A Leap over Boiling Lava onto a Flying Wyvern

[The Shaman]

The OP was a player involved in the session, and he enjoyed the experience greatly. This illustrates DMing to the tastes of the group. So this group specifically enjoyed the experience, as far as we know.

And as I said in my initial post, that is in my opinion, 5E.

And thank you for dropping the XP on EW, btw.

 

[Wolf1066]

... but the called shot thing? I guess I misunderstood and thought you presented that as a situational call, and not some hard and fast rule. If there's a rule, fine. Let the dice fall where they may. I guess that's the problem with talking about D&D in General, since there are so many versions and derivatives of the game.

The called shot thing pertains to the game I run - an extremely modified version of Cyberpunk 2020.

In the core rules, all shots, unless you make a called shot (at negative modifiers, natch) at a specific body location, are considered snapshots in the general direction of the character and you are rolling to see if you hit anything at all. If you succeed, you make a random roll for where on the body it hits.

In the same core rules, when a grenade is thrown and misses by any amount, you roll on a numbered grid to see where it actually lands around the target zone (pray it doesn't land to close to you...)

In the case of a called shot, I apply the same logic (in fact, the same location grid - this time centred on the body location) to a near miss (no more than 5 points) - you miss the head or torso that you called but you might hit something else (or might not), depending on what number you roll on the grid. e.g. there's a lot of air around the head for the bullet to go into and only torso and upper arms below it. Torso has groin, legs, arms and head surrounding it but there's still a couple of chances of missing all of those (attack whizzes past an ear).

That only applies to a called shot, and a near miss at that: too high and the attack could be said to have "missed by miles".

With the (default) snap shots - where the "target" is "anywhere on the person's body", a miss is a miss. A near miss is "you felt the wind as it passed you".

It's not a matter of fudging to make it easier on the players or let the NPC get 'em if I'm having a bad day. It's a matter of reasoned and logical application.

You're blazing away at a person and miss, then you miss.

You're specifically shooting at the person's "centre of mass" and you miss by miles, then you miss.

You're You're specifically shooting at the person's "centre of mass" and you only just miss it, then that bullet's going to land somewhere close to that mark - is it the nearby flesh or thin air?

Likewise, if a character was wandering along a rooftop and failed his/her balance check marginally, they slither down the tiles and get a chance that their frantic scrabbling (quite natural unless they were unconscious at the time) will snag them a hand hold - and present them with the problem of how to climb back up.

Fail that check spectacularly and you cartwheel off the roof onto the street below.

In no way do I advocate making up reasons for unwarranted "saving throws" (let alone repeated saving throws) just to keep the players alive no matter how boneheaded their behaviour gets.

They fail by enough or there's no plausible reason for a "save", then their boneheaded stunt could get them killed - simple as that.

And I extend the same rules to both PCs and NPCs - the PCs have got the same chance of a near miss on their called shot still incapacitating (or unintentionally killing) their opponent as they have of being incapacitated or killed.

If they're just blazing away at each other they each have the same chances of hitting or missing as their skill levels permit.

They all have the same chance of plummeting to their doom or blowing themselves up or, if their fail is within 5 points of the mark and it's plausible to do so, saving themselves by the skin of their teeth.

All those possibilities make for some interesting story-telling. Win, lose or draw, the story could take all sorts of twists and turns - but should never boil down to "and in one bound, Jack was free". OK, you survived the slip on the icy rooftop and managed, after a few hairy moments, to pull yourself - battered and bleeding - back up to safety from the spouting you managed to grab as you slithered, scrabbling frantically, past. Too bad about your buddy who fell to his death...

 

[Blastin]

It's great how a thread about anecdotes of great moments in gaming turns into an argument over the philosophy behind the dice rolls.

This is exactly what I was gonna say as well.
A great post about a positive gaming experience is turned into an opportunity for a few people to try and convince others the one right way to play.

To the OP and others that have posted examples of good, fun games: Keep up the good work!

 

[Wolf1066]

Okay, Rechan, I'll throw one in just for you.

...

Damn, TS, I still can't give you XP. Great story.

The glory days of being a Free Trader - I miss them so...

 

[The Shaman]

The glory days of being a Free Trader - I miss them so...

Me, too.

I've started putting the notes from my last campaign into a wiki, with vague notions of running another game in Spearhead Subsector someday.

 

[Saeviomagy]

And I read this . . . . . . as a referee trying to protect a player from his own choices.

Which leads me to wonder, what would the referee have ruled if the player rolled thirteen exactly? Would as many gamers in this thread argue in favor of "degrees of success" in this instance?

Given that the rules are written as "distance X is DC Y to successfully jump", making DC Y be a "you missed by a bit" is a pretty solid alteration of the rules after the fact in a way that messes with the player, and has no real grounding in anything other than rule 0 in any edition. Compared with what actually happened, which is to take an existing rule for one situation and adapt it to another situation (in which it applied in a previous edition...)

If, on the other hand, the players and dm had agreed that D&D was lacking in degrees of success and failure ahead of time, and that near successes would be accompanied by failures, that would be fine.

Of course you'd need to take a close look and see if jump checks end up sane in that case: it means that most people will fail to clear 10 feet with a running jump under no pressure.

 

[Bullgrit]

I had a situation in an adventure I was running that was something like the OP situation, but with a different result.

The PC monk was being held over a pool of lava by a red dragon (grapple). The dragon was threatening to drop the monk into the lava if the party refused its demand.

The monk chose to try to escape the grapple, and actually succeeded. Over the pool of lava.

The Player asked if he might be able to land on the side of the pool, as it was just one 5' square away. I said ok, with a DC 15 Ref save.

The Player rolled, but failed the save. The monk fell into the lava, took a bunch of damage, and was killed.

Bullgrit

 

[Jdvn1]

See- I like stories like that.

You risk much against tall odds and still succeed? That is classic heroism.

Have I mentioned recently that I love playing with new players? I love the creativity they bring to the game, and that they think of things that we more experienced players wouldn't even consider due to our preconceptions of D&D. They're drawn by the classic heroism, rather than the rules. I think it's easy to lose that, over time.

Is it too late to win that "I have the best players" thread?

 

[Iron Sky]

Have I mentioned recently that I love playing with new players? I love the creativity they bring to the game, and that they think of things that we more experienced players wouldn't even consider due to our preconceptions of D&D. They're drawn by the classic heroism, rather than the rules. I think it's easy to lose that, over time.

Is it too late to win that "I have the best players" thread?

Yeah, new players are cool. A few years ago, I went on a camping trip and ran an impromptu 3.5 game with one of my (RP) buddies, my sister (who had never played an RPG in her life), her boyfriend(who hadn't played in years), and my dad (who listened but didn't play).

The very first combat, they were being attacked by 2 orcs riding dire bats, my sister says "What happens if I cast sleep on the bat while it's flying?" Bam, bat falls, the orc riding it is pasted by the fall, and the bat flies off.

Next round, she says "So, I have the animal domain, can I cast the animal friendship spell on the other bat?" Suddenly the party has a dire bat pet - with saddle - at level 1 (they named it Orion and it stuck around for the whole duration of our mini-campaign).

There's definitely an element of thinking outside the box that new players bring. Not saying old players are bad, but we tend to define our gaming box pretty stringently based on the gaming system we're using. New players don't know where the box even is, so they'll try anything.

 

[D'karr]

Given that the rules are written as "distance X is DC Y to successfully jump", making DC Y be a "you missed by a bit" is a pretty solid alteration of the rules after the fact in a way that messes with the player, and has no real grounding in anything other than rule 0 in any edition.

My favorite, and kind of guiding "rule" for playing and running these games can be found in the foreword to the Moldvay Edition of D&D.

In a sense, the D&D game has no rules, only rule suggestions. No rule is inviolate, particularly if the new or altered rule will encourage creativity and imagination. The important thing is to enjoy the adventure.

I'm kind of glad that for almost 30 years I've been using that quote as a guide rather than being a stickler to the written rules. YMMV.