The problem of saves.

[takyris]

drnuncheon: The save versus a Medusa's gaze is a Fortitude save. If you say that you're closing your eyes, you don't have to save. If you say that you're averting your gaze and trying to look at just her feet or something, you have a 50% chance of having to make a save and a 50% chance of not having to make a save.

If the save were to "avoid looking in the eyes", then it would most likely be a Reflex save. What does your body's natural toughness have to do with avoiding eye contact? A D&D character can, as per the description and example in the DMG, choose to stare directly at the Medusa, meeting its gaze straight-on and trusting in their mettle to see them through. That's not a save that means you avoided the gaze. That's a save that means you looked them in the eye and were too tough to get petrified.

As a game mechanic, it works perfectly and makes for a fun, balanced D&D game. As a dramatic device, I find it to be lacking. I'm definitely leaving it for any D&D games I run, but for a Modern campaign, I don't want my heroes to trust their hours in the gym doing ab workouts to help them not get petrified by the ancient mythical creature. (And of course, I would DEFINITELY tell any of my players about this difference, so that they don't say, "Well, shoot, I'm a Tough Hero with Great Fortitude and a 16 Con, what do I have to worry about?"

Saeviomagy: The "benefit" of having them affected by it is much the same as the benefit of having them be affected by gravity. In the campaign I would hypothetically be running, I don't want the call to be "Something that peasants get sucked into, but experienced warriors can shrug it off." I don't want five percent of the peasants to succeed against the Call every time it happens. And I don't want to have it affect everyone else automatically but give the PCs a save against it under the "They're special" rule. I want the PCs to operate knowing that they'd better have their Timer Grapples set correctly so that if the Call happens, the worst that could happen is that they wake up a few hours and a few miles from where they used to be, tethered to a tree.

This is perhaps just a difference in our campaign and play styles. I don't set the PCs apart as special unless they do something to make themselves special. They're not prophecied heroes who can mystically ignore something that affects everyone else in the entire world.

-Tacky

 

[Ace]

This is perhaps just a difference in our campaign and play styles. I don't set the PCs apart as special unless they do something to make themselves special. They're not prophecied heroes who can mystically ignore something that affects everyone else in the entire world.

-Tacky

Everybodies style is different I guess.

I would walk out of a game like that and not come back. If I tried to run it my players would play 1 session thannot come back

Playing a person mind controled by Evil Whales (which are cool) just sounds suckitudinous in the extreme

Yours and You players Mileage may very of course and I wish you a great game

For mechanics I would do the gnegineered humans as a seperate race, you can tweak stats or whatever as needed

As for the reistance thing I would just allow a will save at some obscene DC, maybe 25 or so. As a house rule a 20 is not an automatic save

Thus high level character can save (maybe) but most folks won't

Also, be cautious about using this in a magical world. If there aren't direct magical countermeasures there will be indirect ones

For example-- A teleport talisman that triggers if the call is detected and sends the mage to a safe room

Other possibilities include parlyzing talismans or if this effect is sonic, portable zones of silence 15' radius carried anytime anyone is outside the walls

Alolowing some of these counter measures in addition to the grapples might give man kind a fighting chance

Oh and a last note just one word for you

Aboleth

 

[s/LaSH]

Hey, I've actually read some of that series (a later book, though; I didn't realise it was part of a series until halfway through, though). That could be pretty cool as a setting, actually; the one I read had a monk as one of the main characters - how can you not love a setting where they have monastaries full of monks whose sole purpose in life is to get very good with pistols?

Of course, the one I read seemed more... steampunk, in a way. But what with certain spoilerish elements, I won't mention the possible reason for people to have spell-like powers in this setting (and it's a cool reason too).

Now, the Call... my inclination would be to say 20s don't automatically save, then set the DC around 25 or so, such that only people with mighty wills can endure it. (For those keeping count, DC25 requires good Will savers to roll a 20 at level6, and poor Will savers to roll a 20 at level 15, not counting ability bonuses. No commoners need apply, and even then it's by no means a sure thing - on average, a good Will saver succeds half the time at level 16! Quite powerful to have even a middling chance.) Unless you've got avian DNA, in which case you're hunted down and lynched by humans.

As for the Medusa... this could go either way, I realised. Ever tried to look at a webcomic and not see what's portrayed there? I have. Keeping your eyes on a person you're fighting while not meeting their gaze is similar, a test of concentration, which is based on CON - as is Fortitude. But in the end, it's all a bit of a hack, because that particular type of concentration requires great self-control, and that's Wisdom (Will), isn't it? Really, any one of the three saves could do for this - Fortitude just happens to tie into the option that adventurers are special and have 'minor spell resistance' or something.

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

Something that hasn't been raised in this discussion is "call anchors". These are devices that everyone wears on their belts. They're clockwork and have to be reset every hour or so. If they don't get reset then they fire an anchor into the ground. The idea is, if the call sweeps across you and you lose control and start heading south, once the clock winds down in the mechanism, the anchor fires and you get stuck. Once the call passes your never more than an hour's walk south of where you started.

With this device in the party's possession (not to mention all npcs), a no-save effect is not so bad - after all, anchors only fail rarely.

The other thing, since the call always draws mammals southwards, most towns are built with dead end streets to the south so people in towns just walk into walls - no getting lost.

Also, it's not just evil whales, but evil carnivorous whales and dolphins. There's a scene in one of the books where someone describes the feeding frenzy on the coast as the mammals just march to their deaths.

 

[takyris]

Hey, Consequence,

Yeah, I mentioned the anchors but called them something else -- it's been awhile since I read the book.

I think that there's a misconception that I plan to run this and use it to kill PCs. The people who have read the series -- and I think that there are at least three of us here -- can attest to the fact that being Called is usually a nuisance and only occasionally an actual hazard. If you're in a town, you bump into a wall -- towns don't put up buildings that have a south-facing doorway, and they always have big walls.

Since this'd be something Modern-ish, there'd be no worries about facing lizard-men or nasty creatures immune to the Call -- save the occasional Avian.

So if I did a game with a Call in it, it would be less like "Whales with Power Word: Kill" and more like a natural hazard. I enjoyed the book, and I thought that putting players who haven't read the books into a world like that and letting them solve some of the old mysteries themselves would be kinda fun.

Ace, I think your viewpoint is the one that made me worried in the first place. Could you be more specific? Are you saying that you'd walk out of a game set with environmental hazards? If, for example, we took away the Call and replaced it with the following:

Rain of Acid

The deadly acidic rain of Tackysworld can kill the foolish and the unwary. Roll on (some weather chart) to see if the Rain of Acid occurs on a given day. A downpour of the rain does 1d4 points of temporary Constitution damage per minute to any creature that does not have Acid Resistance 15 or better. Creatures wearing heavy clothes with hoods reduce this damage by half. Creatures who find shelter under a thick canopy of trees or erect makeshift shelters (Wilderness Lore/Survival DC15) reduce the damage to 1d4 points per hour. An ordinary Rain of Acid lasts 1d3 hours.

So Ace, if a DM told you about that acid rain in advance and said, "This is the world your character grew up in. The rain isn't evil. It's not out to get you. It's an environmental hazard. Everyone in town has lost family members to sudden squalls, and everyone knows that, heavy and bulky as it is, you ALWAYS carry a heavy slicker, and you make your way quickly from one Wayshelter to the next." If a DM told you that, would you walk out of the game?

Or is your complaint that the PCs don't get a special "They're the PCs" way around the problem?

-Tacky

 

[Saeviomagy]

Tacky - first of all, if your players will be fine with it, just do it saveless.

second, if you really don't think they'll go for it, then give it a high DC and let people save against it. If it's unlikely to have serious consequences anyway, then the ability to shrug it off occasionally will likewise have a minimal effect. In fact this variety holds significantly MORE risk for the PC's, as it becomes possible for them to fail their saves, and the NPC's to succeed.

If you want, just point this fact out to them - they're significantly less impacted by it if there is no chance of a save for all...

 

[Squire James]

I don't think it would be a problem if you guarantee that a PC will NEVER be killed by the Call, and will NEVER lose control of his character for a long period of real time because of it. These are both BAAAD juju if there's not even any rolls to avoid it!

In other words, the Call can take the PC's into (or out of) a Situation, sure, but it won't kill them or take effect for long periods of time. The characters just note a discontinuity in their time sense and "appear" somewhere else. Hopefully the Call pretty much pulls everyone with equal force, because otherwise this will separate party members every time it happens, which is another Bad Idea in most cases.

If they insist on doing coastal cliff-side dances, all bets are off. That's sort of like going up to the Terrasque and making lewd comments about his mother! I'd probably be polite enough to let the Call's effect end when they fall in the water... nothing wrong with a rousing shark-fight once in a while!

 

[maddman75]

I would be upset if there was a DM invented hazard that you only had a chance against if you blew a feat on it. It would come off as 'DM is screwing with my character to suck up a feat'. Better to have no save than make them use a feat. They are precious things.

I'd just make it so that most people don't get saves. Only the extraordinay people (PCs) even have a chance against it. Make it a high will save, only monks and others who spend a lot of time studying and focusing their minds have a chance of resisting. Maybe a feat that would give a bonus to the save would be appropriate.

Ultimately, ask yourself how much it really matters. You said yourself this isn't a weapon to use against the PCs, but flavor for the world, part of the environment.

You don't have to use the same rules for common people as you do for adventurers. You just have to make them *think* you are.

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

Sorry Tacky, I see it now in your original post. I'm reading at work and have to scan pretty quickly sometimes.

I really enjoyed Sean McMullen's books and have considered introducing this concept to a campaign of my own. I think it'd be really interesting.

 

[der_kluge]

I guess my big question is what do you do when a PC fails their save, or becomes affected by the Call? Does the PC just walk towards the west. Where do these people go, and what happens when they get there?