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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5285291" data-attributes="member: 22779">Huh.  Learn something new every day.  Thought you could go to -9 in 1e too.  We always played that way.  Cool.  I was just mentioning in another thread that I try to avoid talking about 1e mechanics cos I just don't know them that well.The way I see this, when faced with a SoD AOE ability, there are three approaches being talked about here:1.  Ignore it.  Let the dice fall where they may.  If half the party dies, so be it.  In my mind, this is an approach that works best with a system with very fast character generation and/or playing multiple PC's.2.  Deal with it "in world".  Try to ameliorate the lethality of the encounter by dropping lots of information on the players so that they have ample opportunity to prepare for the encounter.3.  Deal with it mechanically.  Ameliorate the lethality of the encounter by reducing the lethality of the ability.  Obviously, this is my option of choice.  <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=":)" />At the end of the day, the option you choose should best fit with how your campaign works.  I dislike option 1 because I've found that frequent character death tends to reduce the effort players put into their characters.  I dislike option 2 because I find it too limiting.  Sometimes I want to be able to ambush the party with a bodak, but, as it's written in 3e, that's just too lethal for me.  So, I go with option 3, because it fits best with me.  I don't see D&D as a game for recreating mythology, so, playing silly buggers with a medusa's gaze doesn't faze me in the slightest.  I've already accepted that a medusa is not The Medusa of legend, so, taking a couple of steps further doesn't bother me.Obviously opinions vary on this.  <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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