White Plume Mountain -- the slippery room solution?

[Henry]

Levitate does not work in this room.

Sorry -- I was going off of your description of the room. Apparently, so were a lot of other DM's.

So, of 13 solutions used, 4 should not have worked (according to the explicit text), 3 would only work with a very charitable DM, and 6 would work by the text and most DMs.

In which categories did you count the thrown halfling and the "stuff it with seafood" options?

Now, a follow-up question: Was this a fun room to experience? Was it fun spending a lot of time figuring out how to get across a room as gimmicked and restricted as this was? If you experienced this many years ago, when you were younger, do you think it would be fun now?

It always surprises me what kids find fun. A young kid, unless raised absolutely spoiled rotten, will usually take failure as a call to keep trying something to get it right. As adults, we are more often to get discuraged from trying something if we fail it miserably first time out. If not, many life-long D&D players might not have continued on to become such the first time they died 10 minutes into the dungeon under a peer "killer DM".

For me, the first time I DM'ed White Plume Mountain (my first D&D experience!) I killed off half of the party with green slime 5 minutes in! They rolled up new characters, and kept going.

EDIT -- something Crothian said about planning being fun spurred a memory. Last session in our 3.5 Eberron game, I presented the 6 11th level PCs with the herculean task of getting through 16 hill giants, a stone giant, 2 cloud giants, to assassinate a Cloud Giant with nonassociated class levels. It scared the bejeebies out of them, but they had the advantage of surprise, they hid, they planned, and surreptitiously took out as many giants as they could in sneaky ways, where the other giants wouldn't know. They took about two hours to plan the assault, and against all odds succeeded, with some darned crafty plans! (Forcecage is a NASTY, NASTY spell!)

By rights, had they assaulted the place head-on, it would have been their end, but they had a blast poring over a recon map, figuring the best spells, setting ambush routes, etc. None of them are really tactical minded, nor really skilled tacticians, and still had fun figuring out what to do.

 

[Quasqueton]

In which categories did you count the thrown halfling and the "stuff it with seafood" options?

They weren't actual solutions in a real game. I don't want to run a game in this thread, I was asking for what people actually did in their real games. I'm not going to respond to the theoriticals (no offense to anyone proposing possible solutions).

Quasqueton

 

[Umbran]

Now, a follow-up question: Was this a fun room to experience? Was it fun spending a lot of time figuring out how to get across a room as gimmicked and restricted as this was? If you experienced this many years ago, when you were younger, do you think it would be fun now?

If used only occasionally, such things can be fun and refreshing exercises. I wouldn't make too frequent a habit of it, but every now and again having something that cannot be fought or browbeaten into cooperating is good for the players.

If I were Calvin's dad, I'd say it builds character

 

[smootrk]

Easy enough with immovable rods. Just slide until close to the end, then press the button for the brakes. Maybe a weak DC Strength check necessary to hold on as you stop suddenly.

 

[Quasqueton]

Which is just silly. . .

No sillier than the whole scenario. Saying and enforcing a “cannot be damaged or removed” rule is no sillier than saying and enforcing a “fly, levitate, dimension door, etc. don’t work here” rule.

I have no idea what epic range means. The DC according to WotC is 20.

Epic skill DC range = something like found in the ELH – the “impossible” things (like DC 50). In this thread, I’m referring to the original AD&D1 version of the module. WotC “weakened” some things it with their rewrite. (They actually completely changed some parts.)

Quasqueton