How to on Quicksand - General Discussion - D&D Beyond General - D&D Beyond Forums (2024)

Subsequent Rounds: The PC must maketwo more successful Athletics checks to pull themselves from the quicksand. Should they fail twice the third roll is made with disadvantage to represent the suction they're facing off against.

Three successes and they're out--three fails and they drown.

Hope this helps!

Sign--

Wacky

I think they should have at least 2 rounds to cast spells. One round is quite frankly, ridiculous, unless there is magic involved. In real life quicksand is NOT deadly. It is very easily escaped and even if you are tied up and thrown into it, you will float at the top, so the only danger is not being able to keep yourself mouth up. I am willing for a fantasy world to have it deadly, but only six seconds to escape it? That requires magic.

I would ask how natural do you want it? There is the difference between:

• Totally natural feature that just happens to be dangerous
• A humanoid made trap where an intelligence went out of the way to make it as deadly as possible using natural materials
• Magicly enhanced.

Totally natural feature, I would probably make it an Athletic Check, DC 15 to escape, each round. Six failures = over your head, start holding your breath, unless you are large or bigger, which just means you are trapped in it not over your head. Keep trying till you get out. If someone throws you a rope, you get a +5 to your check. If they are simply helping you without a rope, you have advantage, and they must make an Athletic Check of 10 or be pulled in. You can cast spells for the first four rounds.

Humanoid made traps, I would boost the Athletic check to escape to DC 20, and make it 2 rounds to cast spells, 4 rounds till over your head.

Magic, well, the sky's the limit.

I DM'd some of my friends through Hoard of the Dragon Queen recently, and I remembered there's a quicksand hazard as one of the Random Encounters that are possible. I'll go ahead and just share the quote...

Quicksand.

A creature that steps into the quicksand must succeed on a DC 11 Dexterity saving throw or sink into the quicksand and be restrainedOn its turn, as part of its movement, the trapped creature can escape by making a DC 15 Strength check. Another creature can attempt to pull the restrained creature out of the quicksand as an action but must succeed on a DC 15 Strength check to do so. As in a movie, the trapped creature is always more than 5 feet from the edge of the quicksand, so rescuers can't just grab the character; they must find a vine, a rope, or a pole and toss it to where the trapped character can reach it.

Quote from TransmorpherDDS >>

I DM'd some of my friends through Hoard of the Dragon Queen recently, and I remembered there's a quicksand hazard as one of the Random Encounters that are possible. I'll go ahead and just share the quote...

See Also

What is the most aggressive class in DnD?

Quicksand.

A creature that steps into the quicksand must succeed on a DC 11 Dexterity saving throw or sink into the quicksand and be restrainedOn its turn, as part of its movement, the trapped creature can escape by making a DC 15 Strength check. Another creature can attempt to pull the restrained creature out of the quicksand as an action but must succeed on a DC 15 Strength check to do so. As in a movie, the trapped creature is always more than 5 feet from the edge of the quicksand, so rescuers can't just grab the character; they must find a vine, a rope, or a pole and toss it to where the trapped character can reach it.

This is actually was described in the DMG. When I made this post, I did not have that book yet.

Quote from Mog_Dracov >>

I think they should have at least 2 rounds to cast spells. One round is quite frankly, ridiculous, unless there is magic involved. In real life quicksand is NOT deadly. It is very easily escaped and even if you are tied up and thrown into it, you will float at the top, so the only danger is not being able to keep yourself mouth up. I am willing for a fantasy world to have it deadly, but only six seconds to escape it? That requires magic.

I would ask how natural do you want it? There is the difference between:

• Totally natural feature that just happens to be dangerous
• A humanoid made trap where an intelligence went out of the way to make it as deadly as possible using natural materials
• Magicly enhanced.

Totally natural feature, I would probably make it an Athletic Check, DC 15 to escape, each round. Six failures = over your head, start holding your breath, unless you are large or bigger, which just means you are trapped in it not over your head. Keep trying till you get out. If someone throws you a rope, you get a +5 to your check. If they are simply helping you without a rope, you have advantage, and they must make an Athletic Check of 10 or be pulled in. You can cast spells for the first four rounds.

Humanoid made traps, I would boost the Athletic check to escape to DC 20, and make it 2 rounds to cast spells, 4 rounds till over your head.

Magic, well, the sky's the limit.

I would say two rounds to cast spells with S or M components. You can cast V only spells, like dimension door, as long as your head is above the sand.

Good to know about the official rulings on quicksand.

As for my own decisions, I had only one round for spells to heighten the sense of fear and as for the speed, yes I know real-life quicksand is almost always slow, but we play in an edition that is measured in seconds not minutes, so You'd have something like 20 rounds to save your buddy and the sense of fear goes out the window at that point.

Not very good for a sense of realism, but I thought held to the spirit of the real life terror.

Sign--

Wacky

Quote from MidnightPlat >>

What about tar pits? I mean those things trapped sabre tooth tigers and mammoths!

I say higher save DC but slower sink rate