Redress

[Andrew008]

I played #9-20 Fury of the Final Blade (subtier 10-11) at the weekend and the second fight went as follows:

Spoiler:

As the prisoners were being walked out, the three creatures appeared and acted in a surprise round.

The Banshee did its wail @ DC 23 for 140 points of damage, immediately killing two characters and all of the prisoners.

The fight continued for a couple of rounds. One more character was killed, and the other two fled.

Sheets were issued for 1 XP, 0 PP, 0 gold. Two of the downed characters spent to be raised, one didn't.

From talking to players from other tables after the game, I understand that perhaps the creatures were not run correctly.

Should there be/can there be redress for something like this?

[Blake's Tiger]

Talk to: the GM, if not satisfied, the event’s VA/VL, if not satisfied, the local VC, and if still not satisfied, the Regional VC.

Did I leave out any steps?

[Partizanski]

Blake's Tiger wrote:

Talk to: the GM, if not satisfied, the event’s VA/VL, if not satisfied, the local VC, and if still not satisfied, the Regional VC.

Did I leave out any steps?

These are the correct steps.

I ran this recently, and if the banshee did wail on its first turn (its a full-round action so it could not have done it in the surprise round), then it was run incorrectly according to the tactics of the scenario.

[Andrew008]

I know things can be sent up the VO chain.

I wanted to ask generally, if it's possible for a chronicle to be amended or voided after a game in event of a mistake?

And specifically, for anyone who has read/GM'd #9-20, whether this warrants redress?

[Philippe Lam]

Depends of the course of action of the party.

Spoiler:

If the escape was possible in one single round, better that than seeing the prisoners escape.

That case would allow the GM to modify the tactics of the monsters. But clearly if the first fight already have been solved, in all cases the GM should have written the reward from the first fight at least. If it didn't happen like what written in the spoiler, it's difficult to predict how the party would have fared in that fight and the last one (no guarantee of success so would depend on the VO's decision).

[Blake's Tiger]

Andrew008 wrote:

I wanted to ask generally, if it's possible for a chronicle to be amended or voided after a game in event of a mistake?

Yes, any of those are potential remedies that a VO can provide in response to a significant mistake that affected the prestige gained or resulted in character death.

[Andrew008]

Philippe Lam wrote:

Depends of the course of action of the party.

** spoiler omitted **

That case would allow the GM to modify the tactics of the monsters. But clearly if the first fight already have been solved, in all cases the GM should have written the reward from the first fight at least. If it didn't happen like what written in the spoiler, it's difficult to predict how the party would have fared in that fight and the last one (no guarantee of success so would depend on the VO's decision).

The first fight had already been solved with violence.

The party had talked to the prisoners for a bit to establish who they were. Then, as soon as they were walked out, the
creatures appeared in the courtyard bit. I suppose escape is always possible in a single round at 10-11, but the party
weren't in the middle of casting teleport or anything of that nature.

[Philippe Lam]

Spoiler:

There's also the possibility of breaking the walls enough to create a gap, but I'm supposing it probably wasn't the case as there's speaking about the courtyard.

[JDDyslexia]

Philippe Lam wrote:

Depends of the course of action of the party.

** spoiler omitted **

That case would allow the GM to modify the tactics of the monsters. But clearly if the first fight already have been solved, in all cases the GM should have written the reward from the first fight at least. If it didn't happen like what written in the spoiler, it's difficult to predict how the party would have fared in that fight and the last one (no guarantee of success so would depend on the VO's decision).

This is not true, here.

10/11 Tactics:

Read the tactics for the pakalchis. It gives a specific reason why they instruct the banshee to withhold its wail and explains why the banshee's tactics say it only wails if the pakalchis are dead. There's no level of adjustment here for how the party is doing. It's more important to the pakalchis that the prisoners' deaths are a spectacle, rather than prevent escape outright.

Also, from a few paragraphs earlier:

Page 16:

Moving the Andorens out of the prison proves more
complicated than simply motivating the prisoners: the prison’s ethereal and undead guardians don’t take kindly to the PCs’ interfering in their own delights, and they move to confront the party as soon as the PCs try to bring the prisoners from the cell blocks into area A9. Violaine has forbidden the creatures from harming the prisoners, an edict which the sahkils follow and enforce upon the undead, though left to their own devices, the undead attack without regard for who gets harmed in the process.

To summarize, that's two major points where having the wail go off immediately is in direct conflict with the tactics and motiviation of the creatures.

[Philippe Lam]

Spoiler:

I wrote that knowing there's the pakalchis and Citizen Dread.

Might be in the wrong, but I'm merely supposing what a GM might do, and that would still be defendeable even with chain of command escalation. Now doing it can't be advocated.

[Belafon]

Redress:

Redress is a slippery slope. It certainly happens that the GM sometimes misses/misreads qualifiers the author put in to keep the challenge down to an appropriate level. Sometimes as huge as missing which side a creature should have been fighting on “he was supposed to be an ally?” and through forgetting to do the 4-player adjustment (all the way to the outlandish example of “I read it afterwards, and the GM added wrong, a 26 hit me but a 25 wouldn’t have. Then I wouldn’t have needed to make the paralysis save, then...”) , so it’s something most VOs are reluctant to get involved in short of outright malfeasance or utter incompetence on the part of the GM.

The first step is always to talk to the GM first. Point out the items others have said in this thread. Make sure you have a concrete and reasonable remedy to request. In this case, I think simply raising/restoring everyone without cost is the cleanest solution (though of course disappointing that you didn’t get to finish the scenario). The GM may be apologetic and may either retcon it or ask a VO for approval to retcon it.

[Ascalaphus]

Yeah I agree with Kevin; it's not always easy to judge these things.

In this particular case though, the scenario has strong guardrails in it to stop the monsters from targeting/AoEing the NPCs in it (it would be an impossible challenge otherwise). Not following such a major explicit tactic and it resulting in major fallout is a good reason for review and redress.

I mean, there's plenty of reasons it can happen. Brain fart. Con fatigue. Missed a crucial sentence or two in a lot of text. All of those are good-faith reasons but it's still a big thing for the players. So it should be fixed.

On the sliding scale of "mistakes with consequences" this one is fairly high up. We can't fix every small goof but we should fix the big ones.

[Andrew008]

Kevin Willis wrote:

Redress:

Redress is a slippery slope. It certainly happens that the GM sometimes misses/misreads qualifiers the author put in to keep the challenge down to an appropriate level. Sometimes as huge as missing which side a creature should have been fighting on “he was supposed to be an ally?” and through forgetting to do the 4-player adjustment (all the way to the outlandish example of “I read it afterwards, and the GM added wrong, a 26 hit me but a 25 wouldn’t have. Then I wouldn’t have needed to make the paralysis save, then...”) , so it’s something most VOs are reluctant to get involved in short of outright malfeasance or utter incompetence on the part of the GM.

The first step is always to talk to the GM first. Point out the items others have said in this thread. Make sure you have a concrete and reasonable remedy to request. In this case, I think simply raising/restoring everyone without cost is the cleanest solution (though of course disappointing that you didn’t get to finish the scenario). The GM may be apologetic and may either retcon it or ask a VO for approval to retcon it.

Thanks. That was more or less what I wanted to know.

The GM was a good guy, and ran a good game. While the outcome was big (insta-killing two PCs), I'm not sure the error
(missing some bits to tone down an encounter) was.

I'll leave it there.