discuss what they can feasibly accomplish with the time they have available. I find a lot of the time this actually leads to the party reminding each other about other potential plot hooks they've forgotten about, or it can even lead to giving me more ideas for future adventures. My general rules are: Is there realistically anything interesting or threatening along this travel route? If not, then just tell the players how long it takes to arrive. If yes, then I like to actually make a short adventure at some point along the way, skip to that, then skip to the destination after the adventure (sometimes the travel itself is the adventure if it's through mines or something to that effect).
Hi Luke, I'm running your Serpent Senctum adventure and it is a blast to my players. Those three yuan-ti purebloods from the Lounge came to check what is going on in Cathedral and tried to make a deal with PC's but PC's decided to attack. One of yuan-tis ran away to alert the boss and PC's went after him and they burst into Blood Bath in the same time when Mind Whisperer, Abomination and Broodgards went out from the Throne Rome. Against all odds they won, and I wasn't easy on them. One of PC's died but Palading managed to revivify him. And they decided to take a long rest... They are happy now but there will be consequences. Their mission will fail. Everyone from Slave Pen will be slained :(
For anyone that wants to be detailed about travel, a good but not exhaustive walking speed is 3 miles per hour on a good road or trail. Assuming a full day's travel with breaks for meals, snacks, and personals, 10-14 hours a day walking. They can get 30-40 miles a day if they're on roads or well traveled trails. Calculate a slower walking speed if they're traveling off road, even slower over rough terrain. Players could decide to push it and go for a 4-4.5 mph walking speed (any faster than that and you start jogging, seriously, try these speeds on a treadmill). In that case, you might want to make them roll athletics or constitution checks, or give them exhaustion at some point in the day. If you wanted to be really detailed you could say that they need more food throughout the day if they're pushing it, and they're going through their rations faster.
That explanation at the beginning is a cool hook for a dungeon coming up together despite their difference... and a good start to an adventure as dungeon monsters! Haha!
I think it depends largely on the context of what's up in the dungeon. If there's a BBEG in there, and the *entire* dungeon is minions in his service, then yeah. They'd probably be discovered, the BBEG and his elite guard fortify and prepare in the most fortified sanctum of his dungeon. A scout party stays behind to figure out what the attackers are, and then run to report to the BBEG when hut goes down. However, if you're hunting... I dunno, an evil warlock with a minotaur captain, and he's hiding in the caves of the nearby mountains... Well not everything in those caves know or care about the warlock. So unless the party is the warlock's portion of the caves, they may go entirely unnoticed. They may have fought through a tribe of goblins and a family of bulettes, but they just happened to live there also, and so the warlock has no idea and doesn't police the entire cave network. I mean, your imagination is really your only limitation.
Depending on the dungeon you don't need to swarm the hut (also, assuming the enemies have some intelligence). The mastermind/boss can simply have everyone alert, set up more strategic positions that would normally leave their flanks/backs exposed. Even reinforce certain positions and leave other rooms empty (which would give the players a hint that something isn't right). Mechanically, all enemies would have higher stealth DC and advantage on perception checks. It doesn't always make sense to have "everyone attack". For one, they can end up bottlenecked. If the boss knows they have magic, they probably don't want everyone crammed into a smaller space. Secondly, outside the camp/hut might not be ideal position to ambush from.
This is old, but Luke, there's a few things you missed when discussing Leomund's Tiny Hut. 1) You can't cast spells out of it either. You can shoot arrows/bolts/normal projectiles and the like out so long as they were in the dome when the dome was made. 2) What it looks like on the outside is up to the casters, you can try to camouflage it into the dungeon if you do it right. Here's the spell info: A 10-foot-radius immobile dome of force springs into existence around and above you and remains stationary for the duration. The spell ends if you leave its area. Nine creatures of Medium size or smaller can fit inside the dome with you. The spell fails if its area includes a larger creature or more than nine creatures. Creatures and objects within the dome when you cast this spell can move through it freely. All other creatures and objects are barred from passing through it. *Spells and other magical effects can’t extend through the dome or be cast through it* . The atmosphere inside the space is comfortable and dry, regardless of the weather outside. Until the spell ends, you can command the interior to become dimly lit or dark. The dome is opaque from the outside, *of any color you choose* , but it is transparent from the inside.
4th option, maybe harsh. Patrol finds hut. BBEG seals the room, waits for the adventurers to die of exhaustion/dehydration/starvation. Reverse siege. Lock them in.
When the party take a short rest I tend to set a 1 in 6 chance of a random encounter occurring if they take a long rest it’s 2 rolls. Of course if the dungeon is well patrolled then the odds will be even higher
Another way to deal with long rests in dungeons: add a "ticking clock." Just pulling this off the top of my head, but maybe the dungeon boss is a powerful warlock who is conducting a ritual to open a portal to the abyss. The ritual takes 8 hours, and the PCs are informed that the warlock has recently begun casting. It gives them more than enough time to complete the dungeon without worrying about a time limit, but it makes it very clear to them (upfront) that a long rest is something they don't have time for.
Wouldn't work, but I had the idea enough to check. The party climbs inside a bag of holding, wizard casts Tiny Hut inside. Someone climbs out, hides the bag somewhere where it most likely won't be found by casual search, then gets back inside themselves. Bonus if druid, then wild shapes into an insect to crawl back in without leaving a humanoid sized opening. Tiny Hut is a 10' radius dome though, and a bag of holding doesn't have that much space inside. At best, it holds 64 cubic feet, while a 10' radius half-sphere takes up 2094.4 cubic feet.
Travel always been a struggle for me, everyone wants to just get to point B, but it might be fun to run a game where the campaign is the travel, like a Journey to the West. Might also be easy to prep if it is something the group might be interested in.
Players cannot cast spells that pass through the hut, and one thing to keep in mind: any ammunition fired through the hut can be fired back through it. Monsters of any kind of intelligence can actually just push a cover large enough to completely obscure them right up to the hut, and fill the room with oil or something, waiting to light it when they get out
Ooh! the hut is impenetrable? Pile rocks on it, or collapse the room. Maybe pelt the dome with poisonous mushrooms. Fill the room with flammable oil and kindling. When that hut comes down, so does all the stuff you piled around and on it. Then if using flammables, toss in a torch.
my party's wizard decided to steal a relic level spellbook (specifically the Grimoire Infinitus) from an archmage, this allowed me to teach my party a lesson in being to reliant on tiny hut, before this they had taken to not even bothering to set a watch once they got to the level that they had tiny hut available to them, but after the spellbook had been stolen the archmage decided to send some of his apprentices and some mecernaries to recover it, and it only took one ambush encounter with spellcasters that had all the time to set up magical traps and be able to dispel the hut to ambush the party in their sleep for everyone to realize that the tiny hut wasn't the perfect shield they thought it was
Throw a Babau at them. I had a mind to trap one in a Magic Circle that i cast as an Arcane Domain Cleric. The Demon's dispell magic swept that plan away quicker than the 1 minute casting of the circle. Just have the Babau hide, cast Dispell Magic on the hut, followed by Fear, Heat Metal or Darkness. Now you've got an ambush and a legit way of making their safety bubble pop. Can't do it everytime they make a Tiny Hut of course but that possibility will give them pause before they long-rest in a dangerous location. With a CR of 4, Babau's are really viable in early game.
The hut allows for air to pass through. That's a two way street. Goblins or Kobolds might build a bonfire around the hut and either smoke them out or exhaust local oxygen. Or set traps all around the local area. Or post a series of guards. Or trap the room to collapse. Or....
I've also run a Hag-centric campaign. The players used the hut to rest in one Hags forest territory. She could see them via scrying so she simply waited for their rest to end before sending minions.
The enjoyment of the players is the reason that I watch D&D streams. I watch only 2, Critical Roll and D&D NPC from Viva La Dirt League. I like both of them because the players and DM are having fun. I also watch because I like the style of play from them as well.
I think another thing people forget about leomonds tiny hut, is that it's a dome; not a sphere. It doesn't dig into the ground. Kobold love to dig. Mold earth and earth tremor are both low level spells.
The best way to handle rests is put a time limit on the quest and then add a bonus. A significant bonus. Think of it as real contract work, there is a time limit when the project needs to be completed and when you do in a shorter amount of time you receive a bonus. This incentives the PC’s to push forward. The bonus can literally be more than then then the purse. All the other stuff he mentioned is good to but the root of it is incentivizing your PCs to get the job done quickly.
Taking a rest inside a dungeon period has never really crossed my mind. And with how much I've seen Luke talk about it, I'm glad I've never tried doing it. With my group in particular it actually might be more effective since we most commonly fight undead creatures, since they're typically shambling mindless mounds of rotting flesh and bone. But there will come a day where we fight creatures rational of though. The only reason we didn't is because my friend group isn't very capable of getting invested into the game.
These reasons are why when I have used this spell I have a way to hide the dome besides having the dome and a way to alert us if we are found. Alarm or magic mouth. Yes my dm's often hate me.
Just to point out it's opaque but, can be ANY color the caster wishes. Thus I can color to match the surrounding stones or lava glass or take the color of nearby ice or snow. So at very least depending on lighting and enemy perception a stealth check is in order.
3.5 tiny hut would allow creatures in even if they weren't within it on casting. Weapons and spells would pass through it uneffected but the elements were kept out such as snow rain and wind and it provided total concealment for those inside. 5e tiny hut is broken
One thing that I never see anyone mention from the Tiny Hut spell is this: "...The dome is opaque from the outside, of any color you choose..." Since you can make it any color you choose why the heck wouldn't you make it the same color as your surroundings for camouflage? Outside in the snow? Make it white. Next to a rock wall? Make it the same color. Etc, etc. So if you're in the dungeon somewhere go to a dead end, color it like the wall, and now the dead end just looks 10 feet shorter than normal. Pretty hard to spot at that point unless something is actively hunting for them.
4) There might not be enough time for the NPCs to get reinforcements to the Dungeon within the time that elapses during a long rest, but they might have time for reinforcements to arrive as the party is trying to leave the dungeon having spent a bit of time on exploring, doing encounters and looting the dungeon after Novaing and killing the big bad in the dungeon.
2:10 - I wouldn't say, "gather up the entire dungeon." Players I know would happily set up a that looks similar and put massive amounts of explosives or other nasty traps inside it, just waiting for the same behavior so they could blow the dungeon denizens to smithereens. Still, preparing to barricade it up and force the PCs through a gauntlet afterwards is on par with what I would expect.
5e Leomund's: " around and above you" + "fails if its area includes a larger creature or more than nine creatures." I ruled that the phrasing implies that the floor is open. So Dire Wolves smelled the party from before they cast the tent then started digging. As soon as one managed to squeeze inside, "poof", the tent disappears.
Also notably, the players can react to the patrol passing by by interrupting the long-rest to prevent their location being revealed, making it a challenge and a cost-benefit situation for whether or not they, one, wait and allow themselves to be swarmed, two, try to take out the patrol before they alert the boss, or three, try to exit the dungeon or otherwise relocate to hopefully avoid detection/being swarmed.
Taking out the patrol will not interrupt their long rest unless the combat takes at least an hour. Since each round of combat is only 6 seconds players would need to engage in 600 rounds of combat to interrupt their long rest.
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The real adventure is the friends you made along the way.
One time when they were abusing something similar to this I had another adventurer group show up and clear the dungeon. By the time the group came out everything was dead and looted. They eventually became rivals with this random group I created, and it became theme where they would try to out do each other. Both groups eventually came together to deal with the big bad, the NPC group I created sacrificed most of themselves holding off a large force of undead while the PC's worked their way through a liches lair. The only surviving member of the NPC group stayed in their keep, an old enemy became a long time friend.
Nice!
I object to 'using it as it is intended' as 'abuse'. If you don't want the PCs to do it, you don't give them it to begin with. In my books, if the players have it, they're allowed to use it, and I won't punish them for doing it.
On the other hand, the dungeon does not go on 'pause' when the PCs are camping - I 100% agree.
@@ChristopherLaHaise Fair point, "abuse" probably isn't the right word. However, players should not expect "video game logic." In this case the players do get to use Tiny Hut as intended -- they got a safe long rest. He didn't even try to pull some Dispel Magic card with a sudden ambush (which might have been reasonable, depending on the situation, but would have been much harsher). There are risks involved when using Tiny Hut in some situations. Time continues to pass. Intelligent bad guys will have several hours to respond accordingly, and other events may transpire in the meantime. Outside of a dungeon, sure, Tiny Hut will almost always mean "no nighttime ambushes." But personally I very rarely pull nighttime ambushes as a DM, anyway. Only if it really made sense in terms of what was going on in the story. E.g., if the players freely choose to camp in an area that they already know, based on clear previous information, is regularly patrolled by bandits / baddies / etc., it would be reasonable to set a probability of ambush and roll dice some dice in secret.
I really like this option as a way to give the player a reminder that the world don't stop working when they rest. It's an annoying consequence without it being deadly.
You're gonna know that your players got the message on this one when they start casting Tiny Hut as a _decoy_ for the monsters in the dungeon.
Done that before! Lol
Generally we just leave the stealthy guys out side for the ambush
Using wizard as the decoy is bold
That’s not the best option since the hut disappears when the caster leaves it.
@@tscoff What if the caster never enters the tiny hut on the first place?
@@dashua1735 The Tiny Hut appears around the caster. That’s impossible.
DM Lair: How long you have DM'ed, is not necessarily an indication of how good you are.
Also DM Lair: Hi. I'm Luke and I have been a DM since highschool. 😂
I've been DM since before Like was born
My best campaign was nearly 40 years ago.
Having good players with similar concept of what the game is about makes a big difference.
My favourite one was when his editor missed the mark and put in “I’ve been high since dungeon master school” or something like that
@@Danny191 Pretty sure it was on purpose, and unless there have been multiple occasions (which there very well might've been) I'm pretty sure it was: "I've been high school since Dungeon Master."
I too have been high since dungeon master school 🤤
He is not saying that his only qualification is his experience, you know, not "resting on his laurels".
Definitely depends on the dungeon, obviously. Not every dungeon is occupied by intelligent beings, with organized patrols. Sometimes, one intelligent enemy sets up deep inside, and lets the rest fill with random denizens to deter unwanted guests. As for walking across the map, I’m a nerd. There’s always something happening in most of my world. They’ll stumble across something, no matter where they go.
yeah, its one of those "depending on the situation, you might get away with it." sort of things. a mega dungeons with lots of empty rooms? you might get a random encounter or two. but if it's like a crypt filled with zombies and mindless undead? even if they find you, they won't care.. but yeah, taking a long rest in a temple complex or a hobgoblin LAIR? what did you think was going to happen? (also, I hate 5E tiny hut with the heat of 1000 suns, it was never ever designed to be a bulletproof bunker but a protection from weather spell)
I agree, you'll have some mindless mooks or instinct driven entities roaming around as well as scattered intelligent things that can think and act freely, I'd play it by how bad off the party is, if they're just resting up to regain a couple spells and a few hp, pfft eff that, ambush the hell out of them... if they got roughed up really bad let 'em have the rest
Our first time in the Underdark our GM had a hooked horror crawl across the ceiling and just hang there watching our hut. During one of the watches it came down and slowly scrapped at the dome for a couple hours until it finally moved on... It instilled a nice level of paranoia in us.
Most dungeons would react though. A single intelligent “boss” is going to want to know if enemies are coming or if their minions have been killed. Animals and undead would be curious of new structures and smells. Even a tomb full of traps would probably have a magical means of resetting, else it would have been looted due to attrition. Essentially, the DM can always have a reason if they want one.
The DM isn't restricted by the dungeon, they can make it whatever they want.
Even if most of the creatures aren't fully intelligent they may have a basic understanding that alerting the intelligent villain about things being out of place may get them rewarded.
One time, my players barricaded themselves in a room in a dungeon to take a rest. They blocked the doors with furniture from the room. Just to mess with them, when they woke up, the furniture was all stacked in a corner, the doors were all open, and their heads were freshly shaven. They never did learn quite how that all happened.
Were they assaulting a dungeon or a frat house?
Or, when they woke up, they could have found all the furniture stacked neatly in the center of the room.
.... Like how the 6th House dungeons looked in Morrowind.
I'm sure they figured out how it happened.
"We have a shitty DM that is on a Power Trip".
I don’t see a power tripping DM, as it didn’t seem as if he punished the players from that little bit. It more seemed like him messing with them a bit.
Wow the first/second idea while dealing with tiny hut is amazing 🤣 going to give that one a try for sure.
“As a fresh new day sits upon the horizon, once all the party members have rested the magical hut containing the adventures slowly dissipates leaving a faint magical trail as it does.”
-Entire dungeon off undead
“Good morning”
Alternatively unless the bad guys have a reason to stay in the dungeon they could just pack up and leave while the players are resting.... Then the players wake up to an abandoned dungeon...
@@minnion2871 I would consider that to be the last resort. most dungeons/groups and all that have a lot invested in their lair and are only going to pull up stakes if they KNOW they're going to lose. sure, they smoked small groups of the force individually but send everyone all at once...see how well that turns out.
@@doge8726 Just because they can see though the hut doesn't mean they can necessarily see the enemies preparing an ambush or building traps.... A lot of this boils down to location location location though.... (I also wonder.... Does Tiny Hut protect against plane shift? Like if they're in the dungeon of a powerful mage, and the mage just decides to cast plane shift on the room the hut is in to yeet the entire thing off into the plane of fire or something?)
Have the world move.
Oh the players long rest? Ok. Thragg noticed his buddy Thork didnt come to play cards at dinner, so they go looking. Find the dead bodies. Thragg raises the alarm.. etc
Ha my first character was named thragg and liked playing cards
I LOVE your point about travel over long distances...my players in my current game want to travel over a long distance that would take them anywhere between 6-8 months to get there and I love the point-to-point of interests suggestion.
Another option after the dungeon realizes that half the crew was slaughtered and there's a black dome in the kitchen, particularly if there's no other dungeon to call for aid, is to isolate them somehow. Collapse the room onto that dome or the doors that lead to it.
I absolutely did this in one of the first adventures for a new party: The party did a rest in a room off of an old mine that kobolds were working. During the night, the kobolds collapsed the hallways ahead and back, trapping the party underground! I placed a secret door that the kobolds didn't know about, for the party to find in order to get an escape route - but what the party actually ended up doing was spending more than a day to dig up and out thru the collapsed roof and escape.
Now the party tends to always carry digging tools with them. And they carry extra food and water.
@@dondumitru7093 Good party. Correct solution. Starvation rules are brutal.
@@dondumitru7093 why would the kobolds not know every door in the dungeon ? did they just move in ?
@@devforfun5618 It did happen to be that it was a SECRET DOOR, and it also happened to be that it was in an area with undead that the Kobolds had just closed and blocked the doors to instead of exploring and clearing.
The kobolds found the mine, there were undead wandering around in one area that the kobolds sealed off, and the party pursued a kobold raiding party from the settlement back to the mine to explain to them why kobolds should not be raiding the settlement.
Normally, absolutely I very much agree with you. Denizens should know the layout unless there are specific reasons they don't.
Another great idea. Gelatinous cube envelops the dome while they sleep and roll to see if they wake up before the dome time is up. If they don’t, battier drops and the cube drops.
%99.9 of the parties leave watch even while in the hut.
In a dungeon, deep underground is the worst place to set up the tiny hut. If the boss is able to identify this and if the place isn't important... just bring in the explosives and burry the hut...
Just give them enough wiggle room, after everything has collapsed, to teleport out of there or something.
The hut would protect them from the collapse. It lasts for 8 hours, and you sleep for 6 hours, so they would have time, upon waking, to cast another one, if necessary, while they figure out a way to escape. Unless they cast it from a scroll or other consumable without more charges, they would stay in the hut, indefinitely, especially if they have access to food and water from a spell. They could wait until some other adventuring party rescues them.
Heck, you could have them set up their survival, and then say, "OK. Well, until you are rescued, you are stuck, since you have no teleportation magic. Everyone roll up new characters. All set? Great. Your first adventure will be as a rescue party, looking for the adventuring party that was supposed to get the McGuffin out of the mountain, but then the mountain exploded, and they never came back. Also, we still want that McGuffin."
Bonus, once they rescue the party, each player can choose between continuing with their old, rescued character or the new character. Half the new/combined party will have reasons to leave, and the rest will continue together, as the new new party, finishing the campaign.
@@AuntLoopy123 We just had a similar experience, only it was at level 1. This campaign is a more difficult homebrew.
To prove ourselves, we were to slay a bunch of giant rats in a pit fight.
TPK... They were too fast and surrounded us. 1 rolled so low initiative she did not get a turn before going down.
The B team was sent in to rescue the fallen. One slipped on the way down the pit and was knocked unconscious. Another tried to go straight in through the crowd and was blocked, having to take a couple of rounds to get in position. One more killed 2 rats and was bit by a couple others.
In all, we have 2 survivors from team A and 2 from team B.
@@AuntLoopy123 I'd totally go with this, love it
Once had a city seige that the players took part in. A high level party leading a very small force against a much larger military force of a enemy city.
To get past the wall the druid summoned a Bheur Hag to help deal with the masses of enemies. Wizard used a twinned irresistible dance on the elite squad and the paladin hasted themself and smited from the top down. After that they found the nearest place safe from chaos cast rope trick, then magnificent mansion and took a long rest.
when they came back their side had lost most of their army because they were fighting a losing war against a superior force which has in it's employ an adult green dragon, for 17 hours without their greatest asset. The players.
Players sometimes forget just how long a long rest is. You can only take one every 24 hours “we’ll wait” I have always done that very popular ruling of "you have to be in a 'safe place' as determined by the dm to take a long rest". I allow magnificent mansion, but that doesn't mean time doesn't pass. Just because a long rest is only 5 words at the table doesn't mean it's only 3 seconds in the world
I started making it a point of "time lapse" during long rest.
"As you pack up into your tents/bags you see the stars above you (or see the light of the moon on the tent). As you wake the sun has risen and 8 hours have passed."
Im thinking about seting up a fake clock at the table that we can rotate manualy to help with tracking the pasage of time. That also helps to stop players from long resting early in the morning if they had a hard encounter. Or just constantly long rest
Your players decided to, not just take a long rest, but wait most of the day until they could start the rest, DURING A PITCHED BATTLE, and they were surprised to find things hadn't gone well in their absence? Either they're dumb as rocks or you didn't describe the situation clearly. That's crazy.
Idea: surround the hut with traps/hazards
"As you wake up you look out and see a bright green hue surrounding the area. As the hut fades away your restful nest is flooded in acid."
oh most definitely!! like "oh cute, they're safe inside there... wait until they come out", set up several contingency spells, trip wires and crap that barrages them with like mini ballistas and spells, all that long rest to be reduced to half hp again, an anti magic barrier so they can't just setup another hut right away or heal or anything.. punish them!
Luke it might help you to know (so tiny hut isn't as op in your games) that spells can't be cast through it. Basically it's run as a dome where no one can do anything unless they leave the hut. This is also advice for other dms who deal with this. Also a strong note is the creatures have to be in the spell area when cast. So one player can't run away and cast it and the others then run into later. Very key with a turn by turn system.
I like the leave option. Bringing the full might of the dungeon down upon your players makes more sense, but also makes for salty players and less fun.
If they want to be creative and hide the hut within the dungeon, thats fine, but I'm not going to go nuclear on them if they park it in a hallway. Maybe they have a surprise encounter that will make them think on it more next time, but I am not for overkill options that may get a TPK just because my players thought ths dungeon was static if they didn't move through it.
When my PCs camped in a dungeon for eight hours, I had the temple leader (a water elementalist) flood the dungeon with water to the ceiling. The party ended up in a tiny hut at the bottom of a flooded dungeon facing sharks and a dragon turtle. It made the rest of their dungeon delving much, much, harder than it needed to be.
The long travel campaign can be legit a mini campaign of interests. That's pretty much how the first season of every action show works... Like 'monster a week'
One possibility for the long resting in a dungeon I think is also interesting is the monsters attempting to parley with the party (depending on what they want). It could lead to a tense social encounter and (depending on how loyal the lackeys of the boss are/ how smart they are) could lead even to the party helping the monsters start a coup against their boss.
If I was a weak little Goblin , and I noticed this group literally slaughter an entire army. I would collapse the tunnel on that magical little hut , and run for my life. Or if I had the time and resources build a brick wall
Setting it on fire is also good. Why fight, when you can just skip to winning?
@@davidbeppler3032 fire is not the solution for everything
specially in a dungeon
research co2 during tunnle fires
@@doppelhelixes Fire is the solution for this. Research Co2 during tunnel fires. It will kill the adventurers inside the spell. That is the goal.
@@davidbeppler3032 you rake a long rest..... and you die because of co2 poisoning
Congratulations, you found out how they resupply their skeleton minions
@@doppelhelixes Thank you for agreeing with me.
I have a PC at my table freaking out with a threat that their room will get sealed and filled with water by an NPC. 8 hours is a long time for constructive races and diverting a river a doable task.
Ever had a city inside large walls? If you plug the leaks a group of a dozen clerics can drown the whole city in a couple days using create water. As an example.
The color of the leomund's tiny hut is decided by the caster .
But yes it can't be seen through .
But as usual Luke is spot on with solid DM/GM advice .
I spent 5-6, 3 hour with my players traveling from Pernast to Baldur's Gate. They loved the slow leisurely pace and had a few fun adventures, they got lost, backtracked and they loved every moment of it. They even met a character I had planned for them to meet later but the setup on the one day was just too perfect to let slip by.
It was fun? This is the way!
When I get this question when I have a dungeon where they are not planned to long rest I ask the following "You can if I get to repopulate the entire dungeon with enemies that all know you are coming". It tend to resolve itself after that.
I evaluate it this way. If the party is having fun, I let a lot of things like this slide. They are just making use of what resources they have. The party still has watches even under the dome.
The party has always holed up. The wizard used Mold Earth to dig a burrow at 1st level. (I ruled that it took 10 minutes to excavate the 10' dome space, yeah, I'm nice) Then they bought an extended duration Rope Trick magic item. They used that until they got Leomunds Hut. They color the dome to match the terrain. They still have encounters as they are snoozing in their dome home.
Again... If you as DM are tired of the hut messing up your encounter ideas, just have it get dispelled and continue with your planned encounter.
Regarding overland travel... My players "hand walk" 20 miles a day everywhere. The random die roll encounters have created so many plot points that I will always prefer the slow road. Get creative with the things they come across. Every idea you can come up with can make the game more intense than you would expect and the long road can be enjoyable as well.
Tiny hut is opaque but can be any color. So while it being perfectly dome shaped might still cause problems, someone could certainly cast it in a place it is somewhat obscured. I'd rule that it would be a passive perception on the creatures or humanoids that are guarding the dungeon and it would be higher or lower depending on what the PCs do to conceal it before their rest.
I use to be fine with players long resting if they were smart about it. Some dungeons has safe rooms that were so horribly trapped or well hidden that the dungeons occupants decided it wasn't worth patrolling that room but when I discovered there were no options to stop players from using liamond tiny hut in the middle of a room they just had a loud combat in I needed this video to give me more ideas instead of just telling my players there were consequences and rolling off random tables that didn't really teach anything.
I'm glad you talked about this. There should definitely be a risk to resting in a dungeon! Don't forget they could dig underneath it or build a fire on top of it and bake them from the inside 😂🔥
Or just collapse the roof. Why fight when you can just skip to winning?
I have done the hut in the dungeon rest several times. I always expect to be ambushed when I do. I will usually color it to match the wall color and I will block the doorway to a room if possible which gives us a room to plan the next fight from and teases the DM about having hidden passages in the room. I can also recast it before it fails to maintain the hut and at that point it gives my party members to come up with a different plan than what I have. depending on my spells I may be able to fabricate a way out of the room. I could look for a way to block off the bottleneck route or even conjure a bigger threat than us to distract with. these are a couple of my thoughts on it but that is mainly because I do expect to be attacked in every rest.
I've been playing the pathfinder kingmaker game on pc and in many situatiions I've had to take a long rest inside a dungeon and been like "well, thank god THIS IS a video-game, cause this would not fly in a table game", ppl sometimes don't realize this
Baldurs gate let's you get away with that also
@@303Thatoneguy true, though AD&D is kinda wack itself
1. Surprise attacks while they are casting the hut. Cause they usually do that as a ritual.
2. Have them roll wis or con saves every watch due to strange sounds and nerves during their rest time. If they fail then they don't get any rest and if they fail REAL bad then they get exhaustion.
3. Like someone else further down said, the dungeon lives on while they sleep. Change encounters, bolster the minions, set new traps, etc.
Taking a long rest in a dungeon, done intelligently is fine. Random encounters were written 30+ years ago for this various reason. To add challenge and spice during long rests.
My favorite is the Time Limit restriction.
If I know my players are prone to Long Resting in dungeons and will almost certainly try to do it, I'll try to set it up so that resting for 8 hours just won't work out. Whether they're trying to get an artifact before another group, or perhaps a ritual is taking place and they know they have maybe an hour or two at most.
Yep, time limits are useful.
Time limits are how you stop 5 minute adventuring days
Thank you for putting this out there! I've been struggling to figure out a good punishment for my group taking long rests after a few easy encounters because they want to waste spell slots.
Don't forget that PCs can only take a long rest once every 24 hours. Enforcing that rule will help stem some of the worst abuses, especially if the party is under any kind of time pressure. Even something as simple as the risk of running out of rations can encourage the party to press forward.
For long distances I wonder about, with the group's permission, playing the board game Tokaido. It's like a old historical Japanese road trip - you and your companions compete in a way to relax, be entertained, consume the best local food, and meet interesting people. Distribute some XP and loot for players describing how they fight off bandits, what temple they visit, and the memories and souvenirs they picked up along the way.
Drop in some locations or NPCs that might come up later, or develop some based on the players descriptions. Who wouldn't want to go back to that tavern with the challenge of eating a giant steak within an hour and it's free?
That’s a very interesting idea.
The Dungeon Moves. That's how I see the six days between game sessions: time for the dungeon to make its move.
As for the wilderness, I find the Tiny Hut comes along at about the moment I've gotten what I can get out of a hungry owlbear jumping the party at night. So I'm as grateful for it as they are. We're moving on to other things by then.
My favorite thing to do is literally something I implemented in mines of phandelver.
If they set up camp halfway through a dungeon and not xovering your tracks or intelligently taking care of any signs of entry/assault, and word gets back to the shotcaller. Then the shot caller decides, okay, every except our penal group, the soldiers or adventurers we've captured and their third strongest creature leaves with all the supplies and any artifacts. The prisoners are dressed in enemy garb and left bound in place for the players to come up behind. Almost always ends up they snuff the target and don't notice anything. If they loot the body, make it a mark of about a 19 to notice its a prisoner and not an enemy unit. They left behind just enough scrap and their old stuff that they might have looted a new location to replace or repair. Make it seem inhabited but as though the party is being successfully stealthy/catching the enemy off guard with an occasional group of two enemies ordered to patrol the site in case of animals entering the dungeon, villains in my games often lie to their pawns in order to deceive adventurers, if they have questionable moral goals, they won't care much about losing any troops that showed insubordination previously with what would appear to be a vacation in terms of whatever work they were in charge of before. And at the end, the third strongest unit knows his job is to point the enemy in the wrong direction. If they don't confirm anything their targets say or just assume shit. They've pretty much lost every thread to the actual threat. And they will have to contact their guild or spy network after they figure it out. Villains might have more units/troops or more power by the time time heroes figure it out. .
My players, yesterday during our session, decided to long rest when they could hear enemies in the next room over. Those enemies went into the final room, activated the weird machine that served as the boss for the dungeon. The boss killed those enemies and then went on patrol, noticing the players, a fight ensues. It was fun.
This is exactly the video I needed for next session, which ended with the party tanking and nearly dying to 3 fireballs in a row, barricading themselves in another room, and long resting.
Have sappers build a large fire on top of and around the dome, the start casting dispel magic until dome goes away.
Every monster has dispel magic? If they all have that why not just wish it to the bottom of the ocean?
My group took a long rest in the Cragmaw cave but only after we cleared out all the goblins. But just in case, the elf wizard stood watch in shifts with the cleric. After all I did allow for them to prod the bodies of the defeated goblins to see if one was alive ssf o they could interrogate him to learn where the Cragmaw castle was. Then we tied him up and we're taking him with us.
Why I love Runehammers active timer's, break out some dice give them roll and now you have a living world not a static game.
Dispel Magic solves so many of these kinds of problems, and its a fairly common spell for some encounters to logically have at this point.
I had players get rudely awakened one evening when their Magnificent Mansion door got dispelled in the middle of the night, dropping them in to the middle of an ambush.
It's 3rd level. It's reasonable to be commonly available. It's not over powered. It's so nice to clean up these things.
You can even create one-off disposable magic items with this spell. Like a Bead of Dispel Magic. You say the magic word, and throw it (ranged touch attack on a target that tries to dodge). Whatever it hits first gets Dispel Magic cast on it as if it used a third level spell slot, and the bead crumbles to dust. This lets you control how many exist in the world (players can even get a small number) while creating something that could have a reasonable chance to counter these kinds of things if used by the BBEG's minions.
Remember, you're allowed to be creative, too.
I like that idea you mentioned, a tower that randomly teleports to a new position in the world. Perhaps it could even be the basis for a whole campaign. Maybe it doesn't move every day, but after some random time, (e.g. up to a month or so). There could be some evil NPC(s) living in the tower who send minions out to pillage the surrounding area, perhaps some minions get left behind when the tower moves, and the more important ones have to use spells or magic items to catch up with the tower. Or maybe there is some kind of countdown or advance warning just before it moves, allowing the minions to be recalled.
You could start the campaign with the party hearing reports of a strange tower appearing in a forest nearby, and foul creatures spilling out and going on the rampage. The party could be sent to investigate. Maybe partway through the campaign, the tower relocates itself and the party finds themselves in a hostile area and under siege. The goal of the campaign could be either to disable the tower's teleport ability, destroy it, or take control of it for themselves.
I see a few other overland travel options
1. Don't allow such long trips. Blow up the map and have the campaign take place in a smaller area. I typically keep things in the same province or country, such that day (or weekly) hand waving is fine. It saves issues with this.
2. Shorten the travel time and remove encounters. If they need to make a trip that long, put them on a ship which moves faster (so many only 2 sessions while something happens on the ship or during city stops), or flying mounts, or a wizard's guild to teleport them there.
Long travel causes issues. It seems odd in your starting village you have massive adventures, but you hand wave through thousands of miles of wilderness, roads, big cities, etc. Even if you assume those areas are safe, you still need to describe the people, architecture, roads, and have some encounters. Likewise, 2-5 sessions of actual encounters makes the big encounter to the south really boring.
I tends to keep it small, do day-by-day recaps of travel (people, stays, inn names, scenery, language, etc.) and then speed it up if they have travelled over it. Small saves so many problems.
One tiny correction. The caster can pick what color the Tiny Hut is.
It is possible for the players to put some effort into hiding the Tiny Hut and also disguise its color to mostly match the color of the dungeon walls. Casting it in the back of a room with only one entrance for example.
exactly what i was thinking. why bother having the hut if you cant use it as intended
My group in Pathfinder Kingmaker actually put in the time and money to create a wondrous item called Leomund's Instant Cabin (Think Daern's Instant Fortress, but like, a comfortable looking cabin). They did a lot of this in Kingmaker, like the boots of the Winter Wilderness Stride (Now called the Boots of the Winter Wonderland Stride due to mispronunciations of the players). Cross between Boots of the Winterland, Boots of Wilderness Stride, and boot of Springing and Striding. Springing and Striding was a late addition to the mix because, and I'm not kidding here, one of their horses almost gotten taken out, and they were scared I was going to kill off their horses, so they wanted to move faster, so they could laves the horses stabled (They also began breeding horses later). Kingmaker has a lot more downtime than most campaigns, being built as a sandbox, and the group used it to their absurd advantage.
Nothing really broken, but like, they got really into comfort items, like making a magical spice rack that they could use at will (They literally didn't want the rest of the prestidigitation effects on there, JUST the spicing food and drink part. they were incredibly insistent about that part). a "Folding Sofa" modeled after the folding boat item, I suddenly started laughing hysterically at one point, and no one could figure out what I found so funny.
Okay, here we have these ragged, tough adventurers who have decimated a troll army, killed a black dragon, and we suddenly cut to them sitting in a precious little cabin in the woods, the wizard laid out on the sofa reading, while the Barbarian, Druid, and Ranger relax in squashy armchairs by the fire. The Bard is making dinner in the kitchen, while everyone is drinking mulled wine, a little tune being played by the Bard's floating player-instruments. Every one of them are wearing their warm comfy shoes.
Some other alternatives - depending on the dungeon:
- the bad guys collapse the roof on top of the tiny hut. That would mean the players would need to find some way of getting out of a collapsed cave instead of exploring a dungeon.
- there are other adventurers who also explore the dungeon - those might take some or all of the treasure, while the party is wasting time sleeping. This one works really well in our current campaign, as it is already established that different adventurers guilds work in competition to each other and members of different guilds would definitly "steal" others loot like that
- the bad guys fill the room with sleeping gas, construct some kind of cage around the hut or similar shenanigans like that. similar to what Luke said, but in addition the party will also be in a bad strategic situation on top of being swarmed by the entire dungeon.
- the endboss of the dungeon will take care of this himself. This one works specifically well, if the endboss is something like a dragon which players would typically either avoid or fight under "their" conditions. Well, now they are fighting him well rested, but without any other advantages - good luck.
Thank you for the solution on gathering the entire dungeon around the hut, you help me confirm that I am making the right decisions. Players usually expect that I give them a break for whatever they do, no matter how illogical it appears to me. Sometimes they make something like this that just alerts the entire dungeon of their presence and afterward they get upset with me saying: maybe don't swarm us with creatures next time.
For me, it is just the logical thing to do. I like my games with logic. I hate to watch a movie or series and see the script go bunker and illogical. It is a challenge for me to sacrifice logic for fun on the table. I love to have fun and I look to make all experiences fun for everyone, yet players steal a wizard's spellbook and get upset if they are pursued by the said wizard and constantly ambushed by him.
One time players went to attack a goblin tribe fortress that was protecting a green hag they were having problems with (this was at level 5) and they got upset that one player died. But guess what, the goblins were nurtured by this hag for a long time and they were very well organized. Not only that, but the players just marched in front of the fortress demanding that they delivered the hag. Well... it didn't go as they planned. The player that died was a fighter who found his fate after jumping the wall alone after a few rounds of combat (which they were winning; level 5 after all) to face a few remaining hobgoblins, bugbears, and two ogres surrounding him.
Learning how A DM tries to counter lth is useful as a player, thank you 😊
Concerning the travel. I can recommend the adventures in middleearth 5e rules. They basically combine luke‘s middle way with a ruleset incorporating the preparation the players take.
There we have it, boys and girls, Luke confesses that he hasn't been DMing since highschool! He hasn't provided his resume!
Also 100% agree with this video. Either extension to the extremes for traveling.... just sucks. I've done both as a DM and had both as a player. They CAN fit in certain situations and at certain times....but 99% of the time...it's not that time...
In all the dungeon crawls I run I keep a few random encounters on-hand in case of long rests. If they use Tiny Hut, I have the random encounter arrive, the creatures investigate the hut, and then they leave. I then add those NPCs to the next encounter, and they alert the next group that something is up, and to be ready (aka, the enemies cannot be surprised, as they are already on alert).
If there are more than one random encounter that should happen, all of those groups repeat this, and all are added to the next encounter. You'd be surprised how many "first encounters of the day" result in, "can we take one of our two short rests" because they opted to get a safe long rest. It adds a level of strategy to spell selection, because they know that they are making the dungeon harder.
Bonus advantage of this system: these are random encounters, so even if they win, they aren't draining any of the actual NPCs who guard the dungeon. They're just extra NPCs. So if they do win the encounter they haven't slaughtered everyone else in the dungeon. They just upped a difficulty for themselves.
I really would love my players to use the Tiny Hut, especially if monster are around which can burrow. Tiny hut is a dome not a sphere. It would be really sweet to catch the party off guard during their sleep.
Excellent advice as always. Your intellect rises into the sky and you bestow upon us wisdom of the ages that helps us run our games in a way that we could’ve never imagined. We bow before your insight.
Good advice in this video. I'd just add that the "ticking clock" is a super helpful narrative advice. With the exception of one-shots (sometimes), dungeons don't exist in a narrative vacuum. Usually, the adventurers are diving into the cave / lair / hideout / ruins / etc. because they need to stop the evil ritual, rescue the hostages, or what have you. Even if it is more of a side-quest dungeon... what about the main plot? What are the main baddies doing? What is going on back in town? Or in the surrounding region? A lot can happen in ~8 hours. Things that they left dangling might be resolved in ways they don't like. As with the other tips, you don't need to do this every time. But doing it occasionally, when it makes sense, will at least make the players think twice. I don't think the goal should be to prevent every single unplanned or "extra" long rest. That is railroady. But spending time for long rests when the action is happening (i.e., not downtime) _should_ be a strategic decision, rather than a no-brainer.
Villains vs hut.... fire. Stack hay/wood around the hut, light it, smoke'em out.
Yep.
Well maybe, hut is temperature controlled, so the heat wouldn't do anything. But Co2 in the other hand...
@@LeveledRogue exactly
Nothing can pass through the hut though. I presume that would apply to gasses.
@@theDMLair That's fair. But if we assume gas cannot pass through, can Oxygen? (this isn't the point of the fire though).
The point of the fire is to 1, blind them, 2, suffocate them with lack of oxygen 3, stop them from escaping.
For the travel I either hand waive it, if it’s somewhere they have been before and know the route. Or if it’s something that narratively makes sense. Or if my players are being extra distractible.
For long trips, I mostly use that for new places, if I want the journey to have that feeling of slogging through somewhere, or I have finished planning the main campaign setting and they are still traveling there. Oh I need just one more session then I’ll have it ready. Travel session time.
I like that you added that caveat "unless I planned it to take longer than a day" (paraphrasing)... If we want to instill a sense of realism we have to have that in mind when we have expectations on our players as well. Sending them into a dungeon that is basically just a Mad Mage maze of rooms with dangers, and expecting them to go on for days without resting because it would be unrealistic to rest anywhere is bad planning. In that case I think it is better to have rooms or sections of the dungeon that are unpopulated or scarcely populated that they can find and utilize - low risk zones if you will. Perhaps have a monster occupy a section that the other baddies avoid. If the monster find them there it's a lower stake because they don't alert the whole crew of bad guys they are after, if they get spotted or need to fight their way out in the morning.
For overland travel, there should be ways for the players to take long rests. The top two that I can think of are finding a cave and set up security measures and taking watch (the whole point of sleep 6 hours and 2 hours of light activity), of find small huts that merchants would have set up so that their merchandise would not be destroyed while being moved between locations.
The whole 2 hours of light activities to keep watch should be considered for long rests.
Regarding travel, I'm a bit surprised that Luke didn't ask _why_ the players want to travel so far. Of course it could be just something they're excited to try, or it could be because the DM gave them a hook to lead them to that place, but sometimes I think travel can be a sign of either misaligned player expectations (new players who think DnD is Skyrim, usually), or it could be a sign that the players are bored with whatever the DM is doing, and they want to go off and do their own thing.
I had players do this to me in the first campaign I ran, and it didn't take me long to realise that both of these things were happening. These were all avid gamers who had never played a TTRPG before, and expected an experience roughly similar to a video game RPG. On the other hand, the plot hooks I was giving them weren't very interesting, and I was acting a bit railroady. So one game they were on the road, and someone asked "what's to the North", and I was like "err... forest." They immediately just went off into the wilderness and I had to improvise a bunch of random encounters. The next session I planned some wilderness things for them to do, but it just wasn't the game I'd wanted to run, and it all felt very disjointed.
Anyway I've since learned my lesson. I do have things planned in case players decide to go off-piste, but when I DM for new groups I always try to impress on them beforehand that D&D isn't a video game. And of course, that experience gave me another layer of motivation for creating as compelling hooks and scenarios as I possibly can. I've rarely had players wanting to go off travelling to random places ever since, because they enjoy what they're doing where they already are.
I kinda like the idea of low level grunt forces walking on up, investigating it, they roll an arcana check, realize its Leomunds tiny hut with a DC of 13 (10 + level of spell), know that the party inside can see them but the creature can't see them. The minions then leave for a bit, come back with either a large tarp, or preferably boiling tar to then coat and toss over the dome to then cut off the players abilities to see. If its Tar it would probably cool and leave the party a dome they have to consider what might be on the other side, but for a tarp, it could be weighted down with chains and when the dome goes down, the tarp and chains come down and trap the party
When travelling, what I like to do is roll a 1d6 to see if anything happens ( on a 6 there's an event ). Then I roll evens/odds, evens it's a monster or NPC encounter, odds it's a weather or natural hazard. Then I roll another 1d6 for severity. On a 1 its a good thing, 2 it's ignorable, 3-6 is increasingly difficulty/hard to survive. Once I have those parameters I figure something out.
I had a problem with my PCs traveling across a continent in my first 3rd edition D&D campaign.
I mean, it went well. They travelled to different regions, met new people, solved their problems, grew stronger and moved on.
But the thing is that they travelled a significantly large enough distance to the point where they leveled up from 1 to 20. And I realized, to my dismay, that they weren't well known. They'd never had the chance to build up much of a reputation (besides their occasional heroics) in any region. It was a great journey, with tons of great experiences... but I inwardly chafed that the fighter never became the lord of his own keep, the wizard never had his tower, etcetera. I did have a satisfying post-campaign narrative montage for them, but the cool stuff that had happened should have happened to them live during a game.
It made me tweak my subsequent campaigns to have them more invested in the regions they spent time in, and make it obvious that they built a reputation and even a following. i gave them ways to wander away from hub areas, but reasons for them to come back, while still having obvious benefits to growing in power.
This is why our group still plays a Hybrid advanced AD&D (e1&2). Spells actually work, they don't limit you like they do in 5e. You can cast invisibility on items and they stay invisible until they attack. Leomand's Hut never attacks.
I also play a bard that has Leomund's Tiny Hut. There's a difference on how it's being treated, though.
We play in a desert setting, so, the Tiny Hut is a major asset in the sense that it allows us to rest while not being exposed to extreme temperatures. Sure, we can also be safe inside it at night... but we travel with camels. Camels are large, they don't fit inside the tiny hut. So the party still needs to take turns guarding the mounts... which is where the warlock's pseudodragon familiar or my own bard's ability to trance pays off. But yeah, if ghouls come up to us during the night, we need to protect our mounts... so, that's a mitigating factor.
I haven't had reason to use the Tiny hut spell inside a dungeon until recently. We were investigating why one of the sultanate's forward posts was being attacked regularily by undead and we identified that the danger came from below, under the well. We first found natural cavern and contended with some of its less friendly inhabitants like skeletons, vampire bats, giant constrictor snake and a Roper. We noticed a Kruthik hive nearby, but we tried to avoid wandering in territory we perceived as theirs because they were probably not to blame for the reason we were down there.
However, at some point we ran out of options and we had to go in Kruthik territory if we were to find the troubles we divined were under the fort. Our cleric confirmed we had to go there with an augur, but the Kruthik seemed remotely intelligent and in egg-laying season so I was reluctant to fight them. I asked my party for a chance to negociate, and used the Tongues spell in the hopes that I could speak Kruthik and that they had somesort of language. My gamble paid off, and I was able to get us escorted to the Hive Lord, which postured, discussed their hive's woes with 'chitinless ones' that came from below, forcing them to amp up egglaying to have their hive better able to recover from the latest predations.
I managed to convey that our side on the surface were open to coexistence and that we were also having troubles with those chitinless ones, so I managed to get us passage. Knowing we were getting in pretty deep and that we were roughly halfway through our resources (including hit dices, and we only recover half of those per long rest), I was able to negociate with the hive lord to reserve us a place where we could rest between our forays below.
So, now, we have a spot to rest in my Tiny Hut... but at least I earned us the right to rest there. So, hopefully, we should be relatively unmolested by the time we get out and continue on with our business below.
At 2:30 he mentions casting through it.
The spell stops casting both ways.
“spells and other magical effects can’t extend through the dome or be cast through it”
JC also clarified that items like arrows ‘moving’ through refers to movement/transport and *not* being shot out.
The tiny hut is meant as a total peace center there is no combat from within, i suppose melee combat would work, but not the invincible archer hut many try to use it as!
On the note of travel, I find one of the MOST important things is to make the decision to travel in the first place interesting. If there are 3-4 time-sensitive events going on in the world, then the players need to consider and discuss what they can feasibly accomplish with the time they have available. I find a lot of the time this actually leads to the party reminding each other about other potential plot hooks they've forgotten about, or it can even lead to giving me more ideas for future adventures.
My general rules are: Is there realistically anything interesting or threatening along this travel route? If not, then just tell the players how long it takes to arrive. If yes, then I like to actually make a short adventure at some point along the way, skip to that, then skip to the destination after the adventure (sometimes the travel itself is the adventure if it's through mines or something to that effect).
Hi Luke, I'm running your Serpent Senctum adventure and it is a blast to my players. Those three yuan-ti purebloods from the Lounge came to check what is going on in Cathedral and tried to make a deal with PC's but PC's decided to attack. One of yuan-tis ran away to alert the boss and PC's went after him and they burst into Blood Bath in the same time when Mind Whisperer, Abomination and Broodgards went out from the Throne Rome. Against all odds they won, and I wasn't easy on them. One of PC's died but Palading managed to revivify him. And they decided to take a long rest... They are happy now but there will be consequences. Their mission will fail. Everyone from Slave Pen will be slained :(
For anyone that wants to be detailed about travel, a good but not exhaustive walking speed is 3 miles per hour on a good road or trail. Assuming a full day's travel with breaks for meals, snacks, and personals, 10-14 hours a day walking. They can get 30-40 miles a day if they're on roads or well traveled trails. Calculate a slower walking speed if they're traveling off road, even slower over rough terrain.
Players could decide to push it and go for a 4-4.5 mph walking speed (any faster than that and you start jogging, seriously, try these speeds on a treadmill). In that case, you might want to make them roll athletics or constitution checks, or give them exhaustion at some point in the day. If you wanted to be really detailed you could say that they need more food throughout the day if they're pushing it, and they're going through their rations faster.
That explanation at the beginning is a cool hook for a dungeon coming up together despite their difference... and a good start to an adventure as dungeon monsters! Haha!
I think it depends largely on the context of what's up in the dungeon. If there's a BBEG in there, and the *entire* dungeon is minions in his service, then yeah. They'd probably be discovered, the BBEG and his elite guard fortify and prepare in the most fortified sanctum of his dungeon. A scout party stays behind to figure out what the attackers are, and then run to report to the BBEG when hut goes down.
However, if you're hunting... I dunno, an evil warlock with a minotaur captain, and he's hiding in the caves of the nearby mountains... Well not everything in those caves know or care about the warlock. So unless the party is the warlock's portion of the caves, they may go entirely unnoticed. They may have fought through a tribe of goblins and a family of bulettes, but they just happened to live there also, and so the warlock has no idea and doesn't police the entire cave network.
I mean, your imagination is really your only limitation.
Depending on the dungeon you don't need to swarm the hut (also, assuming the enemies have some intelligence). The mastermind/boss can simply have everyone alert, set up more strategic positions that would normally leave their flanks/backs exposed. Even reinforce certain positions and leave other rooms empty (which would give the players a hint that something isn't right). Mechanically, all enemies would have higher stealth DC and advantage on perception checks.
It doesn't always make sense to have "everyone attack". For one, they can end up bottlenecked. If the boss knows they have magic, they probably don't want everyone crammed into a smaller space. Secondly, outside the camp/hut might not be ideal position to ambush from.
This is old, but Luke, there's a few things you missed when discussing Leomund's Tiny Hut.
1) You can't cast spells out of it either. You can shoot arrows/bolts/normal projectiles and the like out so long as they were in the dome when the dome was made.
2) What it looks like on the outside is up to the casters, you can try to camouflage it into the dungeon if you do it right.
Here's the spell info:
A 10-foot-radius immobile dome of force springs into existence around and above you and remains stationary for the duration. The spell ends if you leave its area.
Nine creatures of Medium size or smaller can fit inside the dome with you. The spell fails if its area includes a larger creature or more than nine creatures. Creatures and objects within the dome when you cast this spell can move through it freely. All other creatures and objects are barred from passing through it. *Spells and other magical effects can’t extend through the dome or be cast through it* . The atmosphere inside the space is comfortable and dry, regardless of the weather outside.
Until the spell ends, you can command the interior to become dimly lit or dark. The dome is opaque from the outside, *of any color you choose* , but it is transparent from the inside.
4th option, maybe harsh. Patrol finds hut. BBEG seals the room, waits for the adventurers to die of exhaustion/dehydration/starvation. Reverse siege. Lock them in.
When the party take a short rest I tend to set a 1 in 6 chance of a random encounter occurring if they take a long rest it’s 2 rolls.
Of course if the dungeon is well patrolled then the odds will be even higher
Another way to deal with long rests in dungeons: add a "ticking clock."
Just pulling this off the top of my head, but maybe the dungeon boss is a powerful warlock who is conducting a ritual to open a portal to the abyss. The ritual takes 8 hours, and the PCs are informed that the warlock has recently begun casting. It gives them more than enough time to complete the dungeon without worrying about a time limit, but it makes it very clear to them (upfront) that a long rest is something they don't have time for.
Also, that trip from Luskin to Amn also could include overnight trips in Waterdeep, etc.
Wouldn't work, but I had the idea enough to check. The party climbs inside a bag of holding, wizard casts Tiny Hut inside. Someone climbs out, hides the bag somewhere where it most likely won't be found by casual search, then gets back inside themselves. Bonus if druid, then wild shapes into an insect to crawl back in without leaving a humanoid sized opening.
Tiny Hut is a 10' radius dome though, and a bag of holding doesn't have that much space inside. At best, it holds 64 cubic feet, while a 10' radius half-sphere takes up 2094.4 cubic feet.
Travel always been a struggle for me, everyone wants to just get to point B, but it might be fun to run a game where the campaign is the travel, like a Journey to the West. Might also be easy to prep if it is something the group might be interested in.
Players cannot cast spells that pass through the hut, and one thing to keep in mind: any ammunition fired through the hut can be fired back through it. Monsters of any kind of intelligence can actually just push a cover large enough to completely obscure them right up to the hut, and fill the room with oil or something, waiting to light it when they get out
Ooh! the hut is impenetrable? Pile rocks on it, or collapse the room. Maybe pelt the dome with poisonous mushrooms. Fill the room with flammable oil and kindling.
When that hut comes down, so does all the stuff you piled around and on it. Then if using flammables, toss in a torch.
I always paint the dome as an artist character to look like the walls in a dark corner.
my party's wizard decided to steal a relic level spellbook (specifically the Grimoire Infinitus) from an archmage, this allowed me to teach my party a lesson in being to reliant on tiny hut, before this they had taken to not even bothering to set a watch once they got to the level that they had tiny hut available to them, but after the spellbook had been stolen the archmage decided to send some of his apprentices and some mecernaries to recover it, and it only took one ambush encounter with spellcasters that had all the time to set up magical traps and be able to dispel the hut to ambush the party in their sleep for everyone to realize that the tiny hut wasn't the perfect shield they thought it was
Throw a Babau at them. I had a mind to trap one in a Magic Circle that i cast as an Arcane Domain Cleric. The Demon's dispell magic swept that plan away quicker than the 1 minute casting of the circle. Just have the Babau hide, cast Dispell Magic on the hut, followed by Fear, Heat Metal or Darkness. Now you've got an ambush and a legit way of making their safety bubble pop. Can't do it everytime they make a Tiny Hut of course but that possibility will give them pause before they long-rest in a dangerous location. With a CR of 4, Babau's are really viable in early game.
The hut allows for air to pass through. That's a two way street. Goblins or Kobolds might build a bonfire around the hut and either smoke them out or exhaust local oxygen.
Or set traps all around the local area. Or post a series of guards. Or trap the room to collapse. Or....
I've also run a Hag-centric campaign. The players used the hut to rest in one Hags forest territory. She could see them via scrying so she simply waited for their rest to end before sending minions.
The enjoyment of the players is the reason that I watch D&D streams. I watch only 2, Critical Roll and D&D NPC from Viva La Dirt League. I like both of them because the players and DM are having fun. I also watch because I like the style of play from them as well.
I think another thing people forget about leomonds tiny hut, is that it's a dome; not a sphere. It doesn't dig into the ground.
Kobold love to dig. Mold earth and earth tremor are both low level spells.
The best way to handle rests is put a time limit on the quest and then add a bonus. A significant bonus. Think of it as real contract work, there is a time limit when the project needs to be completed and when you do in a shorter amount of time you receive a bonus. This incentives the PC’s to push forward. The bonus can literally be more than then then the purse. All the other stuff he mentioned is good to but the root of it is incentivizing your PCs to get the job done quickly.
Taking a rest inside a dungeon period has never really crossed my mind. And with how much I've seen Luke talk about it, I'm glad I've never tried doing it. With my group in particular it actually might be more effective since we most commonly fight undead creatures, since they're typically shambling mindless mounds of rotting flesh and bone. But there will come a day where we fight creatures rational of though. The only reason we didn't is because my friend group isn't very capable of getting invested into the game.
These reasons are why when I have used this spell I have a way to hide the dome besides having the dome and a way to alert us if we are found. Alarm or magic mouth. Yes my dm's often hate me.
Just to point out it's opaque but, can be ANY color the caster wishes. Thus I can color to match the surrounding stones or lava glass or take the color of nearby ice or snow. So at very least depending on lighting and enemy perception a stealth check is in order.
I've built a whole plot based encounter around the first use of Rope Trick in my current campaign.
"My players have decided to walk across the continent." Ah, so they're playing Lord of the Rings...
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3.5 tiny hut would allow creatures in even if they weren't within it on casting. Weapons and spells would pass through it uneffected but the elements were kept out such as snow rain and wind and it provided total concealment for those inside. 5e tiny hut is broken
One thing that I never see anyone mention from the Tiny Hut spell is this:
"...The dome is opaque from the outside, of any color you choose..."
Since you can make it any color you choose why the heck wouldn't you make it the same color as your surroundings for camouflage? Outside in the snow? Make it white. Next to a rock wall? Make it the same color. Etc, etc.
So if you're in the dungeon somewhere go to a dead end, color it like the wall, and now the dead end just looks 10 feet shorter than normal. Pretty hard to spot at that point unless something is actively hunting for them.
4) There might not be enough time for the NPCs to get reinforcements to the Dungeon within the time that elapses during a long rest, but they might have time for reinforcements to arrive as the party is trying to leave the dungeon having spent a bit of time on exploring, doing encounters and looting the dungeon after Novaing and killing the big bad in the dungeon.
2:10 - I wouldn't say, "gather up the entire dungeon." Players I know would happily set up a that looks similar and put massive amounts of explosives or other nasty traps inside it, just waiting for the same behavior so they could blow the dungeon denizens to smithereens.
Still, preparing to barricade it up and force the PCs through a gauntlet afterwards is on par with what I would expect.
5e Leomund's: " around and above you" + "fails if its area includes a larger creature or more than nine creatures." I ruled that the phrasing implies that the floor is open. So Dire Wolves smelled the party from before they cast the tent then started digging. As soon as one managed to squeeze inside, "poof", the tent disappears.
Also notably, the players can react to the patrol passing by by interrupting the long-rest to prevent their location being revealed, making it a challenge and a cost-benefit situation for whether or not they, one, wait and allow themselves to be swarmed, two, try to take out the patrol before they alert the boss, or three, try to exit the dungeon or otherwise relocate to hopefully avoid detection/being swarmed.
Taking out the patrol will not interrupt their long rest unless the combat takes at least an hour. Since each round of combat is only 6 seconds players would need to engage in 600 rounds of combat to interrupt their long rest.