Last week, my party had the rather stupid idea of trying to 'smoke out' a group of mites from a cave. It was particularly stupid because half the party was already inside, and it resulted in the suffocating death of one player and the very near death of another.
I winged it, and decided to give everyone poor visibility, huge miss chance at medium range because of the smoke, and they all had to take gradually increasing DC fortitude saves each round, causing 1d3 Str damage from smoke inhalation.
It got me thinking, is there a better way I could have done this? Was I being too harsh? Not harsh enough? How would you have played it?
There's a player in my group that is a bit of a roleplaying pyromaniac (there's always someone, isn't there?), so I expect this is a problem I may have to face again in the very near future.
Last week, my party had the rather stupid idea of trying to 'smoke out' a group of mites from a cave. It was particularly stupid because half the party was already inside, and it resulted in the suffocating death of one player and the very near death of another.
I winged it, and decided to give everyone poor visibility, huge miss chance at medium range because of the smoke, and they all had to take gradually increasing DC fortitude saves each round, causing 1d3 Str damage from smoke inhalation.
It got me thinking, is there a better way I could have done this? Was I being too harsh? Not harsh enough? How would you have played it?
There's a player in my group that is a bit of a roleplaying pyromaniac (there's always someone, isn't there?), so I expect this is a problem I may have to face again in the very near future.
I think I would do CON, but thats it.
Personally, I don't think it should be messed with, this is like equipment maintenance, health problems caused by damage, and environmental effects: you should ignore most of it.
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There happens to be rules about smoke already. It obscures vision, granting 20% concealment, there is a fort save each round with possibility of nonlethal damage. So, yes, it seems you were being a bit harsh, namely with the attribute damage. But I think you handled it well enough.
This came up in my PbP a couple weeks ago. The party was in a cave covered in wall-to-wall, floor to ceiling fungus, and cast a fireball which resulted in most of the party choking on smoke and foul air. She then cast another one so at this point, I decided that the oxygen was sufficiently depleted and enough toxins were in the air that it warranted using the rules on Smoke Effects.
A character who breathes heavy smoke must make a Fortitude save each round (DC 15, +1 per previous check) or spend that round choking and coughing. A character who chokes for 2 consecutive rounds takes 1d6 points of nonlethal damage. Smoke obscures vision, giving concealment (20% miss chance) to characters within it.
This resulted in both the mage and two NPCs losing actions due to smoke inhalation until one of the NPCs was able to cast air bubble and get a breath of fresh air.
Each round, I had the smoke dissipate by another 10-feet (manually moving it towards the cave exit in MapTool), until it was clear. It made a dangerous fight deadly, but it certainly upped ther verisimilitude of the environs — something that I think is important.
In the end, one of the NPCs got CDG'd, the main melee PC ended up at -8, and it was just the two frail little spellcasters left standing due to my ad hoc ruling on the utility of the Air Bubble spell.
In terms of harshness? In my case I decided to waive the concealment since I figured that would pretty much guarantee the death of the KO'd warrior. In your case, I'd say that applying Str damage instead of non-lethal damage was probably too severe, but you definitely had the right idea by using escalating Fort saves.
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There happens to be rules about smoke already. It obscures vision, granting 20% concealment, there is a fort save each round with possibility of nonlethal damage. So, yes, it seems you were being a bit harsh, namely with the attribute damage. But I think you handled it well enough.
Thanks. I don't know how I missed that!
Yeah, I guess as a rule the Str damage is too severe, but at the time it actually worked out to be less severe. They were already really low on hit points, so I think the 1d6 nonlethal would've killed them on the first failed save! I wanted to make them flail around ineffectually for a while. If I'd done the rules as written, they probably would've just keeled over in the first couple of rounds.Plus, they had to do a couple of climb and jump checks to get out of the cave... and I thought I'd work on the drama of attempting that with slowly failing strength.
Unless the smoke was sudden they should get to hold their breath which will give quiet a few rounds before they needs to worry about the smoke. (it's not like character are happy to use CON as a tank stat so they should have 6+ rounds of full action)
Yes, sorry. I should've mentioned: They were able to hold their breath for the first half a dozen rounds according to their CON.