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breaking the healing rules with goodberries
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<blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 6686137" data-attributes="member: 5834"><p>Easier for the PCs? You are sorely mistaken. Not killing them and easy are two completely different things. Why you do not understand the difference I don't understand. I've explained it clearly. I have to tone down encounters or I kill the PCs. I do not want to kill the PCs. I can kill them at any point in time. The trick is challenging them without killing them. Maybe you don't care if campaigns end, but my players have zero desire to play in campaigns where they are endlessly dying and creating new characters. They would quit playing rather than tolerate that. I don't blame them at all. The fun for a player is building a character. Dying over and over again is not fun.</p><p></p><p>You really have a sort self-delusion going that I don't understand. You always have to plan differently. You created an artificial role-play scenario making 24 beholders act in a disorganized fashion so your players could survive. If 24 beholders acted in concert, they could wipe out a party quickly and easily by virtue of the number of attacks going in the direction of the party. You created a scenario where that many beholders were together. You created a reason why they didn't act in concert. You created an environment where they couldn't work together to bring to bear their full force against the party. You crafted a scenario that a PC party could survive using 24 beholders that in no way is standard for the game. This odd pretense you have that you don't have to craft encounters a party can survive is nothing but a pretense. </p><p></p><p>Why would it be the other way around when I have an unlimited ability to increase the difficulty and kill them at any point in time? I'd probably kill your newbie players easily because they wouldn't fully comprehend the tactics I was using against them until they were dead. I would have thought the reason would be self-evident as to why I'm worried about not killing my veteran players. That reason being I have to increase the difficulty to such a level that it would annihilate a less competent party. </p><p></p><p>Your newbies wander into one of my encounters where I'm running the 24 beholders. They aren't staying in the ship. They are acting in an organized manner seeking slaves to repair the ship. A new leader has ascended because the beholders have been trained to follow a hierarchy of leadership in the absence of the hive mother. Their first course of action is to secure the area where the ship crashed and scout reporting back to the new leader the layout of the land and any possible threats. The ship is equipped with an abundance of creatures in stasis for the beholders to use as tools for scouting, repairing the ship, for food, and recovering supplies due to the slow movement of beholders and their lack of motivation to engage in mundane tasks themselves. There are a few beholder casters on the ship specifically there to dispel things like <em>darkness</em> and <em>invisibility</em>. The beholders have an entire plan for dealing with a crashed ship devised by the high intellect hive mother who made sure to instill in the beholder group a hierarchy of leadership including a precise order of who is followed next in the event of death. Anyone that sees one of these beholder ships generally avoids them because such ships have been known to land on planets and conquer entire regions before forces can be joined together to defeat the beholder army and their hive mother. That right there is an example of our differing viewpoints on how creatures should be played. And let us not forget the surprise on their face when they find out I threw out the random eye ray rule and beholders can choose their rays. You know I'm not following that rule ever.</p><p></p><p>Not to mention you throw out a ton of counter-scenarios to defeat one class without ever going, "Hmm. Where is the rest of the party? What are they doing?" I never do this. Party's work together to win. I've played with parties that work as individuals within the group, I often end up killing them far too easily because the monsters are working in a coordinated fashion. The toughest encounters are coordinated encounters where the PCs are dealing with a multitude of methods to counter the group's tactics, not one individual's tactics. For example, your three stone giants come out to attack the paladin. The bard hits them with <em>hypnotic pattern</em> freezing two of them. The third still active guy becomes the focus for the arrows of the hunter ranger, warlock, and sorcerer/rogue. They chew through his hit points while he tries to grapple the paladin and throw him over the edge. Rinse and repeat for the other two stone giants. Then what? You add a shaman with counterspell? A few dire orc servants to wake the giants from the hypnotic pattern? Do you spend time thinking about how the other party members will counter the tactics you're using to stop the paladin? You seem to view it as an isolated fight, when it isn't. </p><p></p><p>The only difference in our approaches is that you do things I would never do because the players would die. I don't waste time trying to figure out how giffs handle beholders. I make beholders one of the most fearsome things in the galaxy prior to starting the encounter. Giffs run from them if they can. They only fight if they outnumber the beholders substantially. Beholders have been around long enough that they have a means to counter <em>darkness</em> rather than me going, "Damn. I didn't think of that beforehand." If I'm creating a beholder fight, I think of all the ways the party might counter them that the beholder would likely know, and I give the beholder the means to counter the tactic. I spend a great deal of time designing things prior because I can't stand playing beholders stupid if for some reason they have been brought together as a group. I really doubt they would be a stupid, disorganized group even with this hive mother thing you incorporated given their intelligence.</p><p></p><p>You wing it a lot more than I do near as I can tell. I play a lot more aggressively than you do because my monsters don't sit waiting for the players to figure out what they're going to do. For example, my beholders would not wait in the ship and my vampire archers wouldn't sit by why the party was figuring out what to do about them. Come prepared to assault them and win now or be prepared to be assaulted or be prepared to run. </p><p></p><p>There is nothing easy about my games. So latching onto this idea of me creating easier encounters is pretty ridiculous. That is a misinterpretation on your part. There is a very big difference between not killing a party and making things easy. I have to ensure I don't kill the party by playing too aggressively. From what you've told me of your scenarios, that does not appear to be the case in your games.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celtavian, post: 6686137, member: 5834"] Easier for the PCs? You are sorely mistaken. Not killing them and easy are two completely different things. Why you do not understand the difference I don't understand. I've explained it clearly. I have to tone down encounters or I kill the PCs. I do not want to kill the PCs. I can kill them at any point in time. The trick is challenging them without killing them. Maybe you don't care if campaigns end, but my players have zero desire to play in campaigns where they are endlessly dying and creating new characters. They would quit playing rather than tolerate that. I don't blame them at all. The fun for a player is building a character. Dying over and over again is not fun. You really have a sort self-delusion going that I don't understand. You always have to plan differently. You created an artificial role-play scenario making 24 beholders act in a disorganized fashion so your players could survive. If 24 beholders acted in concert, they could wipe out a party quickly and easily by virtue of the number of attacks going in the direction of the party. You created a scenario where that many beholders were together. You created a reason why they didn't act in concert. You created an environment where they couldn't work together to bring to bear their full force against the party. You crafted a scenario that a PC party could survive using 24 beholders that in no way is standard for the game. This odd pretense you have that you don't have to craft encounters a party can survive is nothing but a pretense. Why would it be the other way around when I have an unlimited ability to increase the difficulty and kill them at any point in time? I'd probably kill your newbie players easily because they wouldn't fully comprehend the tactics I was using against them until they were dead. I would have thought the reason would be self-evident as to why I'm worried about not killing my veteran players. That reason being I have to increase the difficulty to such a level that it would annihilate a less competent party. Your newbies wander into one of my encounters where I'm running the 24 beholders. They aren't staying in the ship. They are acting in an organized manner seeking slaves to repair the ship. A new leader has ascended because the beholders have been trained to follow a hierarchy of leadership in the absence of the hive mother. Their first course of action is to secure the area where the ship crashed and scout reporting back to the new leader the layout of the land and any possible threats. The ship is equipped with an abundance of creatures in stasis for the beholders to use as tools for scouting, repairing the ship, for food, and recovering supplies due to the slow movement of beholders and their lack of motivation to engage in mundane tasks themselves. There are a few beholder casters on the ship specifically there to dispel things like [I]darkness[/I] and [I]invisibility[/I]. The beholders have an entire plan for dealing with a crashed ship devised by the high intellect hive mother who made sure to instill in the beholder group a hierarchy of leadership including a precise order of who is followed next in the event of death. Anyone that sees one of these beholder ships generally avoids them because such ships have been known to land on planets and conquer entire regions before forces can be joined together to defeat the beholder army and their hive mother. That right there is an example of our differing viewpoints on how creatures should be played. And let us not forget the surprise on their face when they find out I threw out the random eye ray rule and beholders can choose their rays. You know I'm not following that rule ever. Not to mention you throw out a ton of counter-scenarios to defeat one class without ever going, "Hmm. Where is the rest of the party? What are they doing?" I never do this. Party's work together to win. I've played with parties that work as individuals within the group, I often end up killing them far too easily because the monsters are working in a coordinated fashion. The toughest encounters are coordinated encounters where the PCs are dealing with a multitude of methods to counter the group's tactics, not one individual's tactics. For example, your three stone giants come out to attack the paladin. The bard hits them with [I]hypnotic pattern[/I] freezing two of them. The third still active guy becomes the focus for the arrows of the hunter ranger, warlock, and sorcerer/rogue. They chew through his hit points while he tries to grapple the paladin and throw him over the edge. Rinse and repeat for the other two stone giants. Then what? You add a shaman with counterspell? A few dire orc servants to wake the giants from the hypnotic pattern? Do you spend time thinking about how the other party members will counter the tactics you're using to stop the paladin? You seem to view it as an isolated fight, when it isn't. The only difference in our approaches is that you do things I would never do because the players would die. I don't waste time trying to figure out how giffs handle beholders. I make beholders one of the most fearsome things in the galaxy prior to starting the encounter. Giffs run from them if they can. They only fight if they outnumber the beholders substantially. Beholders have been around long enough that they have a means to counter [I]darkness[/I] rather than me going, "Damn. I didn't think of that beforehand." If I'm creating a beholder fight, I think of all the ways the party might counter them that the beholder would likely know, and I give the beholder the means to counter the tactic. I spend a great deal of time designing things prior because I can't stand playing beholders stupid if for some reason they have been brought together as a group. I really doubt they would be a stupid, disorganized group even with this hive mother thing you incorporated given their intelligence. You wing it a lot more than I do near as I can tell. I play a lot more aggressively than you do because my monsters don't sit waiting for the players to figure out what they're going to do. For example, my beholders would not wait in the ship and my vampire archers wouldn't sit by why the party was figuring out what to do about them. Come prepared to assault them and win now or be prepared to be assaulted or be prepared to run. There is nothing easy about my games. So latching onto this idea of me creating easier encounters is pretty ridiculous. That is a misinterpretation on your part. There is a very big difference between not killing a party and making things easy. I have to ensure I don't kill the party by playing too aggressively. From what you've told me of your scenarios, that does not appear to be the case in your games. [/QUOTE]
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