Battlegrounds: Clock Tower

Last time around, I took a look at the alchemist’s lab, a fairly common genre trope, as a potential fight setting.  This time, the setting’s not quite as common in fantasy, but it poses some intriguing possibilities.  Namely:  the clock tower.

If you’ve ever played Castlevania or watched Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, you probably have an inkling of where this is headed:  a standoff between the party and their opponents that takes place amid the mechanism of a very large clock.  Or any large mechanism, really.  Gears and chains and pendulums; pistons and pulleys and chimes — it’s all good.

Part of the Castlevania clock tower

A clock tower setting needn’t be a clock tower any more than an alchemist’s lab setting needs to be an alchemist’s lab.  A clock tower might be a steampunk factory, littered with conveyor belts and ungainly machines, or a gnomish clockwork golem two hundred feet tall, or even a mill with a water wheel and a grindstone.

The clock tower also doesn’t have to be realistic.  Instead, it should be dramatic.  We’ll talk about this more a little later.

The layout of the clock tower, no matter how large it is, should feel a bit cramped.  There might be vast empty spaces through which the gears turn and the pendulum swings, but the walkways should offer limited surface area.  The clock tower is a difficult area to maneuver freely in, and the battle will range around (and onto) the mechanical components that fill the area.

The sense of fighting in a tight space, surrounded by moving parts that could pose a great danger, makes for tension and excitement.  The goal is to produce that sense.

Let’s consider what the area could contain:

Walkways. Whether it’s rickety wooden platforms connected by stairs or metal catwalks with ladders between them, there will be some form of access to the mechanism.  This may be for maintenance purposes only, in which case it will tend to be incredibly cluttered, or it may allow access to another area, such as the control room in the head of the clockwork golem, in which case things might be a little bit cleaner.

Walkways will generally be no more than 5′ (1 square) wide, although there will be larger platforms in places that allow for someone to maintain or repair the machinery if necessary.  The walkways might be narrower at places, perhaps even to the point of requiring skill checks to balance.  The creators might or might not have placed rails to guard against a fall — however, it’s likely that the broader platforms will not possess such guards, at least not on all sides.

Most clock tower scenarios will take place in three dimensions.  This means that it may be tricky to map at times because, drawn on a two-dimensional plane, several levels will overlap each other.  Focusing on just the levels the PCs or monsters are on and the ones immediately above and below might help.  If you use a battlemat, drawing in different colors for the different levels can be good, too.  If you (and preferably most of your players) are good at spacial visualization, you can draw (or set up dungeon tiles) in separate locations and imagine them “stacked” on each other.

Gears. Gigantic gear wheels are a must for this location.  Whether they’re huge ungainly things carved out of wood, or huge shining brass gears that fit together like… well, clockwork… these will be a main centerpiece of your clock tower battle.  Take a look at that screenshot above.  See how many gears there are?  That might be a little overkill… but only a little.  Don’t be afraid to throw them in by the handful.

In order to map a gear, you can put a circle over a graph-paper overlay (free graph-paper PDFs and graph-paper Word or OpenOffice templates are available in many places, including those links).  Or you can cheat by making it a burst (a square area) and declaring that the corners are “squeeze” terrain and will require a balance check to avoid falling.  For a burst 1, 2, or even 3, this works reasonably well; larger bursts may need to impose this rule on squares adjacent to the outermost corners.

The main characteristic of a gear is that it moves.  Specifically, it rotates in one direction.  Rotating everything realistically could become a problem, especially if you’re using a static battlemat drawing instead of mobile tiles.

But remember, you’re not interested in realism, you’re interested in drama.  Wing it.  If you want the lowest-bookkeeping option, make all gears turn a quarter-turn in their designated direction each round.  If you want a little more realism, make it proportional:  a burst 3 gear will rotate a quarter-turn, a burst 2 will rotate a half-turn, a burst 1 will rotate three-quarters.

When a gear rotates, everything on it rotates with it.  If you want to really drive home the sense of fighting on an unsteady surface, having to keep part of your attention on the shifting floor beneath you, rule that this movement provokes opportunity attacks.  A character must spend movement to “stay still”, by moving in the direction opposite the gear’s rotation — which will provoke opportunity attacks as well, unless the character is near the center of the gear.

A character or monster who would be pushed off of a gear (or walkway) can make a saving throw to fall prone in the square at the edge.  If that character is on a gear, however, prone on the edge is still not a great place to be — he must make a balance check when standing, or else he’ll remain prone.  He can avoid making the check by first crawling toward the center of the gear, but that will cost him an extra action.

There are basically two types of gear:  horizontal and vertical.  Horizontal gears are fairly large, flat surfaces — exactly like the walkways are not.  This is not coincidental.  You want the players (and monsters) to have to brave the gears if they want to be able to move freely.  Vertical gears might serve as hazards, “wall” off some areas (providing cover), or allow for dangerous climbing attempts in order to maneuver for position.  A character standing on a vertical gear will need to move, to stay on top as it rotates — or else fall!

The fight is most dramatic if the gears are whirling, grinding mechanisms of death, threatening to crush anything that falls between their teeth.  If a character or object ends up between two gears, it is automatically grabbed.  Assign a Strength score to the gears, and assign a reasonable (fairly high) damage range for the party’s level.  The target takes that damage automatically at the start of each of its turns until it escapes the grab or is reduced to 0 hit points or fewer.

While something (or someone) is caught in the gears, the gears do not rotate.  All of the combatants will, however, hear the sounds of the mechanism straining.  If you want to be really melodramatic, roll a die with a nice range such as 1d6+4.  The result is the number of rounds in which the mechanism will break down if the caught object is not broken before then.  A mechanism breakdown should involve the PCs (and enemies) scrambling to reach the exit before the entire thing falls on their heads.  Describe loose springs flying, showers of sparks, chunks of metal falling from above…

Giant fan blades, rotating grinding wheels, and so forth can be treated as gears in many ways.  Usually these substitutes will lack the “catching” ability, though.

Axles. Some gear wheels will have axles protruding from their centers.  Vertical ones (from horizontal gears) can be used as cover or perhaps climbed.  Horizontal ones (from vertical gears) can be walked upon, but because they’re curved, balance checks are required — and because they’re rotating, the character will need to spend some movement to “stay in place” on top of them.

Aside from the cover, axles are best used to provide fast but dangerous ways of reaching areas that might otherwise be tricky to get to.  If a couple of goblin archers have taken up a position on a platform at the top of two flights of stairs, and the options are to try the climb or to spend several rounds navigating the walkways to get there, then a player might see the risk as worthwhile.

Chains may also be present — these function much like vertical axles, except that they don’t rotate and are easier to climb.  The chain itself may rise or lower (depending on which side a character has grabbed) automatically by a certain number of squares per round, if the chain is attached to a gear.  It’s also possible for a chain or rope to be attached to a pulley — perhaps used by those who built or maintain the machine in order to hoist parts up from ground level.

Pendulums. A pendulum is much like a vertical axle, except that it moves.  It moves further and faster toward its lower end.  It can present a mobile cover area, which can make the fight a bit more dynamic; it can also provide a long climbable surface that serves as a “bridge” between multiple levels of the structure.  It’s even possible for the pendulum to become a hazard, if, at its lower end, it swings out over a platform.

Pipes. These are a less likely scene element to find in a literal clock tower, but in many similar steampunk settings, steam pipes may wind through the structure.  These serve many of the same purposes as vertical and horizontal axles, although they don’t rotate.  In addition, they may serve as a hazard:  vents or leaks might cause intermittent bursts of steam to engulf a square or a blast area near the pipe, causing fire damage to anyone occupying that area.  Sufficient damage to a pipe can cause a new such leak.

Intentional vents may produce more diffuse areas of cooler steam, creating concealment in several nearby squares.

At the game master’s discretion, an attack that would have hit a character or monster, but missed because of the defense bonus provided by the pipe’s cover, hits and damages the pipe, risking a leak.

Pistons. Again, these tend to go better with steampunk variations of the setting.  Pistons are cylindrical areas that rise or fall at times.  If their flat end it horizontal, they serve mostly as height-changing platforms for battle, capable of altering the range between two candidates from one round to the next.  If vertical, they serve as shifting cover and a hazard — cylinders of metal shooting sideways out of an area to block line of sight, perhaps hitting an unwary soul standing in front of one.  (In 4e, this is probably an attack vs. Reflex for low to moderate damage and a push effect — a miss slides the target outside the area and perhaps knocks prone.)

Conveyor Belts. Another steampunk element, a conveyor belt is simply a walkway that causes everything on it to slide a certain number of squares in a defined direction each round.  If its mechanism is damaged or otherwise disabled, it becomes a regular walkway.

An Exterior Portal. There might be a doorway inside the structure that allows the party to access the exterior — the face of the clock, or the shoulder of the golem, or whatever the case may be.  This allows the party to avoid the danger of being crushed and the other hazards of the machine… of course, now they need to worry about falling off.  If there’s some sort of security system inside the structure, this could allow them to evade it for a while, and perhaps take a short rest.

A battle in the clock tower should involve a lot of scrambling over precarious areas:  narrow walkways, rotating gears, projecting axles, swinging pendulums.  Because of the parts in motion, it’s a changing environment — even more so if some of the optional elements, like steam pipes, are present.  The face of the battlefield should change at least a little bit each round — unless, of course, someone is caught in the gears.

The clock tower is a great place to use minions.  You can describe them plummeting to their deaths or getting crushed between the massive gears.

The characters should have some incentive to abandon the relative safety of the walkway in favor of the gears, platforms, and other setting elements.  The monsters’ tactics should be such that creative use of the “terrain” — climbing up a vertical gear and darting across a horizontal axle, for instance — should grant the characters some combat advantage, while taking the conservative approach will place them at a disadvantage.

Flight is both a blessing and a curse in this setting:  the flying creature won’t need to worry about being forcibly moved by the machinery.  However, in this tight space, with so many moving objects around, a flyer will need to take extra care not to crash or get caught by a gear.  Each square flown counts for two squares of movement while taking precautions.  A flying creature can choose to abandon caution in order to move more swiftly, but it then suffers an attack (use the gears’ Strength vs. the creature’s Reflex, in most cases).  If the attack hits, it has crashed, been caught, or suffered a similar danger as judged by the GM.

Forced movement can be a large factor in the clock tower environment.  Remember to allow a saving throw to creatures who would be thrown over an edge or in between a pair of gears.  Enemies who have powers that force movement make for an especially challenging and memorable battle in this setting.  Also remember that enemies can bull rush — intelligent enemies may well give it a shot, hoping to let the gears do their work for them, if they have no better options.

A fight in a multi-level area can be difficult to GM, but if you can bring that third dimension into play, on to of all the moving pieces, you’ll end up with a truly epic battle.

(Edited 9/09/08 to correct the proportional rotation scheme to inverse proportion — I’m not trying for a realistic physics model, but bigger gears should rotate more slowly, not more quickly, if you want to add a bit more realism at the cost of a bit more bookkeeping.)

Related posts:

1. Battlegrounds: Alchemist’s Lab
2. Battlegrounds: On Deck
3. One Year of ABD (Plus a little…)
4. 10 Interesting Fight Settings
5. Stealing, By the Numbers (IV)