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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8924627" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Correct. The Escalation Die exists as an elegant solution to the dominance of the "alpha strike." If you blow your biggest guns right away, you're at much greater risk of failing to connect, but if you do you'll take out more things early. If you wait, you have allowed the enemy to do more damage and survive more rounds, but you're noticeably more likely to succeed. Even after only three rounds (so the start of the fourth round), +3 to all rolls is a powerful thing, turning 50/50 odds into 65/35 odds (or, if you prefer, "every other attack fails" bumped up to "two out of three attacks succeeds.")And the fact that dragons also get the Escalation Die makes them really scary, because now you DON'T have a force pushing toward victory, you have a force that pushes toward greater and greater danger for everyone involved. It situates dragons as a top-tier threat even if they aren't ancient wyrms, making their use and appearance appropriately weighty.Oh God no, anything but that. "Mess with the players and punish them if they refuse" is in that rare breed of mechanics where it's actually worse than critical fumble rules.If you enjoy them, more power to you, but they're a horrible idea that actively invites DMs to be disruptive and divisive. That's the last thing we need in D&D.</blockquote>