In honor of the fact that I completely forgot to put a title on last week's Meme Monday, I figured I ought to make that a highlight of this week's entry.
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| It's not a screw-up per se, but if you see my damage meters... Yeah. From Cheezburger. |
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| I've been both the DM and a player in this situation. Makes you want to bang your head on the wall. From Thunder Dungeon. |
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| That happened in the second MERP campaign I ran. Had an NPC in Bree to provide the players with a hook to investigate the Barrow Downs, and they got that NPC killed. From Pinterest. |
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| Did you have to ask? This is SO me. My very first character in D&D missed their attack rolls and died. Okay, so my Level 1 Cleric died to a RED DRAGON, but... Yeah. From Cheezburger. |
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| "It's one of the classic blunders, such as never get involved in a land war in Asia!" --Vizzini, probably From The Gamer Image. |
Rohan from Blessing of Kings would disagree with that last one!
ReplyDeleteIt is a highly situational event, as given how busy the low level zones are currently on the Anniversary servers, if you pull one you might pull a second while you're fighting due to the respawn rates. Everybody knows that the murlocs (or gnolls) standing around an encampment will all pull whether you like it or not, so you avoid them unless you're grouped. Still, even if you keep to one corner of the area, patiently pulling the one murloc that wanders over this way, you encounter a situation where somebody else pulls multiple murlocs and then once that person is killed they turn on you because you're nearby. Of course, you get those --many of them Warriors-- who likely say to themselves that they can handle a couple of murlocs and proceed to pull them anyway. I usually watch their death from a safe distance.
DeleteThere's also the edge case where you kill a murloc and they immediately respawn and attack. I once lost a toon on a Hardcore server where the murloc respawned 3 times after killing, never giving me a chance to rest. After the third respawn I gave up and began to run, then other respawns finally started showing up and finished me off.
Moral of the story: murlocs and their respawn rates are designed to kill the unwary. But sometimes people have to just learn the hard way.
(Me, I prefer to play solo, but will group up if asked beforehand. I almost always refuse someone who simply tosses me an invite without asking first. If you can't be bothered to ask, I won't be bothered to accept.)
I had the opposite experience to that of your level 1 Cleric out of sheer luck once. Way back in ye olden days of PnP I was playing a mid level Cavalier, a class from Unearthed Arcana in AD&D first edition, that happened to have a vorpal sword. I was wandering around the countryside solo for some reason, and stumbled upon the lair of an Ancient Earth Dragon.
ReplyDeleteI charged in screaming at the top of my lungs, since that's the type of character she was. I was fully expecting to die horribly and have to re-roll, but never considered resorting to strategy (or even sanity) because I was very committed to the bit. Even the DM was a bit taken aback, but we were also all amused by the sheer stupidity of it. The dragon was asleep when I charged in, so I got one chance to attack before I got absolutely destroyed by whatever it chose to do next.
I rolled a natural 20, decapitated it with my vorpal sword, and went up a level on the spot from all the XP. It took me multiple trips back and forth with a rented cart to get all the loot back to town, almost all of which I donated to charity . . .because, again, that's the kind of character she was and I was committed to the bit.
You absolutely lucky duck!
DeleteI remember when the Cavalier was a class highlighted in Dragon magazine --a friend in grade school would get copies-- and I made copies of the article at the library for my own use. The idea, IIRC, was to move the Paladin to being a subclass under the Cavalier, since the Paladin was considered to be a Sir Galahad/Knights of the Round Table class fantasy. (Now that I think about it, I believe Castles and Crusades actually did move the Paladin under the Cavalier.)