Pro-Tip!

[theron]

Advancing on a pair of ogres in such a way as to draw two Attacks of Opportunity at second level is a sub-optimal means of career advancement.  Even if you are a Dwarf Barbarian with twice the HP as the rest of the party.

(Seriously.  Even with my Dwarfy AC bonus, both of the bastards hit Einar for a combined total of 30 points of damage.  He survived, thanks to our Cleric pulling off some seriously handy mojo, but it was a near thing.)

Comments

[hwrnmnbsol]

In every way that fight was harder than it should have been. Yes, they tended to roll 11 or higher, and you guys tended to roll 9 or lower. I'm not talking about that.

You could have done sneakiness. You could have set up missile fire and made them come to you. You could talk Rick into throwing his Bless *before* bringing up Mage Armor, not after. Also, you can ready an attack and incorporate your 5' step into that ready, thereby avoiding the attacks of opportunity.

I know Einar wants to charge into combat, and it make sense with his Rage that he'd go for broke without fooling with the tactics -- but there are a *lot* of enemies in the place we left off, and unless you guys play very smart, we're going to see a TPK.

[theron]

Am I weird in that I don't necessarily see a TPK as a bad thing? Maybe I'm a little too old-school in my perspective.

In Einar's defense, the first ogre he ever encountered, he damned near killed single-handedly. The fact that it was drunk doesn't really register on his radar. I suspect he'll be a bit more wary of them in the future.

[hwrnmnbsol]

I think there's a pretty strong feeling among our gamers, old school or not, that if an encounter results in the death of an entire party, and complete player idiocy wasn't the proximate cause of the TPK, then the GM has designed the game badly. Good games should be designed such that a party that is competently run can achieve success, or at least not death, even with some bad luck with dice. I think that if a TPK came at the result of a series of bad rolls, there would be an expectation that the GM would have some mechanism for moving on other than "Okay, everybody roll up new characters!"

I recognize that's the way we used to do things in 1st edition. However, subsequent editions have improved upon the first, and a reduction in the arbitrariness of the game is one improvement that our players seem to find attractive. Random monster tables is one thing; death without recourse is another.

A Reader Chimes In

[(Anonymous)]

THIS is the kind of thing I want from the (totally free, I realize) gaming blogs of people I happen to know personally--the philosophy/ethos behind the way both players and GMs do their thangs.

I would love to see more Theron-N-Andy-N-More-From-Your-Group discussions such as these.

--The J-Dog

[(Anonymous)]

It was largely uncertain that we could not talk (or buy) our way past the ogres, and hence sneakiness leading to unprovoked assault was largely off the table.

Then the ogres got initiative on almost everyone in the party.

And a single hit from an ogre takes a character out.

Two CL 3 ogres for a party of 8 1st and 2nds, in the wilderness with rest opportunity, looks like a reasonable encounter. But the damage output, I think, makes that a lot more questionable, and the initiative problem was a crucial die roll that shifted things dramatically.

--gpm