Sleeping and silenced rogue, ouch...

[Lord Pendragon]

There's a world of difference between stumbling across a sleeping dragon, and spotting griffons flying about, finding their nest, and developing a plan for dealing with them without an extended melee.

I disagree, mainly because if you've spotted griffons flying about, they've almost certainly spotted you. And griffons are smart enough (Int 5) to be on guard from that point onward. For some reason, these griffons were oblivious to the party, even though the party observed them for a full day of hunting.

Edit to add: However, I can see a DM ruling the other way. In either case, the important part is the initial setup, not the PCs tactics during the encounter, for which I do not dock xp.

 

[marune]

The party member who studied them was under an Invisibility effect and with enough distance between him and the griffons to avoid being Scented.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

The party member who studied them was under an Invisibility effect and with enough distance between him and the griffons to avoid being Scented.

I'm not trying to audit your encounter, skeptic. I'm sure you made all the right checks, etc. etc.

My original comment was that, based on the situation, I wasn't sure I'd give full xp for the encounter. I'm still not, depending on the entire situation, and I've expressed why. Things got a bit sidetracked as folks fixated on my treatment of EL, but that's the gist of it. I'm not trying to indict your DMing, any more than I feel the need to defend my own any more than I already have.

 

[shilsen]

This kind of situation is a minor reason (major reason - ease of use) that I award XP per session based on how quickly I want the party to level up. It has nothing to do with the specific challenges they overcame and how they do so. Awake griffon, sleeping griffon, arm-wrestling, dragon-slaying, getting drunk - all the same

 

[sullivan]

This kind of situation is a minor reason (major reason - ease of use) that I award XP per session based on how quickly I want the party to level up. It has nothing to do with the specific challenges they overcame and how they do so. Awake griffon, sleeping griffon, arm-wrestling, dragon-slaying, getting drunk - all the same

Hear, hear! Well I can't say that I'd give "getting drunk" an even standing unless it was a drinking contest or something, afterall some experiences are more equal than others. But ya, I tend to just come up with number based on desired advancement rate and top it off with extra based on a rough gauge of advancement towards whatever goals.

Afterall that is what the XP chart numbers were originally designed around, advancing a level every X number of sessions of a given length to provide a nice desirable tension between playing each level of a character and not plodding away month after month of RL time between advancement.

I still remember vividly retiring a beloved Paladin character years ago in 2nd edition because at his rate of advancement he was going to take over a year of weekly sessions to advance to the next level, 10th. I had put in several months just to get from 8th to 9th, which was barely a noticable bump in power, and the stagnation was really getting to me. As a DM i'm not going to let my adventure design not meshing well with the XP chart do that to another player.

 

[PaulKemp]

I agree that this sounds fairly well played by the PC's.

Depending upon how confined the nest was -- and I imagine it was pretty confined -- I might have had the first coup de grace cause a stir. A coup de grace does not necessarily mean a clean, motionless death. So, as the creature bled out, it might at least have flapped its wings, spasmed involuntarily, rolled over once with pain, etc. That motion might have been enough to awaken the rest of the nest, especially if it jostled another of the creatures, or otherwise disturbed the nest.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Only one thing could have saved them, their Scent abiliby, but.. when sleeping, do your Scent can wake up you ?

There is a simple experiment you can do in your own home with parts found in the house. You'll need a pair of socks that have been... overused a bit. If you don't have such an Item, you can create it for yourself by wearing those socks for 3 consecutive rounds of jogging. You then wait until your significant other (or sibling, roommate or parent) is sleeping, and hold the sock prepared in the above-mentioned manner close to the nose of the guin.. uh I mean assistant. If he/she wakes up, you have your answer

 

[BSF]

Skeptic, it sounds like the PCs came up with a well-executed plan. They did well and minimized their risk so they could assure success. That's great!

RE: Lord Pendragon
I think he is misrepresenting himself here. He doesn't really mean he would give less than full experience for the encounter. He means he would lower the Encounter Level (EL) based on these circumstances.

Scaling EL based on circumstances is appropriate. Obviously we don't all agree on when you should scale EL. But that's cool.

 

[Bastoche]

As the rogue in question, I might argue a few things with regards to Lord Pendragon's take on the encounter:

1) The top of the mountain, where the nest was, HAD to be secured to other reasons, ie the caern itself. So in order to complete the current quest, we had to slay them and/or drive them away.

2) the griffon sighting appened much earlier in the day with a lucky roll (DC 20 or 25, I don't remember). We were down the mountain (let's say a mile or more away) on a rocky hill when we saw them. We knew there was going to be at least 1 griffon on the top (we expected only one mounted by a guard in fact). All characters have at least 5 ranks + dex in hide due to cloak of elvenkind or just plain ranks in hide (two rogues, one monk). Even with a high griffon spot, he would've been hard pressed to see us, since we were trying to pass unoticed due to the expected presence of kobolds in the mountain and due to the suspicious nature of that quest (we had prisoners from the guard of Waterdeep and guards sentinels were sighted).

3) One of the character could fly invisibly to have a better understanding of the apprehended battlefield. We knew that if we didn't studied our targets (the griffon) it might have had dire conscequences on our current mission. So the goal was: as few casualties as possible. So we devise a plan. It was a thought out plan, not just some beneficial circumtsances.

So to comment on your original post, if all the circumstances were in the PC's favor, it was because we did anything in our power to make it so. Isn't it part of overcoming the challenge?

To adress the issue someone raised: it was not a confined space, it was a nest on a rocky plateau. Large enough to allow a family of 5 griffon to sleep confortably. We were very well aware that only one of them could be slain. We expected to fight the second adult, but we were lucky. XP is not exactly computed per encounter (Our DM may give more details on that is you want) and we never felt cheated by the amount of XP he gave us so far

 

[HeavyG]

I often wake up when the air conditioning unit stops making noise suddenly during the night. I would think that as soon as the rogue approached within Silence spell radius of a griffon, it would probably wake up due to the very strange total absence of any noise including background cricket chirping.