A story of lousy RR skills and vital RR checks.
The characters in the group I run had a little run-in with a demon during our session today. I used a generic pale III demon with the basic demonic abilities from Monsters: A field guide. Apart from the fact that a pale III demon is capable fighter, Demon Fear and Soul Burn (Major) were big problems for the characters in this group. There was a Shadow Blade, a Warrior Mage and a Mage, all around 10th level, in the group.
The Warrior Mage and the Shadow Blade both use Shielding Weapon combat style and had
DBs of a bit over 100 when they had their defensive spells activated as well. The Warrior Mage had an OB off just over 100, pretty similar to the demon, while the Shadow Blade had a bit lower OB, and only used knives, so small attacks as well.
The mage don't have any DB to brag about, but has an impressive OB with his Ice Bolt and has no problem scaling it up to Huge size if need be.
The fight starts as I predicted. The Shadow Blade goes up front and just parries the demons attacks. Full parry gives him an effective DB of around 200 meaning that I as GM need an open ended roll to do more than a few hits to him. The Warrior Mage comes in from the side with an all out attack, rolling bad, but gets a stun result, but I roll good enough to make the stun check so no stun for the demon. The Mage boosts up his Ice Bolt to huge size and casts it in one round accumulating something like -60 to his roll and fail to get enough damage to even stun the demon.
And then I let them roll the RR for Demon Fear. 2 open ended rolls lets the Mage and Shadow Blade off with a scare, but the Warrior Mage soils his pants and runs away. For the next 10-5 rounds or so it's a race with the dice for the first open ended roll to get an edge in the fight. No such luck for me or the players.
Then I let loose the Soul Burn, the Shadow Blade does not make his RR and loses 12 pints of Constitution and takes 120 hits. He goes down like a sack of potatoes. The Mage casts another Ice Bolt before getting ready to teleport to safety, gets a stun result, but again I make the stun check for the demon. They accept defeat, gets ready to write off the Shadow Blade as a another dead character when the Warrior Mage comes charging in, With an OB of 120, +50 for charging in like mad so before any dice are rolled he has a good chance to stun the demon. He then rolls a 98, and follows up with a 93 and almost cuts the demon in half.
Now, all these characters have lousy RR skills. Without the open ended rolls on the fear check all characters would have run away in panic. And the poor Shadow Blade needed an open ended roll to avoid the Soul Burn. And with 2d10 averaging out to 11, that means on average 110 hits are taken by the unfortunate victim of a major Soul Burn. That is enough hits to down all but the toughest of fighters even if they don't have a scratch on them.
Does this neglect of the RR skills seem familiar to you all? Or is it something I have gotten myself into since they seldom end up in do or die situations where the RR skill is vital for their survival.
In any case they have killed a similar demon earlier and thought this an easy fight since they have gained a few levels since that time. Could be that they forgot all about the open ended roll on the Ice Bolt ant their complete failure to do any damage to the demon up until that point. So the three characters who sent yet another demon packing back home now have a lot more respect for demons. A good thing since the party is currently trying to pick a fight with a demon much tougher than this pale II demon. They are on their way to get their hand son some demon slaying weapons, but I think they will worry a lot more about the Soul Burn.
