Legendary Actions and More of Talakeal's Gaming Horror Stories

[Kane0]

Actually giving them a solution to me feels like railroading, and also makes it feel less like an actual encounter and more like a video game style puzzle which arbitrarily shoots down any other ideas.

Would you have allowed any other ideas, such as the ones that they actually came up with?

Also, giving someone A solution is different to giving them THE solution, and providing a solution is also different to forcing the party to take it.

[Kardwill]

What were your exact words when describing the unkillable creature and how to stop it? As it stands now, the solutions the party arrived to were not only justified, but the only possible thing they could try.

I wouldn't say the only ones. For exemple, sending the party rogue for a stealth-grab or trying to find another way into the treasure chamber to bypass the monster would be classical dungeoncrawling staples to this kind of problem. Diplomacy, too ("it's violence incarnate? Let's confuse it with words!"), but I think Talakeal already said that wouldn't have worked (Which is a pity, because roleplaying a confused avatar of violence during a negotiation sounds like my kind of fun ^^).

But yeah, "hug it to death" and "grab and run like a common shoplifter" are perfectly reasonable solutions, especially with the way the prophecy/riddle framed the conflict and insisted on violence reinforcing the monster. As I said, with the lack of other hints to weight the different solutions, those would have been among the first I would have tried too.
And since trying multiple ways to bypass a problem and having them shot down one-by-one is pretty irritating (one of the reasons stopped playing old point-and-click adventure games on my PC, and am leery of letting some GMs I know run an investigation game for me), it's not surprising the players got frustrated and "locked themselves" on the first solutions they thought of, trying them again and again. It happens even in normal groups when the players get tired of the whole "wrong! Try another way" procedure.
Tal's group simply having a lower threshold before they become frustrated doesn't help.

[King of Nowhere]

Why are you surprised that your players cannot trust the facts you have established in your campaign and choose to invest in healing potions that will always be useful?

up until the point where you introduce damage that cannot be healed by potions

seriously, just two days ago my dm threw in a setting with a "corruption" that would deal corruption damage and could not be healed by regular healing (we discovered by tril and error that restoration works somewhat). monsters in there also explode and deal area damage and evasion inexplicably does not apply. and after they explode they leave behind another monster that has to be killed again (finally, this time), and that threw off the fighter charges, and most save or die from the clerics. they were incorporeal, severely curtailing the usefulness of the tripping monk and of most crowd control. and there was an arcane spell failure all around the place, because the corruption fed on magic.
basically, everything in there was a gotcha that could not be figured out beforehand (detailed informations were not available in the world) or a way to remove or curtail the favored strategies of the players.
If I posted that description in a new "player advice" thread, half the people would tell me to quit the group, and the other half to talk to the dm before quitting the group.

And it was GREAT. we all had a blast. one of the best sessions in a long time.

Why? the difference is in the players. we saw all those bad stuff, and instead of whining "poor me, my usual move doesn't work" we were all "oh, a new challenge. we have to figure out a way to adapt". it was a challenge, and a good one. it was also a nice way to do something different.
And at least from my perspective, it was also good that our powers were curtailed because we were being too successful. we hadn't had a really challenging fight in ages. we have developed as a well oiled fighting machine with everyone having a role. and with two cleric, hit point attrition wasn't much of a concern. neither was running out of damaging spells, with three melee types. and all this was making the fighting part boring. instead, here we had to reevaluate and change strategy. I like to be challenged, and this encounter did just that.
Now, of course if every single monster we fought could ignore my evasion and was immune to my tripping I would be mildly pissed. but as long as it's a single adventure where it's thematically appropirate? it's cool.
the DM handbook also says so on negating players power. which is not gotcha, but it's closely related.

so the point is that tal wasn't doing anything wrong with those encounters, as long as not all encounters were like that. it's a big fantasy world, there must be things in it you won't see coming. it's not an enforced failure, it's a challenge to overcome.

and, just because sometimes your expectations will be shot down, it's not good reason to eschew planning entirely. for every dragon that will make your fire protection moot, there must be ten against which it will be successful. it would certainly be stupid to argue that my party should stop npreparing healing spells because we encountered once a damavge that cannot be healed by them.

There's a lot of good stuff being said about gotcha monsters / encounters, and I've not got time to individually call out all the good stuff, so kudos all around.

One thing did strike me, though:


This notion of making yourself a metric. 75% sounds good to me. Talakeal, look at all the monsters that the party didn't know going in, and all the encounters with these monsters. Did your players figure out the monsters trick before they encountered it / from its lore and description / by making knowledge checks / by the time initiative was rolled 75% of the time? Alternately, did they encounter any of these monsters 4+ times, so that they would know that particular monster's odd abilities 75% of the time going in?

Or did your encounter design force your players to play pants-on-heads bumbling idiots? Did your encounters rely on gotchas, or would they do work if they hit the 75% metric for "knowing what's going on, going in"?

Now, I might catch some flak for this, but I'm all about encounters that *would* be "gotcha" encounters, except that I try to train my players to play my way. I intentionally make the first session have a "gotcha" of sorts, with plenty of opportunities for the players to foresee the gotcha. If they don't, that's fine - it won't cause a TPK or other fail state - but I then explain the "behind the scenes", and how they could have learned this information. Repeat until they get the style.

Then, once we're on the same page, I *expect* that they'll get *most* of my "gotchas". I like this 75% metric. It feels like a good target. My encounters don't *require* that they "get it" ahead of time - they work either way. Also, the players get the agency to choose their level of difficulty by how much they investigate if they don't "get it" ("oh, hearts missing? It's a…”).

So, a lot of these things that I do (lots of custom content with no foreshadowing unless the PCs look it, trying get the players to play a particular way, etc) other posters call bad. But I will contend that, just like with gotcha encounters (or, rather, *potential* gotcha encounters), it's a matter of how you do it that determines if it's bad.

+ 1. you can and should throw something unexpected and unpredictable at your players every once in a while.

[Talakeal]

What were your exact words when describing the unkillable creature and how to stop it?.

The initial description was: "An armored figure rises above you; eight feet tall and clad in golden armor that is the most glorious you have ever seen, both from an ornamental and functional perspective, but blackened by fire and scarred by every form of attack imaginable. It makes a mocking salute and then attacks."

When they asked how to defeat it, I told them that "It is born of violence and can never be killed by it."

As it stands now, the solutions the party arrived to were not only justified, but the only possible thing they could try.

Could you explain that at all? I can think of dozens of solutions that they didn't try, and I am not aware of anything I said that would imply they didn't work.

Heck, after the incident I asked my elderly non-gaming parents if they could come up with any solutions and they were able to think up ten or so ideas that would have worked just fine.

I wouldn't say the only ones. For exemple, sending the party rogue for a stealth-grab or trying to find another way into the treasure chamber to bypass the monster would be classical dungeoncrawling staples to this kind of problem. Diplomacy, too ("it's violence incarnate? Let's confuse it with words!"), but I think Talakeal already said that wouldn't have worked (Which is a pity, because roleplaying a confused avatar of violence during a negotiation sounds like my kind of fun ^^).

But yeah, "hug it to death" and "grab and run like a common shoplifter" are perfectly reasonable solutions, especially with the way the prophecy/riddle framed the conflict and insisted on violence reinforcing the monster. As I said, with the lack of other hints to weight the different solutions, those would have been among the first I would have tried too.

I probably would have given them a chance to overcome the encounter through dialogue, but they difficulty would have been higher than anyone in that party could have realistically made; if they had a dedicated face character on the other hand...

And grab and run did ultimately work, they just through a fit because one of their followers was killed in the attempt.

And since trying multiple ways to bypass a problem and having them shot down one-by-one is pretty irritating (one of the reasons stopped playing old point-and-click adventure games on my PC, and am leery of letting some GMs I know run an investigation game for me), it's not surprising the players got frustrated and "locked themselves" on the first solutions they thought of, trying them again and again. It happens even in normal groups when the players get tired of the whole "wrong! Try another way" procedure.
Tal's group simply having a lower threshold before they become frustrated doesn't help.

That didn't happen.

They killed it once, it split, assumed death caused it, but the rest convinced him to try it twice more. Then they retreated, and found out the above "It is born of violence and can never be killed by it.".

They came up with a plan that the warrior would distract it, the ranger would grab the spear and run, and the mage would trap it with a wall of stone.

The ranger decided I was trying to trick them OOC, so instead of grabbing the spear, she did a bunch of random stuff until the party was very badly beaten up. Also, the mage "forgot" that killing split the monster, and put a DoT on it, meaning it was also going to die soon.

The ranger finally grabbed the spear and ran, the mage cast his wall, the monster made its save (by one point) to avoid being trapped. I described it as evading, but for some reason two of the party members got it in their head that it turned incorporeal and simply phased through the wall.

They killed it and it split. Then they told the ranger to keep running and said they were going to make a human shield to keep the two monsters from pursuing her. They were defeated, and said it was fine because I don't play with death, and then I told them that is only for PCs and that their followers would be killed.

Then they started bitching at me for "tricking them" or "violating the gentleman's agreement" and then started literally screaming at one another for not sticking to the plan.

Would you have allowed any other ideas, such as the ones that they actually came up with?

Any solution that would logically work, yes. The solutions they came up with were not logical ways to defeat an enemy, they were assuming I was pulling some weird trick.

Out of curiosity, if I was playing in your game, would you let me kill monsters by just coming up with random things? Kill a dragon by blowing out a candle, kill an ogre by throwing mud on a wall, killing a wyvern by screaming out my mother's maiden name, etc?

I am not sure if I follow the logic that just because it has an immunity to something that means it should also gain a bunch of random vulnerabilities to normally harmless things.

up until the point where you introduce damage that cannot be healed by potions

seriously, just two days ago my dm threw in a setting with a "corruption" that would deal corruption damage and could not be healed by regular healing (we discovered by tril and error that restoration works somewhat). monsters in there also explode and deal area damage and evasion inexplicably does not apply. and after they explode they leave behind another monster that has to be killed again (finally, this time), and that threw off the fighter charges, and most save or die from the clerics. they were incorporeal, severely curtailing the usefulness of the tripping monk and of most crowd control. and there was an arcane spell failure all around the place, because the corruption fed on magic.
basically, everything in there was a gotcha that could not be figured out beforehand (detailed informations were not available in the world) or a way to remove or curtail the favored strategies of the players.
If I posted that description in a new "player advice" thread, half the people would tell me to quit the group, and the other half to talk to the dm before quitting the group.

And it was GREAT. we all had a blast. one of the best sessions in a long time.

Why? the difference is in the players. we saw all those bad stuff, and instead of whining "poor me, my usual move doesn't work" we were all "oh, a new challenge. we have to figure out a way to adapt". it was a challenge, and a good one. it was also a nice way to do something different.
And at least from my perspective, it was also good that our powers were curtailed because we were being too successful. we hadn't had a really challenging fight in ages. we have developed as a well oiled fighting machine with everyone having a role. and with two cleric, hit point attrition wasn't much of a concern. neither was running out of damaging spells, with three melee types. and all this was making the fighting part boring. instead, here we had to reevaluate and change strategy. I like to be challenged, and this encounter did just that.
Now, of course if every single monster we fought could ignore my evasion and was immune to my tripping I would be mildly pissed. but as long as it's a single adventure where it's thematically appropirate? it's cool.
the DM handbook also says so on negating players power. which is not gotcha, but it's closely related.

so the point is that tal wasn't doing anything wrong with those encounters, as long as not all encounters were like that. it's a big fantasy world, there must be things in it you won't see coming. it's not an enforced failure, it's a challenge to overcome.

and, just because sometimes your expectations will be shot down, it's not good reason to eschew planning entirely. for every dragon that will make your fire protection moot, there must be ten against which it will be successful. it would certainly be stupid to argue that my party should stop npreparing healing spells because we encountered once a damavge that cannot be healed by them..

That is pretty much exactly how I feel on the matter. Not saying that my feelings are necessarily right, but I agree with everything you said there.

[zinycor]

So the monster had the weirdest ability to absolutely resist death from damage, but no particular weaknesses, and if it had one, you didn't communicate it. Is this correct?

Could you explain that at all? I can think of dozens of solutions that they didn't try, and I am not aware of anything I said that would imply they didn't work.

Heck, after the incident I asked my elderly non-gaming parents if they could come up with any solutions and they were able to think up ten or so ideas that would have worked just fine.

Ok I'll then rephrase.

"The solutions your party came up with, seem very reasonable to me, in fact I can't think on any other solution to the problem."

Is that a more understandable statement?

[Talakeal]

So the monster had the weirdest ability to absolutely resist death from damage, but no particular weaknesses, and if it had one, you didn't communicate it. Is this correct?

Its functionally a hydra, if you consider that "the weirdest" then yes.

It had no particular weaknesses or vulnerabilities.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...n/HydraProblem

[zinycor]

Its functionally a hydra, if you consider that "the weirdest" then yes.

It had no particular weaknesses or vulnerabilities.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...n/HydraProblem

That's no hydra that I have ever seen, nor in AD&D, 3.5 or 5e.

If that was your attempt to create somewhat of a homebrew hydra, am sorry, but it seems like an absolute failure of an attempt.

At the best, you should have made an actual hydra, if only so genre savvy players would have an idea of what to expect.

I did think of another way to approach the battle, like destroying/moving items in whatever place the monster was, in case it was somehow bonded to any of them. That could have been a cool weakness.

[Talakeal]

That's no hydra that I have ever seen, nor in AD&D, 3.5 or 5e.

If that was your attempt to create somewhat of a homebrew hydra, am sorry, but it seems like an absolute failure of an attempt.

At the best, you should have made an actual hydra, if only so genre savvy players would have an idea of what to expect.

I did think of another way to approach the battle, like destroying/moving items in whatever place the monster was, in case it was somehow bonded to any of them. That could have been a cool weakness.

You are aware that the concept of a monster where you "kill two and take its place" is thousands of years are old and has been replicated thousands of times in many different ways, right? See the link in my previous post for a few examples.

None of my players failed to grasp what was happening, so I am not sure why it was an absolute failure or why I needed to make it look more like a hydra.

[Kane0]

Any solution that would logically work, yes. The solutions they came up with were not logical ways to defeat an enemy, they were assuming I was pulling some weird trick.

Out of curiosity, if I was playing in your game, would you let me kill monsters by just coming up with random things? Kill a dragon by blowing out a candle, kill an ogre by throwing mud on a wall, killing a wyvern by screaming out my mother's maiden name, etc?

The monster itself was the ghost of the demon prince of violence (which had been killed by the PCs in a previous epic level campaign). It was a fairly strong but not unbeatable monster, but with one catch: It was immune to HP damage and everytime it took damage equal to its HP it would gain a substantial stacking buff. It was not immune to anything else, it could disabled, debuffed, knocked out, put to sleep, grappled, trapped, tricked, charmed, turned to stone, polymorphed into a frog, etc.

So, the player charged in, fought it for a while, and realized that it was only getting stronger rather than dying, so they retreated. All good.

They went back to town, did some reasearch, and found an oracle who told them "It is born of violence. It feeds off of violence and can never be killed by violence."

So the players assumed that this was a puzzle of some sort. They went back to the dungeon and started trying to do all sorts of crazy things; smashing objects in its room, healing the monster, singing to the monster, hugging the monster, talking to the monster, etc. This didn't work, so they decided to just run past it into the room it was guarding and grab the magic weapon and see if it they could kill it with the magic weapon.

Smashing objects near the ghost: If you're genre savvy, Ghosts commonly form and hang around because of someone or something keeping them there. This could well be a nearby object.
Healing the monster: In some RPGs this does actually harm the undead, which is what a ghost is. It is also a literal opposite of causing harm.
Singing to the monster: Singing can be used as a method to calm and soothe, like you would with a baby. It's worth a try
Hugging the monster: Hugging is just a gentle grapple, and if you consider the phrase 'make love not war' it's certainly worth a shot.
Talking the monster down: Diplomacy, negotiation, calling truce, etc is another opposite to hostility. It's the classic counterpart to violence.

Note how none of these are random, such as throwing mud or shouting names (though in fantasy it's not uncommon for a name to hold power, another genre savvy item). They are more logical than you are giving credit, and you denied each and every one. I would have given these a chance to work (at least temporarily), as they all logically COULD work.

[zinycor]

You are aware that the concept of a monster where you "kill two and take its place" is thousands of years are old and has been replicated thousands of times in many different ways, right? See the link in my previous post for a few examples.

None of my players failed to grasp what was happening, so I am not sure why it was an absolute failure or why I needed to make it look more like a hydra.

Didn't one of your players forget that the monster duplicated when killed?

(...)

The ranger decided I was trying to trick them OOC, so instead of grabbing the spear, she did a bunch of random stuff until the party was very badly beaten up. Also, the mage "forgot" that killing split the monster, and put a DoT on it, meaning it was also going to die soon. (...)

There.

Edit:
Just to be clear, I don't think hydras or hydra-like creatures are bad design. I believe your particular example is bad.

[kyoryu]

You are aware that the concept of a monster where you "kill two and take its place" is thousands of years are old and has been replicated thousands of times in many different ways, right? See the link in my previous post for a few examples.

None of my players failed to grasp what was happening, so I am not sure why it was an absolute failure or why I needed to make it look more like a hydra.

Note: There's a huge difference between this and a hydra.

If you cut off one of a hydra's 9 heads, it grows another. That's roughly an 11% increase in power.

If you kill this thing, you make two more. That doubles the power.

Also, hydras can still be killed with combat. You just have to not cut them, or cut them off and immediately cauterize the head.

It's also worth noting that the "failure" on a hydra (cutting off its head) also gives hints as to what will work. In your case, it didn't.

[Kardwill]

Smashing objects near the ghost: If you're genre savvy, Ghosts commonly form and hang around because of someone or something keeping them there. This could well be a nearby object.
Healing the monster: In some RPGs this does actually harm the undead, which is what a ghost is. It is also a literal opposite of causing harm.
Singing to the monster: Singing can be used as a method to calm and soothe, like you would with a baby. It's worth a try
Hugging the monster: Hugging is just a gentle grapple, and if you consider the phrase 'make love not war' it's certainly worth a shot.
Talking the monster down: Diplomacy, negotiation, calling truce, etc is another opposite to hostility. It's the classic counterpart to violence.

Yeah, every one of those sound like pretty reasonable "lateral thinking" approaches with the information they were given. In fact, in my last game (the "Death House" dungeon from Curse of Strahd), my players used several of them when dealing with a haunted house.

"Let's break the altar, I'm sure it's what traps all those lost souls here!"

"I talk to the angry ghost, try to get her to calm down. She's crazy with grief, but maybe we can get to her if she sees we're not the ones who took her child"

"That abomination is probably what is left of the baby... I sing one of the lullabies that was in the old book to appease him and put him to sleep"

And my favourite :
"I... Okay, I just take her hand in mine.
- Are you crazy? It's not a child anymore, it's a freakin' ghost!
- Yes, I know, she'll probably possess me. But her parents asked her to stay in her room and wait for an adult, it's the very last thing she heard before she died. Possessing an adult is probably the only way for her ghost to leave this room. And there's no way I'll leave a child alone in this godforsaken place."

The module described those ghost attacks as (pretty tough) fights or "save or suffer" traps, but the player's ideas were simply too good to shoot them down ^^

[Cluedrew]

And it was GREAT. we all had a blast. one of the best sessions in a long time.

This is called "knowing your group". You enjoyed that campaign but I doubt Talakeal's group would have. Actually I doubt I would have enjoyed it because it doesn't focus on the parts of role-playing I enjoy. Which for reference tends to be the character driven parts.

So maybe this encounter with the one who could not die shouldn't of been in the campaign at all. Actually I'm not sure why Talakeal was expecting them to enjoy it so maybe we were so close to it working out, but my gut tells me it never had a chance at being a beloved memory for the group. And no matter how good an encounter is theoretically, when it comes down to it the only real measure of success is how much fun did everybody have. And here the answer was very little.

[Talakeal]

Note: There's a huge difference between this and a hydra.

If you cut off one of a hydra's 9 heads, it grows another. That's roughly an 11% increase in power.

That really seems more like nitpicking than a "huge difference".

It's also worth noting that the "failure" on a hydra (cutting off its head) also gives hints as to what will work.

How so?

Note how none of these are random, such as throwing mud or shouting names (though in fantasy it's not uncommon for a name to hold power, another genre savvy item). They are more logical than you are giving credit, and you denied each and every one. I would have given these a chance to work (at least temporarily), as they all logically COULD work.

When you say "you denied each and every one" you act like I went out of my way to shoot them down, when all I did was not ret-con the encounter to make them work.

You might play that way, but that is just not the type of game I am interested in running. Nor or any of my players, that's exactly the sort of behavior my players flip out over (both retconning the game world and making a puzzle with a lateral thinking solution).

This is called "knowing your group". You enjoyed that campaign but I doubt Talakeal's group would have. Actually I doubt I would have enjoyed it because it doesn't focus on the parts of role-playing I enjoy. Which for reference tends to be the character driven parts.

So maybe this encounter with the one who could not die shouldn't of been in the campaign at all. Actually I'm not sure why Talakeal was expecting them to enjoy it so maybe we were so close to it working out, but my gut tells me it never had a chance at being a beloved memory for the group. And no matter how good an encounter is theoretically, when it comes down to it the only real measure of success is how much fun did everybody have. And here the answer was very little.

As I have said repeatedly, the campaign was designed without any specific group in mind. And although in this case it may seem a bad thing, many of the problems in the game were caused because the players thought I was tailoring encounters to their group.

And honestly, if it had rolled a 12 instead of a 13 to avoid being trapped, or if the ranger had communicated with the rest of the party and they were on the same page, it probably would have gone done as a pleasant memory for everyone involved.

[Cluedrew]

When you say "you denied each and every one" you act like I went out of my way to shoot them down, when all I did was not ret-con the encounter to make them work.

But unless you can communicate why it the idea wouldn't of worked in the first place the two are indistinguishable to the person who had the idea/made the attempt. The "wouldn't" is important - at least with a group as paranoid as yours seems to be - in that if they think it doesn't work now because you made changes of some kind that is also a problem. Perhaps a different probably though so it is more the first part.

And I wrote everything else and I couldn't figure out a good way to describe it. Maybe something will come to me later. But for now it basically boils down to if you can't see the reasons it feels arbitrary.

As I have said repeatedly, the campaign was designed without any specific group in mind. And although in this case it may seem a bad thing, many of the problems in the game were caused because the players thought I was tailoring encounters to their group.

To explain my point I'm going to use a particularly uncharitable reading of your first sentence: "I did not consider whether or not my group would enjoy this campaign." (I understand that is probably not what you were actually saying.) I believe everyone should be considering what other people enjoy when they make decisions in a game, among other factors like what you enjoy. So you could bring a gauntlet of the best and most tactically varied combat encounters you could make, put it in front of me and I probably wouldn't care because that isn't what I game for. But the opposite true, there are other hooks (a city with an uncertain future and at a tipping point were it could be pushed one way or another) that I might be much more interested in than the average player.

For reference what I think what you are actually saying is: this party doesn't want and is in fact actively afraid of things being adjusted for them as they believe it will be adjusted to beat them more effectively. This is a trust issue and I have no solution for it.

And honestly, if it had rolled a 12 instead of a 13 to avoid being trapped, or if the ranger had communicated with the rest of the party and they were on the same page, it probably would have gone done as a pleasant memory for everyone involved.

Makes sense. I suppose I assume the worst of your group because I only know them through help threads. (I'm still open to reading stories of the good times you all had.)

[kyoryu]

That really seems more like nitpicking than a "huge difference".

Really?

You don't see the difference between "before I figure out what doesn't trigger the special ability, doing the wrong thing doubles the power" vs "it makes it 10% stronger?"

So, let's say we're talking 100damage per round, just for a number.

With the hydra, if you screw up, it's now doing 111 damage per round. With your monster, it's doing 200.

Let's say you're dumb, and do the same thing to the two new heads/ghosts. With the hydra it's now doing 133 damage per round. With your ghost, it's doing 400.

That's HUGE. The penalty for "screwing up" is incredibly higher. That's not nitpicking.

How so?

The head is cut off. Severed. That immediately clues the party in that doing things that won't sever the head probably won't result in this happening. So "attacking with blunt damage" is probably safe. Cauterizing the wound... less obvious, but it's such a common D&D-ism that it's not unreasonable to guess.

[zinycor]

Are you seriously defending an unkillable monster? I really don't get it. Even the comparisons with the hydra is absolutely ridiculous, hydras aren't unkillable, they are hard to kill, and force players to find somewhat unorthodox ways to defeat them.

OTOH we have your monster, who not only can't be killed, but gets amazingly more powerful whenever it is killed, independent of whatever tactics or damage is involved. The only way to actually defeat this opponent is to have it be trapped inside a virtually indestructible trap.

Although, I must ask, could the Monster be knocked down?

[NichG]

"It is born of violence, but cannot be killed by violence" has a classic riddle structure, and will easily prompt people to think that the solution must be some esoteric idea. So, Talakeal, rather than focusing on how the monster's mechanics could have been different, lets instead workshop how (given the vestige's mechanics as fixed) you could have communicated that better and in a way which would not encourage people to believe that e.g. hugging it would solve the situation.

The flavor of this thing being a spirit of violence is actually misleading here, because as far as I can tell the true mechanics are more like the ghosts being projections of their actual source, and the source retaliates against attacks on the ghost by spawning more of them. That is to say, it is not violence that energizes the ghost to split or anything like that.

So I would say you have two choices here, which you mixed and therefore confused the situation. One choice is - this is a mechanical puzzle, to be dealt with via good use of game mechanics. The other choice is - this is a conceptual puzzle, to be dealt with by understanding the nature of this adversary at a role-play level and then engaging with that. The players thought you were running the second, and tried things to attack the very concept of violence (hugging it, singing to it, etc).

Since you said that there are just mechanics that the vestige has, and you're unwilling to adapt that or change its behavior from what you planned eight months in advance, then what it really is is a mechanical puzzle even if you insist that you're thinking of it like a roleplay puzzle or puzzle with roleplaying elements.

So with that in mind, you should have explained it in a way that does not make it abstract. For example, simply saying: "If one dies, two will take its place."

[Talakeal]

Are you seriously defending an unkillable monster? I really don't get it. Even the comparisons with the hydra is absolutely ridiculous, hydras aren't unkillable, they are hard to kill, and force players to find somewhat unorthodox ways to defeat them.

OTOH we have your monster, who not only can't be killed, but gets amazingly more powerful whenever it is killed, independent of whatever tactics or damage is involved. The only way to actually defeat this opponent is to have it be trapped inside a virtually indestructible trap.

Although, I must ask, could the Monster be knocked down?

Yes, I am defending it. There are plenty of monsters, in both RPGs and mythology, that cannot be killed or can only be killed in very specific ways that most parties won't have access to, and there is nothing wrong with an encounter that can't be defeated through combat.

I am not sure if I would say "amazingly more powerful", individually they were significantly weaker than any given member of the party.

Where are you getting this "only way to actually defeat this opponent is to have it be trapped inside a virtually indestructible trap" from? As I said in my initial post, it could be knocked out, charmed, banished, put to sleep, polymorphed, grappled, tied up, trapped in a force cage, trapped in a pit, trapped behind a wall of stone, snuck past, petrified, lured away, plus a ton of other stuff I am not thinking of at the moment. Heck, it probably could have even been killed if the party was willing to bring serious magic


Yes, it can be knocked down. Aside from spawning two more when killed, it had no abilities or immunities not possessed by a standard human fighter warrior.

Really?

You don't see the difference between "before I figure out what doesn't trigger the special ability, doing the wrong thing doubles the power" vs "it makes it 10% stronger?"

So, let's say we're talking 100damage per round, just for a number.

With the hydra, if you screw up, it's now doing 111 damage per round. With your monster, it's doing 200.

Let's say you're dumb, and do the same thing to the two new heads/ghosts. With the hydra it's now doing 133 damage per round. With your ghost, it's doing 400.

That's HUGE. The penalty for "screwing up" is incredibly higher. That's not nitpicking.

Its just fiddling with the numbers though. If we replaced the nine headed hydra with a 3 headed hydra or a 12 headed hydra (I believe that is the range in most editions of D&D) you would have similar variance.

The encounter was mathematically balanced so that the party could easily handed several of them, the exact ratio is, imo, pretty irrelevant to the encounter on a conceptual level.

Edit: Also, going by that logic, a 3 headed hydra (the weakest in D&D) is immensely more powerful than a 12 headed hydra (the strongest in D&D), which neither common sense nor the CR system bear out.

The head is cut off. Severed. That immediately clues the party in that doing things that won't sever the head probably won't result in this happening. So "attacking with blunt damage" is probably safe. Cauterizing the wound... less obvious, but it's such a common D&D-ism that it's not unreasonable to guess.

Again, the mythological hydra was immortal (and I believe Hercules actually knocked the heads off with a club rather than cutting them.)

But in many editions of D&D a hydra cannot be killed by clubbing it to death. 1E and 2E explicitly can only be killed by severing all its heads, while later editions simply make killing it in other ways very difficult.

[Excession]

But in many editions of D&D a hydra cannot be killed by clubbing it to death. 1E and 2E explicitly can only be killed by severing all its heads, while later editions simply make killing it in other ways very difficult.

In 3.5 cutting off the heads requires an explicitly declared sunder attempt, costing you an AoO each time. It cannot happen accidentally. Beating through the HP of the body, even with the fast healing, doesn't really look that hard. The 4e hydra gets more dangerous as you hurt it, whether you burn off the heads or not. My wizard surviving at 1HP off negative bloodied value (where a 4e PC straight up dies, a very hard thing to do in 4e) suggests that burning the stumps may have been the wrong choice.

Unless 5e has seriously regressed, your "many editions of D&D" is just two old systems that really shouldn't be treated as untouchable paragons of good RPG design.

Makes sense. I suppose I assume the worst of your group because I only know them through help threads. (I'm still open to reading stories of the good times you all had.)

Yes, either Talakeal has the worst RPG group ever, or he's an even worse GM than his own posts make him look. Either way, I remain surprised that the group has continued playing at all. I wonder if, to some degree, one or more parties is enjoying the abuse.

[Great Dragon]

The head is cut off. Severed. That immediately clues the party in that doing things that won't sever the head probably won't result in this happening. So "attacking with blunt damage" is probably safe. Cauterizing the wound... less obvious, but it's such a common D&D-ism that it's not unreasonable to guess.

Also, it usually clues the Player/Party to stop attacking the Heads and go for the Body (focused fire can beat the Regeneration power), since as mentioned - attacking the creature still kills it. The "can't be killed by violence" would most likely have thrown the majority of even experienced Players off. With this "Hydra-Ghost' combo, unless I had a Caster with Hold/Dominate Monster, Polymorph, Flesh to Stone, etc - even I would most likely have gone for the Shoplifting "Snatch and Run" tactic.

Again, the mythological hydra was immortal (and I believe Hercules actually knocked the heads off with a club rather than cutting them.)

In the new Disney Hercules, he beat the Hydra by literally causing Rocks to Fall, killing it. Same basic effect, doing something that didn't cut the heads off - but still caused enough damage to kill it.

It was more "He's clever, and Strong" that was being focused on there.

It's like asking "Who wins between Superman and the Hulk?"
My answer is "Whoever is in charge of writing that comic."

But in many editions of D&D a hydra cannot be killed by clubbing it to death. 1E and 2E explicitly can only be killed by severing all its heads, while later editions simply make killing it in other ways very difficult.

Yes, but again, there is usually a lot of In Game World stories and myths that can explain what the Monster (Hydra) can do. Even if some Deity has to literally find a way to tell them!!

Going off Mythology, the (original) Medusa was one the most powerful of the majority of the Deific Creations, and in the Clash of the Titans Movie - it took Athena giving a Mechanical Owl that knew how to defeat Medusa for Perseus to actually have a chance to kill her. Since Medusa was immortal, he had to keep her severed head in a bag, and then not look at her face when using it against the Kraken.

[King of Nowhere]

This is called "knowing your group". You enjoyed that campaign but I doubt Talakeal's group would have. Actually I doubt I would have enjoyed it because it doesn't focus on the parts of role-playing I enjoy. Which for reference tends to be the character driven parts.

yes, which is my point: talekeal wasn't doing anything really wrong. it's just that with his group there isn't much you can do. from what i read, they don't like it whenever things don't go their way, or even when they have to sweat to make things go their way.

[Great Dragon]

yes, which is my point: talekeal wasn't doing anything really wrong. it's just that with his group there isn't much you can do. from what i read, they don't like it whenever things don't go their way, or even when they have to sweat to make things go their way.

Which makes me wonder why any of the Players are even playing any Game - RPG or otherwise - in the first place.

In a lot of ways, I'm like Talakeal.
I really like playing tRPGs, even if I'm stuck being the (forever) D/GM.
I've tolerated a Bad Player (always the same Race/Class and mostly inept at RP) to to keep playing/running.

But, even I would have serious issues with Bob, and also with Brian if we couldn't hash out an agreement, preferably between games.

[zinycor]

Yes, either Talakeal has the worst RPG group ever, or he's an even worse GM than his own posts make him look.

I believe both to be close to the truth.

[Talakeal]

"It is born of violence, but cannot be killed by violence" has a classic riddle structure, and will easily prompt people to think that the solution must be some esoteric idea. So, Talakeal, rather than focusing on how the monster's mechanics could have been different, lets instead workshop how (given the vestige's mechanics as fixed) you could have communicated that better and in a way which would not encourage people to believe that e.g. hugging it would solve the situation.

The flavor of this thing being a spirit of violence is actually misleading here, because as far as I can tell the true mechanics are more like the ghosts being projections of their actual source, and the source retaliates against attacks on the ghost by spawning more of them. That is to say, it is not violence that energizes the ghost to split or anything like that.

So I would say you have two choices here, which you mixed and therefore confused the situation. One choice is - this is a mechanical puzzle, to be dealt with via good use of game mechanics. The other choice is - this is a conceptual puzzle, to be dealt with by understanding the nature of this adversary at a role-play level and then engaging with that. The players thought you were running the second, and tried things to attack the very concept of violence (hugging it, singing to it, etc).

Since you said that there are just mechanics that the vestige has, and you're unwilling to adapt that or change its behavior from what you planned eight months in advance, then what it really is is a mechanical puzzle even if you insist that you're thinking of it like a roleplay puzzle or puzzle with roleplaying elements.

So with that in mind, you should have explained it in a way that does not make it abstract. For example, simply saying: "If one dies, two will take its place."

The party already knew that if one died two took its place. They figured that out about 5 minutes into the first fight.

They then retreated to town and did research on how to kill it, and found that it couldn't be killed because it was born of violence. I tried phrasing it in a way that was a call back to "For you see, Strife feeds on conflict," from Aesop's fables, as I said the encounter was inspired by Hercules.

It was not an in character prophecy or anything like that; and to me it seems really bizarre to assume the DM is giving players riddles OOC. If I thought the DM was actually giving me a riddle, as a player, I would certainly break character to ask them to confirm they were riddling at me and asking me why they were giving me OOC riddles to solve when I just wanted to play the game.

Yes, it was absolutely supposed to be an optional mechanical puzzle. I hate conceptual puzzles, and so does most every player I have ever had, so I only use them extremely sparingly.

If I wanted to be more blunt I could have simply said: It can be killed normally, however because the entity that is creating the avatar is strengthened by violence, any dead in its shrine, including its own avatars, will spawn two more avatars on the following round, so you need to come up with a solution, any solution, that involves bypassing or incapacitating the avatars without killing them.

But again, 3/4 players already got that from what I said.

In 3.5 cutting off the heads requires an explicitly declared sunder attempt, costing you an AoO each time. It cannot happen accidentally. Beating through the HP of the body, even with the fast healing, doesn't really look that hard. The 4e hydra gets more dangerous as you hurt it, whether you burn off the heads or not. My wizard surviving at 1HP off negative bloodied value (where a 4e PC straight up dies, a very hard thing to do in 4e) suggests that burning the stumps may have been the wrong choice.

Unless 5e has seriously regressed, your "many editions of D&D" is just two old systems that really shouldn't be treated as untouchable paragons of good RPG design.

There are 5 editions of D&D. In 1E and 2E it is explicitly impossible, and in 3E the body has fast healing and a note in the monster manual saying that it is intentionally designed to be very difficulty to kill by attacking the body. In 4E there is no mechanic for cutting off heads at all, and in 5E there are no mechanics for intentionally targeting heads or body and heads simply get cut off if you damage it too fast, meaning the party can either hold back and give the hydra more time to beat up on them or go all out and deal with the multiplying heads for as short a time as possible.

None of them have ever favored beating it with blunt weapons or focusing on the body.

Yes, either Talakeal has the worst RPG group ever, or he's an even worse GM than his own posts make him look. Either way, I remain surprised that the group has continued playing at all. I wonder if, to some degree, one or more parties is enjoying the abuse.

Alternate solution, Bob likes to bitch and I am very obsessive and self conscious and discuss (almost exclusively negative) aspects of my game on the forum for weeks or months on end.

For example, the fight with the sneeze ogre was simply one four word comment by Bob that the rest of the group didn't share, and which we never brought up again, but we are still debating it eight months later on here.


Its also a mismatch of styles; Bob (and several of the more vocal people in this thread) favor what the DMG calls "Kick in the door" style of play while I (and several of the more vocal people in this thread) favor what the DMG calls "deep immersion" style of play. We try compromise, but that means that there will be spots of friction now and again, but I don't have the confidence to just chalk it up to that and instead tend to drag it onto the forum for in depth naval gazing.

Also, it usually clues the Player/Party to stop attacking the Heads and go for the Body (focused fire can beat the Regeneration power), since as mentioned - attacking the creature still kills it. The "can't be killed by violence" would most likely have thrown the majority of even experienced Players off. With this "Hydra-Ghost' combo, unless I had a Caster with Hold/Dominate Monster, Polymorph, Flesh to Stone, etc - even I would most likely have gone for the Shoplifting "Snatch and Run" tactic.

Which would have been a fine tactic, if the players had agreed on it before it they were already beaten to hell and then decided on the "human shield" approach.

Didn't one of your players forget that the monster duplicated when killed?

Yeah. That was bizarre. Neither I nor any of the other players understood how he could forget the plot point that they had just spent an hour trying to solve. Most likely he just had a "brain-fart" when he threw up the DoT and was then embarrassed about it.

[NichG]

The party already knew that if one died two took its place. They figured that out about 5 minutes into the first fight.

No, they knew that if they killed one, two took its place. The fact that they later tried things like singing or hugging them to death says that they believed there were ways in which the ghost could die without splitting.

I tried phrasing it in a way that was a call back to "For you see, Strife feeds on conflict," from Aesop's fables, as I said the encounter was inspired by Hercules.

This is what makes it sound a riddle. Ancient Greek writing and metaphor usage is a particular voice. It's different than your voice, presumably, unless you order pizza by e.g. asking for a disc of golden dough topped with the crushed jewels of the vine.

Using an archaic voice to give obfuscated and unclear information about a situation in a tabletop RPG? Clear signals of a riddle.

If I wanted to be more blunt I could have simply said: It can be killed normally, however because the entity that is creating the avatar is strengthened by violence, any dead in its shrine, including its own avatars, will spawn two more avatars on the following round, so you need to come up with a solution, any solution, that involves bypassing or incapacitating the avatars without killing them.

This would have been much better. I would still leave out 'strengthened by violence' if the only mechanical trigger is the presence of dead. If you say that but would still have corpses of those who died peacefully trigger the effect, then you are giving incorrect and misleading information OOC.

[Talakeal]

No, they knew that if they killed one, two took its place. The fact that they later tried things like singing or hugging them to death says that they believed there were ways in which the ghost could die without splitting.

That's exactly what I said. Where does the "no" come in.

This is what makes it sound a riddle. Ancient Greek writing and metaphor usage is a particular voice. It's different than your voice, presumably, unless you order pizza by e.g. asking for a disc of golden dough topped with the crushed jewels of the vine.

Using an archaic voice to give obfuscated and unclear information about a situation in a tabletop RPG? Clear signals of a riddle.

I almost always try and speak in a more formal and theatric voice while DMing. Not full on shakespear in the park ham, mind you, but a bit.

It seems really weird to me that the idea that someone is talking in flowery language means they are trying to puzzle or trick you seems odd to me, its not something I have ever considered, and I would certainly break character and question it if I was on the other side of the screen.

This would have been much better. I would still leave out 'strengthened by violence' if the only mechanical trigger is the presence of dead. If you say that but would still have corpses of those who died peacefully trigger the effect, then you are giving incorrect and misleading information OOC.

No, not the presence of corpses, someone has to die by violence in its presence. The idea that someone would die peacefully during an encounter in a monster infested dungeon is such a bizarre edge case its really not worth mentioning unless someone is going out of their way to twist the wording or find loopholes.

[Quertus]

There are 5 editions of D&D. In 1E and 2E it is explicitly impossible, and in 3E the body has fast healing and a note in the monster manual saying that it is intentionally designed to be very difficulty to kill by attacking the body. In 4E there is no mechanic for cutting off heads at all, and in 5E there are no mechanics for intentionally targeting heads or body and heads simply get cut off if you damage it too fast, meaning the party can either hold back and give the hydra more time to beat up on them or go all out and deal with the multiplying heads for as short a time as possible.

None of them have ever favored beating it with blunt weapons or focusing on the body.

In 3.5, the Hydra has fast healing. IME, the optimal tactic is to kill the body. Preferably at range, in 1 hit, or during the surprise round. (Or use SoD spells).

In 3.0, the Hydra does not have fast healing. Same tactical preference, but easier.

However, the 3.0 lernaean Hydra is explicitly immune to damage targeting the body. It's the only one in 3e where I'd consider attacking the heads the optimal choice.

[NichG]

That's exactly what I said. Where does the "no" come in.

'If they killed one, two took its place.' implies that as long as it wasn't the party killing it directly, it might not split. This is consistent with the stuff that the party tried - basically, trying to create a situation in which it dies, but it wasn't due to violence or aggression on the part of the party (at various levels of technicality). If this is my belief in how the encounter works, I might try getting it to commit suicide, sealing the room and filling it with inert gas and coming back in a day, creating pitfalls masked with illusions so that technically its death was an 'accident' brought on by its own actions, attempting to find some source of damage reflection such that it's not 'me' killing it but rather it killing itself. If it were D&D, the spell 'End to Strife' is made for this - it imposes non-violence on an area by making everyone in the zone aware that if they initiate an attack, they will be killed (or rather, will take 20d6 damage).

'If one dies, two take its place' means that none of those strategies can work, and some would be disastrous. If for example you seal the room and fill it with suffocating gas, you'd get a growing number of the things. Even if the things killed themselves, for example, they could voluntarily split and increase their own strength - so End to Strife would be the worst possible thing you could cast. If I believed this, I wouldn't try anything which follows the premise that the end state of the encounter involved the vestige not existing, because anything to 'delete' the vestige even if it was non-violent or indirect would trigger this. Even though this statement is closer to the mechanical reality, its clearly not what the party believed (because then even something like healing it to death or hugging it to death would still have the 'to death' part and would trigger the split).

You believe they understood 'if one dies, two take its place', but what they really understood was 'if we kill one, two take its place'.

I almost always try and speak in a more formal and theatric voice while DMing. Not full on shakespear in the park ham, mind you, but a bit.

It seems really weird to me that the idea that someone is talking in flowery language means they are trying to puzzle or trick you seems odd to me, its not something I have ever considered, and I would certainly break character and question it if I was on the other side of the screen.

Variations in voice label how one should relate to the communication going on. If I'm explaining how something works in response to OOC conversation, I'm going to use a voice that is couched for clearly communicating information with the minimum possibility of being misinterpreted. I'm not going to be sparing with my words, will ask for verification if I'm understood, will walk through logic in a very systematic way. Because the purpose of that interaction is to get the player onto the same page as me, not to establish mood or feel.

If I go theatric, it automatically means that the clarity of my communication will drop (in exchange for having a bigger effect in establishing mood or character). Poetry isn't the language you use when you want to be precise. If I was asking about the details of an employment contract and someone responded in limericks, I'd assume they were intentionally trying to obfuscate things. Combine 'revealing necessary information' with 'intentionally trying to obfuscate' and you have 'it's a riddle'.

No, not the presence of corpses, someone has to die by violence in its presence. The idea that someone would die peacefully during an encounter in a monster infested dungeon is such a bizarre edge case its really not worth mentioning unless someone is going out of their way to twist the wording or find loopholes.

Which is what the party proceeded to attempt to do by e.g. singing at it. They operated under the understanding that, in order to kill it, they were expected to solve a riddle and figure out some kind of loophole that would let them lead it to death without violence. Clear and straightforward communication without dancing around or being subtle is needed to address that kind of disconnect, e.g. saying overtly: 'No, it cannot die no matter what'.

[Great Dragon]

@NichG:
Honestly, saying "It can't die, no matter what" (and where it dying by any means triggers the split) tends to be a disconnect itself.

People are playing a Game where Violence is usually at least one of the options, if not their Go-To.
"Can't be killed by damage" might have been better.

Talakeal listed a bunch of things that would have worked, since none of them "killed" the monster.

Not all, but quite a few, were spells. But, Talakeal failed to give even hints from outside (in world) sources that these spells were even needed by the Mage.

Now, I don't know what Level the party was, but quite a few of those spells were 3rd Tier, and not always chosen by the Player to have, since they all are SoS spells, where it's an all or nothing bet for success.

I'm still wondering why Hugging it (the most non violent grapple) didn't work. Because it wasn't imprisoned by it?