TOPIC: The giant eye monster fight was wrong

Yes, it's eyebeams were right from the point of view of stock DnD, but it was awful when viewed from a game design or even a customer retention point of view.

In a three round fight, the wizards were silenced, silenced, and anti-magic'd. And the monster was immune to wands. You just don't make AI that can stunlock a player like that. Have the effect be "Getting the skill check right does normal damage, and wrong does no damage." Then your players will get to play, and their last memory is "That was awesome" not "Why am I here?"

True
Dungeon is based off D&D. That doesn't mean it had to follow D&D rules.
Sorry you had a
Bad time

What if the monster
Is immune to physical damage. Then the fighter classes suffer. That is why True dungeon is a
Group. Not individual game

That's why True Dungeon hinges on being a team game. If players get knocked out others should be able to step up and carry the burden until others come back. That's what it's all about.

Actually it was awesome. The effects were well thought out.

Wrong would have been the antimagic ray effecting the entire party the entire fight.

You could still participate. While a wizard might not have much direct success at melee, you still could bump pucks into better position.

For that matter you could have not had a Wizard in the party at all. The name of the module was a pretty good hint that magic would be negated to some degree. We chose not to take a Wizard on the run I coordinated for Team Synergy.

And remember wizards can slide pucks. Might not do a ton of damage but don't underestimate the power of bumping someone into a hit when they were missing or into a 20!

I am sorry you didn't enjoy the fight as much as I did.

I had a number of runs on the last monster even as Wizard and there was never an occurrence of being silenced, silenced, and in anti magic (rinse and repeat). There was only 1 round of 3 where a class had issues unless the monster made a ray attack on a player and that player failed their save (can't always boost damage have to be defensive too).

Although I don't do skill checks I believe it was that the monster had spell resistance and on a d20 an even means your spell didn't penetrate and on an odd it did (DM could have done 1-10, and 11+ accordingly). The skill check just adjusted the amount of damage. Again I can't say for sure because I haven't read the module but I am just stating my experience with 7 runs against that monster.

Ed

I loved the Beholder. My groups had no real problems during the combat. Everyone found something to do (minus one combat where the Rogue just stood there counting her gold). I play the Elf Wizard (combat based) so being silenced didn't hurt me at all... it's about teamwork.

I agree with you, fights/mechanics that take people out of the game are sub optimal. And it can be disheartening to feel like the last combat was an unbreakable wall. Lord knows I felt like that my first year vs the dragon. Almost made me not want to stick around actually.

But honestly you kind of just get used to the last room bosses being a little back breaking. If nothing else they are always a spectacular battle and that difficulty, the likelihood of defeat is (for me at least)what makes the victories all the more meaningful.

One thing to remember is the beholder fight was an approximation given the TD format. In D&D everyone would roll independent saving throws, and statistically several characters would pass. Had we done this all we would be doing is rolling dice.

I had one group roll 1, 2, 2, 1, 5 for their saves, ugh.

I do agree that effects that cause characters to lose control and do nothing are generally bad, such as stun locking from *Q$&^##&*^ rogues in mmos.

This was a tough monster to fit into the format and time-frame of a 12 minute room, the only thing that made it possible was the wall chart. I think they did a good job with the design but, personally I would of made it remove players abilities less and kill them more. Don't forget they removed the deadliest rays from the beholders arsenal. Designing combats for the TD format is difficult and I don't envy making those decisions only to hear how we all "would of done it better".

In 1st ed. D&D beholders were mage killers, a decent mage alone had almost zero chance of defeating a beholder. They got the look dead on though, awesome job with the puppet.

Sorry you didn't have fun there, I hope you saw enough in the rest of the dungeon to maybe give TD another shot.

There are usually "hosers" in true dungeon at some point, be it for melee, ranged, or spellcasting - so that's part of the game, but I agree being helpless to the end boss doesn't make for good fun.

As others have pointed out, one think Wizards can always do is slide a puck late and try to bump other people onto better numbers. It's surprisingly effective.

GaryM wrote: And remember wizards can slide pucks. Might not do a ton of damage but don't underestimate the power of bumping someone into a hit when they were missing or into a 20!

I play an Elf Wizard and after getting off my best spells in round 1 was silenced and told it would remain in effect for the rest of the combat. Undaunted I started to slide. What is mentioned above is exactly what can happen. Our first three sliders all came up short and the path to hitting the higher numbers was blocked. What happened next wasn't planned, but I just threw a hard slide down the middle. I knocked two pucks out of the way and my puck deflected into the 16 for a hit. The next two sliders hit a 19 and 20 each and we killed the beholder. So being silenced didn't make me feel ineffective or useless.

Graham Smallwood wrote: In a three round fight, the wizards were silenced, silenced, and anti-magic'd.

Elf wizard should have been silenced only on round 2 and human wizard on round 3. I could see resistance making a lot of spells less effective (charm of the cabal could help outside of having eldritch items). But you shouldn't have been stun locked. Even with resistances there is a spell to boost a teammate's AC and range hit and you could use some sliding spells while bumping others. If your description is meant to be accurate then a DM may have been a bit off.

And since Dave commented after I started, the Beholder's main eye was supposed to be an anti-magic effect that swept across the room, affecting a different group of players each round. You should only be silenced 1 round. Sounds like more cases of differing DM rulings and interpretations. Even in D&D the anti-magic effect isn't permanent, only while the gaze is focused on you.