First of all, Revivify doesn't work on anything Raise Dead cannot bring you back from. Like [Death] effects.
Now to go back to smiting imbeciles.
RandomCasualty2 wrote:But the battle that you want to make unwinnable is in fact not some battle you foolishly proceeded into, but in fact the standard battles of the quest. Because you're saying if you can't beat even CR threats, then you're just fucked. And you are apparently against changing the quest so the PCs are fighting stuff that's 2-3 CR under what they're supposed to be fighting.
Attempting to fight with such a gimp ass group can certainly be argued to be foolish. However you are again sexually molesting a straw man.
So literally the PCs cannot play at your table without getting fucked over. Because you are adamantly opposed to giving them a quest they can actually accomplish (the encounter guidelines are immutable law in your opinion), and will only give them unwinnable battles if they happen to fall below the arbitrary line of how powerful you think they should be. And then when they die, you blame them instead of your own shitty DMing because you refused to adjust your encounters at all so your PCs could have fun.
Where's the logic in that?
Or they can just stop sucking or at least stop expecting me to not only justify their sucking, but encourage them to be as incompetent as possible since the more they suck, the easier their fights get for the same rewards.
No wonder you like fellating 4.Fail so much. You cannot handle basic concepts like 'level x ys should be able to do z'.
It's not even that hard to be level appropriate, all you have to do is avoid the gimp classes, which if you're playing one I've already told you exactly what to do to stop sucking, so if you don't do it it's entirely your fault. If you cannot put it even a little effort to make yourself viable, I am not even going to consider adding warping the entire campaign world around you to the long list of things I already have to do as a DM to justify your suck - especially since that's even more insulting than just letting you get mulched by a Flayer. If I were going the route of 'humiliate the player at every turn' instead of giving them gimp ass mobs to deal with, I would just face hump them or do something similarly disgusting straight off of some FPS.
Isn't the first goal of the DM to make sure people have fun? But apparently you say "fuck that, the encounter building guidelines are LAW!"
So you entitle disruptive players? Remind me to join one of your games and attempt to kill/burn/rape every NPC I find. After all, I'm just trying to have fun right?*
No, they're really not. In D&D you get less XP for being better. That's the spirit of the rules. The lower the difficulty of the encounter relative to you, the less you get. The more difficult the encounter, the more XP you get. Now, they expect that level is going to be a good indicator for power. However, as we know in 3.5, this assumption is flawed.
Level 8 party vs routine encounter = 600 XP each.
Level 8 party vs level 5 trash mobs = 200 XP each.
So let's see... giving the party a third as much XP, and a little under half as much treasure per battle... yeah, that's pretty fucking insulting. And treating the gimp ass mobs as if they were a credible threat, and giving them rewards as if they were level 8 accordingly is even more so. Both of these are more insulting than just throwing a level 8 encounter at the level 8s, and when they die pointing out they were supposed to be able to handle this easily and could have had they actually taken the advice I gave them so this is entirely their fault.
It's also worth mentioning that since the low level trash mobs have over twice as much loot, they just became harder anyways. But not nearly as much as actually being level appropriate.
After all, what happens when they notice?
Player: Hey, how come we're leveling so slowly? It will take 40 of these battles to level up instead of 13 and a third?
DM: Well, since you're so weak, I'm having to throw stuff far below your level at you so you have any chance of survival...
Or alternately...
Player: You know, something doesn't seem right here about these encounters...
DM: Yeah, they're easy in every respect except rewards which are treated as normal, because I know you can't handle what you're actually supposed to.
Oh and it gets worse if they find out on their own, and not because the DM told them.
Treating adults and teenagers as if they were small children is a Very Bad Idea. You are actively making the D&D community worse by encouraging rather than correcting bad and lazy habits, and annoying blame shifting behavior. What's more, you are actively making the fucking WORLD worse for many of the same reasons... just take a look around you, see how many cannot take responsibility for their own actions. You are teaching them it is someone else's problem to look out for their own best interests.
Fuck that noise, and fuck you for making it.
* - I don't actually have any interest in killing or burning NPCs without a good in game reason, or raping them at all. However doing that is as least as disruptive to play as expecting the entire game world to warp around you and justify your suck because in effective you are expecting the game world to warp around you, just for a different reason (expecting people to react reasonably to your Murderous Pyromanic Rapist instead of expecting your gimp not to get gibbed when he continuously enters combat). I would go so far as to take MPR into my game before some whiner gimp, because at least then when he dies it's because he's singled out for an in game reason, and not just Red Shirted off by a routine encounter. Which means the problem solves itself faster.
One more thing. I've been there before. Group that can't handle routine encounters. So they have plenty of warning that they're about to fight some casters that pretty much do nothing but fire evocations, no tricks and almost no defenses. Remember, plenty of warning. And they're all agile sorts, so higher reflex saves and touch AC than the norm. They go in there anyways. One dies to a Fireball + Scorching Ray.
Now here's where the Fail starts. While the player who got selected for that by IC actions didn't complain, several others whose characters got off with some meaningless HP damage started whining at me to essentially let him cheat and not die, ignoring my statements that it would devalue the game, and ignoring HIS protests that it would do the same.
Ok, so now the whole fucking game has to stop while I have to make up some contrived reason as to why he's coming back, because basically the whole group decided to stop until he did. I also have to make up some contrived reason as to how he's getting back, since there was no one anywhere nearby that could revive him. Congrats, that damages the game. Not nearly as bad as doing some of the things suggested by the whiners (having him automatically survive at -17, or get saved by some random super NPC) but closer than I'd like.
Then the game gets damaged more when the newly revived PC gets an easy solo quest that gets him a uber airship and an easy way to continue the game... but loses to some fucking warrior 1s. Or maybe it was warrior 2s. Point is they died in 1 hit from pretty much anything.
More contrived bullshit to justify weak characters, though in this case he had taken my advice and fixed his build... but that whole 50% chance of losing any given spell slot thing resulted in him losing many of his spell slots. So this one could just be chalked up to bad luck, but even so it's some dumbass mooks... it literally doesn't get weaker than that.
Group finally reunites, but at this point it's clear they cannot handle combat at all, and can't really do non combat either... but they want to do both of these things.
Yeah, epic fail. And this is why I refuse to allow anyone who cannot take responsibility for their own actions and character in my games in the future. Especially since one of the most common end complaints I got is that 'the NPCs are doing everything'... when all of the ones that engage in combat are at most, their level - 2 and often lower and are just basic Rogues with no tricks at best shooting fuckers with a crossbow or stabbing them with a rapier. And they aren't even there at all unless the battlefield pops up near them, it's not like they're just showing up.
So that can be considered my new rule. If you cannot casually outclass a completely uncreative Rogue of cohort level and NPC wealth, you can't play until you can. Saves everyone a lot of headaches.
; I didn't have miss-chance, as Invist, and later Greater Invis would have been a more reasonable spell to cast when I was just buffing up, and then charging in after a pair of rounds. 
