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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5814519" data-attributes="member: 5143">That kind of thing works well in a story because you can wait until the exact right moment to write it in, so that there is an epic build up to the conclusion.You can have a battle where the alien chases the hero around, the hero always dodging its attacks, though just barely as the hero leads it down the corridor towards the airlock.  Then have the hero pinned to the floor and unable to reach the airlock as it stretches, just inches away from clutching the lever.  Until the second hero, thought dead until now, revives and distracts the alien just long enough for the hero to get away an pull the lever.It's great story telling.  But when you allow player abilities, rules, and dice to dictate the results instead of an all powerful author who can write it any way they want, what you normally end up with is the hero running head first down the corridor, hitting the switch and beating the enemy before the enemy gets an attack off.  It's not very epic and when it's done nearly every battle, not very special either.  It gets to the point where PCs look at their character sheet and say "I've got a blaster rifle that does 3d6 damage.  But the airlock of the ship does infinite damage.  Let's just do that."Plus, that kind of story technique works better in sci-fi/super hero games which far more often invoke the <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NighInvulnerability" target="_blank">"unbeatable monster which needs a clever plan to defeat"</a> trope.  But sometimes this works in a fantasy campaign for the big, nasty, world destroying creature.  If you are invoking that trope though, the answer shouldn't just be something nearby.  It should be something the PCs have quested to find.Most of the time in Fantasy stories the average enemy is defeated with "Parry, parry, thrust, parry, thrust, slash, hack, decapitate".  I want the average fight to go like that.  The only real way to do that is to make sure that techniques like "I set up a trap" be the same or less powerful than abilities on a character sheet.</blockquote>

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