Unearthed Arcana Light, Dark, Underdark - November's Unearthed Arcana

Interesting stuff.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I will say Impartiality is a complete farce, no person has ever been truly impartial ever. No matter what there is an internal opinion when confronted with a situation. Being impartial just means ignoring your base wishes for the situation at hand, and going with what the rules say. When the thief botched an easy climb check and fell 60 feet I still dealt the 6d6 damage to him that he was supposed to take. That is me acting as an "impartial" arbiter of the rules. Me not being impartial would be to say well I don't want you to die so let's break the rules and say no falling damage. I did the impartial thing and handed him his damage. However I wasn't actually impartial to the situation I wanted him to have little enough damage from the fall that he didn't die. I then rolled 3 6's with my first roll of three dice and then 3, 4, 2 with the second roll (missed killing him by 9 health).

A month or so back my party was 11th level, our fighter had over 100hp (I don't remember exaxt numbers, but it was more then enough over 100) the lowest hp member was our bard/rogue who was in the low sixties.

The party was riding 19hp hippogriffs, and had pissed off a society of dragons living on the moon (long story)... so I had a pair of dragons (one red one white) fly down and hit them mid flight. I gave a pretty easy DC 9 perception roll to the party, and only our warlock made it. So Dragons got surprise... (I guess no one looks up).

the red dragon hit two PCs with it's breath weapon, and it was the fighter and the bard... fighter rolled a nat 1 on his save and clung to his mount for dear life. The rouge/bard lept effortlessly from his sattle taking 1/2 damage. The breath weapon was like 20ish damage no big deal... both mounts failed and died.

then came the falling. Given that they fly like 300 ft+ up in the air, they both hit terminal velocity. I started counting out my d10's for the fall and the fighter player reminded me that was 4e, and it went back to d6's in 5e. I breathed a sigh of relief, I mean the bard was already going through his bag for a character sheet, but at least the fighter may make it.

Then I laughed... and laughed and laughed. I rolled 20d6 and a miracle happened and saved BOTH players. We counted 3 times because it seamed impossible, if I had a DM screen up (I do sometimes) no one would belive I didn't fudge the rolls. 38 damage...

witch lead to us all happy no one died. Especially me, because as much as my encounter was meant to be hard, I had forgotten the hippogriffs were never going to survive a Breath weapon...

also on the good side was the Bard player with 20ish hp left laying on the ground asking "Why god, why would you force me to be consiuse and in this much pain after falling so far...do you not know why shock and sleep would be a blessing?" as his action for the first round...

now I farly made the scenero (although I made a bo boo that made it more deadly) I ran it fairly, and I was rooting and cheering the PCs on the whole way...

 

[Orlax]

A month or so back my party was 11th level, our fighter had over 100hp (I don't remember exaxt numbers, but it was more then enough over 100) the lowest hp member was our bard/rogue who was in the low sixties.

The party was riding 19hp hippogriffs, and had pissed off a society of dragons living on the moon (long story)... so I had a pair of dragons (one red one white) fly down and hit them mid flight. I gave a pretty easy DC 9 perception roll to the party, and only our warlock made it. So Dragons got surprise... (I guess no one looks up).

the red dragon hit two PCs with it's breath weapon, and it was the fighter and the bard... fighter rolled a nat 1 on his save and clung to his mount for dear life. The rouge/bard lept effortlessly from his sattle taking 1/2 damage. The breath weapon was like 20ish damage no big deal... both mounts failed and died.

then came the falling. Given that they fly like 300 ft+ up in the air, they both hit terminal velocity. I started counting out my d10's for the fall and the fighter player reminded me that was 4e, and it went back to d6's in 5e. I breathed a sigh of relief, I mean the bard was already going through his bag for a character sheet, but at least the fighter may make it.

Then I laughed... and laughed and laughed. I rolled 20d6 and a miracle happened and saved BOTH players. We counted 3 times because it seamed impossible, if I had a DM screen up (I do sometimes) no one would belive I didn't fudge the rolls. 38 damage...

witch lead to us all happy no one died. Especially me, because as much as my encounter was meant to be hard, I had forgotten the hippogriffs were never going to survive a Breath weapon...

also on the good side was the Bard player with 20ish hp left laying on the ground asking "Why god, why would you force me to be consiuse and in this much pain after falling so far...do you not know why shock and sleep would be a blessing?" as his action for the first round...

now I farly made the scenero (although I made a bo boo that made it more deadly) I ran it fairly, and I was rooting and cheering the PCs on the whole way...

Exactly, that's a totally fine encounter except for the hippogriff screw up. It's designed to challenge, but not kill. Except you failed a little bit and accidentally put the players in a highly deadly situation. Any death there would have been a failure on your part to account for them flying on 20 HP monsters (especially with the loss of a healer and a main damage dealer in the surprise round that could have been an unavoidable tpk). That failure isn't a bad thing either, in fact it probably made that one of the most memorable fights they will ever have, and you've likely learned to account for the health of flying mounts. It is also totally okay for us to fail in this regard, we aren't perfect and sometimes we fail, and sometimes those failures lead to tpks and sometimes the dice decide that those failures will lead to them getting through by a hairs breadth, and those failures are how we learn to be better. I'm glad the dice gods smiled upon your players.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I don't think you know what impartial means. Because it is entirely possible for that first level party to run into 8 beholders if those beholders were part of whatever area they were found in regardless of what the players did. Now, I have never seen an area with 8 beholders, so I think you're resorting to hyperbole to try to make a point. So I'll use a more realistic example. That dragon, or clan of hill giants that live in the mountains? They've always been there, and don't care if the party is level 1 or level 20. If the level 1 party decides to go explore those mountains where a dragon or giants are known to reside, then yes, I am an impartial DM to keep them there even when the party shows up at level 1. In fact, I would not be impartial if I changed the encounter and living game world to cater to the player choices.

I fully admit that a lot of DMs aren't impartial, for good and for bad. But that does not mean that you can't be impartial as a DM, or that impartial DMs don't exist. We're out there, and our groups have been having fun in our games for decades.

I've never run a game like that, nor have I read advice to.

Example: I am prepping a new world (my group is in the mid to high teens now so time for a new world), I have a starting place, and some adventure stuff... none of it is more then a match for my PCs, I have hints about some far off evil, and an anctiant lich, but nothing MY pcs do will bring them into conflict with even 1 beholder, until they level up a bit.

 

[Orlax]

I don't think you know what impartial means. Because it is entirely possible for that first level party to run into 8 beholders if those beholders were part of whatever area they were found in regardless of what the players did. Now, I have never seen an area with 8 beholders, so I think you're resorting to hyperbole to try to make a point. So I'll use a more realistic example. That dragon, or clan of hill giants that live in the mountains? They've always been there, and don't care if the party is level 1 or level 20. If the level 1 party decides to go explore those mountains where a dragon or giants are known to reside, then yes, I am an impartial DM to keep them there even when the party shows up at level 1. In fact, I would not be impartial if I changed the encounter and living game world to cater to the player choices.

I fully admit that a lot of DMs aren't impartial, for good and for bad. But that does not mean that you can't be impartial as a DM, or that impartial DMs don't exist. We're out there, and our groups have been having fun in our games for decades.

Did you have any sign posts (literal or figurative) that say 'here be dragons low levels need not apply'?

If you don't, that would be your dming failure. No amount of what you say will make that not your dming failure. You had a giant hole full of 'the game is entirely over' sitting in your living world and did nothing to warn the players not to fall into it. When they fall in the hole it's your fault for not describing the hole. By designing the world in such a faulty manner you've ended the game, not their poor choices or unfortunate dice rolls.

If you do have some kind of sign post (rumors in town or the surrounding region, or even legendary landscape effects are sign posts that low levels should be getting the eff out), and they still walk into the hole... Well that's synonymous with the guy throwing rocks at a mean mean fire giant to try and get it's attention for reasoned conversation, they earned their death.

 

[JohnLynch]

Ed Greenwood described a site with plenty of beholders that a first level party could easily survive (let's go with 8). All of the beholders were in stasis with no mechanism to spontaneously wake up.

It's nowhere near relevant, but this thread reminded me of that.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

In our last fight, a couple of mounted PCs charged up to a mass of about 80 skeleton warriors. When their turn came around the skeletons surrounded them and starting swarming them. I allowed about 20 skeletons each to take a swipe at them (yay for DMG mob rules!). (I allowed each PC to take their opportunity attack also.) Treating another creature's space as difficult terrain does place and actual mechanical limit on how many enemies can swarm a character, either in the open or at a chokepoint. I think it's more believable to have mobs of creatures actually swarm lone enemies than to have most of them just stand around polishing their weapons while the guys in the front ranks fight to the death.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I've never run a game like that, nor have I read advice to.

.

You must be new to D&D. I don't mean that as an insult. The way I described it was pretty much status quo for the first 25 years of D&D, and still is the way a whole lot of people play. It's the entire premise behind what's called "a living world"

 

[Serpine]

Given that they fly like 300 ft+ up in the air, they both hit terminal velocity.

Just a side note: Actual "terminal velocity" requires a fall of about 5 times that height and 15 seconds. D&D's 200 foot fall damage cap has never made much sense unless you assume fantasy settings have low gravity and very thick air (which I guess could explain something about dragons).

 

[Orlax]

You must be new to D&D. I don't mean that as an insult. The way I described it was pretty much status quo for the first 25 years of D&D, and still is the way a whole lot of people play. It's the entire premise behind what's called "a living world"

And a living world doesn't mean you let the players unwittingly roll into the end of the game. Living worlds are also rampantly non living. For instance you say hey if these guys walk into this dragon den they are dead, and it is their fault... Why in this living world is the dragon always there? Wouldn't it you know move from time to time, if only for the fun of hunting and killing things? The fact that the dragons will definitely all be there and awake decidedly makes the entire world non living. Living world just seems like a term people use to alleviate responsibility from themselves for presenting appropriate challenges to the players.

 

[Orlax]

Just a side note: Actual "terminal velocity" requires a fall of about 5 times that height and 15 seconds. D&D's 200 foot fall damage cap has never made much sense unless you assume fantasy settings have low gravity and very thick air (which I guess could explain something about dragons).

No it assumes the planet is of a different size than the planet earth.