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Michael Shea describes a technique that works very well for this in his book Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master (he also occasionally talks about it on his blog).
When prepping for your session, take the time to write down ten secrets or clues relevant to the world or the current adventure. These secrets can be critical to the plot, be hints at future plots, ...
21
You owe your players 10* treasure parcels a level, but the payment terms are very flexible.
After each of the baseline 10 fights to level? Sure. All gathered up in the end boss's treasure room so they can open the door and act like a rich duck? That might leave them a little short on consumables for a bit, but that works too.
Some of them pooled together ...
16
Knickknacks and trinkets
Knickknacks and trinkets are often overlooked and underused, while giving a cue to your players that:
There is no other loot here, or
They botched their search.
Examples would include:
A gold (or other rare metal) piece of a time long forgotten.
A handheld watch that would have been worth a small fortune, were it
not for its ...
6
Have it be wet season:
In a wet season things don't burn very well. You could technically open a hole in the wood with a firethrower, but the fire simply wouldn't spread.
Add a stone base:
Especially walls tend to have a stone foundation even if they are primarily made of wood. Have the fire reveal a stone foundation that can be climbed more easily, still ...
5
Don't make eliminating minions part of a victory condition.
If I'm going to have more than a handful of minions in an encounter, my preference is to have endless minions: a couple more minions are going to be added every turn until the party solves the puzzle, or kills the boss, or makes it to the end of the trapped hallway. This makes minions obstacles ...
5
You shouldn't have any serious problems
Looting enemies in D&D is a very "normal" thing to do as a player. Players want to get coins, weapons, armour or other stuff from their enemies either as trophies or to actually use them.
As a DM I always give some coin or a weapon or a piece of armour to any player that wishes to search a body. Usually, I also ...
5
I have players like this. If I feel there should be stuff in said location, I either use it to give hints or I roll for random detritus.
I keep a few random mundane object lists around. One is reserved for the most useful mundane objects for exceptional rolls, another is personal effects (aka pocket/bedroll contents), and another is just random mundane ...
4
It will rarely be appropriate
I suspect this will not be a major problem because it will rarely be appropriate. It is similar to a "nuke it from orbit" approach. It really is the right answer in some rare situations, but for it to work all of the following have to be true:
You are willing to risk destroying everything in the building.
The building in ...
3
Declaring to search every room, is slowing down the game and isn't realistic behaviour either: Unless you are a homeless person looking for empty bottles or food leftovers, you probably don't spend time randomly searching every place you are in. Especially not if you are in a dungeon full a hostile creatures.
Don't reward this behaviour by giving in and let ...
3
The solution depends on your goal as a group.
When I'm running a campaign, I keep in mind what moves the story forward and try to cut out things that do not. With this mindset, I would not want my players searching every room thoroughly. It's a lot of boring rolls with no narrative payoff. So, in this example, searching every room is a behavior I'd like to ...
2
It's all an aboleth plot!
The rift reached the depts of the underdark, opening wide to an underground sea where a branch of the Abolethic Sovereignty was busy manipulating a pocket of Spellplague and covertly experimenting on creatures in and near Neverwinter.
-- "Abolethic Sovereignty", Neverwinter Campaign Setting, p.90
Predating the MMO by more ...
2
Give them something to do besides using their attack power.
The Dungeon Master's Guide 2 introduced the idea of terrain powers, where you're in terrain and can burn a standard/move/minor to get a certain effect. Some terrain will let anyone take advantage of it for the whole battle. Other terrain, like a boulder to be set rolling or a hanging chandelier ...
1
Fire doesn't just hurt the bad guys
My own players did this once. Well, twice actually, but these were implemented very differently. I'll go over both since they both illustrate different ways to handle (that is, limit) the use of fire.
Make fire endanger the party
My party came across a goblin encampment, and they decided that they needed to create a ...
1
You should really ask them why.
Not out of the assumption that they're trying to pull a fast one on you, but because you're the person who keys all the encounters in the world, hostile and otherwise. If your players are building up a collection for anything other than their own satisfaction - because they're not really going to find a buyer for monster ...
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