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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6504979" data-attributes="member: 4937">No, for once, someone actually reads me.  I was beginning to think I had no powers of communication.  You deserve XP just for that alone, besides anything else. Upping stakes is good story telling, but I prefer to get there by not going outside of the rules but by introducing something new to the setting - reinforcements arrive, the airship is drifting into a sandstorm, one of the villains threatens a hostage, the BBEG sets the airship on fire, etc.  And ideally of course these escalations are to make sense in terms of the story, so that they don't feel like something the DM is doing just to screw you or up the stakes, but the logical sort of thing that might happen under the circumstances.That's a very arbitrary definition of a great story.  It seems to require the PC's doing things that are stupid in order to get themselves into situations of great danger that they could have avoided.  I don't honestly think rules exceptions are needed here, and to the extent that you think PC's ought to be able to grab on to things to avoid falling, a rule should be provided for that - I generally use a DC 20 reflex check.   Designing the airship I'd consider things like, "If you are bullrushed against the railing, what check should you use to avoid falling over the railing?  What sort of rules should I have for grappling an enemy and throwing them?  If you are tossed over the railing, what check could be used to grab on?  If this is so dangerous, what previsions did the crew have to operate under dangerous conditions - there are probably tie points for ropes or harnesses.  If the PC's have a climbing harness, that could be very useful for securing themselves to the ship.  When engaged in stressful movement on deck, what balance checks are required?"  Players would be expected to behave in ways that would prevent these unfortunate scenarios from happening.  I'm certainly not there to rescue them from abject stupidity and unnecessary risk.  I'm certainly not looking forward to having one of them hanging over the edge of the airship because I think that makes a good story, which seems to be the direction you are going for here.Generally speaking, I wouldn't put narrative force on a player to fight on an airship until they could do so with a reasonable chance of success.  That is to say, the foozle isn't on the airship until such time that players have the resources to deal with that.I'm not sure it is either, though my preferred way to design such a scenario is cover those possibilities to start with rather than ad hoc allowance just because it appears the story isn't going the way you want.   Magic swords would thus perhaps break if power attacked into a crystal, but of course with the advantage that you just overcame the crystals hardness and did significant damage.   I'd probably be disinclined to rule favorably on, "Ok, so I try hitting the crystal even harder!", responding with, "You mean you haven't been hitting it with all your might up till now?  Why did you roll full damage if you were holding back?", but there are a variety of player resources that they could spend in a pinch here - spend a destiny point, successful appraise check to determine a flaw in the crystal to attack, an appeal for divine intervention, etc.   And of course there are various character resources that they might - feats that make you good at breaking things, spells like shatter to help this along, and so forth.   More than hitting it harder, I'd be more inclined to rule favorably on a more creative plan, something like "Can I attack the stalagmite that is hanging above the crystal with those magic stonebreaker arrows we found?", particularly if I'd already thought of this feature and mentioned it in the room description specifically for that purpose but certainly if it seemed reasonable that a delicate stalagmite was easier to break than a magically hardened crystal and they had the means to do so, that would be a 'dramatic plan', whether I'd allowed for it ahead of time or not.</blockquote>

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