From: joniteig@solan.unit.no (Jon Inge Teigland)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp
Subject: Re: AD&D: XP's for 'Easy' Kills
Date: 7 Apr 92 10:15:52 GMT
Organization: Norwegian Institute of Technology

In article <1992Mar24.023451.12224@zip.eecs.umich.edu> boyd@colonial.eecs.umich.edu (Eric Boyd) writes:
 >
 >A question on the awarding of XP's in AD&D ...
 >
 >SITUATION: A low level party had tracked a bunch of nasties back to their lair,
 >beat up on most through intelligent manuevers, and had finally cornered the
 >head nasty - a drider - in his lair. The DM had a whole host of evil strategies
 >for the drider to use against the PC's, guaranteed to test the characters to
 >their maximum if they wanted to survive. Sounds perfect?
 >
 >PROBLEM: Previously, the party had encountered a chimera, and found a magic
 >wand in its lair. (This scenario came from Book of Lairs II). This magic wand
 >had been found capable of paralyzing one creature. (If you paralyzed another,
 >the first one became 'unparalyzed'.) The PC's had used this weapon previously,
 >but it had never been to unbalancing, as we always fought teams of nasties.
 >The encounter with the drider was the first against a single foe ...
 >
 >The elf F/M cleverly thought to use the wand right away, got the best initiative
 >and amazingly hit the drider on the first blow. (A successfull attack was
 >necessary.) The drider failed its save, and was paralyzed. This despite a
 >boost up armor class, and plenty of magical protections. The party then 
 >hacked the monstrosity to pieces, gathered up the loot, and the players
 >eagerly awaited the ton of XP's for slaying the drider. (2nd Edition AD&D)
 >
 >DILEMMA: The DM said the kill had been 'too easy' (i.e. we got lucky and
 >exploited a loophole) and gave the PC's a small fraction of the 'listed'
 >XP's for the drider.
 >
 >QUESTION: Was this 'fair'. Should the DM award our good luck, and then 
 >endeavor to remove the game-imbalancing wand? Was it unfair to 'punish'
 >the players for a luck blow? I am DM'ing my own campaign, and would
 >like to hear others opinions before I get in a similiar situation.
 >
 >Thoughts?

Well, all I can say is that it reminds me of something that happened to a friend
of mine, he shot an arrow, smeared with poison, at a dragon (don't know it's size
though). Amazingly he hit, and MORE amazingly the dragon failed it's saving throw
and died, the DM got VERY depressed, but he gave them full experience for it.
I think it's correct too, if the DM wanted the dragon to save, he would
effectively give it a saving throw of 1, even though 2 IS the best you can get.
And since there IS a reason why you can't get a better saving throw than 2, there
is ALWAYS a chance of killing a dragon with a poisoned arrow, and likewise, there
is always a chance of paralyzing a drider with a wand. All this is calculated,
and the exp of a drider ALLSO contains this slim chance of being paralyzed with a
wand, or killed by a poisonous arrow. On the other hand, some DMs prefer to say
that the drider (or the dragon) in the example saved, even though they didn't.
This is OK with me, as long as they do the same thing with the player characters,
and let them survive in places they SHOULD have died, due to unlucky dice roll.
Since the DM is the one who decides everything, if he didn't want you to have the
wand, he could have just removed it.

Jon Inge Teigland