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Message: <blockquote data-quote="haakon1" data-source="post: 3287656" data-attributes="member: 25619">Assuming everybody is lazy or foolish is what upsets people.  You may be right, but it still upsets people to be told it.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I'd put down Greyamirl's death (as it should have been, if I'd read the MM Shadow entry to figure out what Ability Damage does instead of the DMG) to a pretty tough fight and some unlucky die rolls -- mixed in with a lot of luckier die rolls that made it seem easier than it really was.Nod, it's a pretty character-heavy, rather than hack n' slash campaign.  Email wouldn't work well if it wasn't.  The player of the druid has been playing D&D since 1988, but he's a more casual player most of the time.  He didn't know how much danger he was in with only an Str 10 and like a 12 or 13 touch AC.  But he was playing the character right -- trying to rescue the wounded mage by throwing himself into the fight to protect her.  As you say, protecting the mage is important.  Not the best tactical decision, but the player is not remotely stupid (he's a math professor).Many days earlier, they captured the magic item used to make the undead and the cleric/druid who used it.  And as the new government of the village she was terrorizing, tried and executed her.  They knew undead were here, and they didn't think 2 shadows would be the full extent of it.  The party leader should have let them rest after their previous exertions that day (no reason not to) and plan better spells for the fight, but he wanted to get on with it.  That was foolhardy.Hoo-ah!  Get some, get some, get some!  That's why -- because they were in a gung-ho mood, and having fun mowing these things down.  And it was working pretty well.The party leader is a 7th level fighter with a 19 Str, Bull's Strength on top of that, and fighting two-handed with a +1 bastard sword.  The second best is a 7th level monk with a +2 halberd and a 19 touch AC.  Pretty much the only magical weapon misses against the Shadows AC 13 were from the 50% incorporeal rule.It's never "just because".Or they could be adventurers and risk their lives adventuring . . .Really?  We're all first edition veterans.  Some of our fondest gaming memories are the big, bad  tough fights we somehow survived.  The most ridiculously tough?  In Oriental Adventures, when were 4th or 5th level, somebody destroyed an altar of Demogorgon.  The old boy himself gated in (on a random roll where we got very unlucky), but San Shei the samurai fired 4 arrows at him (I don't remember the rules that allowed that, but whatever) and the player rolled 4 straight natch 20's (natch 20 = crit under typical house rules at the time), to everyone's amazement.  Demogorgon gated back out before he killed any of us!  Much much more fun than an easy fight.Of course, AD&D had much "easier" rules for mismatch encounters like that . . . I role played the monsters . . . what would an Int 6 monster with a personality that is "Natural enemies of all that lives, shadows are aggressive and predatory.  They are quick to strike" do when two of its number stand up and get wack-a-moled?  My answer was: swarm the enemy -- kill them, kill them all!Pretty much all the PC's were attacking them, and most were doing damage (or missing only because of incorporealness), so I had each of them attack the nearest PC to where they popped up.OK.  Well, I'll admit somethings you said upset me, but it's pretty interesting to be questioned on how I/my players do things.  Our group definitely wasn't at our best in this fight, but I don't think we're a bunch of numbskulls, though I can see why you do.Part of it just that we're looking for different things out of the game, perhaps.  It may be a generational thing about how we grew up with D&D . . . we're deep role-players, but bash in the door and smash the enemy warriors.  We get our kicks not from subtly doing a good build of a character with a lot of optional rules and then stacking spells to get results.  We get it more from having a character with non-rules based quirks: one is from a bronze age culture, one is a nobleman, the monk was petrified for 200 years has an 18 Int (I saw him roll it) and is a bit of an intellectual/pacificist, except when he decides to fight.  All have rules that are straight PHB (well, the bronze-age character has some appropriate feats from the NBOF, but they have to make sense from Greek warfare to get in -- I looked it up in history books, not rulebooks to see if it made sense).  And then we like to take those characters into a good story that makes sense mythologically, rather than being D&Dish. And then we like to kill the baddies and rescue the good folks or do the other story-things.  I think that's a very 1st editiony attitude to the game, since in general it's less concerned with rules, balance, builds, etc., and more about swashbuckling, freebooting heroic adventure "feel".</blockquote>

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