Beware this dire warning. Ignore it at your peril!

[James McMurray]

Delevelling a Solo and putting in multiple other creatures in the same encounter is a mistake.

To clarify, there were no other opponents in the fight. We'd had another fight earlier that day with some carrion crawlers and dire stirges. It was then that other resources were used.

This isn't apparent but the higher in the tiers you go, the more such situations pop up. Is Swallow Whole a bad predicament? Yes. But there are worse situations, such as Petrification. Or getting reduced to 0 hit points immediately thanks to a Finger of Death and the like. You might as well avoid fighting Orcus because he can bring you down from full hit points to zero.

Epic characters capable of fighting Orcus often get more powerful if they are dropped to 0 hit points, and it's not something that will take you out of the fight unless nobody invested in ways to heal people (in which case I'd wonder how you survived to 30th).

Getting bloodied is a bad situation to be in, in much the same way getting damaged is a bad situation. But in general, "bloodied" should be a signifier that things start to happen, either in a positive way (i.e. the Dragonborn's bonus to attack rolls kick in) or in a bad way (i.e. certain abilities can only be used when someone is bloodied). Some monsters also start to behave differently when they are bloodied (getting hurt does that to you).

All very true. How does it apply here?

As was mentioned there are numerous creatures with "off" buttons, so to speak. There are also protections in place so that it does NOT come down to a single roll like it did in 3.5. This is what they wanted to remove. A beholder's petrification I believe requires 3 failed saves. This is fairly unlikely to occur especially if you have allies that can help with those saves via various abilities. The case is similar with the worm. To be swallowed whole you need to:
a) be within range of the worm
b) be HIT by the worm
c) be bloodied
d) not have broken the grab before you get bloodied

I think thats a fairly decent set of circumstances that result in a player being taken out of combat.

So you're saying that yes, you would use a monster with an ability that reads "target player must sit in the corner." Cool. I hope you're reading your players well. Nobody I know would enjoy that.

The disk would have helped in that the worm would not have attacked you first most likely since it cannot sense the disk via tremorsense (which it uses when underground). In any case, I can't imagine the worm would have just as easy a time swallowing someone else unless it was significantly above your guys level. I mean I can see why a wizard would be easier to hit and have a harder time breaking out of its grab. But if NO ONE had a chance to do so (barring very high rolls) thats a mistake on the DMs part for putting a monster against you that is too tough.

I don't know that nobody could have avoided it. I don't have our stats memorized, and don't know exactly what its stats were. But it's got around +19 to hit vs. Fortitude. Assuming our toughest party member (the paladin) has a Fort defense of 23 (4/con + 6/level + 3/item), that's an almost guaranteed swallow. Solos are designed to be hard to hit and rarely miss on their own attacks, which is great until those attacks tell someone to go sit in the corner and watch everyone else play for 2 hours.

Hang on a sec. James McMurray, you said earlier that the purple worm can bite for 25 points of damage. Even a full size purple worm can only do 23 damage and this one has been deleveled by 4. At 12th level, he should be doing 2d8+5 points of damage (using the rules on page 174 of the DMG).

It was an estimate. I don't know exactly how much damage he was doing. It was 2 weeks ago and I wasn't taking detailed notes like I sometimes do. The GM rolls behind his screen, so I don't know what the thing's damage dice were.

That's an average of 14 points per round. You're a 12th level wizard. You should have 58+con hit points. That's a minimum of 34 (assuming a 10 con) hit points before you're bloodied. This thing bloodied you in two rounds? That is definitely very unlucky.

I've got 76 hit points (Toughness and a 12 con). I started the fight slightly hurt though, because it wasn't worth spending my last surge to fix ~10 damage. 14 average per round would have put me exactly at bloodied, so that sounds right.

I think I'm done here though. This thread has turned from me trying to point out a bad rule to me trying to defend the fact that I think its a bad rule, defend my GM, and argue what-ifs to prove that we did everything we could have done under the circumstances.

Some people seem to think that a power which easily and near-unavoidably shuts down a PC and gives a player the most boring game of their life is fine. Others don't. My goal was to make sure that people know the Purple Worm (and Feymire Crocodile) have that ability, and I think I've done that as best I can.

Use it if you want. I won't.

 

[Chen_93]

Some people seem to think that a power which easily and near-unavoidably shuts down a PC and gives a player the most boring game of their life is fine. Others don't. My goal was to make sure that people know the Purple Worm (and Feymire Crocodile) have that ability, and I think I've done that as best I can.

The argument I'm putting forth is that it does not easily and near-unavoidably shut down a PC. It takes a non-trivial set of circumstances before the PC can be shutdown entirely, similar to numerous other monsters and yes I would use these against my PCs if it fit the story/world or whatever.

 

[James McMurray]

Cool. If it works out for you, that's great.

 

[keterys]

Honestly, I think solos over your level are often a bad idea anyways. Better off with a solo of n or n-1 and then a bunch of other stuff, as well. That includes things like traps and environmental hazards that the solo may trigger (like an earthquake that it triggers, cave ins, etc). 4E (like 3E i suppose) is at its worst in a pure one vs. party engagement.

 

[Nail]

This point seems to get lost and found a few times in this thread:

Thanks for the "heads-up" James! It's cool to get feedback about parts of the game that may have troubles. I appreciate your effort in posting.

 

[kaomera]

The only thing that makes the purple worm interesting (tactically) is swallow whole; or more specifically the tactics needed to avoid being swallowed. Aside from the fact that you should (IMO) be assuming that being bloodied is risky and a potential trigger for monster abilities (and being as it's really just one huge maw on the end of a big old stack of hps you might expect a purple worm to eat characters) there really needed to be some kind of info passed on to the players as to what's up in this fight. Aside from that the DM should have looked at the monster's stat block and realized that this wasn't going to be a good choice for your group. Or realized that a big sack of hit points with one trick isn't going to be that much fun... Even Dragons need cool terrain, etc. to make the fight fun all the way to the end.

But on both sides mistakes happen. I'm sorry you had such a bad experience, from the way things sound the DM wasn't loving the situation either and he won't make that mistake again. With the benefits of hindsight I could say that if he was going to fudge to allow you to survive he should have gone ahead and let you escape (perhaps the worm forcefully vomits you up onto one of the other PCs?), but that doesn't really do you much good at this point. Hopefully you don't get swallowed again and therefore it won't come up.

So you're saying that yes, you would use a monster with an ability that reads "target player must sit in the corner." Cool. I hope you're reading your players well. Nobody I know would enjoy that.

I'm sorry, but (personally) this just comes off as whining. If you really would end up sulking in a corner if your character was forced out of action, then I don't think I would really enjoy playing with you that much. I think you're more than likely exaggerating, but it's counterproductive to making your point. It's obvious that a lot of effort was made to keep the 4E version of swallow whole from being a save-or-die situation. It's unfortunate that your character ended up getting swallowed anyway. But that doesn't make the purple worm a monster that can't be used in a fun encounter. You've pointed out one of the potential problems with it, now it's up to each DM to decide what they feel is appropriate to do about it.

 

[Keenath]

I think there definitely is an issue here, in that it's one of very few times in the game where players are required to use a basic attack. This doesn't just screw over wizards; it screws over any build that doesn't focus on Strength and doesn't have a Basic Attack at-will. Or for that matter, anyone who doesn't carry a light weapon around with them. (Yes, yes, daggers are cheap. I know.)

The errata somewhat helps by letting rogues at least use a ranged basic attack to get the benefit of their dex score, but even so you could easily have charisma pallys, laser clerics, and so on who can't do anything from in there.

 

[James McMurray]

This point seems to get lost and found a few times in this thread:

Thanks for the "heads-up" James! It's cool to get feedback about parts of the game that may have troubles. I appreciate your effort in posting.

No problem. Hopefully it helps some people out.

 

[Syrsuro]

No problem. Hopefully it helps some people out.

I still see your complaints as 80-90% due to the way the DM chose to run it, and not due to the way it is designed.

1) Your DM did not give you the opportunity to use Knowledge (no action required; DC 20) to know that the creature can swallow you if you are bloodied. By RAW, a party of your level should have had a decent chance to know that about the worm.
2) Your DM chose to use an action point to swallow you the second you were bloodied, denying the party a chance to heal you at that time. Although legal by RAW, knowing the effect of the power this was not a 'fun' decision (this was the big mistake, imho).
3) Your DM chose to keep you alive, bending the rules to do so, despite your stated opinion that you would rather have died in that situation rather than be effectively useless. By the RAW, you should have been dead quickly and your whole argument here would have been moot. Personally, I'd rather be alive and ineffectual than dead. But I guess that is just me.

So yes, your story is a cautionary for other DMs to be careful how they run such creatures (allow your parties a chance to heal their bloodied party members rather than using the action point to swallow them as soon as they are bloodied and once they are swallowed don't keep them alive if they have a low tolerance for inactivity).

But it is not, as presented, an argument against the creature or its attack as written.

Carl

 

[jaelis]

I think I'm done here though. This thread has turned from me trying to point out a bad rule to me trying to defend the fact that I think its a bad rule, defend my GM, and argue what-ifs to prove that we did everything we could have done under the circumstances.

I think the negative reaction comes because, in essence, you are saying that there shouldn't be any way to "kill" (= turn off) a PC other than grinding through his hp. I know you said you'd rather be dead than swallowed, but I don't see them as all that different. Perhaps the issue is that if you were killed, you would be done with the fight and you would know it, while you didn't really know you were done after being swallowed?