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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreyLord" data-source="post: 9195060" data-attributes="member: 4348">The chances of that fighter being destroyed is pretty high if they only turn to combat.  A ghoul will probably paralyze that fighter pretty quickly (Ghouls are low level creatures overall, but with their attacks and the saves still being relatively high, are a pretty deadly creature for the Figther) and then eat him.  Wights or Wraiths will drain levels (and if that isn't scary enough, once they drain all the levels the fighter is zonked).  Sure, if you get to high level, you might be able to stand toe to toe with some of them for a while (still, losing levels is something most do not want to have happen, changes a high level character to low level really quickly).  If they DO get to higher levels from low levels they probably have learned from this already to avoid fights if possible or find another way to eliminate the enemy.Avoiding combat and finding other ways to get the treasure is normally adviseable in older forms of D&D just because the Save vs. the many ways to die is such a high number to pass consecutively in it.  That opens a LOT of area of what the party should be doing vs. newer versions of D&D where fighting it out is suggested in many instances with their balanced encounter rate and unlimited (aka...HP just keeps going up and getting higher) Hitpoints. Even at 5th level, stumbling across a flight of dragons in their lair isn't something that is just easily waltzed into.  4 dragons can easily cover most angles of a straight forward attack, and with an average of 30-35 HP done by weaker dragons per blast, can quickly kill that 5th level fighter  (or party more likely if they are that foolish) to smithereens.Not FAIR...you say!  Well, it isn't fair per se.  It's an open world (before there were open worlds) in a sandbox with many different threats to find and face...and take their treasure.Or the DM could use the rules to make the combats easier but more dynamic if they want to focus more on combat.  They could focus it more on a war campaign where they inspire characters to hire armies of henchmen to do battle.  The ideas are limitless for a DM that has an open mind and some experience on how to run a game with a flexibility that is not spelled out (and many are right, it's NOT spelled out, which is why it takes a more experienced DM in these games sometimes.  This is why someone who has first played and learned more about how such a game runs should be the DM than someone who learned only on the WotC versions of the game and never learned how to play fast and loose with creativity).This is what I mean by the DM.  There are many things that may not be said in the book, but it doesn't hand hold fair encounters like later editions do either.  It doesn't say...hold back.  It doesn't say...balanced.  You have 10 HD Red Dragons in the Basic set...nothing says you can't have those 2nd level character suddenly finding one or trying to steal it's treasure.  A New DM has nothing to tell him not to do that...but soon enough the players will be wiser on how to deal with something like that than charging in and trying to kill it (and if a fighter only gets one attack per round, the Magic-User starts with ONE SPELL per DAY at that point...the Cleric at first level has NO spells and even less HP than the fighter AND only one attack as well...etc...etc...etc).TSR D&D can be a deadly game if one lets it.  If players are bored with what they have, it's on the DM to use the tools there to make it more exciting.  It's their game (the DMs and the Players).  Open communication and talking about what your expectations are should enable any decent DM to use the tools provided to make a game that is exciting, quick moving, and adventurous for any group of players.</blockquote>

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