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From: mr-frog@sdamos.UUCP (Dave Pare)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Killing off characters
Message-ID: <20@sdamos.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 17-Oct-84 15:27:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdamos.20
Posted: Wed Oct 17 15:27:59 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Oct-84 08:03:02 EDT
References: <3905@decwrl.UUCP>, <1662@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Organization: Phonetics Lab, UC San Diego
Lines: 31

:

The key line in that last article was 

"in line with the power level of your campaign."

I would certainly agree, were I a PC in that system, that if I had
wands of disintegrate-no-save, or delayed blast fireball (no save),
or power word stun (no save), or practically anything with no save
that the DM would be reasonable (under your stipulation of "power level")
to include items which would kill PC's with no save.

How many people run games like this?  Not too many.

Many people do have spells which identify items from a distance
(you don't have to put the item on to figure out what it does)
but these spells are around sixth level.  We generally don't muck
around with items until we can get them back to be "identified"
by high level mages, however those DM's who delight in inflicting
obnoxious devices on players would be the very types who would
not have NPC mages around to do analizes so that the "instant death"
devices would not "go to waste".

A long time ago we used to have those items in dungeons, but we
quickly found that since the players always had the items identified,
they got some pretty gross devices -- you could always instead of
attacking a monster, throw a "robe of blending" on him and push the
button...

Dave Pare