Save or suck Medusa petrification

Imaro said:

Yep, a classic... and a little cliched at this point, but I don't see how this in any way makes it inherently wrong or bad.



I'm really lost as to how this one encounter with one NPC can be equated to... "90% of the "harmless" or "benevolent" PC's that a party will meet in their entire adventuring career."



Hmmm, so it's not that you disagree with this type of encounter... this particular one is just a complete waste of a "wolf in sheeps clothing" type encounter... so what would be a few examples of the type that wouldn't "waste" this type of encounter. I'd be particularly interested in some examples that fit a sandbox style game.

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It's the gotcha style of DMing that SoD engenders that I object to. I'm sure that there are plenty of DMs who understand how to use SoD properly, but I've seen quite a few who did not (especially true of new DMs, who may or may not learn better).

I never said that every DM does that, which seems to me what you're implying. However, it can help to encourage an atmosphere of paranoia. IME, paranoia bogs play down, as players spend hours trying to plan for every contingency the DM might throw at them. Or it leads to SOP, where they slather on Death Wards and keep their wands of Stone to Flesh close at hand, thereby rendering any real risk from the encounter null and void. It's not the style of play I like.

I prefer tension to paranoia. In that sense, most of the rest of the caves is good (although a tad underdeveloped for my tastes). There are a lot of creatures in the caves, and the players stand no real chance if they manage to alert more than one or two groups to their whereabouts. That creates tension and risk, because runners become a high priority target (as they'll no doubt bring more of their kind).

I never waste a wolf in sheep's clothing on a throwaway encounter. When I use one, it's an NPC who I intend to use repeatedly. There will be multiple opportunities to discover the NPC's treachery, and he'll do more harm than simply turning them to stone (and then turning them back via the contrivance he carries). Using it on a throwaway encounter such as this one is a waste and worse, because it shows that the DM is willing to use gotcha throwaway encounters. Those encounters, in turn, will engender an atmosphere of paranoia in the players.

Like I said elsewhere, I have no issue with SoD being an option. However, I'd very much like to see an hp threshold or even SoSoD option in the MM. The simplest way that I can see is to put the rules in there and then tell DMs that they can ignore them if they want a deadlier game (preferably with advice for doing it the right way).

The problem is that, despite all the foreshadowing wisdom, it doesn't necessarily work. In the scenario, there are no statues to warn the players. Sure, the DM might drop hints via the cultists, but some DMs might not realize they should while other DMs might forget to do so. I've seen wandering monster tables in modules that included SoD monsters, while 3.x had dragons on the tables (a creature that was underrated for it's CR on purpose, because the designers assumed that players would knowingly be hunting the dragon).

My point is that it's not always so cut and dry. Make SoD creatures that default to a power level where it's fair and reasonable to drop them on any wandering monster table. Then, if the DM wants to use them as a set piece, give advice for making them deadlier.

We played ToH with 3.5 rules. It was a depressing slow crawl with rolling a check for every inch of stone. An in the end my character died.

Derren said:

Well, that doesn't have to mean anything.

"Hey guys, we are putting back the old design on traps into the game. Can you play this modified classic module and tell us if thats Ok or if we should use the 4E design?"
Hands you Tomb of Horrors.

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Keep on the Borderlands is not comparable to Tomb of Horrors. Not by a long shot.

I think it likelier that they intended to put in a mitigating mechanic and just didn't get to it. After all, several approaches have been thrown around in this thread alone, so it may be that they weren't able to settle on an approach and went with the default. They did state that monster design is still a work in progress. However, the topic was brought up and since it's something that I feel quite strongly about, I felt like sharing my opinion.

1Mac said:

That's okay, though I have a few objections. KM, you say skill-checks are still player-directed, but this gets into mother-may-I territory pretty quickly. How hard should the check be? Depends on how easily the GM wants his players to find out how to beat the monster. That's true of checking to learn about other monster powers as well, of course, except in this case, understanding how to evade petrification is essential to beating the monster. That's not strategic gaming: that's hoping your knowledge check is as high as the GM would like it to be.

There's also the not-insignificant matter that before any of these checks are possible, someone has to turn into stone (or custard), unless the GM makes everyone roll for knowledge ahead of time like Kinak suggests, in which case we're back to the ease of the encounter being determined by the GM's whimsy.

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I agree that it's not really the most....mmm...intuitive way to handle things. I'd prefer if the stat block of the Medusa helped DMs better determine when a player might be subject gaze and what "averting the eyes" entails. That's something I think is useful for the monster's entry (or even just generally, as many monsters have gaze attacks, and they should probably all work similarly).

Walking Dad said:

We played ToH with 3.5 rules. It was a depressing slow crawl with rolling a check for every inch of stone. An in the end my character died.

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We played ToH with 3.5 rules and it was awesome! Our group had a good time with it and it was very, very deadly.

Sometimes it isn't the rules that are the issue it is the style of the DM of the game. Or even the group that plays the game. These things can't be fixed by the rules.

I'm always baffled when people argue that save or die in previous editions is more faithful to the myth than save or die in 4e. The 4e version of petrification simply means the petrification takes 18 seconds. That's it. You cannot tell me that the myth is so precise to say that it was instantaneous death, like a fish being flash frozen. The myth simply says that when you look at a medusa, you turn to stone. As someone pointed out, the novelty is allowing the save in the first place.

But really, I still don't understand why poison, petrification and curses are instantaneous death, but falling from a great height, a knife to the head, and electrocution are handled through hit points. If you are struck by lightning, it is certainly a crap shoot whether you will survive the experience or not, but a lightning bolt or call lightning spell doesn't make you do a save or die saving throw like finger of death or disintegration do.

Lethal poisons are quite obviously better handled through hp loss rather than save or die because no poisons act instantly. Instead poisons cause their victim to become progressively weaker, a process that takes a few minutes to a few weeks, until they die. Ongoing hp damage is the one that obviously offers greater sense of realism and verisimilitude, and it is only the gamist desire of the DM to see his player sweat over a single roll that justifies it.

Yeah, I'll say it. Save or Die is gamist, because it is absolutely arbitrary as to what goes under the hit point system and what goes under save or die. There is no reason why ongoing hp damage can't represent petrification, with being brought to 0hp being the petrified state. There is no reason why the gaze attack of a medusa can't be a contest of wills between the medusa and the party, with the party losing hp as they fall under the gaze attack. In fact, it would be a better model, since you don't have the problem of the medusa's gaze coming to nothing, and have the party laughing at it, if they happen to fluke succeed on all their saving throws.

I play D&D mostly as a PbP. My RL group prefers other games. In PbP any old school paranoid inch by inch exploration is bad IMHO.

IronWolf said:

We played ToH with 3.5 rules and it was awesome! Our group had a good time with it and it was very, very deadly.

Sometimes it isn't the rules that are the issue it is the style of the DM of the game. Or even the group that plays the game. These things can't be fixed by the rules.

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I agree, it won't help in the case of DMs who enjoy killing players. That's a style issue. Either the players enjoy meatgrinders / gritty games or they don't.

However, I think that neglects the newbie DM who simply doesn't know better. He may see a medusa and think "Cool!", not realizing until after the TPK that he may have done something undesirable.

Also, it neglects groups that want to use iconic creatures with SoD abilities, but don't want to make their campaigns gritty. I don't mind PC death, but I hate high PC turnover. It screws with campaign continuity fiercely. I've played in quite a few campaigns where none of original characters survived through level 5, and the campaigns typically fell apart shortly thereafter.

In the latter two cases, putting some "training wheels" on SoD creatures (with the option to remove them) could significantly affect a campaign. The newbie is far less likely to accidentally derail his campaign, and I can run a campaign in my style, while Imaro takes the training wheels off and runs his games hardcore.

As a side note, I don't really care for the idea of action points or reroll points. They have a cascade effect throughout the entire system, and you can't ever be reasonably sure how many a player will have when he meets a SoD effect. Players in a campaign with regular SoD may be forced to horde them for these occasions, while players in a campaign without SoD may be able to spend their points as they will, creating a disparity in ease between the two.

Walking Dad said:

I play D&D mostly as a PbP. My RL group prefers other games. In PbP any old school paranoid inch by inch exploration is bad IMHO.

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Oh I agree. That would not be a lot of fun.

I still think this is less a result of the rules and more dependent on the style of game the DM runs. I am confident I could run ToH in PbP format and not have it turn into a paranoid, inch by inch, mind-numbing exploration.

Imaro said:

If, IYO, it's not a huge change why are you complaining about it returning to one save?

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Just because I think that they are similar doesn't mean I don't think 4e got it more right - the devils in the details. Or that I'm a fan of SOD at all. I don't like everything in 4e.