Probably a straight-up wisdom check. Wisdom's the "awareness" stat, as evidenced by Listen and Spot. Not having any ranks to add to it has the added bonus of nicely mirroring how it's a sense you don't often use in this way.Davek said:Just curious, but what about other senses other than sight and hearing? What about touch, ie. vibrations as the character clambers up into the nest? Not exactly tremor sense which is quite powerful, but even if they are moving carefully and invisible it doesn't mean that the nest doesn't move ie. branches moving slightly, stones shifting.
I like the party's solution so don't take this as a slam in any way, but I do know that when I am sleeping, even if I don't hear anything, if someone brushes against the bed, I wake up. Maybe it is just me
What type of roll would be most appropriate for this?
Sleeping and silenced rogue, ouch...
- Thread starter marune
- Start date
And we met quite our share of undeads already 
My "no strength, no sneak attacks" daggers against those truly is not quite efficent.
If you're interested here's the party (at the time of the encounter):
drow wizard level 4 (ECL 6); mix of utility spells and attack spells.
Fey'ri rogue level 3 (ECL 5); sneak and mechanics
human rogue level 6; sneak and social skills TWF
human monk level 6; high dex and wis
human swashbuckler level 4; social skills (high int and high cha) TWF
human cleric level 4 social skills
The strongest party members have 14 strength; the cleric and the fey'ri. Which happen to be the lowest levels too. All other characters have 10 in str. As you can see, no fighters.
Encounters tend to either be highly in our favor; when sneak attacks and ambush tactics kicks in. Or highly against us when we are forbidden sneak attacks (undead or inability to flank, etc).
We had two encounters with the same band of elves. The first time, they ambushed us and mopped the floor with us. The second time, we ambushed then and mopped the floor with them. The first encounter was quite humiliating due to a clever use of entangle by the elven druid. On the second encounter I sneak attacked her real good (Although I did amlost die due to her poison spell.
Since the beginning of the campaign, if we can't get the suprise round, we're hard pressed no matter the CR. I like it that way though makes it all more realistic IMO in a sense.
My "no strength, no sneak attacks" daggers against those truly is not quite efficent.If you're interested here's the party (at the time of the encounter):
drow wizard level 4 (ECL 6); mix of utility spells and attack spells.
Fey'ri rogue level 3 (ECL 5); sneak and mechanics
human rogue level 6; sneak and social skills TWF
human monk level 6; high dex and wis
human swashbuckler level 4; social skills (high int and high cha) TWF
human cleric level 4 social skills
The strongest party members have 14 strength; the cleric and the fey'ri. Which happen to be the lowest levels too. All other characters have 10 in str. As you can see, no fighters.
Encounters tend to either be highly in our favor; when sneak attacks and ambush tactics kicks in. Or highly against us when we are forbidden sneak attacks (undead or inability to flank, etc).
We had two encounters with the same band of elves. The first time, they ambushed us and mopped the floor with us. The second time, we ambushed then and mopped the floor with them. The first encounter was quite humiliating due to a clever use of entangle by the elven druid. On the second encounter I sneak attacked her real good
(Although I did amlost die due to her poison spell.Since the beginning of the campaign, if we can't get the suprise round, we're hard pressed no matter the CR. I like it that way though
makes it all more realistic IMO in a sense.I have an another "XP critical" situation involving the same party...
They had to kill a Catoblepas (Huge abberation with a death-ray effect)..
How they did it ? The flying character (same who studied the griffon) go up and shot in to death taking a low penalty (migty comp. long bow) to be out of the range of the death ray.
In fact, she was out of arrow when it was at 1 hit point, another player put it to death from distance.
How much XP for this one ? Hehe
They had to kill a Catoblepas (Huge abberation with a death-ray effect)..
How they did it ? The flying character (same who studied the griffon) go up and shot in to death taking a low penalty (migty comp. long bow) to be out of the range of the death ray.
In fact, she was out of arrow when it was at 1 hit point, another player put it to death from distance.
How much XP for this one ? Hehe
If i was a DM i would give full XP as well. I know my DM tries to go out of the way to reward players that use tactics instead of hack and slash. But if it cant be accomplished than by all means fight till the death!!!
I am a 3rd lvl Rogue that needed info on the Pirate organization terrorizing the city. We are told where it is located and was provided a ship. I (wanting to become an Assassin) ask the Mayor (DM) if their might be a Thieves' Guild around to maybe scrounge some useful 'hard to come by' information. I track down some leads (Gather Info) and find someone who knows of a certain guild but is relucctant to talk. So i follow him (Hide/ MS). He goes home and to sleep. I sneak up to him and Intimidate him into talking with a dagger to his throat (20 INT
) Kill him and have the location. I find out that there is a way to tell a pirate from a non pirate (besides the eye patch lol) ... a silver necklace.
What would have happened if i didnt secure the necklace? I mean i put a lot of effort to gain knowledge before we actually head out to Cape Dread and by doing it safely.
you bet your last gp i was rewarded with some XP (i might be able to talk for more as i was only rewarded for killing the lead and hide/ms checks )
If the party delibrately waited for the Griffons to fall asleep then i say by all means give full xp. As they could have slained them in maybe an hour or two instead of waiting till dark. That time could have been spent getting more xp or further to their destination. And they did use some resouorces to aid in the battle. Just because a Rogue can stealth up to the target doesnt mean they should get less xp. He does possess a chance to fail and be mauled. But that is the life of the rogue. Chance. He chanced his fate with some minor goodies and WON. Case Closed
I am a 3rd lvl Rogue that needed info on the Pirate organization terrorizing the city. We are told where it is located and was provided a ship. I (wanting to become an Assassin) ask the Mayor (DM) if their might be a Thieves' Guild around to maybe scrounge some useful 'hard to come by' information. I track down some leads (Gather Info) and find someone who knows of a certain guild but is relucctant to talk. So i follow him (Hide/ MS). He goes home and to sleep. I sneak up to him and Intimidate him into talking with a dagger to his throat (20 INT
) Kill him and have the location. I find out that there is a way to tell a pirate from a non pirate (besides the eye patch lol) ... a silver necklace. What would have happened if i didnt secure the necklace? I mean i put a lot of effort to gain knowledge before we actually head out to Cape Dread and by doing it safely.
you bet your last gp i was rewarded with some XP (i might be able to talk for more as i was only rewarded for killing the lead and hide/ms checks )
If the party delibrately waited for the Griffons to fall asleep then i say by all means give full xp. As they could have slained them in maybe an hour or two instead of waiting till dark. That time could have been spent getting more xp or further to their destination. And they did use some resouorces to aid in the battle. Just because a Rogue can stealth up to the target doesnt mean they should get less xp. He does possess a chance to fail and be mauled. But that is the life of the rogue. Chance. He chanced his fate with some minor goodies and WON. Case Closed
Ridley's Cohort
First Post
skeptic said:
Need more information.
If the nature of the beast and its special attack were handed to the party on a silver platter AND it required no effort get it out into the open where it could be killed at range, I would probably give a significantly lesser XP award. There are countless monsters in the MM that can be trivially butchered by a Fly spell and a large number of arrows if you find them out in the open.
What I would consider is what would be a "fair fight" for a particular creature, considering its nature and habits.
Let's take a simpler example: a Hydra with no special abilities. A fair fight for that hydra is: "You step around the corner and the passageway opens to a large cavern. 50 feet away stands a hydra. No surprise round. Everyone roll for Initiative."
Of course, nobody likes to get in a fair fight with a hydra. And there are lots of ways to make the fight unfair in favor of the PCs, the most obvious of which is having a skilled roguish scout staying 50'-60' ahead of the party who carefully peeks around the corner.
The key question in my mind is did the PCs gain the advantage of an unfair fight due to some strategem they employed? Or is the adventure just written in a way that the party will gain the upper hand extremely easily?
In the case of the catoblepas, the information was gathered through NPCs. The info was pretty much "given by the DM" so to speak. I think we deserve a little less XP then "full XP" in that specific case. However, our intend was the same: we do not want to face that creature in melee. It was loose in a swamp and through knowledge(local) I had heard of such creature enough to know of it's death ray, but certainly not of it's exact range.
Our group has a tendency to make everything in our power to make the encounters less "melee-lethal" through cleverness. I think the lowest int score in the group is 16. I think we all have 16 except the wizard
Also, we haven't talk about the abduction of the two guards that took a suprise round plus one normal round. Plus the few minutes to tie and manacle them, get the charriot and leave. No noise, no witnesses, no problems. And a bit of luck
You can infer now that our PCs aren't exactly do-gooders
Our group has a tendency to make everything in our power to make the encounters less "melee-lethal" through cleverness. I think the lowest int score in the group is 16. I think we all have 16 except the wizard
Also, we haven't talk about the abduction of the two guards that took a suprise round plus one normal round. Plus the few minutes to tie and manacle them, get the charriot and leave. No noise, no witnesses, no problems. And a bit of luck
You can infer now that our PCs aren't exactly do-gooders
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brehobit
Explorer
I agree with this. Slience might well wake someone up. Don't know what kind of a check to make but probably a DC 15-25 Listen check depending on how loud things were to begin with.HeavyG said: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.
