Normal is a relative term, if you mean normal by our living standards, a my living room is 15'x20', the trailer I lived in was 60'x20', the cubicle I'm in is 5'x10'.
The idea I use for the rooms I build is based on the amount of mobility I want my players and monsters to have. I have 6 players, and when combat starts, all of them want to join in on the fun. So if I want to really mess with them, I'll make a 2x3 room with 2 monsters in there. With that kind of limitation you're going to find it rather claustrophobic. However, for the big battle I made recently I gave them an 80'x80' space to work in with pillars, mounds of dirt, and a hill to climb, there was only one monster..but the terrain made combat tricky.
Stick to the 5' square rule as much as you can, it makes understanding the layouts easier, and it's simpler math. An exception I use to this is over land travel, where the group is traveling in the wilderness and there's little to impede movement beyond foliage and terrain.
What is/was the dungeon? An old prison would be full of tiny rooms, while an long dead dragon's tunnel system would have more spacious chambers. What is/was the room? A study or sleeping chamber would be small while a feasting hall would be big. If none of that matters for your story or theme of the dungeon then as DMTHAC0 describes you size the room to fit the encounter style. The Heroquest layout is designed to be just a little crowded for the four heroes in that game. A party of six would find it very tight. Also remember that these monsters might be prepared if they are on home turf. They wouldn't be hanging out in a room that was too small for them to fight effectively.
Honestly, that is going to depend on the party's playstyle in question. A more mobile party is going to want more room to maneuver than a group that focuses on turtling behind shields and uses ranged attacks, or a group of five "sword" classes and no "sorcery" characters. I've played with people that group together, except for that one person that charges ahead into the middle of melee and forces everyone to try to keep them alive.
I find the best answer in this case is simple trial and error, coupled with "whatever seems most thematically appropriate for the story." You could use that map from Heroquest and just go with it
My question about "normal" room size is quite technical and mobility is the key thing. So I resettle my original question as
"What amount of space is recommended for a combat with 5 normal sized characters?"
---
I am currently working small natural dungeon filled with spiders. How about 2 squares wide hallways and 6x6 squares for "normal" sized rooms?
This right here is probably going to be the best way to settle the question for you. Room/Dungeon/Floor Plans are all going to have to become intuitive for you, there's really no mechanical way to say that a room is "normal" or "optimal". The reason for that being party composition as well as tactical decisions on the side of the defender, from bears to barons the way they choose their lairs is based on how easy it is to protect or hide.
You intuitively came up with the idea of 10' wide hallways, that's like walking down the halls in a hospital, school, or even the courthouse. It makes sense, you want the players and creatures to be able to move about with a modicum of freedom. The 5x5 (or 25'x25') rooms also give your players a large area with which to move about and try to out maneuver the spiders.However, a spider doesn't need a wide hallway if it can walk on the ceiling...your players do. As well, if there are any natural structures such as stalactites and stalagmites, you effectively create areas that may be impassable by the players, however the spiders could move about freely. Conversely, if your party is made of melee combatants with little/no range, then these large rooms mean nothing with a spider on ceiling. If you have a group of casters and ranged fighters, then you can make the rooms quite large due to the ranges allowed by most spells and weapons.
As a final thought: the more you play the game, the more creatures you use, and the more combats and encounters you generate, the easier it will be to intuit what is needed for a decent sized map. Don't over think it, let experience guide you, the advice and idea we are offering up come from our games, yours may be vastly different, and should be.
I do think there is an optimal answer to this question. An ideal encounter space has enough space to accommodate all the PCs and the monsters, to allow those creatures to make at least a single move, and space in the middle to separate the two groups when the battle begins (and in which the battle can later occur).
Adhering to these rules ensures that the PCs and the monsters are close enough to be involved in a battle, but not so close that they are all practically adjacent to each other when the encounter starts. These extra squares also allow everyone to move around more, which helps create an encounter that is more dynamic.
With these rules in mind, an encounter space to accomodate two PCs and three spiders (all medium creatures) should be somewhere around 7x7 or 8x8 squares. This doesn't need to be exactly a square shape, and there might be intervening terrain, but a space smaller than this is going to lead a battle that is very static.
If you use a lot of difficult terrain, then you can probably reduce the room size somewhat (as each square effectively becomes two squares instead), but it's going to feel very claustrophobic.
In what ways can the space you're creating be used to help and hinder your players? Enable them to do cool, epic stuff, as well as challenge them to think three-dimensionally and do some problem-solving. I try to think about that first and foremost, and then I figure out what that room would look like and how big it needs to be. If you're just looking for what's "average" or whatever, 4x4 or 4x5 are kind of my go-to sizes.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder) Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
I do think there is an optimal answer to this question. An ideal encounter space that has enough space to accommodate all the PCs and the monsters, to allow those creatures to make at least a single move, and space in the middle to separate the two groups when the battle begins (and in which the battle can later occur).
Of course. The problem is that accommodating all the PCs and their movements is going to change depending on party composition and playstyle. A group with a tabaxi monk and centaur barbarian is going to have far larger range of motion than a group with a dwarf cleric and human paladin protecting an elven archer and tiefling sorcerer.
Lets say we have level 3 Fighter and level 3 Cleric. They are fighting against 3 x Giant Wolf Spider in 7 x 7 squares sized room. Do they have as good chance to survive the battle compared to lets say Level 3 Wizard and Level 3 Sorcerer?
In general casters need more range. For example in cave filled with spiders casters like to move back towards cave enrance and bomb spiders with magic missiles etc.
In general as GM should I choose right monster depending on classes of characters? I am trying to build campaign / dungeon that can be played with two characters of any class.
Lets say we have level 3 Fighter and level 3 Cleric. They are fighting against 3 x Giant Wolf Spider in 7 x 7 squares sized room. Do they have as good chance to survive the battle compared to lets say Level 3 Wizard and Level 3 Sorcerer?
The chance of survival, from a mechanical standpoint, is identical. The chance of survival, from a player standpoint, is purely dependent on the player's decisions.
In general as GM should I choose right monster depending on classes of characters? I am trying to build campaign / dungeon that can be played with two characters of any class.
This is true as well, however, it is not dependent on the scale of a room, it's dependent on the decisions the players make in regards to the information they have available.
In general casters need more range. For example in cave filled with spiders casters like to move back towards cave enrance and bomb spiders with magic missiles etc.
I played the Wizard in LMoP, I fought standing right next to the party, I never once retreated backward. Needing range to cast any of my spells came into play one time, Grease, for the safety of the party, not me. Every other spell was easily handled, didn't require me to move out of the room, didn't require a large area to move in, and I used it in close quarters combat effectively. I played a Sorcerer in a homebrew, took careful spell because I knew I was going to be using AoE spells, never had to worry about range after that. Casters do not need to retreat, they don't need to hide, they are significantly less squishy, and can cast from any place on the map.
I played a ranger in CoS, I had a rapier to help me when I wasn't able to fire my bow. Every class that can use ranged weapons has the ability to use melee weapons just as effectively. The need to back out of a room or get to a specific distance is moot.
I do think there is an optimal answer to this question. An ideal encounter space has enough space to accommodate all the PCs and the monsters, to allow those creatures to make at least a single move, and space in the middle to separate the two groups when the battle begins (and in which the battle can later occur).
Creating encounters like this is fine in when you're starting out, it can actually be helpful. The issue is that it reduces any real threat to the players, makes every combat telegraphed, and is boring after a short time. This is almost like the way wars were fought way back when the two opposing sides would make a line and start firing their rifles. Once the enemy was engaged the two sides would hunker down and just shoot until someone broke ranks. It could also be equated to boxing in that the two sides really don't use much strategy beyond hit hard, if that doesn't work, change the type of strike you do and hit harder, all while trying to keep the other person from hitting you.
One could argue that sports like football, hockey, soccer, or any of the other team sports use strategy in a large empty room. The problem here is pretty apparent if you watch the games long enough; everyone uses an almost identical tactic, with minor alterations, the need for strategy has been lost. Every action over the course of decades has been distilled into the most effective ones. With everything plainly visible, and even after all of the tactics and strategy have been summarized, there's the idea of making a play on the fly. This would be amazing if it weren't for the fact that the opponent can see you making the adjustments, there's no hiding your actions.
----
Ideal/optimal room sizes are a wonderful thing for the players if they're looking to understand how their actions and abilities work together. They're good training rooms and good places for the players to experiment in mechanically. If you want your players to really feel like they're doing something epic, feel like the world is something familiar, and feel like combat is more than just hitting harder, give them real rooms. Give them doors and walls, balconies and stairwells, give them the features of a house that make it feel normal. Very few houses have a 35 ft x 35 ft bedroom where three opponents are going to be hanging out because it gives a fair fight to both sides.
I'm going to go with the idea that using hallways to bottleneck your prey/opponents, positioning up in a smaller room to ambush one or two of your opponents at a time, and finding hidden alcoves or outcroppings are all much better strategies.
Honestly I would say vary it a bit, and see what the party ends up liking. Just try a couple different sizes with some easier encounters, and get a feel for what both you and your party like.
I do think there is an optimal answer to this question. An ideal encounter space has enough space to accommodate all the PCs and the monsters, to allow those creatures to make at least a single move, and space in the middle to separate the two groups when the battle begins (and in which the battle can later occur).
Creating encounters like this is fine in when you're starting out, it can actually be helpful. The issue is that it reduces any real threat to the players, makes every combat telegraphed, and is boring after a short time. This is almost like the way wars were fought way back when the two opposing sides would make a line and start firing their rifles. Once the enemy was engaged the two sides would hunker down and just shoot until someone broke ranks. It could also be equated to boxing in that the two sides really don't use much strategy beyond hit hard, if that doesn't work, change the type of strike you do and hit harder, all while trying to keep the other person from hitting you.
I think you've completely misunderstood what I was saying, DMThac0. I'm not talking about putting the PCs and the monsters in an empty 7x7 room. I'm just indicating roughly the amount of space the encounter should range over in order for it to feel dynamic. In terms of map representation, that might be some combination of smaller rooms, hallways, etc and could include any number of terrain features. But as you indicated, non-dungeon rooms should probably adhere to some sense of realism. I agree a 7x7 bedroom would be ridiculous in most cases.
Not quite misunderstood as playing devil's advocate, I had no intent to point the finger at you saying "you're wrong". I get the feeling I presented myself a bit poorly, however, the last bit of my post and yours here pretty much sum up good room design in the end.
Hey. I am planning a dungeon but I don't know what is good size for a room.
For example what is "normal" size for a room with 3 x Giant wolf spider and 2 x Player characters.
Is 5x5 squares good size or should it be bigger? (1 square = 5 feet)
I like layout of Heroquest board. Most rooms are about 4x4 squares.
My current project: http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/By3s5Uqqf
Normal is a relative term, if you mean normal by our living standards, a my living room is 15'x20', the trailer I lived in was 60'x20', the cubicle I'm in is 5'x10'.
The idea I use for the rooms I build is based on the amount of mobility I want my players and monsters to have. I have 6 players, and when combat starts, all of them want to join in on the fun. So if I want to really mess with them, I'll make a 2x3 room with 2 monsters in there. With that kind of limitation you're going to find it rather claustrophobic. However, for the big battle I made recently I gave them an 80'x80' space to work in with pillars, mounds of dirt, and a hill to climb, there was only one monster..but the terrain made combat tricky.
Stick to the 5' square rule as much as you can, it makes understanding the layouts easier, and it's simpler math. An exception I use to this is over land travel, where the group is traveling in the wilderness and there's little to impede movement beyond foliage and terrain.
What is/was the dungeon? An old prison would be full of tiny rooms, while an long dead dragon's tunnel system would have more spacious chambers. What is/was the room? A study or sleeping chamber would be small while a feasting hall would be big. If none of that matters for your story or theme of the dungeon then as DMTHAC0 describes you size the room to fit the encounter style. The Heroquest layout is designed to be just a little crowded for the four heroes in that game. A party of six would find it very tight. Also remember that these monsters might be prepared if they are on home turf. They wouldn't be hanging out in a room that was too small for them to fight effectively.
My question about "normal" room size is quite technical and mobility is the key thing. So I resettle my original question as
"What amount of space is recommended for a combat with 5 normal sized characters?"
I have played Heroquest and usually doors become chokepoints and "tanking" becomes important.
I am currently working small natural dungeon filled with spiders. How about 2 squares wide hallways and 6x6 squares for "normal" sized rooms?
Honestly, that is going to depend on the party's playstyle in question. A more mobile party is going to want more room to maneuver than a group that focuses on turtling behind shields and uses ranged attacks, or a group of five "sword" classes and no "sorcery" characters. I've played with people that group together, except for that one person that charges ahead into the middle of melee and forces everyone to try to keep them alive.
I find the best answer in this case is simple trial and error, coupled with "whatever seems most thematically appropriate for the story." You could use that map from Heroquest and just go with it
This right here is probably going to be the best way to settle the question for you. Room/Dungeon/Floor Plans are all going to have to become intuitive for you, there's really no mechanical way to say that a room is "normal" or "optimal". The reason for that being party composition as well as tactical decisions on the side of the defender, from bears to barons the way they choose their lairs is based on how easy it is to protect or hide.
You intuitively came up with the idea of 10' wide hallways, that's like walking down the halls in a hospital, school, or even the courthouse. It makes sense, you want the players and creatures to be able to move about with a modicum of freedom. The 5x5 (or 25'x25') rooms also give your players a large area with which to move about and try to out maneuver the spiders.However, a spider doesn't need a wide hallway if it can walk on the ceiling...your players do. As well, if there are any natural structures such as stalactites and stalagmites, you effectively create areas that may be impassable by the players, however the spiders could move about freely. Conversely, if your party is made of melee combatants with little/no range, then these large rooms mean nothing with a spider on ceiling. If you have a group of casters and ranged fighters, then you can make the rooms quite large due to the ranges allowed by most spells and weapons.
As a final thought: the more you play the game, the more creatures you use, and the more combats and encounters you generate, the easier it will be to intuit what is needed for a decent sized map. Don't over think it, let experience guide you, the advice and idea we are offering up come from our games, yours may be vastly different, and should be.
I do think there is an optimal answer to this question. An ideal encounter space has enough space to accommodate all the PCs and the monsters, to allow those creatures to make at least a single move, and space in the middle to separate the two groups when the battle begins (and in which the battle can later occur).
Adhering to these rules ensures that the PCs and the monsters are close enough to be involved in a battle, but not so close that they are all practically adjacent to each other when the encounter starts. These extra squares also allow everyone to move around more, which helps create an encounter that is more dynamic.
With these rules in mind, an encounter space to accomodate two PCs and three spiders (all medium creatures) should be somewhere around 7x7 or 8x8 squares. This doesn't need to be exactly a square shape, and there might be intervening terrain, but a space smaller than this is going to lead a battle that is very static.
If you use a lot of difficult terrain, then you can probably reduce the room size somewhat (as each square effectively becomes two squares instead), but it's going to feel very claustrophobic.
In what ways can the space you're creating be used to help and hinder your players? Enable them to do cool, epic stuff, as well as challenge them to think three-dimensionally and do some problem-solving. I try to think about that first and foremost, and then I figure out what that room would look like and how big it needs to be. If you're just looking for what's "average" or whatever, 4x4 or 4x5 are kind of my go-to sizes.
DM: The Cult of the Crystal Spider (Currently playing Storm King's Thunder)
Player: The Knuckles of Arth - Lemire (Tiefling Rogue 5/Fighter 1)
Of course. The problem is that accommodating all the PCs and their movements is going to change depending on party composition and playstyle. A group with a tabaxi monk and centaur barbarian is going to have far larger range of motion than a group with a dwarf cleric and human paladin protecting an elven archer and tiefling sorcerer.
Different stats lend to different movements
I have used this to calculate amount of monsters: https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/calc/enc_size.html
Lets say we have level 3 Fighter and level 3 Cleric. They are fighting against 3 x Giant Wolf Spider in 7 x 7 squares sized room. Do they have as good chance to survive the battle compared to lets say Level 3 Wizard and Level 3 Sorcerer?
In general casters need more range. For example in cave filled with spiders casters like to move back towards cave enrance and bomb spiders with magic missiles etc.
In general as GM should I choose right monster depending on classes of characters? I am trying to build campaign / dungeon that can be played with two characters of any class.
The chance of survival, from a mechanical standpoint, is identical. The chance of survival, from a player standpoint, is purely dependent on the player's decisions.
This is true as well, however, it is not dependent on the scale of a room, it's dependent on the decisions the players make in regards to the information they have available.
I played the Wizard in LMoP, I fought standing right next to the party, I never once retreated backward. Needing range to cast any of my spells came into play one time, Grease, for the safety of the party, not me. Every other spell was easily handled, didn't require me to move out of the room, didn't require a large area to move in, and I used it in close quarters combat effectively. I played a Sorcerer in a homebrew, took careful spell because I knew I was going to be using AoE spells, never had to worry about range after that. Casters do not need to retreat, they don't need to hide, they are significantly less squishy, and can cast from any place on the map.
I played a ranger in CoS, I had a rapier to help me when I wasn't able to fire my bow. Every class that can use ranged weapons has the ability to use melee weapons just as effectively. The need to back out of a room or get to a specific distance is moot.
Creating encounters like this is fine in when you're starting out, it can actually be helpful. The issue is that it reduces any real threat to the players, makes every combat telegraphed, and is boring after a short time. This is almost like the way wars were fought way back when the two opposing sides would make a line and start firing their rifles. Once the enemy was engaged the two sides would hunker down and just shoot until someone broke ranks. It could also be equated to boxing in that the two sides really don't use much strategy beyond hit hard, if that doesn't work, change the type of strike you do and hit harder, all while trying to keep the other person from hitting you.
One could argue that sports like football, hockey, soccer, or any of the other team sports use strategy in a large empty room. The problem here is pretty apparent if you watch the games long enough; everyone uses an almost identical tactic, with minor alterations, the need for strategy has been lost. Every action over the course of decades has been distilled into the most effective ones. With everything plainly visible, and even after all of the tactics and strategy have been summarized, there's the idea of making a play on the fly. This would be amazing if it weren't for the fact that the opponent can see you making the adjustments, there's no hiding your actions.
----
Ideal/optimal room sizes are a wonderful thing for the players if they're looking to understand how their actions and abilities work together. They're good training rooms and good places for the players to experiment in mechanically. If you want your players to really feel like they're doing something epic, feel like the world is something familiar, and feel like combat is more than just hitting harder, give them real rooms. Give them doors and walls, balconies and stairwells, give them the features of a house that make it feel normal. Very few houses have a 35 ft x 35 ft bedroom where three opponents are going to be hanging out because it gives a fair fight to both sides.
I'm going to go with the idea that using hallways to bottleneck your prey/opponents, positioning up in a smaller room to ambush one or two of your opponents at a time, and finding hidden alcoves or outcroppings are all much better strategies.
Honestly I would say vary it a bit, and see what the party ends up liking. Just try a couple different sizes with some easier encounters, and get a feel for what both you and your party like.
I think you've completely misunderstood what I was saying, DMThac0. I'm not talking about putting the PCs and the monsters in an empty 7x7 room. I'm just indicating roughly the amount of space the encounter should range over in order for it to feel dynamic. In terms of map representation, that might be some combination of smaller rooms, hallways, etc and could include any number of terrain features. But as you indicated, non-dungeon rooms should probably adhere to some sense of realism. I agree a 7x7 bedroom would be ridiculous in most cases.
Not quite misunderstood as playing devil's advocate, I had no intent to point the finger at you saying "you're wrong". I get the feeling I presented myself a bit poorly, however, the last bit of my post and yours here pretty much sum up good room design in the end.
I know this is an old post but her are some real world examples.
Room size
D12
Small
Up to 200 square feet
1
2
10×10 (100 sq ft)
10×20 (200 sq ft)
Small living quarters or chapel.
Medium
Up to 2,000 square feet
3
4
5
6
from 20×20 (400 sq ft)
30' diameter around
30×60 (1,800 sq ft)
40×50 (2000 sq ft), etc.
Tower central room, guard hall, castle kitchen, big living quarters.
Large
Up to 20,000 square feet
7
8
9
from 50×50 (2500 sq ft)
up to 50×100 (5000 sq ft)
max 100×200 (20,000 sq ft)
Keep great hall (100 x 40)
Huge
Up to 200,000 square feet
10
11
12
from 100×200 (20,000 sq ft)
150×350 (52,500 sq ft)
max 400×500 (200,000 sq ft)
Major cathedral
Gigantic
from 400×500 (200,000 sq ft)
Colosseum of Rome
613x574 (351,863 sq ft)
Discord: MasterWitch#2965
My World Anvil account if you're interested. Work in progress.
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/land-of-the-fallen-7Blandfall7D-masterwitch