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

[Slife]

3 choices, 35 squares.

About 5,000,000,000,000,000 combinations. Have the mage rest and fill all his spell slots with unseen servants.

8th level wiz with 20 int gets 17 unseen servants
8th level sorc with 20 chr gets 25 unseen servants

Assume they last eight hours per casting, and can try a combination every second.

For the sorc, that's 70,000,000,000 days of casting
For the wiz, that's 100,000,000,000 days of casting

Halve that for averages.

35,000,000,000 days sorc
50,000,000,000 days wiz

So, your wizard could try for 140,000,000 years on average...
Or your sorc could try for 95,000,000 years.

Break out the potions of lichage.


So lets say you get a level 20 sorcerer instead. He's done in a cool 2,000,000 years (casting time increases with level too).

Impossible to brute force... mathematically. My solution: ask the Dm to let you roll a d20 until you get a 20. The number of rolls= the number of days you spent.

 

[Hodgie]

2 million years? Attrition is out then...

 

[Ds Da Man]

Hey, maybe your DM should just git rid of INT, WIS, CHR all together. Why do you need it if your just going to use your real INT, WIS, CHR?

Roman, if your DM let this campaign go because of this stupid puzzle thing, HE SUCKS!!!

 

[MarauderX]

Here's my logic after staring for a few minutes while enjoying the last brew of the evening.

The blanks will be replaced by either an A (arrow), T (Triangle) or C (Circle). Not all the Blanks will be the same, but will vary depending on the line above it and whether the lines ascend or descend in order. I'm also looking at it like a set of roman numerals, where the higher order letter can be modified by the lower order letter depending on the placement. So in the first line the 3 Blanks might be replaced by either a C or T.
Lower down the list, there are 2 Blanks on the very left. My guess is that each is either a C or an A as it transitions downwards, but knowing when it transitions from C to A going down is what needs to be examined. I think the trick is to figure out the ordered value of A, C & T.

If this is the trick to the puzzle, tell your DM to stick to the other aspects of the game and leave retardedly boring things like this at his MENSA club meetings.

 

[tylerthehobo]

You're a better man than I...

So, there were no hard feelings on the DM ending an entire campaign because you couldn't read his mind?

Anybody ever play 7th Guest? That was a great game built around puzzles. Myst? Great game built around puzzles. This isn't a great puzzle - it's a TPK in the form of a brainteaser. There are tons of great puzzle books out there that could have served as source material - even d20-Fantasy source material - for a puzzle that would have fit your campaign and flavor. It's really sad that the whole campaign hinged on this - so much work goes into a campaign, and to have it all flushed down over this is sad. Sounds like your DM's priorities weren't in the right place. Hope the new campaign's a good time.

 

[Tatsukun]

"Fill in the proper symbols into the blanks"

Is your DM a native English speaker? If so, the grammar error might be a clue.
Why are there two prepositions?

It should be "Fill the proper symbols into the blanks".

Does the phrasal verb "Fill in" have an other meaning in your campaign? Maybe the old cleric always told you to 'Fill in the circle of life' or something?

If not, just beat your DM with sticks until he tells you the answer, then get a new DM.

/professor mode

-Tatsu

 

[D-rock]

I'm glad you didn't take it too hard, most people probably would have been more upset than you were. Although, if you thought your DM just goofed, which happens, I could understand. Perhaps, he really thought the puzzle was easyer than it was. Although, there should of been more than one solution to getting through the puzzle.

 

[RangerWickett]

That's what the world could use: a book on how to create Myst-like puzzles that are engaging and fun.

I remember fondly the weirdest thing I did when playing Myst. There's this one puzzle where you're on a track, and you're trying to head a certain direction, and sometimes you'll stop and hear a chime or something. You're supposed to use those as clues. Not me. I just visually kept a sense of which direction the cart was pointing based on how much it turned on the track. Never knew what the actual puzzle was; I just kept myself pointing in the same direction.

On a related note, Cube 0 is a good movie. Hypercube SUCKS!

 

[Mark]

The DM should always have alternate ways to defeat any obstacle, no matter if it is a physical or mental challenge. That said...

Indiana Jones would be ashamed of the attitude of some of you people! Many puzzles "suck" until you figure them out. They are suppose to stymie you for at least a while. Although I do not understand why a DM would allow his game to end rather than provide some alternatives to knuckling down and solving a puzzle, I think it speaks well of the group and its members that he felt this puzzle was solvable by them, if indeed he did.

Anyway, are we sure we actually have all of the information here?

So anyway, screw this worrying about whether there are spoilers in this thread, I say, let's work this problem transparently, right here in this thread and see if we can figure it out.

I think it would help to have an actual scan of the puzzle as drawn by the DM, or whatever he actually presented to the group. Is that possible?

 

[tarchon]

I would guess that it's meant to be read as a sequence of rows, with some transformation rule between rows. You're intended to infer the transformation rule and use that to extrapolate the symbols from previous and subsequent rows. Significantly, note that there are no complete rows (which would make the transformation obvious) but several complete columns. The first rows have a fairly obvious transformation, but the later ones break it, which is a typical puzzle-book design.