Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5302978" data-attributes="member: 18280">As opposed to my statement of things when? More to the point:*  The bodak created to guard an evil lair was created by someone with the potential to create bodaks.  Unless it happens to be the first and only bodak that someone ever created......*  The wizard who happens to know Prismatic Spray researched it or learned it from somewhere.  And, unless it happens to be the first time he's ever cast it........*  Assassins can be sent out by lots of folks, but they are usually folks who have reasons to have sent out assassins.  But, here's an interesting point -- assassins, unlike bodaks and wizards, are real.  They really do target real people in the real world.  And, while you or I might not have much of a chance were we randomly targetted for some unknowable reason, the people in the real world who are likely to be targetted by assassins really take real world precautions.And, sure, there may be individual cases where the footprints are very unlikely to be found.  If that makes sense within the setting -- if the footprint is "consistent and self-referential", I have no problem with that.  Sometimes, unlikely to be found is what "consistent and self-referential" means!"Fault" is a loaded term here.  If you mean that the players or DM are bad players or DMs, I wouldn't say that.  If you mean the players took a mistep, or the DM failed to provide that potential, then I would agree that there is fault in that sense.I would say that "every enemy has the potential to be foreseen, and PCs should take note of a monster's footprint and prepare accordingly."  I wouldn't hook that into my argument about why SoD is acceptable though.  What you are describing is my answer to the argument made for Hussar why SoD is bad.As far as I am concerned, the potential to deal with SoD is no different than the potential to encounter a monster far, far tougher than the PCs.  I like SoD because it meshes with my idea of how certain creatures/effects should be presented in the rules, but what SoD monsters offer (the chance for getting well and truly creamed) can be offered by non-SoD monsters just as easily.And I do believe that the tension of not knowing for sure whether or not you've parsed out the threat level of an adventure site is critical to keeping the excitement level in the game.  When people say "You can't go back to the gaming of your youth", I often think they are talking about that tension of not knowing.  My answer is, "Sure you can.  You just need a ruleset that plays fast, and a willingness to let the players -- not the GM -- set the level of risk."That is, IMHO, part of why players don't seem to mind SoD as much as GMs.  Allowing for the chance of the PCs getting well and truly creamed is part of letting the players set the risk.  Eliminating it damages the game, IMHO.  SoD isn't the only way to do it, but it isn't a particularly bad way to do it, either.  Likewise, SSSoD can be interesting and fun.  They are both tools, and only slightly different at that.I have no desire to limit the tools at my dispossal.</blockquote>

Verification