The party becomes completely lost in a labyrinth—can they escape the danger that lies ahead while navigating their way to safety?
A Maze to Drop and Run in Your DnD Game
Mazes are infamously unfun to run in games. Almost every GM has had the urge to run a labyrinth (bonus points if there’s a minotaur involved) but then suffer as navigation becomes a slog of skill checks and dead ends on a map.
Luckily, mazes don’t need to be a slog. In fact, they can be an extremely fun and rewarding adventure for your players to trek through. Let’s take a look at how to make mazes that are challenging to navigate but still fun for the players.
How to Run a Maze in DnD 5e
Before we can “make” a maze, we need to confront a tragic truth: almost every GM isn’t the cunning Daedelus-like genius who crafted the labyrinth, and almost every player isn’t someone who can solve them. Whenever we try to imitate that process, we’ll inevitably fall short and hurt our game. But that’s not what really matters, right? We don’t need to actually invent a genius maze, we just need to imitate the fiction of a maze and imitate that feeling in our game, watching our heroes work through impossible odds to escape!So let’s ditch the map completely. We’ll use theater of the mind to navigate the maze’s corridors, and if you need a map for combat, you use an individual room in the vast network of the maze. We can use a skill challenge to represent navigating the maze.
Goals
There’s a few reasons your players might need to navigate a maze like this one. Think about what the players are pursuing and the forces that might stand in their way, then choose an encounter from the list below that matches one or both.
Player Goals
- Trying to claim something within the maze: Run Encounter A
- Trying to find and kill something in the maze: Run Encounter B
- Trying to escape the maze…while outrunning what lives within it: Run Encounter C
Faction Goals
- Not many factions in a maze! Think about why this maze was built, what it’s for, and who lives in it (if anyone) and adjust those to suit player goals.
Maze Rules
Run a Maze in DnD as a Skill Challenge
For this skill challenge, the players will need to roll eight successes to successfully navigate the maze. If they roll three failures first, the navigation ends in a failure, which means a few different things depending on how you set it up (see the “Resolving” section of each encounter for more on that).
to run a maze in DnD, each player will take a turn in initiative order (you can roll if you like, or just use the table’s initiative bonuses to decide). On their turn, they’ll roll 1d20 and check the table for the encounter you’re running. That’s the obstacle they’ll face in this corridor or room of the maze.
On their turn, each player should describe which attribute they use to overcome the obstacle and make their skill roll. On a success, they should describe how they move on to the next leg of the chase. On a failure, they suffer a consequence of their choice from the consequence table in each encounter.
Here’s the unique part a maze can provide. If a character gets the same result as before when they roll their d20 on the table, don’t reroll! They’ve looped back around in the maze! They’re still making progress (mistakes tell them which corridors not to use after all) but they end up at the same place and have to overcome that challenge again. How has the situation changed since they passed through it?
If you don’t feel comfortable improvising how the rooms changed based on how the players affected them, feel free to just reroll duplicates. For more examples of skill challenges, check out this encounter.
- The Shifting Chamber: The floor tiles constantly shift, requiring players to avoid falling into deep pits.
- The Hall of Mirrors: Illusory reflections obscure the correct path, and players must discern the real corridors from the fake ones to avoid getting lost.
- The Riddle Vault: A magical door with odd riddles guards the way forward, and players must solve it to progress.
- The Labyrinthine Pass: The path becomes extremely narrow and hard to move through, twisting in odd paths and tunnels.
- The Poisonous Mists: A thick fog filled with toxic gasses engulfs the room, requiring characters to hold their breath or find a way to neutralize the poison.
- The Crushing Gauntlet: Walls lined with moving spikes threaten to crush anyone who fails to time their movements correctly.
- The Disappearing Floor: Sections of the floor vanish periodically, and players must quickly find safe spots or risk falling into a pit of spikes.
- The Shadowy Hallway: A pervasive darkness obscures vision, making it difficult to spot hidden traps and lurking enemies.
- The Swarm Chamber: Countless swarms of ravenous insects fill the room, forcing players to find a way to repel or distract them.
- The Hall of Statues: Animated statues block the way, lunging at any who approach unless players can decipher the hidden trigger to deactivate them.
- The Fiery Furnace: A scorching inferno engulfs the room, and players must find a way to cool the area or risk being burned alive.
- The Pendulum Corridor: Massive swinging blades swing across the corridor, requiring players to time their movements precisely to avoid being sliced.
- The Haunted Crypt: Ghostly apparitions haunt the room, draining the life force of anyone who succumbs to fear, forcing players to keep their composure.
- The Sound Maze: Deafening noises echo through the twisting corridors, disorienting players and making it difficult to hear approaching danger.
- The Petrifying Gaze: A statue in the center of the room emits a petrifying gaze, and players must find a way to shield themselves from its deadly effects.
- The Hall of Traps: Pressure plates cover the floor, activating deadly traps if stepped on incorrectly, requiring players to carefully navigate the hall.
- The Hallucination Chamber: Illusory visions distort reality, making it challenging for players to distinguish between what is real and what is not.
- The Acidic Runnel: A narrow path traverses a pit of acid, and players must find a way to cross safely or risk being dissolved.
- The Time Dilation Chamber: Time moves at an erratic pace, causing players to age or de-age rapidly unless they can find a way to stabilize the temporal distortion.
- The Final Convergence: Multiple paths converge into a single corridor, and players must race against the closing walls to escape being crushed.
Encounter A
In this encounter, the party tries to find their way into the maze and lay claim to whatever lies in its center.
How I Set Up This Maze Encounter
This encounter involves the group finding their way to the center of a maze. To run the maze in DnD, we’ll use the skill challenge method described above.
This is easy to implement with any goal that involves finding a specific object or person. That thing can just be in the maze! Think about what it is and why it’s there. My group was after the true name of an enemy demon, and had to get through its maze of horrors to find the obsidian obelisk it had inscribed it on.
Skill Challenge Basics
- Eight Successes or Three Failures, whichever comes first.
- Each player must attempt a roll at least once before any player can roll again.
- Each player can attempt a roll based on a certain attribute only once (one INT roll, one CHA roll, one STR roll), no matter what skills they’re using.
When a player makes an attempt, they’ll tell the table which skill they’re using to make the check and justify it to the DM (if necessary). They’ll describe how they’re using that skill to address the problem or help the group work towards a solution, then make their roll.
Action!
We’ll run the encounter as described above, having setbacks for each failed check and a larger consequence for failing the whole challenge. Here’s a list of possible setbacks for failing a check:
- The character takes some damage from a hazardous room (somewhere in the neighborhood of 3d10).
- The party stumbles across a fake version of whatever they’re after, and have to describe how it harms them in some way before they realize it’s a fake.
- The maze slides them down a chute into a more dangerous area. Either DCs increase by 1 for this challenge or the group requires an additional success.
- The player expends a resource, like a spell slot or limited use ability.
- Have the players describe the consequence! (This one is my favorite.)
How I Resolved This Maze Encounter
When this encounter finishes, if your players passed the challenge, they find what they were after! Huzzah! This will change a lot depending on what they were searching for, but they’ve overcome the bulk of the encounter, so be generous!
If your players didn’t succeed, they don’t achieve their goal. Maybe it’s as harsh as the item being stolen first, or maybe instead they can still find what they need, but there’s a huge fight first. Whatever the case, they’ll need to go after this goal another time—for now, there’s only hardship ahead.
Encounter B
In this encounter, the party tries to track down and kill a specific foe or monster within the maze.
Skill Challenge Basics
- Eight Successes or Three Failures, whichever comes first.
- Each player must attempt a roll at least once before any player can roll again.
- Each player can attempt a roll based on a certain attribute only once (one INT roll, one CHA roll, one STR roll), no matter what skills they’re using.
When a player makes an attempt, they’ll tell the table which skill they’re using to make the check and justify it to the DM (if necessary). They’ll describe how they’re using that skill to address the problem or help the group work towards a solution, then make their roll.
How to Set Up This DnD Maze Encounter
To run this maze in DnD, we’ll utilize the skill challenge described above.
What’s the party chasing? You can alter the table below based on the particular prey they’re after and how it affects them. My group was chasing after a powerful fae with superhuman speed, so I had lots of obstacles, traps, and places where it was easy to make a turn that the fae didn’t.
Action!
We’ll run the encounter as described above, having setbacks for each failed check and a larger consequence for failing the whole challenge. Here’s a list of possible setbacks for failing a check:
- The character takes some damage from a hazardous room (somewhere in the neighborhood of 3d10).
- The path splits in many directions. The group has to expend some sort of resource (a spell slot, probably0 to divine the right way to go.
- The prey leads the group into a more dangerous area. Either DCs increase by 1 for this challenge or the group requires an additional success.
- The fleeing party gets a free attack or two against the player, to which they can’t respond or use other abilities.
- Have the players describe the consequence! (This one is my favorite.)
How to Resolve This DnD Maze Encounter
If your party succeeds, they snag what they’re after! That might be it, or maybe it’s time to roll initiative. If they fail…well, the fleeing party gets away. The party might need to overcome some greater obstacle to finally corner their quarry.
Encounter C
In this encounter, the party attempts to escape the maze…before they’re caught by the monster pursuing.
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