Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 Apollo 11/21/85; site apollo.uucp Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!apollo!johnf From: johnf@apollo.uucp (John Francis) Newsgroups: net.games.frp Subject: Re: Soliciting Opinions on AD&D Style Message-ID: <2a7d8c2b.917@apollo.uucp> Date: Mon, 2-Dec-85 16:41:52 EST Article-I.D.: apollo.2a7d8c2b.917 Posted: Mon Dec 2 16:41:52 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 5-Dec-85 06:22:14 EST Organization: Apollo Computer, Chelmsford, Mass. Lines: 71 Before anybody ELSE tells me - I know that what I play is not AD&D, but I hope that some of the points I make below are relevant to any frp game. What is the DM's job? Is he an adversary, a referee, or what?. In my point of view definitely "what". Our group meet once a week to ENJOY playing together. This means that I, as DM, consider it my responsibility to make the game enjoyable for my players. In particular I consider it part of my job to avoid deliberately killing off characters. I try and weight my encounters such that with optimum play all player characters ought to survive. (Of course players will not always find the optimum way to play ...). Any DM who sets up an encounter with the expectation that several player characters will not survive it is running a campaign that will not get the most from the players. My players put a lot of time and effort into imbuing their characters with idiosyncracies, background, etc., and I consider it in poor taste to casually throw away all that effort with a single roll of the dice. (I know that AD&D has a Raise Dead spell to get the characters back, but I regard that as a cop-out). There are other ways to remove characters from the game besides simply killing them off. When I was a player in another campaign I played a half-elf fighter/mage for several years - he eventually got to max out as a mage, and got to be quite a well-equipped fighter. The DM eventually "retired" him from the campaign by having him go off into seven years servitude to a VERY evil NPC. This was quite "in character" - he had begun to develop tendencies that surprised even me (the player), and I felt that this was exactly what the character would do. This means that the DM was able to remove a character that was out of balance with the rest of the party, but the years of investment in the character were not totally wasted. There is always the chance that he will turn up again somewhere down the line (probably on the other side ...), whereupon I will get the chance to play him again. This does NOT mean that the DM should always avoid killing player characters - it simply means that he should only do it when the players have made the wrong decision or done something absolutely stupid. Two examples where I let characters go without any compunction: The party (low level characters) had just escaped being gored by a very angry Unicorn stallion. They were patching up their wounds, and one of the weakest of the fighters in the party said "I wish I had just one good blow at that unicorn..." The way I play things, there is always a one percent chance that somebody will be listening to anything starting "I wish ...". A roll of the dice indicated that somebody was indeed listening, and hey presto there was our low-level fighter in the middle of the meadow facing the Unicorn. The player got surprise, and his first blow was an automatic critical hit. This merely served to annoy the beast, and about 3 rounds later all that remained was an angry Unicorn trampling the remains of one fighter. The party (slightly higher level) were raiding a crypt. In one of the rooms they found a ghost. The character with the best chance of dealing with this problem came to the (erroneous) conclusion that the way to destroy the pest was to destroy the perfectly innoffensive suit of elven chain mail that was also in the chamber. As a result the best magic weapon did not take any part in the combat, and so one of the party characters got killed, and another got aged beyond reasonable adventuring age before she managed to escape. Even then she could have escaped earlier, but she was truly lawful good, and one of her companions was trapped in the room ... Another point - Monster value. In my campaigns, my players will go to any length to avoid combat with a dragon. I simply do not believe that there exist dragons with as few as 30 "hits to kill", let alone less than this. An average sixth-level fighter has 33 hit points! To me this means that Dragons should START at around 80 hits to kill, and range up to maybe two or three times this amount. Instead of dragons I have firedrakes, colddrakes, etc., which have the hits-to-kill of an AD&D dragon (although slightly less offensive power), but do NOT have the vast amounts of loot that dragons have. If my characters find a single item worth 2500 GP this is great treasure indeed - none of these Dragon Hoards with seven- figure sums in gems, platinum, +4 plate mail,... I try and match the amount of loot that a monster has on hand with the amount that a comparable player character has. In other words if you defeat a monster single-handed in fair combat you might double your total worth, but no more than that. And this is only for the richest monsters, as I assume that my adventuring characters are the cream of their society. An average monster might only have one quarter of this amount (or less).