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Proud DM Announcement!; My players fought and killed a Dragon!
Tweet Topic Started: Sep 25 2006, 03:39 PM (173 Views)
Hades Sep 25 2006, 03:39 PM Post #1
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We played yesterday from 11:30am to 7:30pm. We are playing through a cycle of adventures called The Heart of Shadows (original creation - mine). Well, yesterday the heroes fought and killed Thraxata, the Young Adult Red that lives in The Bloodhorn near Highmoon. Yes, I fudged my ass off so they could win the fight and, yes, they were all wounded to within 1 hp of final death and, yes, I broke some rules for the drama and action but...it was a great battle and a great game.

My thinking about fudging the rules so that four 6th level heroes can slay a red dragon are basically this: if Bard could use a single, black arrow to slay Smaug...and if Jack could fight and defeat Lord Darkness (Legend)...and if Eowyn could fight and slay The Lord of the Nazgul...then they could defeat a single dragon in a pitched battle using powerful magic weapons and a ton of luck.

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kismetrose Sep 25 2006, 03:52 PM Post #2
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It sounds like you had a really fun game and that's what matters. :)

Dragons can be difficult to gauge when it comes to setting them against a party. They tend to be a good fight in any event, but they can easily become nasty. I try to be pretty careful when I put dragons against my players so that I don't feel the need to fudge for them. I want them to have a knock down, drag out fight when dragons come their way but death is not necessarily the end of a character.

Still, your point about Eowyn and the rest is well taken.
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Aladdar Sep 26 2006, 07:49 AM Post #3
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There's pros and cons to this.

Pro's: as long as your players had a great time and you did as well, then this was a game well played.

Con's: Players may think that you'll fudge for them in the future and while there's still the threat of death you won't let it happen. Then you get stupid players who do stupid things. One of my players in my recent game drove me crazy. I had been easy on the group earlier so she thought I'd continue to go easy.

They were all second level and had just defeated a buttload of goblins and hobgoblins. None of them died but they're all very wounded. She decides without even talking to the rest of the group to just kick in the door to another room without as much as a listen check thinking it's just a closet. Well situated inside the room were the goblin king and his guards waiting in ambush. (This is where I went easy and let them go)

Later on they summoned up a big bugbear friend of theirs from the lower depths to take care of the group. She assumed I'd let them go again, one very dead character later she learned I wasn't going to do that every time. Well she rolled up another character and last night while exploring this crypt that they thought was a storage vault area she goes stupid again.

Most of the characters realize they all almost died earlier so they decide it's not worth it. She manages to talk the sorcerer to stay with her to investigate. She fails a climb check climbing down a pit filled with spikes three times and dies again. Now she's mad at me thinking I'm singling her out. It was just silly. I didn't tell her, but hiding in the room beyond the pit was a Jot (CR3) and she would have died anyhow at its hands since her escape was blocked by the pit and she was a lone bard.

I'll be a player in the next game and I hope she's calmed down a bit by then. My character definitely won't put up with the stupidity as his main goal is to collect treasure but most of all to stay alive.
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Hades Sep 26 2006, 08:50 AM Post #4
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Aladdar
Sep 26 2006, 06:49 AM
There's pros and cons to this.

Pro's: as long as your players had a great time and you did as well, then this was a game well played.

Con's: Players may think that you'll fudge for them in the future and while there's still the threat of death you won't let it happen. Then you get stupid players who do stupid things. One of my players in my recent game drove me crazy. I had been easy on the group earlier so she thought I'd continue to go easy.

They were all second level and had just defeated a buttload of goblins and hobgoblins. None of them died but they're all very wounded. She decides without even talking to the rest of the group to just kick in the door to another room without as much as a listen check thinking it's just a closet. Well situated inside the room were the goblin king and his guards waiting in ambush. (This is where I went easy and let them go)

Later on they summoned up a big bugbear friend of theirs from the lower depths to take care of the group. She assumed I'd let them go again, one very dead character later she learned I wasn't going to do that every time. Well she rolled up another character and last night while exploring this crypt that they thought was a storage vault area she goes stupid again.

Most of the characters realize they all almost died earlier so they decide it's not worth it. She manages to talk the sorcerer to stay with her to investigate. She fails a climb check climbing down a pit filled with spikes three times and dies again. Now she's mad at me thinking I'm singling her out. It was just silly. I didn't tell her, but hiding in the room beyond the pit was a Jot (CR3) and she would have died anyhow at its hands since her escape was blocked by the pit and she was a lone bard.

I'll be a player in the next game and I hope she's calmed down a bit by then. My character definitely won't put up with the stupidity as his main goal is to collect treasure but most of all to stay alive.

I agree, Aladdar but have no worries about stupidity with this Group. My two veteran players are very conscience of game balance and the importance of not taking the DM's kindness for granted. My two newbies are too scared to do anything stupid. In fact, I often have to advise them all not to be so cautious about everything. They will spend 20 minutes creeping down a hallway while checking for traps, listening, looking for ambushes, and checking for secret doors until I finally have to say, "Its just a normal hallway, guys!"

They had a great time during the battle but now I am going to make some very level-appropriate adventures for them.
“Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.”
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Mocha Torte(guest) Sep 28 2006, 09:54 PM Post #5
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My group of 3 EL 3 characters actually managed to take out a CR 5 green dragon last week. I even gave the thing fly-by attack and a perch high above the water. They managed to shoot it down with arrows and spells (mostly spells). The breath weapon caught them three times and they barely escaped. I'm proud of my party for optimizing their tactics to the situation without necessarily metagaming.
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