Helpful advice in a good campaign? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Helpful advice in a good campaign? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Zarnof
07-02-04, 04:08 PM I had three questions for you guys, and I'll give a little back story to aid in more accurate responses. However, I wanted to preface this thread with the following statement: I like my campaign. In light of the frequent negativity and unhappiness people show with their DM's, I'm not posting to posit significant complaints, or get people on my side or against my DM, or ask advice on when or if I should quit. I have a lot of fun playing, I have a great group with a good campaign, and I just am curious about the perspective of other experienced gamers on some things.

OK, I recently moved to a new city, with a certain amount of trepidation in getting a new group, as I just started playing in college, and in the past 7 years I have only ever really played with that group. They're a great bunch, with a great DM, and concentrated a lot on the whole role-playing aspect of D&D. By this I mean I only played two campaigns, and in the two campaigns we played, we might go like 3 or 4 months without a combat (or we might go a session with 2 combats, it really depended on where the story was). A lot of emphasis on character development and personality, and pretty few magic items, with several of the few items we had being tailored for our characters and not exceedingly "powerful," and the occasional +2 ring of protection or so.

I give you this quick history to show what my only roleplaying roots are, and why I had a bit of trepidation; clearly, there's no norm in D&D, everyone will play differently, but what I was used to is probably a bit slower-paced than most, and I worried about the social aptitude of a completely different group, and how into the whole hack n' slash thing they were. I met a group, and they are really cool guys, and quickly becoming friend out of D&D as well. The DM is also good, and the campaign is fun. It's a bit more dungeon-crawly, lots-of-fighting than I'm used to, but it's fun, and the characters of others in the group are three-dimensional and well fleshed. I've been part of the campaign for about a month and a half, and the campaign has lasted three sessions longer than that, I believe.

Anyway, the party was a monk, paladin, and barbarian, so needing a rogue and arcane caster, I decided to play a rogue who eventually went wizard, then arcane trickster, since the class has always appealed to me. I just got my wizard levels in last week's session (3 rogue/2wizard), and in this week's session we had our first combat. To make a long combat short for you guys, we were ambushed while we slept, by an 8th level rogue, 8th level fighter, 8th level bard. The party ranges in level from 5th to 6th. Anyway, as people slowly awoke, the bard had gone down due to some luch, and some people were attacking the rogue in camp, and I saw a guy with pluncking the camp with a bow, who I went after and later found out was the fighter. Anyway, I cast a shield on my person, he drew a sword, everyone else was occupied in the camp or not awake yet, I was scared, I cast a ray of enfeeblement, hit, rolled 6, did 8 str damage (I was given a ring, that, among other things, treats my caster level as +1). He is still up and going strong, I'm worried, cast another ray, lucky me, another 6, he's down 16 str. I am now largely out of spells, he's still up and swinging his pretty heavy sword, blah blah blah. He drinks some potion and heals 8, we eventually defeat him, etc. All three bandits are taken down, and stabilized, we tie them up and I put them in MW manacles, we take their wagons and go to take them to jail in a city we are headed to. We stop in a town along the way, wyverns attack and, one grabs the manacled prisoners, the rogue slips out and escapes as the wyvern takes off with the bard and fighter. Anyway, through the combat the rogue, who has all taken from him but his shirt and pants, escapes and flees the town, with about 3 HP. We won the fight, search the town, now way to find him, blah blah blah, I've told everything that's really relevant.

That was the backstory, now the questions:

1. OK, I don't know if ray of enfeeblement is one of those spells you guys discuss a lot as being unfair or broken or wahtever, but I've never messed around with it before or even thought much about it, and it worked way better than I thought it would. On one hand, it seems too good to have a character be felled by 2 first level spells, and so I can completely understand the DM not wanting some putz rogue wizard to just chump something 3 CR's above him with a few lucky 6's, and the desire to not let that happen, but the fact that the fighter, who was just a human and had no str items on him, and so was weighing in with an 18, or possibly 20 str AT MOST, which is doubtful, was still able to stand with his sword, equipment, and armor is a little suspect to me, since he probably had a 1 or 2 str. Also, I know there's a potion out there than can remove all ability damage from one source, but the DM didn't know it existed, and the fighter certainly didn't have it on his equipment list; the DM just said "Well, he grabs a potion a (rolls a d8) heals 8 points of ability damage." I'm not super ****** or anything, and like I say, I can completely understand not wanting a challenging guy to be a chump, but his way of dealing with it seemed a bit flustered and heavy-handed. After all this, my question, FINALLY, is: do you think I should mention that it seemed a little heavy-handed, or maybe I should stop casting ray of enfeeblement, or do you think I shouldn't have such a stick up my rear and just let it slide and deal with it?

2. When the rogue escaped, it was one of those things where the DM seemed to just sort of get it in his head the rogue was going to escape and be annoying, and NOTHING, EVER was going to stop it because the DM deemed it so. Escape artist roll to escape those ropes and MW manacles? Nope, not one, he just deemed the rogue was high enough to do it, and high enough to disarm the alarm spell I put on the manacles, without a roll or consideration he had no tools. No search roll was close to good enough to find him in the town; like smoke, he just sort of instantly disappeared, while the DM chuckled that he would hate us and get us sooner or later. DM just sort of making an arbitrary decision and blocking all attemptes is a pet peeve of mine, and really irks me; maybe he came up with a really cool plot hook in the future, and decided to use it, it just bothered me a lot at the time. So my question is essentially the same as the first: find a friendly way to talk to him about it, which is pretty hard to do with a buddy and say "Yeah, it was annoying how that rogue was Stealthy Incarnate and just sort of got away, or just let it slide and give the benefit of the doubt?

3. Finally, the group is really laid back, and not greedy at all... no one wants money, and no one really wants magic items. The monk wants nothing, and the paladin turns everything into his order or charities, and the barbarian is happy with his MW axe. I don't want too much, but I feel greedy in comparison, because, being delicate, I want a few things to make my AC better, and other things just to make me competitive as a character. I feel greedy in comparison though, and that makes me feel bad. Also, the other players in the gorup, while they know the rules and such fairly well, they are pretty laizzez-faire when it comes to a lot of rules, and don't know too many intricacies. "Oh, you dealt 36 points of damage? OK, that's a lot, you know him to the floor." When I point out that no, that's not exactly how it works, when you deal 36 points of damage you do just that, and if you want to knock him to the floor, then you make a trip attack, which has penalties unless you have the proper feats, and if you just allow someone to be knocked to the floor arbitrarily, it takes aay from the value of these feats, they all sort of nod, and shrug, and look to me in the future for more rules and such, but in the meantime I am bogging down fast moving combat, and I feel like a rules lawyer, which I really dislike feeling like. So, final question: continue to tell them the rules, because they seem OK with knowing more but I risk being one of those know-it-alls, or just keep it to myself.

OK, that's it. If I gave the impression of bad DMing, than it's a bad image, because this has a good story and great, well-acted NPC's and a nice world and good DMing on the whole, but I was a bit irked, and wanted to get your opinions. Thanks!
Mockingbird
07-02-04, 05:26 PM One thing about when 3.0 came out, it specifically laid out a fairly consistent set of rules for governing all aspects of play. Where in earlier editions many things were simply left for the dm to decide how something should happen. Sounds like they still playing like in older editions while using the new rules set where many of the things once decided on a whim are laid out in the books.

I see how that could be a little frustrating for you when you come into the game using the new rules as laid out in the books and they are just "winging it". It sounds from what you said they are receptive to learning more about the rules, just be careful not to overdo it. If they ask you about how a situation is handled that's one thing, but if you always interrupting the flow of the game, even well meaning, they might get tired of it quick. Keep working at educating them on the rules, but make a conscious effort to not correct everything that comes up. If you think you're being over rules-lawyerish and interrupting the game too often, then you probably are. Don't stop, just tone it back.

I'd let drop the matter of the rogue escaping. If it's something the dm did all the time, I'd definitely bring it up cause that can get annoying, but I have no problem with every now and then doing something like this to keep a plot hook going or something.

I don't know what to tell you about the ray of enfeeblement and the fighter using that potion. It'd be nice if the dm would've just taken his licks and learned not every fight goes as he plans.

Have you thought of dm'ing a game with this group? Maybe you could tell them you'd like to run a campaign too. Switch game sessions every other time or something.

Either way, sounds like you having fun in the group. Good gaming!
Stuntman
07-02-04, 05:36 PM 1. Ray of enfeeblement does not do ability damage. It gives an ability penalty which means it does not stack. Two ray of enfeeblement effects do not stack. You just take the bigger effect. It's like bull's strength. Two bull's strength does not stack. You only get +4 to Str, not +8.

2. Personally, I would hate this as a player and I do not do this as a DM. If I put an NPC in that I want to be recurring, I do make it hard for the party to kill or capture him, but if the party is successful, they should be justly rewarded. I'll just alter the course of event due to the fact that the NPC is no longer active.

I do understand that some DM's do such things to enhance the story. If the other players are OK with this and everyone is still having fun because of the recurring character, then that's fine. Just go with it.

3. You say that the group is rather laid back with regard to following the rules. I know personally, I like to follow the rules strictly, but other people may not. The DM is probably just wanting to add a bit of flavour to the combat and said the big hit had some other effects. If everyone is still having fun, I wouldn't worry about it.

The laid back nature of the group probably led to the NPC escaping so easily. If it helps the story along and everyone is still having fun, then I wouldn't worry.

As for being greedy, that's OK. There's no reason why one PC can't be more greedy than another. If you are concerned of the other players' perception of you, I'd ask their opinion. I wouldn't blame you for trying to get a better AC considering your group plays more of a dungeon craw type of game that you are used to.
Drone23
07-03-04, 03:41 PM First: I've had the villain-as-chump thing happen to me too. I design this really nasty dwarven wizard, lots of nasty spells (disintegrate, etc.), and plenty of minions (dwarven fighters and caryatid columns). I forgot the cleric/wizard/mystic theurge PC had a ring of spell storing with antimagic field still in it. Long story short, dwarven fighter uses the ring, then runs up on the wizard with his boots of speed and attacks, the monk follows, uses Improved Trip, knocks the wizard down, and he never gets back up. All that work.:mad:

It happens. It's part of being a DM. Yours should just accept the fact that his players will get the better of his creations sometimes. It isn't player vs. DM. If you guys are having a good time, then he should be having a good time. And his job is make sure you do.

Second: I agree with you. That was very heavy-handed.

Third: Don't feel bad. Everyone is roleplaying their character. You're just roleplaying yours. I like the fact that the paladin is donating his treasure to his temple and good causes. I played a cleric once who did the same thing (widows and orphans funds mostly) and it drove the other players nuts! "Spend it on some new armor! You've had that same suit of chainmail since 2nd-level!" "Other people are more needy than me...and more deserving."
Just go with the flow. If that's the way they want to run their combats, more storytelling than number-crunching then that's fine. It's just their style.
cheesegrater
07-03-04, 04:05 PM A few points on the Rogue's escape.

1) It sounds like there was plenty of time to 'take 20' on an escape artist check. With a +15 on an escape artist check (and no tools required), no problem. And a +15 is attainable for a 8th level rogue.

2) I don't think the standard 'Alarm' spell would work on manacles the way you seem to think it does. Maybe you have some sort of a custom spell, but 'Alarm' is for casting on an area, not an object.

3) The 'Search' skill is for searching a specific, small area (a 5 x 5 square). Looking for a Rogue who is blending into a town or city would involve spot checks and probably gather information checks. And that's assuming he didn't just leave town.
Zarnof
07-04-04, 07:10 PM Thanks a lot for the perspective, guys.

A note to cheesegrater: most of what you say is quite true, and some of what I said was either simplified because of time-restraints while writing, or required a little more info because of custom campaign things. As to the take 20 thing, that's normally quite true, but the DM doesn't like the whole taking 20 rule, and disallows it of the PC's. With that in mind, it normally seems only fair to prevent NPC's from doing it. However, if it applied to him, I guess it applies to me, so if I get tied up in the future, I guess I'll be able to automatically escape given a bit of time, so not a huge deal. ANd you're right, the alarm spell is normally area of effect, but he liked the idea of making it able to be put on objects, for NPC's as well as PC's, which is where that came from. And the search roll was one of several rolls that were made, includung spots and gather informations, to try and locate him around the town in the first few minutes after hes escaped, to try and prevent him from leaving the town and fleeing into the wilderness. I wouldn't have had much problem if there had been opposed rolls or something, but we rolled pretty high, the DM rolled nothing, and the rogue was gone into thin air. The search roll was pretty much just a quick thing to try and see if there were any easy footprints to find, ala what you have to do when you don't have someone with the track feat: hope you get lucky and find some DC 10 footprints. Most of the rest of the search was spot, listen, and gather info, to find that boots, jewels, and a horse had been stolen in about 5-15 minutes around the town, with no one seeing a thing, including us.

Anyway, the more time that goes on, the less this stuff bothers me anyway, and it wasn't bothering me all THAT much to begin with. The rogue got away, it was arbitrary, but big deal, he'll probably be a fun villain later. I don't think the bringing up of rules has bothered anyone much yet, but it won't kill me to bite my tongue a little bit more every session for the purpose of flow. And the ray of enfeeblement spell is good to know: I didn't know it worked sort of like a reverse enhancement bonus, thought it was temporary ability damage and could stack. That makes it less potentially over-powered.
Thermanshs
07-04-04, 08:00 PM Answer to 1: the DM clearly cheated on you.
<< 2: the DM railroaded and likely cheated on you
<< 3: the rules balance the game and also make it more real.Banning them just to keep things flow has its + and - .
Steelwill
07-05-04, 12:49 AM Ok:

1. Stuntman hits this on the head in the 3rd post. The only thing I would add is that you already mentioned the group's laissez-faire attitude about the rules, so its likely your DM did not arbitrate this situation per the rules correctly either.

2. This can be a DM's option (truly as anything can) but this should not be overused, because it kills world consistancy when one set of rules works one day, then not the next. Once in a great while something like the Rogue getting away despite all your precautions can be used, but generally this is an uncreative tactic that causes more harm than good.

3. Your group seems to be very lax with the rules, what you have to decide is if you either enjoy the group enough to deal with it as it is, elect to make it an issue with the group, or find another group that follows the rules more closely. Personally it drives me nuts when the rules are overlooked, because I both like the 3.5 ruleset and have put in the time to learn them. This is why I find myself running most campaigns I am involved in. My 2 cents, hope it helps.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Zarnof 07-02-04, 04:08 PM	I had three questions for you guys, and I'll give a little back story to aid in more accurate responses. However, I wanted to preface this thread with the following statement: I like my campaign. In light of the frequent negativity and unhappiness people show with their DM's, I'm not posting to posit significant complaints, or get people on my side or against my DM, or ask advice on when or if I should quit. I have a lot of fun playing, I have a great group with a good campaign, and I just am curious about the perspective of other experienced gamers on some things. OK, I recently moved to a new city, with a certain amount of trepidation in getting a new group, as I just started playing in college, and in the past 7 years I have only ever really played with that group. They're a great bunch, with a great DM, and concentrated a lot on the whole role-playing aspect of D&D. By this I mean I only played two campaigns, and in the two campaigns we played, we might go like 3 or 4 months without a combat (or we might go a session with 2 combats, it really depended on where the story was). A lot of emphasis on character development and personality, and pretty few magic items, with several of the few items we had being tailored for our characters and not exceedingly "powerful," and the occasional +2 ring of protection or so. I give you this quick history to show what my only roleplaying roots are, and why I had a bit of trepidation; clearly, there's no norm in D&D, everyone will play differently, but what I was used to is probably a bit slower-paced than most, and I worried about the social aptitude of a completely different group, and how into the whole hack n' slash thing they were. I met a group, and they are really cool guys, and quickly becoming friend out of D&D as well. The DM is also good, and the campaign is fun. It's a bit more dungeon-crawly, lots-of-fighting than I'm used to, but it's fun, and the characters of others in the group are three-dimensional and well fleshed. I've been part of the campaign for about a month and a half, and the campaign has lasted three sessions longer than that, I believe. Anyway, the party was a monk, paladin, and barbarian, so needing a rogue and arcane caster, I decided to play a rogue who eventually went wizard, then arcane trickster, since the class has always appealed to me. I just got my wizard levels in last week's session (3 rogue/2wizard), and in this week's session we had our first combat. To make a long combat short for you guys, we were ambushed while we slept, by an 8th level rogue, 8th level fighter, 8th level bard. The party ranges in level from 5th to 6th. Anyway, as people slowly awoke, the bard had gone down due to some luch, and some people were attacking the rogue in camp, and I saw a guy with pluncking the camp with a bow, who I went after and later found out was the fighter. Anyway, I cast a shield on my person, he drew a sword, everyone else was occupied in the camp or not awake yet, I was scared, I cast a ray of enfeeblement, hit, rolled 6, did 8 str damage (I was given a ring, that, among other things, treats my caster level as +1). He is still up and going strong, I'm worried, cast another ray, lucky me, another 6, he's down 16 str. I am now largely out of spells, he's still up and swinging his pretty heavy sword, blah blah blah. He drinks some potion and heals 8, we eventually defeat him, etc. All three bandits are taken down, and stabilized, we tie them up and I put them in MW manacles, we take their wagons and go to take them to jail in a city we are headed to. We stop in a town along the way, wyverns attack and, one grabs the manacled prisoners, the rogue slips out and escapes as the wyvern takes off with the bard and fighter. Anyway, through the combat the rogue, who has all taken from him but his shirt and pants, escapes and flees the town, with about 3 HP. We won the fight, search the town, now way to find him, blah blah blah, I've told everything that's really relevant. That was the backstory, now the questions: 1. OK, I don't know if ray of enfeeblement is one of those spells you guys discuss a lot as being unfair or broken or wahtever, but I've never messed around with it before or even thought much about it, and it worked way better than I thought it would. On one hand, it seems too good to have a character be felled by 2 first level spells, and so I can completely understand the DM not wanting some putz rogue wizard to just chump something 3 CR's above him with a few lucky 6's, and the desire to not let that happen, but the fact that the fighter, who was just a human and had no str items on him, and so was weighing in with an 18, or possibly 20 str AT MOST, which is doubtful, was still able to stand with his sword, equipment, and armor is a little suspect to me, since he probably had a 1 or 2 str. Also, I know there's a potion out there than can remove all ability damage from one source, but the DM didn't know it existed, and the fighter certainly didn't have it on his equipment list; the DM just said "Well, he grabs a potion a (rolls a d8) heals 8 points of ability damage." I'm not super ****** or anything, and like I say, I can completely understand not wanting a challenging guy to be a chump, but his way of dealing with it seemed a bit flustered and heavy-handed. After all this, my question, FINALLY, is: do you think I should mention that it seemed a little heavy-handed, or maybe I should stop casting ray of enfeeblement, or do you think I shouldn't have such a stick up my rear and just let it slide and deal with it? 2. When the rogue escaped, it was one of those things where the DM seemed to just sort of get it in his head the rogue was going to escape and be annoying, and NOTHING, EVER was going to stop it because the DM deemed it so. Escape artist roll to escape those ropes and MW manacles? Nope, not one, he just deemed the rogue was high enough to do it, and high enough to disarm the alarm spell I put on the manacles, without a roll or consideration he had no tools. No search roll was close to good enough to find him in the town; like smoke, he just sort of instantly disappeared, while the DM chuckled that he would hate us and get us sooner or later. DM just sort of making an arbitrary decision and blocking all attemptes is a pet peeve of mine, and really irks me; maybe he came up with a really cool plot hook in the future, and decided to use it, it just bothered me a lot at the time. So my question is essentially the same as the first: find a friendly way to talk to him about it, which is pretty hard to do with a buddy and say "Yeah, it was annoying how that rogue was Stealthy Incarnate and just sort of got away, or just let it slide and give the benefit of the doubt? 3. Finally, the group is really laid back, and not greedy at all... no one wants money, and no one really wants magic items. The monk wants nothing, and the paladin turns everything into his order or charities, and the barbarian is happy with his MW axe. I don't want too much, but I feel greedy in comparison, because, being delicate, I want a few things to make my AC better, and other things just to make me competitive as a character. I feel greedy in comparison though, and that makes me feel bad. Also, the other players in the gorup, while they know the rules and such fairly well, they are pretty laizzez-faire when it comes to a lot of rules, and don't know too many intricacies. "Oh, you dealt 36 points of damage? OK, that's a lot, you know him to the floor." When I point out that no, that's not exactly how it works, when you deal 36 points of damage you do just that, and if you want to knock him to the floor, then you make a trip attack, which has penalties unless you have the proper feats, and if you just allow someone to be knocked to the floor arbitrarily, it takes aay from the value of these feats, they all sort of nod, and shrug, and look to me in the future for more rules and such, but in the meantime I am bogging down fast moving combat, and I feel like a rules lawyer, which I really dislike feeling like. So, final question: continue to tell them the rules, because they seem OK with knowing more but I risk being one of those know-it-alls, or just keep it to myself. OK, that's it. If I gave the impression of bad DMing, than it's a bad image, because this has a good story and great, well-acted NPC's and a nice world and good DMing on the whole, but I was a bit irked, and wanted to get your opinions. Thanks!
Mockingbird 07-02-04, 05:26 PM	One thing about when 3.0 came out, it specifically laid out a fairly consistent set of rules for governing all aspects of play. Where in earlier editions many things were simply left for the dm to decide how something should happen. Sounds like they still playing like in older editions while using the new rules set where many of the things once decided on a whim are laid out in the books. I see how that could be a little frustrating for you when you come into the game using the new rules as laid out in the books and they are just "winging it". It sounds from what you said they are receptive to learning more about the rules, just be careful not to overdo it. If they ask you about how a situation is handled that's one thing, but if you always interrupting the flow of the game, even well meaning, they might get tired of it quick. Keep working at educating them on the rules, but make a conscious effort to not correct everything that comes up. If you think you're being over rules-lawyerish and interrupting the game too often, then you probably are. Don't stop, just tone it back. I'd let drop the matter of the rogue escaping. If it's something the dm did all the time, I'd definitely bring it up cause that can get annoying, but I have no problem with every now and then doing something like this to keep a plot hook going or something. I don't know what to tell you about the ray of enfeeblement and the fighter using that potion. It'd be nice if the dm would've just taken his licks and learned not every fight goes as he plans. Have you thought of dm'ing a game with this group? Maybe you could tell them you'd like to run a campaign too. Switch game sessions every other time or something. Either way, sounds like you having fun in the group. Good gaming!
Stuntman 07-02-04, 05:36 PM	1. Ray of enfeeblement does not do ability damage. It gives an ability penalty which means it does not stack. Two ray of enfeeblement effects do not stack. You just take the bigger effect. It's like bull's strength. Two bull's strength does not stack. You only get +4 to Str, not +8. 2. Personally, I would hate this as a player and I do not do this as a DM. If I put an NPC in that I want to be recurring, I do make it hard for the party to kill or capture him, but if the party is successful, they should be justly rewarded. I'll just alter the course of event due to the fact that the NPC is no longer active. I do understand that some DM's do such things to enhance the story. If the other players are OK with this and everyone is still having fun because of the recurring character, then that's fine. Just go with it. 3. You say that the group is rather laid back with regard to following the rules. I know personally, I like to follow the rules strictly, but other people may not. The DM is probably just wanting to add a bit of flavour to the combat and said the big hit had some other effects. If everyone is still having fun, I wouldn't worry about it. The laid back nature of the group probably led to the NPC escaping so easily. If it helps the story along and everyone is still having fun, then I wouldn't worry. As for being greedy, that's OK. There's no reason why one PC can't be more greedy than another. If you are concerned of the other players' perception of you, I'd ask their opinion. I wouldn't blame you for trying to get a better AC considering your group plays more of a dungeon craw type of game that you are used to.
Drone23 07-03-04, 03:41 PM	First: I've had the villain-as-chump thing happen to me too. I design this really nasty dwarven wizard, lots of nasty spells (disintegrate, etc.), and plenty of minions (dwarven fighters and caryatid columns). I forgot the cleric/wizard/mystic theurge PC had a ring of spell storing with antimagic field still in it. Long story short, dwarven fighter uses the ring, then runs up on the wizard with his boots of speed and attacks, the monk follows, uses Improved Trip, knocks the wizard down, and he never gets back up. All that work.:mad: It happens. It's part of being a DM. Yours should just accept the fact that his players will get the better of his creations sometimes. It isn't player vs. DM. If you guys are having a good time, then he should be having a good time. And his job is make sure you do. Second: I agree with you. That was very heavy-handed. Third: Don't feel bad. Everyone is roleplaying their character. You're just roleplaying yours. I like the fact that the paladin is donating his treasure to his temple and good causes. I played a cleric once who did the same thing (widows and orphans funds mostly) and it drove the other players nuts! "Spend it on some new armor! You've had that same suit of chainmail since 2nd-level!" "Other people are more needy than me...and more deserving." Just go with the flow. If that's the way they want to run their combats, more storytelling than number-crunching then that's fine. It's just their style.
cheesegrater 07-03-04, 04:05 PM	A few points on the Rogue's escape. 1) It sounds like there was plenty of time to 'take 20' on an escape artist check. With a +15 on an escape artist check (and no tools required), no problem. And a +15 is attainable for a 8th level rogue. 2) I don't think the standard 'Alarm' spell would work on manacles the way you seem to think it does. Maybe you have some sort of a custom spell, but 'Alarm' is for casting on an area, not an object. 3) The 'Search' skill is for searching a specific, small area (a 5 x 5 square). Looking for a Rogue who is blending into a town or city would involve spot checks and probably gather information checks. And that's assuming he didn't just leave town.
Zarnof 07-04-04, 07:10 PM	Thanks a lot for the perspective, guys. A note to cheesegrater: most of what you say is quite true, and some of what I said was either simplified because of time-restraints while writing, or required a little more info because of custom campaign things. As to the take 20 thing, that's normally quite true, but the DM doesn't like the whole taking 20 rule, and disallows it of the PC's. With that in mind, it normally seems only fair to prevent NPC's from doing it. However, if it applied to him, I guess it applies to me, so if I get tied up in the future, I guess I'll be able to automatically escape given a bit of time, so not a huge deal. ANd you're right, the alarm spell is normally area of effect, but he liked the idea of making it able to be put on objects, for NPC's as well as PC's, which is where that came from. And the search roll was one of several rolls that were made, includung spots and gather informations, to try and locate him around the town in the first few minutes after hes escaped, to try and prevent him from leaving the town and fleeing into the wilderness. I wouldn't have had much problem if there had been opposed rolls or something, but we rolled pretty high, the DM rolled nothing, and the rogue was gone into thin air. The search roll was pretty much just a quick thing to try and see if there were any easy footprints to find, ala what you have to do when you don't have someone with the track feat: hope you get lucky and find some DC 10 footprints. Most of the rest of the search was spot, listen, and gather info, to find that boots, jewels, and a horse had been stolen in about 5-15 minutes around the town, with no one seeing a thing, including us. Anyway, the more time that goes on, the less this stuff bothers me anyway, and it wasn't bothering me all THAT much to begin with. The rogue got away, it was arbitrary, but big deal, he'll probably be a fun villain later. I don't think the bringing up of rules has bothered anyone much yet, but it won't kill me to bite my tongue a little bit more every session for the purpose of flow. And the ray of enfeeblement spell is good to know: I didn't know it worked sort of like a reverse enhancement bonus, thought it was temporary ability damage and could stack. That makes it less potentially over-powered.
Thermanshs 07-04-04, 08:00 PM	Answer to 1: the DM clearly cheated on you. << 2: the DM railroaded and likely cheated on you << 3: the rules balance the game and also make it more real.Banning them just to keep things flow has its + and - .
Steelwill 07-05-04, 12:49 AM	Ok: 1. Stuntman hits this on the head in the 3rd post. The only thing I would add is that you already mentioned the group's laissez-faire attitude about the rules, so its likely your DM did not arbitrate this situation per the rules correctly either. 2. This can be a DM's option (truly as anything can) but this should not be overused, because it kills world consistancy when one set of rules works one day, then not the next. Once in a great while something like the Rogue getting away despite all your precautions can be used, but generally this is an uncreative tactic that causes more harm than good. 3. Your group seems to be very lax with the rules, what you have to decide is if you either enjoy the group enough to deal with it as it is, elect to make it an issue with the group, or find another group that follows the rules more closely. Personally it drives me nuts when the rules are overlooked, because I both like the 3.5 ruleset and have put in the time to learn them. This is why I find myself running most campaigns I am involved in. My 2 cents, hope it helps.