When a GM makes the transition from dungeons or scene-based play to wilderness travel, it’s not unusual for them to suddenly start struggling with describing that travel. The two most common afflictions are long-and-boring (with too much detail that’s poorly presented and neither interesting nor important) or short-and-boring (often bland, generic descriptions that fail to bring the journey to life).

What we want is to capture the epic grandeur of Tolkien’s Middle Earth; to bring our waterways to vivid life like Twain’s Mississippi; to make every corner of the world bristle with adventure like the Mediterranean Sea in Homer’s Odyssey.

But achieving these lofty aspirations can prove elusive for a couple of reasons.

First, whether we’re using hexcrawls, routes, or some other method to run our travel, these are all new procedures with new tools to learn. These can be studied, of course, but mastering them will require practice and experience, so it’s only to be expected that we’ll struggle a bit putting these into practice for the first time. “Whoops, I forgot to roll for a random encounter” and “Wait, what speed did you want to travel at?” aren’t exactly conducive to smooth, immersive descriptions.

Meanwhile, the very nature of time itself has changed.

In a dungeon, for example, pretty much everything is resolved in now time. As defined in the Art of Pacing, this is when the GM is basically describing events “as they happen” and the players are making every decision for their characters.

Wilderness travel, on the other hand, usually happens in abstract time, taking the form of eliding narration: “You wind you way through the canyons of the Opal Mesas for three days before turning south…” or “The afternoon passes quickly as you sail downstream, and as dusk approaches you can see thunderstorms on the horizon…”

At first glance, this seems quite simple. In practice, however, it unleashes a slew of new things we never had to consider before, particularly if we’re expecting the PCs to make meaningful navigational decisions along the way: How much time should be covered by our description? What events and activities can we / should we skip past entirely? What should be included in the description? When/how should the players be making decisions?

For example, how detailed should our description of the Opal Mesas be? And should it be the players’ decision to turn south after traveling three days through the Opal Mesas? Probably… unless they actually make that decision before you started the travel narration (e.g., “Okay, according to our maps we’re going to travel through the mesas and then turn south”). And, either way, what about deciding exactly which canyons to follow through the mesas? Should we be having the PCs make those decisions? Or maybe we should ask once per hex which direction they want to go?

These questions don’t necessarily have obvious answers. Worse yet, the answers will frequently CHANGE from one journey to the next. In fact, even the next time the PCs travel through the Opal Mesas you might have a completely different set of answers based on the circumstances of the trip.

Ultimately, describing travel — and doing so effectively — is more an art than a science. There is no one true way to describe the sun-kissed hills at dusk, the refreshing cool breezes that wash across your face as you head down into the Verdant Vale, or the thick cobwebs draped across the upper boughs of the Bleak Wood.

But there is a mental model that I use — a framework that helps me make sure I’m communicating clearly.

IDENTIFY THE VECTOR

First you need to identify WHAT you’re actually describing.

“Well, obviously I’m describing the journey.”

Sure. But probably not the whole thing all at once, particularly if the PCs are going to be making navigational choices along the way.

So what part of the journey are you describing right now?

I think of this as the group’s vector, but you might also think of it as a “segment” (of the journey) or a “container” (that you’re going to be filling up with your description). In short, look at where the PCs currently are and their intended/actual direction of travel. Looking along that line, you want to figure out where the next interruption will take place. That will give you the endpoint of the group’s current vector, and then you’ll know exactly what chunk of travel you need to describe.

Another way of thinking about the interruption is that it’s the next point along the vector where the players either will or might want to make a meaningful choice. Interruptions can be many different things:

• Terrain. A change in terrain — e.g., arriving at the forest; entering the Mire of Despair; emerging from the Opal Mesas — provides new navigational information to the players, which makes it likely, particularly if this is their first time exploring this region, that they’ll want to stop, try to figure out where they are, and possibly choose to head in a new direction.
• Landmark. Similarly, spotting a landmark is often a point where the PCs will need to make a choice — e.g., You see a castle off to the west. (Do they want to go check it out?)
• Destination. If the PCs are heading to a specific location, then obviously their journey will end when they reach it.
• Getting Lost. Or, more accurately, the point where the PCs realize that they’re lost. They’ll obviously want to stop, try to get their bearings, and then make a new navigational choice.
• Random Encounter. In most cases, when a random encounter is generated, you’ll want to give the players a chance to react to and/or interact with whatever the encounter is.
• End of Watch. Since the PCs need to choose which watch actions they’re going to perform during each watch, you’ll naturally want to stop at the end of each watch so that they can declare those actions… except this is a trap. The choice of a new watch action is often not meaningful at all, because it’s overwhelmingly likely that, for example, the navigator will continue being the navigator. This is why you want to instead establish standing orders for the expedition: It extends the vector so that you can’t get stuck in a long-and-boring cycle of minutia.
• End of Day. Another natural and regular endpoint is the end of the day. Although there are situations in which a vector will end up being longer than a single day, it’s a good default to aim for when in doubt or just getting started. A full day of travel will give you a nice chunk of resolution; settling in around the campfire each night is a logical place for the PCs to compare notes, do some bookkeeping, and prep for the new day; and if something like a random encounter interrupts the day, it’s easy to spot that and then set up another vector aiming for sunset.

Some of these interruptions, like a random encounter, will basically demand the vector’s end. Others can be more situational, and you’ll need to get in sync with your group: Are they in nitty-gritty exploration in an area with lots of new landmarks and terrain? Then you might have a lot of very short vectors. On the other hand, are they traveling a well-known route? Then you probably don’t have to stop when they leave the Emerald Wood — both you and them know where they’re going!

VECTOR PROCEDURE

So, to be clear, what you’re doing is:

1. Identifying the group’s intentions (i.e., their travel plans).
2. Resolving your hexcrawl procedure…
3. … until you reach an interruption.

And that’s the vector you’re going to describe.

The travel plan might simply be the intended direction of travel and travel pace, in which case the vector is quite literal (it’s a line pointing in that direction). However, in some cases, particularly if they’re traveling a familiar route, the players will declare a more complicated intention — e.g., “We’ll travel through the Emerald Wood, then turn southwest when we hit the Ochre Grasslands on the other side.” Assuming nothing else interrupts their intention, you can continue resolving your hexcrawl procedure through that predetermined navigational choice until you reach a meaningful interruption and identify the true end of the current segment.

In practice, I often look ahead and figure out what the end of the vector will be if everything goes “right” for the PCs. This lets me identify a “chunk” of travel that’s going to be fed through the hexcrawl procedure, which — with a little bit of mastery and experience — lets me batch up some tasks (i.e., making multiple random encounter checks in a single roll) resolve things more quickly and efficiently.

Resolving the chunk, of course, may reveal an additional interruption (e.g., the random encounter(s) I rolled), in which case the vector will end sooner. Which is, of course, just fine. Jot down a note of any pending resolutions (i.e., future random encounters), which also conveniently give you a head start when the next vector kicks off.

DESCRIBING THE VECTOR

With your vector in hand (which, in practice, will be a much quicker process than the detailed discussion above might lead you to believe), it’s now time to describe that vector to your players.

The foundation of your description is Terrain + Distance + Time.

Distance and time are easy: You know where the vector started and you know where it ends. Your travel rules will tell you how long it took to get from one point to the other.

For complex vector, you may also want to make a note — mental or otherwise — of the timing for milestones along the way (e.g., they reach the Emerald Forest after three hours and they arrive at the Atharan River after seven). These will help you sequence and provide a light structure for your description.

Terrain is, of course, sourced from your hexmap. Hexcrawl Tools: Spotting Distances provides a detailed breakdown for this, but here are the key points I’m usually thinking about:

• The PCs can see the terrain in their current hex.
• In relatively open terrains (e.g., plains) you might mention the terrain of neighboring hexes on the horizon. (This will be particularly true if the PCs are biased in the hex.)
• Heights can often let the PCs see a lot farther, although it’s usually unreliable. (Being high in the mountains, for example, can let you see a long way… or it can completely block your line of sight.) There are rules for seeking a vantage point that cover this, but as a rule of thumb you might once per day describe terrain and landmarks in hexes made visible by the heights.

In practice, this foundation covers most of what you need to describe:

Crossing through the tall, amber-colored grasses of the plains you reach the Emerald Forest in about three hours. You travel through the forest for the rest of the day and, near nightfall, you hear the roaring rapids of the Atharan River ahead.

But there are two other elements you’ll want to use to flesh out your descriptions: Landmarks and Unkeyed Details.

Landmarks are locations visible to anyone passing through a hex. Some landmarks, including mountains, will be visible from multiple hexes away (and you should make sure these are indicated on your hexmap for easy reference).

Some landmarks may function as interruptions that end the vector, but others will just be additional milestones for the journey.

Tip: An advanced technique here is to mention a landmark (e.g., “Around mid-afternoon you spot the ruins of an old castle on top of a tall hill a couple miles off to your left”) and then pause for just a beat. Not so long as to become expectant, but just a subtle break that gives players the space to say, “Let’s go check it out!” before you continue describing their journey forward.

Figuring out which landmarks should be interruptions, which ones you should give space for a reaction, and which are best just describe in passing (probably because the PCs have already come this way before and are expecting to pass the castle ruins) is something you’ll get a feel for.

When in doubt, it rarely hurts to just ask, “Do you want to check out the castle or keep heading east?” But, in my opinion, you don’t want your players to think that you’re pushing the castle on them. It’s more fun when they feel in control of their exploration.

Unkeyed Details are all the things in your game world that don’t appear in your prep notes: You don’t key the trees. Or the streams. Or every minor details of the terrain.

The key thing to understand here is that if we interpreted a hex in our hexcrawl as if it only contained the keyed point of interest, then it would be a vast howling emptiness. Think about everything interesting within six miles of where you’re reading this. Imagine a GM picking out the single most interesting thing in that area and adding it to their key. Now imagine that same GM describing a group of PCs traveling through the area. See how much stuff they’d miss if they only described what was in their key?

In short, your hexmap doesn’t include every road or river. Hexcrawls are often located out on unexplored frontiers, but if you have a hex keyed as farmland, the unkeyed scenery could even include passing by two or three small villages per hex. (This would obviously vary by locale, but in both medieval France and Qing Dynasty China, the villages were three to four miles apart.)

So what you want to do is add a light spicing of this unkeyed scenery into your descriptions: Describe them splashing through a small stream. Or following an old game trail that leads them down into the river valley.

It might be useful to think of these details as breathing life into a generic terrain symbol. It’s certainly these little details that will make your game world feel like a real and living place to your players.

Note that you don’t need to remember all these details: They’re unimportant by their very nature. Next time you might instead describe a glade dappled by sunlight that the PCs pass through on their way to the Atharan River instead of a game trail, and that’s just fine. You don’t need to memorize these fleeting moments any more than you need to memorize every stitch in your favorite quilt.

(The exception is when an unkeyed detail becomes important because the PCs choose to focus their attention on it. When that happens, just add it to your key. For example, they might say something like, “Let’s find that old game trail we followed last time!” Or they might decide to stop in one of the nondescript villages they’ve been passing along the road and rent a room at the local inn… where one of the PCs ends up falling in love with the innkeeper’s handsome son. They eventually end up getting married, the PC inherits the inn, and then their husband is tragically killed in an orc attack. Yeah… You should probably add that to your notes.)

Unkeyed details can also include minor travel activities: Stopping for a meal. Checking the map. The ranger finding that game trail. These are great because they protagonize the PCs and makes them a concrete part of the journey. You can take cues from the groups’ watch actions and make sure to spread the spotlight around. (Not every PC needs to be described as doing something in every vector, but over the course of several vectors everybody should get a turn.)

So, to sum this all up: Set your foundation with terrain + distance + time. Identify the landmarks the PCs will pass along the way and place them in sequence. Then lightly spice with evocative details to taste.

As you cross through the tall, amber-colored grasses of the plains, the Monterrat Peaks to the north parallel your journey. After about three hours, you reach the Emerald Forest. For the rest of the day, the cool shade of the boughs is a blessed relief from the sun’s heat. Near nightfall, as you head down in to the river valley, the pleasant birdsong of the forest is replaced by the roaring rapids of the Atharan River.

FRAME THE ENDPOINT

There’s a reason why the vector came to an end: A navigational choice. A random encounter. A location.

That interruption is a scene!

The players need to make a choice, so use the principles from the Art of Pacing to frame up the scene where they make that choice. In some cases, that scene will be quite short:

GM: You’ve reached the Atharan River.

Navigator: Okay. We’ll turn left and follow the river south until we see the Eld King’s statue.

At which point you’ll be able to rapidly pivot into identifying the next travel vector and describing it.

In other cases, you’ll instead be transitioning to a lengthier scene or even a full adventure before the PCs continue their journey. Either way, the important thing, as you bring your description to a close, is to clearly frame up the scene: Why are you stopping? What choice are you expecting the PCs to make? Make the stakes as clear as you can and make your bang as powerful as possible.

When in doubt, though, this can boil down to a simple question: You’ve reached [WHERE YOU ARE]… now what?

GM: You’ve reached the Atharan River… Where do you want to go now?

Navigator: We’ll turn left and follow the river south.

And away you go!

Back to Hexcrawls

Go to Table of Contents

This company of mapmakers rose to prominence nearly three centuries ago when they began producing incredibly detailed maps of the Teeth of Light based on the exploration ships that were sent into the southern reaches of the island chain by Yrkyth Vladaam. These charts greatly expanded trade throughout the Whitewind Sea during the decades leading up to the Great Sea War.

The Red Company of Surveyors still uses as its mark the great seal Yrkyth used when he was head of the household. It’s also said that the company was intimately involved in the creation of Yrkyth’s “Enigma Engine”. The company’s influence considerably declined following Yrkyth’s disappearance in 651 IA, but continues to be known for their accurate navigation charts.

The company’s chart-making workshop is located in Oldtown. Their apprentices work as boy messengers on the Docks, purchasing interesting chart data from docking ship captains. (Some of these apprentices are part of Part 18: Vladaam Drug Running.)

The guild uses a diamond-feather badge (representing the quills of the cartographers, but also having deeper meanings for the Brotherhood of Yrkyth).

Chartmakers: Use artisan stats, Ptolus, p. 606.

• Proficiency (+2): Cartographer’s tools
• Equipment: diamond-feather guild badge, Vladaam deot ring

Guildmaster Essetia: Use mage stats, MM p. 347. AC 16 (bracers of defense, ring of protection).

• Proficiency (+3): cartographer’s tools, Arcana, History, Insight, Persuasion
• Combat Equipment: wand of magic missile (1d6+1 charges), portion of superior healing, dagger, light crossbow (20 bolts)
• Magic Items: dust of dryness (x2), scroll of identify, bracers of defense, headband of intellect, ring of protection
• Other Equipment: backpack, rations (x6), scroll case, spellbook, spell component pouch, pearl (x3, 100 gp each), 100 gp, Vladaam deot ring, diamond-feather guild badge

Cantrips (at will): dancing lights, light, mending
1^st level (4 slots): alarm, comprehend languages, detect magic, identify, shield
2^nd level (3 slots): detect thoughts, invisibility, web
3^rd level (3 slots): clairvoyance, dispel magic, fly

4^th level (3 slots): locate creature, stoneskin
5^th level (1 slot): bigby’s hand

Oldtown
Ridge Road – E5

EXTERIOR

A three-storey, stepped tower. A balcony runs around the perimeter of the third floor. Red and gold banners hang around the circumference of the second floor.

AREA 1 – ENTRY

A small  writing desk off to one side of the chamber is typically manned by a guildmember who will inquire after the business of anyone entering.

FIRST MAP OF THE GUILD: Hanging on the wall to the left of the entrance there is an old map of Ptolus. A DC 10 Intelligence (History) check can note the major departures from the modern city:

• Oldtown is nearly in its current state.
• The Nobles’ Quarter is present, but the estates are smaller and less luxurious.
• There are no bridges to Rivergate, and there’s only a single large, walled manor there.
• North of the river, where the Temple District is today, there’s a small cluster of buildings around the Cathedral.
• There’s an area labeled “Guildsman District” clustered around the top of the ramp leading down to the Docks. (Today, this area would be considered the easternmost part of Midtown.)
• South of the river, Oldtown seems to spill out off the mesa and into the western reaches of what’s today the South Market, but the buildings don’t even reach as far as Emerald Hill.

CHART OF THE WHITEWIND SEA: Hangs on the wall to the right of the entrance. Clearly archaic. Drawn by the surveyor who founded the Brotherhood of Yrkyth. (The letters of his name have been cleverly crafted to resemble the diamond-feather symbol of the guild.)

AREA 2 – GREAT SEAL OF YRKYTH

The marble floor of this entry chamber is tiled to form the Great Seal of Yrkyth.

AREA 3 – STAIRS UP

These stairs lead up to Area 6 and the door to Area 8.

AREA 4 – GUILD GATHERING HALL

A long, mahogany dining table runs down the center of this room. The benches to either side of it are padded with purple velvet.

FIREPLACE: On the right-hand wall, there’s a large fireplace. It’s cleverly designed to pump heat under the stone bench which lines the curve of the outer wall.

BOOKCASE: Holds journals and logs donated (or purchased) from various ship captains over the past several centuries.

AREA 5 – CHARTMAKER’S ROOM

This room is filled with drafting tables and associated tools. Most of the guildmembers here are engaged in simply copying maps from the guild’s library (Area 6), but occasionally there will be a new map being drafted.

DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation): Among the mapmaking equipment there is a table with financial records.

• This includes a Tithe Payment of Rent: The boy apprentices of the Red Company of Surveyors are housed in the Vladaam apartments on Crossing Street in Oldtown.
• GM Note: This is not the apartment building occupied by chaos cultists in Night of Dissolution, but one of the neighboring buildings. See Part 15: Oldtown Apartments.

AREA 6 – MAP LIBRARY

This library contains detailed charts of the Whitewind and Southern Seas, but also maps of Palastan, Cherubar, the Plains of Rhoth, the Sea Kingdoms, Ren Tehoth, the Plains of Panish, the Prustan Peninsula, and even the distant lands of Uraq.

ACCESS: The guild charges 100 gp for access to the map room. There is an additional copying charge per map. (These maps represent valuable commercial intelligence.)

LIBRARY: The library grants a +2 bonus to navigation- and geography-related checks.

TREASURE HUNT: A conjoined DC 16 Intelligence (Investigation) and DC 20 Wisdom (Survival) check requiring 1d6 days per check can allow a researcher to turn up a map to a potentially interesting location.

• Use Grim’s “All the Dice” Treasure Map Generator, with a 50% chance of generating a treasure hoard.

HIDDEN SWITCHES: There are six hidden switches located around the room. If activated in the correct sequence, they open the 4-ft. thick stone wall leading to Area 7. If activated in an incorrect order, a magical trap is triggered which summons a chain devil and sends a mental alarm to Guildmaster Essetia.

• DC 10 Intelligence (Investigation): To find one of the six hidden switches.
• DC 14 Intelligence (Investigation): To find two of the six hidden switches.
• DC 20 Intelligence (Investigation): To find all six hidden switches.
• DC 25 Intelligence (Investigation): To realize there’s a trap triggered with an incorrect activation sequence. A second DC 25 Intelligence (Investigation) or a DC 16 Intelligence (Thieves’ Tools) check can determine the correct sequence.

AREA 7 – ENTRANCE TO THE INNER SANCTUM

Lit with red everburning torches, this stairwell hidden within the wall of the guildhouse leads down to Area 1 of the Inner Sanctum.

AREA 8 – GUILDMASTER’S QUARTERS

DOOR – MAGIC MOUTH: A gargoyle on the door will animate and speak to anyone approaching, passing messages to Essetia if she’s inside. If Essetia is not present, the gargoyle will “take a message” and give it to her when she returns.

• Door (Strong Wood): AC 15, 27 hp, DC 24 Dexterity (Thieves’ Tools)

SITTING AREA: Comfortable chairs with griffon-carved backs and a bed of luxurious feather-down. Large windows look out onto the balcony.

WRITING DESK: The top is closed and locked, requiring a DC 14 Dexterity (Thieves’ Tools) check. The desk contains:

• Correspondence Regarding the Hand of Malkith
• Report Concerning the Erthuo/Sadar Affair
• An engraved box of oak containing a cutting from a tree (papery-thing, silver-grey bark and white wood) and Letter from Essetia to Ulloth.
• A red pouch containing 150 pp and Letter of Thanks from Godfred Vladaam.

DC 12 Intelligence (Investigation): A chest is hidden under the bed.

• 469 gp
• potion of fire shield
• scrolls (see invisibility, mage hand, feather fall)
• Oath of the Brotherhood of Yrkyth

IRON COFFER: 10% chance of being present.

• 500 gp
• 40,000 sp
• 50,000 cp
• Instructions to have the Ithildin Couriers ship to the Red Company of Goldsmiths on Gold Street (see Part 12).

AREA 9 – GUILDMASTER’S BALCONY

The balcony encircles the entire third floor of the guildhouse. A beautiful view of the city and out across the Whitewind Sea on one side, and across Oldtown towards the Nobles Quarter and the Spire in the other direction.

TRIPODS: There are two tripods set up on this balcony. One contains a sextant, the other a telescope. The guildmark on each of them marks them as creations of the Red Company of Founders (sees Part 11).

Go to Part 14B: Inner Sanctum of the Surveyor’s Guild

Most RPGs use turn-based combat because it can provide a simple method for clearly resolving the chaotic realities of the battlefield. (Simultaneous action resolution, for example, can work really well with very small numbers of combatants, but then breaks down rapidly as the number of combatants increases.)

Turn-based combat, however, creates mechanical oddities: If you were in a swordfight with someone and they were like, “Hang on a sec. I’m just going to grab a pint and have a quick drink,” you’d just stab their dumb ass. But because we’re using an abstract mechanical structure in which everyone resolves their actions one at a time — even though, in reality, everything is happening simultaneously — suddenly you’re just supposed to stand there watching me take my drink because it’s not your turn.

To deal with this, we add off-turn mechanics that allow characters to react to things that they should, logically, be able to react to, even if it isn’t their turn. In D&D 5^th Edition, these mechanics include the Ready action, reactions, and opportunity attacks.

We can add one more level to this by adding mechanics that allow you to, for example, avoid opportunity attacks. We might want to do this because a character is super-skilled at drinking in the middle of combat, or maybe just because it’s a bad-ass moment. (The Disengage action in D&D 5^th Edition is technically one example of this. In D&D 3^rd Edition you could make Tumbling checks to avoid attacks of opportunity from movement and Concentration checks to avoid provoking while casting a spell.)

D&D 3^rd Edition sought to implement a lot of mechanics from previous editions of the game in ways that were both more consistent and comprehensive. This included inventing the term “attacks of opportunity” and classifying which actions would “provoke an attack of opportunity.” This made sense, but in practice it had a major drawback: It created a huge list that filled nearly two full pages of actions detailing which actions did (and did not) trigger attacks of opportunity, and you either had to reference that list constantly during play or you had to memorize it. Even if most of this list boiled down to common sense, the result was still Byzantine and arcane.

As a result, after 3^rd Edition, there was a practical impulse to avoid this “grand and unwieldy list” of actions. In D&D 5^th Edition, this simplification has been taken to an extreme: An opportunity attack is triggered only when a combatant you can see moves out of your reach, unless they take the Disengage action.

This eliminates the complexity of the list by boiling the mechanic down to a single trigger, but it allows a lot of immersion-breaking shenanigans on the battlefield. And even the implementation of the movement-based trigger is kinda wonky: You can literally run circles around an opponent while firing arrows at someone on the opposite side of the battlefield, but you can’t walk past them while swinging your sword at them. And, bizarrely, this means that creatures with longer reach are actually less effective at attacking people around them.

In my opinion, if you wanted to simplify opportunity attacks, it would be preferable to either (a) eliminate the mechanic entirely (can’t get simpler that that!); or (b) go the other direction.

HARDCORE OPPORTUNITY ATTACKS

By default, any action you take provokes an opportunity attack from any combatant who can reach you.

There are three exceptions:

• Any attack action
• Dodge
• Disengage

In addition, Ready doesn’t provoke, but the action you’re readying may provoke when you take it.

Bonus actions, reactions (other than readied actions), and your free object interaction never provoke opportunity attacks.

Movement provokes opportunity attacks normally.

OPTION: BETTER MOVEMENT OAs

When using this option, movement provokes an opportunity attack whenever a character moves more than 5 ft. within your reach on their turn or moves out of your reach.

Note: Disengage still cancels all movement-based opportunity attacks during your turn. You also don’t provoke an opportunity attack when you teleport or when someone or something moves you without using your movement, action, or reaction.

OPTION: DAMAGE SPELLS

Spellcasters can use their bonus action to avoid the opportunity attack triggered by casting a spell if the spell deals damage.

Note: This rule may be useful to make some 5^th Edition spells work properly. It avoids needing to make all of those spells special case exceptions. Our goal remains One Rule to Rule Them All.

OPTION: HARDCORE RANGED ATTACKS

Using this option, only melee attack actions avoid opportunity attacks. Ranged attacks still provoke.

Note: As with a spellcaster, you might allow a ranged attacker to use their bonus action to negate the opportunity attack.

DESIGN NOTES

Positioning in combat should matter. You want your rogue to pick the lock on the door so you can all escape? Cover their back! You want your spellcaster to rain hellfire down on your foes? Form a defensive line and give them the space they need to do it.

By allowing characters to just do whatever wherever, the 5^th Edition opportunity attack rules cheapen positioning.

Beyond making the battlefield a more interesting space for tactical challenges, I also want things to make sense: If you’re going to do something that isn’t directly focused on fighting, I want you to think to yourself, “Should I really be doing this where the guy with the pointy metal can stab me?”

At the same time, we want to avoid a bunch of Byzantine complexity. We don’t want a big list of what does and does not trigger an opportunity attack: What we want is a simple, straightforward rule that we can easily memorize and apply. We want One Rule to Rule Them All. By flipping things around and listing the very small list of things that DON’T provoke, we achieve that goal.

From a practical point of view, if we end up in a situation where this One Rule to Rule Them All doesn’t make sense, it’s much easier for me as a DM for me to “break” the rules with a ruling that’s more permissive to the PCs than one that isn’t. In other words, saying, “Actually, it would make a lot of sense if this thing you’re doing that would normally provoke doesn’t provoke in this situation,” the players will be much happier accepting that than if I have to say, “Actually, this thing you thought wouldn’t be bad for you is actually going to be bad for you.” A restrictive framing, therefore, can paradoxically give us a greater liberty to make bespoke rulings when and if they’re needed.

ADVANCED DESIGN NOTES

Taking a step back from opportunity attacks, there are two different broad approaches to modeling the idea that you can’t just run willy-nilly around a battlefield or do a crocheting project in the middle of a melee without consequences.

First, you can try to mechanically enforce it: Thou shalt not.

Thou shalt not move past someone threatening you with a melee weapon. Thou shalt not drink a potion if someone has marked you as their target. Thou shalt not run through an area under the effects of suppressive fire.

(My house rules for combat in 1974 D&D, where the procedure effectively makes melee “sticky,” is another approach to this.)

You can also mitigate this approach: Thou shalt not X, unless Y.

For example: “You can move through a threatened space if you succeed on an Acrobatics check.” Or, “If you get hit with an opportunity attack, you have to stop moving.” (If you can avoid the attack, then you can ignore the Thou Shalt Not.)

The other approach is that you can impose a cost for doing it — e.g., “You can do X, but you’ll suffer a penalty.” Or risk getting hit by an extra attack. Or lose an action.

This approach gives more flexibility: If you really want or need to do something, you can still do it. You just have to pay the cost.

And, once again, you can add conditionals that allow characters to mitigate or entirely avoid these costs.

Of course, the highest the cost becomes, the greater your need or desire would need to be to endure it. Conversely, the more negligible the cost becomes, the less influence it will have over the characters’ decisions.

If you think about opportunity attacks within this design paradigm, 5^th Edition’s opportunity attacks are clearly aiming for the second method, and my argument is that they have become so trivial that you would be better off either (a) eliminating them entirely in order to streamline combat and encourage even more movement on the battlefield or (b) using the hardcore opportunity attacks house rules (or something like them) to make them actually matter.

Alternatively, you could abandon that paradigm entirely and maybe try to implement something of the Thou Shalt Not variety.

“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