Stair and Ladder Alternatives in D&D

Nov 19

Are you tired of using boring stairs, ropes and ladders for your D&D adventurers to traverse the multiple levels of dungeons? Well then, stick around as we delve into Chutes, Ladders and Stair Alternatives for your Dungeons and Dragons Game

When adventurers are delving deep into dungeons, trudging through a vile marsh to a half-sunken temple, or squeezing through a small crevasse in a winding cave, they often find themselves needing to ascend or descend multiple levels. In most cases, there are ramps, stairs, or ladders are used. As Game Masters we can easily enhance the environment in a fun and exciting way by altering how the characters traverse the terrain. Below are 5 fun alternatives to traditional stairs, ladders, and ramps for your Dungeons & Dragons stories and campaigns.

Carved Runes: Weathered, but intricately carved runes fill an entire wall from floor to ceiling. Their deep protrusions and engraved recesses make for perfect foot and hand holds. As a GM not only can you use the runes to share some lore about the area, but their use as a ladder isn’t immediately apparent. Making it a perfect place to hide a secret chamber or compartment.

Dangling Chains: In dungeons chains are common lifting and torture tools. A room full of chains dangling from a high ceiling can make for a perfect replacement for stairs or ladders up to another level. Streaks hardened of red, green or yellow stains could easily elude to their potential torturous use. The chains coming to life as animated traps halfway up certainly seems like a fun opportunity once or twice as well.

Pile of Bones: Carnivorous creatures tend to leave behind the harder leftovers of their meals. The lairs of monsters make for a perfect location for a pile of bones of a variety of creatures as a perfect and sinister ladder up to another level of the creature’s home. As GM, using the bones to indicate the potential strength of the creature that calls the lair home could be enough to send the strongest of adventurers running to the exit. “Is that a bulette skull? What the hell can eat a bulette!?”

Purple Worm Gullet: Death is inevitable for all creatures. Even those of great power such as a purple worm. Using their leftovers as a chute that connects two locations like a hall passage certainly makes the world feel alive. Whether in a desert or a mountainous area, the massive gullet that has been hardened and smoothed by a combination of the worm’s inner juices and the earth they devoured makes for a perfect lacquered slide into the Underdark or a villain's lair.

Tree Trunk: Whether you need a ladder, chute or stairs. The inside of a massive tree makes for a perfect scene setter in Dungeons and Dragons. The tree trunk can be slick with slime and oil in a swamp, blooming with flowers and rich colored leaves, or hardened by a lightning strike, cracked and broken. Regardless of the form, you decide, as a GM this is one of the most versatile (and abundant) ways to replace ladders, stairs and chutes.

These are some fun and common stairs, ladders, and chutes that I’ve used at my D&D table. Do you like this list? Let me know! Email me and share with me your favorite stair, ladder, or chute alternative that you’ve experienced in your roleplaying games. If I get enough submissions, I’ll compile them and put together another blog full of those submissions.

Witiker's Wondrous Well imbues mundane items with powerful magic. Inside you will find three generators for magic items. These can be used to spice up any game as instantly generated loot or to diversify the weapons of enemies. Within, are weapons with incredible effects such as immolating the flesh of foes that their steel bites into, or simpler ones that emit light in dark times. One may also find armors that can withstand the toxic corrosiveness of a dark dragon or the frigid cold of an ice mage. Finally, there lie potions that can still the mind of the drinker and solidify their inner walls to prevent prying charms or spells from peeking or interfering within. Use this book for it all; it is here to serve you.

CREATE THOUSANDS OF UNIQUE MAGIC ITEMS WITH A ROLL OF THE DICE!

Unearthed Tips and Tricks

We hope to inspire you with creative content that you can bring with you on your next adventure.

Monster: Aracthillid

Origin: Ice Spider Queen (SKT)

Lost Features: Cold Aura, Icy web, bite

New Feature:

Bite. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. Hit: 8 (1d10 + 3) psychic damage. If the target is Medium or smaller, it is grappled (escape DC 13) and must succeed on a DC 13 Intelligence saving throw or be stunned until this grapple ends.

Extract Brain. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one incapacitated humanoid grappled by the mind flayer. Hit: The target takes 22 (4d10) piercing damage. If this damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, the mind flayer kills the target by extracting and devouring its brain.

Mind Blast (Recharge 5–6). The arachthid magically emits a psychic energy in a 60-foot cone. Each creature in that area must succeed on a DC 13 Intelligence saving throw or take 7 (1d8 +3) psychic damage and be stunned for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success.

Encounter: Exploditorium by Andrew from Crit Academy Discord

"The Exploditorium" is somewhere you don't want to be without good reason. Its real name is Gnomish in origin, but due to the sound that pervades the area - and a good half mile around, at least - that name has been forgotten. It serves as a testing ground for various technological advances, but most often the tests are military in nature. Day or night, the people working there have no respect for the eardrums of other species. The only difference is the night somehow seems to be louder. They have come up with a few marvels, however. A cannon that fires moonlight that strikes with the force of a few dozen orcs. A little ball you can throw and it blinds anyone in the area. That one lit up the night sky like daylight, along with the loud BANG that accompanied it, I got no sleep that week. They've even started working on making pieces of the weave physically, to work as energy sources for some of these inventions.

Plus, everything's gnome-sized. I hit my head all the time. After several years the local council informed them that they would need to make accommodations for larger folk. They decided that meant "explode a big hole in the wall" and gleefully went about their duty.

Most days without injurious incidents: 28.

There's a local betting pool to guess when the next incident will occur, and another to guess what the injury will be. If you bet over a month and win, that pot of gold could keep you happy for life.

Magic Item: Whip of Wild Precision

RIP Gilhelm, Eridor (Andrew)

Whip, rare - Requires attunement

Each time you hit with this whip and don’t score a critical hit, your crit range increases by 1. When you score a critical hit with this weapon outside of your normal crit range, it triggers a Wild Magic Surge, and your crit range decreases by 2, up to your natural crit range. Any time you score a critical hit with this whip, you may make one extra attack.

Dungeon Master Tip: Apex Enemies

There must be some apex of power in the game world. Gods, beings from beyond the void, space aliens with bigger-than-average lasers, all of these must-have established power levels. Every D&D adventure has a big bad with stats written into a book for the players to fight. This is the player's foil they face off against and compete in power for, these foils are the power ceilings for the players.

This Ceiling must be firmly established in the DMs head at the start of the campaign. In this way, challenges can be balanced and set like stepping stones so that the party is never overwhelmed (unless that is the point).

-Jacob Bourque-

Player Tip: Don’t be a Dick Tieflings, the Halfbloods - From Andrew on Discord

In the lore of the forgotten realm, tiefling and their demonic appearance is derived originally from human bloodlines, but they have been described as a mix of humanoid and “something else”. Will O’Connor, the artist responsible for designing tieflings highlighted he want them to look like a cursed people. Their infernal heritage catches this well. But humans aren’t the only race that can intermingle with creatures of the nine-hells. This means you could have a gnome-based tiefling. Imagine how adorable that would be. Perhaps you decide to be a tabaxi or orc based tiefling. In any case, this mixture of infernal blood lines can allow you to play around with the physical appearance of your characters when you play a tiefling race.

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