Quote from: StormBringer;575972At this point, I am pretty sure the only way this is going to work is if Sacrosanct DMs,.

Hell no.  Not only am I not familiar enough DMing 3e, but I want no part of this.  D&D isn't really designed for this style of play, so I think it's meaningless to "prove" anything by it.  I started to read one of the threads and I think I caught the cancer

Quote from: Fiasco;575985That would actually be good to see. If only for a sense of closure and with participants who will conduct themselves reasonably. Having said that I dont have a problem with deadDMwalking. He has conducted himself with a lot of class.

Actually DeadDM has been very classy about this hence my disappointment in his last post.

Quote from: Marleycat;575983Brendan would be best but he doesn't know 3x well enough.  Sacrosanct would be and interesting choice though.  Heck, Ben would be a good choice also given he can run multiple game systems and DM's with the right mindset. (not a competition).

I would accept Benoist running the scenario.

Quote from: Fiasco;575985That would actually be good to see. If only for a sense of closure and with participants who will conduct themselves reasonably. Having said that I dont have a problem with deadDMwalking. He has conducted himself with a lot of class.

I think he was more or less fair about the whole thing.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;575986Hell no.  Not only am I not familiar enough DMing 3e, but I want no part of this.  D&D isn't really designed for this style of play, so I think it's meaningless to "prove" anything by it.  I started to read one of the threads and I think I caught the cancer

Understood; I counted you among the reasonable players here.  Perhaps that explains the sensible reluctance.  

Quote from: StormBringer;575989I would accept Benoist running the scenario.

I have to decline, for several reasons.

First, I can't say I'm particularly enamored with the concept of a "white room" Thunderdome scenario. I've been pretty vocal against theorywank, and this is just an extension of that disease of gaming forums, to me.

Second, the very notion the Thunderdome would have to "disprove" is moronic from the get-go. No, a Bone Devil will not TPK a 10th level party all the time. It's dumb to say so, and that kind of stupid statement should be rejected out of hand. The Thunderdome actually lends a legitimacy to the very idea that I don't feel like granting myself. It's dumb. Period.

Third, I can't run this thing for the same reason I can't reopen the Ptolus AD&D game and create new ones right this minute. I'm busy with my mega-dungeon design right now and will have a bunch of updates for it soon. More about that in the next few days, hopefully.

I'm thankful for the vote of confidence. Really am. I just can't accept the responsibility right now.

Quote from: Benoist;576240Third, I can't run this thing for the same reason I can't reopen the Ptolus AD&D game and create new ones right this minute. I'm busy with my mega-dungeon design right now and will have a bunch of updates for it soon. More about that in the next few days, hopefully.

I know one place that would like to hear about that.  

QuoteI'm thankful for the vote of confidence. Really am. I just can't accept the responsibility right now.

No problem from my end, real-life is starting to pile up for me as well.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;575923But if anyone can review Spike's characters (posted on the thread) and suggest a workable strategy, that could be relevant to the discussion WITHOUT the need to go with a THUNDERDOME.

Are we talking about the see in darkness thing?

First solution is to barricade yourself inside an area small enough that you can keep it fully lighted. (Although, reviewing Spike's character sheets, I notice he didn't actually bring any light sources into the dungeon. So I'm not clear how his human character was seeing anything in the first place.)

If that proves intractable for some reason, hit your dimension door, pick different spells, and come back tomorrow.

This, of course, assumes that I've actually encountered something that's sniping me out of the darkness. Which the bone devil probably isn't, since it doesn't have any ranged attacks.

See in darkness just isn't that impressive by itself. It's not even much of a game changer: If I've got a light source, the guy 200 feet away with darkvision can still see me without me seeing him. The game changer is when you get a character with see in darkness who can also whip out a darkness spell. But the bone devil can't do that, so I'm not particularly impressed.

I'm actually a little hazy on what the dilemma was supposed to be here.

It wasn't the see in darkness...it was Spike spending 3 days waiting for an ambush that was never going to come.

Quote from: Doom;576357It wasn't the see in darkness...it was Spike spending 3 days waiting for an ambush that was never going to come.

I find that hard to believe considering that he quit right when one of his characters got cut off.

Quote from: MGuy;576408I find that hard to believe considering that he quit right when one of his characters got cut off.

No, he didn't.

He quit after going out the primarch's quarter and finding a wall of ice blocking the party's way and that things were going nowhere and not even fast.

Check it yourself, post 212, post 217 is Spike's answer.

Yeah, there was no "successful separation of party" going on.  The party was whole and intact, and untouched.

To answer Justin's question, the idea is since the Bone Devil has See in Darkness, Teleport and Wall of Ice, it is 100% impossible to prevent it from somehow separating and isolating the party and thus inflicting a 100% TPK.  Every.Time.

Somehow, in Den-verse, this doesn't need to be proved - it all works 100%, in fact you have to prove that you can not be TPK'd every time.

However, the fact that Team Den is whining about re-using the Bone Devil is telling, since if the TPK rate is 100%, then conditions Don't.Matter.Period.  If the TPK rate depends on success of very specific strategies, then it becomes conditional, which is all anyone else was arguing.

Quote from: CRKrueger;576708Yeah, there was no "successful separation of party" going on.  The party was whole and intact, and untouched.

To answer Justin's question, the idea is since the Bone Devil has See in Darkness, Teleport and Wall of Ice, it is 100% impossible to prevent it from somehow separating and isolating the party and thus inflicting a 100% TPK.  Every.Time.

Somehow, in Den-verse, this doesn't need to be proved - it all works 100%, in fact you have to prove that you can not be TPK'd every time.

However, the fact that Team Den is whining about re-using the Bone Devil is telling, since if the TPK rate is 100%, then conditions Don't.Matter.Period.  If the TPK rate depends on success of very specific strategies, then it becomes conditional, which is all anyone else was arguing.

I can see an Ice Devil, on home turf, having the field and tactical advantage against most groups of advennturers that don't he's there but I don't believe "Team Den" has formed together to make the claim that Bone Devil TPKs parties 100% of time. I am pretty surre I pointed out (along with DeadDM) that that wasn't our claim.

Quote from: CRKrueger;576708However, the fact that Team Den is whining about re-using the Bone Devil is telling, since if the TPK rate is 100%, then conditions Don't.Matter.Period.  If the TPK rate depends on success of very specific strategies, then it becomes conditional, which is all anyone else was arguing.

It's conditioned on PCs being limited to the information they would actually have.

I have never claimed that PCs being omniscient and knowing things they could not possibly know would be TPKed, because I said that by the book you would TPK all core parties.

I also never said that a Bone Devil would always kill a Bone Devil Killers, the Party deliberately designed solely for killing Bone Devils. I said that you would TPK all core parties playing by the book. If you design your party to kill Bone Devils, then it probably dies to Slaads, Vrocks, Earth Elementals, Giants, ect.

So if a level 10 party can't kill a Bone Devil without knowing in advance that they are only fighting a Bone Devil and nothing else (which by the way, isn't by the book because they are supposed to be able to beat 4 encounters a day, especially if they are under CR) then they would be TPKed in an actual by the book game where they would fight things that are not Bone Devils.

You'll notice that in the actual original Thunderdome I insisted in advance that I be allowed to choose from a variety of monsters. And then I choose the Bone Devil. Because the only purpose of insisting on the ability to choose different monsters is to prevent metagaming.

But no, you guys need to be able to prepare a party that only ever fights Bone Devils and nothing else.

I never said the Bone Devil TPK is not conditional. I said it was very specifically conditioned on playing Bone Devils intelligently and playing by the book.

So every time you say that you can imagine a condition that makes the Bone Devil lose, and that condition is violating the rules in some way, IE, a party that is designed for the express purpose of killing a Bone Devil and nothing else, that condition allowing a party to defeat a Bone Devil has no effect on my claim that when you play by the book, core parties get TPKed by intelligent monster play.

Quote from: Kaelik;576744It's conditioned on PCs being limited to the information they would actually have.

I have never claimed that PCs being omniscient and knowing things they could not possibly know would be TPKed, because I said that by the book you would TPK all core parties.

I also never said that a Bone Devil would always kill a Bone Devil Killers, the Party deliberately designed solely for killing Bone Devils. I said that you would TPK all core parties playing by the book. If you design your party to kill Bone Devils, then it probably dies to Slaads, Vrocks, Earth Elementals, Giants, ect.

So if a level 10 party can't kill a Bone Devil without knowing in advance that they are only fighting a Bone Devil and nothing else (which by the way, isn't by the book because they are supposed to be able to beat 4 encounters a day, especially if they are under CR) then they would be TPKed in an actual by the book game where they would fight things that are not Bone Devils.

You'll notice that in the actual original Thunderdome I insisted in advance that I be allowed to choose from a variety of monsters. And then I choose the Bone Devil. Because the only purpose of insisting on the ability to choose different monsters is to prevent metagaming.

But no, you guys need to be able to prepare a party that only ever fights Bone Devils and nothing else.

I never said the Bone Devil TPK is not conditional. I said it was very specifically conditioned on playing Bone Devils intelligently and playing by the book.

So every time you say that you can imagine a condition that makes the Bone Devil lose, and that condition is violating the rules in some way, IE, a party that is designed for the express purpose of killing a Bone Devil and nothing else, that condition allowing a party to defeat a Bone Devil has no effect on my claim that when you play by the book, core parties get TPKed by intelligent monster play.

To summarize sempai's point the scenario is

-If the PCs don't know what they're fighting.
-The Monster is played intelligently.

It is often the case for PCs to go into an encounter blind, then if played intelligently a CR=ECL encounter that should be a cakewalk is instead a TPK.

If everyone accedes to sempai's point then there is no need to continue this thread. Otherwise, the experiment goes like this. Justin makes his core party. DeadDM sets up the area. Sempai has a level appropriate monster and attempts to TPK the party. If the party knows they are fighting a Bone Devil and are built and prepared to face a Bone Devil specifically than that defeats the point of the scenario.

BTW stopping the bone devil (or anyone using walls of ice) from separate the party is pretty easy, all you need to do is link each party member to another with a rope to the waist. Of course, to do that they must know that is necessary but I think that after the second or third wall of ice they meet it should not be too hard put two and two together.

Quote from: Just Another User;576776BTW stopping the bone devil (or anyone using walls of ice) from separate the party is pretty easy, all you need to do is link each party member to another with a rope to the waist. Of course, to do that they must know that is necessary but I think that after the second or third wall of ice they meet it should not be too hard put two and two together.

Indeed, that would prevent separation. But of course, that also comes with a whole bunch of disadvantages too. Especially when the Wizard's Darkvision wears off and he is blind.