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General Tabletop Discussion
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Is it fair to cast save-or-suck spells on the players?
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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7150288" data-attributes="member: 6787650"><p>It wasn't my intention.</p><p></p><p>The lich in that anecdote was orders of magnitude more disappointing than your fight described in the OP could possibly have been, even to challenge-seeking players. It was really bad. (Extreme examples make good illustrations.)</p><p></p><p>I'm assuming Vlaakith was deliberately underplayed (and it also turns out the monsters had weaker stats than I realized--I thought there were actual "Adult Red Dragons without wings", but it sounds like these were closer to Young Red Dragons with some extra HP--hence why they are apparently still vulnerable to Vorpal weapon auto-kill, unlike an adult red), but I also assume you had good reasons on the DM side for doing that, and your players may not have found it <em>disappointing</em> at all. E.g. just because the monk runs up to Vlaakith inside of an Anti-Magic Field doesn't mean she has to STAY there, since she's not grappled--she can still Shapechange into an Ancient Silver Dragon. If the monk approaches her again next round, she will briefly turn back into herself until she (again) steps backward 10' to get out of it and turns back into a dragon and then paralyze all the PCs with her breath (including the ones in AMF, thus shutting down the AMFs). She COULD have done that, but it might be frustrating for the actual human being playing the monk, and I assume that is why you did that. Similarly, the almost-liches COULD have used illusions and pre-cast Magic Jar (as discussed in the other thread) to take over one or more of the PCs including the Champion or the Rogue, but that would be even less fun for them than being banished back to the Prime Material plane.</p><p></p><p>As I said in that previous post, <<<em>Even when something is billed as a deadly fight, it's emotionally difficult to pull the trigger on your friends. After all, Vlaakith doesn't really get excited if she TPKs the player characters--but there are actual real live human beings (the players) who will get excited if their characters triumph over Vlaakith. I'm not saying that the DM was wrong to be less than 100% maximum nasty--just that, from the previous thread, I expected a high level of nastiness from Vlaakith which may not have actually manifested in the real fight.</em>>></p><p></p><p>If my expectations were wrong, then they were wrong, that's all. That doesn't make you a bad DM. You're there at that table and I'm not.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 7150288, member: 6787650"] It wasn't my intention. The lich in that anecdote was orders of magnitude more disappointing than your fight described in the OP could possibly have been, even to challenge-seeking players. It was really bad. (Extreme examples make good illustrations.) I'm assuming Vlaakith was deliberately underplayed (and it also turns out the monsters had weaker stats than I realized--I thought there were actual "Adult Red Dragons without wings", but it sounds like these were closer to Young Red Dragons with some extra HP--hence why they are apparently still vulnerable to Vorpal weapon auto-kill, unlike an adult red), but I also assume you had good reasons on the DM side for doing that, and your players may not have found it [I]disappointing[/I] at all. E.g. just because the monk runs up to Vlaakith inside of an Anti-Magic Field doesn't mean she has to STAY there, since she's not grappled--she can still Shapechange into an Ancient Silver Dragon. If the monk approaches her again next round, she will briefly turn back into herself until she (again) steps backward 10' to get out of it and turns back into a dragon and then paralyze all the PCs with her breath (including the ones in AMF, thus shutting down the AMFs). She COULD have done that, but it might be frustrating for the actual human being playing the monk, and I assume that is why you did that. Similarly, the almost-liches COULD have used illusions and pre-cast Magic Jar (as discussed in the other thread) to take over one or more of the PCs including the Champion or the Rogue, but that would be even less fun for them than being banished back to the Prime Material plane. As I said in that previous post, <<[I]Even when something is billed as a deadly fight, it's emotionally difficult to pull the trigger on your friends. After all, Vlaakith doesn't really get excited if she TPKs the player characters--but there are actual real live human beings (the players) who will get excited if their characters triumph over Vlaakith. I'm not saying that the DM was wrong to be less than 100% maximum nasty--just that, from the previous thread, I expected a high level of nastiness from Vlaakith which may not have actually manifested in the real fight.[/I]>> If my expectations were wrong, then they were wrong, that's all. That doesn't make you a bad DM. You're there at that table and I'm not. [/QUOTE]
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Is it fair to cast save-or-suck spells on the players?
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