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<blockquote data-quote="Thank Dog" data-source="post: 6386753" data-attributes="member: 6780250">Character death is part of the D&amp;D gaming experience. This notion that PC's should survive everything thrown at them is a recent addition to gaming culture, born of the trend towards &quot;balanced&quot; mechanics and a rule for everything which, I believe, began with 2e Powers &amp; Options and the various splatbooks and was codified with 3e and then solidified into the gaming paradigm by Pathfinder.5e is clearly going in a different direction, a direction which I personally favour.When I ran the encounter, I tried to make it fairly obvious that the PC wasn't meant to win and yet before I'd even managed to issue the challenge or roleplay the sergeant's reaction, a player up and said he'd do it. Afterwards when discussing the encounter I mentioned that it was intended to be unwinnable and he said that he had figured that all along. This, to me, made it a cool and memorable encounter.A lot of criticisms about HotDQ (not to mention 5e in general) seem to be of this nature where people have glossed over something, not realised something, or misinterpreted something. The funny thing was that when I ran it, I had the cultists not immediately attack the PC's on sight. In one encounter I even had a cultist ask the PC in the lead, &quot;What do you want?&quot; They charged anyway but I think the point remains that the possibility was there for a non-combat situation. When other DM's have run it, it's been initiative immediately with no chance of bluffing or ignoring the cultists.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Thank Dog, post: 6386753, member: 6780250"] Character death is part of the D&D gaming experience. This notion that PC's should survive everything thrown at them is a recent addition to gaming culture, born of the trend towards "balanced" mechanics and a rule for everything which, I believe, began with 2e Powers & Options and the various splatbooks and was codified with 3e and then solidified into the gaming paradigm by Pathfinder. 5e is clearly going in a different direction, a direction which I personally favour. When I ran the encounter, I tried to make it fairly obvious that the PC wasn't meant to win and yet before I'd even managed to issue the challenge or roleplay the sergeant's reaction, a player up and said he'd do it. Afterwards when discussing the encounter I mentioned that it was intended to be unwinnable and he said that he had figured that all along. This, to me, made it a cool and memorable encounter. A lot of criticisms about HotDQ (not to mention 5e in general) seem to be of this nature where people have glossed over something, not realised something, or misinterpreted something. The funny thing was that when I ran it, I had the cultists not immediately attack the PC's on sight. In one encounter I even had a cultist ask the PC in the lead, "What do you want?" They charged anyway but I think the point remains that the possibility was there for a non-combat situation. When other DM's have run it, it's been initiative immediately with no chance of bluffing or ignoring the cultists. [/QUOTE]

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