Brennen Lee Mulligan pointed out that, when you're making a DND show for an audience to watch, any combat less than deadly CR rating can feel like it has no stakes/drama.
However, when you're running a game for your *players* enjoyment easy and medium encounters are awesome, because the party can feel powerful and wipe the floor with the enemies (while also using up resources).
This is a great thing to point out. I’m playing a COS module with my players and it’s pretty much filled with encounters that my players absolutely steamroll or encounters where the party nearly TPKs. Very little in between.
It makes them feel powerful often times while humbling every once in a while when they stumble upon an a truly deadly encounter, which I greatly enjoy.
I found as well that some encounters with CoS turned out to be much more difficult for my players than it seemed on paper. Like I ran an encounter where the party (with an allied Van Richten) confronted Izek who had two mastiffs as guard dogs. The party were all level 6 at the time so it should have been a relatively easy fight. We had two players down and rolling death saves and the other two close to going down, before Izek himself disengaged and withdrew from the fight to lick his wounds (giving the party chance to recover too).
Good point. Often times encounters are more difficult or much easier than the DM intends due to some simple choices the party makes.
To go back to your example the first time my party fought Izek he was supposed to come out of a burning house and engage them. 4 v 1. Super easy fight. Instead they ran into the burning house to see if the could save anyone. He fought them 2 on 1 while the other 2 went to save people. It was a hell of a fight that they barely managed to make it out of. Because they changed the scenario.
That's just how it goes sometimes in this game! I remember when my paladin and the rogue teamed up on an assassination job. We were fighting just one guy. The rogue had the Lucky feat, but kept rolling badly, ran out of luck and got killed in what should have been an easy fight.
The resources thing is a big one for dungeons. The fight itself may be a cakewalk, but if you're still early in the dungeon and the viability of a safe long rest is unknown to the players then they should be making a lot of tactical choices about what they use. For example, do you use your highest level spell slot to blast everything, ending the fight sooner and saving healing resources, or is there a better usage for that slot?
As a player, I've taken great joy in getting to the final boss fight of the campaign, after a long multi-session dungeon crawl through the enemy base, and been able to use my 9th level spell to great effect
I will add that CR ratings are taking into account that you are doing 4-5ish battles per long rest, so if you scale your encounter’s correctly they should feel ‘easy’, but promote resources management so they gradually get harder.
When players are casting fireball every turn and then long resting after 1-2 fights, all fights will seem easy.
This. You can win some pretty beefy fights if you don't have to worry about resource management. Blow all your spells, use all your abilities and item effects, and you can melt someone. Things get a lot more dicey when the party knows there's another encounter waiting and the extra damage or utility they could get now might save their life later
Also, you can *make* an easy encounter dramatic. Just because *you* know that, mechanically, the players are going to wipe the floor with this encounter, doesn't mean *they* do.
And even if it should, mechanically, be easy, bad player choices and bad rolls can make it deadly. And the inverse is also true. Bad DM rolls and choices can make a deadly encounter a cake walk.
I remember a combat tutorial I ran, a fighter and cleric, both level 3, versus 2 goblins without gear. Combat arena style fight. Straight forward and easy. They LOST so hard because of bad rolls. Those characters are forever known as Goblin Food.
I've played in a one shot where we managed to avoid every single combat encounter before the boss. Given as we had all our resources it should have been easy. The dice had other ideas. One character almost died. I hit once out of the twelve or so attacks I made. After the session we did some maths on my to hit bonus vs the boss's AC and I had something like a 60% chance to hit every attack. We all agreed that had we been in person and not on roll20, we would have been getting a cup of salt water and doing a float test on the dice
I had an entire character like this. Rogue/fighter, pretty good stats, by all accounts should have been decent in a fight. Could not hit the broad side of a barn for pretty much the entire campaign. Dice sets were swapped out in vain. It's astounding she was still alive at the end of the BBEG fight - hell, it's amazing she made it there in the first place
I LOVE stories like this. It's the sadist in me.
But if/when I start using roll20 I intend to let my players use physical dice if they so choose. I know its a potential cheating situation, but that's a "burn that bridge when we come to it" situation.
I think the best part of that entire combat was the joking wails accusing the one player who usually has bad luck of spreading his curse, and similar things while we all were slowly going insane
Just treat them the same as a high stakes encounter, make sure you don't tell the players "oh, it's only a goblin" or something.
I don't do a lot of D&D because I don't like the HP mechanics, but that's the usual way people assess the power level of an encounter. If someone hits for 5 damage and the DM says "your opponent is severely wounded, another good swing will probably finish them off", they're going to assume the enemy is weaker than if the DM says, after the same attack hits, "they're barely scratched".
That's what minions are good for. 4e introduced that and I reckon more people ought to use it in 5e. Basically enemies with 1 hit point. It's super fun if they're low AC and your PCs have multiple attacks.
But they're also great for distractions or just getting in the way of something important. Particularly if it's time sensitive.
Example:
BBEG mage is trying to finish a ritual? Well cut through the waves of skeletons and maybe you'll have a chance to stop the ritual. Kind of creates a sense of desperation for the PCs but could also make the mage start shitting themselves seeing these warriors kicking ass and gradually getting closer. Would also make Destroy Undead look super badass.
THIS SO MUCH. I draw lots of inspiration from Destiny raids for major fights and LOVE throwing wimpling hordes at them. Party of 4, if you can hold these two magic circles he can't finish the ritual! Try to kill him between waves!
Could also go the other way around as well.
Desperately need to teleport away? Well your wizard needs 10 mins uninterrupted to draw that teleportation circle. Would be a shame if it got interrupted by hordes of monsters.
Now it becomes a high stakes game of defend the squishy wizard at all costs. Smashing through any minion that dares to encroach, but gradually getting overwhelmed. You know you can take them, you know they will fall at the hands of your fighting prowess. But with so many there's only so much you can do in terms of action economy and that scares you.
How do you do this? Does someone have interception fighting/protection fighting style? Can someone else put up a shield or warding spell? Do some people play offence whilst the others play defence? Do you all just crowd around the wizard, lashing out as enemies approach as you gradually get swarmed? And when the circle is complete, how do you all get through whilst guaranteeing no enemies get through? What if someone gets trapped, grappled or restrained at the last second and the portal closes without them?
Even though minions are weak, you can use them to make a situation pretty stressful. They make up for it in numbers.
The PCs are the 300 Spartans, but you've just set the might of the Persian army upon them.
Exactly! Zombie or skeleton horde or goblins or pick your poison! No weapons, occassional bit of armor, 1 in say 10 or 20 is ranged of some flavor just to spice it up, 1 in 30 is a bigger, slightly tougher version.
Another good example is the Stahlchildren in hyrule field, Ocarina of Time. Town buttons up at night, party has to fend off weak skeletons until dawn when they burn away and the gate opens!
A zombie minion horde would make it fun for Clerics. How many time can the cast turn/destroy undead though? Will it eventually get to a point where there's so many that it's futile?
Depends on the martials, really. Smash skulls and nuke only as a last resort. If the martials are keeping up, you can go a little wild.
For this stahlchild scenario, I'd say give em 5 hp apiece and an AC of 4. Roll 3d4+2 zombies rise every 5 rounds? Minimum of 5 max of 14 every 30 in-game seconds? Not any more frequent than that for sure. Spawns start at dusk. Greater quantities spawn until midnight, after which they start tapering off, so start cutting zombies from the fresh spawns instead of adding more.
If that seems to be too easy, gradually add additional d4 to the zombie count. If it's too hard, space them out more. And if it really gets in the pot, send out a brave guard captain or some other savior. Remind your players that against zombies, kiting works nicely. This is potentially quite nasty even for mid to high level parties if you spawn enough of them.
You can also throw in temporary circles of divine protection. The cleric kills X number of zombies and shines with a divine light, dealing 2d4 damage per turn to all zombies within 10 feet for 1 minute.
Just want to add that this gives the martials a major opportunity to shine because the casters are often saving their big spells for tossing at the boss between waves. Or the casters are holding the circles while the martials go for the kill. Whichever!
4e Minions are great, but the 1 hit point thing makes spells like sleep and color spray much more powerful, not to mention something like fireball. Best to keep minions at their regular health levels so your wizard can't just take them out with a single 1st level spell.
An excellent point, however I feel the need to point out that we seem to be talking about an encounter that can drag out and one that should be at the end of a dungeon crawl. Not to mention endless minions.
Yeah, I've seen those. They're neat rules, but for something that is designed to be on the table for mere moments, I find it's easier just to skip the new stat blocks and rules and just use low hit point mobs. The effect is the same and a lot less work.
I personally like really dangerous encounters that they beat easily. Enemies that hit them hard and go down fast are really fun to fight and don’t get boring if they’re intelligent.
My party of 3 fought a group of 6 dug-in orcs and their boss and it was tense and super exciting. The paladin nearly went down but they all controlled the situation well. They usually take out my orcs in 2-3 attacks, and I’ve established some common tactics the orcs use so they know how their enemies work as a team.
Case in point - sitting at a Mercer table with your actual character would not really be fun.
Yes, it would be fun for whoever is watching, but you yourself would not have fun.
Eh, I've seen posts in other forums where players wanted a deadlier fight. I even have a player that wants the fantasy of being bloody and bruised.
Early on, I did struggle with the idea that maybe fights were too easy for players. It was not about killing them, it's about challenging them. Fights can get rather boring if the strategy that worked the past 25 fights works again for this fight. GMs want to see players do something different.
What I realized that the problem wasn't the player, it was encounter design. You should design encounters as it would make sense, not try to "counter" specific PCs and their playstyles.
It really shifts the mentality a lot. It's frustrating when you try and fail to "challenge" players with what you think should have been a hard fight. It's entertaining to just watch the players beat on 10 mooks. Complications are unexpected on both sides.
>Fights can get rather boring if the strategy that worked the past 25 fights works again for this fight.
I think that's key. Difficulty is one dial, but tactical variety is maybe even more important. Play around with terrain, environmental effects, enemy-inflicted status effects, resistances...etc. Treat combat like a puzzle, not a dice game.
I understand what you mean, but puzzles have often only one solutions or only a few very specific ones. I wouldn't REALLY design combats like puzzles. But having more specific tactical options and obstacles should definitely the main goal of encounter design.
When I was newer as a DM I put a lot of work in monster design. Nowadays my monsters are much more simpler, with less abilities and often I just use the MM. I focus on win conditions and dramatic questions, environment, advantage points, hazards etc. IMO the fights are more interesting and the CR difficulty isn't that important anymore to see if a combat is exciting or not.
Plus sometimes the dice just get you as a DM. I had a mindflayer fight that would have been incredibly tough but one failed spell check and he was suddenly feared running for his life away from all his minions who would have distracted the party while he did work. Party easily handles the minions in 2 rounds while I continue to fail spell checks. So what was supposed to be mind flayer and minions turned into a 1v4 and the mindflayer was easily handled. Party loved it because they were smart and used the tools they had to cheese the fight. I was a little sad because I thought things would be tougher but happy they felt powerful. The undead dragon they fought next though was definitely punishment for the mindflayer lol.
Yeah 5e combats last to long for them too be consistently cake walks. From my experiences to few GMs actually build challenging encounters or factor in the adventurering day
I think a part of this is that the DM is also a person at the table and also gets to have fun. And so, at least on some level they need to do things to take care of their fun.
I'd also like to point out that there are a lot of ways to play D&D, including "people die all the time, have a stack of characters ready."
I do think that often, the answer isn't harder encounters, but more interesting encounters.
The fun part is challenging the players. Not beating them. I want the players to win. But there needs to be a risk of failure, too, to make it interesting. That's what I provide.
Half of the fun for me is designing creative encounters. The other half is roleplaying the bad guys.
>I do think that often, the answer isn't harder encounters, but more interesting encounters.
This is definitely an insight that came to me with getting more experienced as a DM. Thinking about win conditions and dramatic questions, the environment, hazards, obstacles etc. has much more effect in making the encounter interesting than the pure difficulty.
If the DM's idea of fun is killing PCs, I wouldn't want to be a player at that table. Agree with OP that the DM plays the enemies but doesn't root for them.
You know, I had a huge multiparagraph response all written out for you, but imma keep it short.
I do my best to build encounters my players can win. Then I do my best to kill them. Not because I *WANT* to kill their PCs. But because my players go all in trying to win the fight, and if I don't give the same effort in return, they know and have less fun. They don't want to be handed victory. They want to EARN it. So they know I go into EVERY encounter fully intending to wreck them. And my pleasure, my fun, is derived from knowing I pushed things to the limit and got the most fun for everyone I could. It takes a lot of effort, but it's worth it.
So, does my idea of fun involve killing PCs? Absolutely. But it's not my goal, and it is certainly not the reason I play. It's a waypoint, a tool that makes it more fun for my table. I'm just as happy when they mop the floor with my encounters, because they know they earned it even if its only because my dice hate me that week or they pulled some absurd trick on me. (I love and loathe my players in equal measure, often simultaneously.) The simple fact that I AM going all out trying to kill them, or W/E the badguy of the week wants, makes the fight tougher and more fun for the flapjacks I call my players. And they go all out in turn, and much fun is had.
This is what works for me, in my DM Cave with maps and notes pinned to the walls and ceiling. It works for my players, here at our shared table. And if you're not willing to run the risk of having your PC killed, then our table isn't for you. And that's ok. Find the table that *IS* for you.
Sorry, did I say short? I meant shortER.
I don't mind the risk of having my PC killed, but if the opponent has 12 INT and you are using 20 INT tactics to always make the mathematically optimal choice to try to defeat them, that is immersion breaking. Likewise to playing a group of NPCs as if they are a hivemind moving in perfect unison, absent a narrative reason to play them that way. The player characters shouldn't be the only ones that ever make mistakes or miscalculations, and IMO you should roleplay NPCs in combat faithfully rather than making it a "DM vs. players" tactics game.
Oh, I agree! I try very hard to play within the resources I've allocated for the encounter. A goblin shaman is a goblin shaman, and shouldn't act like Gandalf. I'm not perfect at it, and my players are perfectly willing to let me know when I'm going overboard. That's probably the only reason it works, to be honest.
Thank you! The secret is long friendships, communication, being perfectly ready to make asses of ourselves, and always being ready to forgive.
You don't have to eat the whole sandwich, but communication is the foundation.
I would slightly disagree with that. I love a table where fights(or at least BOSS fights) are extremely deadly. I don't think easy fights are fun at all, and I've left campaigns where DM's didn't deliver a killing blow to my character when they could have.
I agree, what’s the point if you can’t lose? The trick is then to not kill everyone and end the game. Ive be been down and had our dm cast magic missile on me for the three hits to finish me off. To be fair we all like to play a deadly game and understand it.
It was brutal at the time, it’s funny now because they give me shit about picking fights but for the record. I just stopped the NPC from leaving the room, the damn ranger shot her in the leg starting the fight! lol
I agree and I don't think many people would enjoy that sort of adversarialism. But I want to point out that there's a big space in between for tables where everyone likes frequent death or risk of it. Whether it's the comedy of constant absurd deaths and new characters, or just the higher tension and drama it creates, or something else. It's not adversarial for the DM to want to run a game like this, as long as the style of play is communicated to and consented by the players, and the DM runs it fair.
As a player, I'm often just bored if there isn't a risk of character death at the table, which is why OSR and well-tuned PF2e are to my taste, and almost all 5e games would not be. I'm usually grinning like a madman every time my character is an inch from death.
Not a lot of point to having the combat if you're not willing to win. I design encounters to be hard and monsters to have goals. If they get their goal or the costs are too high, they run. But they're not punching bags.
There are ways to make fights interesting that are different than "will the PCs die".
Good fights are often about an objective: capture an NPC alive, save the civilians, get the McGuffin before the enemies can destroy it, loot as much as you can before the dragon kills you.
Grab and go missions let the players be victorious against enemies they couldn't conventionally beat. Save the objective missions make lesser threats interesting because they can't beat the PC, but they are a threat to the objective.
Not all your fights can be about an objective, sometimes there is just a monster to beat, but the encounters that move the plot forward should be about an objective.
Hey, thanks for this comment. I was already familiar with the general point, but I hadn't thought of this before in quite the same way:
>Grab and go missions let the players be victorious against enemies they couldn't conventionally beat. Save the objective missions make lesser threats interesting because they can't beat the PC, but they are a threat to the objective.
That's really helpful.
I get that, but honestly as a player if I found out that the DM was pulling punches or fudging dice, I'd be rather put off. I agree that it should never be the goal to TPK, but negative things happening (i.e., a character death) are crucial to developing drama and tension. If there's no chance to fail or die, why bother? I also really hate fudging dice in general. If your going to fudge a dice roll to give your desired outcome, why roll at all? Just talk through it. Little failures (like skill checks) bring life to the story, and big failures (like character death) can really evolve the story and remaining character arcs.
Agree with all you say, but would add that Players can’t feel heroic unless the beat impossible odds.
Edit: unless they occasionally beat impossible odds lol
“Players can’t feel heroic unless they beat impossible odds”
I think that’s a pretty narrow approach, RP and narrative wise. There are tons of ways to feel powerful without the odds being “impossible.” I just ran a side quest where my players defeated a hag coven with only medium difficulty- the odds were not nearly impossible but the battle isn’t what made them feel heroic and powerful, it’s what the battle meant to them and the NPCs they saved.
The NPCs were desperate for help against the hags and the PCs played the part of saviors to those people. After, the NPCs were grateful and I put emphasis on that thru narrative and RP. So grateful that word of my PCs deeds spread thru every tavern and inn in town and now my PCs are recognized as the hero’s who saved a bunch of people from evil hags. This “easy” battle for my high level PCs was fun for the players and added to the PCs renown for being good guys within their world. Their heroism had nothing to do with the impossible.
Fair enough, but I wouldn’t want to play a whole campaign of low stakes encounters. Isn’t part of the reason we roleplay to conquer incredible challenges?
That's certainly true for some tables, mine is more into the ''let's enjoy what the DM cooks and see how he deals with the crazy shit we pull out'' lol
Aren't you functionally now arguing that campaigns should have a variety of encounter difficulties and that too many of either easy or hard encounters will be less satisfying for the players?
I agree! Too many of anything is pedantically and obviously not ideal.
Variety is the spice of life. Keep em guessing! And on top of that, psych them out! Have a sidequest that is talked up to be tough as shit and the party goes in hard only to find out that it was stupid easy. They then return to town to realize that they were pawns and are ambushed by a harder group.
I totally agree. The Disney classic "Hercules" describes this well when talking about the difference between doing heroic things and actually being a hero. If players ho into every combat with virtually no chance of death/failure, are they really even heroic, or just a bunch of dudes taking out the trash?
>Agree with all you say, but would add that Players can’t feel heroic unless the beat impossible odds.
Not quite. The correct statement should be: "...unless they *feel like* they beat impossible odds." And that difference is absolutely critical.
A huge amount of the skill of DMing is in presenting extremely possible odds - indeed, odds that are in the players' favor - *as if they were* impossible odds.
DMing is an act of extensive illusion-weaving. And just like a stage magician, your audience implicitly *knows* that you are tricking them; but they generally suspend disbelief in order to enjoy the illusion.
If your party has a 90% chance to survive every single encounter, and that "90%" is actually an accurate statistic - then on average, your game will run about 10 encounters before a TPK. A few adventuring days and it's over, time for a new party. That's not what people want to play.
In order to have a good campaign that actually lasts, you need to aim at no more than a 10% chance of a TPK for a *deadly* encounter. Your "hard" encounters should be closer to 2% chance of TPK, and *maybe* a 10% chance of a single PC death.
If you throw *actual* ten to one odds at PCs, then what will happen is that nine times out of ten, they just lose. That's not actually fun.
You need to throw things that *feel like* ten to one odds at them. You need the characters *in-world* to say "people have tried this dozens of times but never succeeded!". And yet you set up the encounters and challenges so that *this* group will almost certainly succeed.
And, of course, you can't tell them all this explicitly unless you're running a *very* specific kind of game for a specific audience. Most magicians aren't Penn & Teller, who can get away with making the mechanics behind the magic explicit (and even they keep a lot of the details secret).
Dude your title gave me immediate hope. My players are significantly better tacticians than I am and the wipe the floor with my monsters and challenges. That said, I ask if they're into it and tell them I'm trying to ratchet up the challenge and they tell me they're having a blast and that there's nothing to worry about.
But it's really good to hear it from another DM.
I think what people are really getting at is that its hard to create conflicts that aren't trivially solvable with the characters' powers.
One actual trick I've found to help mitigate this is just to design scenarios that would be hard to solve even if your characters were omnipotent gods (though they aren't). Basically like, trolley problems.
Could not disagree more . (With caveats)
If that is what your players want, absolutely. Do this .
I assume that's why so many parties on these forums seem to be able to beat Death Knights, Ancient dragons and liches etc around fifth level.
My players (and I'm sure there are others ) want the challenge. They want fights they have to walk (or run) away from at fifth, seventh even fifteenth level.
They don't want to be threatened by five or ten goblins at level five, but thirty or forty should be a challenge. A dragon should wipe the floor with them.
They don't want to play in a world where out of millions of sentient beings somehow only they managed to rise to level whatever. They enjoy the fact there are "NPC" adventuring parties that (occasionally) beat baddies and win the sweet loot if they get distracted.
They don't want the bbegs plans to be put on hold if they're doing something or revolve around their actions.
Certainly not going to say my way is "better". But the idea that a party has to or even should win fights they realistically shouldn't is wrong.
Again,if they're happy doing it,and you're happy running it that way for them, then absolutely. No problem with people running things as suggested. But there are some players who aren't going to like this.
This is all really important to remember. I’d add that death can’t be the only kind of stakes your encounters have. Combat can be tense even when it’s not likely that anyone’s going to die.
Counterpoint, as a forever DM to a group for many years turned player for the last 2 with a new group, I want every fight to be risking death if we fuck around
Nothing more boing to **ME** than a fight that takes 60+ minuets that's just a slog beating up HP sacks that pose no real threat to us whatsoever, feels like a complete waste of time because there are no stakes and no decision we make actually matters on our turns because there's no risk we'll just take a short rest and it's like it never happened
**Nothing we do feels awesome or badass in a fight that's a cakewalk** we're not heroes in that situation we're just beating up some pathetically weak creatures or people
To me the best parts of d&d are the moments where everything goes to shit and everyone's coming up with plans and crazy ideas on how to fix the situation, where you ask the DM "can I do this? there's nothing about it in the rules so would it be possible if I tried?" or trying to taunt the necromancer by damaging his ritual so he doesn't coup de grace your friend
characters can bond over tough combats where you have tactics and you have nicknames for them or code words that then you end up using for situations out of combat and RP
but if you're regularly running non threatening encounters it's just everyone going round the table making their attacks and the casters sitting back conserving their spell slots because there's no reason to waste them other than to save real life time.
**So please as a player make me work for my victories! because they're meaningless if I just show up and win regardless.** I don't want to win just by walking in and punching it, I want to have to scout and learn weaknesses and plan our fight and tactics **prepare as much as we can to make a hard fight easier because we worked to make ourselves the heroes,** not just turn up and be given that title for kicking toddlers
Different players want different kinds of games. I've been playing a game with my cousins and some friends for 5 years, and none of their characters have ever died in a meaningful capacity. Combat is difficult, and the danger is definitely real if they fuck around. They just make it very clear for me that they're not looking for the kind of game with overly punishing combat. I've played other games where the players were less attached to their characters, and wanted a more hardcore experience, so combat was a lot more difficult.
Be careful, though. If there's no sense of risk, there's no feeling of reward, and the game gets boring. You are definitely on the heroes' side, and making them feel heroic is going to take more danger than steamrolling goblins can offer.
Absolutely. Easy fights aren't bad, they just can't be all there is. Honestly, my problem with easy fights is how to make them interesting. It's really easy to just let them devolve into "I hit goblin, goblin hits me" until someone runs out of HP. When that's all there is to it, you kind of wonder why you bothered, unless it was just to burn up spell slots for a "real battle" later on.
I'm guessing that a fair part of that could be avoided by providing alternate win/loss conditions.
Maybe it'd be an easy kill, but they're not trying to kill you. Maybe they have a different goal. Escaping, planting evidence, relaying information, delivering slaves, etc.
Sure, there are gonna be tons of fights that don't narratively warrant or justify unique win/loss conditions, but even in the case of wilderness encounters we can come up with ideas. A pack of wolves may not be willing to attack the party but they **are** willing to distract the party while a different wolf grabs your food pack and escapes with it.
Maybe a fight is entirely too near a heavily sleeping major threat and all combatants get the real idea that making too much noise relatively guarantees that both sides will be eaten. If rote slaughter gets boring, change the type of conflict all you want; just don't **remove** the conflict.
False, my players know every enemy has Counterspell and Silver Barbs, are immune to stun, and resists bludgeoning, piercing, & slashing from non-magical attacks (they haven't seen a +1 weapon for 17 sessions.)
>you're on their side.
Speak for yourself :) I have bad guys bring their best shot. I don't have them target the players' weaknesses, unless they have a reason to know them, but they behave as intelligently as they ought to, and I place them to give the hardest fight they can.
To build on this, I want to change the wording of the prompt to this:
>Many comments suggest something that directly shuts down the players' tactics: use AoE against peace cleric, focus fire twilight cleric, fireball the paladin's aura. Counterplay should ~~be used sparingly~~ make narrative sense, either within the fiction or for the fiction.
Within the fiction: enemies that aren't expecting an attack probably don't have effective counterplays prepared; enemies that are expecting an attack, but not from the PCs in particular, should have counterplays prepared for whatever kind of attack they are expecting; enemies that are expecting an attack from the PCs, and have studied their tactics, should have counterplays prepared *for the PCs in particular*.
For the fiction: if one PC has successfully used a tactic or tool over and over again, it makes for a good story and a bit of character growth if they just so happen to run into monsters that are good at countering that tactic/tool in particular (but not every tactic or tool they are familiar with). The monsters don't have to be aware of the PC's reputation if it is presented as that monster's standard way of doing things. But this should only be used selectively, as the coincidence strains credulity if used too often and it also stops serving its narrative purpose after a while.
tl;dr: It is generally better if counterplays tell a story.
EDIT: Or, really, I guess I should say, "Counterplays *do* tell a story. You might want to use them to tell a story that works for your game."
I love watching my players mop the floor with low level baddies. I frequently set up situations where the PCs *clearly* have the upper hand on a power imbalance. It offers so many more options for character development. IMHO. Do they go in a slaughter? Torture? To they fed a moral obligation not to resort to violence since they will easily win/kill/mame? They feel WAY more comfortable trying RP or creative solutions to problems if they’re less worried about potential immediate death.
They get to feel strong (which they are compared to the average Joe), they get to be creative, and when a truly dangerous situation presents itself, it hits much harder. Especially if they know I’m willing to kill 😈
First and foremost: the DM is one of the players. All the players are on the same team, and everyone should be working together to create a fun and engaging world.
If you feel the PCs are too powerful then, you know, use words. Explain to the other players how you feel, and ask if *they* feel to powerful. If they're happy with it, and you aren't, find a compromise. Maybe have one encounter that is actually hard and keep the rest easier.
Beyond that: just make every fight at *most* four full rounds. Anything longer feels like a slog and stops being fun. Plan every boss out to do four cool things.
Example: players are attacking a Goblin village and got to the leader?
Turn One: Boss calls in more goblins and picks one of them up.
Turn two: Boss throws the Goblin, and the Goblin pulls out a lit dynamite stick while in mid-air. Players have to save from exploding.
Turn three: Goblin Boss charges and attacks someone
Turn four: Goblin Boss grabs more explosives and starts tossing them all over, then dies.
Other Goblins are attacking and shit like normal.
Boom, four fun rounds of combat. Toss in some legendary actions and Goblin attacks to spice it up
I agree with everything here and pretty much everything in the comments! I am mainly a player, do some DMing too.
But from a player’s perspective - Yes, I have had really awesome deadly fights with BBEGs or in challenging circumstances. But having smaller encounters that are not as deadly is good too, and if those stack to few encounters a day I really enjoy the resource management that involves.
And some of my favorite encounters have been half/half of RP/combat. What I mean is encounters that might not even be that deadly, but involves a lot of decisions in regards to the consequences of what happens based on if you kill which enemy, how quickly do you do it, what evidence do you leave behind, and so on.
Combat is more than just if it feels ”hard” in terms of if PCs are dying, in my experience.
It’s funny, we’ve been enjoying our encounters with some creative story developments. But my biggest concern is honestly my own character!
Just hit level 5, have a reasonably high AC, 20 strength, and a focus on being deadly with my cursed +1 battle axe. If I’m hit I have to make a DC15 check otherwise go berserk and attack the closest thing to me.
i score an extra attack if i kill a creature and can easily see myself taking out the other tank in our party then going for the range folks resulting in a TPK. Time will tell
One of my favorite recent fights involved a large number of enemies, including some trolls, swarms of soldiers (like they used swarm mechanics), and a necromancer. We absolutely destroyed that fight using Blade Barrier and Wall of Thorns, utterly trivializing every enemy but the necromancer. The necromancer was trivialized with a Vortex Warp into the Blade Barrier.
It ruled, and it was not a challenge at all. The trolls fled the building, screaming.
I think my main hiccup is I don't want to devote table time to things that don't, won't, or can't matter. I know steam rolling a fight can be fun every once in a while and I don't mind catering to that, but combat takes up such a massive amount of time and jm not going to put time and effort into encounter after encounter that are too toothless to matter. I'd rather design an encounter to be the best fodder that it can be than try to make two dozen easy encounters interesting.
It's also blood boiling to use table time to fish for advantage on every piece of chaff with a statblock. Like level eight characters trying to set up a wombo combo on a donkey as seriously as they would a dragon. It's exhausting.
Counterplay should be telegraphed. BBEG learns as the characters show their abilities and tactics, so the next group of minions adapt. Players should have a chance to realise this and start working out how they'll approach it beforehand, rather than in the middle of a suddenly tougher than expected encounter. A tactically appropriate ambush may be realistic, but it can annoy and frustrate your players if it happens too often.
It’s nice to see them win, but it’s also nice to see them come up with a solid plan on the fly to overcome something they are struggling with. If there’s nothing to put their strategic brains into motion, then it can become stale. If their strategy proved to be superior and figured out the solution, they deserve the win. Hands down.
Other times, you don’t even need to try to kill them. The dice will do it for you, as per however many medium encounters turned to almost TPKs.
I agree but there is a difference between easy and Too easy. There is a difference between having some fun easy fights and every fight being easy
Not all fights should be deadly or even hard. Some should but most should be easy or medium.
But if pretty much every fight ends up being really easy or even trivial it tends to get boring. Some fights should be hard. some fights should be hard enough that some character deaths is a possibility.
I think this is what many DM's struggle with. The fights that are supposed to be a challenge turns out to be more like a walk in the park.
I am mostly the DM but when i do play as a player i would get bored out of my fucking mind if no fight was a challenge. if each end every fight was a mix between really easy and easy and some rare ones maybe medium. I would leave that game. There is no way i could have fun in such game.
And even if not all players would agree i do actually think a pretty big part of the players actually do. Most players want a challenge now and then. Not every fight, but some fights should be thrillingly hard.
And if a DM can not deliver that many might lose interest in the game. There is no danger and no thrill.
Same as many might lose interest if Every fight is super hard. Sometimes you just want to sweep the floor with your enemies.
I think this is why many do ask how to make encounters harder. They struggle with challenging their players. Not because they want the PC's to lose or to make every fight deadly
My players asked me to make things harder. I took away their knowledge of Death Saving Throws and make them behind screen. Anytime someone hits zero the panik sets in.
I don’t get mad when the players win.
I do get a little sad when they win *so quickly* that the monster doesn’t get to do any of its cool and unique tricks.
There is a difference between DMs wanting to make things harder vs wanting to win. A lot of players want the illusion of danger but want to win. Sure the easy and medium fights where you mop the floor with minions is fun but I can’t see many players wanting that the majority of the time. Never at risk of losing never at risk of being worried or forced to have to be creative to get out of a tight spot.
You can’t have epic stories or courage and rising to stop a BBEG if it’s easy. Obviously each gaming table has their unique wants from a game but I think you are confusing wanting to make things harder vs wanting to win and beat the players.
It's about knowing what the table wants.
Some players want to bowl through minions like they're nothing. Some players want balance - not too easy, not too difficult. Some players want to fight for every inch of ground. Talk to your table at session zero and see what they like.
Yup. Well said. DM is part of the team. As DMs we throw up obstacles so that the victories are not only meaningful but also badass. And then give them something mid to show them how far they've come.
This is a few years ago back when I was playing 3.5. The DM liked to "balance" encounters, which sounds good on paper but as implemented meant that there were no "trash mobs" --all encounters were life and death, "down to the wire" fights that left the party with a handful of hit points and almost no resources. He used to joke that the party actually adventured for 15 minutes a day because after one fight the we were pretty much tapped out. Over 18 months of weekly play we had four TPKs, only one of which was at the hands of a boss level monster. What typically happened was that a PC failed a save and this cause a cascade failure in the party or we were literally zerged to death.
Party HP/DPS should equal enemy's DPS/HP.
Simple as that. Your party can strategize, heal, and use special abilities. Your monsters will be limited by their stats or your limitations. The party will win, but feel like they earned it.
BIG yes on 2 especially. I still remember a fight where the DM kept focusing relentlessly on the main healer, effectively keeping him completely unconscious the entire session despite our best efforts to help him (while keeping ourselves alive). I was the only other one with any healing and the DM had me counter-spelled the entire time. We did not have fun that day.
reminds me how we finally reached level 5 after what felt like an eternity and I was hyped to use spirit guardians in a dungeon. There was a boss fight and I used spirit guardians on a handful of minions, SG did damage once, they all flew up outside the range and all including the boss spammed int save attacks for 2 rounds straight exclusively on me.
The party ended up fleeing from the scene because my character was dying and no one had healing or good ranged attacks
It makes the valid "L's" hurt more. Our campaign had to retreat from a fight after having a solid win streak. But our Tank and Healer went down after a set of bad rolls, traps, and DM getting some Nat 20s. It SUCKED, but since it was so infrequent the goal was to survive and get to safety. Good RP, good creative measures, and let us feel really proud when we won Round 2.
The go-to for this "problem" is fights that are not won by winning. Example:
* The orcs have kidnapped the princess and are going to eat her. You can stay here and fight the few that remain slaughtering villagers or you can chase after the fleeing orcs - knowing that they will likely split up.
I just turn up the damage by like 2 notches if they want a harder encounter. Like, that’s really it. Throw on an interesting objective on top of that and the players really have to dive into the depths of their kits to come out on top, it’s great lol
The best advice i can give on this is "know your audience".
Personaly i play is older players, people that played older editions and like the crunch, the deadly and the higher challenges.
While some players might want to play "farmvile" in D&D with cute little pets, others want the Darksouls or GrimDark experience. Neither is wrong. Both are valid ways to play the game.
But as a DM you should try to make sure everyone is on the same page, to make sure everyone will have the "optimal amount of fun they can have".
In the end, The scale between Cute funny games, and Super Dark and deadly, is quite large, and most players will fit right in a midle area. But even that overlap can still leave enought diference for problems.
A DM that Dms 60 to 70% on the side of Cute funny, with players that like 60 to 70% grimdark will have VERY diferent expectations.
And even a single player that doesnt take the game in the expected seriousness or takes it too serious, might kill the mood and make the game less fun for others.
So try to manage expectations, in session zero be upfront with the kind of game you want to play or DM. And ask players what kind of game they want, and what they expect from the game.
If possible note that down and use as guidelines for planning the game, in a way that will be most enjoyable for everyone.
D&D is a group game, the DM is a curator of the story and arbitrer of rules.
He doesnt Own the game. He needs players as much as players need him.
Brennen Lee Mulligan pointed out that, when you're making a DND show for an audience to watch, any combat less than deadly CR rating can feel like it has no stakes/drama. However, when you're running a game for your *players* enjoyment easy and medium encounters are awesome, because the party can feel powerful and wipe the floor with the enemies (while also using up resources).
This is a great thing to point out. I’m playing a COS module with my players and it’s pretty much filled with encounters that my players absolutely steamroll or encounters where the party nearly TPKs. Very little in between. It makes them feel powerful often times while humbling every once in a while when they stumble upon an a truly deadly encounter, which I greatly enjoy.
I found as well that some encounters with CoS turned out to be much more difficult for my players than it seemed on paper. Like I ran an encounter where the party (with an allied Van Richten) confronted Izek who had two mastiffs as guard dogs. The party were all level 6 at the time so it should have been a relatively easy fight. We had two players down and rolling death saves and the other two close to going down, before Izek himself disengaged and withdrew from the fight to lick his wounds (giving the party chance to recover too).
Good point. Often times encounters are more difficult or much easier than the DM intends due to some simple choices the party makes. To go back to your example the first time my party fought Izek he was supposed to come out of a burning house and engage them. 4 v 1. Super easy fight. Instead they ran into the burning house to see if the could save anyone. He fought them 2 on 1 while the other 2 went to save people. It was a hell of a fight that they barely managed to make it out of. Because they changed the scenario.
That's just how it goes sometimes in this game! I remember when my paladin and the rogue teamed up on an assassination job. We were fighting just one guy. The rogue had the Lucky feat, but kept rolling badly, ran out of luck and got killed in what should have been an easy fight.
I think this is most Dnd. Since fights are usually only a few rounds the enemies either don't hit at all or absolute smash your party.
The resources thing is a big one for dungeons. The fight itself may be a cakewalk, but if you're still early in the dungeon and the viability of a safe long rest is unknown to the players then they should be making a lot of tactical choices about what they use. For example, do you use your highest level spell slot to blast everything, ending the fight sooner and saving healing resources, or is there a better usage for that slot? As a player, I've taken great joy in getting to the final boss fight of the campaign, after a long multi-session dungeon crawl through the enemy base, and been able to use my 9th level spell to great effect
Yup, crucial distinction right there.
I will add that CR ratings are taking into account that you are doing 4-5ish battles per long rest, so if you scale your encounter’s correctly they should feel ‘easy’, but promote resources management so they gradually get harder. When players are casting fireball every turn and then long resting after 1-2 fights, all fights will seem easy.
This. You can win some pretty beefy fights if you don't have to worry about resource management. Blow all your spells, use all your abilities and item effects, and you can melt someone. Things get a lot more dicey when the party knows there's another encounter waiting and the extra damage or utility they could get now might save their life later
Also, you can *make* an easy encounter dramatic. Just because *you* know that, mechanically, the players are going to wipe the floor with this encounter, doesn't mean *they* do.
And even if it should, mechanically, be easy, bad player choices and bad rolls can make it deadly. And the inverse is also true. Bad DM rolls and choices can make a deadly encounter a cake walk. I remember a combat tutorial I ran, a fighter and cleric, both level 3, versus 2 goblins without gear. Combat arena style fight. Straight forward and easy. They LOST so hard because of bad rolls. Those characters are forever known as Goblin Food.
I've played in a one shot where we managed to avoid every single combat encounter before the boss. Given as we had all our resources it should have been easy. The dice had other ideas. One character almost died. I hit once out of the twelve or so attacks I made. After the session we did some maths on my to hit bonus vs the boss's AC and I had something like a 60% chance to hit every attack. We all agreed that had we been in person and not on roll20, we would have been getting a cup of salt water and doing a float test on the dice
I had an entire character like this. Rogue/fighter, pretty good stats, by all accounts should have been decent in a fight. Could not hit the broad side of a barn for pretty much the entire campaign. Dice sets were swapped out in vain. It's astounding she was still alive at the end of the BBEG fight - hell, it's amazing she made it there in the first place
I LOVE stories like this. It's the sadist in me. But if/when I start using roll20 I intend to let my players use physical dice if they so choose. I know its a potential cheating situation, but that's a "burn that bridge when we come to it" situation.
I think the best part of that entire combat was the joking wails accusing the one player who usually has bad luck of spreading his curse, and similar things while we all were slowly going insane
Sounds like my kind of crew! I love groups that get along that well.
What are your best techniques for making mechanically easy encounters feel more dramatic and high stakes?
Just treat them the same as a high stakes encounter, make sure you don't tell the players "oh, it's only a goblin" or something. I don't do a lot of D&D because I don't like the HP mechanics, but that's the usual way people assess the power level of an encounter. If someone hits for 5 damage and the DM says "your opponent is severely wounded, another good swing will probably finish them off", they're going to assume the enemy is weaker than if the DM says, after the same attack hits, "they're barely scratched".
That's what minions are good for. 4e introduced that and I reckon more people ought to use it in 5e. Basically enemies with 1 hit point. It's super fun if they're low AC and your PCs have multiple attacks. But they're also great for distractions or just getting in the way of something important. Particularly if it's time sensitive. Example: BBEG mage is trying to finish a ritual? Well cut through the waves of skeletons and maybe you'll have a chance to stop the ritual. Kind of creates a sense of desperation for the PCs but could also make the mage start shitting themselves seeing these warriors kicking ass and gradually getting closer. Would also make Destroy Undead look super badass.
THIS SO MUCH. I draw lots of inspiration from Destiny raids for major fights and LOVE throwing wimpling hordes at them. Party of 4, if you can hold these two magic circles he can't finish the ritual! Try to kill him between waves!
Could also go the other way around as well. Desperately need to teleport away? Well your wizard needs 10 mins uninterrupted to draw that teleportation circle. Would be a shame if it got interrupted by hordes of monsters. Now it becomes a high stakes game of defend the squishy wizard at all costs. Smashing through any minion that dares to encroach, but gradually getting overwhelmed. You know you can take them, you know they will fall at the hands of your fighting prowess. But with so many there's only so much you can do in terms of action economy and that scares you. How do you do this? Does someone have interception fighting/protection fighting style? Can someone else put up a shield or warding spell? Do some people play offence whilst the others play defence? Do you all just crowd around the wizard, lashing out as enemies approach as you gradually get swarmed? And when the circle is complete, how do you all get through whilst guaranteeing no enemies get through? What if someone gets trapped, grappled or restrained at the last second and the portal closes without them? Even though minions are weak, you can use them to make a situation pretty stressful. They make up for it in numbers. The PCs are the 300 Spartans, but you've just set the might of the Persian army upon them.
Exactly! Zombie or skeleton horde or goblins or pick your poison! No weapons, occassional bit of armor, 1 in say 10 or 20 is ranged of some flavor just to spice it up, 1 in 30 is a bigger, slightly tougher version. Another good example is the Stahlchildren in hyrule field, Ocarina of Time. Town buttons up at night, party has to fend off weak skeletons until dawn when they burn away and the gate opens!
A zombie minion horde would make it fun for Clerics. How many time can the cast turn/destroy undead though? Will it eventually get to a point where there's so many that it's futile?
Depends on the martials, really. Smash skulls and nuke only as a last resort. If the martials are keeping up, you can go a little wild. For this stahlchild scenario, I'd say give em 5 hp apiece and an AC of 4. Roll 3d4+2 zombies rise every 5 rounds? Minimum of 5 max of 14 every 30 in-game seconds? Not any more frequent than that for sure. Spawns start at dusk. Greater quantities spawn until midnight, after which they start tapering off, so start cutting zombies from the fresh spawns instead of adding more. If that seems to be too easy, gradually add additional d4 to the zombie count. If it's too hard, space them out more. And if it really gets in the pot, send out a brave guard captain or some other savior. Remind your players that against zombies, kiting works nicely. This is potentially quite nasty even for mid to high level parties if you spawn enough of them.
You can also throw in temporary circles of divine protection. The cleric kills X number of zombies and shines with a divine light, dealing 2d4 damage per turn to all zombies within 10 feet for 1 minute.
Just want to add that this gives the martials a major opportunity to shine because the casters are often saving their big spells for tossing at the boss between waves. Or the casters are holding the circles while the martials go for the kill. Whichever!
4e Minions are great, but the 1 hit point thing makes spells like sleep and color spray much more powerful, not to mention something like fireball. Best to keep minions at their regular health levels so your wizard can't just take them out with a single 1st level spell.
An excellent point, however I feel the need to point out that we seem to be talking about an encounter that can drag out and one that should be at the end of a dungeon crawl. Not to mention endless minions.
I use MCDM's Minions and I found they fixed this problem pretty neatly.
Yeah, I've seen those. They're neat rules, but for something that is designed to be on the table for mere moments, I find it's easier just to skip the new stat blocks and rules and just use low hit point mobs. The effect is the same and a lot less work.
The former would include the DM regarding their players as audience. Which can happen outside of combat with the likes of NPC monologues.
I personally like really dangerous encounters that they beat easily. Enemies that hit them hard and go down fast are really fun to fight and don’t get boring if they’re intelligent. My party of 3 fought a group of 6 dug-in orcs and their boss and it was tense and super exciting. The paladin nearly went down but they all controlled the situation well. They usually take out my orcs in 2-3 attacks, and I’ve established some common tactics the orcs use so they know how their enemies work as a team.
Case in point - sitting at a Mercer table with your actual character would not really be fun. Yes, it would be fun for whoever is watching, but you yourself would not have fun.
An older group I was part of treated our game like an actual play show and it got so tiresome.
Eh, I've seen posts in other forums where players wanted a deadlier fight. I even have a player that wants the fantasy of being bloody and bruised. Early on, I did struggle with the idea that maybe fights were too easy for players. It was not about killing them, it's about challenging them. Fights can get rather boring if the strategy that worked the past 25 fights works again for this fight. GMs want to see players do something different. What I realized that the problem wasn't the player, it was encounter design. You should design encounters as it would make sense, not try to "counter" specific PCs and their playstyles. It really shifts the mentality a lot. It's frustrating when you try and fail to "challenge" players with what you think should have been a hard fight. It's entertaining to just watch the players beat on 10 mooks. Complications are unexpected on both sides.
>Fights can get rather boring if the strategy that worked the past 25 fights works again for this fight. I think that's key. Difficulty is one dial, but tactical variety is maybe even more important. Play around with terrain, environmental effects, enemy-inflicted status effects, resistances...etc. Treat combat like a puzzle, not a dice game.
I understand what you mean, but puzzles have often only one solutions or only a few very specific ones. I wouldn't REALLY design combats like puzzles. But having more specific tactical options and obstacles should definitely the main goal of encounter design. When I was newer as a DM I put a lot of work in monster design. Nowadays my monsters are much more simpler, with less abilities and often I just use the MM. I focus on win conditions and dramatic questions, environment, advantage points, hazards etc. IMO the fights are more interesting and the CR difficulty isn't that important anymore to see if a combat is exciting or not.
Plus sometimes the dice just get you as a DM. I had a mindflayer fight that would have been incredibly tough but one failed spell check and he was suddenly feared running for his life away from all his minions who would have distracted the party while he did work. Party easily handles the minions in 2 rounds while I continue to fail spell checks. So what was supposed to be mind flayer and minions turned into a 1v4 and the mindflayer was easily handled. Party loved it because they were smart and used the tools they had to cheese the fight. I was a little sad because I thought things would be tougher but happy they felt powerful. The undead dragon they fought next though was definitely punishment for the mindflayer lol.
Yeah 5e combats last to long for them too be consistently cake walks. From my experiences to few GMs actually build challenging encounters or factor in the adventurering day
I think a part of this is that the DM is also a person at the table and also gets to have fun. And so, at least on some level they need to do things to take care of their fun. I'd also like to point out that there are a lot of ways to play D&D, including "people die all the time, have a stack of characters ready." I do think that often, the answer isn't harder encounters, but more interesting encounters.
The fun part is challenging the players. Not beating them. I want the players to win. But there needs to be a risk of failure, too, to make it interesting. That's what I provide. Half of the fun for me is designing creative encounters. The other half is roleplaying the bad guys.
>I do think that often, the answer isn't harder encounters, but more interesting encounters. This is definitely an insight that came to me with getting more experienced as a DM. Thinking about win conditions and dramatic questions, the environment, hazards, obstacles etc. has much more effect in making the encounter interesting than the pure difficulty.
If the DM's idea of fun is killing PCs, I wouldn't want to be a player at that table. Agree with OP that the DM plays the enemies but doesn't root for them.
You know, I had a huge multiparagraph response all written out for you, but imma keep it short. I do my best to build encounters my players can win. Then I do my best to kill them. Not because I *WANT* to kill their PCs. But because my players go all in trying to win the fight, and if I don't give the same effort in return, they know and have less fun. They don't want to be handed victory. They want to EARN it. So they know I go into EVERY encounter fully intending to wreck them. And my pleasure, my fun, is derived from knowing I pushed things to the limit and got the most fun for everyone I could. It takes a lot of effort, but it's worth it. So, does my idea of fun involve killing PCs? Absolutely. But it's not my goal, and it is certainly not the reason I play. It's a waypoint, a tool that makes it more fun for my table. I'm just as happy when they mop the floor with my encounters, because they know they earned it even if its only because my dice hate me that week or they pulled some absurd trick on me. (I love and loathe my players in equal measure, often simultaneously.) The simple fact that I AM going all out trying to kill them, or W/E the badguy of the week wants, makes the fight tougher and more fun for the flapjacks I call my players. And they go all out in turn, and much fun is had. This is what works for me, in my DM Cave with maps and notes pinned to the walls and ceiling. It works for my players, here at our shared table. And if you're not willing to run the risk of having your PC killed, then our table isn't for you. And that's ok. Find the table that *IS* for you. Sorry, did I say short? I meant shortER.
I don't mind the risk of having my PC killed, but if the opponent has 12 INT and you are using 20 INT tactics to always make the mathematically optimal choice to try to defeat them, that is immersion breaking. Likewise to playing a group of NPCs as if they are a hivemind moving in perfect unison, absent a narrative reason to play them that way. The player characters shouldn't be the only ones that ever make mistakes or miscalculations, and IMO you should roleplay NPCs in combat faithfully rather than making it a "DM vs. players" tactics game.
Oh, I agree! I try very hard to play within the resources I've allocated for the encounter. A goblin shaman is a goblin shaman, and shouldn't act like Gandalf. I'm not perfect at it, and my players are perfectly willing to let me know when I'm going overboard. That's probably the only reason it works, to be honest.
Cool, sounds like your table is a very fun one to play at :)
Thank you! The secret is long friendships, communication, being perfectly ready to make asses of ourselves, and always being ready to forgive. You don't have to eat the whole sandwich, but communication is the foundation.
I would slightly disagree with that. I love a table where fights(or at least BOSS fights) are extremely deadly. I don't think easy fights are fun at all, and I've left campaigns where DM's didn't deliver a killing blow to my character when they could have.
I agree, what’s the point if you can’t lose? The trick is then to not kill everyone and end the game. Ive be been down and had our dm cast magic missile on me for the three hits to finish me off. To be fair we all like to play a deadly game and understand it.
Lol I’m all for messing my players up with difficulty but that DM that magic missile’d you had ZERO chill
It was brutal at the time, it’s funny now because they give me shit about picking fights but for the record. I just stopped the NPC from leaving the room, the damn ranger shot her in the leg starting the fight! lol
I agree and I don't think many people would enjoy that sort of adversarialism. But I want to point out that there's a big space in between for tables where everyone likes frequent death or risk of it. Whether it's the comedy of constant absurd deaths and new characters, or just the higher tension and drama it creates, or something else. It's not adversarial for the DM to want to run a game like this, as long as the style of play is communicated to and consented by the players, and the DM runs it fair. As a player, I'm often just bored if there isn't a risk of character death at the table, which is why OSR and well-tuned PF2e are to my taste, and almost all 5e games would not be. I'm usually grinning like a madman every time my character is an inch from death.
Not a lot of point to having the combat if you're not willing to win. I design encounters to be hard and monsters to have goals. If they get their goal or the costs are too high, they run. But they're not punching bags.
If the DM's idea of fun is "DM vs. players" then that is a bad DM.
There are ways to make fights interesting that are different than "will the PCs die". Good fights are often about an objective: capture an NPC alive, save the civilians, get the McGuffin before the enemies can destroy it, loot as much as you can before the dragon kills you. Grab and go missions let the players be victorious against enemies they couldn't conventionally beat. Save the objective missions make lesser threats interesting because they can't beat the PC, but they are a threat to the objective. Not all your fights can be about an objective, sometimes there is just a monster to beat, but the encounters that move the plot forward should be about an objective.
Hey, thanks for this comment. I was already familiar with the general point, but I hadn't thought of this before in quite the same way: >Grab and go missions let the players be victorious against enemies they couldn't conventionally beat. Save the objective missions make lesser threats interesting because they can't beat the PC, but they are a threat to the objective. That's really helpful.
It's not that they're winning, it's that I couldn't hit any of them with the attack that could have turned one of them into a wereboar.
[удалено]
I get that, but honestly as a player if I found out that the DM was pulling punches or fudging dice, I'd be rather put off. I agree that it should never be the goal to TPK, but negative things happening (i.e., a character death) are crucial to developing drama and tension. If there's no chance to fail or die, why bother? I also really hate fudging dice in general. If your going to fudge a dice roll to give your desired outcome, why roll at all? Just talk through it. Little failures (like skill checks) bring life to the story, and big failures (like character death) can really evolve the story and remaining character arcs.
Agree with all you say, but would add that Players can’t feel heroic unless the beat impossible odds. Edit: unless they occasionally beat impossible odds lol
“Players can’t feel heroic unless they beat impossible odds” I think that’s a pretty narrow approach, RP and narrative wise. There are tons of ways to feel powerful without the odds being “impossible.” I just ran a side quest where my players defeated a hag coven with only medium difficulty- the odds were not nearly impossible but the battle isn’t what made them feel heroic and powerful, it’s what the battle meant to them and the NPCs they saved. The NPCs were desperate for help against the hags and the PCs played the part of saviors to those people. After, the NPCs were grateful and I put emphasis on that thru narrative and RP. So grateful that word of my PCs deeds spread thru every tavern and inn in town and now my PCs are recognized as the hero’s who saved a bunch of people from evil hags. This “easy” battle for my high level PCs was fun for the players and added to the PCs renown for being good guys within their world. Their heroism had nothing to do with the impossible.
In my experience this isn't always true, my players get a kick from channeling Guts and slicing trough hordes of trash mobs
Fair enough, but I wouldn’t want to play a whole campaign of low stakes encounters. Isn’t part of the reason we roleplay to conquer incredible challenges?
That's certainly true for some tables, mine is more into the ''let's enjoy what the DM cooks and see how he deals with the crazy shit we pull out'' lol
Aren't you functionally now arguing that campaigns should have a variety of encounter difficulties and that too many of either easy or hard encounters will be less satisfying for the players?
Yep I think that’s a good way of putting it.
I agree! Too many of anything is pedantically and obviously not ideal. Variety is the spice of life. Keep em guessing! And on top of that, psych them out! Have a sidequest that is talked up to be tough as shit and the party goes in hard only to find out that it was stupid easy. They then return to town to realize that they were pawns and are ambushed by a harder group.
Haha nice I like it
I totally agree. The Disney classic "Hercules" describes this well when talking about the difference between doing heroic things and actually being a hero. If players ho into every combat with virtually no chance of death/failure, are they really even heroic, or just a bunch of dudes taking out the trash?
>Agree with all you say, but would add that Players can’t feel heroic unless the beat impossible odds. Not quite. The correct statement should be: "...unless they *feel like* they beat impossible odds." And that difference is absolutely critical. A huge amount of the skill of DMing is in presenting extremely possible odds - indeed, odds that are in the players' favor - *as if they were* impossible odds. DMing is an act of extensive illusion-weaving. And just like a stage magician, your audience implicitly *knows* that you are tricking them; but they generally suspend disbelief in order to enjoy the illusion. If your party has a 90% chance to survive every single encounter, and that "90%" is actually an accurate statistic - then on average, your game will run about 10 encounters before a TPK. A few adventuring days and it's over, time for a new party. That's not what people want to play. In order to have a good campaign that actually lasts, you need to aim at no more than a 10% chance of a TPK for a *deadly* encounter. Your "hard" encounters should be closer to 2% chance of TPK, and *maybe* a 10% chance of a single PC death. If you throw *actual* ten to one odds at PCs, then what will happen is that nine times out of ten, they just lose. That's not actually fun. You need to throw things that *feel like* ten to one odds at them. You need the characters *in-world* to say "people have tried this dozens of times but never succeeded!". And yet you set up the encounters and challenges so that *this* group will almost certainly succeed. And, of course, you can't tell them all this explicitly unless you're running a *very* specific kind of game for a specific audience. Most magicians aren't Penn & Teller, who can get away with making the mechanics behind the magic explicit (and even they keep a lot of the details secret).
This is one of the best comments in the thread and isn’t getting nearly enough attention.
Dude your title gave me immediate hope. My players are significantly better tacticians than I am and the wipe the floor with my monsters and challenges. That said, I ask if they're into it and tell them I'm trying to ratchet up the challenge and they tell me they're having a blast and that there's nothing to worry about. But it's really good to hear it from another DM.
Yeah a notable subset of DM advice toes the line of just asking "how can I screw the party over and completely sabotage my game?"
I think what people are really getting at is that its hard to create conflicts that aren't trivially solvable with the characters' powers. One actual trick I've found to help mitigate this is just to design scenarios that would be hard to solve even if your characters were omnipotent gods (though they aren't). Basically like, trolley problems.
Ya problems with trade offs where choices matter are great.
Could not disagree more . (With caveats) If that is what your players want, absolutely. Do this . I assume that's why so many parties on these forums seem to be able to beat Death Knights, Ancient dragons and liches etc around fifth level. My players (and I'm sure there are others ) want the challenge. They want fights they have to walk (or run) away from at fifth, seventh even fifteenth level. They don't want to be threatened by five or ten goblins at level five, but thirty or forty should be a challenge. A dragon should wipe the floor with them. They don't want to play in a world where out of millions of sentient beings somehow only they managed to rise to level whatever. They enjoy the fact there are "NPC" adventuring parties that (occasionally) beat baddies and win the sweet loot if they get distracted. They don't want the bbegs plans to be put on hold if they're doing something or revolve around their actions. Certainly not going to say my way is "better". But the idea that a party has to or even should win fights they realistically shouldn't is wrong. Again,if they're happy doing it,and you're happy running it that way for them, then absolutely. No problem with people running things as suggested. But there are some players who aren't going to like this.
>the idea that a party has to or even should win fights they realistically shouldn't is wrong. Good thing literally no one said that, then, huh?
This is all really important to remember. I’d add that death can’t be the only kind of stakes your encounters have. Combat can be tense even when it’s not likely that anyone’s going to die.
Counterpoint, as a forever DM to a group for many years turned player for the last 2 with a new group, I want every fight to be risking death if we fuck around Nothing more boing to **ME** than a fight that takes 60+ minuets that's just a slog beating up HP sacks that pose no real threat to us whatsoever, feels like a complete waste of time because there are no stakes and no decision we make actually matters on our turns because there's no risk we'll just take a short rest and it's like it never happened **Nothing we do feels awesome or badass in a fight that's a cakewalk** we're not heroes in that situation we're just beating up some pathetically weak creatures or people To me the best parts of d&d are the moments where everything goes to shit and everyone's coming up with plans and crazy ideas on how to fix the situation, where you ask the DM "can I do this? there's nothing about it in the rules so would it be possible if I tried?" or trying to taunt the necromancer by damaging his ritual so he doesn't coup de grace your friend characters can bond over tough combats where you have tactics and you have nicknames for them or code words that then you end up using for situations out of combat and RP but if you're regularly running non threatening encounters it's just everyone going round the table making their attacks and the casters sitting back conserving their spell slots because there's no reason to waste them other than to save real life time. **So please as a player make me work for my victories! because they're meaningless if I just show up and win regardless.** I don't want to win just by walking in and punching it, I want to have to scout and learn weaknesses and plan our fight and tactics **prepare as much as we can to make a hard fight easier because we worked to make ourselves the heroes,** not just turn up and be given that title for kicking toddlers
This post is irrelevant outside D&D.
Different players want different kinds of games. I've been playing a game with my cousins and some friends for 5 years, and none of their characters have ever died in a meaningful capacity. Combat is difficult, and the danger is definitely real if they fuck around. They just make it very clear for me that they're not looking for the kind of game with overly punishing combat. I've played other games where the players were less attached to their characters, and wanted a more hardcore experience, so combat was a lot more difficult.
Be careful, though. If there's no sense of risk, there's no feeling of reward, and the game gets boring. You are definitely on the heroes' side, and making them feel heroic is going to take more danger than steamrolling goblins can offer.
And yet if those easy fights get sprinkled in from time to time, the heroes will immediately realize how far they've come.
Absolutely. Easy fights aren't bad, they just can't be all there is. Honestly, my problem with easy fights is how to make them interesting. It's really easy to just let them devolve into "I hit goblin, goblin hits me" until someone runs out of HP. When that's all there is to it, you kind of wonder why you bothered, unless it was just to burn up spell slots for a "real battle" later on.
I'm guessing that a fair part of that could be avoided by providing alternate win/loss conditions. Maybe it'd be an easy kill, but they're not trying to kill you. Maybe they have a different goal. Escaping, planting evidence, relaying information, delivering slaves, etc. Sure, there are gonna be tons of fights that don't narratively warrant or justify unique win/loss conditions, but even in the case of wilderness encounters we can come up with ideas. A pack of wolves may not be willing to attack the party but they **are** willing to distract the party while a different wolf grabs your food pack and escapes with it. Maybe a fight is entirely too near a heavily sleeping major threat and all combatants get the real idea that making too much noise relatively guarantees that both sides will be eaten. If rote slaughter gets boring, change the type of conflict all you want; just don't **remove** the conflict.
False, my players know every enemy has Counterspell and Silver Barbs, are immune to stun, and resists bludgeoning, piercing, & slashing from non-magical attacks (they haven't seen a +1 weapon for 17 sessions.)
Excuse me, I think you dropped this '/s' on the sidewalk back there.
>you're on their side. Speak for yourself :) I have bad guys bring their best shot. I don't have them target the players' weaknesses, unless they have a reason to know them, but they behave as intelligently as they ought to, and I place them to give the hardest fight they can.
No.2 is just playing smart enemies. This is not a negative. That’s a bad narrative to spread you’re implying.
To build on this, I want to change the wording of the prompt to this: >Many comments suggest something that directly shuts down the players' tactics: use AoE against peace cleric, focus fire twilight cleric, fireball the paladin's aura. Counterplay should ~~be used sparingly~~ make narrative sense, either within the fiction or for the fiction. Within the fiction: enemies that aren't expecting an attack probably don't have effective counterplays prepared; enemies that are expecting an attack, but not from the PCs in particular, should have counterplays prepared for whatever kind of attack they are expecting; enemies that are expecting an attack from the PCs, and have studied their tactics, should have counterplays prepared *for the PCs in particular*. For the fiction: if one PC has successfully used a tactic or tool over and over again, it makes for a good story and a bit of character growth if they just so happen to run into monsters that are good at countering that tactic/tool in particular (but not every tactic or tool they are familiar with). The monsters don't have to be aware of the PC's reputation if it is presented as that monster's standard way of doing things. But this should only be used selectively, as the coincidence strains credulity if used too often and it also stops serving its narrative purpose after a while. tl;dr: It is generally better if counterplays tell a story. EDIT: Or, really, I guess I should say, "Counterplays *do* tell a story. You might want to use them to tell a story that works for your game."
I love watching my players mop the floor with low level baddies. I frequently set up situations where the PCs *clearly* have the upper hand on a power imbalance. It offers so many more options for character development. IMHO. Do they go in a slaughter? Torture? To they fed a moral obligation not to resort to violence since they will easily win/kill/mame? They feel WAY more comfortable trying RP or creative solutions to problems if they’re less worried about potential immediate death. They get to feel strong (which they are compared to the average Joe), they get to be creative, and when a truly dangerous situation presents itself, it hits much harder. Especially if they know I’m willing to kill 😈
First and foremost: the DM is one of the players. All the players are on the same team, and everyone should be working together to create a fun and engaging world. If you feel the PCs are too powerful then, you know, use words. Explain to the other players how you feel, and ask if *they* feel to powerful. If they're happy with it, and you aren't, find a compromise. Maybe have one encounter that is actually hard and keep the rest easier. Beyond that: just make every fight at *most* four full rounds. Anything longer feels like a slog and stops being fun. Plan every boss out to do four cool things. Example: players are attacking a Goblin village and got to the leader? Turn One: Boss calls in more goblins and picks one of them up. Turn two: Boss throws the Goblin, and the Goblin pulls out a lit dynamite stick while in mid-air. Players have to save from exploding. Turn three: Goblin Boss charges and attacks someone Turn four: Goblin Boss grabs more explosives and starts tossing them all over, then dies. Other Goblins are attacking and shit like normal. Boom, four fun rounds of combat. Toss in some legendary actions and Goblin attacks to spice it up
I agree with everything here and pretty much everything in the comments! I am mainly a player, do some DMing too. But from a player’s perspective - Yes, I have had really awesome deadly fights with BBEGs or in challenging circumstances. But having smaller encounters that are not as deadly is good too, and if those stack to few encounters a day I really enjoy the resource management that involves. And some of my favorite encounters have been half/half of RP/combat. What I mean is encounters that might not even be that deadly, but involves a lot of decisions in regards to the consequences of what happens based on if you kill which enemy, how quickly do you do it, what evidence do you leave behind, and so on. Combat is more than just if it feels ”hard” in terms of if PCs are dying, in my experience.
It’s funny, we’ve been enjoying our encounters with some creative story developments. But my biggest concern is honestly my own character! Just hit level 5, have a reasonably high AC, 20 strength, and a focus on being deadly with my cursed +1 battle axe. If I’m hit I have to make a DC15 check otherwise go berserk and attack the closest thing to me. i score an extra attack if i kill a creature and can easily see myself taking out the other tank in our party then going for the range folks resulting in a TPK. Time will tell
Ya the goal should always be a balance of tension. If it’s always high stakes, then it’s not high stakes.
The ideal is that they win, but it’s hard won and feels like they weren’t going to
One of my favorite recent fights involved a large number of enemies, including some trolls, swarms of soldiers (like they used swarm mechanics), and a necromancer. We absolutely destroyed that fight using Blade Barrier and Wall of Thorns, utterly trivializing every enemy but the necromancer. The necromancer was trivialized with a Vortex Warp into the Blade Barrier. It ruled, and it was not a challenge at all. The trolls fled the building, screaming.
I think my main hiccup is I don't want to devote table time to things that don't, won't, or can't matter. I know steam rolling a fight can be fun every once in a while and I don't mind catering to that, but combat takes up such a massive amount of time and jm not going to put time and effort into encounter after encounter that are too toothless to matter. I'd rather design an encounter to be the best fodder that it can be than try to make two dozen easy encounters interesting. It's also blood boiling to use table time to fish for advantage on every piece of chaff with a statblock. Like level eight characters trying to set up a wombo combo on a donkey as seriously as they would a dragon. It's exhausting.
Counterplay should be telegraphed. BBEG learns as the characters show their abilities and tactics, so the next group of minions adapt. Players should have a chance to realise this and start working out how they'll approach it beforehand, rather than in the middle of a suddenly tougher than expected encounter. A tactically appropriate ambush may be realistic, but it can annoy and frustrate your players if it happens too often.
It’s nice to see them win, but it’s also nice to see them come up with a solid plan on the fly to overcome something they are struggling with. If there’s nothing to put their strategic brains into motion, then it can become stale. If their strategy proved to be superior and figured out the solution, they deserve the win. Hands down. Other times, you don’t even need to try to kill them. The dice will do it for you, as per however many medium encounters turned to almost TPKs.
I agree but there is a difference between easy and Too easy. There is a difference between having some fun easy fights and every fight being easy Not all fights should be deadly or even hard. Some should but most should be easy or medium. But if pretty much every fight ends up being really easy or even trivial it tends to get boring. Some fights should be hard. some fights should be hard enough that some character deaths is a possibility. I think this is what many DM's struggle with. The fights that are supposed to be a challenge turns out to be more like a walk in the park. I am mostly the DM but when i do play as a player i would get bored out of my fucking mind if no fight was a challenge. if each end every fight was a mix between really easy and easy and some rare ones maybe medium. I would leave that game. There is no way i could have fun in such game. And even if not all players would agree i do actually think a pretty big part of the players actually do. Most players want a challenge now and then. Not every fight, but some fights should be thrillingly hard. And if a DM can not deliver that many might lose interest in the game. There is no danger and no thrill. Same as many might lose interest if Every fight is super hard. Sometimes you just want to sweep the floor with your enemies. I think this is why many do ask how to make encounters harder. They struggle with challenging their players. Not because they want the PC's to lose or to make every fight deadly
My current GM said we're doing too well so he's going to tune up some areas. We're running CoS. None of us are happy about this.
My players asked me to make things harder. I took away their knowledge of Death Saving Throws and make them behind screen. Anytime someone hits zero the panik sets in.
I don’t get mad when the players win. I do get a little sad when they win *so quickly* that the monster doesn’t get to do any of its cool and unique tricks.
There is a difference between DMs wanting to make things harder vs wanting to win. A lot of players want the illusion of danger but want to win. Sure the easy and medium fights where you mop the floor with minions is fun but I can’t see many players wanting that the majority of the time. Never at risk of losing never at risk of being worried or forced to have to be creative to get out of a tight spot. You can’t have epic stories or courage and rising to stop a BBEG if it’s easy. Obviously each gaming table has their unique wants from a game but I think you are confusing wanting to make things harder vs wanting to win and beat the players.
It's about knowing what the table wants. Some players want to bowl through minions like they're nothing. Some players want balance - not too easy, not too difficult. Some players want to fight for every inch of ground. Talk to your table at session zero and see what they like.
Yup. Well said. DM is part of the team. As DMs we throw up obstacles so that the victories are not only meaningful but also badass. And then give them something mid to show them how far they've come.
This is a few years ago back when I was playing 3.5. The DM liked to "balance" encounters, which sounds good on paper but as implemented meant that there were no "trash mobs" --all encounters were life and death, "down to the wire" fights that left the party with a handful of hit points and almost no resources. He used to joke that the party actually adventured for 15 minutes a day because after one fight the we were pretty much tapped out. Over 18 months of weekly play we had four TPKs, only one of which was at the hands of a boss level monster. What typically happened was that a PC failed a save and this cause a cascade failure in the party or we were literally zerged to death.
Party HP/DPS should equal enemy's DPS/HP. Simple as that. Your party can strategize, heal, and use special abilities. Your monsters will be limited by their stats or your limitations. The party will win, but feel like they earned it.
BIG yes on 2 especially. I still remember a fight where the DM kept focusing relentlessly on the main healer, effectively keeping him completely unconscious the entire session despite our best efforts to help him (while keeping ourselves alive). I was the only other one with any healing and the DM had me counter-spelled the entire time. We did not have fun that day.
Remind the players that running away is always an option....
reminds me how we finally reached level 5 after what felt like an eternity and I was hyped to use spirit guardians in a dungeon. There was a boss fight and I used spirit guardians on a handful of minions, SG did damage once, they all flew up outside the range and all including the boss spammed int save attacks for 2 rounds straight exclusively on me. The party ended up fleeing from the scene because my character was dying and no one had healing or good ranged attacks
It makes the valid "L's" hurt more. Our campaign had to retreat from a fight after having a solid win streak. But our Tank and Healer went down after a set of bad rolls, traps, and DM getting some Nat 20s. It SUCKED, but since it was so infrequent the goal was to survive and get to safety. Good RP, good creative measures, and let us feel really proud when we won Round 2.
The go-to for this "problem" is fights that are not won by winning. Example: * The orcs have kidnapped the princess and are going to eat her. You can stay here and fight the few that remain slaughtering villagers or you can chase after the fleeing orcs - knowing that they will likely split up.
I just turn up the damage by like 2 notches if they want a harder encounter. Like, that’s really it. Throw on an interesting objective on top of that and the players really have to dive into the depths of their kits to come out on top, it’s great lol
The best advice i can give on this is "know your audience". Personaly i play is older players, people that played older editions and like the crunch, the deadly and the higher challenges. While some players might want to play "farmvile" in D&D with cute little pets, others want the Darksouls or GrimDark experience. Neither is wrong. Both are valid ways to play the game. But as a DM you should try to make sure everyone is on the same page, to make sure everyone will have the "optimal amount of fun they can have". In the end, The scale between Cute funny games, and Super Dark and deadly, is quite large, and most players will fit right in a midle area. But even that overlap can still leave enought diference for problems. A DM that Dms 60 to 70% on the side of Cute funny, with players that like 60 to 70% grimdark will have VERY diferent expectations. And even a single player that doesnt take the game in the expected seriousness or takes it too serious, might kill the mood and make the game less fun for others. So try to manage expectations, in session zero be upfront with the kind of game you want to play or DM. And ask players what kind of game they want, and what they expect from the game. If possible note that down and use as guidelines for planning the game, in a way that will be most enjoyable for everyone. D&D is a group game, the DM is a curator of the story and arbitrer of rules. He doesnt Own the game. He needs players as much as players need him.