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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 333549" data-attributes="member: 4937">"If you have a cleric with Harm prepared, it doesn't matter if the beastie has 10,000 HP."Yeah, assuming you are one of the three DM's in the country that haven't rule 0'd Harm as the most obviously broken spell in the game.  I don't think I'd allow Harm as a 9th level spell, much less a 5th.  The default solution arrived at independently by at least half the DM's in the country is to rule that harm gets a save, with the results of a successful save being a cause critical wounds that never leaves the foe with less than 4 h.p.  The other 49% cap the damage in some fashion.RC: I agree, but once you publish a puzzle monster - its no longer a puzzle.Peter Donis said: "It seems to me that the problem isn't so much with high-level play as with overly combat-oriented play. After all, put yourself in the place of a high-level opponent such as a dragon (or, for that matter, in the place of a high-level character about to fight one). You want to survive, and you want to kill your opponent. Wouldn't you do exactly those things that are referred to above? I.e., buff yourself up with defenses against the other guy's likely attacks, and try to use attacks that will be as quickly lethal as possible? And if you know that your opponent is thinking this way, wouldn't you try to set up some kind of layered defense, a "convoluted chain" that the other guy must penetrate to hurt you, instead of being able to win with a single instant-kill attack? If you were really facing such a combat, all these things would be common sense, so it's only reasonable to expect them to be common sense to characters and monsters in the game."I think you are dealing with a classic case of confusing cause and effect.  It doesn't matter whether you run a story based game or a hack and slash game, the mechanics of high level combat remain the same.  Either you kill or be killed.  And that harsh standard forces everyone (whether the PC's or the DM) to always be ready for combat and when in doubt attack on sight.  I have already written extensively about defusing the attack on sight attitude of the PC's, but at some point the system is going to force it on the PC's if you as a DM ever plan on having monsters that seriously challenge them at high level.  As a PC waiting or holding your action is highly unattractive if the monsters first action could quite probably kill one or more members of the party.  So the reason that everyone is buffing up isn't that the game is combat oriented, the game is combat oriented because everyone is so buff.  Failure to be ready and willing for combat puts you out of the game if the other side was ready and willing for combat.  How many DM's have been caught unprepared for NPC death because the NPC wasn't supposed to be attacked but died in the first round?The solution isn't merely changing playing style, it is limiting the destructiveness of PC's and NPC's so that they have time to interact memorably violently or otherwise and feel that they can afford to give up the advantage of going first in order to see if some sort of non-violent interaction is possible.</blockquote>

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