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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6730694" data-attributes="member: 42582">Yes an no. The relevant passage is on p 110 of Gygax's DMG (emphasis added):Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any reasonably severe penalty that still takes into account what the monster has done.I have bolded of the final clause because I think it is key. The GM is not fudging the combat in terms of who wins and who loses. Within the context of the combat resolution itself, there is no fudging. What the GM is doing is changing the consequence of losing the combat, from PC death to reasonably severe penalty to the PC.The most important thing, from the point of view of the &quot;skilled play&quot; which Gygax advocates, is that the GM is not changing the balance between failure and success - it's just that the failure is being ameliorated from death (= wish or Raise Dead) to unconsciousness or maiming (= Cure Blindness, Regeneration or something similar).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6730694, member: 42582"] Yes an no. The relevant passage is on p 110 of Gygax's DMG (emphasis added): [indent]Now and then a player will die through no fault of his own. He or she will have done everything correctly, taken every reasonable precaution, but still the freakish roll of the dice will kill the character. In the long run you should let such things pass as the players will kill more than one opponent with their own freakish rolls at some later time. Yet you do have the right to arbitrate the situation. You can rule that the player, instead of dying, is knocked unconscious, loses a limb, is blinded in one eye or invoke any reasonably severe penalty [B]that still takes into account what the monster has done[/B].[/indent] I have bolded of the final clause because I think it is key. The GM is not fudging the combat in terms of who wins and who loses. [I]Within the context of the combat resolution itself[/I], there is no fudging. What the GM is doing is changing the consequence of losing the combat, from [I]PC death[/I] to [I]reasonably severe penalty to the PC[/I]. The most important thing, from the point of view of the "skilled play" which Gygax advocates, is that the GM is not changing the balance between failure and success - it's just that the failure is being ameliorated from death (= wish or Raise Dead) to unconsciousness or maiming (= Cure Blindness, Regeneration or something similar). [/QUOTE]

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