Dragon Editorial: Fearless

[Hussar]

A house rule I toyed around with has been allowing clerics to cast Cure Minor Wounds at will. That means that you never have the situation where you fight, heal, then rest. You only have to rest when you're truly out of gas. Higher level healing is for in combat.

I haven't test driven it yet, but, I think it would work.

 

[Campbell]

A house rule I toyed around with has been allowing clerics to cast Cure Minor Wounds at will. That means that you never have the situation where you fight, heal, then rest. You only have to rest when you're truly out of gas. Higher level healing is for in combat.

I haven't test driven it yet, but, I think it would work.

That would involve an awful lot of touching.

 

[hong]

Another way to reduce the importance of healing is to provide lots of freely-usable ways of reducing/negating damage taken. Eg if the defender gets a shout that gives everyone DR /10 for 1 round, and is usable every encounter (or even at will).

 

[Hussar]

I know that in my last campaign, we had a cohort Truenamer. Now, the truenamer mechanics aren't the most wonderful, but, he could give people a fast healing ability 10 for 5 rounds. We chucked the idea that you couldn't Take 20 with truename spells, because that rule makes utterly no sense, which meant that he could bump you about 50 hp's about 10 or 12 times a day.

No good in combat of course, but, it sure made the game run smoother. Finish a fight, heal up, keep going.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

In 3.5 I've lost a PC to a phantasmal killer trap and another to circle of death, 4th and 6th level spells respectively. I've died three times from a ragewalker's Induce Blood Frenzy ability. Two of those were the same PC (and the same ragewalker). DC 28 will save = ouch. The ability effectively means only the strongest melee character in the party survives. All three times that wasn't me.

As a DM I've killed a PC with a medusa's petrification as he failed his 'system shock' check to be stone to fleshed. And I caused a TPK with an umber hulk's confusion - everyone failed the save.

Last Sunday I came this close to generating a TPK for my 4th and 5th level PCs when they went up against a pair of harpies. Round 1, the harpies started to sing. Everyone failed their saving throws except the warmage, who just kept firing at them while they tried to take down the party. If he had failed one or the other of his saves, they'd have all been toast. Of course, I use action points, so they could have started burning off action points to get additional saves, but I do that for exactly the reason that D&D is too lethal.

I'd say approximately half of all PC deaths are to SoDs or SoSomethingReallyBadHappens. A quarter are to big monsters with improved grab, those are vicious in 3e.

Same session, the rogue almost got chewed to paste by a huge crocodile. 1d12+13 per round, or something like that. I only could miss her on a 1, then improved grab. The only reason she survived is because someone gave the croc a good reason to do a tail swipe, so it took the -20 to grapple and she managed to slip away. Another round and she'd be rolling up a new character.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Heh. The monster in Age of Worms that scared us most wasn't Dragotha or Kyuss. It didn't even have any instakill spells. It was a buffed fang dragon with an AC of ~50, and damage on a full attack around 500. It (literally) ripped the barbarian a new one, we ran away, and we were too scared to go back.

I hope to GOD that I get the chance to sic that particular puppy on my players. I think I hurt myself just by reading his stats. Also, if my players are reading this, MWUAHAHAHA!!!

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

A house rule I toyed around with has been allowing clerics to cast Cure Minor Wounds at will. That means that you never have the situation where you fight, heal, then rest. You only have to rest when you're truly out of gas. Higher level healing is for in combat.

I haven't test driven it yet, but, I think it would work.

I just give my players full HP between combats. And they still get their butts whupped on a fairly regular basis.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

It's all about the expected playstyle, if the DM and players are on the same page then regardless of how exactly they play it'll be fun for all involved.

I just seem to prefer a harsher, more deadly playstyle than many. I like SoDs, I like clever traps and clever ways to avoid/disarm them, hordes of vicious enemies, random encounters of random CR. Anyway that's peripheral. What I read says that risks have been reduced, randomness reduced. And those tend to go against my preferred playstyle.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

See I don't get your comment on randomness being reduced, it isn't random when you hit a SoD and all you can do is either roll and pass or roll and die.

I think it is more random and more in-game challenging to have to figure out on the fly out of the multiple means of dealing with a scenario/trap what the proper course of action is.

I think this also makes it MORE gritty since grit to me isn't about a person just dying thats it. It is about having to twist and turn and wiggle your way through tough encounters, through various means. Your battered and bruised at the end, but your made it through, and toughened up for the next thing to be thrown in your face.

Also with hordes of vicious monsters well given that we can actually deal with hordes of vicious monsters now and it is built into the ruleset I would think that be a good-thing for 4e in your eyes.

 

[Hussar]

It's all about the expected playstyle, if the DM and players are on the same page then regardless of how exactly they play it'll be fun for all involved.

I just seem to prefer a harsher, more deadly playstyle than many. I like SoDs, I like clever traps and clever ways to avoid/disarm them, hordes of vicious enemies, random encounters of random CR. Anyway that's peripheral. What I read says that risks have been reduced, randomness reduced. And those tend to go against my preferred playstyle.

Ok, I'll buy that. Fits with how I play as well.

How do you get around the fact that you are whacking PC's every other session or so? Don't your players get annoyed by the fact that any PC they create, they may as well not bother with a background, because the PC won't survive long enough for the background to matter?

I have zero problems whacking PC's. I'm pretty good at it. But, honestly, I wish 3e made it a trifle harder to do. A given monster of CR=PC level, quite possibly can kill a PC in one round. Granted, the chances are not high, I realize that. But, the chances are very much real. Over a fairly short span of time, you should be killing PC's regularly, regardless of how cautious the players are, simply because of the way the math in 3e works.

How do you deal with that? Or do you deal with it at all?