Defeated by puzzle - campaign over: Here is the offending puzzle!

[orsal]

5) The puzzle is a 15x15 grid, but the cells are about twice as wide as they are high. I suspect this does not have any significance other than the fact that the puzzle was printed from Excel where cells are wider than they are high.

In which case it would be due to the fact that the puzzle was printed from Excel by a DM who hasn't figured out how to resize column width.

 

[punkorange]

This is precisely why I don't do puzzles out of character. Even though my character has in intelligence of 19 and can use magic to somewhat see the future, I can't figure out this puzzle so my character is clueless.

 

[Len]

Not with compitent people running and playing the game.

You've never been within 1 roll of a TPK?

 

[Crothian]

You've never been within 1 roll of a TPK?

But it wasn't that single roll that caused the TPK, there were other dice rolls that got you to the place that one more bad roll would cause a TPK.

 

[Psion]

Puzzles are not for characters they are for players. Making it a skill check is even worse. You'd perfer having a campaign hinge on a single roll of the die? Though having it hinge on solving a puzzlle is not much better.

Nonetheless, this notion may leave you with a jarring sense that your character's intelligence doesn't mean much.

A compromise between gamist and simulationist stances is justifiable here. As the Yuan-Ti puzzle in the Book of Challenges did, you can let the pcs may intelligence checks (or appropriate skill checks) to get hints.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

A compromise between gamist and simulationist stances is justifiable here. As the Yuan-Ti puzzle in the Book of Challenges did, you can let the pcs may intelligence checks (or appropriate skill checks) to get hints.

This reminds me of an old, old computer game about spying. You could take skill ranks in things like cryptography or driving. What you would get out of it is that the more skill you put into a given category the easier the puzzle was.

Hints for skill checks seems like a good idea. In the case of this particular puzzle, the DM could have ruled that for every point the characters beat a given DC, he would fill in one of the blanks.

 

[Jdvn1]

There is no answer, there is only Zuul.

 

[Crothian]

Nonetheless, this notion may leave you with a jarring sense that your character's intelligence doesn't mean much.

That is why knowing your players and asking them ahead of time how they would like puzzles done is important. I know some people that don't want puzzles period and others that would not want any hints no matter what character they play.

 

[Starglim]

Nearly impossible, because not enough information is given to guess the pattern or to find a starting point.

 

[Hodgie]

Romnipotent- What program did you make that puzzle with?

Had the puzzle been presented in this fashion I would have had no qualms with it. Players could have messed with it away from the table and (assuming some sort of result occured when the solution was found) attrition could be used to solve it.