“If I cast a fireball spell and fill a room with a giant explosion that incinerates a half goblins, shouldn’t the curtain in the room catch on fire? And how did the delicate potion bottles the goblins were carrying all manage to survive the explosion?”

“If I fell into a vat of acid… even if I survive, isn’t there a risk that my boots of elvenkind would be damaged?”

“So if I stabbed him through the chest, which is mithril shirt in perfect condition and ready to be worn into combat?”

Good questions!

Questions like this have been asked since at least the dawn of D&D (and I wouldn’t be shocked if they date back to Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign), so by asking these questions you’re part of a tradition that’s entering its sixth decade!

And, traditionally speaking, there are several broad approaches that have been taken to answering this question:

1. Let’s just ignore that sort of thing. It’s not worth the hassle.
2. The GM can just apply that sort of thing ad hoc when it seems appropriate. (GM intrusions are a great mechanic for handling this!)
3. Whenever we cast a fireball or someone gets hit by a black dragon’s acid attack, we should (a) resolve the attack and then (b) have some sort of procedure for applying (or potentially applying) damage to every single individual piece of equipment carried by the character, tracking the hit points for each individual piece of equipment. It probably makes sense to have a threshold of damage at which the item’s utility is impaired and then another at which it’s totally destroyed. Oh! We’ll also need repair rules, so that damaged equipment can be recovered before it’s lost forever!

The great thing is that anyone actually doing #3 inevitably discovers that it’s a huge pain in the ass and they rapidly circle back to #1. So it turns out there’s really only one solution, it’s just a question of how long it takes for you to reach it!

… but there are a couple things to think about.

First, it turns out that “you can cast fireball or meteor swarm and unleash overwhelming hellfire upon your enemies, but if you do that you risk losing all the kewl lootz they’re carrying” was actually an interesting balancing mechanic that varied gameplay and created interesting strategic choices.

Second, the verisimilitude of “your acid arrow melts a hole through the goblin’s chain armor!” or “as the flames of fireball clear, you can see that all the books in the library are aflame!” is appealing. It just makes sense! That’s why, after five decades, we’re still asking these questions!

Plus, it can really make the wizard’s player feel like a badass.

Is there a way we can have the best of both worlds?

Maybe.

LOOT DAMAGE!

When looting an NPC’s corpse, roll 1d6 for each:

• Armor
• Weapon
• Magic Item (or other significant item)
• Container (e.g., a backpack)

On a roll of 1, the item was damaged. (Their armor is rent; their blade broken; the potion bottle shattered.) If a container is indicated, the container is ruined and you should additionally make a check for each item bundle in that container.

Non-Fragile Magic Items have advantage on this check. (Roll 2d6, and both dice must roll 1 for the item to be destroyed.)

Fragile Items or items that are particularly vulnerable to the attack(s) suffered (e.g., paper blasted by a fireball) have disadvantage on this check. (Roll 2d6, and a 1 on either die means the item has been destroyed.)

Area Effects, like a fireball or dragon’s acid breath, trigger a check for all unattended loot in the room / area of effect. You can wait until the PCs start looting to make these checks, but a check is made for each area damage effect! (If there are valuables about, use with caution!)

DESIGN NOTES

The advantage of a loot-focused approach is that the bookkeeping is pushed to the point where the party is, in fact, looting the bodies. Listing, distributing, and recording loot is, of course, already a moment in the session that’s focused on bookkeeping. So rather than bogging down the action-focused combat sequences, this system.

By using a simple binary check (destroyed or not destroyed?), we’re also simplifying the mechanic so that it can be resolved quickly and efficiently. Simply grab a fistful of d6s, roll them all at once, and check the condition of each item as you list it for the players.

You can easily tweak this procedure by varying the dice size until you’ve got a frequency of loot damage that feels right to you.

GRITTY VARIANT: PC EQUIPMENT

In addition to checking for loot damage, when a PC is slain or brough to death’s door, make a damage check for their equipment (as per the loot check).

These checks might be triggered only if a PC is actually killed. (“We were able to raise you from the dead, Norgara, but not your plate armor.”) Alternative thresholds might vary depending on what edition of D&D you’re playing, and in some cases you might have multiple triggering events:

• D&D 5^th Edition: When the PC has to start making death saves.
• D&D 3^rd Edition: The PC has negative hit points, even if they haven’t reach their death threshold.
• D&D 3^rd Edition: The PC suffers massive damage.
• AD&D: The PC is reduced to 1/10^th their maximum hit points.

For a truly brutal variant in any edition, you could also trigger an equipment damage check any time the character fails a saving throw against an area effect. (Or, for a less painful version, when they roll a natural 1 on a saving throw.)

DESIGN NOTES

In D&D 5^th Edition, in particular, triggering an equipment damage check on death saves gives them an extra bite. You REALLY don’t want to be popping up and down on the battlefield! Get some healing to your allies!

INCIDENTAL DAMGE

Incidental environmental effects and damage — e.g., curtains being set on fire, windows being blown out, spilled oil being set aflame — is still be handled by via GM fiat and the whim of description.

If you want a rudimentary procedural generator for this, however, you could roll an additional 1d6 for each area effect and, on a roll of 1, make a point of including a significant environmental effect (e.g., the dragon’s acid breath melts the floor, creating difficult terrain; or the fireball spell causes the barrels of oil in the room to explode).

ADDITIONAL READING
Shields Shall Be Splintered!
5E Encumbrance by Stone

Disclaimer: I am not entirely sure how serious I am about this.

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 38D: Arrows & Skulls

The room beyond was filled with carefully arranged piles of bulky, broken machinery bearing the unmistakable patina of age. Kneeling amidst this equipment – her back to the door – was a single ratling dressed in pale yellow robes.

“Not now! I don’t want to be disturbed!” she hissed.

Tee put an arrow through the back of her skull.

“… was that Silion?” Tee looked back at the others. “I think that was Silion!”

If you’ve been hanging around the Alexandrian for a while, this is a moment you may recognize. I’ve talked about it in articles, videos, and So You Want To Be a Game Master, among other places. When I talk about not fudging your dice rolls, this is a moment I’m thinking about.

Because Silion is a big deal. I believe the PCs first became aware of her in Session 9, which means the players have literally been hunting her for years. And we just introduced a new PC whose backstory and primary campaign hook were linked to her!

So if we were going to prep plots or enforce preconceived outcomes or try to “preserve” the dramatic moment, this would be THE MOMENT to do it, right? Silion can’t die like this! A single critical hit to the back of her head? The PCs never even saw her face! This is a disaster!

… except, of course, it wasn’t.

It’s been just over fifteen years since this moment happened at the game table, and my players still talk about it. They’ll probably be talking about it until the day they die. It’s a cherished memory from the game table.

Okay, but… why?

The Principles of RPG Villainy breaks this down in more detail, but the short version is that, for the players, this was not anticlimactic in any way. It was a huge reward for all their hard work: They had, in fact, worked for years to get here. They’d come up with clever plans to infiltrate the temple (even if not all of them had worked). They’d successfully snuck their way down to this inner sanctum.

They earned this.

And that’s why, a few minutes later, they can gleefully taunt Silion’s mate, Urnest, with what they’ve done. Because they were the ones who did it.

If I had fudged the results — maybe by boosting her hit points or bumping up her AC so that they couldn’t confirm the critical hit — that would have been a huge letdown for the players. Sure, they would have gotten to face off against Silion and maybe she’d summon reinforcements and there’d be an epic battle and the PCs would triumph or whatever… but none of that would have been something they actually did. It would have just been a thing that happened to them.

And the really key insight is that, conversely, if I’d tried to pre-script and force this moment — surprising Silion and shooting her in the back of the head! — it would have also fallen flat. Because it still wouldn’t have been something that the players actually did.

This is why moments like this — moments of great truth at the table — are so important. Because they’ll teach your players that what’s happening in the game is really happening. It’s not a script. It’s not a trick. If they achieve great victories, it’s because they actually earned those victories. And if they suffer horrible defeats, that’s a burden they have to bear… because they know it could have gone a different way if they’d made different choices.

As the players learn that lesson — as the belief of it seeps down into their souls — it will literally breathe life into every other moment of your campaign. It will elevate everything you and your players do to a new level.

When you truly play to find out — when you actively play scenarios instead of prepping plots — you’ll discover that moments like this aren’t unusual. What makes this particular moment notable, perhaps, is that it simply might be the purest example possible:

Boom.

Arrow to the head.

Campaign Journal: Session 39A – Running the Campaign: Using Scenery & Traps
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Come join me on for How to Become a Game Master at the Ukrainian podcast Where Are My Dice?

In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Justin Alexander, the creator of prominent The Alexandrian blog, the author of numerous TTRPG materials, and the author of the best guide for people who want to go into GM business So You Want To Be A Game Master.

The interview is English. The video has subtitles in both English & Ukrainian!

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 38C: Scouting the Temple

Nasira quickly muttered an incantive prayer and projected a sense of clairaudience into the sanctuary hall below. She was in time to hear the ratmen deciding to summon reinforcements. She quickly informed Tee of what was happening, and Tee rushed back to the street in case the ratmen headed that way (in which case she could follow them).

But she saw nothing: The ratmen didn’t leave through the front door. Instead, Nasira heard the sound of scraping stone…

When I ‘m prepping published dungeons, I have a tendency to make them BIGGER.

Sometimes I think this might be a bad habit, but the results in actual play seem to be good.

What’s really going on is a couple of things: First, when I’m planning a campaign, I’m often pulling stuff in from a bunch of different sources. Sometimes that’s two different adventures that get linked to each other using node-based design, but sometimes I have two different “ruins of a dwarven city” adventures… and couldn’t they be the same dwarven city? I can just make one of the adventures Level 1 of the dungeon and the other adventure Level 2, and now, instead of two small dungeon cities, I have one BIG dungeon city that truly lives up to the name. Plus I can mix all the scenario hooks from both adventures and create all sorts of dynamic vectors for the PCs!

(See The Campaign Stitch for a deeper dive into this sort of thing.)

The second thing that happens is that I simply get inspired. As I’m reading through an adventure, all of the adventure’s cool ideas will start sparking off new cool ideas in my own brain: Sometimes those are ideas I can just add to the existing room key, but in other cases it’ll make more sense to pile ‘em all up and fill a new sub-level with them.

The Temple of the Rat God is a good example of what this looks like in actual practice.

This adventure exists because the Nights of Dissolution mini-campaign, which was one of the building blocks for In the Shadow of the Spire, features several of the chaos cults in Ptolus working with each other. And I basically thought, “Why not all of them?” So I went through the Ptolus and Chaositech sourcebooks and started grabbing chaos cults. Then I made a few of my own. Then I started linking them together with clues, creating a node-based campaign structure.

The Temple of the Rat God comes from the Ptolus sourcebook (p. 394), where it looks like this:

As you can see, it’s not fully keyed. So I took the map, made some modifications, and keyed it:

You can see I’ve added additional hallways leading off the edges of this map and connecting to other maps.

Elsewhere in Ptolus there’s a Ratman Nest (p. 442). This is a fully keyed adventure designed for the DM to drop it pretty much anywhere in the city sewers where the PCs might be chasing ratmen:

I decided to put it here, once again with some minor modifications. (You can see the changes on the map above, including the addition of a sinkhole and the connection to the temple.)

During my campaign prep, I’d also thumbed through my monster books for inspiration. Knowing that ratlings and the Temple of the Rat God were on the menu, I scooped up cranium rats from the 3^rd Edition Fiend Folio and the rylkar (dangerous fire rats) from Monster Manual V. (I also linked the latter to ash rats from Monster Manual II.) I rekeyed the Ratman Nest map to include cranium rat nests, and then added a whole new level down the sinkhole — the Rylkar Depths:

The result is a fairly expansive example (showcasing, as it does, a wide gamut of techniques all coming together), but it’s what I enjoy about working with published adventures: When the creativity of the author and the creativity of the game master combine, you end up with richer and more varied material than you could have achieved on your own.

I’m a really big believer in the power of collaborative creation, whatever form it might take.

This is a topic we’ll also likely revisit as the PCs begin delving deeper into the Banewarrens. There, too, I took inspiration from the core concept of the adventure and then drew on a wide variety of sources to create fresh wards: What else could the Banelord have locked away down there?

Campaign Journal: Session 38D – Running the Campaign: The Secret Life of Silion
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index