I'd appreciate if people could help me figure out how to do this and/or point me at the various resources that explain the components needed.
Here's the scenario I'm trying to create: The players chase down the evil bad guy until they have him cornered. Unwilling to be taken in, he sets the building on fire with the intent of burning everyone to death. The players now need to fight him inside a building that is on fire and literally collapsing, requiring them to dodge burning beams that are falling from the roof or avoid areas that have already caught fire, etc.
Which brings me back to the big question, how do I do that?
Thanks
Well, the most reasonable way is to use reflex saves to represent avoiding being hit by falling debris. Avoiding areas that are on fire is as simple as not being in that 5ft square.
You will have to decide what you feel the appropriate DC for the reflex save is.
Well completely depends on how you want it to go.
So first thing to watch out for, players stopping him before he gets INTO the building, probably better if he has a solid head start, nothing stops an encounter if the players trip lock him before he even gets to where you planned the fight to take place.
Second thing. Should be a building that is already set to burn easily, perhaps a forge or warehouse, somewhere that burnable substances would cause the place to ignite quickly. Warehouse could work well in this case I think due to the fact that it could make the place big enough to be interesting.
Depending on what kind of hazards you want their could be burning sections on the ground, you could give them a chance to spread. Falling debris I'd give the building an initiative count and have it make random attack rolls to represent stuff falling, You could treat this either as a trap like roll, say all being done at +10 or treat it as a reflex save to get out of the way of the debris,
I think the idea of a changing battlefield to be great, flaming pillers falling, flameing debris blocking paths, floor boards collapsing into pits to the basement.
lots of fun to be had.
Paizo's take on chases: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/mastery/chases.html
Some of the APs like Carrion Crown 1st module (Event 5) have a burning building scenario.
First, you could have the building drawn out on a mat. Mark the square the guy lights with a red x. Now how fast do you want it to spread? At the start of every round mark a randomly determined adjacent square with a red x. If you want it to spread really fast, add more than one square a round. People who end up being in a fire square have to make a DC 15 Reflex or take 1d6 fire and deal with this: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/environment.html#_catching-on-fire
a d6/round they stay in a red marked fire square.
When the fire starts or even before entering let them make knowledge engineering checks to see how unstable this building likely is.
Now for the object stuff: Let's say the building was relatively stable. When spreading the fire also roll a d100 starting with a 5% chance of collapsing stuff. If they get a 5 or less roll a d4 (if there's four of them) and determine who has to make a DC 15 reflex to avoid falling debris and take 1d6. Every round keep adding on 5%. 10% chance on round 2, 15% chance on round 3 etc with it becoming more dangerous. Adjust this also how you see fit.
You could also make it even more hectic. Starting on say round 4 they have to make a DC 10 fortitude check due to smoke or take a -1 penalty to pretty much all rolls from it being in their eyes and lungs etc. Each round it goes up 2 (DC 12 at round 5, DC 14 at 6 etc.) and the penalty stacks. Adjust this also as you see fit.
Determine your own drag/carry rules. Likely a strength check and move at half speed to drag someone out of a fire square.
Hope this helps.
Have the heat in the building slowly build up. On the first round it does 2 fire damage and increases by 3 every round or something like that. This damage would happen on the each creatures turn.
On top of that have the building go on init 0 and a random chart.
The chart should include things like structural collapse, fire spreading, combustibles exploding, and what other fire effects you want to have happen.
Those seem like pretty good methods, so I'm now thinking the following:
1) Give the building its own initiative, and on its turn, roll to see whether a piece falls off or collapses, etc. Any suggestions on what the odds of a piece of roof falling in or wall collapsing should be?
2) Allow the PCs reflex saves against the things that fall on them or fires they get thrown into. I'm thinking maybe DC 15? This would be a pretty tough battle without the fire aspect, so I don't want to make it too tough to avoid. After all, I'm going for excitement here, not total party wipe, lol.
3) If they step in fire or fail the save, the they take regular fire damage or crush damage depending on what hits them (any ideas as to how much damage is appropriate for APL5 in the middle of a CR6 fight? CR6 is not counting the fire, btw)
Thanks Matt and Mathius, hadn't seen your posts before my previous, even more cool stuff now. Since the fight was going to be against the bad guy and his helper (both CR3), I'm thinking now to leave out the helper and let it just be the bad guy and the building against them, still at CR6 (basically counting the building as CR3 by itself).
It depends on their level. Don't make the fire spread too fast if they're low level, don't make the cumulative falling stuff too fast if they're low and same with the smoke.
If you really want to be evil give the bad guy fire immunity/resistance so he's moving freely through fire squares to get to players while they have to go around to get to him.
fire immunity, lol - I like it. I'm not going to do that, since I want them to catch him here, but I do like it.
If anything him having fire immunity will make it easier to be caught. If he is at risk of burning he's more likely to say "screw this" and go out a window. If he has fire immunity he'll think he has an advantage and stay and fight. As long as he doesn't have a zillion hit points, he may be a slippery little dirtwad to get to at times but after so many hits he'll go down or when surrounded he'll surrender so long as the players are smart and account for his advantage in maneuvering around him.
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