Inattentive Guards
Scenario the first:
So there you are in the Vestibule of Evil. You’ve booted down the door, called your challenge to the darkness, and drawn aggro from the first group of trash mobs. Everything is working as intended. You’re going HAM with your murder-bros, slaying orcs and goblins and dire corbies or whatever. Then all of a sudden the sound of a war-horn echoes through the halls. Apparently one of the evil minions took a few years of trumpet as a kid, and he’s just called for backup. The entirety of the dungeon answers the call. Roomfuls of ogres and owlbears and evil lieutenants surge towards your location, and now the tides have turned. Now you’re retreating. Every friggin’ monster in the complex is chasing you back across the drawbridge, and soon you’ll be rolling up a new character.
Scenario the second:
So there you are in the Vestibule of Evil. You’ve booted down the door, called your challenge to the darkness, and drawn aggro from the first group of trash mobs. You and your team of murder-bros kill the first 1d4+1 orcs or goblins or dire corbies or whatever. Minions dispatched, you decide to hang a right and explore the next room. There, not thirty feet from the site of your last battle, is a trio of ogres. They charge in, clubs swinging, and they go down just as easily. In a nearby courtyard you stumble upon an owlbear (apparently it was hibernating through the first two fights). Past him is a group of evil lieutenants, and you can only assume that you caught them between shifts. By the time you’ve fought your way to the boss monster’s lair you’re growing suspicious. What’s up with this castle? Why isn’t anybody coming to investigate the commotion? It’s only when you arrive at the inner sanctum that you realize your error. Instead of a boss monster you discover kindly old Professor Monkwart. You’ve mistakenly invaded the Castle Evildark School for the Deaf! The actual den of evil is next door, and boy is your face red.
This is a problem as old as dungeons, and it’s one that every GM has to figure out. How do you justify battling your way through a dungeon without fighting every inhabitant all at once? Why don’t the monsters seem to notice the sounds of slaughter emanating from the next room? The Handbook gives us one explanation, but I’m betting you all have your own headcanon for this one. So as an exercise in better dungeon-building, share your rationale down in the comments! (And, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that “dungeons don’t make sense which is why I don’t use them” is a less-than-useful answer.) All clear? Ready? Go!
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Walls, doors, gates, and noise-diminishing obstacles exist for good reason. Plus, card games!
I dunno man… I bet I could hear someone kicking down my front door and murdering my roommate from the comfort of my bedroom.
But would you intervene?
Depends on the rent situation.
Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage spoilers ahead:
The first two levels of the dungeon are very old-school, room-by-room dungeons, with a sprawling map filled with monsters and treasure. So in the first two levels, with so much to keep track of, there was really no way to deal with monsters moving about the dungeon, save when they were in the very next room. As such, the dungeon was quite static, with players able to take short rests while the monsters two rooms over ignored the sounds of battle and waited around.
Fortunately for me, two things happened. The first is that the lower levels all “themed” dungeons, that is, they all contain factions of creatures. This made it far easier to keep track of things, as now I could take note of, “22 drow from areas 3-14”, rather than, “4 kobold area 4, 2 ettins area 6, 8 orcs area 9-11, etc.”. The second was that players had raised an army out of the goblins found in the first two levels, and were willing to make alliances with some factions and fight others. So, instead of swarming the players with a horde of monsters, we would swamp the board with multiple hordes of monsters, while the players go after the boss and pray that the enemy doesn’t have fireball
I’d go with the TPK. The logistics sound much easier.
In most situations, I just go for the enemies not taking trumpet lessons, and calling out for help, with nearby enemies arriving over time. It can be a real pain to do, though, so an alternative plan is to just have REALLY long corridors, so that monsters in room #2 have no chance of hearing the monsters in room #1 being horrifically slaughtered.
Big sprawling volcano lairs are good for that sort of thing. Harder to pull off for bandit camps and such though.
Remember all kind of traps? They just won’t rush and fear to open doors.
The corridors are suuuuper long and sound doesn’t carry that well…and the rooms are scattered… and covered in cardboard egg trays to increase sound absorbtion. The Grateful Undead gotta record somewhere.
Storming a recording studio in Shadow Run could honestly be a great sendup for this.
Our heroes had been tasked with a quest most noble – rescuing a Princess from the terrible dungeon of doom. This time however, her peril was very much self-inflicted – the princess in question is a rebelious sort and favors dungeon delving over forms of entertainment more appropriate for a woman of her station, such as embroidering, listening to bards or getting kidnapped by a local dragon. She entered the Dungeon of Doom willingly along with several other misfits and hasn’t been seen since.
Upon entering, our adventurers found that the underground complex was very much deserving of its name. Each room was a deathtrap – sometimes of mechanical or arcane nature, and sometimes of the sort that wants to tear you apart with claws and spears. But something was amiss. The monsters, as ferocious as they were in defending “their” rooms, appeared mortally afraid of leaving them, as if the door posed some barrier for them that’s impossible to cross.
None the less, the party pushed forward, until finally they reached what seemed to be the innermost sanctum of the Dungeon. There they found the Princess and her cohorts, very much alive if a little worse for wear.
Paladin: Rejoice, Princess! We came to rescue you! Also the insignificant bystanders.
Princess: Oh thank the gods! But how were you able to figure out how to escape?
Paladin: Fear not, your Highness, my stealthily inclined colleague that assures me he is not a criminal has disabled all the traps on our way here, while I, along with a little help from my fellows, have eliminated all the beasts guarding you. You are free to go!
Princess: But every time we tried to leave we found new rooms blocking our path, as if the Dungeon itself was constantly rearranging itself, set on presenting us with a new deathtrap. By now I wouldn’t be surprised if all those monsters were trapped here the same way we are! How were you able to find a way out in spite of this?
Paladin: …
Not-a-thief: …shit
Fantasy ripoff of the Cube notwithstanding, this seems like one way to resolve this issue. Simply put a deathtrap between each combat encounter. Evil overlords are after all notorious for the poor treatment of their employees, as one recent page of the Handbook clearly shown. Why aren’t the monsters coming over to help fight you? Because they like their odds of defeating you I their own better than their odds of not getting melted with acid because they stepped on the wrong floor tile.
Heh. “The Cube” was actually my inspiration for this one:
https://adventureaweek.com/shop/pathfinder/pathfinder-adventures/b20-rent-lease-conquest/
I used the shifting rooms for different reasons there, but damned if that isn’t a clever solution to the issue. Good show!
Because the hallways are full of traps, and it’s hard to remember how to get past them all when you’re in a hurry. And your rushing to the rescue might not even be worth it, since the combat could be over seconds after it started.
Best to stick to your post and try to ambush the adventurers when they pass your way.
So are your dungeons generally full of ambushes?
The ones I crawl tend to be, yeah. Honestly, it makes sense — what’s the point of holing up in a dungeon if not to use that home field advantage? Especially if you can get the high ground, and fire down at the party below!
Here’s one way you actually could run it:
So the party could conceivably dispatch the gate guardians without alerting anyone, but let’s assume that they don’t. Now, the entire dungeon is alerted.
What’s going to happen is this: The boss sends out a 1st wave of enemies to take down the intruders. The second wave, however, is tasked with arming the traps (you can’t expect to run an operation with active deathtraps all over the place). The third wave is ordered to rush completion of the Evil Plot Device. The fourth wave was off-rotation, and will take half an hour to be awoken and armored.
The party deals with the first wave, but now they have to push their way through the second wave, who are blocking off passages and laying in wait near the deathtraps.
Meanwhile, the third wave is still busy near the sanctum.
By the time the fourth wave is armed and ready, half of the lair’s defenders are dead, the party is short resting somewhere, and nobody knows where they are. So they split into small teams and scour the lair. This, obviously, leads to their demise at the hands of the party, who can then proceed to the sanctum, where they must face the boss and the third wave, who are possibly in the middle of trying to make a getaway with the macguffin.
So that’s one easy encounter at the gate,
one very hard encounter against a lot of foes,
one close sequence of medium encounters with traps,
another sequence of easy encounters after a rest,
and a climactic encounter at the end.
My gods… It’s plausible!
Because the monsters frequently have illegal or BBEG-frowned-upon gnomefights (like cockfights, but with imprisoned gnomes). Everyone knows they’re happening, but pretend they aren’t. Rhus, nobody is going to act when they hear angry shouting and the sounds of combat. Especially if they owe the bookie money.
Heh. I like the idea of letting the sounds of combat cover for the sounds of combat. Must be why it’s so easy to infiltrate orc camps.
What about a dungeon where the lack of combat sounds is cause for alarm? E.g. a slave arena, where the sounds of combat ceasing is a sign that the slaves are up to something. Or a torture chamber where the torturer is being awfully quiet with his work all of a sudden… Or a rowdy music hall where the singing of bards turns to silence…
Well sure. But inverting the problem doesn’t solve it: You’re either dealing with an overwhelming number of monsters, or you’re trying to explain why the dungeon isn’t on “high alert” after the disruption.
Who is Barb fighting in the background there? Cultist Rayman?
Anyone with Mage Hand / miniature Bigby’s Hand?
You can tell from the glowy green nimbus: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/union-dues
No wonder the goblins are ignoring their boss getting assaulted – after what he did to their union/strike attempt.
Didn’t realize BBEG had a case of Rayman limbs until now, though.
If I’m being honest here, neither did I.
There’s a backstory here! Probably involving BBEG and a humiliating encounter with an Auruumvorax.
“Because your poor rolls nearly got you killed by the incredibly drunk, actually-asleep goblin guard who crit you with a tattered sack of rocks. If the rest DID hear it and run out, you’d be dead.” -Actual answer I gave last time this came up. They graciously chose not to question it. Because sometimes your characters don’t make it to level 2.
But if they don’t have a terrible time, TPK, decide D&D is dumb, and quit the hobby, how will they ever learn?
Exactly! Glad to know SOMEone out there really GETS it!
It ended well, actually, despite the hilariously bad rolls on their end. Once they un-split the party and got nudged into resting to heal up before tackling the rest of the dungeon, they all had a blast~
One explanation that work for some places is to have internally hostile monsters. Team evil doesn’t have to be a big happy family and if it happens from time to time that the Owlbear eats an unlucky goblin that strayed too far into it’s cavern, or that the two ogres pick (presumably less deadly) fight, you would need less muffling to explain them not going to check out a battle.
Similarly evil sacrifice rituals/torture of helpless victims combined with occasional training matches might have made the monsters accustomed to the screams and sound of battle so that they don’t immediately recognize that something is amiss.
Finally big solid doors that give a big solid perception penalty can help.
“Internally hostile monsters” is a trope for a reason. It makes evil villainous, and it makes your dungeon sensible. (Note the banner text from today’s Handbook).
Oh come on. This is a den of evil. If you would check out every time someone tries to advance rank by eliminating the competition in the next room, you’l spend more time there than in your own room. Also it’s better to wait until they kill each other, then finish off the last survivors and loot everything, right?
In short: in an evil mosnter lair, why would sounds of creatures fighting be uncommon?
Fair enough. How about a neutral lair then?
Neutral?
– There’s some fighting in the next room.
– Whatever, dude.
(Also, why would you go and slaughter the denizens of a neutral lair? They are not evil, right?)
Honestly, if the fighting is within earshot I usually have it bring other enemies. I also have enemies who have a sense of self-preservation retreat or surrender. Said retreating enemies may call for backup and put the dungeon on alert.
Tomb of Annihilation spoilers ahoy!
So the Yuan-Ti dungeon before the penultimate eponymous tomb has an alarm gong in the center. If it gets rung the entire facility goes on high alert and starts looking for you. I introduced my enemies to “Dwarven stealth tactics” Which consisted of very conspicuously taking them down before they could put the facility on alert. Once we disabled the gong we systematically removed the temple’s leadership while talking the mooks down. The funny thing aboot Neutral Evil is that it tends to be selfish and disloyal, so getting them to stand down is easy.
I think that the nature of the enemy is important. Oddly enough, it was also a snake cult that served as my standout “enemies respond intelligently” dungeon. It was level 6 of Dragon’s Delver, the Monte Cook megadungeon I like to talk about. Patrols had war horns to signal for backup “on the second round of combat,” and Cook had detailed a few “this room’s occupants arrive in X rounds” instructions to keep the difficulty but stagger the arrival of the baddies.
In my mind, “intelligent dungeons” are prime for “the party has been captured” scenarios or similar “avoid the TPK” setups. If you’re going to run one, it pays to have a few of those contingencies in your back pocket.
Unintelligent undead are a great solution to this problem. They generally only perform their assigned task or wander aimlessly, so as long as they don’t see you, they’ll totally ignore the sounds of battle no matter how close it is.
Unintelligent anything works just fine. Ambush predators like ropers are also a good candidate for solving this problem and separating one room from the next.
These two scenerios assume the dungeon is a static entity. If you attack at 5 am or 5 pm same number of monsters are in the same rooms always, so you get questions about why the monsters down the hall didn’t attack when they heard their friends getting axed. Back in the second edition the DM guide had a little pointer about sketching out a quick dungeon schedule. Something really simple that tells me what’s happening generally in the morning, afternoon, evening and night. Then throwing in an NPC who tells the party about the importance of scouting for intelligence. If the party heeds the advice they’ll have a good idea about the best time to attack (in my dungeons it was typically in the middle morning when hunting parties were out and the nightwatch was sleeping). So you get a much more sparcely populated dungeon with empty rooms adjacent to populated rooms. No body from the next room comes to help because there’s no one there. Sometimes you will get monsters in the next room and they come to help but after that it’s empty for 3-4 rooms.
I also emphasize to PCs that they are basically breaking and entering someone’s home. So how they go about dispatching the monsters is important. Arrows and sneak stabbing will go a long way toward keeping your cover and letting you fight the monsters on your terms. If the paladin starts by casting thunderwave and the druid goes dinosaur, then all bets are off, everyone is coming your way. So party personality is also important.
The monsters living in a dog-eat-dog society all want to be the one to kill the party and get a reward from the master so they generally hold off asking for help until they are certain to lose, when they are down to one or two allies. The parties should know to watch for runners when it looks like they are about to win.
The last group I DM’d scouted the dungeon and decided to to attack a dungeon at about 10 pm after they saw every last monster and lieutenant walk in the front door for the night. Then they went to the front gate and started to try to smash it with swords and hammers.
They woke up every monster in the dungeon who fought them at the front door. They also woke up every resident of a nearby town who came to watch and some to riot. It was a clustefuck of epic proportions and one PC died, and several townspeople. After that the townspeople weren’t too keen on the party trying to base themselves there.
This mess is also critical in allowing your rogue types to feel useful. Setting up the ambush is a big damn deal for some archetypes, so I’m sure you’ll have a ready ally if you point out to the group that “your warrior’s training tells you that not running in face first might be a good idea.”
Ran Master of the Fallen Fortress for my players, the main two sets of encounters are separated by 2 floors, a couple of doors, and about 6 feet of stone. So, I figured it’d be about a DC10 perception check to hear the combat going on down there. The guards in the barracks two floors above rolled an 8 on the die with a -1 modifier. There could have been reinforcements pdq, but even the baddies suffer from ill-timed bad rolls.
Well hey, there’s no substitute for a well timed perception oppsie :
The last dungeon I did I certainly tried to bring down all the enemies at once on my hapless players. But through a combination of stealthy surprise rounds and sleep spells, they managed to prevent any of the mooks from standing long enough to draw their ally-summoning horns. Luckily the crone who ran the volcano-lair could see the future and organized a great big beat-em-up ambush halfway through, but the first part of the dungeon was much less tense than it could have been.
Always nice when the stealth play actually works. Smart players you’ve got there!
You know that beautiful maps that would make Tolkien blush? That pieces of cartographic dungeoning craftsmanship that are great and just with seeing them you can see your pc crawling in them defeating the forces of evil?
Well, we don’t use them that much. Since in many cases, at least in my group, we use or own settings and “dungeons”, many if which by the way aren’t even dungeons, we take our time to make our own maps. Or at least that is what the DM in our group does if he know what is good for him. Therefor in many case we use a rooms design more that a dungeon. For example we make that feast hall where we kill some vampires, we move to the dorms where a couple of ghost needs help to defeat their corpses and get release, and that. But that are just rooms, yeah, we do corridors but not design each part of the dungeon like we were architecture students. In fact, lets say that the DM say that the party is in a corridor, he make us do an spot check for traps, maybe there are traps that we need to deactivate, in which case we don’t even bother with a map and we just roll for Disarm Traps or Dodge and damage, or there is a combat encounter and our DM pulls out a map. As a rule of thumb, combat=map non-combat=non-map.
That is what we do, at least in my group. But in that game Warframe, and i am not doing it publicity, it’s just that it’s a good example, the first example is actually what happens in the game. In the Grineer and Corpus levels at least, sneaking doesn’t work with the Infected, once they saw you each of them know where you are, and the Corrupted in the Void more or less are the each of them a security measure, so it can happens that when a Grineer or Corpus see you they run to the nearest console and try to trigger an alarm. When that happens more enemies come running to their death, until you stop the alarm by hacking the console. This can be problematic when you are in a spot when the enemies can shoot you or you need to catch a capture target and minions keep coming for you, or when you do Spy missions, in that case the data you are searching for can be destroyed which is worst than enemies swarming you. Still i dare to say that in general more enemies isn’t that a big problem if you can manage them. The game usually send mobs and mobs of minions to try, and miserably fail, to slow a Tenno, so swarming minions, with the right gear or a full energy bar, isn’t that problematic. But Warframe is a computer game, in a TTRpg you need to do much of the math a computer can do for you and since every necromancer knows more heads, or shoulders in case of some active defunct, isn’t always better. But still that little addition is, at least for me, a welcome addition that makes the game more real and interesting. Even in many games like Skyrim and Mass Effect you can shoot everything in a room without the minions next door knowing it. Also since in Warframe you need to do a little hacking mini-game, while you are being shoot, is a funny decision to choose between shooting the mooks or going to the console to stop the incoming reinforcements, that tor just shoot the idiot who tries to trigger the alarm instead of running for his life when he sees a Tenno. A good addition that makes you made decisions in a split second, a funny mini-game that thanks to the Nightwave system can be rewarding, and touch of reality that many real games ignore, but not one that many games can have 🙂
My DM does not make his monsters deaf.
We frequently have six-hour running battles throughout entire dungeons.
Is this your preferred way to play it?
For the most part, my dungeon denizens will come investigate any significant disturbances.
In most of my previous dungeons, the party avoided pulling too much aggro because they were largely trying to be sneaky and didn’t use any loud spells. Additionally, the dungeons were largely manned by things like undead (who single-mindedly focus on murdering intruders), wild creatures (who don’t usually call for reinforcements beyond any pack they naturally travel with), or goblins (who aren’t all that big on the initiative unless something is yelling at them).
Currently, however, my group is storming a firenewt stronghold, and not only did reinforcements show up, but the high priest came out demanding to know what the ruckus was and proceeded to take charge of the defense and start launching Fireballs.
There’s only two groups of enemies currently in that stronghold that have not yet engaged the party — one set of guards at the other entrance to the place that have been dutifully standing guard (and are probably going to get called away from their posts once the party gets the high priest well and truly on the ropes), and the elite guards watching the hatchery, who will not abandon their posts for any reason.
Of course, that doesn’t include the enemies outside the stronghold: another squad of firenewts (currently keeping an eye on the slaves that are digging a passage into the nearby dwarven ruins), and the firenewt cavalry patrol (who have been alerted with a flare and will arrive within the next hour or so).
Is there serious threat of a TPK here?
Potentially, if things go horribly wrong. I think they should be able to make an escape so long as they can finish off the high priest and then flee before the patrol returns. It helps that their original characters (the ones they were coming to rescue) just managed to free themselves and are still fairly fresh.
My monsters are not deaf. My players need to either find a way to handle the swarm, create a choke point, kill creatures before backup arrives, or run.
Well, there are two other situations:
1) The dungeon is actually a test of some sort
2) The dungeon is super massive and understaffed (Not hearing battle several hundred feet away is rather plausible)
Granted, I don’t do many dungeons either.
Honestly considering the amount of things PCs don’t see or hear or smell unless their players specify they’re actually looking for it (despite no actual reason to ever look for said things until suddenly they’re a problem now) I just assume every creature in the worlds of D&D has very dimmed passive senses or have a very bad case of “out of sight, out of mind”. ;P
Sure, there’s such things as Passive Perception, but even when the GM doesn’t forget/fail to care this is a thing, only people who specialize in Perception tend to ever succeed at those. Which to me just says those are PCs that realize to be extra attentive to things.
But in all honestly, I just…. don’t see a reason to treat dungeons “realistically”. Just go whatever works for the setting/group. Because the very concept of dungeons (in the D&D sense) doesn’t make any sense to begin with.
(Admittedly sometimes your “dungeon” is in a more realistic location like a castle or a cave or a sewer.)
As a designer, I tend to use long hallways and thick walls. I do cave systems rather than caves with doors. In castles, thick walls become both a protection vs divination magic and support for the upper floors. Finally, I take a page from Paizo. Of course the BBEG doesn’t just walk out cause you triggered the alarm in room one. He takes a few turns to buff first.
In game, I did have a serious problem with this exact thing. It was Rise of the Runelords, and my Players were assaulting Thistletop, the home of the goblins in the first section. Thistletop is effectively two separate sections, with a large hedgy area filled with thorns and venomous plants before you get to the cave system proper. There are goblins in the thorns, and one of them is particularly sneaky and actively alerts the main camp in his tactics block with a pretty good method. So of course my players attacked him, failed to kill him before he retreated and he got off his message. Not a big problem I think to myself, it just makes stealth nearly impossible cause everyone is expecting enemies and this party doesn’t even have a rogue. But then my players decided after the Thorny section to camp and rest for spells and healing. In the middle of the thorns. Like, they can see the bridge leading to the rest of the dungeon from their camp site. The goblins on the walls are practically watching them set up camp with confused expressions.
So I combed through the module, plucked a few of the jokey “Goblins being Goblins” encounters that don’t play out comedically if the fortress is on alert anyway, and attacked them in the middle of the night. I considered pulling one of the BBEG’s lieutenants, but I was afraid of murdering them all at level 3.
And not the same thing, but it happened again at Fort Rannick. They came to a split in the Fort while they were storming, they could go upstairs or downstairs. They went upstairs. I glanced at who was downstairs and how their tactics say if too much of a ruckus is raised they retreat to their boss’s side, and did just that. Only, that character turned out to have a really good set of abilities for escape, and ended up escaping that encounter when the party focused their fire on her boss. Then she escaped the death of That guy’s boss. Finally I had her attempt to hit the PCs where they lived by charming and luring various people of Sandpoint into dangerous situations designed to try and make them split the party. It kinda worked, and she eventually was dealt with.
A simple, more-friendly explanation for mega dungeons could be that with all the various monster types/factions the ogres don’t care when goblins and kobolds are “fighting over the remote again”.
For me, I don’t usually run large dungeons. When I do, the main enemy is usually traps and riddles not monsters. Monsters, to avoid this problem, are seperated by one or two stone floors, or doing something noisy like combat training. Often my “dungeons” are two or three rooms of one fight and one puzzle in an old mine or crypt.
If I’m doing a big dungeon, it’s usually for a one shot or something where everyone knows not to question weird stuff.
Because the party poisoned the food supply to this place beforehand and Everyone and their brother is at ye olde cesspit with a line regretting eating that delicious looking steak served last night.
I remember one castle infiltration that went south due to three main factors. One, one of the NPC rangers was a traitor. Two, one of the players rushed into the fortress through a little hole in the wall while the hunter (channelling earth) escorted the rest of the party in one by one, preventing a coordinated…anything.
Three, I emptied the fortress at them. Not completely (the boss ogres stayed put), not immediately (I added a couple of ogres every round), but enough. And I didn’t suspect a thing until the bodies started hitting the floor.
The hunter knew entangle and could walk through the tangles unimpeded, so he survived, along with his giant tiger companion and the one PC who hadn’t bled out by the time he reached him. Everyone else died, one way or another.
Oh, I was the DM. That’s why what I expected influenced the outcome.
Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three ways of dealing with this issue, which can conveniently be combined.
1: Many dungeons aren’t ruled by a single force, but instead have multiple independent (and possibly hostile) factions. The kobolds that lair in the west wing of level 1 are no friends to the ogres in the central atrium, and so won’t respond to the ogres’ battlecries.
Unless they were already planning to launch an attack, only a small fraction of the enemy troops will be equipped and ready for battle. When the alarm is raised, the rest of the troops will have to get their armor and weapons on, fall into order, get the owlbear goals so they can direct the thing instead of having it eat them, etc. And even then, they don’t automatically know where the party is at all times, so they probably send guard contingents to protect the critical points and split the rest into several fast-reaction forces that start searching the dungeon for the heroes. And even if one of those forces finds the heroes, it’ll take at least a few minutes for the other reaction forces to hear the noises and make their way across the dungeon. And the fixed-position guard detachments are probably under orders not to leave their posts, just in case the adventurers try to use the attack as a diversion to sneak a rogue into the library or the treasure vaults or something.
And for at least some adventures, you could lean into this dynamic. The party has to move stealthily, evading guard patrols whenever possible and making quick and silent takedowns, because if the alarm is raised they will face forces they can’t hope to match. And then if the alarm does get raised, the party now has to move quickly, trying to evade the reaction forces now searching for them. Secret passages, invisibility, and other stealth options become particularly valuable with this dynamic.
My favorite example of this was Level 6 of the megadungeon I’m running. It’s the cultist level, and it does indeed have a complex web of “if they attack this room then it draws these guys into play X rounds later” going on. It doesn’t make perfect sense, because a single war horn blast ought to raise everybody to arms (think about how long it would take PCs to respond to an attack on their castle). But I think that even gesturing at a dynamic response like you suggest is enough for purposes of verisimilitude.