Re: mechanics of surprise

On Mar 7, 12:46 pm, John Morrow <mor...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Will in New Haven wrote:
>
> > I think characters should often, perhaps usually, know who can kill
> > them in one blow and who can't. A campaign where such foes are
> > indistinguishable from many others who cannot is, in my opinion,
> > flawed.
>
> One thing that causes a problem in D&D 3e is that a full-round attack is
> much more effective than a single attack, and maybe that's why some
> people's game descriptions seem to be much higher fatality than what
I've
> seen both running and playing in D&D 3.5.

We have short rounds and being attacked for a few rounds in a row is
probably much like that full-round attack. On the other paw, there are
single attacks that can be quite deadly. More likely, they will render
the character unconscious and unable to aid in the rest of the fight
but sometimes they kill people dead.

>
> My group fought a lot of running attacks and such that allowing
full-round
> attacks weren't the norm.  In fact, the two one-round kill PC fatalities
> in my game both consisted of a spell-casting type getting too close to a
> monster so it could take a 5-foot step and do a full-round attack on
them.
> Most of the other times, the players did a pretty good job of avoiding
> full-round attacks unless they could take them.

Movement and teamwork are used a great deal to avoid being squared up
with a heavy hitter or with a monster in our campaign. Even the heavy
hitters in our current party prefer to move and stick against some of
the foes they have encountered.

Will in New Haven

--


>
> John Morrow