Our party was nearly massacred by a troll because the GM flumphed my Recall Knowledge checks.
I was playing a 5th-level sorcerer with produce flame when our party encountered the lone beast.
I attempted Recall Knowledge and the GM told me that it was weak against fire and had regeneration that could be stopped by fire. Hurray.
So I laid on produce flame round after round doing an average of 21 damage generally. The troll never died. After it got a couple of crits on the party, we were all forced to flee for our lives.
So why did that happen, crits aside? In large part it was because my turn immediately preceded the troll's turn, and because the GM neglected to state that the fire turns off the regeneration UNTIL THE END OF THE TROLL'S NEXT TURN. So in effect, it's regeneration would switch off, then immediately switch back on before anyone could do anything about it.
Had I known that, I would have delayed until after the troll's turn and then turned off his regeneration, allowing the rest of the party to get their hits in while the regeneration was down and actually kill the monster.
I know some GMs hate to give their players what they consider "meta info" but please, please be absolutely clear with your players on how things work, else you're just leading the party to its next TPK despite their successful rolls.
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I hate to break this to you RD, but if your GM was having the Troll regen while you were hitting it with produce flame every round, he hosed you.
This monster regains the listed number of Hit Points each round at the beginning of its turn. Its dying condition never increases beyond dying 3 as long as its regeneration is active. However, if it takes damage of a type listed in the regeneration entry, its regeneration deactivates until the end of its next turn. Deactivate the regeneration before applying any damage of a listed type, since that damage might kill the monster by bringing it to dying 4.
Regeneration triggers at the Start of a creatures turn. You deactivate it until the End of it's next turn.
If you hit it every round with fire, that means it would never have a chance to regenerate, barring any misses.
Edit: I understand a bit better what happened after a second read. The GM ruled that the Troll couldn't be dropped by lethal damage because it's regeneration was still active. And that is true... until your turn comes up again, and you burn it. As soon as you apply that fire damage, assuming it took enough damage from the rest of the party to die, it dies.
It doesn't matter that it's Regen would turn on at the end of it's next turn, because it's already dead.
Double Edit to avoid Double Post: The other option is that you actually failed your recall knowledge, and it turned out to be a Cavern Troll, which requires either Acid or Sonic damage to deactivate it's regeneration, meaning the Fire was just doing regular damage.
Still, at some point you would beat the troll unconscious, unless the party just wasn't doing enough damage.
Yeah as Beowulf said, seems like your GM flubbed the rules (happens to the best of us sadly)
That said, being clear about how something works is also worthwhile, but in this case it wouldn't have changed that the GM got it wrong.
On the disclaimer side of things, there was a point in time where I treated grab as if it were improved grab and such, so any creature with a grab action attached to a strike was just getting a free grab... I appologised to my players profusely after I realised my mistake though.
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It sounds like the GM took 'end of turn' to be when the initiative count resets rather than 'when your actions end and the next creature can act': This makes a big difference in situations like this. Source
Core Rulebook pg. 469 2.0
End any effects that last until the end of your turn. For example, spells with a sustained duration end at the end of your turn unless you used the Sustain a Spell action during your turn to extend them. Some effects caused by enemies might also last through a certain number of your turns, and you decrease the remaining duration by 1 during this step, ending the effect if its duration is reduced to 0.
If you have a persistent damage condition, you take the damage at this point. After you take the damage, you can attempt the flat check to end the persistent damage. You then attempt any saving throws for ongoing afflictions. Many other conditions change at the end of your turn, such as the frightened condition decreasing in severity. These take place after you’ve taken any persistent damage, attempted flat checks to end the persistent damage, and attempted saves against any afflictions.
You can use 1 free action or reaction with a trigger of “Your turn ends” or something similar.
Resolve anything else specified to happen at the end of your turn.
If you hit the troll with fire damage, it should not regenerate when it's initiative comes up next, regardless of what it actually rolled for initiative.
We can all make rule mistakes, but they tell something of you.
Ruling so the troll always keeps its regeneration is weird. If, as a GM, I ever end up in such a situation I would either:
- Read the rules again because there's something obviously wrong happening.
- Tell the players that there's a specific rule case that they can only circumvent by doing things another way.
- Houserule on the spot.
But completely cancelling the players' attempt at winning an encounter through a weird ruling seems a very bad GM call. One that I would question as a player.
If you hit the troll with fire damage, it should not regenerate when it's initiative comes up next, regardless of what it actually rolled for initiative.
It wasn't regaining its HP most rounds. It just wasn't dying. It kept getting back up again.
Insofar as I'm aware, the GM ran the creature and its abilities correctly. He just neglected to be specific in how those abilities worked.
Assuming I succeeded in hitting it, the troll's regeneration would stop. The troll's turn would start. It would not heal hit points since that happens at the start of its turn. It would rip into us to the best of its ability. Then its turn would end and its regeneration would kick in again (not healing hit points, but protecting it from the dead condition). Then the rest of the party would attempt to wail on it.
Eventually, after we've all but exhausted our resources, it went down.
Then, while we treated our wounds it would simply get up again. Rip into us some more. Except now we didn't have the resources we had before, and fewer hit points besides.
"Well, fire doesn't seem to be killing it."
"Yeah, let's get out of here."
Later it tracked us and ambushed us in our camp, where most of us were caught off guard (sleeping, with someone on watch) and we didn't have our armor or wards, and so we were forced to flee yet again, losing lots of our survival gear in the process.
Now, I fully understand that there was a bit of unluckiness involved, and it's on us that we let it track us down and ambush us. If the troll hadn't got a couple early crits, the fight might have gone very differently. However, the same is true had the GM been clear on how regeneration worked in regards to the initiative order. Had we known that, we would have acted differently, likely killed the beast, and there wouldn't have been any subsequent ambush.
In short, I'm offering up our experience as a cautionary tale: if you're going to tell your players about an ability a monster has, give them the FULL ability. Otherwise, it remains hard to counter, possibly even misleading--effectively if unintentionally cheating the players our of their characters' abilities.
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RD, that's not how Regeneration works. If you damage a troll at Dying 3 with fire, it will immediately go to Dying 4 and die. So unless you decided not to try to double tap it with Produce Flame, that should have been a dead troll.
Unless that wasn't a "Troll" and was instead a Cavern Troll or some derivative that isn't weak to fire. In which case, you didn't roll high enough on your Knowledge check to know that. In either case, Knowledge worked as intended: If it was a Troll, you knew to use fire. The GM just flubbed how Regeneration works.
If it was a Cavern Troll then Knowledge also worked as intended. You got misleading information that led you to try to use the wrong element against the enemy.
I mean in this case the troll would still be unconscious at 0 hit points, if it wasn't then either it didn't matter because your party never got it to 0 hit points and could never actually kill it or you DM did screw you over by not having the troll be unconscious for a turn at 0 hit points (or like beowulf says it was a type of troll not weak to fire).
Thats what I was going to say too.
DYING: You are bleeding out or otherwise at death’s door. While you have this condition, you are unconscious.
It was a normal troll. The dice just weren't with us this time.
RD, that's not how Regeneration works. If you damage a troll at Dying 3 with fire, it will immediately go to Dying 4 and die. So unless you decided not to try to double tap it with Produce Flame, that should have been a dead troll.
Perhaps I'm not being clear. The GM did everything regarding regeneration correctly.
Once we had "killed" it with fire and other attacks, we concerned ourselves with healing the party, not with double-tapping the "corpse." (And why would we? Most things in P2E simply die, never getting recovery checks.) I'd call it our mistake save for the fact that the GM didn't explain the troll's abilities clearly to us in the first place.
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It was a normal troll. The dice just weren't with us this time.
RD, that's not how Regeneration works. If you damage a troll at Dying 3 with fire, it will immediately go to Dying 4 and die. So unless you decided not to try to double tap it with Produce Flame, that should have been a dead troll.Perhaps I'm not being clear. The GM did everything regarding regeneration correctly.
Once we had "killed" it with fire and other attacks, we concerned ourselves with healing the party, not with double-tapping the "corpse." (And why would we? Most things in P2E simply die, never getting recovery checks.) I'd call it our mistake save for the fact that the GM didn't explain the troll's abilities clearly to us in the first place.
That doesn't feel like the GM's or Recall knowledges fault to me. He gave you the information you needed. You knew fire was important. Initiative order was irrelevant, even if you were to have gone after the troll, nothing would have changed.
For my party, I don't have a prohibition against the party looking up specific creature abilities if they are unsure how they work, but I also don't quote the rule to them when they make a recall knowledge. It breaks verisimilitude. So for a troll, I'd say something to the effect of, "You recall reading about the miraculous rapid healing abilities of Trolls, and believe this could be one of them. You happen to remember the author mentioning fire or acid as methods of combating this ability."
Simple, clear, and as much information as any PC should get on the weaknesses of a creature imo. Recall Knowledge isn't there for the GM to give you a tutorial on how to defeat a particular foe, or how a particular mechanic works, it's there to reveal to your character information you can use to help plan out the battle. Your GM did that. Anything that happens after that, so long as everything was indeed done correctly, is on the party.
That doesn't feel like the GM's or Recall knowledges fault to me. He gave you the information you needed. You knew fire was important. Initiative order was irrelevant, even if you were to have gone after the troll, nothing would have changed.
How do you figure? If the troll took its turn, and THEN I went (after delaying) and knocked out its regeneration, then the rest of the party's attacks would have killed it since its regeneration would still be down.
As it was though, we got screwed due to bad luck, lack of information, and the initiative order.
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That doesn't feel like the GM's or Recall knowledges fault to me. He gave you the information you needed. You knew fire was important. Initiative order was irrelevant, even if you were to have gone after the troll, nothing would have changed.How do you figure? If the troll took its turn, and THEN I went (after delaying) and knocked out its regeneration, then the rest of the party's attacks would have killed it since its regeneration would still be down.
As it was though, we got screwed due to bad luck, lack of information, and the initiative order.
If you knock out its regeneration you also kill it in the process. The rules are clear: Regeneration is knocked out before applying fire damage.
But anyway, the invincible troll without Survival was able to track you down, so, it doesn't seem to be an issue with Recall Knowledge.| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
That doesn't feel like the GM's or Recall knowledges fault to me. He gave you the information you needed. You knew fire was important. Initiative order was irrelevant, even if you were to have gone after the troll, nothing would have changed.How do you figure? If the troll took its turn, and THEN I went (after delaying) and knocked out its regeneration, then the rest of the party's attacks would have killed it since its regeneration would still be down.
As it was though, we got screwed due to bad luck, lack of information, and the initiative order.
Because it doesn't matter that it's regeneration is up while the party is beating on it if you also hit it with fire.
Example 1: You go before the Troll.
Troll is up and fighting.
Your party takes turns, dealing lethal damage to it. Troll goes unconscious and is at Dying 1 (for arguments sake). It's not dead, it's dying, so should still appear to be "alive" if unconcious.
You go, you hit the Troll with Fire. It's regeneration turns off, and it goes to Dying 2, Dying 3 if you crit.
Trolls Turn, it does not regen. It's still unconscious and makes Recovery check. Apply effects. If it fails this check, it dies. End of turn, Regeneration turns back on.
Your party goes and beats on the Troll. It goes to Dying 3 probably, due simply to the number of attacks hitting it, but can't go to dying 4 because of Regeneration.
You go. Damage it with Fire. Your fire turns off Regeneration immediately, and it goes to Dying 4 and dies because it took damage.
Example 2: You go after the Troll.
Troll is up and fighting.
You go. You hit the troll with Fire, dropping it's regeneration.
Your party goes. If at any time the troll hits dying 4 during this time, it dies. If not, repeat until it dies.
As long as you are reliably hitting the troll with fire damage, it won't regain health. The only thing that going before the troll changes is a couple of your party members may "waste" turns and resources beating on a troll that can't die yet. Either way, the Troll ends up dead unless you, the party, decide not to make sure it's dead. Or the GM makes you believe it's dead when it's really not.
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I am understanding:
RD: Hits with Fire, Regen deactivates. Troll is positive.
Troll: Takes turn. No healing. Regen reactivates
Party: Acts. Takes down troll. Troll is Dying but not Dead
RD: Does not hit with fire because the troll is 'dead'
Troll: For some reason doesn't heal instantly and regain consciousness or else everybody would have seen it.
No one: Checks to make sure the troll is actually dead because even though it has Regeneration, most creatures never stand back up so they assumed incorrectly that it was truly dead.
Troll: Gets up and mysteriously tracks party down, perhaps because it is a unique or special troll or because they camped 30' away from the body without lighting a pyre like my group did the first time they discovered regeneration was a thing.
Personally, this doesn't feel like a Recall issue but a communication issue. Somebody assumed that 'Regeneration means never assume it's dead until you have put it down AND made sure it was dead' was more common knowledge, or intentionally concealed the fact that the troll was still alive while watching the party who ostensibly 'knew' about Regeneration NOT perform actions consistent with a party that knows about Regeneration.
As I said, we didn't "double tap" it with fire once it was down. Once it was down, we assumed it was dead because we had been wailing on it with with fire and other assorted attacks all along.
If you've killed something with fire, per the GM's advice on beating regeneration, why would you continue to burn the corpse? It's already dead. I understand that, that was not the case, but it was certainly perceived to be by our characters.
If it gets back up after you've spent an entire combat burning it, despite the GM's advice on how to beat the regeneration, then it stands to reason that it's not a normal troll or that the secret Recall Knowledge check was botched.
I think we all acted very reasonably, considering the information we were given.
To clarify, troll went down once, got up again and attacked the party. We knocked it down again. Then we fled thinking "we were wrong; fire can't kill it after all." There was no double tapping, because by then we were convinced it would be fruitless anyways.
It got up again, tracked us over a couple miles, and ambushed us a few hours later.
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As I said, we didn't "double tap" it with fire once it was down. Once it was down, we assumed it was dead because we had been wailing on it with with fire and other assorted attacks the entire time.
We understand that, but usually I would assume that the Troll would only be able to pull that "trick" once, i.e. stand from prone, move, make one attack. After that you usually ensure that the Troll is and stays deader than dead.
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As I said, we didn't "double tap" it with fire once it was down. Once it was down, we assumed it was dead because we had been wailing on it with with fire and other assorted attacks the entire time.
Okay, then this isn't a Recall Knowledge issue. This is an issue with how the party used that recalled knowledge. It's not the GM's job to stop the game and bring out a power point presentation on Regeneration and it's 4th quarter impact on your parties ability to draw breath.
They told you to use fire. You did, but didn't do your adventurer due diligence and confirm your kill.
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As I said, we didn't "double tap" it with fire once it was down. Once it was down, we assumed it was dead because we had been wailing on it with with fire and other assorted attacks the entire time.Okay, then this isn't a Recall Knowledge issue. This is an issue with how the party used that recalled knowledge. It's not the GM's job to stop the game and bring out a power point presentation on Regeneration and it's 4th quarter impact on your parties ability to draw breath.
They told you to use fire. You did, but didn't do your adventurer due diligence and confirm your kill.
Hyperbole. Regeneration is all of four sentences. No PowerPoint presentation necessary.
Reading it aloud would actually have taken LESS time than the manner he spent describing it off the cuff.
And we did do our due diligence. It was down. It was not regenerating. It was dead. We turned our backs. It's regeneration turned back on. It got back up. It was all about the timing and lack of information.
As I said, we didn't "double tap" it with fire once it was down. Once it was down, we assumed it was dead because we had been wailing on it with with fire and other assorted attacks the entire time.Okay, then this isn't a Recall Knowledge issue. This is an issue with how the party used that recalled knowledge. It's not the GM's job to stop the game and bring out a power point presentation on Regeneration and it's 4th quarter impact on your parties ability to draw breath.
They told you to use fire. You did, but didn't do your adventurer due diligence and confirm your kill.
Well I wouldn't be so harsh with RD, mistakes happen on both sides, GM and players and in his case the party came to wrong conclusions, not realizing that it is the fire damage that has to down the troll (respectively bring it to dying 4).
However what I do not understand is, why not at least TRY before jumping to said (false) conclusion?
Party got definitely troll'd.
XD
Anyway, there shouldn't also have been a deception check against the party perception?
Perhaps there was such a check? It would have been a secret check anyways, so if we didn't do well on it, we never would have known.
The creature laid down, pretending to be dead ( ready to stand up and track players again as soon as they leave ), should take care of its body ( filling lungs and chest expansion, for example ), breath ( noises ) and so on.
I don't know that it was faking in order to heal more, but I know that when we checked it immediately after dropping it, it was no longer regenerating, and so we thought it was really and truly dead--at least at first.
When we dropped it a second time, we waited to see if it would start regenerating again (it did). When we saw that, we were all like "well, fire didn't work." Then we left because we weren't aware of anything we had in our possession that could kill it.
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As I said, we didn't "double tap" it with fire once it was down. Once it was down, we assumed it was dead because we had been wailing on it with with fire and other assorted attacks the entire time.Okay, then this isn't a Recall Knowledge issue. This is an issue with how the party used that recalled knowledge. It's not the GM's job to stop the game and bring out a power point presentation on Regeneration and it's 4th quarter impact on your parties ability to draw breath.
They told you to use fire. You did, but didn't do your adventurer due diligence and confirm your kill.
Hyperbole. Regeneration is all of four sentences. No PowerPoint presentation necessary.
Reading it aloud would actually have taken LESS time than the manner he spent describing it off the cuff.
And we did do our due diligence. It was down. It was not regenerating. It was dead. We turned our backs. It's regeneration turned back on. It got back up. It was all about the timing and lack of information.
You did not. It was not down. It was unconscious.
Either the party just took for granted that the Troll fell over and assumed it was dead, or the GM accidentally or purposefully hid that fact from the party to showcase the smartest troll who ever lived.
But neither of those points is relevant to the topic: This wasn't an issue with your GM's use of Recall Knowledge. You shouldn't quote rules text to players. Instead you should use Recall knowledge to give advice in a "realistic" way, and by what you've said they did that.
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I think the advice in the title is good. GMs are the players' eyes and ears in the world of imagination, so playing Gotcha with descriptions/information is annoying.
"It's not resistant to electricity."
"I shoot it with electricity."
"lol pwned it's immune to electricity."
I have no opinion on the specific example offered, but if I suspected that my players had misunderstood the information from Recall, I'd at the very least repeat the information from Recall, but probably go further and offer some additional information to clarify.
Very few people are playing the game because they have fun semantically parsing the regeneration rules.
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I think the advice in the title is good. GMs are the players' eyes and ears in the world of imagination, so playing Gotcha with descriptions/information is annoying.
"It's not resistant to electricity."
"I shoot it with electricity."
"lol pwned it's immune to electricity."I have no opinion on the specific example offered, but if I suspected that my players had misunderstood the information from Recall, I'd at the very least repeat the information from Recall, but probably go further and offer some additional information to clarify.
Very few people are playing the game because they have fun semantically parsing the regeneration rules.
Being absolutely clear with your players and explaining exactly how a mechanic works every time your player rolls a recall knowledge are two different things. RD's issue isn't that the GM played "Gotcha" with their party, it's that the GM didn't explain exactly how Regeneration works as a part of that check.
I don't think that is fair to the GM. They provided enough information for RD to know that fire would address the Troll's regen. That is as much information as you should ever really give a player for a single recall, unless they get a critical success and are entitled to more information.
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RD's issue isn't that the GM played "Gotcha" with their party, it's that the GM didn't explain exactly how Regeneration works as a part of that check.
Quite right.
I don't think that is fair to the GM. They provided enough information for RD to know that fire would address the Troll's regen. That is as much information as you should ever really give a player for a single recall, unless they get a critical success and are entitled to more information.
And on what do you base that assertion?
If a character successfully identifies a magical item or recalls a monster ability, what good is it to say "it's a lute of enchantment" or "it has the dreamwalker ability" if you don't bother defining what those even are or do?
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This whole scenario still feels a little sketchy to me on the GM's part, not being more clear about how regeneration works, not appearing to make any check to have the troll play dead, it does sort of feel like a bit of a gotcha moment.
That said, it also seems weird to know that a creature has regeneration that gets beat by fire and not decide to torch the corpse so it can't regenerate..
RD's issue isn't that the GM played "Gotcha" with their party, it's that the GM didn't explain exactly how Regeneration works as a part of that check.Quite right.
I don't think that is fair to the GM. They provided enough information for RD to know that fire would address the Troll's regen. That is as much information as you should ever really give a player for a single recall, unless they get a critical success and are entitled to more information.And on what do you base that assertion?
If a character successfully identifies a magical item or recalls a monster ability, what good is it to say "it's a lute of enchantment" or "it has the dreamwalker ability" if you don't bother defining what those even are or do?
Apples to Oranges. Identifying a piece of gear that a party member intends to use doesn't happen as one action in a 6 second round. It typically happens during downtime with no stakes at play.
Recall Knowledge as an action in combat is a way of conveying information to a player that their character would know based on their experiences. Your character doesn't know how regeneration works mechanically, but they could very well know that a troll heals rapidly unless exposed to fire or acid. Anything beyond that is up to the player to know or ask about.
Mechanics as a rule are open discussion at my table. If a player wants to look up regeneration so they know how it works, or asks me how it works, I just tell them as that information is important to the player and playing the game. The character doesn't need to know how regeneration works however, and I won't include that sort of information as part of the recall knowledge.
Think from the perspective of your Sorcerer character. You are facing a Troll. You know that it regenerates and that you can beat that regeneration with fire. The Troll savages your party, but after a struggle you successfully bring it down. But again, you know that they regenerate.
If I'm in those shoes, I keep blasting away with produce flame until nothing but ash remains, just to be sure.
In other words, talking mechanics should never happen in character. It should happen out of character. If you had questions about how regeneration works, you should have posed those questions to your DM as a player, instead of expecting them to include that information in Recall Knowledge. You made an assumption, which ended up being incorrect.
Now if you had asked the GM how Regeneration works, and they either didn't tell you or lied about it, then we'd have a whole other issue to talk about. But their use of Recall Knowledge is well in line with every other use of it I've ever seen or heard anyone talk about, in Pathfinder or the equivalent in pretty much any other game I've ever played.
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GM definitely should have alerted them to the troll waking up imo or done a secret check on whether they notice the troll starting to regenerate again and get up.
When something is weak to fire and you kill it with fire there's a certain expectation to have killed it with fire.
The interaction is a bit of a gotcha but the ensuing situation sounds punishing for no reason.
Edit: wait wouldn't taking the troll down have moved it ahead of you in initiative order and solved the issue anyway?
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Edit: wait wouldn't taking the troll down have moved it ahead of you in initiative order and solved the issue anyway?
Was just about to type this myself after seeing the discussion above (also, side note, how good is that rule. It has saved players of mine so many times vs the old negative hp rules from PF1e or dying rules from 5e)
Edit: wait wouldn't taking the troll down have moved it ahead of you in initiative order and solved the issue anyway?Was just about to type this myself after seeing the discussion above (also, side note, how good is that rule. It has saved players of mine so many times vs the old negative hp rules from PF1e or dying rules from 5e)
I do think we missed that this time around.
We knew about the rule, but seem to have collectively forgot about it these last few games...
Edit: wait wouldn't taking the troll down have moved it ahead of you in initiative order and solved the issue anyway?Was just about to type this myself after seeing the discussion above (also, side note, how good is that rule. It has saved players of mine so many times vs the old negative hp rules from PF1e or dying rules from 5e)I do think we missed that this time around.
We knew about the rule, but seem to have collectively forgot about it these last few games...
It's easy to miss in relation to monsters, as most of them just die when brought to 0. It's usually just PC's that end up having the rule applied to them.
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What I find interesting is that this whole story is somewhat of a confirmation of the rather bad feelings that I as a player harbour against the current iteration of Recall Knowledge checks. Secret check plus four levels of success with a notibly detrimental crit fail result plus a certain level of uncertainty when it comes to how to conduct the check itself (knowing which skill to use, what kind of information is provided etc) actually made RD wonder if he had potentially failed when he had actually succeeded. Not saying that all RK checks are always going sideways but there apparently is a latent chance for bad experiences using RK which are not always directly related to simply crit failing your check.
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Yeah, the problem is not that the DM withhold informations about the trolls abilities, it's that it wasn't clear to the group how the regeneration mechanics work in PF2. It happens.
I remember a scene like that in PF1, when my group encountered trolls for the first time in the campaign. Everyone failed the recall knowledge rolls, so the PCs were surprised when they got back up after being 'killed'. Once the trolls were down again, the GM let us roll a second time; but again, the results were low. So the group tried cutting the trolls' heads off, and when we found out that it wasn't working, the solution was to drop the monsters into a nearby lake. They stopped bothering us, at least.
After fighting another group we failed our recall knowledge for the third time, but after trying some other things, burning their bodies was a logical solution anyway.
I do think we missed that this time around.
We knew about the rule, but seem to have collectively forgot about it these last few games...
It's something I've missed a bunch of times GMing because it's only intuitive when you're trying to keep someone alive xD.
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but I know that when we checked it immediately after dropping it, it was no longer regenerating, and so we thought it was really and truly dead--at least at first.
So not regenerating at that particular point in turn order because it had been burnt. But not dead yet so it switched back on.
That is harsh GMing. The characters in the game aren't aware of the granularity of the turn order. Its only fair if the players are expert in the rules.
Aside from which it should not be just a one action to be able to check whether or not it is regenerating. I know you can make a perception/medicine check in one action. But the only way to get that information should be to make several actions watching the troll over time. The result of a successful one action check to see if the Troll is regenerating should be - you are not sure, you need to keep watching it for a few more seconds.
There was no feigning. It was just the turn order.
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Mechanically, if the Troll made no effort to obfuscate it, the Party should just know that the Troll is alive. Dying and Unconscious don't mean that the creature stops breathing, moaning or making any other obvious signs of life. I wouldn't personally require any check to determine whether or not it was dead. At most I would roll a secret deception check if the creature had decided to play dead, and a Troll would most likely fail said check.
Like I said, whether on purpose or accidentally, the GM showcased the smartest Troll who ever lived. For your average Troll, I wouldn't ever allow it to regenerate more than once from unconscious without making some attempt to attack the party. So it would never have more than 20 hit points unless the party booked it Immediately and didn't bother to look back. Even then, the Party would be aware it was alive when it began to SCREAM for revenge after them. Trolls are not known for their great Subterfuge.
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Whatever the GM tried to achieve with his troll, he either failed or achieved it through too many shenanigans.
So, more than a rules question, it's a GMing question. What was the GM's goal? Could it be achieved differently?
Because the "invincible troll hunter" doesn't seem a funny concept at all. At least, from RD's description, the result seem to have been more frustrating for the players than enjoyable.
These kind of situations can create excellent moments, but they have to be properly handled...
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In my opinion, the monster comeback might be interesting.
So, more than a rules question, it's a GMing question. What was the GM's goal? Could it be achieved differently?
Because the "invincible troll hunter" doesn't seem a funny concept at all. At least, from RD's description, the result seem to have been more frustrating for the players than enjoyable.
I agree, but it must be done without too many shenanigans. Otherwise it just feels like an unfair punishment.
And in that case, RD stated the monster attacked during the night while they were unequipped and they lost part of their gear. When you create such a situation, you must be sure that the players feel it's fair, otherwise you end up with new discussions on the boards (and you're lucky if it's the end of it, I've seen players really pissed when a GM clearly screwed them).| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
As I said, we didn't "double tap" it with fire once it was down. Once it was down, we assumed it was dead because we had been wailing on it with with fire and other assorted attacks the entire time.Okay, then this isn't a Recall Knowledge issue. This is an issue with how the party used that recalled knowledge. It's not the GM's job to stop the game and bring out a power point presentation on Regeneration and it's 4th quarter impact on your parties ability to draw breath.
They told you to use fire. You did, but didn't do your adventurer due diligence and confirm your kill.
Hyperbole. Regeneration is all of four sentences. No PowerPoint presentation necessary.
Reading it aloud would actually have taken LESS time than the manner he spent describing it off the cuff.
And we did do our due diligence. It was down. It was not regenerating. It was dead. We turned our backs. It's regeneration turned back on. It got back up. It was all about the timing and lack of information.
Regeneration is all of four sentences, as Ravingdork said,
Regeneration This monster regains the listed number of Hit Points each round at the beginning of its turn. Its dying condition never increases beyond dying 3 as long as its regeneration is active. However, if it takes damage of a type listed in the regeneration entry, its regeneration deactivates until the end of its next turn. Deactivate the regeneration before applying any damage of a listed type, since that damage might kill the monster by bringing it to dying 4.
However, Ravingdork and the other players did not remember the 2nd sentence about regeneration operating during the dying condition.
This is a curious quandary about metagaming. The party members are not supposed to know about the troll's regeneration before their Recall Knowledge roll. Yet after the successful Recall Knowledge check they are supposed to remember how regeneration is affected by turns, by listed damage types, and by dying, even thought that information is in the Bestiary rather than the Core Rulebook.
What should have happened is that when the party left the dying troll for dead and did not apply fire to the unconscious creature, the GM should have asked out of character, "Why are you letting the troll regenerate?" Once the players point out that dead trolls don't regenerate, the GM should have clarified the rules, "It is dying, not dead. It has to reach Dying 4 to be dead and stop regenerating. It is only at Dying 2." One of the GM's jobs is to explain the rules.
I wonder how Regeneration affects the Wounded condition? I guess its Wounded number goes up every time it regenerates back to consciousness. At Wounded 3 the next time it is downed by fire it would die immediately.
However, Ravingdork and the other players did not remember the 2nd sentence about regeneration operating during the dying condition.
This is a curious quandary about metagaming. The party members are not supposed to know about the troll's regeneration before their Recall Knowledge roll. Yet after the successful Recall Knowledge check they are supposed to remember how regeneration is affected by turns, by listed damage types, and by dying, even thought that information is in the Bestiary rather than the Core Rulebook.
What should have happened is that when the party left the dying troll for dead and did not apply fire to the unconscious creature, the GM should have asked out of character, "Why are you letting the troll regenerate?" Once the players point out that dead trolls don't regenerate, the GM should have clarified the rules, "It is dying, not dead. It has to reach Dying 4 to be dead and stop regenerating. It is only at Dying 2." One of the GM's jobs is to explain the rules.
This is not much of a burden on the player, since the GM is also supposed to understand how these things work. A recall knowledge check is not there to explain the mechanics of how X creature works, it's there to give an in character reason for the Sorcerer to know that they should use fire, regardless of whether the player knows they should.
If the player doesn't know how a mechanic works, then it is their duty to ask or look it up themselves. As I've said, at my table, I have no specific prohibition against looking up rules. As long as you aren't actively looking at a statblock, I'm cool with it. But even for abilities that are specific to a certain creature only, like say Golem Anti-Magic, I will generally explain how the mechanic works when asked. Though I won't give specific numbers and traits most of the time unless their character has some reason to know that information.
There shouldn't be an expectation that the GM will include mechanical information with each Recall Knowledge check in my opinion. If you are unclear on how a mechanic works in relation to the Knowledge gained, then the onus is on you to ask for clarification.
Where the GM messed up from my perspective is in obfuscating the status of the Troll. Dying and unconscious don't look like death. I agree, the GM should have provided some clear hint that the Troll wasn't down for the count yet. But I still probably wouldn't go into a full description of the mechanics involved unless asked by a player. But that's my opinion on the matter.
I wonder how Regeneration affects the Wounded condition? I guess its Wounded number goes up every time it regenerates back to consciousness. At Wounded 3 the next time it is downed by fire it would die immediately.
That would be how I'd run it. The Troll still has the Wounded Condition, and can even have a ridiculous level of Wounded, but until it's downed by flame, it's Dying condition just doesn't ever go to 4.