Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4702331" data-attributes="member: 710">I think one difference I see is that your extreme doesn't have to be true. Look at random encounter tables. If there is a 5 % chance that the 1st level PCs encounter the Ancient Wyrm when traveling through the forest, they might know that - but does that mean they will never ever dare to enter the forest until they are of sufficient level? Or can we assume that the DM will engineer the scenario in a way to give the PCs some warning signs (&quot;You hear a terrible roar - it must be the Dragon! What do you do!&quot; - &quot;We run in the opposite direction and hide!&quot;)? Of course, if I was the DM, that's what I would do, and I'd turn it into a &quot;level appropriate&quot; challenge. Because otherwise it still seems unfair and not conductive to my enjoyment of the game. Because there was nothing the PCs really could have done except not using the forest to avoid that problem - after all, they don't control the outcome of my d% on the random encounter table! It seems like &quot;Save or Die&quot; to me. Of course every PC death and every TPK hinges on one final roll, but as usual my problem is that there is no way to really &quot;predict&quot; it happening or providing an opportunity to turn things around. The only way this works for me is1) A threat appears2) I can make a choice on how to deal with it3) My decision meaningful affects whether the the threat is realized (bad things happen) or not.(And note in this example: The threat does - not in my &quot;mental model&quot; of the game world - appear when I choose to enter the forest. It appears when the DM rolls that the Dragon appears. Before this decision, the threat did not appear. It was a threat like &quot;I might have a heart stroke today&quot; or &quot;a tree could fall down on me&quot;. Yes, it is a possibility, but the threat hasn't really appeared.)</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Mustrum_Ridcully, post: 4702331, member: 710"] I think one difference I see is that your extreme doesn't have to be true. Look at random encounter tables. If there is a 5 % chance that the 1st level PCs encounter the Ancient Wyrm when traveling through the forest, they might know that - but does that mean they will never ever dare to enter the forest until they are of sufficient level? Or can we assume that the DM will engineer the scenario in a way to give the PCs some warning signs ("You hear a terrible roar - it must be the Dragon! What do you do!" - "We run in the opposite direction and hide!")? Of course, if I was the DM, that's what I would do, and I'd turn it into a "level appropriate" challenge. Because otherwise it still seems unfair and not conductive to my enjoyment of the game. Because there was nothing the PCs really could have done except not using the forest to avoid that problem - after all, they don't control the outcome of my d% on the random encounter table! It seems like "Save or Die" to me. Of course every PC death and every TPK hinges on one final roll, but as usual my problem is that there is no way to really "predict" it happening or providing an opportunity to turn things around. The only way this works for me is 1) A threat appears 2) I can make a choice on how to deal with it 3) My decision meaningful affects whether the the threat is realized (bad things happen) or not. (And note in this example: The threat does - not in my "mental model" of the game world - appear when I choose to enter the forest. It appears when the DM rolls that the Dragon appears. Before this decision, the threat did not appear. It was a threat like "I might have a heart stroke today" or "a tree could fall down on me". Yes, it is a possibility, but the threat hasn't really appeared.) [/QUOTE]

Verification