I posted about this on EN World earlier today – I really, really hate 5′ wide corridors. Last session of Savage Tide was ruined by their overusage, as I think Craig, Rich and Bradford can attest.
An entire dungeon of 5 ft corridors is not fun. It is especially not fun when you have a party of 6 PCs (not unknown in the D&D world). It is extra especially not fun when those 5′ corridors wind around and so the back two PCs can’t even *see* the encounter the front two PCs are experiencing.
One of the big things with D&D that we’ve been realising is that D&D combat is most fun when mobility is encouraged. When there’s more to it than stand toe-to-toe and swing swords blindly.
I don’t mind the odd encounter where movement is restricted. I hate it when you have 5-6 hours of dungeoneering where some people can’t participate because the map was ill-designed.
Realism? I understand it, but this is a game. We’re here to have fun.
Please designers, don’t use 5′ corridors unless it’s only for a couple of encounters. They suck the fun out of a game.
Here’s one example from the game last Friday. The monster is in Red. The green dots indicate the PCs able to participate. The Yellow indicate those that can’t – they can’t even see the monster. I think it was worse than that, in fact, because no-one wanted to stand in the toilet (the 5×5 room to the south).
Grr. 5′ corridors = no fun. I don’t like editing adventures because it can have unintended effects, but I’ll be killing them from now on. I just wish designers would realise it.
Ack. 6 hours of 5-foot corridors! That sucks. Closest thing I ever had was facing three full sessions of opponents wearing Torcs of anti-magic in a high level game.
The other good one is at the end of Age of Worms where *everything* can’t be sneak attacked. The Rogue gets nothing to do.
Aside from Kyuss, what made the other creatures immune to sneak attack? Those augment crystals from Magic Item Compedium might come in handy. Or those Rogue substitution levels/special ability swap.
They’re pretty much all constructs or undead (or incorporeal undead, to make it worse). I did give the rogue’s Legacy Weapon that augment crystal’s ability, and it gave him some joy.
But RAW… no joy at all for the rogue.
Kyuss is just “immune to sneak attacks & criticals”, as well as having DR 10/epic. No fun at all for the rogue.
I think Kyuss is okay since he is the final “boss”. The rest though could have been better presented.
Of course at epic levels and Abominations, there’s a lot of creatures that are immune to sneak attacks, necromancy spells, enchantment spells, polymorph spells, various type of energy, or simply a ridiculously high AC that even the Ftr has a hard time hitting.