Re: Basic D&D Redux

Justisaur wrote:
>>> The last death was just a good hit on the sorcerer after the baddies
>>> got by the fighters.

Bradd wrote:
>> Yeah, that happens, although it must've been a really good hit to take
>> out a mid-level character, even a sorcerer, unless he had lousy Con.

> I think he put his medium stat in str. His first time playing 3.x, he
> was warned against it, but did it anyway.

That's unwise but not unthinkable. I wouldn't recommend it for a new
player, but whatever.

> He also insisted on rolling his HP and did rather poorly IIRC, even
> though I let everyone round up on taking average to encourage using
> average.

This, however, is just another case of player suicide. I understand the
attraction of gambling on random rolls instead of taking the average,
but betting that you'll roll better than 3 per d4 is just dumb.

>> Multiple wraiths? That's at least EL 7, and a tough EL 7 at that. Unless
>> the PCs were already 7th level by then, it's not too surprising.

> 6th lv. was well within encounter guidelines, the party also had 7
> characters in it at the time (if you count the NPC paladin)

Ah, that's a different story. When playing a double-sized party, it's
entirely appropriate to use "double encounters": Set up an encounter for
a standard party of four, then double the number of foes and double the
loot. (When figuring loot, it's important to double the amount instead
of adding +2 EL; because of quirks in the wealth system, the latter
method will result in poor PCs.)

Getting surprised by wraiths is nasty -- it happened to my PCs last
weekend -- but it shouldn't be deadly unless there are lots of them, and
they gang up.

>> Ogre barbarian is a nasty combination; what was its overall level & CR ...?

> It's the one out of the MM.

Ah! I keep forgetting that the MM has lots of leveled monsters in it
now. It'd be a great time-saver if only I remembered to use it!

>> OK, seriously, I don't think D&D's encounter guidelines are at fault
>> here. About half of the casualties were caused by player mistakes or
>> worse. Of the other half, it sounds like at least a couple were
>> caused by difficult or overwhelming challenges, perhaps also with an
>> element of player idiocy (depending on how and why they got into
>> those fights). There's not much you can do to the /game/ to fix that.

> Yeah. I think part of the problem is the large party size, the
> guidelines don't work very well for that. I had been throwing
> encounters 1 EL higher than the party average level, and it didn't
> really seem to matter if there were extra monsters, or single higher
> level monsters.

With a party of seven, the safest way to handle encounters is to add
50-100% more monsters and 50-100% more loot. That's roughly equivalent
to +1 or +2 EL, except that the individual CRs don't go as high, and the
PCs get more treasure (which is good). Using higher-CR foes now and then
is OK, but too much of that will make the PCs dead, poor, or both.

> Actually it seemed worse with multiple monsters, the only death to a
> single monster was the ogre/barbarian.

Huh. More combatants does lead to more chaos, and you can run into
problems if the bad guys concentrate fire on one PC, but overall that
should be more survivable than raising the CRs. No offense, but based on
your comments so far it sounds like you have an unusual number of self-
destructive players. I've had to deal with the type before, but usually
only one per group. It sounds like you have several.

>> Also, in my experience, expanding the disabled & dying range causes a
>> bit of confusion when it comes up, since somebody always forgets about
>> the rule, resulting in a flurry of reminders and re-planning. (In our
>> game, that somebody was usually me. I don't always cope well with house
>> rules. Speaking of which, house rules are another source of potential
>> slowdowns, especially for old DMs used to running by-the-book.)

> Yeah, no one ever remembers that rule besides me, and I have to remind
> them. I like the rule, and it has kept characters alive that would
> have normally been dead, but it is a little extra work, for me as well,
> and they just don't seem to appreciate it, so I'll probably drop it in
> my next campain.

Our other DM used it, and he always had to remind me when my PC was
disabled instead of dying (which, uh, happened way too often, mostly to
my PCs -- I've got a bit of the self-destructive streak myself). I don't
use it in my own game.
--
Bradd W. Szonye
http://www.szonye.com/bradd
.

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