TOPIC: The giant eye monster fight was wrong

Incognito wrote:

jedibcg wrote:

Incognito wrote:

Jeff321 wrote:

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

My beginner's run (me + 9 newbies) was pretty much that. I don't believe we passed a single save. I (rogue) just had to keep counting my gold the whole time.

Still had fun while we got completely owned. Not a big deal, it's the final room anyway.

I lost initiative for my Nightmare party 3 times and failed the Beholder saving throw another 2 or 3 times. Kept rolling 1-5's. Since I am sympathetic towards the monsters, I didn't mind - but my party members were mad at me!

Did you at least warn the 3rd party how terrible your last two rolls were?

Nope!

My party members begged that I not roll the saving throws again. I insisted however!

HAHAHAHA! I can back up this claim.

No one *physically* tried to wrestle the dice out of Eric's hands .. but I few folks looked like they wanted to give it a try ..

Kaledor wrote:

Chris Von Wahlde wrote:

jedibcg wrote: anyone try mind blank to remove and/or prevent the effects of the ray? I don't know that it would work but it seems to should allow some characters to resume combat like the rogue, cleric and druid

We did... it worked wonderfully

We tried it and it did not work... maybe because it was a NM run?

or

Lack of consistency?

Mind Blank should of worked as long as the caster was not silenced, and both the caster and target were not in the anti-magic field. I honestly don't remember anyone trying, maybe one, it's a blur. Gencon goes by too fast.

Steve wrote:

Druegar wrote:

Incognito wrote: Was it intended that you would only get 3 rounds of combat?

no
On rounds 4, 7, etc. the cycle would repeat.

*grumble*

I had a PUG run where the DM told us (with a few minutes left in the room) that since we didn't kill it on round three we 'lost' the fight.

I honestly had no frame of reference, because on the prior runs - we had generally killed it by round three.

I had one group get in 12 rounds of combat, most of them entered the room dead, but the 4 that remained were really quick.

Most nightmare groups had it dead in 2-3 rounds, the most damage I saw in one round was around 500 or so. One group slid every slider (at least 7 of them) in a tight cluster on the 18,19, and 20. It would be difficult to place them manually like that no less slide them. We need pinball machine bumpers and magnets.

I would like to see actual twenty sided dice vs spindowns in the dungeon. It is very easy to roll low or high based on the clusters on the die faces.

balthasar wrote: I would like to see actual twenty sided dice vs spindowns in the dungeon. It is very easy to roll low or high based on the clusters on the die faces.

I have requested this from Jeff in the past.

Apparently, large normal twenty-sided dice are either non-existent or extremely hard to find. Unfortunately, count down dice is what is readily available.

Incognito wrote:

balthasar wrote: I would like to see actual twenty sided dice vs spindowns in the dungeon. It is very easy to roll low or high based on the clusters on the die faces.

I have requested this from Jeff in the past.

Apparently, large normal twenty-sided dice are either non-existent or extremely hard to find. Unfortunately, count down dice is what is readily available.

Yeah I haven't seen them that big either, that aren't made of foam. I have a couple about half that size. Which is still pretty big, and probably good enough, if they wanted to go that route.

We aren't supposed to kill normal characters in the first half of the dungeon.

I'm told some DMs keep unlucky normal players alive by rolling some misses on purpose, using the properties of spin-down dice. It beats trying to get away with "oh, this 20 is a miss because reasons. You wouldn't understand..."

But that's not how we roll in Grind. So to speak.

It's not ideal, but rolls with a spin down die are essentially random, unless the DM or cagey player doesn't want them to be.

It would probably be easier to build dice towers than find big custom dice, unless some 3D-printer-equipped person wanted to make some. I'm guessing it's not easy to balance them though, which defeats the purpose.