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Chataro
Learned Scribe
Singapore
114 Posts |
 Posted - 08 Mar 2006 : 11:29:32
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My lvl 1 mage with my lvl 9fighter and lvl 6 cleric and lvl 4 thief met a white dragon accidently in the midst of a snowstorm. My mage was stuck with a cursed robe of randomness and i tried to cast a magic missle at the dragon. Somehow my DM decreed that my magic missle spell mutated and instead of 1 missle or 5 missle. It would be my intellgence score X 5 amount of missle. Yes , u saw it right. Intelligence X 5. My intelligence was 18 which resulted in 90missles flying towards the dragon. That was the fastest way i ever seen a dragon died :p
And for that, i gained about 6 lvls. That was incredibly wierd. Now may party has a lvl 7 mage with only the spell magic missle and sleep in my spell book.
Just curious, was my Dm correct in trying to do that or was it wrong?
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Trace_Coburn
Learned Scribe
New Zealand
137 Posts |
Posted - 08 Mar 2006 : 12:30:45
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quote:
Originally posted by Chataro
My lvl 1 mage with my lvl 9fighter and lvl 6 cleric and lvl 4 thief met a white dragon accidently in the midst of a snowstorm. My mage was stuck with a cursed robe of randomness and i tried to cast a magic missle at the dragon. Somehow my DM decreed that my magic missle spell mutated and instead of 1 missle or 5 missle. It would be my intellgence score X 5 amount of missle. Yes , u saw it right. Intelligence X 5. My intelligence was 18 which resulted in 90missles flying towards the dragon. That was the fastest way i ever seen a dragon died :p
And for that, i gained about 6 lvls. That was incredibly wierd. Now may party has a lvl 7 mage with only the spell magic missle and sleep in my spell book.
Just curious, was my DM correct in trying to do that or was it wrong?
Sounds to me like he rolled up a 'random encounter' that was a bit out of your party's league and he had to make some on-the-fly adjustments to avoid killing you all in a couple of rounds. 
Me, I get so much bad luck that I'll take good fortune any way I can get it; FWIW, in your position I'd just say "thank you, sir!", take the XP, and get while the gettin' was good.  
(Besides, think how much 'easier' your party's life is going to be for the next few adventures. All those Lvl1 and Lvl2 fighter-types now have a Wiz7 backing their plays, which is serious fire-support at that level.  Once you pick up some more spells to prepare, you're going to be making a pretty fair dent in the opposition for a goodly while.... ) |
D&D collection: Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, Monster Manual I, Complete Arcane, Arms & Equipment Guide.
FR sourcebook collection: Dragons of Faerūn, Faiths & Pantheons, FRCS, Lords of Darkness, Monsters of Faerūn, Player's Guide to Faerūn, Power of Faerūn, Races of Faerūn, Silver Marches.
I just got back into this, okay? Give me time (or better yet money) - I'll catch up soon enough.  |
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Wooly Rupert
Master of Mischief
USA
36781 Posts |
Posted - 08 Mar 2006 : 13:55:03
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I'm not really up on the rules (I prefer the lore), but I believe that it is written somewhere that characters should not gain multiple levels at once.
Me, I think your DM was doing some serious fudging of the rules. |
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scererar
Master of Realmslore
USA
1618 Posts |
Posted - 08 Mar 2006 : 14:48:11
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sounds crazy, but it is a fantasy world where anything can happen. If I as a DM would have rolled a random encounter like that I would propably re-rolled for something else. Creative on the Dm's part, but not too sure rules appropriate. I also thought that you could only go up 1 level at a time. At least in my house rules/ if they were house rules, stated that a character could go up 1 level per session, and no more than 1/2 way in experience to the next. This kept all of them white dragons away regardless, it was your campaign and the realms is all of ours. I am assuming you had fun casting 90 magic missles and single handedly saving the day  |
Edited by - scererar on 08 Mar 2006 14:49:06 |
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Beirnadri Magranth
Senior Scribe
USA
720 Posts |
Posted - 08 Mar 2006 : 18:07:22
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| sounds like you were in a Hyper Magic Zone! (the result of 2 dead magic zones? haha lol) |
"You came here to be a martyr in a great big bang of glory... instead you will die with a whimper."
::moussaoui tries to interrupt::
"You will never get a chance to speak again and that's an appropriate ending."
-Judge Brinkema |
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Faramicos
Senior Scribe
Denmark
468 Posts |
Posted - 08 Mar 2006 : 22:10:49
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| perhaps he could have thought of some other and more clever way of securing your escape. I make an effort of sticking to ,my decisions and not withdrawing an encounter or ending with an example like yours... But hell, if a DM is cornered with an unlucky turn of events he sometimes has to pull some tricks out of his sleeve to save the situation. No one is perfect... But sounds crazy... |
"When dragons make war, worlds can only tremble in the shadow of angry wings" |
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Sgain
Acolyte
Canada
32 Posts |
Posted - 08 Mar 2006 : 22:39:39
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| Maybe he wanted to level up your character quickly, as he was obviously the lowest one there. Rather than just say 'your level 6' he gave you a bit of a scare and leveled you up, I've done similar stuff before myself to speed up the process. At least thats what I think he did... |
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4686 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2006 : 04:15:33
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Well I was thinking it might have been a level up encounter as well.
Using conventional experience point calculator the White dragon had to be CR 10 and worth 2,700 experience points (base table does not award experience points for CR that eaquals or is greater then 10 plus character level). Clearly enough to level up, however to gain enough points to earn 5 levels, using a modified experience award system the CR clearly wasmuch higher then 10. Also the DM is susposed to factor in ease or difficulty of an emcounter, if battle appears too one sided one way or another the experience points are to be adjusted upward or downward. 80 magic missles made the encouter too easy and CR perhaps should have been one or in that range.
The party itself was a wide range level 1 to level 9 and best guess indeed was to try to bring levels closer together, I expect the theif gained at least 2 (if not three levels) the Cleric likely gaind 2 and the Fighter might have gained one.
Not sure if rule still exists about not gaining more then one level per encounter (after all training rules are gone and one does not have to cpmplet an adventure before leveling up) and gaining enough points in a single encounter to level twice should be imposible (the CR difference being such that low levels will die).
Per the rules (which the DM appears to ignore) gaining 5 Wiz levels means that 10 spells can be added to spellbook for free. So the spell book should now have 10 spells in it. The spells of course must be castable (no adding a 9th level spell).
All in all it was bad play by the DM no matter what reason such an encounter occured. From experience points award the White Dragon should not have been a random encouter (a very young one acceptible, but that would not yeild some many points). The magical enhancement itself is out of bounds 80d4 in damage from a 1st level spell.
There are two important things to keep in mind, the game is to be fun for all and the DM is always right (except when he is wrong *wink*).
If the level increase however gained bothers no one I would not worry about it too much this time, I would however worry if bizarre things keep occuring. |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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Iliphar1
Learned Scribe
Austria
133 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2006 : 09:25:08
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is your DM noob?
IMHO if a DM never kills a party, or (even worse) puts them into impossible encounters and then breaks the rules to help them get out, he does something completely wrong. The party knows for sure, that they will never be killed anyway, so there's no danger in adventuring. Without danger it becomes boring... (where's the thrill or the accomlishment, when you know from right the start, that you're invincible and you know already, that nothing can defeat you?) |
'You see dead bones? ... I see an army!' Ezechiel 37 |
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Chataro
Learned Scribe
Singapore
114 Posts |
Posted - 09 Mar 2006 : 12:25:42
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Actually, this was my third PC, my first cleric died from a encounter with a red dragon. My second PC was a mage and he died when he accidently fireballed himself when fighting trolls.
Heres something u can all really laugh at now, the DM declared that we couldn't find the white dragon's treasure horde and we came out not much wealtheir than before our leaving of Luskan. And now my party members refused to pay for my uncursing of my robe. i have to wear it constantly now. They claim that i am much more useful that way :( |
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Mazrim_Taim
Learned Scribe
341 Posts |
Posted - 12 Mar 2006 : 13:17:45
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Haha, that is rich. I love it. You know, I say trust your DM for now. I think the person who said he just wanted a more creative way of leveling you up was right.
But the thing with the party making you wear the cursed robe because of that one random burst of power at the white dragon, lol. Sounds like something my players would do..hehe, they're crazy like that. |
And if the PCs DO win their ways through all the liches to Larloch, he will almost certainly be just another lich (loaded with explosive spells) set up as a decoy, with dozens of hidden liches waiting to pounce on any surviving PCs who celebrate after they take Larloch down. As the REAL Larloch watches (magical scrying) from afar. Myself, as DM, Id be wondering: Such a glorious game, so many opportunities laid out before your PCs to devote your time to, and THIS fixation is the best you can come up with? Are you SURE youre adventurers? -Ed Greenwood
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Chataro
Learned Scribe
Singapore
114 Posts |
Posted - 12 Mar 2006 : 16:20:27
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| not bad today, i silenced my cleric and made my thief fall asleep today. My DM later confided to me that he wanted to make my teammates willing pay the gold for me to remove my robe since he was sick of thinking of random effects : D |
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4686 Posts |
Posted - 12 Mar 2006 : 16:42:22
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Well the DM could predetermine some random events in advance, and apply flexiblity.
Also DM can make the random effects cost the party gold, a gold to lead effect might cost more then cost of removing a curse. That +2 sword might get turned into a +5 cursed sword, etc.
Also DM could have robe stolen or damaged. There are a lot of ways to deal with the problem. While it would be good that the players have an incentive to have curse removed a more direct route can be taken the most extreme might be acidently fireball self and robe burns up). |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
Edited by - Kentinal on 13 Mar 2006 08:14:11 |
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msatran
Learned Scribe
USA
210 Posts |
Posted - 13 Mar 2006 : 04:29:58
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The issue here is not whether or not he's right or wrong. That answer is easy. Of course he's RIGHT. It's his game, and he's the DM. :)
The issue here is the kludgy mechanic he used to snap your fingers and make you a level 7 wizard. While I don't agree with what he did, it's not my game and I can't say "This was obnoxious and out of your league."
I pull no punches when I DM. I can be VERY nasty. But the point is, my players know that going in. So the question that you have to ask yourself is:
Am I comfortable with this, and if not, why not?
Try talking it over with your DM calmly, rationally, and out of sight of the other players, preferably in a situation where you are being generous and buying him or her one of his favorite repasts at your expense.
If the answer you come up with is satisfying to you, then have fun in the game.
If not, drop the game immediately rather than expose yourself to the difficulties inherent in showing up just to show up. |
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4686 Posts |
Posted - 13 Mar 2006 : 08:16:37
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| Well we are told DM is not happy with robe, so indeed anoter side talk with DM should provide an answer to problem. |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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Xysma
Master of Realmslore
USA
1089 Posts |
Posted - 13 Mar 2006 : 18:59:10
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quote:
Originally posted by Chataro
My mage was stuck with a cursed robe of randomness and i tried to cast a magic missle at the dragon.
If that robe was a cursed item of his creation, then only he knows if he was right or not... As far as 6 levels at once, technically you're not supposed to, but that's one rule that we overlook as a house rule, if you earn the xp, you should get to level up regardless is our ruling. |
War to slay, not to fight long and glorious.
Aermhar of the Tangletrees
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Edited by - Xysma on 13 Mar 2006 19:00:08 |
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msatran
Learned Scribe
USA
210 Posts |
Posted - 14 Mar 2006 : 02:06:36
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Heh, In my game you have to train for the levels, so you get to keep the XP, BUT...it will likely take you a long time to make up all that time.
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Xysma
Master of Realmslore
USA
1089 Posts |
Posted - 14 Mar 2006 : 14:59:30
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quote:
Originally posted by msatran
Heh, In my game you have to train for the levels, so you get to keep the XP, BUT...it will likely take you a long time to make up all that time.
That's the way we used to do it, it would basically take 12 weeks of game time to train and level up. At some point we quit doing that and now we usually level up on the fly (not in mid-dungeon mind you) as long as you continue going up in your current class, if you want to multi-class, you still have to train to level. My question is why did the mage get all the xp for the encounter? It takes 15,000 xp to go up from 1st to 6th level, that's a ton of xp, particularly divided 4 ways. |
War to slay, not to fight long and glorious.
Aermhar of the Tangletrees
Year of the Hooded Falcon
Xysma's Gallery
Guide to the Tomes and Tales of the Realms download from Candlekeep
Anthologies and Tales Overviews
Check out my custom action figures, hand-painted miniatures, gaming products, and other stuff on eBay.
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Chataro
Learned Scribe
Singapore
114 Posts |
Posted - 15 Mar 2006 : 10:20:22
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| I'm not really sure myself. I never tried Dming before. My Dm said the extra exp was because of our big lvl difference and the CR is high. In our game,to prevent wasting time, big boss type encounter exp are not shared equally butgiven out as quest exp. We level up straight once we reach town. We don't have to train in our games. To simplify matters, only exception is when we multi class or learn special skills. Thats when our Dm usually give us a new quest that we have to do to learn new skills or multiclass |
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Xysma
Master of Realmslore
USA
1089 Posts |
Posted - 16 Mar 2006 : 17:52:52
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quote:
Originally posted by Chataro
I'm not really sure myself. I never tried Dming before. My Dm said the extra exp was because of our big lvl difference and the CR is high. In our game,to prevent wasting time, big boss type encounter exp are not shared equally butgiven out as quest exp. We level up straight once we reach town. We don't have to train in our games. To simplify matters, only exception is when we multi class or learn special skills. Thats when our Dm usually give us a new quest that we have to do to learn new skills or multiclass
It sounds like he just wnated your mage to be more on par with the rest of the group. No big deal, sometimes you've got to just let the DM do what he thinks is best. As a DM, I can say that a 1st level mage in a party with a 9th level fighter is a recipe for disaster. Either the fighter wlkasw all over everything you create or the mage gets killed every week. It's a no-win situation for him. |
War to slay, not to fight long and glorious.
Aermhar of the Tangletrees
Year of the Hooded Falcon
Xysma's Gallery
Guide to the Tomes and Tales of the Realms download from Candlekeep
Anthologies and Tales Overviews
Check out my custom action figures, hand-painted miniatures, gaming products, and other stuff on eBay.
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poilbrun
Acolyte
Belgium
17 Posts |
Posted - 17 Mar 2006 : 14:51:30
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| My opinion is close to what other posters have mentionned. However, I do not really understand the reason why he did it this way. He could have asked you to create a higher-level character with backstory rather than doing it that way. After all, there is no out-of-game explanation for your gaining 6 levels but most importantly no in-game explanation either. How does casting a single 1st-level spell against a target, whatever it is, explain how a wizard can now cast 4th-level spells? |
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Mordakay of Thay
Acolyte
Romania
33 Posts |
Posted - 10 Apr 2006 : 16:05:23
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| Well,imo its pretty wrong and not realistic.I know its his camapaign and DnD is a fictional game.But,imo u don't get 6 lvls of XP by just aiming a spell at a dragon, fizzling into some uber version that kills him in 1 hit.Really not realistic,even for a fantasy game :D.And what about the other ppl in the world.It took them years to atain their levels,cuz they trained,fought,got xp etc.I dunno,but i'd never have that in my campaign.Like Poilbrun said,why didn't he jus let u make a lvl 8 mage with a backstory(maybe his other group died :)) and let u join the party.Seems easier and less rulebreaking to me. |
William Yeats |
Edited by - Mordakay of Thay on 10 Apr 2006 16:09:03 |
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sleyvas
Skilled Spell Strategist
USA
11703 Posts |
Posted - 10 Apr 2006 : 20:43:37
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| Was it wrong? Yes. Random effects would be like maximizing a spell, or even empowering and maximizing. Making the spell 18 times more powerful than it normally is should have had some repercussions for you (like I don't know using your soul to power the spell). Even Mystra's avatar has limits. |
Alavairthae, may your skill prevail
Phillip aka Sleyvas |
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Crust
Learned Scribe
USA
273 Posts |
Posted - 11 Apr 2006 : 00:20:24
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quote:
Originally posted by Chataro
My lvl 1 mage with my lvl 9fighter and lvl 6 cleric and lvl 4 thief met a white dragon accidently in the midst of a snowstorm. My mage was stuck with a cursed robe of randomness and i tried to cast a magic missle at the dragon. Somehow my DM decreed that my magic missle spell mutated and instead of 1 missle or 5 missle. It would be my intellgence score X 5 amount of missle. Yes , u saw it right. Intelligence X 5. My intelligence was 18 which resulted in 90missles flying towards the dragon. That was the fastest way i ever seen a dragon died :p
And for that, i gained about 6 lvls. That was incredibly wierd. Now may party has a lvl 7 mage with only the spell magic missle and sleep in my spell book.
Just curious, was my Dm correct in trying to do that or was it wrong?
The DM makes the rules, folks.
That being sais, I wouldn't have made the same decisions that DM made. It does seem odd. Reminds me of how we played in our early teens. |
"That's right, hurl back views that force ye to think by name-calling - 'tis the grand old tradition, let it not down! Anything to keep from having to think, or - Mystra forfend - change thy own views!"
Narnra glowered at her father. "Just how am I to learn how to think? By being taught by you?"
"Some folk in the Realms would give their lives for the chance to learn at my feet," Elminster said mildly. "Several already have."
~from Elminster's Daughter, Ed Greenwood |
Edited by - Crust on 11 Apr 2006 00:25:08 |
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Faramicos
Senior Scribe
Denmark
468 Posts |
Posted - 11 Apr 2006 : 11:30:18
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| It is a fascinating case of trust in the random encounter table... Never been much fond of the use of "random" encounters. My players will, of course, meet creatures and monsters that seems random to them and of varying strength, but i have never fully trusted the fate of my group to the roll of a dice on the random encounter table... That being said, if it was a move from the DM to level up the group he could have done so in a more creative and realistic way... Having people increase lots of levels, and the skills that goes with it, with the stroke of a sword (blast of magic missiles) is simply to weird for my game-style... I have no problem with boosting player-levels, but i always do it in a more discreat way... Doing it over a longer period of time. Killing a dragon with a freak blast of magic to rise several levels just seems like a bad choice to me... |
"When dragons make war, worlds can only tremble in the shadow of angry wings" |
Edited by - Faramicos on 11 Apr 2006 11:30:43 |
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Artalis
Senior Scribe
USA
444 Posts |
Posted - 20 Apr 2006 : 17:30:51
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I have to agree with Faramicos.
"Random" encounters smack of laziness to my dm'ing style. There is no such thing as random encountes in the games I have run.
Before I set my pc's into an area, I know what dangers are in the area and I choose whether to beset them with terrors or no.
Something else that I liked to do was collect the character sheets at the beginning of the adventure and keep track of xp/levelups/hp and so on myself. The PC's were free to take notes and so on, but they would only know exactly what their pc's know. Ie. "There's an arrow stuck in my leg and it hurts like heck" ans so on.
This makes it easier to tell the story without people bugging me about what numbers are what and if I remembered to add such and such modifier. It becomes a story and the rules take the back seat as they should imo.
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Artalis
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lockdar
Acolyte
Netherlands
18 Posts |
Posted - 20 Apr 2006 : 21:11:56
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| As a DM myself I sometimes use the random encounter table, Yet this is usual at the players request. Sometimes my players simply have the urge to go out and see what they can find, sometimes it's something good and random, sometimes it's something good that appears to be random. The latter ones are fun because they usually find or discover more about certain storylines and happenings in the world around them. Yet since it appears random it usually comes around and bites 'em in the buttocks when they least expect it. |
Save yourself a penny for the ferryman. |
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Fletcher
Learned Scribe
USA
299 Posts |
Posted - 21 Apr 2006 : 15:47:23
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| I ususally have specific planned encounters, and the players get to run into them randomly. I personally dislike true random encounters. |
Run faster! The Kobolds are catching up! |
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4686 Posts |
Posted - 21 Apr 2006 : 16:03:15
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| Even most random encounter table are level specific, not anything in the book. |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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Fletcher
Learned Scribe
USA
299 Posts |
Posted - 21 Apr 2006 : 17:37:24
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quote:
Originally posted by Kentinal
Even most random encounter table are level specific, not anything in the book.
Excellent point. Unless there is a really specific reason to have something 5 CR higher than the party attack the poor PC, don't do it. The GM has the option and responsibility to not slaughter his PC's out of hand. Just because the roll points to a monster, feel free to say..."Nah! That just doesn't work for this situation."
Personally I love to keep encounters in a theme, to build up to a conclusion of some sort. Dark ikky monsters, a bunch of fey creatures, undead, or goblinoids... a theme to get the party into a mindset.
Of course of the PC's decided to go after the +5 CR dragon in its lair,(like one of my PC parties decided to do) then the GM would be within his rights to kill them. |
Run faster! The Kobolds are catching up! |
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Mordakay of Thay
Acolyte
Romania
33 Posts |
Posted - 24 Apr 2006 : 22:40:57
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| A few random encounters don't hurt,but not off this calibre :P. |
William Yeats |
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Was my DM correct in doing this...?
