Quote from: Gold Roger;786458Yes.

I remember mearls posting an article on how humor has no place in D&D source- and rulebooks (I think in 4e developement circle, but I might be way of).

Let's just say I'm really glad that stance changed.

This is a serious game!

I don't really care how tough it is or isn't; what I dig is that it is interesting!

god help me i need to get something off my chest:

i'm a glutton for punishment so i still read the rpg.net d20 forum -- the reaction to the intellect devourer there has been...quite different from here. take it away, Sage Genesis:

QuoteI don't think the CR is a typo. It's the same for the will-o'-wisp. Some creatures are apparently meant to be "rocket tag", meaning that you're fine if they miss but you're dead if they hit.

I don't like it. The only remedies are far beyond what a level 2 party has available. I also think the ability is poorly explained; gaining knowledge of spells implies that you can cast them (or does it? I'm not sure), but is simply having knowledge of spells enough to cast Cleric spells or Warlock spells? If so, why does anybody need to follow a god or make a pact? Does the Devourer ever lose the abilities it gains from devouring brains? It doesn't say anywhere that leaving the body causes loss of knowledge, nor does it make "common sense" because it ate the brain. So doesn't that mean the typical Devourer has a ton of class abilities available to it after a while? Cool idea for a villain but inadequately explained for a monster. All in all this is turning out to be rather disappointing.

admittedly i'm cherry-picking -- Sage Genesis is a one-man olympic games of tendentious, socially-incompetent point-missing -- but the whole thread is fucked this way. here the comments are like 'cool scary monster, here are some ways to boost its threat level' and TBP's thread is this weird mix of speculating about editorial competence, bitching about the definition of 'houserule,' passive-aggressive sotto voce moaning about 4e's 'playstyle,' seeming consensus that the rules proscribe action first and foremost...

even i'm less imaginatively straitjacketed than that. and i'm rubbish.

thank god they're a rounding error on the hobby at large.

Quote from: Larsdangly;786550I don't really care how tough it is or isn't; what I dig is that it is interesting!

yep. the ID says 'play me' in big letters. can't ask for much more than that.

Quote from: stuffis;786961yep. the ID says 'play me' in big letters. can't ask for much more than that.

  Well, maybe that it not risk blowing up a campaign without warning when used ... but then, D&D isn't a game for new and inexperienced players, is it?

  (I'm not sure if I'm serious or sarcastic there; the game is pitched as the entry point to the hobby, but the playstyle it goes for, especially in its more Old-School-inspired modes, can be bizarre and demanding.)

An encounter with a weird and potentially life threatening monster is not game wrecking. It is the game.

Quote from: Larsdangly;786974An encounter with a weird and potentially life threatening monster is not game wrecking. It is the game.

neatly sums up something i couldn't understand/accept about 'old-school' play for the longest time. nicely put.

In old school games your suppose to encounter weird creatures, meet strange people, explore places, and take exotic treasure.  If you die along the way that is the draw back of exploring that mysterious dungeon that you shouldn't go in the first place.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;786970Well, maybe that it not risk blowing up a campaign without warning when used ... but then, D&D isn't a game for new and inexperienced players, is it?

(I'm not sure if I'm serious or sarcastic there; the game is pitched as the entry point to the hobby, but the playstyle it goes for, especially in its more Old-School-inspired modes, can be bizarre and demanding.)

This presumes your campaign can be "blown up" by character deaths. I say just don't build your campaigns that way. For me personally, the day I stopped building around the assumption that the players had to survive was a moment of liberation.

But of course make sure you inform the players of this at the start of the campaign. If you explain it right, they realize it's a liberation too: yeah there's no safety net, but there's no script with plot beats to meet either.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;786970Well, maybe that it not risk blowing up a campaign without warning when used ... but then, D&D isn't a game for new and inexperienced players, is it?

  (I'm not sure if I'm serious or sarcastic there; the game is pitched as the entry point to the hobby, but the playstyle it goes for, especially in its more Old-School-inspired modes, can be bizarre and demanding.)

So what? A few characters get blowed up REAL GOOD!  Roll some new ones and perhaps their luck will be better.

Its just a game. Do people freak out when its checkmate time in chess? Should you lose it when you go bankrupt in Monopoly?

Whiny bitches  & sore losers shouldn't get involved in playing games.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;787005But of course make sure you inform the players of this at the start of the campaign.

In all my years of gaming, I have only come across one person who assumed his PC was going to be always saved by 'plot'.

It seems ludicrous to me that you might have to explain in a game that involved deadly combat, that the PCs might die. A more sensible option, which no-one ever advocates, is you should sit down and tell the players if you intend to fudge the dice and always save them.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;787007Its just a game. Do people freak out when its checkmate time in chess? Should you lose it when you go bankrupt in Monopoly?

While I agree, I HAVE seen both of these things happen in real life by regular players. Especially in Monopoly. In most of my social circles, it's lovingly referred to as "the rage-quit board flipping game".

I consider it a form of unacceptable anti-social behavior to be a bad sport about loosing at games of any kind, and can be quite pissy about the idea of enabling these sorts of useless babies at a roleplaying game table. Doing so robs the game of the vital spark that comes from genuine risk and so deflates the whole experience for everyone else. I would rather do some chores around my house than waste time playing a session of D&D that contains no significant risk of character death.

As a DM I would never unfairly kill the character of such a player. But I might be standing suspiciously nearby when something unfortunate happened to him...

Quote from: jadrax;787008It seems ludicrous to me that you might have to explain in a game that involved deadly combat, that the PCs might die. A more sensible option, which no-one ever advocates, is you should sit down and tell the players if you intend to fudge the dice and always save them.

Yes, this is very telling. Why are they so embarrassed to admit what they're really doing and build it officially into their campaign's social contract at the start?

For instance, say what you will about 7th Sea's terrible design, at least it told everyone up front that death was not usually an option and alternative penalties (capture, loss of crucial time, etc) were the standard. This was done to overtly encourage a certain style of wild play.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;787007So what? A few characters get blowed up REAL GOOD!  Roll some new ones and perhaps their luck will be better.

  A legitimate mode of play. The questions I'd have are:

  1. Does 5E warn players about this going in? That is, is it clear that a CR 2 is something that has a realistic chance of taking out a 2nd-level PC if the odds go against it? From what's present in the Basic rules, I'd suggest that the ID might be undervalued, and bounded accuracy and the potential for wide gaps between proficient and non-proficient saves mean that creatures with save or die abilities that bypass the HP system are going to be very swingy. Something like BECMI's star ratings might have been a good idea to flag monsters with unpredictable abilities like this.
  2. Does the rest of the system support this? Better than 3E or 4E, but not quite as well as Basic. Probably in the same range of 'quick and easy' character generation as AD&D, maybe a step above it.
  3. Is this what new players want, and will they be energized or frustrated by high-swing monsters like this, presented with minimal guidance? I have no idea; for WotC's sake, I hope they know what they're doing.