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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrMyth" data-source="post: 5304032" data-attributes="member: 61155">These quotes, and others like them, seemed very much to be saying that PCs were always given warning signs of encounters, or at the very least were always making informed decisions that lead to whatever their fate may be. Again, my bad if that isn't what you intended, but these absolutely made it sound like having even the possibility of the PCs entering an encounter uninformed was "bad DMing".   Just as a note, this is part of my point. You can come up with scenarios in which a creature's footprint is obvious. I can come up with scenarios in which it isn't. But I'm not trying to prove that your examples aren't reasonable - I'm just trying to prove that both scenarios exist.   Honestly, no, I don't agree. I think that in most situations, the signs of a creature's presence will exist but not be easy to find unless a party is really good at their job or is lucky enough to glance in the right place. Some of the time the signs will be quite obvious. Some of the times the signs will be almost impossible to find.  The possibility will often be there, but in most scenarios that I've seen in adventures, comes down more to chance than anything else - do the players happen to have the right skills? Do they look in the right place?  Now, you can tie those elements into player ability - a group should make sure it has someone knowledgeable in every field, and that goes out of its way to search everything foe clues (and going a step further, has all the right magic items and divination spells to learn even more.) And maybe that is part of the old school field that I'm not getting, that there is a level of player skill to making sure they aren't taken unaware by an encounter.  But I don't think that level of behavior is a reasonable expectation for a game. And more than that, the issue at hand remains Save or Die - if a group happens to miss a clue and run into a scary giant, they might take one or two bad hits and then make an informed decision to run. If they turn the corner and spot a Bodak, half the party could be dead before they've been given that option.  Again, it's all about being able to make informed decisions to determine your character's fate. Your argument has been that those decisions come up before combat ever starts, and sometimes that is true. But I think there are plenty of times when you aren't likely to know what you are fighting, and not simply as the result of a world lacking consistency or realism or a bad DM.   I'll readily admit that my positions are largely informed on my own experiences, which have only been from 2nd Ed and 3rd Edition... but it was actually my impression that Gygaxian D&D was even more about surprise encounters and dungeons filled with random monsters whose presence wasn't particularly obvious from the local ecology.  In any case, I don't think the discussion at hand is particularly tied to edition. I'll maintain that regardless of edition, I don't think that the default level of knowledge for PCs is to typically know exactly what they are fighting and what it is capable of.   Er, just to clarify - I hadn't meant to ever present it as an interpretation of your point at all. It was a point brought up by a number of other posters that seemed connected to this discussion (hence why I wanted to address it), but I realized was largely just drawing things off focus since it hadn't been part of your own argument at all.   There are basically two elements of your argument that I disagree with.  One, as we've been discussing, that a consistent game environment results in the majority of encounters being easily predictable by the PCs. I just don't agree that is the case. Some encounters being easily predictable, sure. Most... might have the potential, but usually only if the PCs happen to be lucky (either in having the right skill, looking in the right place) or have really exceptional knowledge-gathering capabilities (super divination spells or other info-gathering tricks).  Secondly... the reason SSSoD, to me, is acceptable is because that final save isn't isolated. It is the result of informed decisions that were made with full knowledge that death was approaching.  Again:  Scenario One. I begin fighting a Basilisk and start to turn to stone. I make decisions about whether to try and heal myself or win the fight. After several rounds, I end up petrified. I still feel like I was able to participate in the combat and help decide my own fate.  Scenario Two. I enter level 7 of a dungeon. I know that there could be Bodaks here, just like there could be any of a thousand other level 7 monsters. Our DM has carefully plotted out the dungeon - he knows in which rooms the Bodak leaves the corpses of its prey, he knows what hallways it prowls for more prey (and when), he knows which hobgoblins might offer rumors of a 'death watcher' in exchange for their lives. So we've got our consistent dungeon with various possible clues.  Our group enters the first intersection. We hear the sounds of rowdy hobgoblins to the left... we decide we don't want to dive into a fight until we learn more, so we go right. We find another intersection, and our rogue decides to spend some time searching for traps before we go further. While he does so, the DM notes we are in the patrol path of the Bodak - it turns a corner, we see it, combat starts, and I die before our Cleric can point out what it is.  I don't see this as particularly unlikely. Yes, there are dozens of branching points of decisions here. Maybe a third of them lead to use learning about the Bodak in advance, maybe a third of them result in us fighting it without any warning, maybe a third allow us to avoid it entirely.  But most of those decisions are uninformed. I know that I can go fight some hobgoblins or keep exploring on my own; I don't know that by fighting the hobgoblins I will learn the nature of a specific death gazing undead in the dungeon.  Whereas when I am being turned to stone by a Basilisk, I know, in general, what is happening and what the consequences of my actions might be. I get to participate in the fight before petrification overcomes me.  That's why the SSSoD is acceptable, to me, while the SoD is not.  And the problem with the SoD is not the DMing style, for not having warning signs of the Bodak in the very first room we enter. It isn't the fault of the party for going down the wrong path or missing the right clues. The problem is with having a mechanic that instantly kills a character before any action can be taken on behalf of that character.  I'm not saying this problem is for everyone. But I am saying that my personal issues with it are, yes, absolutely rooted in the mechanic itself!</blockquote>

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