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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 758131" data-attributes="member: 5171">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</blockquote>

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