Save or suck Medusa petrification

I also don't mind save or die so much if the DM gives appropriate warnings to the creature. For example, when rolling a cockatrice on a random encounter table during a D&D basic game, I let the party see the lizard-chicken chase a rabbit out of the bushes and petrify it. The party still attacked the creature anyway (being PC's) but I didn't feel guilty about petrifying someone. I certainly didn't feel guilty about doing it the second time (after a few rounds of failing to petrify people because of saving throws).

If there is plenty of warning, or save or die monsters are infamous enough that they don't show up with suprise attacks (the great and terrible medusa lairs here, watch out!) then the mechanic is certainly easier to swallow.

Otherwise the game's expectations should be tempered so that the point of the game is to defeat a dungeon, not have a long term character arc or goals. Tomb of Horrors is not a dungeon that you put in the middle of a long-running plot heavy campaign (sorry Ari, but your Tomb of Horrors super adventure is fundamentally flawed in concept). I would much rather have save or die monsters be on a dial of lethality, with the monsters and spells that do this in a "tomb of horrors" module.

Barring that, I would at least like for those types of save or die abilities to be clearly marked as being disruptive to long-term plot heavy campaigns. A lot of DM's simply don't realize that they have to completely rewrite their campaigns when a few bad save or die rolls kill half the party.

Stalker0 said:

For those who hate the depetrify potion, just change it that the blood of a medusa can undo the stoning effect (common knowledge in Dnd world). That way you get your potions effect without the weird flavor.

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That's like the basilisk in Pathfinder. They ease up the petrification powers from relatively weak and low CR with the CR 3 cockatrice through the CR 5 basilisk up to the CR 7 medusa.

I'm kind of liking the averting eye = taking disadvantage and not having an ongoing chance to look at the medusa. It's simpler than most previous editions.

Fanaelialae said:

Are you aware of the scenario that's presented in the playtest module? That's not the kind of situation that I would expect to need recon or Charm Person.

IME, this is the kind of gotcha play that engenders ultra-paranoid players who bog down play by insisting on thoroughly checking every five foot square for traps before moving forward. They take absurd precautions in everything they do, because they feel the DM is out to get them (which, given the scenario, I'd say is true because it makes little sense - why didn't they at least place a bag over her head).

I've been in those kinds of games in the past, but I found them tedious and they're not the type of game I like to run.

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So then, isn't the solution just to not use Medusae, and similar creatures in that way, in your game? Personally, I don't think I've every put a Medusa in one of my adventures.

I mean, we're confronted with a conflict between two play styles in a system that's trying to be as inclusive as possible. If the system excludes all SoS-ness, then that playstyle is excluded. If the system includes SoS critters, then SoS-averse games can simply avoid using those creatures, and thus both playstyles are still available. Seems that leans toward SoS effects being in/default, IMO.

Now, its also possible that later playtests will allow or encourage us to experiment with variations on the SoS theme. I can easily envision a situation where the DMG has a chapter on changing the way saves work so that SoS-averse games can have their Medusa and kill it, too.

Its just too early in the process to get too excited about anything.

LostSoul said:

That's only true if the DM ignores how to set DCs. DCs are supposed to be set based on the task's difficulty (DM Guidelines, page 2). If you ignore that, then I can see the game turning into mother-may-I play in some cases.

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I don't think they mitigate mother-may-I at all in this case. How does the GM determine whether the level of expertise required to know how to defeat a medusa is "moderate" or "advanced", "extreme" or "master"? Nothing in the guidelines say how to do that, so it's entirely up to the GM to determine how esoteric that knowledge is.

For the record, I have no problem with pg-42-style GM empowerment. Such empowerment is necessary for a roleplaying game to function. I do have a problem with a single check with arbitrary difficulty determining whether an encounter is fairly easy or certainly lethal, with no in-between.

Hussar said:

Which in no way actually represents the mythical medusa. We've had this argument over and over and over again (where's [MENTION=957]BryonD[/MENTION] when you need him?) for the past two years. The D&D medusa has NEVER been, "See it and turn to stone". Not in any edition of D&D. Why would it be so now?

With the save DC that low, we're talking about a 50/50 chance of very low level characters being able to see the Medusa and not turn to stone.

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Hi there.
Not around much lately. Good chance that will be the trend we will see....


Anyway, just for the record....

BS!!!

There has NEVER (pre-4E) been anything close to an overt implication that you could so much as GLANCE at Medusa and actually SEE her and do anything less than instantly turn to stone. Period.

I *WILL* concede that the rules took for granted the idea that the players got the premise of Medusa and don't bother to explain the obvious. This opens up the door to ignoring the obvious. And thus the rules do permit pointless interpretations.

It is fundamental that the versions of the game have always allowed for fate to allow a character to escape a pending fate. Saving throws allow for this in a simple and functional manner. Allowing a saving throw when faced with a threat of "seeing" Medusa is completely reasonable. To then turn around and force the implication that Medusa was seen but the effect was shrugged off is reading outside of the actual text and throwing away common sense to boot. Pre-4E I never had a conversation that even approached this concept. Post 4E with its kid gloves approach, it is uncommon, but not even rare, much less unheard of. Which is just one more grain of sand on the scale of complaints against 4E.

Yes, you can corrupt the reading of the rules and the game will function quite nicely with Medusa staring contests. The idea that this was remotely intended in absurd. If Pre-4E D&D had been played this way AND that mentality was built into the mechanics throughout the game system then pre-4E D&D would have been significantly less popular than it was.

If future editions of D&D elect to cling to this mentality, that same weight will undermine them. I have no doubt there will be a niche that won't LOVE it that way. But that process will never achieve going back to being the gold standard of RPGs.

IMO.

BryonD said:

It is fundamental that the versions of the game have always allowed for fate to allow a character to escape a pending fate. Saving throws allow for this in a simple and functional manner. Allowing a saving throw when faced with a threat of "seeing" Medusa is completely reasonable. To then turn around and force the implication that Medusa was seen but the effect was shrugged off is reading outside of the actual text and throwing away common sense to boot. Pre-4E I never had a conversation that even approached this concept. Post 4E with its kid gloves approach, it is uncommon, but not even rare, much less unheard of. Which is just one more grain of sand on the scale of complaints against 4E.

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(emphasis added)

In 3E at least, the saving throw to avoid petrification is a Fortitude one—the save used to resist physical effects on the body. When two people meet a medusa's gaze, the tougher one is more likely to resist being turned to stone.

How could that effect be anything other than people seeing the medusa and the effect being shrugged off? It might not be spelled out, but it doesn't have to be—we know how Fortitude saves work in other circumstances.

1Mac said:

I don't think they mitigate mother-may-I at all in this case. How does the GM determine whether the level of expertise required to know how to defeat a medusa is "moderate" or "advanced", "extreme" or "master"? Nothing in the guidelines say how to do that, so it's entirely up to the GM to determine how esoteric that knowledge is.

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I think we might have two different versions of what mother-may-I means.

I imagine the player saying something like, "I've got some Folklore; do I recognize what this thing is?" At that point the DM has to make a judgement call.

If the DM's judgement call is based on his relationship with the player, how the player asked, if the player promised to buy him a beer after the game, etc., instead of how the DM envisions his campaign world, then I think you could describe that as mother-may-I.

If the DM's judgement call is based on how esoteric the knowledge is - so he can point to a DC - the DM is making a setting-design decision. I don't think it's mother-may-I because his decision isn't related to the player's statement (except that the player's statement has forced him to make that call).

I think the advice in the booklets points to the latter option.

LostSoul said:

If the DM's judgement call is based on his relationship with the player, how the player asked, if the player promised to buy him a beer after the game, etc., instead of how the DM envisions his campaign world, then I think you could describe that as mother-may-I.

If the DM's judgement call is based on how esoteric the knowledge is - so he can point to a DC - the DM is making a setting-design decision. I don't think it's mother-may-I because his decision isn't related to the player's statement (except that the player's statement has forced him to make that call).

I think the advice in the booklets points to the latter option.

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I never thought of mother-may-I as having anything to do with GM favoritism. The former is certainly more arbitrary, but what I'm saying is that even the latter doesn't actually give any guidelines for how esoteric this knowledge is. I don't want to quote the sections in question so as not to violate the EULA of the playtest, but the definition of, say, an "Advanced" difficulty is essentially tautological, meaning it's entirely up to the GM to decide how difficult the task is.

Again, I don't have a problem with that in general, but not when it comes to a single life-or-death check.

ferratus said:

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.

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Yup.

Those who are concerned about a possible loss of a proper SoD roll are ignoring the fact that if I make my save I get to walk up to her and attempt to plant my dagger exactly between her eyes. The D&D Medusa in play in every edition has never closely resembled the Medusa of myth, because in most editions there are zero consequences for those who happen to have good dice (so far). In fact, IME some PCs in higher level play would outright taunt these things, because they are only failing on a 1 or 2. Is that the awesome "authentic" Medusa we are trying to honor?

An obnoxious tactical penalty is a better result for a standard beast IMO, because at least it make some sense to simply say "I catch a glimpse of her asps and I put my gaze towards her feet just in time. Now I am not fighting my best I cannot look properly at my enemy."

SoD was originally a quick and dirty mechanic for deciding when a "unit" was sufficiently disrupted to be ineffective for the remainder of our mass battle on hand. Whether the unit was truly dead was not something gamers at the table usually thought so much about. Do you track your losses over the course of a game of Risk? We care who wins the battle, right?

If we keep in mind that units were originally 20 or 100 men, then handling these things sort of how many other mass battle system handle Morale Checks is a "good enough" mechanic. It became ackward when 1 unit = 1 man.

Well, you turn to stone, you turn to stone, it's not like kinda pregnant.