Dungeon Design Tips: Ticking Time Clocks, And Wizard Bullets

There is a common complaint among many Game Masters that players ride roughshod over their dungeons and encounters without any serious challenge. Things are just too easy, and there's rarely any real risk to them. However, once Game Masters start pulling back the curtain, it becomes clear they're leaving out an important aspect of the game... namely, that sometimes things need to be done quickly.

For more installments of this series, check out:

- Consider Removing Doors From Your Dungeon

- Combine Combat With Traps

- Cover, Firing Lines, and Dynamic Arenas

- Antagonist Action Economy (Never Fight Just One BBEG)

- Pay Attention To The Environment

Seriously, it makes a difference...

As always, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron! Also, be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree.

Lastly, for hundreds of extra articles on gaming, weird history, and for more free fiction, check out my Vocal archive, too!

A Timer Makes A Big Difference!

Now, before we get going on this, it's important to remember that not all events should have a ticking time clock on them. Sometimes the party should be allowed to take their time, explore, and go at their own pace. However, time should be treated as a resource in an RPG, and like any resource it should be finite. Not only that, it should be more finite in particular instances than others as a way of creating additional challenge.

For some examples, consider the following situations:

- The party must reach the heart of the Shrine of Eternal Storms... but it is only ever accessible for 3 days out of a year. If they fail in their quest, they will either need to escape and wait another year, or they will be trapped inside!

- A jailbreak is happening tonight! They need to get themselves, and a specific fellow prisoner, out... preferably before the guards realize what's happening!

- A force of the dread warlock Al-Kazir is approaching the ruins with the intent to seize the Bloodstone. They need to get it first, otherwise it will fall into his hands... then there may be no way to stop him and his legions if that happens!

While there are just a few broad strokes, you get the idea. It's not just that the party has to fight their way through a dungeon, or explore a dangerous crypt, or acquire a certain relic... it's that they don't have the luxury of time. This means that they will have to make choices based on the sand falling through the hourglass as much as anything else, and it will likely lead to some hard decisions.

We don't have time for this...

As an example, the smart thing to do in a dungeon is to carefully check every inch of the floor for traps... but if you have enemy forces closing on your position, you don't have the luxury of crawling along the floor and fiddling with every door. So now the rogue is rushing the job, or alternatives methods are used. Does the barbarian or the fighter bulldoze their way down a hallway, counting on toughness or armor to save them from the worst of the trap's damage? Or does the necromancer take one of her least-robust servants, walking the undead down the hall to trigger any tripwires or slicing blades, sacrificing the zombie in order to gain a few precious minutes of efficiency?

The same is true of combat situations in the dungeon. While a party might normally decide to clear a dungeon room by room, fighting anything that resists them, that can turn into a slog, and use a lot of resources that requires members to rest, recuperate, and replenish themselves. Alternatively, the party might like to try diplomacy and negotiation, but such tactics can be unreliable at best, and they often eat into the amount of time one has allotted. Does the press of minutes mean that the characters embrace stealth or guile instead? Perhaps attempting to sneak in without being seen, getting close to their goal and rushing out before they can get caught? Or do they attempt to blend in, don the uniforms and forms of creatures or warriors who should be present in this place, avoiding battle as much as possible in order to get what they came for and get out?

These are the kinds of pivots and changes that can be made when players don't have time to rush in, face first, sword swinging, before retreating half a dozen times to try again the next day once they've had 8 hours of rest, a Gatorade, and a chance to replenish all their spells and class features.

This is Where The Wizard Bullets Come In

Vancian magic is the dominant form of magic in Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, and similar games. Characters start the day with a certain amount of spells, and even if you aren't a spellcaster per-se, you often have a class feature or power that has a pool of points or resources (a cleric's channel energy, an alchemist's bombs and extracts, a monk's ki pool, a swashbuckler's panache, and so on) that runs out as you use them. This acts kind of like the bullets in a gun, which means that spellcasters and similar characters are extremely dangerous as long as they still have ammunition, but once they run out of their resources, they have a serious problem.

The problem arises when players have no time limit on their activities, and there's no penalties for rushing in, empting their magazines (so to speak), and then retreating to rest and recharge before coming in fresh. Because the challenge of these games is set up in such a way that a party should go through between 3 and 5 encounters between when they first loaded up to fight, and when they are supposed to be drained of their abilities.

By putting a time constraint on your players, you eliminate them retreating and "reloading" after every single encounter (or only a small handful of them), thus forcing them to conserve their resources and make tougher decisions about where they're going to use their powers, and how they're going to handle things going forward.

Oh balls... Guys, I think I'm tapped out!

For example, does the sorcerer really want to cast a spell just because it's their turn? Or will they use a wand or a scroll that will still be a helpful contrinbution to the battle while keeping their own powers in reserve? Does this battle really warrant the barbarian using their Rage, or can they handle this with their raw, brute strength and clever maneuverability? Does the ranger want to use their special arrows on this fight, or should they save those for the upcoming boss fight, knowing they only have a handful of them?

Because if players know, academically, they're on a time crunch they are going to get a lot more creative with their resources. Not only that, but they're going to really ask whether it's worth pulling the trigger when they only have so many rounds in the magazine... or should they just let the fighter with the greatsword handle it, even if it means the spellcaster has to wait a round or two while the martials mop up the rest of the battle?

If your players can just go in, guns blazing with no repercussions for walking back out and taking 24 hours to rest and recuperate to get themselves fully locked and loaded before wading back in... well, that's certainly going to undermine your threat and danger. But if they know they have to do all of this in one go, and the only resources they have are the ones they bring in the door with them, that's going to be a very different (and usually much more tense) adventure.

Additional Recommended Reading

If you enjoyed this piece, then I would recommend checking out 100 Tips And Tricks For Being A Better Game Master, along with the companion piece 100 Tips For Being A Better RPG Player. Both of these supplements have been quite popular, and they collect some of the best field-tested tips that have been covered on this blog over the years!

Like, Follow, and Stay in Touch!

That's all for this week's Crunch post! To stay on top of all my content and releases, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at the bottom of the page!

Again, for more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the Azukail Games YouTube channel, or my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary! Or if you'd prefer to read some of my books, like my dystopian sci-fi thriller Old Soldiers, my hardboiled gangland noir series starring a bruiser of a Maine Coon with Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, then head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Blue Sky, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now Pinterest as well! To support my work, consider Buying Me a Ko-Fi, or heading to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron. That one helps ensure you get more Improved Initiative, and it means you'll get my regular, monthly giveaways as a bonus!

"Well-Rounded" Rarely Works in Pathfinder

There is a desire among a lot of players (and particularly among newer players) to try to build a character that's "well-rounded" when they sit down at a Pathfinder table. They want to put a skill point into Handle Animal, for example, or they want to take 2-3 different classes just so they "have options" when it comes to what they can and can't do in game.

And I get that urge. I do. However, I would like to try to save my fellow players as much frustration as possible, since I had to learn this lesson the hard way over several campaigns between 3.5 and Pathfinder. That is, in short, that the game does not, generally speaking, reward spreading your resources wider and thinner. That's why you have a party.

No one is meant to be able to do everything on their own.

As always, if you want to help me keep the wheels turning then consider becoming a Patreon patron today! It makes a big difference, and ensures I have the bandwidth to keep the blogs going. And if you don't want to miss anything that I'm doing, sign up for my weekly newsletter as well!

Increased Challenge Requires Focus To Succeed

As anyone who has played Pathfinder can tell you, as the game proceeds, everything about it gets harder. The difficulty checks for skills get higher, the armor class for enemies goes up, enemy saving throws get better, and so on, and so forth. So while you can sometimes succeed at lower levels with nothing more than a good roll and a higher-than-average attribute, that isn't going to cut it past level 4-5. After that you need to start stacking bonuses from various sources if you expect to succeed.

I put one rank in Intimidate... I should still be able to do this, right?

As an example, say you want your barbarian to be able to move around silently. They're a hunter, after all, so you put a skill rank into Stealth. That's not an inherently bad idea... however, a Stealth check is always going to be opposed by an enemy's Perception roll. And at lower levels that's often going to be a toss up as to whether they hear/see you or not. But if you just leave that one rank in Stealth? Or if you didn't make it a class skill by taking an appropriate background trait? And if there are no magic items, spells, etc. giving it a boost? Well, at level one having a +4 to Stealth means you've got a decent shot of not being seen or heard if you roll well. At level 8 or 10, that +4 to Stealth is nowhere near as good when your opponent has a +12 or more to their Perception score.

You can apply this to a lot of different aspects of the game. For example, identifying monsters and their abilities is a Knowledge roll, but that difficulty goes up with the monster's CR. Intimidating a creature gets harder the more hit dice they have. Traps get more difficult to bypass, spells become harder to resist, enemies get more difficult to hit, and they gain more and more hit points.

So if you want this thing you're putting resources into to be something your character is actually going to succeed at, you need to make the necessary investment to pull it off.

In short, Pathfinder is a game that rewards focused builds. You should be good at more than one thing, but generally speaking any given character is going to have a small handful of things they can be really, truly good at that they should expect to succeed at more often than not. And if you're good at a particular thing, there's a trade off for it elsewhere. It's why full casters don't get a full base attack bonus, it's why skill monkey builds tend to have lower hit points, and so on, and so forth.

End of The Day, You're All Part of a Team

The logic behind this structure is that a party is assembled with the intention that you're all filling necessary roles, and covering certain tasks. For example, the barbarian is here to tank damage, dish out the harshness, Intimidate the enemy (or those who annoy them in social situations), and perhaps one other sub-specialty depending on resources and expenditures. The paladin is here to fight evil foes, but they can also act as a diplomat during social situations due to their class skills and necessary attributes. The wizard is here to provide arcane insight, and to use their spells to provide solutions for their comrades. The rogue is the one capable of disabling magical traps, spotting ambushes, and doing Stealth reconnaissance.

Swap the roles around as your build sees fit.

Now, while the examples given are the stereotypical roles for these character classes, one of the great advantages of Pathfinder is that it gives you a lot of flexibility in which classes can be made to fit which roles. For example, you could make a long-ranged, Stealth-based paladin who can sneak around and provide fire support, while also smiting demons. You could make a rogue who favors a greatclub over daggers, and who runs in bellowing a battle cry when initiative is rolled, dealing out damage on par with many fighters. You can make a bard who's just as adept at dealing with dungeon crawls as a rogue, or a wizard who focuses their skill set on diplomacy and social skills.

However, even when you step outside of class stereotypes, you still have to deal with the fact that every character regardless of the class or classes they take levels in, has a set amount of resources. They only have so many skill points to distribute, so many feats to take, and so much gold to buy magic items with. And if you spread them around to a bunch of disparate, unconnected skills or abilities, then you're going to find that you aren't keeping pace with the challenges you're facing.

Everyone Gets a Turn

A common issue a lot of players run into is they want to be able to participate (if not to shine) in every, single situation. However, Pathfinder is a game where a lot of the time players need to work together to assist one another, handing off the spotlight as one character's skill set comes into focus. Those with Knowledge skills are the ones who discover lore and shout out a monster's weaknesses, those with melee skill engage the enemy to keep them back from their allies, spellcasters utilize their magic to end threats, etc.

While you can build a character to be effective at nearly any task you set, as a lot of people have pointed out, unless you want to keep investing in that ability as you level (increasing your skill ranks, increasing your caster level, increasing your combat prowess, etc.) you are going to fall behind until something you were reliably good at in the start of the game is something that will require a natural 20 to succeed by the time your level hits double digits.

In Other News...

For those who've been following my Sundara: Dawn of a New Age RPG setting, a completely new installment dropped today! This month we take a break from exploring the physical locations we saw in the Cities of Sundara series, with Gods of Sundara, a book that delves into the metaphysical workings of this setting, and what makes it different from more traditional DND and Pathfinder settings.

It only gets stranger from here on out.

For those who haven't been tuned-in, though, Sundara has done away with alignment completely and utterly. There is no divinely mandated good and evil... but this also means there are no angels, no demons, no devils, and so on, and so forth. There is also no huge nexus of the planes as we're used to seeing... there is only the physical, material world and the strange, impossible realm of the Prim beyond it. The place where all magic is drawn from, which is also the realm of the gods. And in Sundara there is not one pantheon, but many, with faiths and religions often unknowingly venerating different Masks of the same god.

So if you'd like to see a more organic take on the development of faiths and deities, or you'd just like to see what tieflings and aasimar were replaced with in this setting, pick up your copy of Gods of Sundara for Pathfinder, or Gods of Sundara for DND 5th Edition today!

Like, Share, and Follow For More!

That's all for this week's Crunch topic! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, and stop by the YouTube channel Dungeon Keeper Radio! Or if you'd like to read some of my books, like my alley cat noir novel Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife or my latest short story collection The Rejects, head over to My Amazon Author Page!

To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well! And if you'd like to help support me and my work, consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a regular, monthly patron! Even a little bit of help can go a long way, trust me on that one.