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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zuche" data-source="post: 5762087" data-attributes="member: 6682151">The rules already allow a blinded wizard to distinguish between friend and foe without the need for Perception checks when throwing around such spells as fountain of flame. Should magic really be that special, or can we accept that a malevolent intelligence from the depths on a Mission from God might just know a few tricks for determining who's who? Why complicate things further with an extra die roll every time a kraken takes a turn? The rules let passive Perception instantly locate everything within its DC range, unlikely as that is, because the extra dice rolling does not improve the game enough to justify the more elaborate mechanic. Once we've accepted that as a given, tentacles with blindsight are plausible within the same system. Now if someone at my table asked if it was possible to "blend in" among the kraken's allies for the purpose of avoiding the tentacles attacks, great! I'd assign that a hard difficulty Bluff check, but I'd allow it as a minor action. That over-complicates matters to no good purpose. It's enough that the tentacles have lower attack modifiers and defenses than you'd expect from a kraken. We're discussing a game that gives giants and dragons a pass on all of the impossible things about them. In that light, objecting to tentacles that sense by blindsight is arbitrary.And I'm saying that you get out of it what you put into it. For example, all you saw in the first season were runes that always did the same thing. What I saw were players working out a number of different ways to make those runes mean something different. Some just looked for ways to travel above them, since they only affect people entering a square containing runes on the floor (and not the square above that, something you'd find in 10 foot tall corridors). Others looked into ways to make the runes work to their advantage. One even put together a plan for using the room and a telekinetic psion against Mordai Vell, but couldn't assemble a team willing to try it.This reminds me of people who don't vote because none of the candidates ever support the causes of interest to them. How can you possibly know everything that's available to you if you only play once? I'm not talking about point tweaking. Here, let's try this: name three items you could find in the pirate base, and suggest two different ways to use each of them. I'm not asking you to come up with ways to use them better than one of your at-will powers, but it would be nice to see something more than the, "Been there, done that," school of thought.You invaded a pirate lair, then fought sea monsters on a ship. You did not find the experience remotely interesting. The problem with this picture is not mechanical failure. If you find spamming the B button boring; other options are available, and you're not going to get punished by some professional gamer for trying them. You might even be able to have some fun and look good doing it.Consider Bloodbath's horn. One contributor here mentioned having stolen the horn, preventing the arrival of reinforcements. That's a good move. A great move would have been to steal the horn and immediately blow it. Stupid? Maybe, but it's also the stuff of legends if you pull it off. Even if you fail afterward, that's a moment worthy of Blackbeard's legend, or Roland's. If you succeed, I'd be awfully disappointed if you refrained from roaring insults at the pirate fleets as you pulled away from the pirate base.You know how many people dismissed 4th Edition (and 3rd before it) as video games? That only applies when we play them as video games, where any sense of style is surrendered to technical mastery. Great, you won, but did you actually attempt anything worthy of a tavern tale, let alone a legend? Don't think in terms of skills or powers or die rolls. No one's going to buy you a round for those, no matter how much damage you do.  "Use the resources available to you," is only one way, even if all sides of a conflict make use of it. As I've noted before, when I'm expected to do everything I can within the rules to defeat you, I will do exactly what I know (by experience) that players in the same circumstances would do. Up to a point, you had a sound plan, until you opted for too much of a good thing. So when I point out the problem it creates when everyone clears the deck, you tell me that even though it's allowed by the rules and still gives you at least two rounds to adapt your tactics, because, "That's not fair!"It is unfortunate that people often repeat the same mistakes without knowing it, but that's why it's worth replaying a scenario. It's easier to identify an opportunity when it's the exact same opportunity rather than a similar one in new circumstances. Once they've figured it out on their own, they tend to be more likely to spot a variation on the same theme in a new scenario.It also helps if the DM provides examples through play...even when quarter is not to be expected. Yet a supposedly save-or-die hazard is a violation of the game's spirit? We're talking about something you could counter without having access to flight or a spell.Everything in the game can be countered. If one thing is more readily countered than others, it's probably because this is what should be countered most frequently. There are reasons few monsters have this privilege, and why revisions of those monsters (such as orcs) tend to replace such powers. There are a lot of effects that are not as much fun outside of player hands.In other words: time-consuming activities that encourage players to compete against each other for the DM's time, ambiguously defined obstacles, and three things that were already present within this scenario. Really, those last three were all there, both times. Maybe they weren't the right kind of zones (the flammable pools in the first room), effects (the idol), and terrain (lava walking, platform jumping, and wall crawling). Maybe Acrobatics does need more love, though if anyone had suggested it as a means of crossing the rune-covered floor safely, I'd have given consideration to their arguments. (If it would be good enough to get through a laser net, why not?) I'd love to see what someone could come up with for Streetwise checks, but a player would have to make a very convincing argument before being allowed to make one that could accomplish anything. Earlier, you asked Tony Vargas whether a pixie could get out of reach by moving to the crow's nest. Is there some reason no other race could reach the crow's nest? They weren't designed to be completely inaccessible to non-fantastic humans. Flight makes that easier, but it also makes it easier to avoid many of the zones and terrain types you'd like to see utilized. If a player wants to skip such opportunities, that's not my problem here. Maybe next season we'll read complaints about how Lair Assault completely screwed over flying characters. (Or pretty much everyone but the strikers if the scenario splits the party.)</blockquote>

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