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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6243208" data-attributes="member: 5143">I explain this slightly above in a post to someone else, but to summarize:  There's a difference between being creative and completely bypassing the balance of the game.The spell in question is a wall spell designed to protect people.  There are other spells at the same level as it that do damage.  Cone of Cold does 1d6 points of damage per level.  At 9th level, it does an average of 32 damage with a save for half and allows spell resistance.  There is a spell that can essentially defeat a monster immediately:  Baleful Polymorph.  It has a save to avoid the effects and allows spell resistance.All the 5th level spells are supposed to be equal in power.  That's the entire concept of balance.  If wall of force kills people outright, it isn't balanced.  Part of your job as DM is to enforce balance.The spell isn't designed to hurt people at all.  It includes a number of sentences in its description that were put there entirely to make sure people didn't try to use it to kill people.  Those sentences were put there after people in 3.0e used it to kill people, DMs complained that it was overpowered when used that way and the designers took steps to make it more clear that the spell can't be used in a method that would harm people. Using a spell that the rules say can't hurt anyone in order to hurt people is pretty much the entire definition of cheating.This is precisely what they did.  The rules said "No, you can't do this", they proceeded to say "I do this, despite the fact that the rules tell me it's impossible.  I mean, if you read it in a very specific way, it MIGHT work."  They were just lucky that their DM was easily swayed by arguments.In the same way that you MIGHT convince someone that putting a puck into ANY net still scores points.  After all, the rules only specify putting a puck into a net.  However, the players of the game have the common sense to interpret the rules in the most sane way possible.  They know that the rules didn't take into account someone putting a puck into a basketball net however everyone can jointly agree that that's likely not what the designers of the rules were thinking when they wrote them.The Wall of Force spell could TECHNICALLY kill someone even though it's readily apparent that that's not what the designers of the rules meant when they wrote up the description of the spell.  In theory, the players of D&D should make the same logical assumption and say "Yeah, nice try to get around the rules."Yeah, you can choke to death, but as everyone points out above, it would take many, many rounds to choke to death.  More than enough time for a dragon to silent dimension door away from the wall and kill everyone.I'm not sure how them running or continuing to negotiate with the dragon would not still be rolling with a fun scene.  You are rolling in a direction that is equally fun while following the rules.Wow...all I can say is...apparently your DMing style works because your players are pushovers.  My players had the XP table nearly memorized.  There would be a discussion on the spot about how much a EL 24 encounter was worth given that the chart doesn't show XP for encounters more than 10 levels above the Average Party Level(since the DMG says that encounters that high are impossible and should not be able to be defeated so the values aren't needed).  I'm sure someone would be looking up the XP value for an APL 19 encounter and then making a case for how I needed to triple or quadruple it.They also pretty much have the treasure tables memorized and would be wondering where the CR 24 worth of treasure was located.After all, killing a monster comes with its just rewards.  They beat a CR 24 fair and square(assuming I had allowed it)...where is there proper reward?</blockquote>

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