Party stuck on puzzle. Any ideas?

[Nail]

The scary thing is he truly believes hes right......and that at least one of the players believe so. The player actually said that DMs were allowed to kill players. The irony is hes a DM himself and im fairly sure he wouldnt dream of killing off his players randomly.

But this wasn't "random". The DM said so himself.

The problem here isn't that a random PC would die. It's that the trap was poorly constructed. There's a huge difference between those two statements! The first is a result of random chance. The second is a result of poor DMing...and can be fixed.

The trap had at least 2 major flaws:

• the clues to the trap's solution are not all available to the PCs when playing in-character, and
• the saves for mistakes are not in-line with the EL of the trap (or heck: even the entire adventure! Has the DM looked over the trap guidlines and DCs in the DMG?)

The DM doesnt get to bring out the "some encounters should be over-whelming" card here. It's true that a few encounters should be like this, but they should never be puzzles or traps. Traps are meant to be encountered and over-come by the PCs. Traps are not the same as monsters.

......
All that said, I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that this puzzle changed something else, in a different part of the maze. This trap reminds me of several different computer games (the description of the sky over-head was a dead give away), in which you are supposed to change something in one room, then go to a different room and get some result. Although that's (arguably) fine in a computer game, that just SUCKS in a RPG.

IMNSHO.

 

[Question]

By "random" i meant more along the lines of "Im dead? What happened?"

 

[pawsplay]

4 shields 1 dragon 6 swords or whatever order the blocks might have to be put in.

The 11 places in the square still doesn't make sense, though, from a geometrical viewpoint.

Bye
Thanee

ah, but line eleven says you have been led in a straight path.

 

[pawsplay]

I now quote the following passage :

Yes, im done allright.

But overwhelming encounters are the ones the party is supposed to run from, according to the DMG.

 

[Question]

But overwhelming encounters are the ones the party is supposed to run from, according to the DMG.

Exactly.

 

[Nail]

But overwhelming encounters are the ones the party is supposed to run from, according to the DMG.

Pawsplay, help me out:

"How, exactly, would you know this was an overwhelming encounter?"

or

"What would make you believe, with just the knowledge of a player in the game, that missing a save on this trap would cause a DC 40 save-or-die?"

 

[Nail]

By "random" i meant more along the lines of "Im dead? What happened?"

Got it.

 

[cmanos]

hey question,

You are better off with a new DM. Games are supposed to be fun for players. I have played with a couple "Killer" DM's in my life. They have all 'beaten' me and gotten me to walk out of their game. They win. That's what they are going for. They don't get that RPG's are not "I win. You lose."

I appreciate puzzles. Love them. When you have absolutely no way of solving thjem without using out of character knowledge or having a couple characters die, they have been designed poorly. You hung in longer than I would have.

 

[Question]

Pretty much. I received a couple of hostile responses for leaving though. One player in particular insisted the DCs were perfectly acceptable and started doing the "The game isnt about you, you need to grow up" schtick, and tried to liken a "You bumped into a trap and died." scenario to "Half the party dies because they charged into a palace with armed guards everywhere, how is that the DMs fault" scenario (personally i dont see the link anywhere). Im not too concerned, you always get some weirdos. Sad thing is that the player saying this is supposed to a fairly respectable DM but i dont see how, if hes thinks throwing DC 40 traps at ECL 15 is fine.....i want to see him do one just to see what his players will say.

 

[KarinsDad]

What you should do Question is send the link to the original post here to the DM and all of the players and point out that not a single person here agreed that this was a reasonable gaming situation.

In fact, some of the people here think that the DM should go back and learn the balance of the rules (ditto for the players who thought that the DM is always right and can do whatever he wants).

The game is meant to be fun and epic level save or dies are typically not fun.

JMO.