Is this "Fair" - Part II

[drothgery]

OK, so lets add a few more details to the encounter....

Two party members are dwarves in heavy armor so there is no way they can hide, or run away, since they are slow, loud, and easy to spot.

The giant has cover from the trees, and begins to throw rocks at the party.

Everyone in the party, except the monk (my character) is standing in the middle of the road because they believe that any creature they encounter will be of a equivelent challenge for their level.

Does this change your opinion?

Yes, it's changed from fair to unfair, because, no matter what the motivates the other PCs actions, purely by DM fiat they've been placed in a scenario where it's impossible for them to survive. And they were placed in it -- this was a random encounter, not something they sought out.

It's not even possible for the PCs to talk their way out of this; the giant's throwing rocks from out of range.

 

[Thaniel]

There are bad things in the world, and they don't morph into stronger or weaker versions depending on the level of the pcs who happen to walk by.

QFT

I voted 'Yes'.

 

[spectre72]

Yes, it's changed from fair to unfair, because, no matter what the motivates the other PCs actions, purely by DM fiat they've been placed in a scenario where it's impossible for them to survive. And they were placed in it -- this was a random encounter, not something they sought out.

OK, a clarification...

The party had warning because they heard a rumbling and other noises coming from the forest.

The party, except the monk, decided to stay in the road and meet whatever came out of the woods.

The monk reasoned that anything that made that much noise should be approached with caution and hid.

When the giant got close enough to see the party they were already in trouble.

The dwarves were in heavy armor and didn't move very fast, and the rest of the party decided to stay and help the dwarves because they were convinced that the DM would not throw anything at them that they could not handle.

The encounter probably could have been avoided if the party had hid in the forest, like the monk

At this point the giant started throwing things, but would it have mattered if he had come up and smacked the 1st level characters (dead is dead).

The DM placed a creature in the area based on a random monster chart (the creature was native to the environment).

Players were overconfident of their charaters abilities (seasoned veterans to RPG's), and were also confident that the GM would save their bacon.

He didn't...

as we often say "There are dangerous things in the world, and some of them are best left alone - At least until we gain more levels".

 

[Someone]

the rest stay to fight whatever is coming because the GM would never challenge them with something they couldn't handle.

I voted fair, but the OP would have gained much if that sentence was omited.

 

[Brian Gibbons]

The dwarves were in heavy armor and didn't move very fast, and the rest of the party decided to stay and help the dwarves because they were convinced that the DM would not throw anything at them that they could not handle.

Setting up a scenario so that players need to leave other PCs to die at the very start of an encounter may be realistic, but it's also setting a tone that may come back to haunt you.

 

[mcrow]

I think it is fair and also a good roleplaying tool.

It gets the players out of the "kill'em all" mode in a hurry. They may take different routes, maybe negotiate with the NPC, follow them, and in general just think more about what they are doing.

 

[painandgreed]

Again, I voted "other' because if I would consider it fair or not would greatly deal with the expectations of the party. For my campaign, I would consider it fair because they have been well warned that not all encoutners are CR appropriate and there are some things they will need to run from. If the DM is running a gritty campaign but hasn't informed his players who have expectations of a heroic campaign, then I would consider it less fair. If the DM told them it was a heroic campaign and then threw stuff like that at the party*, then I'd say it wasn't fair.

*I've had it happen. DM says he won't throw anything we can't handle at us and then tell us we should have run from the TPK encounter, or tell us we didn't need to clear out the secret treasure horde, as we were drawing up plans to do so, because he always envisioned it as a place we could return to when we needed more treasure and it would be there for us later, only to have it all stolen later.

 

[T. Foster]

The revised/expanded encounter is still fair IMO, but is unfortunate. There was obviously a miscommunication between players and DM with regard to the sorts of challenges they'll be facing with random wilderness encounters, with tragic consequences. One way to resolve this is to let the action take its natural course (near-TPK) and let the other players create new characters with more wisdom about the world they'll be adventuring in. That's justifiable (especially since these were level 1 characters that presumably the players haven't invested a lot of time and emotion into yet -- a TPK at level 1 is an inconvenience, a TPK at level 7 is a complete disaster!) but pretty harsh, and some players might not react well to this "lesson."

What I'd probably do (because I'm a big softy as a DM) would be to temporarily step out of character and explain to the players that this giant would normally kill them at this point, that the wilderness in this campaign is a tough place where they shouldn't expect the challenges to be matched to their level, and that as low level characters they should 1) seek to spend as little time as possible in the open wilderness, 2) always seek to hide or run from encounters, or at least 3) consider beefing up their numbers with guards/hirelings (not that a dozen 0-level men-at-arms would be much help against a hill giant, but it's still solid advice in a lot of other instances), but since we're all still getting settled and feeling each other out, we'll consider this a "warning." Then, returning to character, the giant wouldn't immediately start hurling rocks from cover, but would allow the PCs to either parley (letting them go if they give him a horse or mule to eat, perhaps) or run away without pursuit. If the players didn't take the hint and decided they still wanted to fight it, then, of course, they'd be slaughtered unmercifully (and asked, as they're rolling their new characters, why they didn't take the hints).

And, next time they're wandering in the wilderness and hear something big approaching, they'd better have sense enough to react appropriately...

 

[the Jester]

Fair. The pcs chose to act on the assumption that the world doesn't have anything bigger than them in it- always a foolish assumption imho.

Kudos to the monk for saying, "Hmm, big noise... we're first level... HIDE IN THE BUSHES!!" Did he suggest this to the other pcs? Cause if he did, my assessment changes from "fair" to "even more fair, but man, those players need a cup of coffee in order to wake up before gaming."

 

[Al the Absentminded]

Fair. Somewhat. Lowbies should know to run and hide.

My second serious DM did something like this. The party - first level - was approached by a random giant. He threw rocks at us - but aimed to scare us, rather than kill us. A failed bluff attempt later, he was forcing us into his cave, where he hoisted us into a giant suspended hotplate (suspended by a big rope going over a pulley, the other end tied to a big rock on the floor.

The giant built up the fire under us, but ran out of wood before the fire was hot enough, so he hauled us up to 20' above the floor and left to go chop more wood.

Being a fairly stupid giant, he hadn't stripped us, and several of the party members had rope. The master plan was to cut up some of our rope, loop our ropes around the big rope (courtesy of the party rogue) and kind-of slide down while holding on for dear life. Several strength checks later most of the party was on the ground.

Except my Str 6 Wizard. Who decided that the best way to survive this was to count on the strength of the rope rather than his arms. He knotted his end-sections of rope around his armpits (I did not have rope-use, so the DM made the Int roll in secret to figure out if I came up with a knot that would last 10 seconds with my characters weight on it.) and cast off.

We all survived, and got 1/10 of the giant's listed XP for successfully escaping (if we'd managed to kill him or ally with him we'd have gotten full xp, but he was still out there in an area we'd have to cross at least 3 more times, so we hadn't really overcome the challenge).

-Albert the Absentminded