Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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This is really going to be down to you, the DM, and what you want the players to experience.
It could be argued that at the very least you would need to dispel the gas within the area to ensure it isn't in the Hut when it the hut is formed. There's nothing in the spell description that states it would purify already toxic air, so I think that's a fine assumption. So the party using a spell slot to cast Gust or using some ability to clear the air before the Hut casting finishes could make sense. But the question might be: why are you making them do that? Are you trying to get them to run low on spell slots or use resources? If not, and you're just going to let them get a long rest anyway, then you're really just slowing down part of the session for no real impact. Now if the players come up with this idea independently, then maybe it's a fun thing to play off of. But You as the DM saying "first you need to spend a spell slot before you can long rest, when you'll get the spell slot back anyway" just adds a random burden with no real narrative benefit. But if you're playing a more gritty/"realistic" campaign, maybe that's something you want anyway.
Otherwise, if you want your party to suffer exhaustion or give them a time crunch to "open the doors to area 39", then just say the gas goes through the Hut and they can't get the benefit of a Long Rest due to taking damage every hour. This will press the party to find a way out of the area with the gas and give them a sense of urgency. If THAT is what you want, make the gas go through the Hut barrier.
It doesn't seem like there is a RAW answer either way, so decide what is going to be A) fun for the party and B) effective for the narrative, pacing, and overall feeling of the session/dungeon.
I don't think blowing air around works, because the air that will replace the air you blew will also have poison gas. It might be possible to clear a volume of air somehow, but it's going to require way more cleverness than 'i cast a spell, done'. (And this is an 'I'm going to need at least 5 minutes to think about this' problem, it's not obvious.)
Narratively the gas should have a couple of effects:
I'd actually recommend cribbing B/X dungeon procedures. Out of combat actions happen in dungeon turns = 10 min. In that time, you can carefully explore (and map) 120' of dungeon, or investigate a 10'x10' area, or pick a lock quietly, or etc... Check for wandering monsters every two turns. A torch lasts 6 turns. A combat takes a full turn. (Sure, the fighting might be over in 4 rounds, but then you take a breather, bandage wounds, clean weapons, check gear, etc...). Doing things faster creates noise, which triggers more wandering monster checks.
5e does have some dungeon procedure, but it's not emphasized (and pretty scattered), and it's not dangerous enough. Wandering monster checks are too infrequent, and actions are too fast (1 min for many things; you generally explore areas too quickly). And that lack of standardized time makes time-keeping harder (because everything isn't measured in the same standard 10min block).
I would say establishing the vibe of the dungeon -- that even the air will kill you eventually if you don't do something about it -- is not "no real impact"
Active characters:
Edoumiaond Willegume "Eddie" Podslee, Vegetanian scholar (College of Spirits bard)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Peter "the Pied Piper" Hausler, human con artist/remover of vermin (Circle of the Shepherd druid)
PIPA - Planar Interception/Protection Aeormaton, warforged bodyguard and ex-wizard hunter (Warrior of the Elements monk/Cartographer artificer)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Within the context of the adventure, the purpose of the gas is to add time pressure and make it impossible to complete a long rest. As such, it fails to do its job if tiny hut works against it.
That's why I said this part: "It doesn't seem like there is a RAW answer either way, so decide what is going to be A) fun for the party and B) effective for the narrative, pacing, and overall feeling of the session/dungeon.
For reference, Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan was originally a tournament module with a primary goal of 'make it out alive'.
If you play it RAW it's very hard.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
I have the original module somewhere, but I've never tried to run it. It has this interesting scoring system in the back which basically amounted to getting points for moving forward, and losing points for poking at anything you didn't absolutely have to poke at. Which is to say, it encouraged entirely un-PC-like behavior.
I'd never heard of it but this gives me Tomb of Horrors vibes. There's a gap, a chasm, an abyss, between holding players accountable for their actions and downright punishing exploration. In a turn-based game, "difficulty" is an abstract concept. It lies in resource management and the occasional puzzle solving (when they exist). You could mention party and build optimization, but that's metagaming at this point, which you're not supposed to do. Everything else is pure luck and DM intervention.
Exploring a room and fall into an unavoidable trap that cannot be escaped with clever decision-making is not a challenge, it's just an HP tax, and that's both boring and frustrating.
If the players often die to this, that's not "difficulty", it's poor balance and bad game design, coupled with DM passiveness.
In a game where every outcome depends on a roll of dice, you're not gaming as much as you're gambling, and that's why the DM's role is important. But if the entire adventure needs to be rebalanced for the players to have fun, then it's mostly useless, and you might as well just rewrite the whole thing.
The kicker
"A creature takes 3 (1d6) poison damage every hour it spends in the gas..... Inhabitants of the dungeon have immunity to the poisonous effect of the gas."
Resting in the dungeon is a bad deal. I can see where the players would want to have a safe place to do so. Hence this thread conversation.
If the players already know the trick, then it ruins the novelty of the dungeon.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
If the players love the spell and hope for it to work, perhaps you should make it possible but costly.
Have them do some Arcana and Investigation type checks. If they seem to work some things out, then advise that air in the hut can be kept fresh long enough for a short rest using a spell of any level that can move air. For a long rest maybe they need a spell of at least level 3, or two spells of level 2 each.
This would mean they have to prepare the spells and save the slots needed to get the benefits they desire - and they can feel they have worked to beat the challenge of the time. Or they can look for other options.
It's not punishing exploration; exploration is absolutely required. It's punishing being slow.
Yup, this spell works for this situation. Being damaged by breathing in poison is not comfortable. Yet, the spell explicitly magically creates a comfortable atmosphere. Thus, the created atmosphere does not contain poison. Spells do what they say.
Players love the spell because it's stupidly overpowered (in 5e. In previous editions it was useless against anything but bad weather).
That is not a natural english reading of that language. 'Comfortable' idiomatically means its not too warm and its not too cold, and you can tell this because it is paired with the atmosphere being dry (ie, not too humid or raining). Spells do what they say, and what LTH says is it keeps the air dry and moderate temperature.
Poison gas is not affected.
To-may-to, to-mah-to... Exploring instead of running straight to the next level inevitably slows you down. And if you don't know as a player what constitutes something that you "absolutely need to poke at" (that's something only the DM knows), it all boils down to punishing exploration, or any kind of curiosity, really. That's why this reminds me of Tomb of Horrors: an adventure that actively punishes you for trying to discover what's in it. In the end, the only way to survive the adventure's content is to avoid consuming it. Kinda like poisoned food.
I disagree, exploring is risk/reward.
Even the 5e rules have some dungeon exploration procedure that defines how long it takes to search an area, how often you make wandering monster checks, and how quickly things like torches last. Wandering monsters, like this poison gas, are a clock that gives you important decisions - is it worth searching every 10' section of wall and risking wandering monsters / gas damage every hour?
It's the risk, the cost of spending time doing things, not punishment. The players choose whether they want to pay the cost or not.
(And in old-style play, wandering monsters were checked every 20 minutes = 2 dungeon turns, and weren't worth xp, only treasure was, and wandering monsters didn't usually have treasure).