Should stone to flesh and random encounters be banned

[infected slut princess]

Last session, the party was on its way to do some epic shit. Along the way, the DM rolled on a random encounter table and generated an encounter with four basilisks. For the party's level, this should have been easy.

Well, it was easy but there was a problem. One dude in the party bombed a save and got petrified. The party had no way to restore him immediately.

So the fastest character in the party ran back to town and found an NPC for hire who could cast stone to flesh. The NPC was kind of slow, so the character carried the NPC back to the party.

This took about 8-hours of in-game time and about 45 minutes of real time, including player discussion, planning, decision-making, and some general fucking around and chatting about unrelated things.

Should stone to flesh and random encounters be banned? Or just basilisks.

[Schleiermacher]

First things first. This is an honest question, with no malice: Are you drunk?


Assuming you're not: The only problem here is that the group (including the DM) doesn't seem to know what kind of D&D game it's playing.

Is this a game where you're the Fellowship on an epic quest, ala Final Fantasy? In that case, random encounters are a waste of everyone's time and generally shouldn't be used -it would be annoying and dramatically inappropriate for them to derail the session like this, and if there's nothing at stake there's no reason to have them.

Or is this the kind of game where you're a bunch of wandering do-gooders and/or murderbums out fighting for riches and fame? In that case a random encounter that throws everyone's plans for a loop is a feature, not a bug, and the problem is that the "run back home and get a healer" plan wasn't considered as dangerous and unfeasible by the group as it probably should have been. After all, if you're wandering through an area where basilisks travel in packs, your Marathon runner would be at risk of random encounters too -and he's probably not well equipped to deal with them alone. For the same reason the stone to flesh caster would probably not be willing to make a house call to basilisk-land without significant additional compensation or some good diplomacy -that's why he's staying in town instead of adventuring himself, after all.

[ACOS]

@ Schleiermacher:
If only more people understood that.
I've never heard it put in to those exact words; but the idea is something that should be understood. This is the kind of stuff that needs to be in every DMG.

[Blicero]

I was skimming through one of those wanky OSR blogs a bit ago, and one of them proposed that "random encounters" or "wandering monsters" be renamed to "chance encounters". Which I think is a pretty good renaming, as far as renamings go. It emphasizes how such an encounter should consist of more than "a wild basilisk appears!" And both of the former terms, I think, have acquired a negative connotation for many people because of grinding in Pokeymans and JRPGs and the like.

[NineInchNall]

This actually sounds like an amusing scenario and sequence of events.

[Occluded Sun]

The most important issue - whether the players had fun - isn't addressed at all.

So: did they enjoy spending that time talking out the situation and finding a solution? If they did, there's no problem whatsoever. If they perceived it as a distraction from the fun parts of the game, then perhaps the issue is more avoiding monsters that can petrify.

[OgreBattle]

I was skimming through one of those wanky OSR blogs a bit ago, and one of them proposed that "random encounters" or "wandering monsters" be renamed to "chance encounters". Which I think is a pretty good renaming, as far as renamings go. It emphasizes how such an encounter should consist of more than "a wild basilisk appears!" And both of the former terms, I think, have acquired a negative connotation for many people because of grinding in Pokeymans and JRPGs and the like.

I like the sound of 'chance encounters', will have to take that idea for my own.

[Dean]

I disagree with anyone saying that this is a DM problem. The Basilisk showing up at CR 5 with an AOE SOD is BS. There have been many solutions brought up about this exact problem over the years and chastising DM's have never been one of them. The solutions I can think of are

1) Toughen up Basilisks to the enormous Harry Potter snake version and have them show up at CR 12 when Stone to Flesh is online
2) Allow Petrification to count as a weird disease which sounds kinda cool anyway. Then let it be treated with Remove Disease at level 5.
3) The 4E solution of making the Basilisks gaze not actually petrify people but slow them and allowing multiple failed saves before actually petrifying. This solution feels lame to me
4) Give Basilisks an ability to cure their own petrification. Basilisk blood or Basilisk liver being able to be turned into a petrification cure sounds cool.
5) Make the petrification only last an hour. If everyone loses the combat the Basilisk eats your rocky corpses and you're dead but if even one person survives then you just hang out for an hour + or - d10 minutes and you've got your party back.

[Axebird]

Pathfinder goes with the blood = cure solution, which I think is pretty solid. Running away from the things is an available option until one of your friends gets stoned, then shit gets real and you need to kill the little monster and tear it apart to heal your buddy.

[angelfromanotherpin]

I disagree with anyone saying that this is a DM problem. The Basilisk showing up at CR 5 with an AOE SOD is BS.

Hey, remember that elves show up with an AOE SOD at level 1?

I mean, FFS, the Basilisk's gaze attack is completely ineffectual if you are more than 30 feet away, and it has a Speed of 20. Kite more. It's also completely ineffectual if you just close your fucking eyes and suck up the miss chance, in which case you will still win because it has abysmal combat numbers for its CR.

[Omegonthesane]

I disagree with anyone saying that this is a DM problem. The Basilisk showing up at CR 5 with an AOE SOD is BS.

Hey, remember that elves show up with an AOE SOD at level 1?

I mean, FFS, the Basilisk's gaze attack is completely ineffectual if you are more than 30 feet away, and it has a Speed of 20. Kite more. It's also completely ineffectual if you just close your fucking eyes and suck up the miss chance, in which case you will still win because it has abysmal combat numbers for its CR.

It isn't so much whether you can avoid the SOD, as that if you fuck up, you aren't high level enough to reverse your fuckup.

Unless Dean intends to complain about enemies with Sleep in a low level encounter, I'm not really seeing the issue.

...Great, now I'm flashing back to Spoony complaining that he got told off at RPGA or wherever for giving his NPC wizards better spells (not inherently retarded) and having them dogpile the PC who was rendered helpless (DM fuckery and not even tactically sensible in-character, but Spoony spun it so that I didn't realise that at the time).

[angelfromanotherpin]

It isn't so much whether you can avoid the SOD, as that if you fuck up, you aren't high level enough to reverse your fuckup.

I don't understand the complaint that mistakes have consequences. That's good, it means that there's some actual weight to your quality of play, and you can distinguish between doing well and doing badly. Were the players upset at all the previous levels that they couldn't personally have rez'd anyone who got axe-crit'd?

[Omegonthesane]

It isn't so much whether you can avoid the SOD, as that if you fuck up, you aren't high level enough to reverse your fuckup.

I don't understand the complaint that mistakes have consequences. That's good, it means that there's some actual weight to your quality of play, and you can distinguish between doing well and doing badly. Were the players upset at all the previous levels that they couldn't personally have rez'd anyone who got axe-crit'd?

Having to roll new characters either as temporary or permanent replacements is a debatable matter of taste at fucking best. I would most definitely sympathise with someone who lost their character permanently to a crit, and how badly I myself reacted to an involuntary character death would almost certainly correlate linearly to how invested I am in the actual game (and thus how reluctant I am to simply swap out the current PC for a new one).

It is simply not fun to be told that you cannot play for the rest of the session because your party cannot logically either de-unplayable-ify your character or hand you a new one in a way that doesn't break people's immersion.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Having to roll new characters either as temporary or permanent replacements is a debatable matter of taste at fucking best.

Dude, it's D&D. That's explicitly the game the player signed up for, so they don't really get to complain. It's like complaining that Yahtzee is random and arbitrary: if that wasn't to their taste, they should have been playing something else.

[Dean]

I don't understand the complaint that mistakes have consequences. That's good, it means that there's some actual weight to your quality of play, and you can distinguish between doing well and doing badly.

Dude do fuck off. Read any of the half a dozen 30 page long threads about how D&D is not a game of skill and one die roll character death for characters that take hours to make is retarded.

You want to play a game that puts weight on your quality of play go play club chess. You're pretending to be an Elf Princess in your basement with all your friends, that's as far removed from games of skill as possible.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Fuck off yourself, Dean. D&D is neither chess nor 2-Up, skill and chance both play a part, and one of the elements of skill is reducing the extent to which chance can screw you. For instance, if the Basilisk doesn't start its turn sufficiently close to you, there is actually no luck shitty enough to end you because there is no roll in the first place.

Anyway, I would think long and hard before solving the problem of inadequate replacement character mechanisms by removing lasting consequences. Maybe by including an adequate replacement character mechanism? Just a thought.

[Dogbert]

Random encounters are only good for beer&pretzels sessions when the party has nothing better to do.

When the group is following specific objectives, however, they're annoying as all hell as all they do it keep the players from what they -actually want to do-.

[hamstertamer]

I don't understand the complaint that mistakes have consequences. That's good, it means that there's some actual weight to your quality of play, and you can distinguish between doing well and doing badly.

Dude do fuck off. Read any of the half a dozen 30 page long threads about how D&D is not a game of skill and one die roll character death for characters that take hours to make is retarded.

You want to play a game that puts weight on your quality of play go play club chess. You're pretending to be an Elf Princess in your basement with all your friends, that's as far removed from games of skill as possible.

Nope, "pretending to be an ELF Princess" or pretending to be your character as always been an optional part of the game. And to be honest you don't need any rules book for "pretending to be an ELF princess," you can literally play make believe without and published rules, or even self-made rules. D&D has always been a game of rules and has had consequences for failure, even death of a PC. Taking that away changes the game in fundamental way. And if you are someone that takes hours to make a character then you are a idiot that shouldn't ever play TTRPGS ever. I can make complete HERO system character in twenty minutes or less. D&D, even 3rd edition, is easy mode comparatively.

[hamstertamer]

Random encounters are only good for beer&pretzels sessions when the party has nothing better to do.

When the group is following specific objectives, however, they're annoying as all hell as all they do it keep the players from what they -actually want to do-.

Nah, Random encounters are great for making the world feel real and unpredictable. When the PCs go into the "deep dark woods" they shouldn't be able to expect pre-made encounters. And if they know the DM plays with random encounters, they really will get that feeling of the unknown. Random encounters also kills the 5 minute work day. I've never played a game of D&D where resting wasn't an event in it's self. Tying up horses, choosing fire watch, setting up precautions, so we never stayed in dangerous areas to rest unless we had to.

[Blicero]

When the group is following specific objectives, however, they're annoying as all hell as all they do it keep the players from what they -actually want to do-.

What if the specific objective is "explore the cavern system" or "traverse the desert"?

[Kaelik]

Random encounters also kills the 5 minute work day. I've never played a game of D&D where resting wasn't an event in it's self. Tying up horses, choosing fire watch, setting up precautions, so we never stayed in dangerous areas to rest unless we had to.higher than level 5.

Fixed that for you.

[Dogbert]

What if the specific objective is "explore the cavern system" or "traverse the desert"?

It's totally valid having a "procedurally generated dungeon/environment," but then I hope we agree that, in that case, either you make everything random or you keep the random encounters limited to easy stuff. You don't get to roll a dracolich or a pack of bodaks in a dungeon where you put a beholder and a dragon as "boss encounters." Also, if we're taking the Diablo route, the dungeon better has procedurally generated treasure as well, because for some reason all the neckbeards who use "organic" as a mantra and fap to fantasies of having the party run through the whole Temple of Elemental Evil on a single sitting without rest or spells tend to ignore basic common sense tenets such as "risk vs. reward."

Basic common sense: Unless the party has a place to camp inside the dungeon already secured, only an idiot keeps venturing forth and spending resources in terra incognita past the Point of No Return.

Adding random encounters does nothing about the 5 Minute Workday except making it even shorter, because now you also have to factor in your delve trips enough resources to account for a safe returns to camp.

[Omegonthesane]

Having to roll new characters either as temporary or permanent replacements is a debatable matter of taste at fucking best.

Dude, it's D&D. That's explicitly the game the player signed up for, so they don't really get to complain. It's like complaining that Yahtzee is random and arbitrary: if that wasn't to their taste, they should have been playing something else.

I don't know what strange game you've played but the last few times I played D&D death by luck was not a risk we were expected to deal with. There's a reason many players start at level 2 or 3, at a point when "crit from a crossbow" is no longer a death effect, and the same logic extends to facing Save-or-Die effects without the means to reverse Death in downtime.

[Dean]

D&D has always been a game of rules and has had consequences for failure, even death

Your opinion on this is the special kind of wrong that is intensely boring. You've put no thought into what you're saying so you will only be able to say uninteresting things. We've all talked about the failures of "Death as punishment" in rpgs, a million times. Every new idiot ends up making a thread about how D&D is totally a game of skill and they're CRUSHING it and that's why their characters personally never die but death needs to exist to punish all the idiots who don't have their sweet skills. Before starting your own predictable rant go read those threads. Here, I will assemble some in increasing order of relevance

Here is a thread where Elensarr, a known idiot, talks about how he wants to make a game setting for real men where people die all the time unless they play to the hilt. His basic problem is he can't understand that a game with a real chance of death or TPK every battle WILL end in death and TPK. What he want's isn't actually a real chance of death he wants to imagine he's winning a game with objective difficulty and is a total badass even while pretending to be an elf with all his friends. People mock him for being an idiot.

Here is a thread where Shadow Balls, a known idiot, talks about how his characters don't die because he's a real man who plays the game for real, and all the little pansies who talk about not wanting their characters to die should just nut up and play the game on hard mode like him. People mock him for being an idiot.

Here's Roy, a troll, doing the same thing. Talking about how his game is hard mode and he never dies cause he's great but D&D is totally a game with real difficulty so death should be in it even though he never deals with it. People mock him for being an idiot.

Here's Archmage, not a troll or idiot, talking about how TTRPG's aren't games with objective difficulties.

You don't have to read any of these but doing so would let you say that, while your position is the same ignorant unexamined bullshit that every RPGnet troglodyte thinks, it's at least the opinion of someone who's investigated the subject.

And if you are someone that takes hours to make a character then you are a idiot that shouldn't ever play TTRPGS ever. I can make complete HERO system character in twenty minutes or less. D&D, even 3rd edition, is easy mode comparatively.

You play on hardmode and are a total system master. Too badass for me bro.

[hogarth]

Pathfinder goes with the blood = cure solution, which I think is pretty solid.

It's okay, as long as your GM is soft-hearted enough to let you know that solution without having to make a Knowledge: Monsters check.