DMing Dilemma

[Jack of Shadows]

Wild-shaping druids should *always* be careful around hungry critters. You handled it fine.

It was a spell not a wild shape but that's probably semantics.

Jack

 

[delericho]

The character takes 1d8+8 from being crushed by the gizzard and then an additional 8 points of acid damage.

Yeah, that's not unreasonable. Had you replied "20d6", or "You die, no save", then I would have objected, but no - you handled the encounter fine.

 

[DragonLancer]

I think you handled the whole thing fine. Perfectly acceptable as far as I am concerned.

 

[dpetroc]

Good call on the no bite damage. Druid got nailed but good. The assumption that the t-rex wouldn't react to something that small is predicated on the T-rex having a brain larger than a walnut able to discriminate what is and is not worth eating. It don't.

 

[Rvdvelden]

My DM would point me to the finer details of D&D:

Roll Initiative equals Encounter equals Threat to PC. Ignore Threat equals Dead PC.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

You did right by me.

At my table anybody who got within bite.s reach of a T-rex and whined because of the consequences would be teased until they shut up.

 

[Asmor]

Kind of a weird death. A flying party with missile weapons should be able to kill a T-Rex with absolutely zero risk. Arguably it's not even an encounter. Why was the druid so close to it?

That was my thought as soon as he said the Warlock uses his flight invocation. I'd be tempted to withhold exp from this encounter just because it's so simple that it could easily be handwaved by the Warlock's player saying, "Ok, I hover above it and blast it 'til it falls." The only challenge provided by the encounter was finding the T-Rex in the first place, so I'd assign experience based on that challenge and be done with it.

The fact is the players played exceptionally poorly... It's akin to walking past a river, then deciding to stick your head under the water and hold it there until you drown.

 

[Glyfair]

Opinions? Was I unfair in this encounter or did the player get what he deserved? Would you have handled it differently?

To me it's a matter of consistency. If the players sent a bird (or birds) towards the T-Rex as a distraction (perhaps having it draw an attack so that the T-Rex wouldn't charge or delay until the PCs got close) would you have had it attack the bird? If so, then I think you were fine. If you wouldn't, then maybe you weren't.

The issue of unfairness comes because the player feels that you had the T-Rex attack the bird because it was a PC. If it would have been to the player's advantage for the T-Rex to attack and you wouldn't have it do so, then clearly you had the T-Rex attack the bird because it was a PC. In that case the player's argument was sound (but not necessarily right, depending on your group's style of play).

 

[Li Shenron]

I would have ruled otherwise.

A tyrannosaurus is huge, the druid was wildshaped into a tiny bird (e.g. hawk). Definitely possible for the dinosaur to eat it, but since it was being blasted by someone else I would have ruled that it would not have bothered about a currently harmless bird and focused instead on the current threats. Close call anyway, your ruling doesn't sound wrong.