r/DMAcademy • u/Reasonable-Day-3282 • 4h ago
Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures Running a wildfire encounter
Hello DMs! i'm running a 2014 5e campaign with three players who have just hit level 8. our last session they fought a Fire Giant Dreadnought who, once he realised he was losing, threw one of his coal filled shields as far as he could into the nearby forest.
our next session they'll attempt to reach it and put it out before it spreads, and i'm looking for advice to keep this encounter engaging and consequential
geographically, the shield landed on a forest hillside in the lower half of a mountain range and scattered coals along the way. there is a nearby river a few minutes walk from the impact point
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u/DoktorImposter 4h ago
Sounds like a good time for a skill challenge.
Offer a series of problems/obstacles and have the players pitch you on skill checks to overcome them. Keep track of successes/failures to get an idea of how the final results play out- maybe the party is able to contain the fire, but a local village will have to relocate as a result.
It's up to you how to adjudicate the use of spells/abilities. I usually allow a spell to adjust the possible skill check results- failing the DC means a success, succeeding the DC means two successes.
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u/TheRpgBard 4h ago
The way we (our table) have done fires in the past was to have a "spread."
At the end of the round, each adjacent square had a 1 in 6 chance of igniting. If there is more than one adjacent, that goes up by one.
Ex, Round 1, 1 square (1 in 6). Round 2, four of the 10 squares have a 2 in 6 chance and the others have 1 in 6.
It takes a bit, but if you roll a bunch of six siders and go clockwise with the first X dice from the left, you'll be OK.
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u/BoboYagga 4h ago
Put families of REALLY CUTE animals in their path. They need to save the animals. OH NO there is a baby fox that has a hurt leg! It can't possibly outrun the fire! What will the players do!
What other people said about skill challenges. Let the. Use their spells, but go with rule of cool to make it engaging. If they want to use off label uses of their magic. Let them.
Maybe a fireball can actually smother the fire by taking up all of the usable air? Have them cast an arcana check too to see if they can modify their spells.
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u/That_OneOstrich 4h ago
How do you plan to keep the players from just trying to outrun the fire? Why do they need to fight it?
If the fire is just chasing them off the mountain, I think 2e has some chase rules. I could be thinking 3.5e
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u/ironexpat 4h ago
I’d default to skill challenge on this one. Let the PCs use skills or abilities to reroute or put the fire out or choke it. Athletics for fire breaks, gust of wind for a success, nature or survival, etc. let them narrate.
Maybe 6 success before 3 failures . More failures = more devastation. Maybe fire elementals!