Gaze Attacks

[Scott]

This isn't really detailed in the rules. How do you handle it?

[GT]

Mostly DM's call--if the party "blunders" into a gaze attack creature, then they save or face the consequences...

[ghul]

As GT says. I take it case-by-case. Using medusae encourages meta-gaming, I've found as the players all know their characters should look away and are quick to cry it out ("A Titan against a Titan!"), but do their *characters* really know this?

Then again, I've always loathed the debate on what the player knows versus what the player characters knows. Like the dude in my game who is an eagle scout. It's fine when he tells me precisely how his ranger goes about setting a snare in the wilderness, but when he tries to do it with his elf magic-user, I must cry foul.

[GT]

Heh! I have had the same issues with Physicists, Chemists, etc.--- what you know, your character only knows if it's germaine to them (and then, much doesn't apply in a Fantasy environment!). Mostly on gaze attacks, I do the 180 degree zone, to visual range. If there are others in front (unless they are halflings, gnomes or such), I do a "two ranks" rule and alter saves after that. But again, circumstances can alter all of this...

[Scott]

I usually don't worry about that stuff, and just let it go, after all, there's going to be stuff that your 800 year old elf (or magic-user whose been reading endless arcane tomes, or ranger whose been raised in the forest, cleric that's been training and studying for years at a temple, etc.) should know that your player will never think of, so in the long run, I just think it balances out. Same thing with Intelligence; I'm not one of those DMs that say, 'your 8 Int character could never think of that'. I never hear those DMs saying to those players with the real life Int of 8 playing a character with an Int of 18, 'your character would think of the answer'.

[GT]

Now hold on there, Babalooyee!! Some things just aren't known; or the very least aren't common knowledge to characters in AD&D! PLAYER: "My character mixes a specific proportion of sodium nitrate, carbon and sulphur together... " ME: "Sorry; that doesn't work! Geez!!! You're on Oerth, not in Chem 115, Al !!!!" ^__^

[Scott]

That's an extreme example, but I did start my post with usually.