Reposted from the other thread:

Quote from: Spike;574082By way of illustration: Kaelik recently challenged me to a series of battles against his choice of monsters. What were they? Four devils and an earth elemental.

Why four devils? Why no demons? Why no undead?

Ah. You see, now I know: See in Darkness.

I offered you 2 Demons, 2 Devils, and an Earth Elemental. I'd also offer you the Slaad, but those aren't SRD, only in printed books.

At least if you are going to make long diatribes, get the facts right.

Vrocks don't have See in Darkness, but I bet I could still TPK your party with one.

Continuing

The party completes their thorough search of the Primarch's quarters.  Correspondence reveals that he was planning on summoning a powerful outsider and binding it to his will.  The letters inquiring about it stress that it is very dangerous and could result in the Primarch's death.  They emphasize having a powerful ward surrounding the calling circle, emphasizing that it must be perfect or the bound creature could break free.

With out anything of more use, the party steps back into the hallway to find an unbroken plane blocking their path.  It is smooth as glass, slightly reflective, and bitterly cold.  It is impossible to tell how thick it might be in the darkness, but it completely blocks the hall, floor to ceiling and wall to wall.  

Out of Character
The number of rounds you spend interacting with the blockage may be significant.  Please keep your actions in one round increments until told otherwise.

I think there should be a set Character Name on the castle used, and that same name used for every roll, so that the entire history of rolls can be seen.  Anyone could generate a spread of rolls, find out it sucked, then do another one with a new name and only link to the one they liked.

Quote from: CRKrueger;574184I think there should be a set Character Name on the castle used, and that same name used for every roll, so that the entire history of rolls can be seen.  Anyone could generate a spread of rolls, find out it sucked, then do another one with a new name and only link to the one they liked.

This is true, and I used "Kaelik" for mine spot/listen, but honestly, at this point deadDM has just been rolling for me without telling me, so...

Quote from: CRKrueger;574184I think there should be a set Character Name on the castle used

I recommend Flying Fortress.

Quote from: CRKrueger;574184I think there should be a set Character Name on the castle used, and that same name used for every roll, so that the entire history of rolls can be seen.  Anyone could generate a spread of rolls, find out it sucked, then do another one with a new name and only link to the one they liked.

I have no objection.  But as long as the party rolling is logged-in, we can look to see all of their rolls, even if they roll for different campaigns.  Ie, instead of rolling as a guest, it would be better to register.  

Spike has:

http://invisiblecastle.com/search/?roll=&name=Spike&player=&campaign=&latest=10

In any case, for Campaign Name, let's use: Thunderdome.

That's what Jeff and Panzerkraken are using, too, but it shouldn't cause any confusion.  

http://invisiblecastle.com/search/?roll=&name=&player=&campaign=Thunderdome&latest=

I've been using '[Thunderdome] 3e core party vs. Bone Devil ' (with or without a space at the end, I think', so that might cause confusion.  

Thunderdome is easier.

No.  Sorry. I haven't read a single post since my last one, but no.

I am not Captain fucking Ahab, and this Bone Devil is not my Great White Whale.

Kaelic set out to prove he could ambush and TPK an average party of adventurers. That was obviously a lie. Instead he has set out to prove that an invisible teleporting monster could outrun and outhide a party of adventurers until they died of old age.

So congratulations Kaelik, for proving a point absolutely no one here was trying to contest.


See, I'm going to treat you just like I treat GMs in real life that pull dumb stunts like this. You've wasted three days of my internet life 'avoiding' me...

Here, let me clue you in: I don't care how much information you present or hide, no amount of metagaming would allow me to catch your Bone Devil. And, just like in real life, now that I've realized the GM is jerking me around on my Saturday (or whatever day you'd like, since its been three or so), I will just... walk away.


Yup. You won.

You've managed to prove that any dickhead can drive away players by being an asshole.

Go you.

I'm fucking out.  The party commits seppuku in shame for their failure to even discover what, exactly the horrible evil is, much less defeat it. TPK, Kaelik earns a total victory.

Ain't he so cool?

yay! a resounding defeat for scientific inquiry. :rolleyes:

Winner: anyone who was actually amused by following this thread.  

Not the ending i was hoping for, a battle royale would have been nice, but i did enjoy the atmosphere DeadDM conjured.

Wall of Ice, nice touch Kaelik, i wouldn't have expected a gaping entry way to be sealed off that way.

I enjoyed your "killer DM" paranoia Spike, even if it was toned down. I'd like to see you one-off against a true killer DM in a megadungeon or something sometime (in a game where the life or death of egos are not in the balance).

Well that was anti-climatic.  

Sorry folks.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

Post Thunderdome Review

I wasn't really party to the thread that spawned this, but I thought I'd do a recap.

The original thread is here:
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=23300

The relevant bits:

Quote from: Kaelik;555026But yes, encumbrance is punishing as all shit to PCs, and if you play monsters as even remotely intelligent and by the book, you can probably TPK every core party I've ever seen.

Quote from: Kaelik;555047It's not about risk of dying from foolish actions, it's about going to die no matter what the moment I decide you are going to fight an,

Aboleth, Allip*, Angel, Greater Barghest, Beholder, Demon, Devil, Dragon, Elemental (Except Fire), Formian (non worker/warrior), Genie, Ghaele, Inevitable, Lammassu, Naga, Slaad, Shadow*, or Pack of Shadows* regardless of how good or bad the decisions you make are.

*With these ones there is at least a chance, if they don't gank the Cleric first.

Quote from: Kaelik;555062Well, not that it might not be an issue in 2e, but I can't say that is. I was only referring to 3e, where you have Dragons that all have a base land speed of 60ft to the PCs 30 or 20, and demons almost all have Greater Teleport at will, most have fly speeds faster than PCs, and almost all have land speeds of 30ft or higher (mostly higher).

It's basically suicide to wear Medium or Heavy Armor in 3e if your DM ever has you fight something and expect to run, but even if you move at 30ft, most enemies are still faster than you.

Quote from: Kaelik;555133Next round, people do things. Whatever they do, it probably doesn't beat the Bone Devil. Then the Bone Devil seals off half the room with Wall of Ice, locking a party member in with him, and sealing off the other two. Then it kills the trapped one, who might even be forced to cower, then goes invisible, creates a Major Image of itself, and sneaks away to ambush the party later as they break through the wall.

There are more posts along these lines, but this seems to provide a pretty good overview of Kaelik's claim.  

He made a point that the Devil is more mobile than the party (greater teleport at will), could use Major Image to trick the party into attacking an illusion, and could retreat and return multiple times.  

Spike seemed to have the impression that Kaelik would run the Devil as a 'closet troll', which wasn't specifically his point - Kaelik asserted that an intelligently run opponent would be able to TPK a party.  

Using major image to drain party resources seems like a clever tactic, and I would have liked to see if it worked in play.  Kaelik specifically requested to continue PM for his actions because announcing that the Bone Devil attacking was a simple illusion might have been difficult for Spike to ignore.  I know he was committed to avoiding metagaming, but the easiest way to be sure is to make sure it can't happen.  Since the DM would not announce 'this is an illusion', it would be unfair to require Kaelik to do so.  

Kaelik seemed to be planning on putting basically unlimited numbers of walls of ice between himself and the party.  Each of them could do 1d6+15 damage if the party breached it.  Since there would be 10 in a row, it could get difficult.  Spells with several hour duration could expire before the devil was required to force a confrontation.  Again, Kaelik posited Intelligent play, not running up and attacking (which may be what the designers intended).  

For lack of a complete test, Kaelik's assertions appear to be true.  From the (limited) response Spike has used so far, it did not appear that he had a sufficient response for the devils superior vision, superior stealth, and superior mobility.  The ability to negate those advantages for a limited time could be helpful, but without successfully casting dimensional anchor on the devil, this looks like it would have played out mostly like the original Alien movie.  Bad time to be a party of adventurers.

From my perspective, I think Kaelik makes his point pretty convincingly, though I was pretty skeptical prior to recognizing the combined better awareness and better mobility that only became obvious to me once the party entered the dungeon and I realized Kaelik could see them while even after advancing, they could not see him.  

For a DM that wants to use the Devil as a challenge for the party, limiting the creature's mobility seems to be a requirement.  If the devil has a reason it can't leave a particular room (say, because it must prevent the party from passing through a particular door or because it is protecting a particular person) the fight would be much more interesting (and less likely to result in a TPK).  

Again, the lack of completely running the scenario makes it hard to confirm this is the case, but again, considering all I had seen, it seems the most likely.

PMs to follow.

I was personally treating it like I had something to protect. In this case my gold and artworks which were stored in the far upper left corner of the map behind some walls of ice. If the players ever got that far and took my lewts, I would have had to admit at least partial defeat, but I was pretty sure they would die long before then.

At least the wizard did get ganked in one round.

That's the sucking thing, nothing whatsoever was proved at all.  Not a single point of damage was done.  Different spells and magic items in the party could change the little that did happen significantly.

I'm sure there will be a 200-line post describing in detail how the BD could have won, but it would be as much total bullshit as the thread that spawned this abortion to begin with.

For all the "Bone Devils can WTFPWN a whole party instantly" vibe, I was a little surprised to see "death by boredom (giggle giggle)" from the supposed rule asskickers.  I was kind of hoping mass carnage.  Oh well.

I think that somewhere in the world, someone is crying tears of a life lost.

Quote from: One Horse Town;574346I think that somewhere in the world, someone is crying tears of a life lost.

Did you really expect a different outcome?

Good odds that the other Thunderdome goes bust too. It has however already lasted longer than I expected.