TOPIC: Party saves

Fred K wrote:

Cary Kelly wrote: I can see how one single bad roll can have a bad effect on the entire party having been involved in that on the FFL run of N1. The Ogre Mage cast sleep - and one bad roll from our fearless leader resulted in the entire party failing - which would have meant TPK in room 3 (had it not been for one incredibly lucky roll where our Elf Wizard was the first one "killed").

That could leave a very bad taste in the mouths of some players.

However the time constraint of 10 rolls is too much.

The one compromise might be to divide the character card in slots like with the beholder - 2 or 3 slots of 4 or 6 classes. Two quick rolls (1-6 on card get result one and 7-12 get result 2) could guard against a single bad dice roll dooming everybody.

As the Elf Wizard in question, it did suck for the entire party to fail a save versus sleep because our leader rolled a 2 or 3 (nightmare level so the save was in the 20s). The GM declared the ogre magi jumps down and kills us all one by one in our sleep. I asked him to determine who was killed in what order and we “lucked” into my character being killed first. Ash’s death pouch later, I’m up and blow the horn of the minotaur waking the rest of the party. The ogre killed me again immediately. I seem to remember dying three times in that room due to a bad roll but we all ended up surviving into the next room. It probably shouldn’t have required that odd combination to avoid a TPK 30 seconds into a room.

My suggestion is we have all players, in the prep room, roll 5-10 d20 rolls each and those are recorded onto the party card. When we use our tokens for re-rolls, etc that would happen in the room as needed. Seems pretty simple and quick.

I am finding it somewhat terrifying to think that there was a 5% chance of a TPK in the Ogre room (which was like what - room 3?) due to rolling a 1 on saves.

I hope your DM was taking liberties and the module doesn't say "May cast sleep with DC-X, if at any point all players are asleep kill the entire party."

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Fred K wrote:

Cary Kelly wrote: I can see how one single bad roll can have a bad effect on the entire party having been involved in that on the FFL run of N1. The Ogre Mage cast sleep - and one bad roll from our fearless leader resulted in the entire party failing - which would have meant TPK in room 3 (had it not been for one incredibly lucky roll where our Elf Wizard was the first one "killed").

That could leave a very bad taste in the mouths of some players.

However the time constraint of 10 rolls is too much.

The one compromise might be to divide the character card in slots like with the beholder - 2 or 3 slots of 4 or 6 classes. Two quick rolls (1-6 on card get result one and 7-12 get result 2) could guard against a single bad dice roll dooming everybody.

As the Elf Wizard in question, it did suck for the entire party to fail a save versus sleep because our leader rolled a 2 or 3 (nightmare level so the save was in the 20s). The GM declared the ogre magi jumps down and kills us all one by one in our sleep. I asked him to determine who was killed in what order and we “lucked” into my character being killed first. Ash’s death pouch later, I’m up and blow the horn of the minotaur waking the rest of the party. The ogre killed me again immediately. I seem to remember dying three times in that room due to a bad roll but we all ended up surviving into the next room. It probably shouldn’t have required that odd combination to avoid a TPK 30 seconds into a room.

My suggestion is we have all players, in the prep room, roll 5-10 d20 rolls each and those are recorded onto the party card. When we use our tokens for re-rolls, etc that would happen in the room as needed. Seems pretty simple and quick.

I am finding it somewhat terrifying to think that there was a 5% chance of a TPK in the Ogre room (which was like what - room 3?) due to rolling a 1 on saves.

I hope your DM was taking liberties and the module doesn't say "May cast sleep with DC-X, if at any point all players are asleep kill the entire party."

Ya, if that's in the module then something has gone horribly wrong.

I’ve run through it twice and he cast sleep both times. One time we had PCs not fail so we woke the others, the other everyone failed. My understanding is that it is a tpk if sleep works.

Fred

I would hope in normal and probably hardcore the tpk wasn't an option.

At Epic it's probably reasonable.

At nightmare I could see it going either way, but giving another party throw each round somebody dies (potential for waking up hearing the death cries) seems like a reasonable approach. That said, it did generate a fairly cool story for Fred's group because they had the tokens to deal with it.

Aegoce wrote: I would hope in normal and probably hardcore the tpk wasn't an option.

At Epic it's probably reasonable.

At nightmare I could see it going either way, but giving another party throw each round somebody dies (potential for waking up hearing the death cries) seems like a reasonable approach. That said, it did generate a fairly cool story for Fred's group because they had the tokens to deal with it.

Did the casting of Sleep get added partway through GenCon? I know I ran into on some runs t GenCon, but don't recall it happening at all at Origins. I also don't remember it happening on the run I did Thursday of GenCon. It is also possible my memory is bad.

Perhaps a simpler mechanic for when natural 1s are rolled for a party save, just have the natural 1 apply to the roller, and have a second roll for the rest of the party. To be fair, do the same for natural 20s. That would cut down on both eztremes of swinginess a little.

We ran into a similar situation with a failed save on nightmare...luckily the fighter was able to reroll their save and then wake other members who had the minotaur horn. I feel like this was added after using lesser maze on the ogre mage several times at Origins.

It was a 7, honest.

Fred K wrote:

Cary Kelly wrote: I can see how one single bad roll can have a bad effect on the entire party having been involved in that on the FFL run of N1. The Ogre Mage cast sleep - and one bad roll from our fearless leader resulted in the entire party failing - which would have meant TPK in room 3 (had it not been for one incredibly lucky roll where our Elf Wizard was the first one "killed").

That could leave a very bad taste in the mouths of some players.

However the time constraint of 10 rolls is too much.

The one compromise might be to divide the character card in slots like with the beholder - 2 or 3 slots of 4 or 6 classes. Two quick rolls (1-6 on card get result one and 7-12 get result 2) could guard against a single bad dice roll dooming everybody.

As the Elf Wizard in question, it did suck for the entire party to fail a save versus sleep because our leader rolled a 2 or 3 (nightmare level so the save was in the 20s). The GM declared the ogre magi jumps down and kills us all one by one in our sleep. I asked him to determine who was killed in what order and we “lucked” into my character being killed first. Ash’s death pouch later, I’m up and blow the horn of the minotaur waking the rest of the party. The ogre killed me again immediately. I seem to remember dying three times in that room due to a bad roll but we all ended up surviving into the next room. It probably shouldn’t have required that odd combination to avoid a TPK 30 seconds into a room.

My suggestion is we have all players, in the prep room, roll 5-10 d20 rolls each and those are recorded onto the party card. When we use our tokens for re-rolls, etc that would happen in the room as needed. Seems pretty simple and quick.

Same thing happened to our group at Gen Con... rolled a one, everyone falls asleep, and the GM says it is going to be a TPK.

Luckily one player had a UR cat figurine that allowed a save re-roll which she made (GM ruled only for her) and was able to start waking people up. Still, by the time everyone was awake a few people were dead, the room was over, and the push damage killed off a few more (hardcore).

What's interesting is that the GM insisted it had never happened before... which seemed implausible at 5% odds (or higher). Confirmed by multiple groups talking about it here.

In any case, my suggestion for a solution would be to join the 21st century and use a simple phone or tablet app to keep the party sheet and roll individual values for each player. If you want to keep the physical roll then a slightly more involved app could compute statistical probabilities for separate rolls resulting in 1 thru 10 players failing and you could then map those probabilities to the D20 with the char with the highest saves assumed to make it even on a '1' if there were less than a 5% chance of everyone failing (which there WOULD be for virtually any party)... or you could just make that a rule, highest save char succeeds even on a '1' if it would be a TPK otherwise.