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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 6661206" data-attributes="member: 2011">We have only had one PC death (my wizard before I took over as DM at the end of level 4), but we almost had a TPK just last week. After killing a minor BBEG (the PCs thought that he was the main BBEG), the PCs had acquired a ring that allowed the minor BBEG to communicate once per day (similar to Sending Stone) with a major BBEG (still not the main BBEG, but higher on the food chain). The PCs have a way to do Scry once per day, so they tried to scry an identical ring and my random "high is good for the party" roll resulted in them scrying the major BBEG. Later on, they communicated with him, but based on how the spell works, he realized that it was not his flunky calling. So, the major BBEG (who himself has the Scry spell) scried back and was successful. Based on their surroundings, he was able to discern their location and the direction they were heading. So, he sent a Young Blue Dragon (with double Cha spells) CR 9+, a Half Blue Dragon CR 5, and 3 other CR ~2 Draconic foes (I forget their names, maybe Dragonwings they are out of RoT or HotDQ) against 7 level 6 PCs. This is a deadly encounter to begin with and the NPCs set up an ambush site, so they ended up with surprise on half of the PCs. It was definitely an assassination squad and it nearly succeeded (two PCs that we thought had died due to massive damage ended up actually just dying due to a careful reading of the death rules and how they interact with the Aid spell).But, I tend to go for fewer tougher encounters: the previous two encounters (different day) were a CR 13 Vampire (medium encounter due to action economy, i.e. no NPC allies, but still 10,000 XP or 1/6th PC level) that was kicking their butts until the Daylight spell came out; and one with a Mind Flayer, 2 Elite Drow, and a dozen normal Drow (deadly encounter) who had NPC cowering miners in the battlefield, so the PCs had difficulty trotting out area effect spells without killing miners. So when there are tougher encounters, the chance of PC death increases. Medium encounters are often the weakest I throw at the party, mostly because there are 7 players and grinding through a weak encounter just eats up precious gaming time. IMO.In these three encounters, each second level Hold Person could have affected very few of these foes: at best an Elite Drow (or less impressively, one of the normal Drow), but even then, it was a large battlefield (~200 feet x 150 feet) with a lot of Darkness spells all over the place and although the players eventually figured out which Drow were the best fighters, the PCs (and Drow) were all over the place and a Hold would not have resulted in too many PCs getting free crits. The elite drow were on opposite sides of the encounter, so having both of them within 60 feet for a third level spell slot would have been possible, but more problematic. A player could also accidentally cast a Hold Person on the Mind Flayer (the biggest threat on the board) that looks somewhat humanoid and it would have failed (granted, I would have given the player an Arcana(Int) roll after he declared his action to figure out that Mind Flayers are not humanoids).In some campaigns, the players always know whether a given spell is applicable or not (i.e. the DM tells them the type of monster). At my table, it's usually some type of Int roll. So a spell like Hold Person might be self limiting at my table, just because it could more often be cast on invalid targets than at other tables (not that the players have actually tried Hold Person yet).Granted, a successful Hold Person in that encounter would have probably saved some other resources (the elite Drow were dishing out the most damage), but it probably would not have shortened the encounter by too much. An unsuccessful Hold Person might have extended the encounter by a hair (one PC wasting a spell and a spell slot that did nothing). But the utility of lower level Hold Person definitely seems to be campaign dependent.</blockquote>

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