Interlude
Greetings Readers, Lurkers and Occasional Guests,
I will swing back to answer some of the individual comments, but I wanted to go ahead and discuss the miraculous
”Return of Rosë”
!
Answers and Questions (or Confessions of a RBDM)
The Mistake
The genesis of Rosë’s return lays in one simple event…I made a
MISTAKE! I usually take about 15-20 minutes after each session to jot down important notes, make sure I have the order of events right, etc. I was making my notes following the session in which our barbarian friend fell when I realized that I – a DM with 21 years of experience behind the screen – had made a major error.
While studying the layout of the battlemat, I realized that I had given the “pit fighter” (you remember him…he was the one dropping everyone with his ransuer) an unwarranted AoO on Rosë early in the battle. When Rosë moved to engage from 10’ to 5’, I gave the pit fighter an AoO, even though it was only a 5’ adjustment. I didn’t catch at the time and none of the players caught it either (I have several good “rules hounds” who don’t cross the line into “rules lawyering”). That attack produced the x3 critical that knocked off 30+ of Rosë’s hit points!
A major mistake, but one discovered after the fact!
The Dilemma
As most of you know, I am a “roll-in-the-open-and-let-the-dice-fall-where-they-may DM”. Normally, when something is discovered after-the-fact (a forgotten bonus, etc), we chalk it up to the vagaries of fate and say, “Too bad…you’ll remember that next time!”
This, however, was different.
This was a glaring DM error - albeit an understandable one in the heat of combat – that had a direct negative impact on the PC. Although the damage done by the attack didn’t kill Rosë, it clearly was a major contributing factor to his eventual demise and it had a major impact on the rest of the battle. I, however, was the only one who realized there was a problem.
My choices were:
Choice 1: Do nothing and let things continue without ever bringing it up.
Choice 2: Re-Run the entire encounter.
Choice 3: Something else entirely!
The Process
I did not feel comfortable with
Choice 1 or
Choice 2. I have never been one to screw my players on purpose (they usually do a good enough job on their own
), so
Choice 1 was out. Due to the way events transpired, a clean “re-run” would have been nigh impossible, even with my great role-players, so
Choice 2 didn’t make sense either.
I decided to do something different entirely. I posed the dilemma to the brain trust over at the RBDM Club with several proposed solutions and got some great input from them. Armed with a developing idea, I e-mailed John (Rosë’s player) and told him of the error along with several proposed solutions. He concurred with my preliminary assessment, so I bounced things off the RBDM crew again, tightened it up a bit and e-mailed all of the other players with news that
news of Rosë’s death was greatly exaggerated!
The Solution
The final decision was for Rosë to be “mostly dead” (ala Wesley in
The Princess Bride), but with a MAJOR in-game plot hook as to why this condition existed. This allowed for a rather elegant way to wrap everything up…advance several minor plot lines…create a major new one…AND rectify a major DM boo-boo
!
All in all, it worked well. John was happy to be able to keep going with Rosë, the other players were glad to keep their tank and the DM was happy that yet more plotlines were created to torture the players with…an all-around win!
As always, question and commentary welcome!
~ Old One
