Hi all. Looking for advice on battle mechanics and preparing my group for a possible TPK. Long story short, level 10 party is in a flying keep controlled by a wizard. And they just disenchanted the machinery that makes the castle fly, stopping the flow of energy and causing the castle to start falling. The wizard immediately popped into the room to make repairs and they decided to fight him.
Re: Battle mechanics
Would love any advice on mechanics here. Was thinking by x rounds the keep crashes? Maybe a “lair action” where the ground shifts and turns? There’s a big opening in the floor and somE could fall out on a bad roll. Maybe the wiz will keep trying to re-enchant the machinery and, he could repair it in x rounds? The place isn’t dropping like a stone. I told the party there is still some juice in the system. So it’s started to slowly descend, but that it’s likely to pick up speed as the tank runs fully dry. All thoughts are appreciated.
Re:TPK
We’ve been running this campaign for several years and PC death will be a very big deal. That said, they know actions have consequences. This was a moment of such brazen risk, they need to feel those stakes. I don’t want to pull punches. But I want make sure I clearly communicate what is at stake without hand holding them or telegraphing “you should all flee now” during the battle.
How would folks out there handle this?. Would you let them know some of the mechanics? Eg x rounds before you crash? Would you share nothing? Would you give them a last ditch save but make it depend on high DC rolls? would deeply appreciate advice on how to make sure these dire consequences are fully in their hands
I’d start with the wizard telling them clearly telling them “if I don’t fix what you broke, this thing will crash and we will all die.” And really look around the table at them to make it clear that is you talking to the players, not just the NPC talking to the characters. And if they need more reason, the wizard can point out that by their estimation, the place will crash into some town or city or something (maybe that’s a lie, maybe not). That’s where you could give them an estimate. “We have less than 1 minute.”
I would do that for two reasons. One is understanding consequences makes them more interesting, two because it ramps up the drama. Now they have a choice, cut a deal with the wizard to save everyone, or fight the wizard and take their chances that they can turn this thing back on in however much time they have left.
If they need to fix it, I’d go the skill challenge route from 4e. Something like they have to make arcana checks and get, I don’t know , 4 successes before they get 3 failures. Maybe a DC like 17 or 18. That lets everyone choose if they want to participate, but the barbarian who dumped int will probably do more harm than good, or they might get lucky.
As far as the fight, you could make it dynamic, where as the thing falls, parts break off. The edges start to come in, and it starts to get smaller and smaller. Maybe the hole gets bigger. I’d give the wizard something like Bigby’s hand to grapple PCs and maybe drop them off the side. Also some minions, little clockwork automatons who would help with the repairs, but can be re-purposed to defend the wizard. And it would be reasonable for a wizard facing a level 10 party to just be able to teleport away. If the party chooses to fight, the wizard realizes they can’t both fight the party and stop their fortress crashing, so they leave (you could even add this in at the beginning speech). Or if not teleport, dimension door once they are within 500’ of the ground. Or cast fly on themself. Or even just feather fall off the side, and see if the party tries to chase him. The automatons will keep fighting no matter what, brave and mindless little things. A wizard in a flying fortress will have an exit strategy.
One think you want to make sure is how you are going to handle the damage. 5e has a cap on fall damage, and so they may determine they can't die do to that cap. You want to probably make sure they know they will take fall damage and damage from the debris.
They also need to be aware of how long they have before it falls. But more importantly the Wizard himself likely should have an exit plan, and would telegraph the last chance to leave.
Do they have any means to escape? This matters a lot, because if they can bail and choose not to, then the consequences should be harsher than if they've got no escape.
At some point in the fight, the wizard should probably yell "Fools! You have only doomed yourselves!" and try to teleport out.
Ultimately, you control the rate of descent and how hard the castle hits. You can time it for drama, and definitely should make it clear the castle is falling.
How high up was the castle? If it's high enough up, I'd start having the thing tumble, so they're sliding down the walls to the new floor each round.
If the players just fell from that height, they'd only take 20d6 damage. 70 damage is survivable at that level, but won't necessarily be survived if they've been taking damage in the fight. The DMG also has suggested damage from environmental hazards like falling rocks. Falling damage plus some crushing damage with a save may well take out a bunch of them without being a full TPK, and the survivors can potentially save their friends, or at least recover the bodies for raising.
idk I rarely see the storytelling or fun value of a TPK - hopefully one of them has feather fall or make them do a perception check and have some escape gliders on the wall.
You always need to ask yourself as a DM is whatever I am doing making this a more fun experience for the table or am I just pissed they attacked a thing I didn't want them to attack,
I was in a group that did much the same in a campaign a while back and we just used fly and brooms of flying and such and it was no big deal when the castle fell and exploded.
A flying castle explodes in D&D - so what we have all collectively razed a billion castles lol
Clearly telegraph that the castle flying system is failing - have at Initiative Count 0 it first lurch to the side - meaning all movement up hill is difficult terrain and all furniture/objects not affixed to the walls/floor go sliding against the wall and can push any creatures they hit against the walls too - deal 1d6 or 2d6 bludgeoning damage and make the creature restrained (DC 10 escape). Then have everyone start feeling like they weigh less / stomachs lurch up - this releases anyone still pinned by furniture. Then have it become free fall - you can borrow mechanics from the Levitate spell.
The Wizard should attempt to fix it probably shouting at the party while they do so - make this sound in character not that the DM saying "players you made the wrong choice" - until it reaches the free fall state, then once it is in free fall the wizard should attempt to escape. Or if the players do significant damage to the Wizard he should just attempt to leave immediately.
Re: TPK
Lastly, there should be some way for the players to escape if they choose to attempt to. It could be potions of flying somewhere in the wizard's castle, or a sentient magic carpet that flies past them attempting to escape the castle itself or whatever. If they choose not to attempt to escape then describe the heavy stone over their heads and remind them their characters would know they probably won't survive that amount of stone crushing them. Or remind them in meta-knowledge how you run falling damage. (Though honestly at level 10 they can probably save themselves).
One thing to keep in mind when DMing is you should not have an opinion about what the "right" and "wrong" solution is to any conflict/problem, the players can choose to resolve conflicts however they want and that is still good game play. This falling castle fight is going to be epic and exciting and super fun, so the players aren't "wrong" here, because the point of the game is to play out fun epic exciting stories not logically reason out the most safe tactical choice.
One thing to keep in mind when DMing is you should not have an opinion about what the "right" and "wrong" solution is to any conflict/problem, the players can choose to resolve conflicts however they want and that is still good game play. This falling castle fight is going to be epic and exciting and super fun, so the players aren't "wrong" here, because the point of the game is to play out fun epic exciting stories not logically reason out the most safe tactical choice.
While the DM should roll with the players' actions, there are still situations where they do their damnedest to get themselves killed, and unplugging a flying castle while they're in it probably counts. (Notwithstanding that the DM can probably keep them mostly alive with consequences without breaking the verisimilitude of the game.)
While the DM should roll with the players' actions, there are still situations where they do their damnedest to get themselves killed, and unplugging a flying castle while they're in it probably counts. (Notwithstanding that the DM can probably keep them mostly alive with consequences without breaking the verisimilitude of the game.)
Disagree, at 10th level at least one character will have Polymorph, probably somebody else can cast Fly, you might have a Bigby's Hand or a Feather Fall or a Conjure Animals / Wildshape available as well. It shouldn't be a problem for them to escape and land safely.
Hoard of the Dragon Queen ends at level 7 and the ending includes crashing a flying castle. It seems completely reasonable for a 10th level party to crash the flying tower of an evil wizard.
One thing to keep in mind when DMing is you should not have an opinion about what the "right" and "wrong" solution is to any conflict/problem, the players can choose to resolve conflicts however they want and that is still good game play. This falling castle fight is going to be epic and exciting and super fun, so the players aren't "wrong" here, because the point of the game is to play out fun epic exciting stories not logically reason out the most safe tactical choice.
While the DM should roll with the players' actions, there are still situations where they do their damnedest to get themselves killed, and unplugging a flying castle while they're in it probably counts. (Notwithstanding that the DM can probably keep them mostly alive with consequences without breaking the verisimilitude of the game.)
If players do something stupid that will get themselves killed, they should be allowed to do so.
You are the DM so it is up to you to figure out how your world works.
1) Do things fall in your world as they do in the real world?
Here are times for an object to fall some distances without air resistance included:
500' : 5.6s
1000' : 7.9s
5000' : 17.7s
10000': 25s
20000': 35.4s
If the falling tower is modeled as a cylinder with a drag coefficient of 0.81 falling vertically with a mass of ~1000 metric tons (stone shell 30cm thick made of granite) and a cross sectional area of 100m2 (about 30'x30' tower or ~20' radius) then the terminal velocity with air resistance is about 1500ft/s. The building should hit the ground long before hitting terminal velocity - so the numbers above should be reasonable.
In D&D terms, round it off :). Either way, you are only looking at 1-5 combat rounds before the castle hits the ground depending on how high it started at.
In terms of describing it to your players, I would lead off with "As soon as you dispel the magic keeping the tower aloft, you all start to float off the ground - you are in freefall - you can't walk or effectively swing weapons. Make a constitution saving throw to determine if you feel nauseous. The party realizes that there are likely only seconds before the tower weighing 1000 tons or more will crash into the ground. What would you like to do?" Unless a character has the Spelljammer wildspacer background ... sudden freefall that they may never have experienced before is going to be a challenge.
If the above doesn't get them focused on self preservation over trying to kill the wizard then they will get what they deserve. :)
Also, consider some of their possible responses and how you would rule them ...
- featherfall - feather fall slows their rate of descent to 60'/rd - but it only takes 2s for the building to be falling faster than that and feather fall won't hold up 100 tons or more - so the party ends up stuck to the ceiling by an increasing force as their velocity increases and the spell tries harder and harder to keep their speed to 60'/rd.
So, featherfall is likely to not work unless you want to rule differently.
On the other hand ...
- wall of force - if someone casts wall of force above them or encloses them in a sphere version of wall of force, then the wall won't move since physical objects can't pass through so either the tower will be momentarily hung up on the wall of force or it will break at the impact and the pieces will plummet to the ground around them.
- polymorph and similar spells are likely to be useless unless the characters have a route to escape the tower in a round or two.
- another cool escape mechanism could be the rope trick spell - the characters can't take turns climbing in due to the tower falling and rope trick being fixed in place - however, if someone suggested casting it and everyone held actions to jump inside the moment it was cast in front of them then I'd probably allow it as a creative use of a spell to escape this situation.
You will likely need to house rule damage or other effects. D&D limits falling damage to 20d6 .. if the party is thinking that is all there will be then they are looking at 70 hit points on average which many level 10 parties might shrug off. If you are going to house rule this then you need to make sure the players are aware of it from the very start. In addition, if you think it is something that the CHARACTERS would know but which the players are unconsciously meta gaming thinking they can't take more than 20d6 then, as DM, you might want to let the players know what the characters know ... i.e. your character thinks that having 1000 tons of floating tower fall on them is likely to be FAR more damaging than just falling. The players should really know that but D&D falling rules aren't very challenging to characters at higher levels.
2) Wizards tend to be quite intelligent. They think of events and consequences. Would a wizard really fly around in a floating tower with no fail safe mechanisms? Does the wizard value the contents of the tower or does he have the most valuable stuff tucked away in a demiplane somewhere? What if the wizard was sleeping when the tower was hit by an anti magic effect or some intruder dispelled the lifting mechanism.
So what could the wizard do?
- the base of the tower could have feather fall built in - if the lifting mechanism fails - the base invokes feather fall to slow its descent. It will still hit very hard - but the tower and its contents might survive. This could be triggered to go off just before impact so if the party decides to teleport away (helm of teleportation if they have one) then the tower might save itself after the party have fled.
- he could have a contingency spell cast on himself when he is in the tower to trigger when the tower is about to hit the ground and set to teleport them to a horizontal surface at least 200' from the tower. Dimension Door only requires a target they can visualize so it depends on how you want to rule than and how specific the visualization needs to be ... but the wizard is unlikely to end up under the tower.
- Alternatively, if the wizard doesn't have to rely on the contingency then they could use dimension door, teleport, planeshift or demiplane (planeshift or demiplane could take them directly to their hidden sanctum) to escape and deal with the party later. The wizard is very unlikely to want to die trying to save the tower. What use is a flying tower when you are dead?
However, before departing, the wizard might decide to try casting hold person on the party or some other spell that will leave them helpless to escape the falling tower.
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Anyway, whether the party survives depends on how you rule the damage from the falling tower and what spells/magic items/resources the party has available. However, if the tower is within 1000' of the ground then the party is really only looking at one combat round or 6 seconds to take some sort of action to save themselves. If that is the case then you really need to emphasize to the players that the tower WILL hit the ground very very very soon ... likely no more than 1 round ... and the damage is likely to be 1000d6 or more from literally tons of falling stone landing on you. Something like this will set the context of what an idiotic move it was to remove the flight mechanism when inside a flying stone tower.
On the other hand, as DM, you generally know the spells and resources available to the party. Ask yourself if they have any abilities/spells that might allow them to survive. If they don't, then it is up to you how you want to handle the situation since you know that dispeling the lifting capability will result in a TPK if you decide to do so.
Some possibilities in that case would be to decide a damage threshold that might kill some but not all of the characters. Also decide whether you plan to use death saves or decide that the damage is so high that the characters die immediately from massive damage. You could use the death save mechanic - in which case perhaps 1/2 of the party might eventually wake up. Depending on the classes and the world you are in, raise dead is a level 5 spell available at level 9 .. so a party with a druid or cleric would eventually be able to raise all of the party members. This might represent a "realistic" consequence scenario that would not end the campaign (unless the party is very unlucky with death saves and/or there is no resurrection magic available).
It's up to you how you want to play it but I can see several possible outcomes where either the party saves themselves with creative use of spells or most die in the tower fall and the rest survive to pick up the pieces and resurrect their fallen companions having perhaps learned a valuable lesson.
This is a magic fantasy world. IRL physics do not matter. It is literally in the 2024 PHB. Magic works because it does, rounds of combat work because they do, monsters can monster because they can. Nothing says feather fall can't hold up a castle, or that a castle wouldn't break apart around a character under the effects of featherfall so you can rule it however you want, so that it is the most fun.
Trying to escape a falling tower sounds super fun, why would you take that away from your game because muh-physics ?
Level 10 characters are basically superheroes, they can survive a 1000' fall.
This is a magic fantasy world. IRL physics do not matter. It is literally in the 2024 PHB. Magic works because it does, rounds of combat work because they do, monsters can monster because they can. Nothing says feather fall can't hold up a castle, or that a castle wouldn't break apart around a character under the effects of featherfall so you can rule it however you want, so that it is the most fun.
Trying to escape a falling tower sounds super fun, why would you take that away from your game because muh-physics ?
Level 10 characters are basically superheroes, they can survive a 1000' fall.
Well, feather fall targets creatures, and a castle isn’t a creature, so there’s that. I guess you can always house rule otherwise, but then if you can use it to let a castle float down, you can use it for lots of other objects, as well.
Well if the object is to not be that DM they better have a plan in place for a non tpk or it will be a short campaign with no returning player cause the dm was a jerk lol!
This is a magic fantasy world. IRL physics do not matter. It is literally in the 2024 PHB. Magic works because it does, rounds of combat work because they do, monsters can monster because they can. Nothing says feather fall can't hold up a castle, or that a castle wouldn't break apart around a character under the effects of featherfall so you can rule it however you want, so that it is the most fun.
Trying to escape a falling tower sounds super fun, why would you take that away from your game because muh-physics ?
Level 10 characters are basically superheroes, they can survive a 1000' fall.
Well, feather fall targets creatures, and a castle isn’t a creature, so there’s that. I guess you can always house rule otherwise, but then if you can use it to let a castle float down, you can use it for lots of other objects, as well.
Featherfall works on a multiple 100 ton spermwhales, why would casting it on characters within a falling castle result in them continuing to fall at normal speed? There's no weight limit or size limit in the spell, if the flying tower is falling and the wizard casts featherfall on the party and the druid polymorphs one of them into a Gargantuan Brontosaurus and the rest hide underneath it, why would they TPK?
These are level 10 characters! Surviving a 1000' fall is a moderate-hard challenge encounter for them.
Or here's another solution: polymorph one of the party into a sperm whale, everyone else climbs in its mouth, it wiggles around so it is falling tail-first sure the fall wipes out the 189 hit points of the sperm whale but the polymorphee just zaps back to themselves and the rest of the party is fine.
Or here's another another solution: upcast Fly on the three strongest members of the party, they grab hold of the rest and fly them safely out of the tower and down to the ground.
Or here's another another another solution: the druid Wildshapes into a Quetzelcoatl everyone else wraps bedsheets around themselves and the druid "stork-s" the party safely out of the crumbling, falling, tower.
Druids can no longer wildshape into any beast they havve seen they now have a preset beasts they have to select.
Why would they not have Quetzelcoatl selected? Quetzelcoatl is the best flying form once you hit level 8, since in 2024 you don't need to have seen the creature before you can just pick it with your druid regardless of the campaign. - 80 ft fly speed, Flyby, Huge size, 30 hit points.
I would say fearherfall would work but they really need to leave the castle as the castle would be falling faster than them.
So? If you destroy the foundations of a building it typically breaks apart, a level 10 STR-based character should be able to punch their way through the collapsing building without much issue. Or one Shatter spell or as I mentioned above polymorphing one person into a giant beefy creature should break apart what remains of the tower above them.
Druids can no longer wildshape into any beast they havve seen they now have a preset beasts they have to select.
Why would they not have Quetzelcoatl selected? Quetzelcoatl is the best flying form once you hit level 8, since in 2024 you don't need to have seen the creature before you can just pick it with your druid regardless of the campaign. - 80 ft fly speed, Flyby, Huge size, 30 hit points.
I would say fearherfall would work but they really need to leave the castle as the castle would be falling faster than them.
So? If you destroy the foundations of a building it typically breaks apart, a level 10 STR-based character should be able to punch their way through the collapsing building without much issue. Or one Shatter spell or as I mentioned above polymorphing one person into a giant beefy creature should break apart what remains of the tower above them.
1st most games are likely to assume dinosaurs don't exist so you couldn't turn into one regardless. Id also say it isn't even necessarily the best. It also doesn't come from the monster manual and so even if your DM allows dinosaurs there is a chance neither of you even know the creature exists.the creatures CR is way too high.
Since HP of the creature is irrelevant now, there is not any major reason to even take it.
As for the building breaking apart, that would still infer debris are going to hit you and probably even more so if you are not falling the same speed as the building.
1st most games are likely to assume dinosaurs don't exist so you couldn't turn into one regardless.
Why would you assume that? Chult canonically exists in the base setting and is full of dinosaurs, and most published modules are in settings where dinosaurs exist. Moon druid is by far the most popular druid and can WS into the Quetzel at level 8. And Polymorph can turn any level 10 character into a Quetzel at anytime.
Hi all. Looking for advice on battle mechanics and preparing my group for a possible TPK. Long story short, level 10 party is in a flying keep controlled by a wizard. And they just disenchanted the machinery that makes the castle fly, stopping the flow of energy and causing the castle to start falling. The wizard immediately popped into the room to make repairs and they decided to fight him.
Re: Battle mechanics
Would love any advice on mechanics here. Was thinking by x rounds the keep crashes? Maybe a “lair action” where the ground shifts and turns? There’s a big opening in the floor and somE could fall out on a bad roll. Maybe the wiz will keep trying to re-enchant the machinery and, he could repair it in x rounds? The place isn’t dropping like a stone. I told the party there is still some juice in the system. So it’s started to slowly descend, but that it’s likely to pick up speed as the tank runs fully dry. All thoughts are appreciated.
Re:TPK
We’ve been running this campaign for several years and PC death will be a very big deal. That said, they know actions have consequences. This was a moment of such brazen risk, they need to feel those stakes. I don’t want to pull punches. But I want make sure I clearly communicate what is at stake without hand holding them or telegraphing “you should all flee now” during the battle.
How would folks out there handle this?. Would you let them know some of the mechanics? Eg x rounds before you crash? Would you share nothing? Would you give them a last ditch save but make it depend on high DC rolls? would deeply appreciate advice on how to make sure these dire consequences are fully in their hands
I’d start with the wizard telling them clearly telling them “if I don’t fix what you broke, this thing will crash and we will all die.” And really look around the table at them to make it clear that is you talking to the players, not just the NPC talking to the characters. And if they need more reason, the wizard can point out that by their estimation, the place will crash into some town or city or something (maybe that’s a lie, maybe not). That’s where you could give them an estimate. “We have less than 1 minute.”
I would do that for two reasons. One is understanding consequences makes them more interesting, two because it ramps up the drama.
Now they have a choice, cut a deal with the wizard to save everyone, or fight the wizard and take their chances that they can turn this thing back on in however much time they have left.
If they need to fix it, I’d go the skill challenge route from 4e. Something like they have to make arcana checks and get, I don’t know , 4 successes before they get 3 failures. Maybe a DC like 17 or 18. That lets everyone choose if they want to participate, but the barbarian who dumped int will probably do more harm than good, or they might get lucky.
As far as the fight, you could make it dynamic, where as the thing falls, parts break off. The edges start to come in, and it starts to get smaller and smaller. Maybe the hole gets bigger. I’d give the wizard something like Bigby’s hand to grapple PCs and maybe drop them off the side. Also some minions, little clockwork automatons who would help with the repairs, but can be re-purposed to defend the wizard. And it would be reasonable for a wizard facing a level 10 party to just be able to teleport away. If the party chooses to fight, the wizard realizes they can’t both fight the party and stop their fortress crashing, so they leave (you could even add this in at the beginning speech). Or if not teleport, dimension door once they are within 500’ of the ground. Or cast fly on themself. Or even just feather fall off the side, and see if the party tries to chase him. The automatons will keep fighting no matter what, brave and mindless little things. A wizard in a flying fortress will have an exit strategy.
One think you want to make sure is how you are going to handle the damage. 5e has a cap on fall damage, and so they may determine they can't die do to that cap. You want to probably make sure they know they will take fall damage and damage from the debris.
They also need to be aware of how long they have before it falls. But more importantly the Wizard himself likely should have an exit plan, and would telegraph the last chance to leave.
Do they have any means to escape? This matters a lot, because if they can bail and choose not to, then the consequences should be harsher than if they've got no escape.
At some point in the fight, the wizard should probably yell "Fools! You have only doomed yourselves!" and try to teleport out.
Ultimately, you control the rate of descent and how hard the castle hits. You can time it for drama, and definitely should make it clear the castle is falling.
How high up was the castle? If it's high enough up, I'd start having the thing tumble, so they're sliding down the walls to the new floor each round.
If the players just fell from that height, they'd only take 20d6 damage. 70 damage is survivable at that level, but won't necessarily be survived if they've been taking damage in the fight. The DMG also has suggested damage from environmental hazards like falling rocks. Falling damage plus some crushing damage with a save may well take out a bunch of them without being a full TPK, and the survivors can potentially save their friends, or at least recover the bodies for raising.
idk I rarely see the storytelling or fun value of a TPK - hopefully one of them has feather fall or make them do a perception check and have some escape gliders on the wall.
You always need to ask yourself as a DM is whatever I am doing making this a more fun experience for the table or am I just pissed they attacked a thing I didn't want them to attack,
I was in a group that did much the same in a campaign a while back and we just used fly and brooms of flying and such and it was no big deal when the castle fell and exploded.
A flying castle explodes in D&D - so what we have all collectively razed a billion castles lol
Re: Battle mechanics
Clearly telegraph that the castle flying system is failing - have at Initiative Count 0 it first lurch to the side - meaning all movement up hill is difficult terrain and all furniture/objects not affixed to the walls/floor go sliding against the wall and can push any creatures they hit against the walls too - deal 1d6 or 2d6 bludgeoning damage and make the creature restrained (DC 10 escape). Then have everyone start feeling like they weigh less / stomachs lurch up - this releases anyone still pinned by furniture. Then have it become free fall - you can borrow mechanics from the Levitate spell.
The Wizard should attempt to fix it probably shouting at the party while they do so - make this sound in character not that the DM saying "players you made the wrong choice" - until it reaches the free fall state, then once it is in free fall the wizard should attempt to escape. Or if the players do significant damage to the Wizard he should just attempt to leave immediately.
Re: TPK
Lastly, there should be some way for the players to escape if they choose to attempt to. It could be potions of flying somewhere in the wizard's castle, or a sentient magic carpet that flies past them attempting to escape the castle itself or whatever. If they choose not to attempt to escape then describe the heavy stone over their heads and remind them their characters would know they probably won't survive that amount of stone crushing them. Or remind them in meta-knowledge how you run falling damage. (Though honestly at level 10 they can probably save themselves).
One thing to keep in mind when DMing is you should not have an opinion about what the "right" and "wrong" solution is to any conflict/problem, the players can choose to resolve conflicts however they want and that is still good game play. This falling castle fight is going to be epic and exciting and super fun, so the players aren't "wrong" here, because the point of the game is to play out fun epic exciting stories not logically reason out the most safe tactical choice.
While the DM should roll with the players' actions, there are still situations where they do their damnedest to get themselves killed, and unplugging a flying castle while they're in it probably counts. (Notwithstanding that the DM can probably keep them mostly alive with consequences without breaking the verisimilitude of the game.)
Disagree, at 10th level at least one character will have Polymorph, probably somebody else can cast Fly, you might have a Bigby's Hand or a Feather Fall or a Conjure Animals / Wildshape available as well. It shouldn't be a problem for them to escape and land safely.
Hoard of the Dragon Queen ends at level 7 and the ending includes crashing a flying castle. It seems completely reasonable for a 10th level party to crash the flying tower of an evil wizard.
If players do something stupid that will get themselves killed, they should be allowed to do so.
You are the DM so it is up to you to figure out how your world works.
1) Do things fall in your world as they do in the real world?
Here are times for an object to fall some distances without air resistance included:
If the falling tower is modeled as a cylinder with a drag coefficient of 0.81 falling vertically with a mass of ~1000 metric tons (stone shell 30cm thick made of granite) and a cross sectional area of 100m2 (about 30'x30' tower or ~20' radius) then the terminal velocity with air resistance is about 1500ft/s. The building should hit the ground long before hitting terminal velocity - so the numbers above should be reasonable.
In D&D terms, round it off :). Either way, you are only looking at 1-5 combat rounds before the castle hits the ground depending on how high it started at.
In terms of describing it to your players, I would lead off with "As soon as you dispel the magic keeping the tower aloft, you all start to float off the ground - you are in freefall - you can't walk or effectively swing weapons. Make a constitution saving throw to determine if you feel nauseous. The party realizes that there are likely only seconds before the tower weighing 1000 tons or more will crash into the ground. What would you like to do?" Unless a character has the Spelljammer wildspacer background ... sudden freefall that they may never have experienced before is going to be a challenge.
If the above doesn't get them focused on self preservation over trying to kill the wizard then they will get what they deserve. :)
Also, consider some of their possible responses and how you would rule them ...
- featherfall - feather fall slows their rate of descent to 60'/rd - but it only takes 2s for the building to be falling faster than that and feather fall won't hold up 100 tons or more - so the party ends up stuck to the ceiling by an increasing force as their velocity increases and the spell tries harder and harder to keep their speed to 60'/rd.
So, featherfall is likely to not work unless you want to rule differently.
On the other hand ...
- wall of force - if someone casts wall of force above them or encloses them in a sphere version of wall of force, then the wall won't move since physical objects can't pass through so either the tower will be momentarily hung up on the wall of force or it will break at the impact and the pieces will plummet to the ground around them.
- polymorph and similar spells are likely to be useless unless the characters have a route to escape the tower in a round or two.
- another cool escape mechanism could be the rope trick spell - the characters can't take turns climbing in due to the tower falling and rope trick being fixed in place - however, if someone suggested casting it and everyone held actions to jump inside the moment it was cast in front of them then I'd probably allow it as a creative use of a spell to escape this situation.
You will likely need to house rule damage or other effects. D&D limits falling damage to 20d6 .. if the party is thinking that is all there will be then they are looking at 70 hit points on average which many level 10 parties might shrug off. If you are going to house rule this then you need to make sure the players are aware of it from the very start. In addition, if you think it is something that the CHARACTERS would know but which the players are unconsciously meta gaming thinking they can't take more than 20d6 then, as DM, you might want to let the players know what the characters know ... i.e. your character thinks that having 1000 tons of floating tower fall on them is likely to be FAR more damaging than just falling. The players should really know that but D&D falling rules aren't very challenging to characters at higher levels.
2) Wizards tend to be quite intelligent. They think of events and consequences. Would a wizard really fly around in a floating tower with no fail safe mechanisms? Does the wizard value the contents of the tower or does he have the most valuable stuff tucked away in a demiplane somewhere? What if the wizard was sleeping when the tower was hit by an anti magic effect or some intruder dispelled the lifting mechanism.
So what could the wizard do?
- the base of the tower could have feather fall built in - if the lifting mechanism fails - the base invokes feather fall to slow its descent. It will still hit very hard - but the tower and its contents might survive. This could be triggered to go off just before impact so if the party decides to teleport away (helm of teleportation if they have one) then the tower might save itself after the party have fled.
- he could have a contingency spell cast on himself when he is in the tower to trigger when the tower is about to hit the ground and set to teleport them to a horizontal surface at least 200' from the tower. Dimension Door only requires a target they can visualize so it depends on how you want to rule than and how specific the visualization needs to be ... but the wizard is unlikely to end up under the tower.
- Alternatively, if the wizard doesn't have to rely on the contingency then they could use dimension door, teleport, planeshift or demiplane (planeshift or demiplane could take them directly to their hidden sanctum) to escape and deal with the party later. The wizard is very unlikely to want to die trying to save the tower. What use is a flying tower when you are dead?
However, before departing, the wizard might decide to try casting hold person on the party or some other spell that will leave them helpless to escape the falling tower.
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Anyway, whether the party survives depends on how you rule the damage from the falling tower and what spells/magic items/resources the party has available. However, if the tower is within 1000' of the ground then the party is really only looking at one combat round or 6 seconds to take some sort of action to save themselves. If that is the case then you really need to emphasize to the players that the tower WILL hit the ground very very very soon ... likely no more than 1 round ... and the damage is likely to be 1000d6 or more from literally tons of falling stone landing on you. Something like this will set the context of what an idiotic move it was to remove the flight mechanism when inside a flying stone tower.
On the other hand, as DM, you generally know the spells and resources available to the party. Ask yourself if they have any abilities/spells that might allow them to survive. If they don't, then it is up to you how you want to handle the situation since you know that dispeling the lifting capability will result in a TPK if you decide to do so.
Some possibilities in that case would be to decide a damage threshold that might kill some but not all of the characters. Also decide whether you plan to use death saves or decide that the damage is so high that the characters die immediately from massive damage. You could use the death save mechanic - in which case perhaps 1/2 of the party might eventually wake up. Depending on the classes and the world you are in, raise dead is a level 5 spell available at level 9 .. so a party with a druid or cleric would eventually be able to raise all of the party members. This might represent a "realistic" consequence scenario that would not end the campaign (unless the party is very unlucky with death saves and/or there is no resurrection magic available).
It's up to you how you want to play it but I can see several possible outcomes where either the party saves themselves with creative use of spells or most die in the tower fall and the rest survive to pick up the pieces and resurrect their fallen companions having perhaps learned a valuable lesson.
This is a magic fantasy world. IRL physics do not matter. It is literally in the 2024 PHB. Magic works because it does, rounds of combat work because they do, monsters can monster because they can. Nothing says feather fall can't hold up a castle, or that a castle wouldn't break apart around a character under the effects of featherfall so you can rule it however you want, so that it is the most fun.
Trying to escape a falling tower sounds super fun, why would you take that away from your game because muh-physics ?
Level 10 characters are basically superheroes, they can survive a 1000' fall.
Well, feather fall targets creatures, and a castle isn’t a creature, so there’s that. I guess you can always house rule otherwise, but then if you can use it to let a castle float down, you can use it for lots of other objects, as well.
Well if the object is to not be that DM they better have a plan in place for a non tpk or it will be a short campaign with no returning player cause the dm was a jerk lol!
Out of curiosity, OP, why did they destroy the machinery? What did they think the result would be?
Featherfall works on a multiple 100 ton spermwhales, why would casting it on characters within a falling castle result in them continuing to fall at normal speed? There's no weight limit or size limit in the spell, if the flying tower is falling and the wizard casts featherfall on the party and the druid polymorphs one of them into a Gargantuan Brontosaurus and the rest hide underneath it, why would they TPK?
These are level 10 characters! Surviving a 1000' fall is a moderate-hard challenge encounter for them.
Or here's another solution: polymorph one of the party into a sperm whale, everyone else climbs in its mouth, it wiggles around so it is falling tail-first sure the fall wipes out the 189 hit points of the sperm whale but the polymorphee just zaps back to themselves and the rest of the party is fine.
Or here's another another solution: upcast Fly on the three strongest members of the party, they grab hold of the rest and fly them safely out of the tower and down to the ground.
Or here's another another another solution: the druid Wildshapes into a Quetzelcoatl everyone else wraps bedsheets around themselves and the druid "stork-s" the party safely out of the crumbling, falling, tower.
Oh, yeah. On the party it would work, certainly. I thought you meant casting it on the castle itself, not the people in it.
Druids can no longer wildshape into any beast they havve seen they now have a preset beasts they have to select.
I would say fearherfall would work but they really need to leave the castle as the castle would be falling faster than them.
Why would they not have Quetzelcoatl selected? Quetzelcoatl is the best flying form once you hit level 8, since in 2024 you don't need to have seen the creature before you can just pick it with your druid regardless of the campaign. - 80 ft fly speed, Flyby, Huge size, 30 hit points.
So? If you destroy the foundations of a building it typically breaks apart, a level 10 STR-based character should be able to punch their way through the collapsing building without much issue. Or one Shatter spell or as I mentioned above polymorphing one person into a giant beefy creature should break apart what remains of the tower above them.
1st most games are likely to assume dinosaurs don't exist so you couldn't turn into one regardless. Id also say it isn't even necessarily the best. It also doesn't come from the monster manual and so even if your DM allows dinosaurs there is a chance neither of you even know the creature exists.the creatures CR is way too high.
Since HP of the creature is irrelevant now, there is not any major reason to even take it.
As for the building breaking apart, that would still infer debris are going to hit you and probably even more so if you are not falling the same speed as the building.
Why would you assume that? Chult canonically exists in the base setting and is full of dinosaurs, and most published modules are in settings where dinosaurs exist. Moon druid is by far the most popular druid and can WS into the Quetzel at level 8. And Polymorph can turn any level 10 character into a Quetzel at anytime.