PHILIP TAYLOR's page

Sure most Dm’s play fair,
Most never pull punches unless absolutely necessary,
And some even cast the dice and let them fall where they will….

Some DM’s occasionally allow the gloves come off,
Most DM’s play their NPC’s as challenging as their stats allow,
And some DM’s spread their reputation as a Total Party Killer…..

But all DM’s at some time have been down right evil towards the PC’s
Nasty, filthy evil with great big fangs and smelly eldritch warts!
Yes! You know who you are.
Come on fess up and spill the beans….You know you want to…

Tell us about the time you were really evil towards your unsuspecting players.

I had such a moment last night in the Three Faces of Evil. The party carefully approached the chamber with the waiting skeletons in the Hextorite temple. The players didn’t use the knock code to open the door and so the skeletons had a free surprise round. The scout in the party who was considered a front line fighter steamed into the room on his own, the other party members retreated back down the corridor 5ft, Why? Who knows? I took advantage

So the skeletons got a surprise round they move to surround the lone scout while one went to alert the six waiting cultists and one went to alert the two tieflings.

The evil part
The skeletons attacked but one of them had a really evil purpose to fullfill, it shut the door, locked it and left the key in the lock effectively cutting off the scout from the rest of the party.

More evil
The rest of the party had to spend the next few rounds trying to break the door down, when they finaly got the door down their friend was still alive, barely, however the cultists and tieflings were now joining the frey with one of the cultists untying the padlocked door to unleash the beast, (a Dire Lion in my campaign),

And still more evil
The teiflings then cast darkness on the whole melee, chaos ensued as I removed the minis onto a hidden board so that the players were playing blind. The players really feared for their PC’s lives last knight and we almost had a TPK! Awesome.

Hi
the title pretty much says it all.

how do you pronounce Aaqa?
i can't get it to roll of the tongue.

cheers Phil

Hi
I’m about to start running age of worms and I am just preparing my campaign handout for the players. I was looking for some advise on problem that has dogged my group for a long time now. Character Death.

The problem arises when you are in the middle of a campaign or adventure and one or all of the party members dies What level does the player introduce his new character.? Or party.

Basically I don’t want to have to shelf the adventure due to Total Party Death or constantly scale the adventures down to give the party a reasonable chance.

My group has always start afresh with a new character at one level lower than the party average, but players still grumble at the lost levels saying that they haven’t earned those levels and feel like they are cheating.

So I was toying with this idea that the character or party roll up the same level as they were but with zero XP points, then they have to earn the required XP to reach the next level as normal. I think this would allow the character to survive along side the existing characters (or a new party to survive the level of the adventure) long enough to earn the required XP given the self correcting nature of the system. I am aware that may take some time.

What are your thoughts and best practices on this topic?
I would like to present a few tried and tested methods to my group before we decide

Phil.T