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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7941241" data-attributes="member: 42582">I noticed that too. [USER=6696971]@Manbearcat[/USER] has refelcted on some of the bigger-picture issues this raises. My comment will be more parochial: I think he's made a mistake.For AD&D, there is no need for the PCs to escape "unnaturally" or anything like that. He's already provided the solution in the DMG - have the reduction of a PC to zero hp count as something other than death. (I've myself applied this "solution" to a TPK in 4e.)But maybe he's no longer assuming that the players choose the encounters (via planning, evasion from wandering monsters, etc). Because his advice makes more sense in a post-Gygaxian context of the GM choosing the encounters (whether as part of an "adventure path" or as en expression of a "living, breathing world"), which means that the odds can go freakishly against the players through no fault of their own.In the sort of dungeon-crawling set out in AD&D, though, if the players choose to take on the troll on the 4th level that's on them! And if one or more of them gets knocked unconscious and taken prisoner, then it's time for other PCs in the stable to mount a rescue (or maybe ransom) expedition.But by 1987 Gygax must have been aware that that had become (and perhaps always was, once the game got out into the wild) a minority approach to play.</blockquote>