Thornborn wrote:
Tolkein's elves didn't get described as sleeping, they were described as having a 'faraway look in the evenings', which could have meant a lot of things, but was interpreted as what came to be reverie.
And your GM was salvaging the win he'd already awarded himself.
Elves being immune to sleep is not in most of the games I have played, so forgive me as the silly GM, I will chime in.
First, I appreciate Matt telling me he posted this, and I was curious to know what others thought. No one even questioned it until the Magus kept failing the save, and I did not know he was an elf to start with nor was it brought up until later. It was on his 3rd or 4th round of failing the save and getting woke up that Matt or the player mentioned he was an elf.
Waking Rune is a complex adventure and there is a lot going on. I spent well over 50 hours prepping the event and even used dungeon tiles to try and create the room. I thought I was being nice to them even casting cloak of dreams instead of something more direct like chain lightning again. I stated at the time, I had planned on casting repulsion, but did cloak of dreams because I had it printed out already, and it made more sense for the baddie's intent. Outsiders are not immune to sleep and the intentions of the baddie is to eat an outsider, putting them to sleep would have nearly guaranteed that, repelling them would not have.
There is no "win I awarded myself", you can ask anyone who played the game, I had kid gloves on so people could even have fun. Matt fully expected to die. I could have killed the party if I wanted to, but that is not fun or sporting. There is no lessen learned for getting it handed to you, besides people not wanting to play and feeling that they had no chance or "try harder" unless you consider power game or plan better as a lessen. The party did well for the most part, even taking down all runes, they just did not have enough damage. Really only one serious damage dealing character and a few batman's.
When it was brought up, after several rounds I did not stop and read on elves, I do not have an elf character, and it was not "sleep". On the fly I said no, as it made no difference because the battle was well in hand for them at the time. Matt nor the player argued it and if it did lead to the character death I would have dealt with it in the players favor. We discuss these things after the game and review the rules as needed. Players are free to pull references instead of stopping the game for the GM to do it, which I loathe.
Upon reading the elven racial rules, Elves are immune to magic sleep effects. Had the player said something maybe it would have been different, not 3 rounds after the fact and in passing by another player. What did happen after the game is the player realized his will save was wrong.
We tease the player all the time for things like this happening to his character and it was amusing at the time. No one even the player felt robbed. I apologized to him and as I said I believe he would be immune upon reading the rules, but he should have said something to start with.
