[OOC] Sweet Spoilerousness

[DM Surranó]

Let me reorganise Torin's post a bit and reply accordingly. I would like to note in advance that our IRL acquaintance with Torin's player has a long history (as many may have guessed) and I treat playing together as a kind of friendly contest. I know him as a power gamer (and a very good one at that) and he inspires my DM self to plan my adventures smartly and thinking in advance about what a power gamer may achieve. Like, posting a challenge to defeat an iron golem with a level 7 party (same house rules). Guess what. He won the challenge with a single character of level 7. I used that experience in this adventure to design the encounter with, including the "programming" of, the guardian (which I still won't tell whether it's an iron golem, an adamantine golem, or whatnot. Just in case someone still hasn't figured out )

(I played with a high level (14?) BoED monk and with his wife (leadership -> BoED druid) in a two days long (IRL) game.

(an IRL game sounds a bit occult let's agree it was a traditional pen-and-paper game )

Our DM didn't let the players to speak the roles in the preparation phase: the characters were collected with a big ritual magic. So, only the druid could heal the others and some of them(monk, psion, ???) cloud heal themselfes. That game was much worse then this, but I have got some deja vu feelings at now. Do you know that DM, don't you? )

Sure thing and I do not feel ashamed for being able to learn from my own mistakes. For one, none of the original PCs were divine casters (let alone healers) so I dropped in an NPC priest of Pelor and even polled the (at the time) players about his chosen domains. None selected Healing so here he goes with Strength and Good. (something the newcomers still have to learn IC, especially since none of them know anything about an Oeridian deity)
Second, I littered the whole place with adamantine stuff; even this fact could give a hint about what to expect... and when you get home with all the treasure you'll see that it's ridiculously overpowered compared to the party level (some of them have story hooks)

1. IMHO: PfE suppress all effect of DP.

IMHO this is ambiguous therefore I put it up for democracy and I tend to believe that those involved in THIS game agree with you even if the internet doesn't (I don't incline towards either so I will accept the party's view on this)

2. Torin was memorized to "self-sustaining mode" and lot of his spell was wasted beacuse the IC meetings. If you calculate the CR of a situtation then you must count this weaknesses from the PCs. This makes things harder.

So I can be blamed for not being able to bring up an encounter where all automatically become "allies" (and will get there soon...). Honestly though this adventure is designed (if not carefully) so that an average party of the intended level can defeat it with one, maybe two full rests; and I'd like to keep this from fragmenting the game into lots of hit-and-rest encounters which don't make sense in such a dense dungeon. You may try to rest more than appropriate for the difficulty, of course, but I hope you won't Also, this is a boss fight and --correct me if I'm wrong-- a boss fight is destined to be "owerwhelming" or whatever it's called. (I already cut back on the warriors as they proved to be more formidable in the first version than I thought). And finally, Lugar is right: I made up an IC reason (will disclose later) for Cloak to hold his horses (him having missed the first two attacks was a rare luck for the party anyway)

3. I don't mind if you let your's NPCs to change their action in retrospectively, but after this our PCs will do in the same way.

Well. First of all, this is not for the players to decide. All decisions on allowing a retroactive event is judged by the DM, on a case-by-case basis.
Second, if a rules clarification works against players anytime then we may discuss retroactively change something to mitigate the effects. Basically, this is the purpose of this thread.
Third, I'm willing to keep everything as originally intended, meaning NOT changing rule interpretation retroactively for the BENEFIT of the party. You only have to ask.

4. Ally: a person who associates or cooperates with another; supporter.

I don't think anyone questioned the definition of the term "ally". What's questionable are "nature", and (from your quote) "almost always", the latter of which, you apparently interpreted as "granted". With all due respect to the author Skip Williams (also author of Deep Horizon) Torin and I know I have disagreed with one of his statements in another game earlier but his wording in this particular case is soooo convenient for me to interpret "against nature" as I originally intended.

To sum things up; we can go one of two ways and it is yours to decide.

A) I as a DM dictate how Dominate Person works, including PfE and make all the decisions alone what counts as "against one's nature"; in that case, a CG dwarf attacking a gnome having met a few days ago doesn't qualify.
In this case, there will be no retroactive gaming.

B) We make a common understanding of how the ability works, including PfE and what exactly counts as "against one's nature".
Once this baseline is established I will retroactively change just the tiniest bit (apparent to all players) and will send an additional private message to Torin on what is the exact command he's compelled to do.

Your votes and comments are welcome in the next 24 hours.