Fear the DM -- Putting the fear of the DM into the Players!

by Pleiades LLC

Get a Handle on the Environment

DM should be able to construct and describe adventures that can challenge players and part of doing this well is realizing that magic is not the answer to every challenge. As Player's gain levels they will quickly get access to powerful spells and magic items and the DM shouldn't rely on overly infusing the game with magic to properly challenge the players which can lead to a vicious cycle. A DM needs to learn how to construct an environment so that a non-magical setting can still challenge the players.

Fur and Humble Felt

Fur and humble felt in doors, shutters, and windows can be used to create air tight seals and was commonly used in the middle ages to protect against the elements. Leather is not a porous material and an air tight seal is useful in keeping out gaseous intruders and stopping gaseous attacks such as a Cloudkill. Glass is a more expensive solution and withstand liquids more effectively.

Tin or Iron Plating and Wet Hides

Tin or iron plating and wet hides were layered on top of wooden structures to prevent or reduce fire damage. Wet hides could be quickly deployed in the event of a siege and plating could be layered and nailed onto structures for more permanent solutions. An attack that does fire damage might not destroy a wooden object unless the covering first fails its saving throw vs. fire.

Double and Triple Locks

Using more than one lock on a door or window will increase the number of skill checks and time need to get past barriers. A Knock spell can only undo two means of preventing egress so a triple lock can withstand a single knock spell. False locks could be designed to break lock picks or trigger additional traps.

Dust, Soot, and Sawdust

Sprinkling dust, soot, or sawdust on floors and walls can be used to detect the movement or passage of sneaky thief or invisible spellcaster. A character moving in the dark or using Darkvision might not notice the tracks they are leaving behind but a guard who knows to look for them sure would.

Creatures with Scent

A dog or other creature with Scent special ability would be invaluable additions to patrols for detecting and tracking intruders. They would most likely be in the company of a humanoid guard while on patrol or stationed in specific locations to sound an alarm if an intruder is detected.

Meet My Little Friend

Proper training or a simple spells like Speak with Animals makes it easier to train native creatures to perform more useful and critical functions. Flying or burrowing animals would very likely be trained to sound warnings or act as scouts when an intruder passes through their domain. DMs need to take advantage of useful classes like the Druid or Ranger when building any environment.

Barbed Wire

Embedding shards of glass or pottery into masonry is a very crude form of barbed wire. It can render grappling hooks useless and Spiderclimbing mages or wall crawling thieves will no doubt not appreciate running across these impediments. Iron spikes and scraps of metal could achieve the same effect.

Ballistae

It only takes a single warrior to fire a Ballistae yet a single bolt can do an awful lot of damage to a high level character. If the Ballistae can be quickly reloaded and fired a low level guard can pose a threat an exposed assault force.

Mage Shot

Using special ammo such as Alchemist Fire, Thunderstones, Poison, and even creatures, like Green Slime, in siege weapons can give these weapons a little extra punch. A case of sling bullets can be wrapped in a leather shroud and fired from a catapult to make for excellent sources of artillery fire against Flying creatures. Splash damage from grenade attacks ignores the Miss Chances due to Concealment.

Towers

The tops of towers are excellent platforms for Ballistae or Catapults to be brought to bear against Flying attackers. Partial and/ or dividing walls can be use to provide partial protection for siege weapons placed on top of towers. Dome covered towers with arrow loops embedded in the dome can provide protection for archers or pike men.

Concentration Rooms

A concentration room is a method of design that funnels attackers in such a way as to give defenders every possible advantage. Arrow slits, murder holes, pits, portcullises, oil spouts, and other devices are used to provide protection and repel invaders. Prisons are designed in this fashion except that they are designed in reverse to keep people within the structure. One or more concentration rooms might be used to protected against different egress points such as the tower top or dungeon entrance.

Partitions

Frequent use of partitions would be incorporated into defenses to protect against area effect spells and grenade attacks.

Nets

Nets can be used to capture flying creatures or grapple invisible intruders. They could be thrown from tower tops, shot from Ballistae, levitated into place, floated up on balloons, or strung between walls.

Spares

When the watered down skins protecting the building from fire damage dry out, throw on some more. If a passwall or disintegrate removed a portion of a wall levitate the spare stones in place before the wall collapses.

Creatures and the Environment

Small humanoids

Imagine a world where the rats and mice were organized, intelligent, and armed. Fey creatures like Grigs, Nixies, and Pixies that live in harmony with communities near them would protect and warn them to threats and dangers.

Magical Tricks:

• Magic Mouth riddles or alarms.
• Gust of Wind while on a narrow ledge or near a pool of water.
• Reverse Gravity trap outside on a windy day dealing falling damage.
• Bag of Devouring placed on the floor next to a few copper pieces or gems. Very dangerous.
• NPC who places a Portable Hole underneath a rug.
• Placing Explosive Runes on a magic item like a sword.
• Antimagic field in an area that is naturally deadly like a cliff or moat.
• Fill a pit using a Decanter of Endless Water.
• Permanency with Shrink Item to create crushing traps in confined spaces.
• Casting Shrink Item on dangerous things like barrels of Acids.
• Traps that require the party to do dangerous things like peer into holes, stick limbs in to walls or doors.
• Use two illusions, one is an illusionary trap (actually perfectly safe) and the other is trap (actually an path/hall/passage appears perfectly safe). Adventures never seem to wonder why a villain would go to the trouble of making a trap and then providing obvious way around it.
• Using a written lure in a language that the adventurers have a good chance of understanding but that might be odd for the locale. Give the plaintext version to the characters that speak the language and if another character doesn't speak the language tell them they don't understand the message. Use an Wisdom ability Check to determine if they notice. Use several degrees of success: realizes the language, realize the locale, and realize the odd combination. For example, a message in Elvish located in an Orcish strong hold is odd. Most Orcs don't speak Elvish and know to avoid areas with those markings.
• Use two traps together where the disarm for the first trap is the trigger for the second that gets the person trying to disarm it. Use two DCs for Search and two DCs for Disable Device. If the character doesn't roll high enough on the Search check to find the second trap they can't properly disarm it. If the character doesn't roll high enough on the Disable Device check to beat the higher DCs of the "hidden" trap, they trigger the anti-tampering mechanism or the original trap.

Interesting Combats

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