the 6th level spell that destroyed our party (Acid Fog)

[Al'Kelhar]

shoot me now!

Umm, I was hoping for "Rabbit season!", but maybe not everyone has seen that particular Looney Tunes... 'Way to kill a hijack.

 

[cmanos]

yeah sounds like your DM didn't understand the rules, or thought you guys were getting too kitted out with magic items and decided to alter the rules a bit, which is his perogative.

Yes, discounting Rule Zero, your DM messed up.

But be thankful your characters aren't dead. Equipment can be rebought.

 

[Nail]

Does anyone ever read through all a threads messages anymore?.....

 

[Sir ThornCrest]

No....

usually the beginning of a thread...I usually check out the beginning and skip to the end
Thorncrest

Does anyone ever read through all a threads messages anymore?.....

 

[UltimaGabe]

The same thing happens in DBZ, although to a lesser degree. The character's clothes can get ripped, but never destroyed, not even when hit with something that demolishes mountains.

Well, in DBZ, shirts are usually made out of normal material (somewhat stronger than most fabrics, but still normal fabrics), whereas pants are made out of super-reinforced titanium alloy that's been compressed and compressed until it's nigh-indestructable. To cut down on the weight, though, the knees of said pants are usually just made out of normal fabric.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Wow, isn´t that a little bit harsh? The dm makes a bad call once and you want to replace him?

Asmo

It's not just the bad call. It's the fact that this call screwed up the characters for good, and, the way it seems, he chose to use an effect which he thought would do that. He didn't just use an effect, then looked it up and realized it screwed the players. That's one bastard DM, and expect that even if he rewinds here, he'll use mordenkainen's disjunction when he can. Man, that spell should have been banned along with true 10th-level magic back then. Someone resurrect Karsus, we need to waste another mystra so her successor can set some things right

 

[Plane Sailing]

Exactly.

Just to pick a nit, precisely speaking, it is not a game balance issue. It is a genre issue. Balance can only be judged in the context of an understandable genre.

Once you hit 5th or 6th level, it just becomes too difficult to maintain a fun swashbuckling game if you have a "realistic" rate of item attrition. The game starts resembling Looney Tunes more than Conan. "Ha ha!!! I shot you with a Fireball and now you are all bwack and crispy looking! Take that you wascally Necwomancer!"

Although it worked just fine as a genre for 1e and 2e; I think it was one of the retrograde steps in 3e as it works *against* verisimilitude IMO. They ought to have kept in destruction of items by spells. Why?

1) They still include rust monsters, grey oozes and various other ways for a DM to arbitrarily destroy magic items quickly

2) Making magic items available is still basically in the DMs hands. So everyone saves badly and loses a lot of good gear? The DM just makes sure that over the next few encounters they can find treasure which would bring them up to "appropriate" amounts for their level

3) It would make the red dragons text about it not using its breath weapon because it doesn't want to destroy treasure meaningful

Just MHO

 

[drnuncheon]

I think the big thing in your favour is that the fireball you tossed does MORE damage than the acid. So your reply to his "yeah, acid strong enough to kill you won't effect that delicate paper hanging off your belt, or your soft cloak." is countered by "but the fireball does MORE damage than that, and specifically says it ignites flammable objects."

Or the equally logical objection, "so acid that can melt a greatsword in two rounds only causes a flesh wound?" (Just be careful, you might wind up with Con damage...)

I always throught that the real killer was that it slowed you down to 5' per round just like solid fog.

J

 

[Kapture]

I call it the "Superman Factor", based on this logic:
1) Superman is nigh invincible (kryptonite aside).
2) His clothing, though, is just normal clothing.
3) Therefore, any force strong enough to even lightly bruise superman should utterly destroy his clothes. In fact, even moving at the speed he sometimes does should literally set his pants on fire.

However, it doesn't. The same thing happens in DBZ, although to a lesser degree. The character's clothes can get ripped, but never destroyed, not even when hit with something that demolishes mountains.

That's pretty much what happens in D&D. They figured that, frankly, nobody wanted the orc fighter's clothes to get burned off when a fireball hit, so it simply wasn't going to happen. There's a more important reason too, which is that in the RAW a character's effectiveness is highly dependant on items. At high levels, losing your gear is worth than getting killed, and effectively lowers the character's power by several levels (although more-so for some classes than others).

Dude. Before crisis, his clothes were special kryptonian fabric. Insert acronym for, "I think."

In Marvelese, don't they still use unstable molecules?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Although it worked just fine as a genre for 1e and 2e; I think it was one of the retrograde steps in 3e as it works *against* verisimilitude IMO. They ought to have kept in destruction of items by spells. Why?

1) They still include rust monsters, grey oozes and various other ways for a DM to arbitrarily destroy magic items quickly

Or perhaps we should just get rid of the rust monsters. Oozes I am okay with because I expect them to be bizarre and dangerously unpredictable.

2) Making magic items available is still basically in the DMs hands. So everyone saves badly and loses a lot of good gear? The DM just makes sure that over the next few encounters they can find treasure which would bring them up to "appropriate" amounts for their level

In the the long run, yes. In the short run, it adds a lot of random, unpredictable pain for everyone and feels arbitrary in the extreme. It is no fun for the DM to have to ask for the character sheet to roll for every item to see if it survives. Also keep in mind that failing saving throws is more common in 3e once you get past low levels.

My person opinion is failing a saving throw is its own reward. Blowing up an occasional item makes sense, but wholesale magic item slaughter does not sound like fun to me.

YMMV.