TTRPG Clock Challenge

“As you sprint towards the exit of the dungeon, you notice that your path is blocked by a door with glowing dwarven runes. You get an uneasy feeling that the statue by the door isn’t just a statue, and the ticking is getting louder…time is running out. Can you beat the clock?”

This Instructable describes how to build a timed challenge into a TTRPG session. Racing against the clock in an encounter not only makes combat feel more intense, but it can also help future sessions run more smoothly by getting players into the habit of being prepared when it’s their turn. The encounter described below can be adapted for D&D and Pathfinder campaigns, and it can be run virtually or in-person.

• 3-5 players with character sheets
• A timer with a buzzer or an hourglass
• Your favorite table top (physical or virtual)
• A battle map
• Monster stats

Before introducing a clock into your TTRPG, you need to make sure that your players know the rules and their characters fairly well. You want the drama of this encounter to come from the pressure of making snap decisions, not from feeling overwhelmed by unfamiliar features or spell options. So, before putting your players in a situation like this, give them time to battle some lower level monsters and to solve puzzles so that they have a clear understanding of the game mechanics. If you are using a clock in a one-shot, make it the final encounter of the session.

Anything that makes it easier to reference rules, features, and spells more quickly will help keep the focus on the fight. Physical character sheets and spell cards are helpful for players more comfortable with in-person play. Whether you are in a physical or virtual environment, an initiative tracker is a must.

Timed encounters also work better with a smaller party (i.e. 3-5 players), especially if you want to keep the timed encounter to only an hour. If you have a 5-7 person party, I would recommend an hour and a half for the encounter described below.

You will need five ingredients to cook up a timed encounter: a task for the players to complete, an in-game clock, a physical or magical obstacle preventing players from completing the task, a BBEG (big bad evil guy), and a safety net.

Task

What do the players need to accomplish in this encounter? The most compelling tasks are ones that are tied to one or more of the character’s backstories or ones that threaten the entire party's well being.

• Escape a dangerous environment
• Rescue an NPC from a precarious situation
• Diffuse a bomb threatening their beloved town
• Make a magical potion

In-game clock

This is something in the environment that the players cannot control that introduces a time constraint. It makes the players feel like they have a limited amount of time to complete the task.

• Diminishing air supply
• Rising water
• A ticking time bomb inside the walls
• Eminent eruption of a volcano
• Poison gas emanating from multiple crevices
• Alignment of the planets at a certain time

Obstacle

This is something in the environment that the players can control that complicates the process of completing their task.

• The riddle to open the door is in a secret code.
• Ingredients to the magical potion are scattered throughout the room.
• There are several keys to the lock on the door, and they are hanging from the ceiling, but only one will open the door. (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, anyone?)
• The object that you need to assemble is in pieces. (Think the silver monkey from Legends of the Hidden Temple.)
• There’s a pile of rubble that takes at least 3 successful strength checks to move.

You want to make the potion ingredients, keys, puzzle parts obvious so that a failed investigation check does not prevent the players from completing the task. Remember, you want the challenge to be how to complete the task on time, not the task itself.

BBEG

Simply removing the obstacle a bit too easy? Introduce a BBEG! As a GM, you want to select a monster that is easy for you to run, so unless you are very familiar with spells, it’s better to choose one that has simple attacks. It’s also easier to manage one powerful creature as opposed to many smaller creatures or several different kinds of monster. Make sure that the creature is an appropriate difficulty level for the party.

Safety net

This is something that prevents your encounter from being a TPK (total party kill) and is introduced only when the time is running out or when players are truly stuck.

• An NPC (non-player character) who can provide clues about the riddle’s solution
• Inscriptions that help guide the players towards the solution
• A deus ex machina who can rescue the players
• Explosive device that can blast through the rubble
• Another creature that takes down the BBEG, giving the players more time to remove the obstacle (think the Mosasaur in Jurassic World)

Whether you use a physical or a virtual tabletop to run your sessions, the most important thing is that there is a visual or audio cue to remind the players that the clock is always ticking.

In-person games

An hourglass can be a great tool because it provides a visual cue that time is running out, and it creates more tension because players do not know exactly how much time is left. Using the timer app on your phone can work just as well. Keep it behind the DM screen out of the players' sight for extra drama.

If you use sound to cue the passage of time, you will need to create periodic reminders that the clock is ticking. Say a line like, “You must rescue the prince by the time you hear the 6th bell toll!” and then set your timer for 10 minutes. Repeat the timer 6 times for an hour-long encounter. While this is a little more tedious than simply setting your timer for an hour, it ups the tension by keeping players mindful of the passage of time.

Virtual table tops

The simplest way to add a clock to your virtual TTRPG is to use Zoom, Skype, or Google Hangouts. You can broadcast the sound of a timer through your mic or put the clock in view of your camera. If you have extra screen space, use the "share your screen" or "present now" function to replace your video feed with a video of a timer from Youtube. If you have the bandwidth and the devices to do so, you can run the game from one device and use a second device to stream video of the clock. This makes the clock feel like another character. Joining the call from two devices in the same room can cause audio feedback, so to avoid this, mute the microphone and turn the volume to 0 on the second device.

There is an API in Roll20 for hourglass timers, and Fantasy Grounds has a clock adjuster extension. Check out their documentation on how to add these.

Make sure that your players have the information and resources that they need before starting the clock. Let your players know that it’s a timed encounter. Provide a detailed description of the environment and the obstacle, though you don’t have to provide them with all of the details. For example, if the player asks you about the inscription on the door, you can say something like “You can see that there are symbols on the door, but you’ll need to make an arcana check on your turn to interpret it.” Roll initiative before you start the clock. Also, give them a chance to grab snacks. Snacks are essential.

Signal that the clock represents real-world time, not in-game time. It often takes longer for a player to choose an action and roll the results than the time it takes for the character to complete that action. (A round in DnD is 6 seconds in-game but often 20 minutes or longer of actual gameplay.) In other words, let your players know that they have an hour to complete the task, regardless of how many rounds of combat or how much time their character takes to do something in game.

Once the clock is running, do your best to keep it running. Giving players time to ask questions before starting the countdown helps reduce the need to call “time out” in the middle of the encounter. Remember that the tension is created by the ticking clock, so anything that stops it will stop the momentum of the encounter.

Create a battle map using your favorite tools. This helps players understand the environment and keep track of each other. Check out the winners of the Instructables RPG contest for ideas. The photo above is a screenshot of my DIY virtual tabletop with Google Slides. (Instructables forthcoming!)

Make it easy for players to follow combat order. Post initiative order in the group chat, write it on a chalkboard, announce who’s turn is next and who’s on deck.

Take as little time during your turn as possible. Roll once for both of the BBEG’s attacks. Pre-roll damage. Describe the player’s action as they roll for damage. The more time the players have, the better.

Narrate the conclusion as slowly as possible. Pause for at least 3 seconds before you start describing how the door opens. Ask “Are you sure?” when players have guessed the correct solution to the puzzle. Take a moment to relish the look on your players’ faces as they wait for you to tell them that they’ve saved the prince from an untimely death. The contrast between the breakneck speed of encounter and the excruciatingly slow pace of the conclusion makes that final moment of success all the more dramatic.

Below is a cautionary tale of how I introduced a "race against the clock" challenge in my current D&D campaign.

TL;DR: the players solved the riddle and killed the BBEG in the same round of combat with about 20 minutes remaining on the clock. The obstacle almost killed a player because of a bad dice roll, but the other players saved the day with some quick-thinking and role play. BIG STORY MOMENT FOR ALL.

Preparing players

The challenged happened in session 10. I have five players who started the campaign at level 3 and reached level 5 by the end of session 7, so they had had 2 sessions to get used to their new level features. I have been using a combination of Zoom and Google slides to run the campaign virtually, so players felt very comfortable using these platforms by the time we reached the session with the timed challenge.

Designing the encounter

The campaign is set in magical 1892, and the players were investigating a mysterious complex carved into a cliff face which turned out to be the hide-out of an ancient Egyptian mage who had gone mad. While exploring the small complex with an NPC cleric, they found a room with a large sand pit in the center that had animal cages placed around it. There was no door to the room, just an open door frame. They investigated the room and found a couple of weapons, but nothing else happened, and they continued to travel further into the complex. Upon retracing their steps to exit, they discovered that their path was now blocked by a large stone door inscribed with hieroglyphs. Since the room was sealed, the characters were beginning to realize that they had a limited air supply as a figure made of sand began rising out of the pit in the middle of the room.

Encounter ingredients:

• Task: escape the complex
• In-game clock: limited air supply
• Obstacle: stone door with a riddle creating an air-tight seal
• BBEG: Sand assassin
• Safety net: an NPC cleric who could interpret hieroglyphics and heal players

To escape, they had to translate the hieroglyphs and solve the riddle while fending off the sand assassin. As an antagonist, the sand assassin worked particularly well because It could multiattack with a simple melee weapon, simplifying my turn as GM. It could hide when it got low on hit points by dispersing, making it harder for players to hit it and thereby making the encounter last longer. It forced players to think about where they were standing in the room because it could deal extra damage to combatants who were more than 5 feet away from an ally. It thematically fit the sandy setting and the sand flowing through the hourglass keeping time.

Choosing the clock

I opted to introduce the clock via Zoom. I used my laptop to run the session and my phone to stream video of an hourglass.

Running the encounter

Before flipping the hour glass, we rolled for initiative. I posted the order of combat in our battle map in Google slides and then checked to see if players had any questions about the door or the environment. Since they had been in this room once before, they were already familiar with the room’s basic layout. Questions answered, I started the clock.

The solution to the riddle required players to do something incredibly risky. The inscription read “Knock on Death’s door,” meaning that someone would have to go down to 0 hit points and make a death saving throw. (In D&D, you have to fail three death savings throws in order to be considered dead.) At this point, the god of Death would appear and knock on the door. The stone would crumble, and the players would be able to breathe freely again. The appearance of Death was a MAJOR plot point with MASSIVE character development payoffs as two of the characters had previously encountered Death in their backstories.To prevent the riddle from killing a character outright, the NPC cleric would stabilize them as soon as they made their first death saving throw. In other words, it was meant to be a high risk, high rewards situation, not a deadly one.

The outcomes I expected:

• Option A: One of the players solves the riddle by sacrificing themself. After they make their first death saving throw, Death appears, knocks on the door, the stone crumbles, and the party has plenty of air. Big moment for those two characters to see Death again, and big moment for the other members of the party to learn that Death is a person.
• Option B: Sand assassin takes a player down to 0 hit points before they solve the riddle. The player rolls their first death saving throw. Death appears and knocks on the door. They still have to deal with the sand assassin, but the amount of air is no longer a problem. Big story moment for everyone involved.
• Option C: The players can’t solve the riddle, so the cleric sacrifices himself to get Death’s attention. Death opens the door, at which point the players can choose whether or not to stabilize the cleric. Big story moment for all.

Combat begins and the players spend a couple rounds fighting the sand assassin. Player A works their way over to the door, translates the inscription, knocks on the door to see if that will open it (doesn’t work), and then asks the NPC cleric if it means someone has to die. Cleric responds that they think to summon Death, someone has to be near death. Cleric assures Player A that they will do all that they can to make sure that no one actually dies. In the same round, Player B kills the sand assassin. There are about 20 minutes left before the sand runs out. Player A decides to sacrifice themself by slitting their wrists and fails their first death saving throw. Death appears and knocks on the door, which crumbles. Air floods the chamber. Task complete!

Time seems to come to a standstill, initiative order drops, and the hourglass is put away. Player B (who has not encountered Death before) has a short conversation with Death. As Death is leaving, Player C (who has met Death before) tries to command Death to stay so that he can ask more questions. I ask for a persuasion check, and Player C rolls a 6. With such a low roll, I determine that there would need to be consequences. I reason that Death would need to draw more energy from the dying in order to remain, so I asked Player A to make another death saving throw. Player A rolls a natural 1, which means they automatically fail two death savings throws, which means that Player A is now technically dead.

*GULP*

Since this puzzle was designed to be a risky situation (and not a deadly one), I decided to give the players one last chance to save their friend. (My players know that I am a story-first, “rule of cool” DM, and they are ok with me taking liberties with the official rules if it has a payoff for the plot.) With the life quickly draining from Player A, Death asks Player C “Do you really want me to stay?” Player C has the presence of mind to say something to the effect of “No. I’ll ask my questions later. Leave our friend with us.” Player C rolls a 14 on a persuasion check, higher than the number needed to clear a death saving throw. Death disappears and leaves Player A’s soul, the Cleric works with great speed and skill to stabilize Player A, and the players make it out of the complex alive.

DRAMA! The players had a blast, and the encounter with Death was one of the most dramatic moments of the campaign thus far.

Players need to be prepared for timed encounters. When players feel comfortable with their characters, the game rules, and the technologies that you’re using to run the game, all of the focus is on the fight and the story, which is where you want it to be.

Create strong ties between the clock and the other elements of your encounter. The example above could have leaned even harder into the sand theme by making the in-game clock rising levels of sand. The more ties there are between the clock, the characters, and the creature, the more cohesive the encounter will be.

Don’t make the obstacle a death trap unless you are prepared for a PC or an NPC to die. See above example.

Always make the encounter about the players and their stories. Always.

Go forth, and adventure! Feel free to share how you adapted this TTRPG clock encounter for your games with the "I made it!" button.