party wipe

Got home from gaming not long ago. It was supposed to be "finish up the adventure" night, but nearly turned into "start a new character" night. I guess we took a wrong turn or something, sheesh, but we faced a group of harpies, and they nearly took us all out. The problem was, that they would fly in and get past our weapons and start a grapple with us. Well, that means you are fighting with knives, rocks, and hand-to-hand, which doesn't do all that much damage, but the harpies have claws, and they had no problem doing damage to us. So, we would displace a feather or two, and they would scratch and claw the heck out of us. I finally thought to play dead so that I might have the chance to pick up my sword and try again. It worked, but took some time to get back in the battle. A couple of other people kind of took my cue and tried to break out of the grapple. Trouble was, the harpy would close in again, and we were not having any luck keeping them out. Three characters died (fortunately we could take them to be resurected), three more were badly injured (why aren't there healing potions in real life?) and two of us managed to stay up through the whole battle and minister to the rest.

Dragon Quest was the game, and we do a lot of dice rolling in combat, to see how we are doing. The problem is, you see, that we all roll poorly. Oh, yes, that was what was happening tonight. All over the place. At times like tonight, when the whole party is going down, it gets rather discouraging. On the other hand, we are all mature enough to die with good grace, even if it is obviously frustrating to all involved. That is one of the things that I really like about this gaming group. The other thing about rolling badly - and we ALL do - is that it helps give your character CHARACTER. And those times we sit around and talk about the "remember the game when" it is those terrible die rolls that really get remembered. To quote Dev, "STOP HELPING!!!"