NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5581767" data-attributes="member: 80487">Yes, it would be unskilled reasoning and poor rhetoric if one were to claim as something else what is evidently chance (or might as well be).However, skill can enter a game involving chance when opportunities to gamble are not just isolated events but instead interact with a larger context. Is the potential treasure more important, or the potential trap?Poker is a game of both chance and skill. Situations can arise in such games as Chess and Diplomacy in which actually random choice of which move to make would be superior strategy to risking the revelation of a subconscious pattern that the opponent might be able to use.Depending on the dice appears to be what often gets hailed as "good" design these days! I have yet to see the chance of picking the right door of three be only 25% or worse because some joker decided to make it a certain DC, but it seems just a matter of time.Even when there are clues to discover, it may be most unlikely that someone will think to look for them. A spear trap in Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure comes to mind, and a Medusa in Keep on the Borderlands, as "gotcha" moments likely to get most player groups (albeit not so many characters in well deployed parties).In such cases, not getting caught is a noteworthy accomplishment. Not unleashing a certain furious elemental in MFA is probably more a matter of experience suggesting the general inadvisability of some courses of action. That one can have no iron-clad guarantee of either safety or treasure, though, is part of the game's interest. The strategic scope of the old game's design gave many types of probability more opportunity to play out and a context in which players were less dismayed by such turns of fortune.I think there are weaknesses in, e.g., The Temple of Elemental Evil and In Search of the Unknown, things that might add spice if used sparingly but easily become tiresome when overused. I do not remember such a problem in the Tomb, and no doubt that is due partly to the different circumstances of the whole scenario.I seem to recall a gargoyle in the Tomb that would require magic either to bypass or to defeat. That "challenges the characters" at least to the extent that low-level characters might need to be unusually well equipped -- but really only "name level" worthies should seek Acerak's resting place.</blockquote>

Verification