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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 4967001" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I agree KD. There are always ways to make something interesting out of any encounter. And as you say, the DM can kill any party any old time he feels like it if that's what he wants to do.The thing is there are always weaknesses in any party. I guarantee you if you hand me 5 character sheets for a party of any level and composition and no matter how skilled they are at covering their bases I'll be able to design an encounter that will render them virtually helpless. There are just so many possibilities available to the DM and that doesn't even count DM cheese. I'm just talking about using pretty much by-the-book encounters. For that matter almost any group of monsters if played to the hilt (intelligent ones at least) can be run in such a way that they're at best virtually unbeatable. There's nothing wrong with any of that, but obviously there is some sort of line the DM needs to walk between impossible challenges and fun, challenging, dangerous ones. It seems merely sensible that if the DM is going to spring encounters on the PCs that are designed to be close to impossible then there should be some plot element which compensates. The PCs should be forewarned or have an escape route. Their inevitable defeat should be a plot point and maybe how close they come to victory despite the odds is their real measure of success. Maybe the scenario is even a case of "Lets all go out in a blaze of glory", which is a perfectly good end to a campaign if its done well.I'm not advocating coddling players either. Its fine to TPK a party that cockily ignores its own weakness and warnings. There COULD be other ways to teach them a lesson that don't involve wiping them out though. My campaign is pretty much a sandbox, so players can easily find stuff they can't handle, but almost invariably they'll get some forewarning that they're going to be in trouble, or there's some reasonable way they can escape, etc.Anyway, I'm still not really convinced that 4e has any bigger problem with characters using secondary weapons than say 2e did. I still say a 2e fighter taking on a blue dragon using a bow is at best marginally less in trouble than his 4e counterpart. A 2e fighter's to-hit increased at the same rate (1/2 levels) as a 4e fighter's does. MAYBE you got more enhancement bonuses at lower levels, but its hard to say since there was no standard for this in 2e. Still, a level 10 2e fighter with a +1 or +2 bow when its not his main weapon sounds well-equipped to me. A 4e fighter can easily afford something similar at the same level (and figure the 4e guy is probably really 15th level for roughly the same point in level progression). Yeah, technically the 2e fighter's bow MIGHT be a strength bow, so OK he's got maybe +6 damage from that at most. Yes, he can attack 2x per round, but still the dragon's return shots are still a lot more powerful than his attacks and those attacks will be greatly less than what he can do with his melee weapons. His chance to hit with his (lets say) +2 bow is also not that great. At level 10 to hit AC -3 (adult blue dragon) he's got a 23 - 7 = 16+ or 25% hit rate. The 4e equivalent dragon has AC30 so again assuming the fighter has SOME dex and a +2 bow his chance to hit is not that much different. So it seems fair to say that in 2e being stuck using a bow was a little better than it is in 4e, but really the ultimate result is the same, the dragon wins and it wins because using an off weapon just never is that great. It really isn't a 4e specific problem.</blockquote>

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