Tuesday, April 11, 2006

GMing thoughts

My group recently finished the major portion of their storyline that ended in an epic brutal involved combat with the villian. He was a 10th level Cleric with a Nightmare mount. Justin's character did die thanks to a Slay Living spell but he was quickly revived thanks to a cleric that did happen to be nearby. (No, seriously, he wasn't planted by me. He just worked out really nicely.) After a long battle, in which Justin did rejoin, the villian was slain and the party rejoiced.

It looks on paper that the battle was way too tough for them and I'll admit I was worried for awhile. Heck, even The Lord of Faerun "The Slayer of the Player" himself shot me a look like "dude, too much" when I told him of the encounter. But, I find that things at their challenge level aren't challenging to them. Adam was on a solo quest,he rolls a 100 on the random encounter chart. He encountered a spectral panther (MoF) CR 4. He was a level 5 barbarian. It was slain in 3 rounds and he had 1 scratch on him. GAH! Where's the challenge?? His sword wasn't ghost-touch, just +1. He should have at least had to think about raging...shouldn't he? So I have a hard time judging what to throw at them, and this was supposed to be the culimnation of a lot of work, the final showdown with the vile evil overlord and I couldn't take it if they just ran up and stabbed him for 2 rounds then he died. That's really not satisfying for all parties involved.

In all fairness, except for damage and AC and HP the Nightmare was nothing more than a horse. He didn't use his eatherialness or his flight and his flames were negated by his environment. As for the cleric, a lot of his nastier low level spells were targetted at the NPC healer. Blindness/Deafness and Hold Person were used to zap him instead of the PC's. Also, the PC's had a hound archon helping them out, at least until he rolled a 1 and threw up. (it made sense in the story). Overall, it was a hellacious fight with them thinking they were doomed throughout most of it, but with a sense of triumph and joy when he fell and Justin cut off his head. Its what it was supposed to be.

I don't like death effects. I may still use them, but it won't be as easy. I think that if I do use them in the future, be it by spell or gaze attack (bodak) or flashing her chest at the PC's (nymph), the victim will have to fail 2 saves or maybe i'll just alter it so the victim goes to -9 HP (no need to stabilize). Death should be feared in games, as such, it should not occur so easily as one lousy roll.

This is not to say that fate should not come down to a lousy roll. Things such as "if my character doesn't make his reflex save against this lightning bolt, I'll drop to -13" are okay because things have led up to drop his HP to such low numbers.

All that being said, I do really enjoy DMing for this group. Hell, we gamed on the fly from Midnight till 4 AM and general concensus was that it was one of my best sessions even though I was making up 2/3 of it on the fly. (I totally did not expect them to go to Celestia, but there they were and wanting to explore it and pursue their backstories.) One last thing, now that they are at 6th level, they both get 2 attacks per round and Adam is getting a cohort fighter too. Plus they have earned some loot lately. So now I wonder what I can do to possibly challenge them?

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