nick@utcsrgv.UUCP (T.C. Nicholas Graham) (01/17/84)
Good grief! While I'll admit that some of the spell usages posted to the net have been just a little on the tenuous side, I'm still amazed at the dogmatic way in which people are clinging to strict interpretation of the rules. What is Dungeons and Dragons (trademark of EGG & TSR conglomerates etc.) if not a fantasy game, where the rather outlandish can occur? For example, the first level thief attempting to subdue the dragon: for a start, characters do NOT have 'first level' tatooed across their forehead (as can be attested to by the fact that our party blew away a party of 1st and 2nd levels with our hard-won 16th level fireball scroll, when a sleep would have done the trick). If the thief happened to thump the dragon in the dragon equivalent of the solar-plexus, who's to say that there's not a 4% chance (or whatever) of the dragon suddenly waking, and mistakenly assuming he's being attacked by a 23d level assassin? So maybe he surrenders for the moment... but who's to say what happens when he sees said thief shying away from the next group of Kobolds he runs across. So don't revile the DM for giving the first levels a break, at least for as long as it takes him to gather his thoughts (and his forces!) after an unexpected move. As a couple of examples of interesting spell use, our party (high level: average 8th to 9th (hold the flames: it took a year and a half of regular play to get there!) level, 10 characters) has had a couple of off-beat ones. A couple of sessions ago, we went to do in a relatively small enclave of deep ones. Upon entering the central palace (and after recovering from the "strange non-Euclidean geometry"), we searched out and found a secret door. We tried every conceivable opening method to no avail, finally concluding that the door was one-way, and we were on the wrong side. After some deliberation, one of the physicists in the group triumphantly pointed out: "Aha! We are 200 feet under water! Therefore, there is an incredible pressure differential between the globe of "airy water" surrounding us, and the water at this depth. Thus, standing in front of the door should cause the water on the other side of the door to push it open!" Groaning loudly, the DM made the requisite rolls to see if the triumphant physicist's magic user (Mylar the Mystic -- I told you he was a physicist!) was smart enough to stand out of the way when the door blew off its hinges. We then proceeded to follow the secret corridors which eventually allowed us to enter the throne room from behind, knocking the king off his throne as we did so. As it happened, this luck made a murderous adventure only deadly. The DM did however get his revenge, when our best cleric was rather badly smeared under the weight of 200' of water when a dispell magic spell left him without his globe of air for a round. (These were rather special globes, but that's another story...) As an example of more frivelous magic use, consider our flying boat. Our flying WHAT? Well, I'll admit that a single wish spell to convert a custom- made merchant ship into a flying version is probably rather generous of the DM. However, two principles are at work: 1) wish spells in our campaign are RARE. In our year and a half of play, we have found one wish ring ever. It was after such a deadly dungeon that it immediately became a ring of raise dead, and was essentially nullified. To get the wish in question, we practically had to sell our souls. (Actually, we rescued an elvish enclave from a demon problem while they were busy with the rebellion, but that's another story...) So wishes can be pretty powerful without disrupting play. (2) If a spell use is not imbalancing, but otherwise is powerful, why not allow it? Let's face it, a flying boat is a lot of fun (and looks pretty impressive), but has not really changed much in terms of our power. It just means that instead of fighting a lot of lions and tigers and so forth, we meet griffons, sphynxes, dragons etc. In fact, the DM's ruling that a dispell magic nullifies the boat's flight for one round has made life considrably more dangerous! In any case, the boat has been a lot of fun. Consider the time we used it to land 100 dwarven allies in the middle of the orcish fort... (We prefer NOT to consider the time we tried something similar and got meteor-swarmed out of the sky!) All in all though, I suspect the DM's main motivation in allowing us to make it was that it gives him a reasonable rationale for some characters 'popping' in and out if their players fail to make it to a session. Throughout this raving, what I am trying to convey is that it really doesn't harm the game to allow the players some creative license in playing the game. This should extend to cleverness and truly interesting ideas, as long as the idea doesn't destroy game balance. And if all else fails, just remember that whatever the players can do, the NPC's can learn... -- Nick Graham, U of T.