I play a one-shot yesterday in which their was an incurable disease that was certainly fatal and delivered by monster melee attacks. I was the party fighter and the recipient of said attacks. I could fail only on a 1....and rolled the 1. Then long slow heroic death.
I've always struggled with this outcome: in RA, in one shots and in home games. I get raising the intensity of threat attempt by raising the stakes, but mechanically, some combats cannot be avoided or fought so that the melee can actually avoid melee.
I feel like there are rarely alternatives that target other classes, like a fatal spellplague if you cast a spell in a certain area.
Anyone else have similar experiences?
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I take it this was a homebrew? Because I'll say it flat out: Giving an incurable disease to monsters to dole out through melee attacks is bad GMing. It's basically saying, "I want my PCs' front liners to die."
Homebrew.
I've been mulling over this in my head and I tend to agree. I can't think of anything I've written or DM'ed that had this effect. Even in the RA campaign, there were cures possible with magic.
I think I get the story idea that was being intended: you have to make choices and their are consequences...terminal consequences.
I think it just feels like an intention that belongs in a Philsophy class, not an adventure game.
I did the best I could with it. My character returned to the infected town and quarantined himself with the other infected, caring for them until we all dissolved into goop.
Actually, you/your character handled it beautifully.
It wasn't even bad GMing, probably.
If it really was truly incurable, not so good.
It was easy to resist, only an auto-fail fails, somewhat mitigates this.
With the following, remember, I have no knowledge of party level/resources, I assume the party is at least experienced enough for you to have formed a strong attachment.
Now, what did the party do to verify there was no cure?
What if a Cure Disease would have fixed it up fine, if you had just used a cup of tea as
part of its components?
Did you try forced reincarnate to put the victim in an unaffected/uninfected body?
Would you have had the resources to petrify the infected to stop the disease progression until you could have worked out a solution?
Catching the disease should have been the beginning, not the end.
Our party was the investigation team from a healer's guild. We gathered all of the BBEG's notes and sent them to the guild, along with our wizard, who was not infected.
The lack of cure was DM fiat, clearly communicated. Our party attempted many cure ideas before this. The ending implied that bigger better people would eventually cure the illness, but not in time for anyone in the city.
We were limited to PC level 3 and below resources, so we could not try the big boys like heal and greater restoration.
Two of us died, both the melees, the thief and the fighter. I failed on a natural 1 and thief failed on something in the 10 range.
The cleric stayed behind on the illness island to prevent other ships from landing there, via manning a lighthouse. I give her a 50/50 of getting infected on the island. She's isolated and well stocked, but the island is a cess pool.
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OK, you all handled it better than the GM had any right to expect. Kudos.
In my games I gave the players boons for heroic self-sacrifice when they created their new characters. Not for missing the roll, but for how the character dealt with it afterward.
If the GM does something like this, great, if not, pffft.
Thanks, Daw!
I tried to put myself in a CDC apocalypse-management mindset, like I was losing a game of Pandemic.
I feel like there are rarely alternatives that target other classes, like a fatal spellplague if you cast a spell in a certain area.
As DM, I once wrote an encounter that was weighted against casters.
Scene: Unholy temple w/some undead.
Curse: Every spell cast caused an equal summon undead X spell.
The more they relied on spells, the more undead they had to fight.
The bigger the spell used, the tougher undead they had to fight.
It was the martials that saved the day, as they thinned the undead without causing more to arrive.
/cevah
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To be fair though, disease and poison saving throws are ridiculously easy to pass.
Unless you are subject to a lot of them; then it becomes 'roll until you fail'.
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A lot of people, including me now that I think about it, assumes that playing a melee fighter means being willing to die for the team. That's just your role, keep the casters alive.
The melee fighter's job isn't to die for the team, it's to take a giant club to the face because they won't die as a result, but the wizard would. It might look like altruism, and it can be rewarding to play an altruistic meat shield, but really it doesn't have to be anything more than good tactics.
I don't think disease and poison are intended to target melee types. After all, the wizard could get forced into melee and in that event is much more likely to fail the save. Compare a defensive ability that hurts characters that hit the monster with a melee attack. It's just that in practice the melee types take so many more attacks that they do tend to be hurt by these things more often. And the nastier the rider, the less fair that is. When the threat in question is a save or die, without access to Raise Dead... if this wasn't a one shot I'd be pretty upset.
It certainly would be interesting to have more caster-specific threats, but it might also help if it were easier for melee types to be effective at range so they'd have more tactical options in encounters where melee is extra dangerous - and of course give them some chance to prevent the threat from closing. And it might balance out the "meat shield" perception if casters had a way to intercept magical threats in the same way that melee types can intercept physical threats (serving as a "mind shield" for a low will save fighter).
Honestly if this was a one shot as you said then I find it totally fine.
You stated the result was a long slow heroic death and it is not like your DM is doing this in an ongoing campaign that killed a character that you have been playing for months or years.
I mean come on, adventuring is dangerous and sometimes adventurers die. Any fighter worth the name should have a ranged weapon option along with a melee option. At worst you can make the monster chase you around in circles while the party pelts it with spells and/or ranged attacks. Or you could have gone full defensive in combat to boost your AC as much as possible to tie it up while your party killed it if melee was the sole option.
One of those times that Combat Expertise would have been darned helpful.
And you yourself said you had a 95% chance of surviving the disease attack. Sorry but in this case I would state 'stuff happens'.
It is not like you lost a long term campaign character you been playing for months (or longer). You lost a character in a one shot. Appreciate the story and move on.
Permanent death is always a possible outcome in adventuring. You just got really unlucky.
Like the time my very first Paladin was Dominated by a mind flayer and rolled two natural 1's in a row when it told me to cut my own throat and bleed to death. Stuff happens.
I feel like there are rarely alternatives that target other classes, like a fatal spellplague if you cast a spell in a certain area.
See I have problems with this kind of thinking. It assumes that every other character there was not in equal danger from this creature as you were. Was there somehow something that made it impossible for the monster that attacked you to attack anyone else in the party? Because if not then generally at level 3, fighters usually have the single best chance to survive a melee based fortitude save of anyone in the game. At that level they often have the best HP and AC of any class and the best fort saves as well (except for the Paladin of course). If that thing had gone after say your wizard for example (assuming you had such) they would have been in a much worse position than you by far with a lower AC, less HP and far worse fort save.
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It's not impossible for the monster to attack anyone else in the party, but melee characters generally take more melee hits. It's unusual in my group for a ranged or caster PC to get a poison or disease from monster attacks but even the tanky melee characters are regularly affected due to making maybe five times as many saves (heck, the party paladin almost died of Con poison last session). And melee characters aren't always tanks - caster priests and archers often have very solid AC and Fort saves compared to for example the rogue that OP mentioned. The fighter was unlucky. The rogue was just plain hosed.
You could fight defensively or use a ranged weapon. But then the decrease in damage you're dealing means the monster doesn't die quite as fast, gets a few more attacks in. Maybe some of these extra attacks hit you and you end up failing a save anyway. If you're keeping your distance, maybe it gets at one of the squishier characters who you'd normally be shielding. Or maybe you just spend several rounds saying "I use the total defense action" and not having a whole lot of fun.
Any way you slice it, more painful for melee players.
Like the time my very first Paladin was Dominated by a mind flayer and rolled two natural 1's in a row when it told me to cut my own throat and bleed to death. Stuff happens.
Stuff does happen, but Dominate-Suicide doesn't:
Obviously self-destructive orders are not carried out.
Stuff does happen, but Dominate-Suicide doesn't:Obviously self-destructive orders are not carried out.
Yeah that line did not exist back in AD&D when this happened heheh. Back then 'Domination' was a psionic power and not a even a spell. Orders that were self destructive meant the psionic just had to spend 2-3 times more psionic points to dominate the creature for that round.
The GM was being nice when he gave me a second save to resist since I was a paladin and suicide would be so antithetical to my beliefs.
There is a reason folks were scared of Mind Flayers back in the day.