No, I don't like it. In my game last week, the heroes and their allies were all down except one in an arena fight. My solution when the last hero still attacked the obvious leader of the opposition and wounded him was that all the other enemies withdrew to see how the one-on-one fight for supremacy played out. After a tense battle, the hero eventually prevailed. Then he was able to escape with the other unconscious hero but the allies got left behind. So, they survived but there was a price. It was close and hopefully more satisfying than some outside force coming in to save them.
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Do you like being saved? Or the Dues ex machina in action
- Thread starter Gundark
- Start date
No, I don't like it. In my game last week, the heroes and their allies were all down except one in an arena fight. My solution when the last hero still attacked the obvious leader of the opposition and wounded him was that all the other enemies withdrew to see how the one-on-one fight for supremacy played out. After a tense battle, the hero eventually prevailed. Then he was able to escape with the other unconscious hero but the allies got left behind. So, they survived but there was a price. It was close and hopefully more satisfying than some outside force coming in to save them.
Indeed. There've been occasions when I told my players that I felt I may have made a bad judgement call when designing the encounter and offered them to make a retroactive change, but they always refused.Many of my players have likewise been seriously annoyed by fudger GMs who won't let their PCs die, so I often get praise when I do kill 'em off.Not everyone likes my style but most seem to. Killing the big demon is a real achievement when there was a real chance of TPK.
A deus ex machina would be totally unacceptable for our group.
Zelda Themelin
First Post
I think "being saved by ex machina" sucks fun out of game.
It's another thing to set up system for fate points or have actual plot even that just is supposed to play pc:s into believing for while they are in trouble. It works best if pc:s expect additional forces to appear or someone coming to help, but are loosing hope it's going to happen in time.
Sometimes those kinda events are fun, but they should be quite rare.
Last game I played such situation came as our characters had to run after main baddie in hurry to spot the ritual and leave part of our npc team help army to finnish off some nasties on the outside while we hit the portal. We were underpowered with the rush but we had to try. One of us ended up dead but then rest of our npc-team (the survivers) followed into our battle and we were able to win. Worse than if we could have regrouped before attacking ritual stop but we were running out of time, so it was our choice.
Sometimes when gm has complitely misread relevant rule we have even ret-conned it, but only those times mistake was discovered during the event. Or at least brought up "you sure that spell is really works like that, seems bit too much" or such. And hushed until end of combat.
It's another thing to set up system for fate points or have actual plot even that just is supposed to play pc:s into believing for while they are in trouble. It works best if pc:s expect additional forces to appear or someone coming to help, but are loosing hope it's going to happen in time.
Sometimes those kinda events are fun, but they should be quite rare.
Last game I played such situation came as our characters had to run after main baddie in hurry to spot the ritual and leave part of our npc team help army to finnish off some nasties on the outside while we hit the portal. We were underpowered with the rush but we had to try. One of us ended up dead but then rest of our npc-team (the survivers) followed into our battle and we were able to win. Worse than if we could have regrouped before attacking ritual stop but we were running out of time, so it was our choice.
Sometimes when gm has complitely misread relevant rule we have even ret-conned it, but only those times mistake was discovered during the event. Or at least brought up "you sure that spell is really works like that, seems bit too much" or such. And hushed until end of combat.
As a player, I prefer for my character to be able to die. The possibility of death (whether due to an error on my part or just bad luck) adds spice to the game.
That said, if the GM screws up and makes an encounter that's tougher than he intended, I wouldn't resent a lucky break coming my way - especially if its not heavy-handed/blatant.
Similarly, when I GM, I let the dice fall as they may - unless I think that I have screwed up. That's the only time that I will twist things in the party's favor, and I'm only doing it to balance out an error of mine that worked against them.
That said, if the GM screws up and makes an encounter that's tougher than he intended, I wouldn't resent a lucky break coming my way - especially if its not heavy-handed/blatant.
Similarly, when I GM, I let the dice fall as they may - unless I think that I have screwed up. That's the only time that I will twist things in the party's favor, and I'm only doing it to balance out an error of mine that worked against them.
