You must be thinking of a different adventure. The players are supposed to be told with Lair Assault that this is the idea behind it.
No, I know which adventure this was. If there had been no alternate for the new guy to run, that would have been it. Letting a player run Konan meant the party wasn't forced to choose between leaving the barbarian behind in round three or the warden using one standard action to direct his mount to grab the character, but that was the only advantage gained and they paid for it in the time it took to rescue the horse, letting the enemies they'd left behind reach the forge first and thereby setting themselves up to run into a wall of readied actions.
Everyone knew that the outcome was decided the moment the first PC died. The decision only changed how the fourth player could continue to participate through a resource another player had acquired.
It depends on what your players are mature enough to handle.
Acceptance of misfortune is a mature response, but it does not end there. If the resources exist to accomodate people, use them. Maturity acknowledges that a party's failure here is not a DM's success. If there were no horses or henchmen or familiars, a host should still keep all players engaged, even if just to roll dice for the opposition.
Just tonight, we had a new player who never played 4E before (he played 3E). In one encounter, his defender PC was knocked unconscious round after round after round starting in round one (heal, KO, heal, KO, heal, KO), and he only got 1 attack in during the entire encounter. He was totally cool with it because his PC was doing his job of having foes attack him instead of someone else. As DM, I was watching him closely for signs of frustration and there were none.
I know of some players where this would not have been the case.
I had to recommend that one of the DMs from Encounters should avoid Lair Assault from either side of the table. He won't be running next season, and I'm glad he had the self-awareness to make that choice on his own. Nevertheless, he deserved the chance. It wasn't easy on him, or on the players that had to work through his triggers. Thankfully, they understand his limitations, and running things from the sidelines this season leaves me free to step in whenever there's a concern or dispute without disrupting another table.
Maturity means we find ways to accomodate other people, regardless of whether they themselves can handle adversity in a mature fashion. Please don't assume that the guy running Konan sat and pouted over his initial misfortune, because that wasn't the case. Whether or not he accepted it has nothing to do with his host's obligations to him.
If players are able to do this in normal adventures, why would a DM want to hold their hand in a killer adventure?
This isn't about hand-holding. It's about leadership. If the resource exists to keep a player in the game and the players request it, agree to the request.
A killer dungeon requires more fairness than usual. In Lair Assault, the DM is required to strive to shut players down as hard and fast as players do their opposition, an option that isn't always open to us, depending on the monsters involved.
Konan was no more effective than a horse normally would be. The only attacks it got were opportunities (which the warden did not share) because the DM underestimated what the animal could do on a critical hit--much less than any of the PCs could have done, admittedly, but enough to force him to reconsider after the second hit.
Are you saying that the game can only be fun (given the upfront premise) if players are given second chances?
How much fun is a roller coaster if you take your seat, the ride starts... and your car is left behind at the starting gate? That's what happened here. There is no challenge in dying before you can act. What can you do about it? Sure, sometimes that's just luck of the draw and you have to accept it.
However, if you were running two characters when the one run by another player died, wouldn't you hand over one of your characters for that person to play? Would you, as DM, ever consider giving the player of a dead character control over an NPC travelling with the group? As a mature individual in a social, cooperative game, the answer to both of those questions should be yes.
Knowing that, where exactly did this DM go wrong in allowing the PC-unencumbered player to play as the horse some other player had purchased with his starting gold? This was not fudging. Nothing new was introduced to the scenario.
If your opponent hangs his Queen, do you give him a take back?
In tournament play, I cannot. In casual play, I will do so if I'm enjoying the position enough that I don't want to see it spoiled by such a blunder. That said, a hung queen only removes the queen from play. If my opponent wishes to play on and still has rooks, I would expect to see them used.
The thing is though, I'd rather be playing real D&D with fresh new and surprising encounters every session than playing in order to hone my player tactical skills a little.
"Real D&D" is a loaded declaration, so I'll leave it alone. On the subject of new and surprising, you've surely read a short story twice and picked up on something new the second time?
A single run-through of this challenge does not give a person full appreciation for everything they (or it) can do, even if they ignore the glory awards. I doubt your party is facing entirely new opponents all the time, just as I doubt that an encounter with a repeated monster always plays out exactly the same way. Assuming it gets to act, there are times all players will see is its melee basic attack, and others when they'll be struggling to avoid offering it optimal use of an encounter or recharge power. Maybe that can't be avoided in some cases. Maybe this doesn't feel fresh and new to you, but then a lot of people take the same view of this hobby, seeing everything you present as nothing more than an exercise in dice rolling and pawn pushing.
Me, I'll take the view presented in R.A. MacAvoy's
Tea with the Black Dragon: "Every time is the first time." There are just too many ways the same thing can be different for me to limit myself to, "Been there, done that."
Lair Assault wasn't going to be to all tastes. I'm not sure why you thought it would be to yours, since repeat play was established as part of the premise. It's not repeat play if everything changes. Still, here's hoping future installments may be of more interest to you.
