Caving in a 60ft cave


Advice


hey everyone,

like the subject says i am looking for advice on causing a cave-in of a cave 60ft wide and 60ft tall.

there is a white dragon in this cave. The objective is to lure the dragon out, then set off a cave-in to stop the dragon from getting back in, so the party has time to gather up the treasure hoard and escape with a dimension door.

What would you recommend to cause this cave-in? some kind of explosives? how exactly would the rules work for an explosion like this?

any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks!


Is the cave within rock, earth or 'other'? What is the party makeup and capabilities? Anyone have Knowledge Engineering or other potentially useful skills? Need a few more details.


Extended duration wall of force or a few walls of stone at the entrance is probably going to work a lot better then trying to cause a cave in. If the cave is stable stone then it would be extremely difficult, most magic spells that aren't designed to effect stone just aren't very effective at damaging it.

And ignore what I said if you mean the cave entrance is 60x60, no wall is going to be big enough.


Transmute rock to mud might do it. Be warned that the rather large collapse you'll need to trigger to block such a large cave might trigger further instability and collapses.

The amount of explosives you'd need to do this is tremendous.


john kilmer wrote:

hey everyone,

like the subject says i am looking for advice on causing a cave-in of a cave 60ft wide and 60ft tall.

there is a white dragon in this cave. The objective is to lure the dragon out, then set off a cave-in to stop the dragon from getting back in, so the party has time to gather up the treasure hoard and escape with a dimension door.

What would you recommend to cause this cave-in? some kind of explosives? how exactly would the rules work for an explosion like this?

any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

Hello. I live near real life caves and I've gone spelunking. Most decent size caves have more than 1 entrance irl. If a dragon has lived there for multiple years, the dragon likely knows all the entrances.

Personally, I'm having trouble imagining the explosion required to cause a cave in big enough to block a 60 x 60 foot entrance. In terms of game rules, the spell is a cleric spell called stone shape at which you shape the stones on the roof of the cave to become no longer attached. Due to the size of the hole, (if I were the gm) I would require a high knowledge engineering check to go along with that spell to cause the correct size rocks and spaces from which the rocks come to cause a proper cave in.


Most of the spells at least that might work to accomplish this are relatively high level.

Move Earth - might move a large volume of soil into the mouth of the cave.

Earthquake - either within the cave or potential to cause a landslide to block the entrance (with the side benefit of sealing up any entrance/exits the party might not be aware of. As Sarrah is quite correct the likelyhood of additional openings is quite high. As an intelligent dragon I certainly wouldn't pick a cave network with only one way in and out.

Transmute Rock to Mud - landslide or collapse potential

Summon an Elemental to do the dirty work.


Thanks for all the input,

Sadly we did not realize the burrow speed on the dragon, so the cave in won't really be very effective. The idea of alternate entrances has got me thinking though, i guess the party will need to explore the place a little more and see if we can find any.


Depending on how much you trust your fellow characters there's always we lure the beastie away while the others slip in rob them blind or stake the place out and wait until the dragon leaves to hunt (or see his lady friend(s) or rob a caravan ... perhaps one thoughtfully provided for said purpose).

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