zlefin
2013-04-10, 10:20 PM
After looking at a recent thread where the dm gave the party a building that had ridiculous amounts of nasty stuff in it; I felt like posting some basic principles of safe dungeon clearing.
This is for when the goal is to get rid of anything bad in the dungeon, and it's a very VERY bad and dangerous dungeon.
1) don't enter the dungeon.. This is key, the dungeon is very dangerous, and should never be entered; it's full of traps and monsters.
2) it takes time. Unlike other dungeon clearing techniques, safe clearing takes quite awhile. It could be weeks, months, or years. But it's much safer.
3) Destroy (almost) everything. You can try to rescue some of the treasure, maybe, at some point; if it's really important treasure. But mostly you tear the dungeon apart piece by piece and from the outside. The degree of destruction depends on the danger and power level of the dungeon. At lower levels it may be as simple as tunneling in from the outside to destroy every wall and passageway (which tends to disable most traps); at the highest levels it tends to mean disjoining and disintegrating the entire dungeon.
If you want to get any treasure out, try to destroy as much of the area as you can first, then pull it out from a distance; using perhaps grappling hooks, or suitable spells, a custom research spell of mage hand with long range would be good.
I always imagine some dungeon clearers work this way, due to its relative safety in dealing with nasty trap heavy dungeons.
This is for when the goal is to get rid of anything bad in the dungeon, and it's a very VERY bad and dangerous dungeon.
1) don't enter the dungeon.. This is key, the dungeon is very dangerous, and should never be entered; it's full of traps and monsters.
2) it takes time. Unlike other dungeon clearing techniques, safe clearing takes quite awhile. It could be weeks, months, or years. But it's much safer.
3) Destroy (almost) everything. You can try to rescue some of the treasure, maybe, at some point; if it's really important treasure. But mostly you tear the dungeon apart piece by piece and from the outside. The degree of destruction depends on the danger and power level of the dungeon. At lower levels it may be as simple as tunneling in from the outside to destroy every wall and passageway (which tends to disable most traps); at the highest levels it tends to mean disjoining and disintegrating the entire dungeon.
If you want to get any treasure out, try to destroy as much of the area as you can first, then pull it out from a distance; using perhaps grappling hooks, or suitable spells, a custom research spell of mage hand with long range would be good.
I always imagine some dungeon clearers work this way, due to its relative safety in dealing with nasty trap heavy dungeons.