Have I spoiled my PCs?

[Kunimatyu]

Last night, my party of six level 5 PCs encountered a

Spoiler

basilisk

in the Savage Tide Adventure Path. Several of the party rolled low and life got pretty miserable for them when they didn't have enough resources to restore all 3 of the PCs. After the encounter, I got an unusual amount of complaining that the encounter was 'crappy' and 'overpowered' - I told them that while I don't usually like save-or-lose monsters, it was a perfectly fair encounter for PCs of their level.

Usually, when I run campaigns of my own creation, I stay away from that particular type of monster, but now I'm wondering if I've been spoiling my PCs too much.

Have I?

 

[Crothian]

No, I don't use them much either but when I do they know to be worried.

 

[shilsen]

Spoiling is a really nebulous term, and there's no correct answer to it. The main thing which matters is what you and your players are expecting from the game and the encounters in it. In my game, for example, PCs literally never die, since I have a house rule allowing them to survive killing blows effects at -9 by blowing action pts or (now) swashbuckling cards. But PCs are constantly beat down and suffer all sorts of repercussions to being beaten in a fight. According to some, the "no death" clause would count as spoiling my PCs, but I think my players would seriously disagree, and so would I.

In short, there's no way to say if you've been spoiling your PCs, IMO, and I don't even think that concept has any meaning. You may, however, be functioning with expectations that don't meet your players', in which case you should speak to them and find a compromise that pleases them and you.

 

[Fishbone]

Hey, sometimes the dice hate you.
A group of 6 5th level PCs should be able to handle that and should have loot saved up and scrolls and potions and the like available to cure that.
Sucks, though.
Hey, at least it wasn't something like a bodak. Petrification is a rather large inconvenience, death is all but insurmountable for a level 5 PC.

 

[Bagpuss]

I had five 5th level PC's encounter the same monster the scout didn't spot it until he was within 10ft of it, due to some bad rolls.

The whole party took the avert gaze option to have a 50% chance on not needing to save, and at 20% miss chance. Except for the warmage who was so far back from the party that he was out of range. They killed it without a single person failing the save even though, on at least two occasions what could have been hits weren't due to the miss chance and on a similar number of occasions they had to make saves as they rolled badly on the averting gaze roll.

With decent tactics that creature wasn't much of a threat, the save DC is pretty low, the creatures AC isn't difficult for the fighter types that need to get close, and it's other attack isn't great. If you don't need to be close to it to fight you should have looked away and moved out of range of it's gaze. Unless it's looking at you (using it's gaze as an attack action) then you only save on your turn, at which point you can declare you aren't looking at it an avoid making a save altogether.

Also from the adventure I know they are told what creature they are about to face, well in advance, if they didn't prepare properly then they only have themselves to blame.

 

[Bagpuss]

should have loot saved up and scrolls and potions and the like available to cure that.

Hardly, it's 4000gp an once for Stone Salve, Flesh to Stone on a scroll is 1,650gp, at 6th level they have what 9,000gp each in items. Are you going to spend 4,000gp on Stone Salve or Gauntlets of Ogre Power?

Also where the encounter occurs the nearest town within a months travel only has a gp limit of about 200gp.

 

[Rothe]

-deleted- posted to wrong thread

 

[gribble]

Hey, at least it wasn't something like a bodak. Petrification is a rather large inconvenience, death is all but insurmountable for a level 5 PC.

At 5th level, it's pretty much equivalent. The 5th level cleric spell "break enchantment" is just as hard to get as the 5th level cleric spell "raise dead"...

We had a similiar situation with our campaign. Some very bad rolls resulted in the entire party getting petrified. Luckily an NPC "rescued" some of us, who came back with some "new guys" to give it a second go. My new character, a dwarven fighter, with something like +10 fort save (could have even been higher) charged it. Basically I needed a natural 1 to fail the fort save... you can guess what I rolled. I set a new group record for fastest character "death" - he was dead before I even finished filling in his character sheet...


In the end that pesky CR-appropriate

Spoiler

basilisk

accounted for something like 6 PCs... (2 or 3 of which managed to get "cured" by the NPC) not bad going really.

 

[Kunimatyu]

Right, stone to flesh, stone salve, and the like are simply not affordable for 4th level PCs.

Since Savage Tide is both fairly lethal and also piratical, I use the "lives" rule from Skull and Bones, where you have 1d4+1 "lives" and when you die, you come back shortly(usually with a far-fetched tale of how you beat the odds) with a minor inconvenience, like a lost eye, a facial scar, or a missing limb.

In this case, the PCs were short one stone salve, so I had Urol attempt to brew up a makeshift stone salve from the basilisk's eyes. The party decided that the one guy who hadn't lost a life so far would take one for the team, and he rolled on the table and got the Missing Eye(-2 init, -2 Reflex, -2 Dex-based skills).

I told the player that Urol's impromptu stone salve worked....except for one of his eyes, which was still stone. This prompted an onslaught of bad jokes from the other players (one of the PCs asked that one to take a look at a stone trap, since he 'had an eye for that sort of thing').

Personally, I thought it was a rather good solution - eye for an eye, and all that.

 

[robberbaron]

Nice solution and, no, you're not spoiling the players.
If they get into situations they should (by the rules) be able to handle and they fail it is probably due to either: unlucky dice rolls (not much you can do about it and them whining about it doesn't help) or rubbish tactics (not much you can do about that, either, but they can).