There's nothing like being level 1 again (or level 2, 3 or 4 for that matter) to really feel vulnerable. Any off chance crit from some NPC or other could easily bring your fun new character's adventuring career to a grinding halt and while this isn't exactly a bad thing, it certainly does bring out a high level of danger that just cant really be experienced at the higher levels without edging onto the ridiculous. Similarly, simple obstacles like crevasses, cliff faces, raging rivers and any number of others, can make really tough challenges without any need for horrid demons and vast armies.
Without access to key spells like stone shape, fly and any number of other utility spells available at lvl 5 and onwards, it takes a serious amount of ingenuity to pass obstacles of a non-combative sort and its an aspect of DnD that can easily be overlooked.
Inventing genius plans and strange contraptions with whatever may be handy really cements a party together, pooling aspects of everyone's skills together and enforcing ideas of teamwork. Taking a 20ft crevasse as an example, characters will need to find some sort of makeshift bridge, get it across, secure it, possibly still needing to balance if its a crappy bridge, theres no way in hell they're jumping the damn thing. Basically, fun for the whole family.
Seeing as its something that can really die out at higher levels, get in on the action as much as possible and cackle with inner glee as your players attempt to cross that deep lake with nothing but 3 pints of oil, a rope and some dead trees... and succeed.
1 comment:
My adventure group level 7, and on more than one occasion they have nearly died from simple physical challenges rather than a straight forward combat, now I add this type of terrain to combats,
Crossing a Ravine, where a wizard with a wand of dispel magic is waiting.
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