pawsplay
Hero
A thread for discussion of what it says, and responses to what it says.
Relevant passage:
Relevant passage:
ROLLING THE DICE AND CONTROL OF THE GAME
In many situations it is correct and fun to have the players dice such things
as melee hits or saving throws. However, it is your right to control the dice
at any time and to roll dice for the players. You might wish ta do this to
keep them from knowing some specific fact. You also might wish to give
them an edge in finding a particular clue, e.g. a secret door that leads to a
complex of monsters and treasures that will be especially entertaining.
You do have every right to overrule the dice at any time if there is a
particular course of events that you would like to have occur. In making
such a decision you should never seriously harm the party or a non-player
character with your actions. "ALWAYS GIVE A MONSTER AN EVEN BREAK!"
Examples of dice rolls which should always be made secretly are: listening,
hiding in shadows, detecting traps, moving silently, finding secret
doors, monster saving throws, and attacks made upon the party without
their possible knowledge.
There will be times in which the rules do not cover a specific action that a
player will attempt. In such situations, instead of being forced to make a
decision, take the option to allow the dice to control the situation. This can
be done by assigning a reasonable probability to an event and letting the
player dice to see if he or she can make that percentage. You can
weigh the dice in any way so as to give the advantage to either the player
or the non-player character, whichever seems more correct and logical to
you while being fair to bath sides.
Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will
have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but
still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you
should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent
with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right
to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is
knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any
reasonably severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster
has done. It is very demoralizing to the players to lose a cared-for-player
character when they have played well. When they have done something
stupid or have not taken precautions, then let the dice fall where they
may! Again, if you have available ample means of raising characters from
the dead, even death is not too severe; remember, however, the
constitution-based limit to resurrections. Yet one die roll that you should
NEVER tamper with is the SYSTEM SHOCK ROLL to be raised from the dead.
If a character fails that roll, which he or she should make him or herself, he or
she is FOREVER DEAD. There MUST be some final death or immortality will
take over and again the game will become boring because the player
characters will have 9+ lives each!
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