Stopping the PCs from breaking dungeon walls

[Thealtruistorc]

This has been a question lingering at the back of my mine for a long time, and given that I will be DMing at a major event soon ((url=http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?435088-Gamehole-Con-Players-and-DMs-needed-for-event&highlight=gamehole+con)Hello!(/url)) I feel that I should find some way to deal with this problem that has plagued me ever since I learned adamantine weapons were a thing.

What's to stop a party from bypassing every puzzle and obstacle by simply smashing through the door with an adamantine warhammer? I know that many melee builds can deal more than enough damage to smash through building materials (even adamantine) and I want to make players genuinely think through a few puzzles sometimes besides "what do I smash?" How do other DMs deal with this and what might be a good approach to making sure wanton damage doesn't become the go-to solution for every dungeon wall?

[ComaVision]

I don't know what level your adventurers are going to be but painted Walls of Force may be an option. If they start smashing the wall, it'll just chip off paint.



If they're high enough level to disable the walls then this does not work, obviously.

[Deadline]

What's to stop a party from bypassing every puzzle and obstacle by simply smashing through the door with an adamantine warhammer?

Make everything load bearing, and destroying it collapses the room and/or dungeon. Yes, even that finely crafted 2-inch tall statue that doesn't reach the ceiling, that pencil, that table, and that pie. Load bearing, all of it. Most importantly, make the boss load bearing as well.

Ahem. In all seriousness, traps are the most likely thing you can use. That and the fact that they're going to make a lot of noise smashing through doors and walls, which will alert the dungeon and the monsters can put together a better defense or gather up their loot and flee. But more realistically, if your party has adamantine weapons, then it's time for you to stop using locked doors and regular walls as challenges, much like it's time to stop using pit traps as a challenge once the party has reliable access to flight.

[Strigon]

The load-bearing example works, though maybe not to that extreme.
Perhaps try an underwater dungeon? If they smash through walls, water starts to flood in.
You could have the doors be trapped, and the rooms dug out of the earth; smashing through walls mostly leaves you with tonnes of earth before another room.

But maybe your PC's just don't want puzzles. The most common advice on this forum is talk to the players, and it seems to fit just as well here as anywhere else. Ask them why that's all they do, and work from there.

[ComaVision]

But maybe your PC's just don't want puzzles. The most common advice on this forum is talk to the players, and it seems to fit just as well here as anywhere else. Ask them why that's all they do, and work from there.

While this is good advice, it's much less helpful for a Con game.

[NevinPL]

What's to stop a party from bypassing every puzzle and obstacle by simply smashing through the door with an adamantine warhammer?
Making "simply smashing through the door with an adamantine warhammer" not a puzzle, obstacle bypass ?
If "destroying everything, solves everything", I don't think DnD is the "most optimal" choice.

But if the puzzle\obstacle is a labyrinth, or something like that, you could:

get back to the 3E rules for adamantine,
fill the other side of that wall with green slime, or just some "big nasty",
make them from Obdurium (SBG), or reinforce it with things also from that book,
Wall of force is fine too.

[Remedy]

Steal a page from Attack on Titan, obviously. You don't want to smash the walls. There are... Things... Under there... Best left undisturbed. They just are really desperate to be allowed to sleep, though; they aren't super duper Evil and jumping to kill everything as soon as they're released from their prison or whatever. Have them warned of this by some outside character or force. If they still go through it, have one of the things pop out and punt them aside effortlessly before going back in and regrowing the wall around them. If they make the mistake of trying again, introduce them to a monster stronger than the dungeon's boss, but who won't pursue them if they flee after realizing they're boned. If the players proceed to find a way to neutralize one of the monsters and get through its section of the wall, congratulate them and let them go ahead, because that was probably a puzzle all its own.

[jiriku]

Spells such as hardening and augment object can increase the hardness and hit points of doors and walls. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander, so PCs can just as easily use those spells to augment their adamantine weapons and win that arms race.

Exotic dungeons are generally the way to go. That's not a door: it's a magical portal to a pocket demiplane. Those aren't walls: they are sheets of magma, held in place by magic. This isn't a room:the dungeon is the corpse of a dead god floating in the astral plane and even dead, his insides regenerate amazingly quickly.

As mentioned though, you are probably approaching the point where doors and walls are not level-appropriate challenges any more. PCs can teleport through such things, smash them with brute force, or disrupt them with spells such as stone shape, metal melt, and disintigrate. It might be time to start attaching your puzzles and obstacles to things that are not physical objects. For example, the puzzle isn't a combination lock on a door, but a riddle providing the true name to the demon the BBEG has bound. With the true name the demon can be dismissed, robbing the BBEG of most of his power and bringing him down to a level where the PCs can oppose him. The obstacle preventing forward progress isn't a wall: the obstacle is that the players don't even know where the dungeon is, and they have to use their spells, skills, and social contacts to discover it. Or perhaps the obstacle is time: the dungeon is hundreds of miles away, the world is ending tomorrow, and they have to put their heroic attributes to use finding some way to get to the dungeon and fight through it without rest before the clock runs out and we're all doomed.

[Chilxius]

Something I've done is have the owner of the dungeon (or palace, library, temple) give them the quest, so that tearing down their employer's house could adversely affect their quest rewards.

And if the heroes' adamantine weapons are such an issue, maybe it's time to deploy some dire rust monsters.

[elonin]

There's plenty bad that can happen to them. There are some traps where the answer is smashing the floor the trap is on. Then sometimes when you smash the floor they find that under that floor is a threat that had been contained and was sleeping. I'd also let whatever treasure was there and is now lost. It would be a shame if they were supposed to find a quest item that would have just been trapped but now is neigh unrecoverable.

[Strigon]

And if the heroes' adamantine weapons are such an issue, maybe it's time to deploy some dire rust monsters.

Dire rust monsters? Pshaw; try dire multi-headed rust monsters!

[Aetol]

For the walls : if the dungeon is underground, make it a network of tunnels rather than rooms separated by walls. You can't smash the "walls" when they're 10 m thick. If the dungeon is a building, make a lot of load-bearing wall, as previously stated. Don't make it an instant "rock falls everyone dies", of course. But when the players start weakening the wall, tell them they hear crumbling noises and see the roof starting to slump.

[Drayco84]

Argh... Why do I feel the need to chip in?!

Right to the point and willing to be the unpopular opinion here, but... Are the puzzles WORTH solving?
I don't mean in a reward sense, I mean are they a challenge the party would appreciate? Are we talking Legend of Zelda style puzzles (Tricky, but you feel oh-so-clever when you get it.) or Sierra-style puzzles? (IE a solution only an insane idiot would've guessed?) Destroying walls and such is satisfying and makes the players feel like they "won" one over on the DM for using a trite, but effective out of the box solution. But, puzzles within the game need to feel like not a lot of time is being "wasted" in solving them.
Also, does the puzzle/trap make sense for where it's at? In the middle of a BBEG's lair makes no sense as that means the BBEG has to go through and solve/reset his puzzle every time he wants to pass through. In an ancient ruin to test whose "worthy" before they get a certain reward makes more sense.
And finally, ruining the PC's gear is the second fastest way to piss off players. The quickest? Being railroaded into some bull**** Sierra-level puzzle that the solution to makes no goddamn ****ing sense. Seriously, I'd stand up and hit you if it was bad enough. Time to play in a con is limited, and the players know this, so they're less likely to want to screw around with a puzzle.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

The walls are thick, and will take several minutes to smash through. This makes a lot of noise that reverberates throughout the dungeon, and everything that inhabits it will come investigating all at the same time. Your next ten appropriate-level encounters now occur simultaneously, good luck.

[Grod_The_Giant]

You could enforce the use of Break Item rules instead, possibly with a bonus for using a big adamantium hammer.

[BowStreetRunner]

Just create a few situations where they will want to be able to close those doors again and they will start to think twice about breaking them.

[Necroticplague]

Bashing through walls is the least of your concerns. Ghosts, Uncarnates, Druids, and Totemists can simply waltz right through most walls like they're not there (ethereal, incorporeal, earth glide, and phase cloak, respectively). Fortunately, all of these have the same solution: walls of force. Unbreakable, and impermeable to all methods of passing straight through it (except for incredibly high Escape Artist checks, but I've hardly ever seen anyone put ranks in escape artist). Add a Forbiddance to stop people from teleporting, and your rails are pretty firmly in place.

[Sagetim]

This has been a question lingering at the back of my mine for a long time, and given that I will be DMing at a major event soon ((url=http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?435088-Gamehole-Con-Players-and-DMs-needed-for-event&highlight=gamehole+con)Hello!(/url)) I feel that I should find some way to deal with this problem that has plagued me ever since I learned adamantine weapons were a thing.

What's to stop a party from bypassing every puzzle and obstacle by simply smashing through the door with an adamantine warhammer? I know that many melee builds can deal more than enough damage to smash through building materials (even adamantine) and I want to make players genuinely think through a few puzzles sometimes besides "what do I smash?" How do other DMs deal with this and what might be a good approach to making sure wanton damage doesn't become the go-to solution for every dungeon wall?

Well, doors...I'll have to think about that for a moment. But for walls there's a very good reason not to go smashing through them- load bearing structures. What I mean is: if you don't have a strong understanding of architecture and engineering and you start knocking solid walls down within a building, you could find yourself buried under falling ceilings of death. If the players don't bother to mention making a knowledge check to make sure they aren't knocking out load bearing elements as they knock their way through the walls of a maze or what have you, then it's their own fault if they happen to collapse a ceiling onto themselves and the rest of the party. Even if they do, the dc should not be easy unless they take minutes of time to evaluate the room, wall, and what they know about the building itself. Even then, there can be elements of magical architecture that they aren't expecting or can't account for. After all, if there are immovable rods built into the 9th floor's floor to support the weight of the higher levels, they could be buried deep enough that detect magic wouldn't be able to sense them. And if they're taking the time to evaluate each wall before they punch through it, they're taking time that could work against them in the form of wandering monster patrols or other guardian type forces.

As for doors...well, if there's a trap on the door and you bust it down, would that trap not go off? In a similar vein, if the person who lives at the location is a level 11+ wizard, it might be fair to assume that they have the Hardening spell. If they can inflate their caster level (or have one already) to 18 or so, then they can cast hardening on each of their doors, once, and solve the adamantine problem by making a steel door with a hardness of 21. I think the broken mechanics thread mentioned that Hardening can stack, so they don't even necessarily need to do that, just habitate the building long enough to cast hardening at caster level 11 on each wooden door 3 times and voila, the doors now have a hardness of 8+5+5+5= 23. Of course, this won't stop clever players from bringing the necessary tools to unhinge doors that tough and use them as potent mobile cover, but it's one potential solution.

Do bear in mind that, as I recall, sonic damage tends to ignore hardness, so if someone really wanted a door buster they would get an adamantine etc with +1 and screaming for an extra 1d6 sonic damage.

In any case, traps are probably the way to go with things. If the players aren't taking the time to check for traps/didn't bring anyone with trapfinding, be it on their own heads for delving a dungeon without the appropriate skill sets.

[Coidzor]

Make it so that digging through the stuff inbetween the dungeon's wall and the other parts of the dungeon takes too long relative to dealing with what they're dealing with.

Alternatively, don't have "you must solve puzzle to pass" things for players who don't want to have that as part of their gaming experience and invest the resources to mitigate most cases of that which aren't special cases.

[It Sat Rap]

Don't make the mistake of using adamant doors to prevent the PCs from smashing them. They will simply loot these doors, no matter how hard they are!

A firstly non-existent door works better. The PCs enter the puzzle room, but there is no other exit in there. The exit only appears magically when the have solved the puzzle. It's unlikely that they start smashing the walls when they don't know the right direction.

Exhaustion is also a tool. The players have to make stamina rolls or they will be exhausted pretty soon if they try to dig through tons of earth and stone.

If you use XP, simply tell your players that they get less XP for smashing through the wall instead of solving the puzzle.

[5ColouredWalker]

Obduradon is a material, Hardness 30 I think, it's the improved version of adamantine.
If you need to, then enchant it.

[Amon Winterfall]

I have given this topic a lot of thought, since going through the walls is often much easier than going through monsters.

Making Walls Loadbearing doesn't achieve much. It means the party just needs to brace the opening instead of digging only; it might work if the party doesn't have any means to brace the wall, but spells like Wall of Stone would definitely allow for a gap to be made without taking down the ceiling.

Putting the dungeon under the water table is great fun, but then the hard choices come:

1) If the Dungeon's Walls are waterproof, this means that its in extremely good condition. If mice can burrow in, water has long since flowed into parts of the dungeon.
2) The Dungeon can somehow have a drainage system. This can be something like a Bag of Devouring.
3) Embrace the idea of putting part or most of the dungeon under the water table and make breathing an issue.

The ideas that I use these days are:

A: Pipes in the Walls. This can be used to facilitate moving Oozes from point A to point B safely, to do things like keep a dungeons' heating system online, or even to use Mercury to block detection a la Lead).

Depending on how nasty this is supposed to be, those pipes can be carrying anything from drinkable water to natural gas (which likely explodes when the metal pipe sparks).

B: Use a Demiplane: You can change how everything works in a Demiplane, including things like gravity. There's no reason that the edge of the Demiplane itself can't be a wall, or that it couldn't be specially tailored to literally mean the edge of the world stops travel.

C: Time Pressure: It's comparatively easy to simply force the PCs to need to act faster than going through a wall. If they have all the time in the world, they can defeat anything simply by shuffling spells and camping. Reinforcing Walls might be fast with magical means, but if they can't camp out, it gets a lot harder to justify mining style spells.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Another point worth considering: If the players start devoting time to figuring out how to bypass the dungeon entirely-- not just knock down the odd door, but tunnel straight through to the goal-- it might mean that they're not interested in a dungeon crawl. If that's the case, saying "the walls are all Walls of Force so you can't break through them so :smallyuk:" isn't going to improve the situation.

[ahenobarbi]

In game - make sure your design actually makes sense. If you make an extremely complex puzzle to unlock a paper door you should expect your players to do the smart thing and just destroy the door. If you make the puzzle the easier way to move forward (put a bridge over lava; stop continuous magical lightning storm in a long passage; reveal which of 10000 doors it the one you're looking for; open all 1000 stone doors that block passage; ...) expect players to actually take on the riddle.

As others pointed out you should avoid putting lost of easily lootable valuable stuff as "obstacles" - if you make whole dungeon adamantine PCs might realize it's much more profitable to loot walls of the dungeon instead of looking for some measly change treasure. It also destroys verisimilitude (who spends millions on dungeon that protects treasure worth a few thousands gp?).

[Xuldarinar]

A dungeon where the walls and floors are constructed from spells or held together by them at least. The entire dungeon is suspended over traps such as spikes, a really deep pit, lava, or lasting portals to unpleasant places. Attempts to break through the walls go up against any enchantments in place. Attempts to dispel any surface in a room will generally dispel the entire room, sending people plummeting.


Of course, it might be simpler to have the dungeon largely submerged under lava or something to that effect, with dungeon walls having several foot gaps between one room and the next hall/room, so breaking any wall floods the room.

[ThinkMinty]

Rule Zero was made for situations like this.

"The wall punches back, then says in a Midwestern accent to knock that bull**** off and walk through the dungeon like regular adventurers."

[ahenobarbi]

A dungeon where the walls and floors are constructed from spells or held together by them at least. The entire dungeon is suspended over traps such as spikes, a really deep pit, lava, or lasting portals to unpleasant places. Attempts to break through the walls go up against any enchantments in place. Attempts to dispel any surface in a room will generally dispel the entire room, sending people plummeting.


Of course, it might be simpler to have the dungeon largely submerged under lava or something to that effect, with dungeon walls having several foot gaps between one room and the next hall/room, so breaking any wall floods the room.

Why would PCs bother going through the dungeon when they can make much more cash by disassembling the dungeon?

[Der_DWSage]

Everyone that's suggesting water/lava/THINGS in the walls are still missing the fundamental points of Earthglide, Teleportation, Etherealness, and the other 50 ways to bypass solid objects. Force Wall is a good step up...but honestly, if you need to go for broke, you need to stop thinking inside the box. Actually, you need to stop having a box at all. Have this Moebius strip instead.

Stop playing with normal geometry. Use Teleportation Circles instead of doors, non-euclidean Geometry, puzzles that require you to reverse gravity so you can start walking on the ceiling, combinations of planes and shifting, alternate modes of travel required by totems that lie in the dungeon (Like an orb that grants everyone a Burrow Speed!) and other thing of that nature. If you feel particularly sadistic, have an adventure inside an oversized creature-I'm pretty sure you can think of reasons to NOT sunder in there. Forget traps-traps can be bypassed. Forget mundane issues-water and lava can be dealt with. The only surefire way for them to not bypass a dungeon just by breaking things is to throw the rules of distance and connecting space out the window.

(Not that I recommend doing this for every dungeon or every door-no, that's a good way to end up with people just getting frustrated and accusing you of railroading. This is just for those times when you utterly, absolutely need a door that can't be bypassed the easy way.)

[ahenobarbi]

Another point worth considering: If the players start devoting time to figuring out how to bypass the dungeon entirely-- not just knock down the odd door, but tunnel straight through to the goal-- it might mean that they're not interested in a dungeon crawl. If that's the case, saying "the walls are all Walls of Force so you can't break through them so :smallyuk:" isn't going to improve the situation.

This is for an event game so talking to players and adjusting the game based on their feedback probably isn't an option (but preparing adventure that is more interesting than skipping around it is generally a good idea :smallsmile: ).


Rule Zero was made for situations like this.

"The wall punches back, then says in a Midwestern accent to knock that bull**** off and walk through the dungeon like regular adventurers."

If railroading doesn't solve your problems it means you're not using enough of it I guess.

[sovin_ndore]

Well, bashing a wall down will start by making a small hole... at which point the archers/spellcasters/acid spitting monsters on the other side can start making use of said impromptu murder hole to attack the PCs without threat of melee reprocussion.

[Nibbens]

As mentioned though, you are probably approaching the point where doors and walls are not level-appropriate challenges any more. PCs can teleport through such things, smash them with brute force, or disrupt them with spells such as stone shape, metal melt, and disintigrate. It might be time to start attaching your puzzles and obstacles to things that are not physical objects. For example, the puzzle isn't a combination lock on a door, but a riddle providing the true name to the demon the BBEG has bound. With the true name the demon can be dismissed, robbing the BBEG of most of his power and bringing him down to a level where the PCs can oppose him. The obstacle preventing forward progress isn't a wall: the obstacle is that the players don't even know where the dungeon is, and they have to use their spells, skills, and social contacts to discover it. Or perhaps the obstacle is time: the dungeon is hundreds of miles away, the world is ending tomorrow, and they have to put their heroic attributes to use finding some way to get to the dungeon and fight through it without rest before the clock runs out and we're all doomed.

I second this idea. I'm gaming for a PF group at level 16 right now - my puzzles aren't objects anymore - they're situations.

For example, a mute hag is tormenting a town, literally turning the town in on itself, villagers killing one another because they think they saw person X killing person Y - when really it was the hag with disguise self killing person Y. Person X gets prosecuted and bam, I drop my players in the middle of this mess and make them figure it out.

All the meanwhile, the townfolk are dying at a maddening pace, and as soon as the PCs show themselves as a viable threat, the hag starts impersonating them - committing atrocities.

Now my PCs are forced into very difficult situations they can't solve with a hammer to the head - they couldn't even find where to put the hammer to begin with.

Sure, I'm dropping hints left and right and my PCs are scrambling to put the puzzle together while people are dying and turning on their very would be saviors. It took them 3 sessions just to find the hag and kill the darned thing.

And the best part was I count it as a failure on their part - they Failed to stop the hag from killing a bunch of people. They failed to stop it in time to cause permanent damage to the town, a multitude of families and my PCs all important reputation. I made sure the paladin was acutely aware of his failure as well. He didn't fall, but he felt horrible as a player and a character - and that was better than any measly loss of class-features which he can gain back with a single casting of a spell (atonement).

At high level, death isn't even an obstacle anymore - so how do you keep them worried? Their reputation, and their love of the world you've created. ***warning - this does not work with murderhobos.*** lol.

[Segev]

There's also the DaVinci Code option: have the puzzle be the only way to get to something without destroying it. The treasure chest is a stone coffer balanced precariously over a pit filled with lava, and the puzzle provides a way to get to it without unbalancing it. Smash something, and it likely just falls in.

The puzzle could activate a teleportation circle that takes them to the next room, rather than simply unlocking a door.

The puzzle gives them information when solved, either by revealing it as a reward or by literally containing the information in the answer. Without this information, smashing through walls will just let them dig tunnels. If they don't know where to aim those tunnels or what to do at the other end...

Wandering monsters have an increased chance of showing up when loud noises occur. Having to fight more encounters will slow them down and be its own drain on their resources if they keep smashing things.

The puzzle is figuring out which way to go.

The puzzle actually unlocks a hidden door elsewhere in the room. (Warning: an elf with an adamntine hammer could find this and smash it, anyway)

[Bronk]

Everyone that's suggesting water/lava/THINGS in the walls are still missing the fundamental points of Earthglide, Teleportation, Etherealness, and the other 50 ways to bypass solid objects.

I agree with this, by my suggestion is to basically have the 'outside' of the dungeon be either 'more dungeon' or 'more adventure'. They could find:

1: Another room of the dungeon they're in, where they could either catch something that was waiting to ambush them unawares, or come up against something that is more powerful than they expected.

2: Monsters or NPCs that are using the same methods to move about the interstitial spaces as they are.

3: The hidden workings of their dungeon, complete with NPCs or monsters providing upkeep duties to other areas, feeding the dumber monsters, transporting monsters around, and so on (similar to Halaster's Undermountain).

4: An entirely different dungeon.

[Xuldarinar]

I second this idea. I'm gaming for a PF group at level 16 right now - my puzzles aren't objects anymore - they're situations.

For example, a mute hag is tormenting a town, literally turning the town in on itself, villagers killing one another because they think they saw person X killing person Y - when really it was the hag with disguise self killing person Y. Person X gets prosecuted and bam, I drop my players in the middle of this mess and make them figure it out.

All the meanwhile, the townfolk are dying at a maddening pace, and as soon as the PCs show themselves as a viable threat, the hag starts impersonating them - committing atrocities.

Now my PCs are forced into very difficult situations they can't solve with a hammer to the head - they couldn't even find where to put the hammer to begin with.

Sure, I'm dropping hints left and right and my PCs are scrambling to put the puzzle together while people are dying and turning on their very would be saviors. It took them 3 sessions just to find the hag and kill the darned thing.

And the best part was I count it as a failure on their part - they Failed to stop the hag from killing a bunch of people. They failed to stop it in time to cause permanent damage to the town, a multitude of families and my PCs all important reputation. I made sure the paladin was acutely aware of his failure as well. He didn't fall, but he felt horrible as a player and a character - and that was better than any measly loss of class-features which he can gain back with a single casting of a spell (atonement).

At high level, death isn't even an obstacle anymore - so how do you keep them worried? Their reputation, and their love of the world you've created. ***warning - this does not work with murderhobos.*** lol.



That one makes me think.

If one member of the party is a cleric, or anyone that draws their power from a certain deity, then there is a simple solution. Make the dungeon a sacred place, perhaps the walls are adorned with tapestries that are very important to their religion. Breaking down the walls, or allowing a party member to do so, would be desecrating it and could come with consequences to the individual and the party. Last thing you want to do in the middle of a delve is for your cleric to need an atonement they can no longer cast on themselves.

[EldritchWeaver]

Obduradon is a material, Hardness 30 I think, it's the improved version of adamantine.
If you need to, then enchant it.

So what prevents people to make weapons from this?

[Xuldarinar]

So what prevents people to make weapons from this?

Maybe it is too hard?

[noob]

Adamantine ignore a fixed 20 harness not his current hardness so making a more solid weapon does not makes you ignore more harness but generally a material with 20 or more hardness costs ridiculously super high prices making impossible to justify how this dungeon was made without making the price of those materials becoming equivalent to the one of dirt.
one way against dungeon breakers is gigantic caves inside of mountains: they could dig their way if only they knew it and dug 100 meters or they might instead solve an enigma or even the enigma is finding the direction.

[NevinPL]

So what prevents people to make weapons from this?
Well, it doesn't exist anymore:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obdurodon
;)

[Ferronach]

I have never really had an issue with players breaking the walls down on me. If the dungeon is non-linear, then how do they know which way to go? They could choose wrong and be "MineCrafting" for a really long time.

One of my friends was the DM of a game where the players began smashing his walls because parts of them were laced with expensive crystals.
He solved the problem by having the hammer wielder roll d% after every 5 minutes of "digging/smashing" and increased the "DC margin" by 5% at the same time starting at 0%, 5%, 10% and so on. If the wielder rolled within the range, the haft or the head of the hammer (or pick or whatever was being wielded) broke. He warned the players of this and they decided to move on after getting some of the "shiny"

Another friend solved it by having the dungeon tremble while they were going "MineCraft" on the walls. That stopped the smashing spree very quickly. The players all know that a trembling/shaking/not normal seeming dungeon is a really bad thing and should not be encouraged with more senseless smashing.

If you don't have a trap/puzzle around every corner, then you should be fine. Make sure that every party member can contribute to solving the puzzle and try to make the process fun as opposed to tedious. If the players are involved and having fun wracking their brains trying to solve the puzzle, they won't be thinking of smashing the walls to bypass it.

[goto124]

Rule Zero was made for situations like this.

"The wall punches back, then says in a Midwestern accent to knock that bull**** off and walk through the dungeon like regular adventurers."

This is in the context of a Con game, and the players are breaking down walls or otherwise attempting a dungeon bypass. Considering how many players (who are strangers) there are for the DM to handle, why would you do something off-the-wall (or break-the-wall) and throw everything into a mess?

All the already posted ideas make for interesting puzzles though, even if the players aren't deliberately trying to bypass puzzles.

[Magma Armor0]

Does adamantium conduct electricity? Smashing through the wall could complete a circuit via the PC's arm. Take 5d6 electricity damage! What a shocking surprise!

[the_david]

There are 2 simple ways to stop them:
1. The ceiling collapses. Clever players might stop as they feel the first tremors.
2. They wake up every monster in the dungeon.

Every action...

[Sagetim]

Why would PCs bother going through the dungeon when they can make much more cash by disassembling the dungeon?

Just because you looted it doesn't mean someone wants to buy it. There's nothing compelling npcs to buy things they don't need, and I imagine most npcs in a town don't need deadly traps or doors with a hardness multiple times their walls (such as the case of magically hardened wooden doors). Sure, the lord of a town might be interested in such heavily fortified doors, but that doesn't mean he's just going to buy them off a bunch of hobo adventurers. Not when it's cheaper to tax it from them for adventuring on his lands. Or, if he is or has a high enough level wizard at his disposal, he's probably already gotten his important doors hardened.

And some traps just can't really be looted. You can't steal a hole in the ground. Not when it's just a hole in the ground. Perhaps some hinges and flippy parts if there's a trap door to hide the hole. Maybe the spikes at the bottom if you're obsessed enough to try and cut cheap metal spikes off a floor.

I think the point is: doors don't get made of adamant because it's expensive. Also, just to point it out in case no one has mentioned it yet-


This ultrahard metal adds to the quality of a weapon or suit of armor. Weapons fashioned from adamantine have a natural ability to bypass hardness when sundering weapons or attacking objects, ignoring hardness less than 20.

This means that if the target thing has less than 20 hardness, the hardness rating is ignored. If it has greater than 20 hardness, the weapon does not ignore 20 of that hardness, the entire hardness rating applies.

[Nibbens]

That one makes me think.

I think I my point may have been a little lost - so I'll answer the OP's question with another question.

"Why stop them from breaking dungeon walls?"

There's something that I've come to say - it's "players like to roll their dice." This has come to mean a number of things equating to "the players are going to do anything they can." - D&D is a game of lateral thinking. The tomb of horrors becomes a moot point with a few high powered spells and a dwarven excavation team to tunnel under the dungeon and come up in the room they need - and this is within the realm of possibilities for them. All they have to do is expend the resources.

So, if you start designing all your dungeons to stop wall breaking and such - then you're going into that territory that no one wants to talk about: "unfair." Once or twice is logical - give them a different challenge from time to time. But if every other dungeon is immune to their favorite tactic, then they will know the situation is unfair.

I suggest instead of stopping them from breaking through dungeon walls - let them - and let the world react to their success. Soon enough, your world-class-wall-breakers will attract the notice of thieves and or assassins who like the sound of the party's easily gained loot ("And besides, it's not like they're that tough - all they did was break a wall, not defeat the tough monsters - so these guys should be a cake walk to kill as long as no one with us is a block of stone!") Or maybe the Zelekuts (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/inevitable/inevitable-zelekhut) attention have been grabbed by these "wall-breaking-laws-of-dungeon-evading" PCs.

Nontraditional dungeons are great too - maybe the story takes them into a stint into the plane of earth where there very powers are needed to traverse the land, and then next they need to go to the plane of air - where there is no substance to anything, no walls or barriers to stop them. However, these should not be relied upon as permanent dungeon types.

Your players have a style - play with them. Let them spend their resources as they choose, and let their consequences come from their success and the way they play. React! :D

[killem2]

I've not had this problem but if I started to see it become an issue, I'd start putting in monsters with extreme tremorsense.

Bust those walls. Wake up every nasty being in 300ft.

[ahenobarbi]

I suggest instead of stopping them from breaking through dungeon walls - let them - and let the world react to their success. Soon enough, your world-class-wall-breakers will attract the notice of thieves and or assassins who like the sound of the party's easily gained loot ("And besides, it's not like they're that tough - all they did was break a wall, not defeat the tough monsters - so these guys should be a cake walk to kill as long as no one with us is a block of stone!") Or maybe the Zelekuts (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/inevitable/inevitable-zelekhut) attention have been grabbed by these "wall-breaking-laws-of-dungeon-evading" PCs.

Nontraditional dungeons are great too - maybe the story takes them into a stint into the plane of earth where there very powers are needed to traverse the land, and then next they need to go to the plane of air - where there is no substance to anything, no walls or barriers to stop them. However, these should not be relied upon as permanent dungeon types.

Your players have a style - play with them. Let them spend their resources as they choose, and let their consequences come from their success and the way they play. React! :D

I think that's the best advice I've seen in the thread, have a cookie :)


Just because you looted it doesn't mean someone wants to buy it. There's nothing compelling npcs to buy things they don't need, and I imagine most npcs in a town don't need deadly traps or doors with a hardness multiple times their walls (such as the case of magically hardened wooden doors). Sure, the lord of a town might be interested in such heavily fortified doors, but that doesn't mean he's just going to buy them off a bunch of hobo adventurers. Not when it's cheaper to tax it from them for adventuring on his lands. Or, if he is or has a high enough level wizard at his disposal, he's probably already gotten his important doors hardened.

And some traps just can't really be looted. You can't steal a hole in the ground. Not when it's just a hole in the ground. Perhaps some hinges and flippy parts if there's a trap door to hide the hole. Maybe the spikes at the bottom if you're obsessed enough to try and cut cheap metal spikes off a floor.


That's why PCs sell loot for 1/2 regular price. They sell it to someone who doesn't really need it but is willing to wait to get great profit margin.

[Eisfalken]

I know some of this (or most/all of it) has been covered by other posters, but as a DM, thought I'd share some ideas I'd do for myself it this happened.

Load-bearing walls are a capital idea. See the DMG, pg. 66. Just as an aside, I don't think it's a "problem" to do it once in a while, as long as it isn't every single wall they break. Unless they break them all for lulz; then nothing I do feels bad (to quote Marv from "Sin City").

The rules for being buried alive are pretty harsh: you take automatic nonlethal damage per minute (10 rounds) until unconscious, then make Con saves against lethal damage until dead. Perhaps more alarmingly, RAW the only way to get yourself free is with a DC 25 Strength check (or, theoretically, some power/ability/spell that doesn't require somatic or verbal components to get off); if you're in there, you are stuck good.

What's that you say? A cave-in alone is no real threat, because the checks/saves are easy-peasy to make? I agree. That's what leads to the next item...

Wandering monsters! Oh, that's right, players forgot that this is a staple of the D&D game. The idea that all the monsters are just kind of sitting around waiting to be murdered is, after all, ridiculous. Maybe they need to take a deuce, or are on the way to get dinner, or whatever it is monsters do down there in the dark...

Seriously, though, if a cave-in happens, that is in no way a quiet thing. It's going to be LOUD. Meaning the chance of a wandering monster should definitely be better. At the very least, make all stationary monsters within a given radius of the collapse make Listen checks (with penalties for distance, intervening walls, etc.). Tremorsense is also going to automatically detect that thing; there's just no way you can "hide" a ton of stone crashing down.

Then there's other complications. What if the wandering monsters are sentient and working for the BBEG? Of course, they'd be stupid not to report this development right way. If the players have already thrown caution to the wind, don't sit there waiting for them to destroy your dungeon; have the BBEG round up everyone working for them, juice up with a list of buff spells, and run straight at the party with everything in the dungeon. Hell, have the BBEG escape instead, packing up all the treasure and just leaving. Or have them send work teams (kobolds, constructs, undead, whatever) to do the exact same thing: start collapsing sections of the dungeon to force players to waste hours digging through, while the BBEG does anything and everything to either unleash the fury upon them, or deny them their loot.

And maybe the first cave-in just outright triggers others, forcing the PCs to go the long way around some areas. Or maybe a hidden underground water source gets sprung, flooding an area (if the water is trapped somehow, it could possibly start posing a drowning risk). Hell, maybe the cave-in drops straight through the floor... and exposes a magma vent, filled with toxic fumes, fire, etc. Maybe they open a passage that ultimately leads to a mind flayer city (and what do you know, it's time for more braaaaaaains).

Last word on this: don't be too vicious. It's easy to get a little bit mean with players getting lulz. But don't punish creative thinking outright, or the players will get bored and quit. Give them a cookie if they actually pull one over on you; that's exactly what they are supposed to do, think outside the box, be daring and dashing and heroic and all that jazz. Just make sure their actions have consequences that make as much sense as they can in an fantasy setting.

If you have to alter the walls, there's a number of ways. Spell Compendium has the spell hardening, which increases hardness. Wall of force is okay, but it might be more fun to set it up so that the stone overlays a wall of fire under there (add flaming damage to those who actually touch the stone with body or limbs); even if they bust the stone, the fire can't be seen through, and going through it causes damage. Wall of iron is a pretty easy spell for a BBEG with arcane spells to use, either over or under the stone. If you want to get really tricky, get the Sandstorm book and throw up some permanent walls of magma, sand, or water.

Good luck and godspeed.

[Inevitability]

Spending a few minutes banging a chunk of adamantine against a metal wall is sure to make some noise. Even if there aren't any monsters near enough to attack the PC's where they are, there ought to be at least some who can set up an ambush on the other side of the wall.

Another option is to just create the dungeon in such a way that the important area's can't be easily reached (towers, basements, other planes even).

Finally, you could just put giant water-filled spaces in the walls. Claim it is there to prevent earthquake shocks. Really evil DM's may put a few undead sharks in there.

[Coidzor]

So what prevents people to make weapons from this?

It's not a special material that you can use to make weapons or armor out of without homebrewing.

[ericgrau]

What's to stop a party from bypassing every puzzle and obstacle by simply smashing through the door with an adamantine warhammer? I know that many melee builds can deal more than enough damage to smash through building materials (even adamantine) and I want to make players genuinely think through a few puzzles sometimes besides "what do I smash?" How do other DMs deal with this and ...
Stop right there. Making invincible challenges with only your way out is a DM trap. This is not a video game. There should never be The One Solution. Never ever ever. It's dull and one dimensional; either a boring cakewalk when they have The One Solution or a frustrating impossibility when they don't. Either way it's uncreative and unfun. Let them smash the wall. And if you make the walls out of adamantine and they start harvesting it, it's your own fault. Don't blame them for maintaining verisimilitude when you won't.

For that matter all stock traps can be bypassed with enough time. They provide delays, damage and some debilitating conditions, all of which can be healed and eventually overcome without any loss.

The main purpose of walls, traps and terrain are to provide delays and strategic positioning. Have smart monsters that use this to their advantage and force time pressure on the PCs, so that they can't chip away at the dungeon at their leisure. Crossbowmen behind arrow slits. Attacking the party as soon as one falls in a pit trap or other trap. Greased anything. Secret doors that lead behind the PCs. Alarm systems (mechanical or simply humanoid messengers) that bring the enemy together against anyone being too slow and noisy. Etc., etc.

[StreamOfTheSky]

The walls are thick, and will take several minutes to smash through. This makes a lot of noise that reverberates throughout the dungeon, and everything that inhabits it will come investigating all at the same time. Your next ten appropriate-level encounters now occur simultaneously, good luck.

This is the direction I was leaning. There are quite a few unwritten gentleman's agreements in D&D. One of them involves the iconic "dungeons" (it's in the name!) and it is that the players will actually play ball and go through the established hallways, paths, secret tunnels, etc... And not simply smash their way through Kool Aid man-style. On the other hand, as DM you uphold the convention that except on a small localized level (maybe the occupants of the next room hear a commotion and join in, but that's about it), monsters will generally remain sectioned off so that each grouping is possible to be defeated w/o overwhelming the party.

Once the party breaks their vow, you break yours. Flood them with every monster in the freaking dungeon, and they'll learn their lesson for the new party they roll up. By all means, give non-specific warnings that them trying to hack and slash their way through the environment itself will have dire consequences (the classic semi-subtle, "are you sure you want to do that?" may even be enough to get them to back down) so they don't HAVE to learn through TPK. But if they're stubborn, you have to stick to your guns, too.

[anti-ninja]

Or how about instead of making your walls impossible or dangerous to break make your puzzles worth solving.say your pc's are being chased through the dungeon ,how about that puzzle there allows them to have the dungeons traps target its inhabitants not them,sure they could still smash through that wall , but then their pursuers could just follow ,where as if they solve they puzzle they gain a tactical advantage.

[ericgrau]

This is the direction I was leaning. There are quite a few unwritten gentleman's agreements in D&D. One of them involves the iconic "dungeons" (it's in the name!) and it is that the players will actually play ball and go through the established hallways, paths, secret tunnels, etc... And not simply smash their way through Kool Aid man-style. On the other hand, as DM you uphold the convention that except on a small localized level (maybe the occupants of the next room hear a commotion and join in, but that's about it), monsters will generally remain sectioned off so that each grouping is possible to be defeated w/o overwhelming the party.

Once the party breaks their vow, you break yours. Flood them with every monster in the freaking dungeon, and they'll learn their lesson for the new party they roll up. By all means, give non-specific warnings that them trying to hack and slash their way through the environment itself will have dire consequences (the classic semi-subtle, "are you sure you want to do that?" may even be enough to get them to back down) so they don't HAVE to learn through TPK. But if they're stubborn, you have to stick to your guns, too.
I'm in favor of something part way in between. It takes time for foes to arrive. So as they gradually pour in that could be a big hint to run and try again another day. Another way would be to make the encounters easy if fought one at a time, and difficult if not impossible if they gang up. And maybe the players alert the enemy or one gets away by accident, not necessarily on purpose. Or maybe the enemy is not familiar with the PCs and only sends 2 squads rather than everybody, thinking 2 squads will be more than enough when it isn't. Plus if the whole dungeon goes to one spot, then that could easily get exploited with a PC-made noisemaker while the PCs go for the goal. So maybe some defend the goal while others investigate, or all return to the goal and barricade the room, forcing the PCs to come back later. Or maybe the PCs will play smart and intentionally make distractions in some dungeons, with success at times. Etc., etc. Or stealth plays a far bigger role, as it lets players defeat a series of low EL encounters rather than tougher ones. Let this stuff happen instead of avoiding it and it adds new dimension to the game.

[Strigon]

Stop right there. Making invincible challenges with only your way out is a DM trap. This is not a video game. There should never be The One Solution.

While I agree with your premise, I think you're giving the PC's a bit too much freedom here.
Not having a single way through a problem? Fine, that's a good rule. Letting the PC's find their own path? Also fine.
But this isn't Minecraft. One can take this advice too far; shutting down entire dungeons isn't a fun game, for anyone.

For crying out loud; he's not railroading, he just wants his PC's to play the game. At their core, TTRPG's rely on an inherent trust between the GM and the players. The players allow the GM to create a realistic world, with a compelling story and fun sessions, and in turn they agree to work with the GM. The players, in this scenario, would be breaking their side of the bargain.

[ericgrau]

While I agree with your premise, I think you're giving the PC's a bit too much freedom here.
Not having a single way through a problem? Fine, that's a good rule. Letting the PC's find their own path? Also fine.
But this isn't Minecraft. One can take this advice too far; shutting down entire dungeons isn't a fun game, for anyone.

For crying out loud; he's not railroading, he just wants his PC's to play the game. At their core, TTRPG's rely on an inherent trust between the GM and the players. The players allow the GM to create a realistic world, with a compelling story and fun sessions, and in turn they agree to work with the GM. The players, in this scenario, would be breaking their side of the bargain.

Which is why I brought up alternatives such as noise and time pressure from foes. There is a real in-world reason why tunneling doesn't happen. Without the PCs tying their own hands. How many castle sieges were won with pick axes? It's a bit too slow.

[Sagetim]

I think that's the best advice I've seen in the thread, have a cookie :)



That's why PCs sell loot for 1/2 regular price. They sell it to someone who doesn't really need it but is willing to wait to get great profit margin.

I was always under the impression that the real reason adventurer's can't sell things for full price is because they aren't actually merchants. Don't have a merchants license. Aren't part of the merchants guild. Do not give their due diligence to the merchants cartel. You know...they aren't in the merchants club so if they try to sell to anyone other than the merchants guild they get cracked down on by the ruler of the kingdom out of fear of all the merchants ceasing to do business in protest. And of course, the merchants club doesn't buy things at full price. Ever. That would be silly.

Why, yes, I do assume that there are cut throat businessmen in ever dnd campaign setting. Don't you?

[ericgrau]

I was always under the impression that the real reason adventurer's can't sell things for full price is because they aren't actually merchants. Don't have a merchants license. Aren't part of the merchants guild. Do not give their due diligence to the merchants cartel. You know...they aren't in the merchants club so if they try to sell to anyone other than the merchants guild they get cracked down on by the ruler of the kingdom out of fear of all the merchants ceasing to do business in protest. And of course, the merchants club doesn't buy things at full price. Ever. That would be silly.

Why, yes, I do assume that there are cut throat businessmen in ever dnd campaign setting. Don't you?

Ha when selling a rare expensive item that few people can use to a merchant it is perfectly reasonable to get half, sans cut-throat business. He has to do all the legwork to find a buyer and he may have his money tied up in it for months which isn't making him money in the meantime. High level characters are rare. Now if a PC sells an item to someone who needs it it's more reasonable to get full price. If he sells an item that more people can use like a house it's more reasonable to get close to full price even if selling to someone who will resell it. If he sells a widely used commodity like grain RAW says you get full price.

[Sagetim]

Ha when selling a rare expensive item that few people can use to a merchant it is reasonable to get half. He has to do all the legwork to find a buyer and he may have his money tied up in it for months which isn't making him money in the meantime. Now if PCs sell an item to someone who needs it it's more reasonable to get full price.

I still think the merchants cartel wouldn't look too kindly on such behavior. And considering a merchants cartel can wreck a medieval economy? I think the ruler of that area would probably be more concerned about the well being of their entire land than the fairness towards some murder hobos.

[ericgrau]

I still think the merchants cartel wouldn't look too kindly on such behavior. And considering a merchants cartel can wreck a medieval economy? I think the ruler of that area would probably be more concerned about the well being of their entire land than the fairness towards some murder hobos.

No doubt cartels can increase the profit margin and fight competition. But I mean half isn't unreasonable for magic items.

[Sacrieur]

It's the dungeon's fault for using such bad doors.

The dungeons in my campaign tend to have big thick stone doors.

[Curmudgeon]

Spells such as hardening and augment object can increase the hardness and hit points of doors and walls. But what's good for the goose is good for the gander, so PCs can just as easily use those spells to augment their adamantine weapons and win that arms race.
There is no arms race.
Weapons fashioned from adamantine have a natural ability to bypass hardness when sundering weapons or attacking objects, ignoring hardness less than 20.
It's always a fixed cutoff, not relative. So giving the walls hardness of 20+ means that no matter how much hardness the PCs' weapons have, they'll reduce the damage by the wall's full hardness with every attack.


Ineffective Weapons
Certain weapons just can’t effectively deal damage to certain objects.
You can also just follow this rule and say that swords aren't designed to cut into walls, and they'd need a mining (not military) pick instead.

[Sagetim]

There is no arms race.
It's always a fixed cutoff, not relative. So giving the walls hardness of 20+ means that no matter how much hardness the PCs' weapons have, they'll reduce the damage by the wall's full hardness with every attack.


You can also just follow this rule and say that swords aren't designed to cut into walls, and they'd need a mining (not military) pick instead.

And if it comes to hammers...war hammers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_hammer)aren't sledge hammers. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sledgehammer)

So the hammer weapons available in 3.5 probably just aren't that well suited to breaking down walls anyway.

[Doorhandle]

If the dungeon is in an alternate dimension, as opposed to being simply embedded in stone, it's much easier to limit. One mega-dungeon i've played in just had it be solid stone in all directions for hundreds of feet if you dug outside the room/dimension, and thus no-way to tunnel into the next room/dimension without going through the proper passage. Another option would be to have the walls of the dungeon be the only things between you and the endless void: but i'd recommend the former, as the latter is still exportable to shove the endboss out through. With the former you could still make defensive chokepoints or alternate routes, but it wouldn't break obstacles in half nearly as hard.

Also, you could just point out how slow most tunneling is through stone: with the most advanced modern tunnel boring machines, they move a staggering 10 meters a day: While they won't; need to dig out as much as the machine, it's still slow, boring (heh) work, and would allow easy ambush from behind... or even from their exit point if up against a particularly savvy villain.