Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Megrim_Lord 12-18-04, 12:28 PM	Lately, it seems so. Whenever we die due to a random dice roll or a freak accident, he shrugs it off, but it seems like he can't bring himself to use truely lethal force on our characters, for example: Last session we attacked a Kaorti cyst run by a 15th level Kaorti wizard and about 10 6th level archer/fighters. The DM showed us the mage's stats ahead of time just to show us what we were up against. I was a bit nervous when I saw phantasmal killer, flesh to stone, disintegrate, and other nasty spells on his repertoire, however, when it came to fight time, it worked as such: *Mage casts mass hold person and fails miserably, archers all fire * I huck a log at an archer and it dies * Party goes in init order, 4 archers remain * mage casts wall of force * Archers fire, injure us slightly * We go, all archers dead, mage remaining * Mage casts mass hold person, again failing miserably. * Dispelled wall of force * Mage gets gored by crazy dwarf druid in rhinocerous form * Mage dies It seems to me that the encounter should have been much more deadly, seeing as it had the capability to cast a quickened phantasmal killer and one other kill spell per round, and still tried only to disable our openly hostile party. Is it just me, or is our Dm being too nice? I mean no one likes to die, but not being challenged when we are allowed to freely min/max is kind of a let down. The funny thing is, he did kill 2 characters once at the same time through freak luck. I angered a 12 headed pyrohydra, and it blew up half our party with a lucky breath weapon roll, crippling us. it died and we lived but this still seems a bit... off...
Steelwill 12-18-04, 02:17 PM	Your post alone makes it difficult to answer specifically; there are many reasons that the encounter wasn't more deadly: 1. Does the DM understand and know fully how to use the spells and monsters he is throwing out. This is not a slam against him, but there is a lot of material a DM has to be very familiar with especially where spells and monsters are concerned, and maybe he just did not know how best to use them. 2. Maybe it would inconvenience plot-based interests that your DM would prefer to play out, rather than have to stop and deal with character death. I myself have deliberately fudged some harmful things to the characters because there was a plot twist or event I had more interest in seeing through than a random character or party death. 3. There is always the possibility that he is indeed squeamish about killing off characters, especially since not all players take such things well. There are many reasons for this, ranging from an immature player who latches onto a specific character too much and takes it's death too personal, to it just being a major inconvenience to them to have to roll up a new one. The instance described above as previously stated does not give enough information to narrow it down, so I can just offer possibilities. My 2 cents.
Telperion 12-18-04, 02:19 PM	It seems to me that the encounter should have been much more deadly, seeing as it had the capability to cast a quickened phantasmal killer and one other kill spell per round, and still tried only to disable our openly hostile party. Is it just me, or is our Dm being too nice? I mean no one likes to die, but not being challenged when we are allowed to freely min/max is kind of a let down. It depends. You know: not every NPC in the world is out to kill the party. Some might be more interested in disabling and capturing you. The kind of non-lethal tactics the wizard was using, along with the obviously ineffective archers, suggests to such an objective. Possible tactics: Round 1: Wizard tries to disable the whole party. Having failed this the wizard orders his archer cronies to distract the party and buy him more time. The archers start firing, but do fairly poorly. Round 2: Wizard sees that things aren't going his way, but he isn't going to give up. He sets up a Wall of Force to protect himself, and orders the archers to continue their distraction. Round 3: once again the wizard tries to disable the whole party with one big spell, but fails again. Seeing the archers dead he should bail out with a Teleport, but maybe he isn't a veteran battle mage? Maybe the situation is new to him and he panics? Maybe the mighty spells of death he is trying to bring to bear get stuck in his throat while the party Dispells his Wall of Force and hacks him to pieces? The funny thing is, he did kill 2 characters once at the same time through freak luck. I angered a 12 headed pyrohydra, and it blew up half our party with a lucky breath weapon roll, crippling us. it died and we lived but this still seems a bit... off... Is he a veteran DM of many campaigns or new to the craft? Sounds like the latter. You know, I don't enjoy killing PCs either, but I do it without mercy if the players start acting stupid. However, I wasn't always like this: 6 - 8 years ago I went to great lengths to keep the party alive, no matter what. Sure, I would ridicule, punish and curse them, but in the end I just didn't have the stomach to actually kill anyone outright. Since then I have been "cured" of such habits and the PCs death ratio per' campaign has gone up considerably. So, my advice is: give your DM time. Sooner or later he will see that sometimes the only way to teach a player a lesson is by killing his cool character. And if the player doesn't learn the first time the DM is within his rights to kill the character again if the player repeats the mistake. If the player does it often enough he is left with a 1st level character with a significantly low Constitution score, and I have seen very few players who are diehard enough to play with one of those when the rest of the party is on average over 10th level :). As for killing PCs in a freak accident? It happens in nearly every campaign, and certainly to every DM. It happens, you shrug, and move on...simple as that...
Board_Rider 12-18-04, 03:42 PM	I won't break it down as the above posters did. What I think is that, as stated, he doesn't have a complete grasp on how to totally play an encounter. Or perhaps he just really doesn't want to kill your party.
Phrennzy 12-20-04, 01:35 AM	How did you knock down the Wall of Force? It's not affected by dispel magic. In any case, it may have been that the DM was surprised by how quickly things turned against his forces. It's happened to me. He has strategy planned out, and then you crazy players come up with something screwy and then the mage is dead. But, if he's letting you dispel a wall of force, I'd chalk it up to unfamiliarity with the rules & spells.
Telperion 12-20-04, 02:26 AM	But, if he's letting you dispel a wall of force, I'd chalk it up to unfamiliarity with the rules & spells. I actually didn't remember that bit about Wall of Force being impervious to Dispel Magic. Anyway, I would have checked the spell description before using it, so I probably would have caught that little detail. The PHB is so full of these little details that there isn't a single session when I'm not checking things out and reminding myself of this and that... ...not that I let the players notice any of it, of course ;).
Ut-Napishtim 12-20-04, 03:42 AM	Yeah, as a DM I'd have to say you really have to go over every spell description before you throw an NPC magic-user at the party. I have a feeling that if that wall had held it would've been a different situation entirely... or maybe not if the DM really is going soft on you guys. The first thing I would've done is pop off that Disintegrate at the PC magic-user or weakest-looking party member if there wasn't one. Nothing messes up a Wizard like another Wizard, and they all know how weak they are to damage. Then maybe throw up a simple Invisibility and start geting some extra help in there with the various Summon Monster spells - 1d4+1 Hell Hounds (Summon Monster V IIRC) would've filled the gap left by the fallen archers nicely on round 3, then throw out the Quickened Phantasmal Killer and then a Summon Monster IV to add 1d3 Hell Hounds (flanking positions of course) into the fray. After that the NPC Wizzie should have enough distractions out there to drop his Invisibility and start picking off PC's with Scorching Ray's. If it doesn't work out he can always throw up his Wall of Force then and Teleport out of there (leaving at least two dead PC's in his wake by my estimation.) :thinks:
Telperion 12-20-04, 07:16 AM	Then maybe throw up a simple Invisibility and start geting some extra help in there with the various Summon Monster spells - 1d4+1 Hell Hounds (Summon Monster V IIRC) would've filled the gap left by the fallen archers nicely on round 3, then throw out the Quickened Phantasmal Killer and then a Summon Monster IV to add 1d3 Hell Hounds (flanking positions of course) into the fray. After that the NPC Wizzie should have enough distractions out there to drop his Invisibility and start picking off PC's with Scorching Ray's. If it doesn't work out he can always throw up his Wall of Force then and Teleport out of there (leaving at least two dead PC's in his wake by my estimation.) :thinks: This is exactly why I avoid using mid to high level NPC spell casters. Gives me a headache... :twitch: ...unless we are talking about a big showdown with the BBEG of the campaign, in which case the effort of creating a round per' round strategy is usually worth the effort.
Megrim_Lord 12-20-04, 03:28 PM	I talked to the DM, and he himself chalks some of it up to purpose, and some up to inexperience. He is moderately inexperienced, DMed before but not often, knows the rules, but likes to change them etc etc. Apparently what we didn't know was that the Kaorti are more interested in trying to transform us into Kaorti than killing us, hence the non lethalness. I think the biggest thing here is the difference between our styles, his DMing and my Playing. We've since talked about it and come to an understanding. I've taken it upon myself to help him as much as possible with rules and ideas so that we can keep things fun and interesting while challenging at the same time. funny, and all this time we both thought we were each just being pompous asses, it's amazing what talking can do when level heads are involved. now I just have to stop being tempted to abuse a few of his house rules... :D
weretouched 01-13-05, 05:54 PM	i dm and play at different times but when i dm i have no problem slaying pc's for being stupid ive read nearly 10 source books front to back several times so i know a good amount of rules..... it seems to me that the dm's not good at playing out smarter foes even an orc will use slight strategy. from what ive seen the mage and his archers just walk out into the open and start fighting, stupid plain and simple. why didnt the wizard buff himself and his archers beforehand or go invis and fireball b4 the party knows whats goin on, "so the weathers nice isn......BOOM".thats how to use a wizard :D . my players learn to not be idiots. i have no quarry havin them meat a great wyrm black dragon at lvl 1 if they walk into its lair.... Light a man a fire warm him for a day Light a man on fire warm him forever