I remember running an adventure where the flavor text said "a small 20x30 room" and one of my players pointed out that it was larger than the apartment we were playing in.
Most real buildings have 5 foot corridors and 10x10 rooms but adventure maps have 10 foot corridors and 40x40 rooms. A lived in room would have lots of furniture, yet multiple people would feel comfortable being in it together. An adventure room is going to have little clutter and few beings.
Do you ever have your door-kicking party open up a 10x10 barracks with four opponents, two bunk beds, a bench, a table, some boxes used as chairs, a heating brazier, a storage cabinet and a parakeet cage? Or any similar situation which is 'realistically' proportioned but plays havoc with the 5' standards?
If so, why did you do it and how did it go?
An old, but still effective trick to spice up an encounter is to set it in narrow spaces that require Medium-size and larger PCs to use the Squeezing rules. It changes the tactics quickly, and is a nice way to recognize that sometimes, just sometimes, halflings and gnomes aren't always replaceable by the larger races.
I've played in a game where there were 7 PCs and a battle were taking place down a 5' corridor.
The battle was not over quickly.
I played a boss fight that took place of second floor balcony overlooking the entrance hall and a staircase
Everything was 5 foot wide.
Was a nightmare for ranged characters since everything always had soft cover pretty much I was playing a feinting mesmerist/swashbuckler so it made my life pretty easy. I just backed myself into a corner and let things line up to fight me one at a time whilst the war priest moved on my que of baddies from the other side of the corridor.
Strategically, a narrow battlefield is good for:
Tanky frontliners who can stand at the front, soak up hits, and protect allies.
Healers, who are more likely to be able to keep up with the damage.
Casters, depending on what spells they've prepared.
Powerful boss enemies, who are less likely to get surrounded by the party.
Large characters
It's bad for:
Archers who don't have feats to get around soft cover.
Martial charactes who aren't at the front and who aren't ranged specialists.
Rogues who want to flank.
Large parties with animal companions, etc.
Mook enemies, who don't do too well attacking one at a time.
I once had the experience of playing through the same encounter in a limited space and a non-limited one.
One GM didn't want to make a map for an unimportant encounter, and the other used the provided dimensions for the space. The mapless encounter was over in 1 round: everyone was able to get a clear shot/flank/etc.; we won and moved on.
The one that used the actual dimensions of the space provided lasted several rounds, and we barely won. The enemy used abilities which took advantage of the terrain, we had to spend a lot of time moving to get safely into position or else provoke attacks of opportunity, and it was a much longer and harder fight, which used more of our limited resources.
Sometimes close quarters make up a large part of the difficulty of the encounter. And sometimes it just seems mean, like a 5-foot-corridor with a bend in it 10 feet from a door so the PCs at the back of the party don't even have line of sight, let alone line of effect, on the combat.
Keep in mind that AP maps are drawn with the assumption of a 4-person party. If your group is larger, you may want to consider expanding the available space just like you might consider adding more enemies to make it a fair fight. (There are dungeon rooms in some maps that six PCs can't fit in, let alone fight in.)
In Dragon's Demand there is a Kobold lair that does this.
If you wanted to be brutal, have specialized ratfolk enemies with all the features and that gunslinger Archetype.the swarming trait lets them flank while sharing squares. That would be a memorable fight.
Also Morlocks. Because Morlocks.
Ooh! Minotaurs in tight labyrinths charging at people!
Back in the old days of SCA demos at conventions we set up demos that showed how this works. The nearly unbeatable combination for 5 foot wide corridors was two kite shields, locked, with short to medium stabbies, backed by a pole arm or long spear/pike from the second rank. We didn't have anyone with Roman style rectangular shields, which would have been perfect for this.
That won't really work in the video game mechanics that Pathfinder most accurately simulates though.
Ooh! Minotaurs in tight labyrinths charging at people!
Especially when the minotaur gets earth glide and the party doesn't...
Do you ever do combat in tight quarters? How did it go?
Yes. Poorly.
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Murderclosets abound in the adventures I play in. Sometimes it drags the fight out incredibly long.
Keep in mind that many places would be built for Large or Huge sized creatures. It makes sense that halls are 10ft wide there, as even that would be a cramped place for a giant.
I did have a problem with one adventure putting five minotaurs and a huge sized troll in a 20ft wide corridor. We had a good laugh over that.
I hate to tell you, but IRL house hallways are spacious if they're 3 feet wide. And even in an office building, where you might get a 4-footer due to fire regs, the doors are at best 2-1/2 feet wide. My favorite example of this sort of disparity is a rowboat, dinghy, or gig. IRL, you can fit two rowers and a (narrow) space for movement between them into a boat 5 feet wide. In PF, that's got to be at least 10 feet wide, although I personally cavil at 15. (The rowers really aren't "squeezed" -- without a person in the middle.)
I've simply tended to assume that the universe is different in PF. People waste space on hallways just like boats. So I don't blink at a 5-foot-wide hallway, although I do at 10 feet in any structure intended as functional. A "spacious" 12x15 room (that is, spacious in modern terms) goes to 20x20 or even 25x25. (Although I do stick with doors that are 2-1/2 feet wide.) Building materials and construction labor must be cheap here!
As an upper end on this, if you want to pay attention to real-life spaces, royal great halls might be 40 x 100 feet -- anything larger would be celebrated for the engineering. At least, if it didn't have pillars!
True dungeons, of course, have the Pathfinderized realism filter turned off. Right? I mean, no one would ever have wanted to live there, would they? {Unless, yes, they're themselves large.}
I hate to tell you, but IRL house hallways are spacious if they're 3 feet wide. And even in an office building, where you might get a 4-footer due to fire regs, the doors are at best 2-1/2 feet wide. My favorite example of this sort of disparity is a rowboat, dinghy, or gig. IRL, you can fit two rowers and a (narrow) space for movement between them into a boat 5 feet wide. In PF, that's got to be at least 10 feet wide, although I personally cavil at 15. (The rowers really aren't "squeezed" -- without a person in the middle.)
I've simply tended to assume that the universe is different in PF. People waste space on hallways just like boats. So I don't blink at a 5-foot-wide hallway, although I do at 10 feet in any structure intended as functional. A "spacious" 12x15 room (that is, spacious in modern terms) goes to 20x20 or even 25x25. (Although I do stick with doors that are 2-1/2 feet wide.) Building materials and construction labor must be cheap here!
A very nice summary that matched my thoughts as well.
Boats were one of the first places where I noticed that "one creature per 25 sq ft" really didn't make sense. It got more obvious as I tried to furnish rooms realistically.As you say, I sort of warp Pathfinder space as needed. Depending on the situation, the side of a square can vary in my mental model from 2.5' to 5'. (All range and movement calculations still use 5' a square)
Squeezing is awful and just as bad as going prone. And damned you be if you go prone while squeezing, you might as well just roll over and snuff it.
Also no one ever puts ranks in Escape Artist so good luck making those checks!
This is particularly terrible for anyone who wants to do fancy things like charging and using mounts or Enlarge Person. Rogues are great in these situations though- but LOL who plays rogues am I right??
My absolute favourite thing to throw at my players is having a small difficult passageway that the PCs can navigate easily enough to get in and once they get in rocks fall, acid floods, gas... gasses and everyone needs to leave the room very quickly which turns your game into a deadly rendition of 3 stooges.
I remember running an adventure where the flavor text said "a small 20x30 room" and one of my players pointed out that it was larger than the apartment we were playing in.
Most real buildings have 5 foot corridors and 10x10 rooms but adventure maps have 10 foot corridors and 40x40 rooms. A lived in room would have lots of furniture, yet multiple people would feel comfortable being in it together. An adventure room is going to have little clutter and few beings.
Do you ever have your door-kicking party open up a 10x10 barracks with four opponents, two bunk beds, a bench, a table, some boxes used as chairs, a heating brazier, a storage cabinet and a parakeet cage? Or any similar situation which is 'realistically' proportioned but plays havoc with the 5' standards?
If so, why did you do it and how did it go?
Very few encounters ever happen in empty open spaces.
I'll just echo that it's definitely worth a CR boost. Maybe even +2 in some cases, sounds like some posters are pretty evil GMs.
;)
I hate to tell you, but IRL house hallways are spacious if they're 3 feet wide.
In all fairness, 5" is the minimum space you need to fight in, not stand in. Imagine 4 adventurers swinging swords and shooting bows down your house hallway at 3 goblins at the other end. Unmitigated chaos.
Paizo is somewhat restricted in that their maps have to show in squares, making it a 5" minimum, but it's as much an approximation as the fact that all rooms are exact multiples of 5", yet the walls frequently don't take up enough room to occupy the next square and don't reduce the inner size of the room.
I hate to tell you, but IRL house hallways are spacious if they're 3 feet wide.In all fairness, 5" is the minimum space you need to fight in, not stand in. Imagine 4 adventurers swinging swords and shooting bows down your house hallway at 3 goblins at the other end. Unmitigated chaos.
Paizo is somewhat restricted in that their maps have to show in squares, making it a 5" minimum, but it's as much an approximation as the fact that all rooms are exact multiples of 5", yet the walls frequently don't take up enough room to occupy the next square and don't reduce the inner size of the room.
Are you familiar with Spinal Tap? Tell me, please tell me, you'll know why I was thinking of an 18-inch-tall Stonehenge when I read this.