My preference for D&D is very much like Dark Souls: I don't want difficulty so much as I want punishment. I don't want it to be easy to make mistakes, but I would prefer that should I make a mistake it is punished harshly, be that tactical decisions, resource management, and generally goofing off. My votes went to "just don't do things egregiously stupid," which I often do because my character's original concept does not mesh with the group that joined, and "75% of the party's health lost; at least one PC hits zero during the battle," which is me. In 18 sessions I've gone down about three times. I've taken it upon myself to inflict scars upon my character: a floating rib, a badly healed nose, and now streaming tears and rain burnt deeply into their face with a blue dragon's lightning breath. I may have to stop yelling "drive me closer, I want to hit them with my sword" atop my Steel Defender so often, but where's the fun in staying behind and shooting people?
Regarding expectations however, I think it's down to how each DM lays them out with their campaign and how much each player takes note. Experience with the system helps. I think my first ever campaign, the Lost Mine of Phandelver, and holding off all of Cragmaw Castle's inhabitants locking ourselves in a single room has spoilt me. It's going to be tough getting such a thrill again.
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Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
Question 1: It should depend on the skill level of the group and what they enjoy. Some think tactically and it becomes a battle of minds between the DM, I'll have to push every advantage I have to every weakness they have just to make a dent. Others get looked at by a Goblin and die. As an individual player, this means that where I want the difficulty really depends on my party. The atmosphere of the game also matters - are we just having fun RPing and being goofy, and combat is just another facet of that? Or are we approaching it with the intent of testing our wits?
I also think there is a big gap between option 2 & 3 which is where I'd sit on average. It wouldn't take a massive egregious mistake to punish me, but I'm not sitting there playing chess either. I can be kind of relaxed and given room to goof, but not so much that I'm wrapped in cotton wool either. I voted 2 in the end since that's nearest to where I feel comfortable, but if there were an in between option, I'd vote for that with no question.
Question 2: I feel this is unanswerable, really. Not only does it depend on the party, but the nature of the campaign and what you define as."important".
I'm doing RotFM at the moment, and the party will be pushed hard. It's meant to be a gritty survival adventure, so they have to measure up, weigh things and work together to either achieve an objective or just forget about it. One has died already from underestimating their enemy. On the other hand, I'll be running TWBtWL afterward, and if one of them goes down at any point, it'll be once too many. While combat will still be present, the idea will be to enjoy the narrative, their surroundings and the characters rather than killing or being killed. It just depends on the tone of the adventure.
Also, what does "important" mean? End of quest fight? End of chapter fight? BBEG? Different degrees of importance there that give different answers. The end of a random quest shouldn't KO anyone really, BBEG should (generally) feel like it's pushing them beyond all hope before they win.
As such, I haven't voted, because there isn't the information I need to answer properly. It's a shame I can't see the results without voting, I'd be interested in them.
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I found the difficult battle question difficult as I plan my games around multiple encounters, so losing half health might well involve PCs dropping if they've been hurt before they get there!
I like to make sure that actions have consequences, whenever it is important that they do. So sometimes, a character will jump out of a window in a non-vital situation and land in a compost heap, and in other times, when the heat is on, they might jump out of a window and get hurt because they fell from a window. I have found that being strict all the time makes for less interestign gameplay, but making sure you're strict when the game gets serious helps to focus the players into realising that goofing off will have to wait, because they are facing the thousand demons of the evil mountain right now, and goofing off will get them killed.
So in short, difficult when it needs to be, and easier when it needs to be, to keep the game dynamic fun but the challenge real.
Ideally, the encounter design should challenge the players without causing meltdown of their mental faculties, and require expenditure of almost all character abilities. While still being fun, having a reasonable margin for error, and no tpk's
And that's a lot of variables to juggle.
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Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
As a DM, I aim for the player expectation of death to be high, while the actual risk of death is relatively low. Players should feel challenged by encounters and thus feel accomplished when they pull out a victory, balanced against months or even years of growing attached to a character.
As a player, I understand hitting this balance of lethal without being fatal can be hard to hit, particularly for inexperienced DMs. Personally, if I were a player, I would rather have a DM err on the side of being deadly rather than being too easy. While I get attached to my characters and their story, I would rather be challenged and risk having to roll a new character than have my character simply coast through encounters. This is particularly true as I tend to prefer support roles over pure DPS—it is hardly fun to create a character designed to help the party survive long combats, then have combats which end before you are even up in the initiative order.
Honestly, I know the purpose of these polls is to see what most people do, but let me say one thing before I give my answers to these questions; different groups play in different ways with different difficulties. As long as you and your group are having fun, then you are doing well. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, only what you and your group enjoy.
1: While I don't think one answer fits what I do perfectly, "Better think pretty carefully about what you're doing" is the response that fits best. It is important for my PC's not to be egregiously stupid, but what is more important is for them to make decent decisions overall. The way I run and play it, D&D is a tactical game. In order to do well in a tactical game, you need to be tactical. If my players don't put a decent amount of thought into their characters decisions, then they may face additional difficulties and/or problems because they made unnecessary mistakes or just failed to design a decent plan.
2: This is really hard to answer. In general, I try to make big combats challenging and interesting, but if my players did a better job than I expected them to and enjoyed themselves well doing it, then there is nothing wrong with that. I don't outline hard combats by how injured my players will be after them. Instead, I use the encounter building tools from the DMG and Xanathars and tend to do combats that are a bit harder than the DMG model recommends, since that model isn't really super good.
Anyways, I judge big combats by how much it makes my players think, react, and enjoy a bit of nervous stress. If I had to say how much HP I would want them to be down by at the end of important battles, then I would say that the closest option on the poll is 50%. I want them to be taxed, so I might do a bit more than that for super, super hard battles, but overall, I think that it is way too easy for PC's to die if you start a battle with the goal of knocking them unconscious.
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There is no one answer to these questions. It depends on the campaign and the tone. The level of "difficulty" in my Curse of Strahd campaign should be, and is, very different than the campaign in which my party formed a band and toured the country solving mysteries Scooby Doo style
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Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
It's worth bringing up that there are different ways to make things difficult. Two fights might both result in the party just barely scraping by, but the one where we mowed down a horde of orcs was a lot more fun than taking on the ancient guardian that wasn't that beefy but had spell immunity and could only be hit on a 18 or higher.
Similarly, you can make a "difficult" situation by introducing a scenario and then as the players come up with solutions, say "well actually that won't work because of [insert sudden new restriction here]" until they're nearly out of options or finally hit the path you wanted them to pick. A common reaction to this approach is for a player to just throw their hands up and ask the DM, "OK, what do you want us to do?" Because you don't feel like you have agency anymore.
It's frustrating to feel like you're making good choices but are still banging your head against a wall. I don't like that kind of difficulty. I prefer challenges that require a multitude of smaller wins, giving you plenty of room for failure without feeling completely helpless or unable to progress.
Basically, it boils down to whether it feels fair. I have been in TPKs where we acknowledged, "Yeah, we should have done X differently." It feels much better than being TPKed and not knowing what you could have done to avoid it - that just feels like a bum rush by an omnipotent DM.
Ideally, the encounter design should challenge the players without causing meltdown of their mental faculties, and require expenditure of almost all character abilities. While still being fun, having a reasonable margin for error, and no tpk's
And that's a lot of variables to juggle.
Exactly -- it should be as hard as it needs to be for the players to have fun, and different players require different kinds of difficulty. Some don't even care if they're challenged in combat, they just want to look cool. Some are only truly satisfied when they feel they've conquered something impossible... But they might not actually be that skilled, who knows.
This is another reason to keep using different kinds of combat encounters. Basically throw as much spaghetti at the wall as you can, lol.
It also depends hugely on the group dynamic. You can run the same adventure for two groups where one is an abolute hardcore meat grinder - because everyone relishes that kind of challenge, and another where it's a humour filled cartoon event instead - because everyone does silly things. Biggest challenge is probably where that group dynamic is too deeply divided among the players - hence the importance of setting a tone for a campaign or even single session.
The thing is is the second sentence in that quote. My tastes change depending ony mood, how I'm feeling with the party and campaign etc. There just isn't one answer, even from just me.
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It really comes down to the importance of the battle. If its a run of the mill encounter, then I expect the party to cut through the creatures with little expenditure of hit points or resources. If its a more important battle I want to see my characters have to use their best spells and be reduced in health. If it's against the main antagonist of the adventure, I want them to struggle! By struggle, I mean at least one or two characters are incapacitated or dead and the group having to show some sort of ingenuity to overcome the villain. Sometimes, I take it as a win when the party have to flee (magically or otherwise) and return to battle the villain more under their own terms.
Often the most memorable battles are the ones the group struggled in or when they did the unexpected to defeat a villain. Death is not the horror it used to be in D&D, its now more of an inconvenience. As long as you can avoid a TPK, giving a player a challenge where they could be the difference in the tide of the battle and even be the saviour of the kingdom but even more importantly, the group, is what we all play for!
I've yet to actually play yet but I do prefer it to be on the easier side. But after an "important" battle, I'm thinking most characters should be at 25% health, or so.
The problem is that if battles are sufficiently hard, the odds are that over the course of a campaign, PC deaths or even TPKs are likely. You can have players that want to be challenged to use tactics, but also want to get to the resolution of their character's story.
The problem is that if battles are sufficiently hard, the odds are that over the course of a campaign, PC deaths or even TPKs are likely. You can have players that want to be challenged to use tactics, but also want to get to the resolution of their character's story.
"Problem"? What's the point of resurrection spells if you never get to cast em?
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While I've seen various discussion about how D&D difficulty somewhat doesn't match people's expectations... how hard to you actually want D&D to be?
My preference for D&D is very much like Dark Souls: I don't want difficulty so much as I want punishment. I don't want it to be easy to make mistakes, but I would prefer that should I make a mistake it is punished harshly, be that tactical decisions, resource management, and generally goofing off. My votes went to "just don't do things egregiously stupid," which I often do because my character's original concept does not mesh with the group that joined, and "75% of the party's health lost; at least one PC hits zero during the battle," which is me. In 18 sessions I've gone down about three times. I've taken it upon myself to inflict scars upon my character: a floating rib, a badly healed nose, and now streaming tears and rain burnt deeply into their face with a blue dragon's lightning breath. I may have to stop yelling "drive me closer, I want to hit them with my sword" atop my Steel Defender so often, but where's the fun in staying behind and shooting people?
Regarding expectations however, I think it's down to how each DM lays them out with their campaign and how much each player takes note. Experience with the system helps. I think my first ever campaign, the Lost Mine of Phandelver, and holding off all of Cragmaw Castle's inhabitants locking ourselves in a single room has spoilt me. It's going to be tough getting such a thrill again.
Zero is the most important number in D&D: Session Zero sets the boundaries and the tone; Rule Zero dictates the Dungeon Master (DM) is the final arbiter; and Zero D&D is better than Bad D&D.
"Let us speak plainly now, and in earnest, for words mean little without the weight of conviction."
- The Assemblage of Houses, World of Warcraft
Question 1: It should depend on the skill level of the group and what they enjoy. Some think tactically and it becomes a battle of minds between the DM, I'll have to push every advantage I have to every weakness they have just to make a dent. Others get looked at by a Goblin and die. As an individual player, this means that where I want the difficulty really depends on my party. The atmosphere of the game also matters - are we just having fun RPing and being goofy, and combat is just another facet of that? Or are we approaching it with the intent of testing our wits?
I also think there is a big gap between option 2 & 3 which is where I'd sit on average. It wouldn't take a massive egregious mistake to punish me, but I'm not sitting there playing chess either. I can be kind of relaxed and given room to goof, but not so much that I'm wrapped in cotton wool either. I voted 2 in the end since that's nearest to where I feel comfortable, but if there were an in between option, I'd vote for that with no question.
Question 2: I feel this is unanswerable, really. Not only does it depend on the party, but the nature of the campaign and what you define as."important".
I'm doing RotFM at the moment, and the party will be pushed hard. It's meant to be a gritty survival adventure, so they have to measure up, weigh things and work together to either achieve an objective or just forget about it. One has died already from underestimating their enemy. On the other hand, I'll be running TWBtWL afterward, and if one of them goes down at any point, it'll be once too many. While combat will still be present, the idea will be to enjoy the narrative, their surroundings and the characters rather than killing or being killed. It just depends on the tone of the adventure.
Also, what does "important" mean? End of quest fight? End of chapter fight? BBEG? Different degrees of importance there that give different answers. The end of a random quest shouldn't KO anyone really, BBEG should (generally) feel like it's pushing them beyond all hope before they win.
As such, I haven't voted, because there isn't the information I need to answer properly. It's a shame I can't see the results without voting, I'd be interested in them.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I found the difficult battle question difficult as I plan my games around multiple encounters, so losing half health might well involve PCs dropping if they've been hurt before they get there!
I like to make sure that actions have consequences, whenever it is important that they do. So sometimes, a character will jump out of a window in a non-vital situation and land in a compost heap, and in other times, when the heat is on, they might jump out of a window and get hurt because they fell from a window. I have found that being strict all the time makes for less interestign gameplay, but making sure you're strict when the game gets serious helps to focus the players into realising that goofing off will have to wait, because they are facing the thousand demons of the evil mountain right now, and goofing off will get them killed.
So in short, difficult when it needs to be, and easier when it needs to be, to keep the game dynamic fun but the challenge real.
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It's not so easy to answer.
Ideally, the encounter design should challenge the players without causing meltdown of their mental faculties, and require expenditure of almost all character abilities. While still being fun, having a reasonable margin for error, and no tpk's
And that's a lot of variables to juggle.
Blanket disclaimer: I only ever state opinion. But I can sound terribly dogmatic - so if you feel I'm trying to tell you what to think, I'm really not, I swear. I'm telling you what I think, that's all.
As a DM, I aim for the player expectation of death to be high, while the actual risk of death is relatively low. Players should feel challenged by encounters and thus feel accomplished when they pull out a victory, balanced against months or even years of growing attached to a character.
As a player, I understand hitting this balance of lethal without being fatal can be hard to hit, particularly for inexperienced DMs. Personally, if I were a player, I would rather have a DM err on the side of being deadly rather than being too easy. While I get attached to my characters and their story, I would rather be challenged and risk having to roll a new character than have my character simply coast through encounters. This is particularly true as I tend to prefer support roles over pure DPS—it is hardly fun to create a character designed to help the party survive long combats, then have combats which end before you are even up in the initiative order.
Honestly, I know the purpose of these polls is to see what most people do, but let me say one thing before I give my answers to these questions; different groups play in different ways with different difficulties. As long as you and your group are having fun, then you are doing well. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, only what you and your group enjoy.
1: While I don't think one answer fits what I do perfectly, "Better think pretty carefully about what you're doing" is the response that fits best. It is important for my PC's not to be egregiously stupid, but what is more important is for them to make decent decisions overall. The way I run and play it, D&D is a tactical game. In order to do well in a tactical game, you need to be tactical. If my players don't put a decent amount of thought into their characters decisions, then they may face additional difficulties and/or problems because they made unnecessary mistakes or just failed to design a decent plan.
2: This is really hard to answer. In general, I try to make big combats challenging and interesting, but if my players did a better job than I expected them to and enjoyed themselves well doing it, then there is nothing wrong with that. I don't outline hard combats by how injured my players will be after them. Instead, I use the encounter building tools from the DMG and Xanathars and tend to do combats that are a bit harder than the DMG model recommends, since that model isn't really super good.
Anyways, I judge big combats by how much it makes my players think, react, and enjoy a bit of nervous stress. If I had to say how much HP I would want them to be down by at the end of important battles, then I would say that the closest option on the poll is 50%. I want them to be taxed, so I might do a bit more than that for super, super hard battles, but overall, I think that it is way too easy for PC's to die if you start a battle with the goal of knocking them unconscious.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.There is no one answer to these questions. It depends on the campaign and the tone. The level of "difficulty" in my Curse of Strahd campaign should be, and is, very different than the campaign in which my party formed a band and toured the country solving mysteries Scooby Doo style
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
It's worth bringing up that there are different ways to make things difficult. Two fights might both result in the party just barely scraping by, but the one where we mowed down a horde of orcs was a lot more fun than taking on the ancient guardian that wasn't that beefy but had spell immunity and could only be hit on a 18 or higher.
Similarly, you can make a "difficult" situation by introducing a scenario and then as the players come up with solutions, say "well actually that won't work because of [insert sudden new restriction here]" until they're nearly out of options or finally hit the path you wanted them to pick. A common reaction to this approach is for a player to just throw their hands up and ask the DM, "OK, what do you want us to do?" Because you don't feel like you have agency anymore.
It's frustrating to feel like you're making good choices but are still banging your head against a wall. I don't like that kind of difficulty. I prefer challenges that require a multitude of smaller wins, giving you plenty of room for failure without feeling completely helpless or unable to progress.
Basically, it boils down to whether it feels fair. I have been in TPKs where we acknowledged, "Yeah, we should have done X differently." It feels much better than being TPKed and not knowing what you could have done to avoid it - that just feels like a bum rush by an omnipotent DM.
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(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Exactly -- it should be as hard as it needs to be for the players to have fun, and different players require different kinds of difficulty. Some don't even care if they're challenged in combat, they just want to look cool. Some are only truly satisfied when they feel they've conquered something impossible... But they might not actually be that skilled, who knows.
This is another reason to keep using different kinds of combat encounters. Basically throw as much spaghetti at the wall as you can, lol.
It also depends hugely on the group dynamic. You can run the same adventure for two groups where one is an abolute hardcore meat grinder - because everyone relishes that kind of challenge, and another where it's a humour filled cartoon event instead - because everyone does silly things. Biggest challenge is probably where that group dynamic is too deeply divided among the players - hence the importance of setting a tone for a campaign or even single session.
This is entirely subjective and VERY dependent on your players and the tone of the campaign you are playing in.
Even with the same players, you may have two different "hurt" expectations based on game and setting.
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Just don’t do really stupid stuff.
I really like D&D, especially Ravenloft, Exandria and the Upside Down from Stranger Things. My pronouns are she/they (genderfae).
The question is meant to be subjective: it's not about how the game should be in abstract, it's about how you like it.
The thing is is the second sentence in that quote. My tastes change depending ony mood, how I'm feeling with the party and campaign etc. There just isn't one answer, even from just me.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It really comes down to the importance of the battle. If its a run of the mill encounter, then I expect the party to cut through the creatures with little expenditure of hit points or resources. If its a more important battle I want to see my characters have to use their best spells and be reduced in health. If it's against the main antagonist of the adventure, I want them to struggle! By struggle, I mean at least one or two characters are incapacitated or dead and the group having to show some sort of ingenuity to overcome the villain. Sometimes, I take it as a win when the party have to flee (magically or otherwise) and return to battle the villain more under their own terms.
Often the most memorable battles are the ones the group struggled in or when they did the unexpected to defeat a villain. Death is not the horror it used to be in D&D, its now more of an inconvenience. As long as you can avoid a TPK, giving a player a challenge where they could be the difference in the tide of the battle and even be the saviour of the kingdom but even more importantly, the group, is what we all play for!
I've yet to actually play yet but I do prefer it to be on the easier side. But after an "important" battle, I'm thinking most characters should be at 25% health, or so.
I voted 75% of party health lost for a major battle. I guess we also call them boss fights in VG.
I like to tailor the occasional encounter that gets the player nervous.
As a DM I do not go out of my way to try and kill any PC's (Ok I did 2 times)
Most of the dead deaths have happened from a poor player choice.
The problem is that if battles are sufficiently hard, the odds are that over the course of a campaign, PC deaths or even TPKs are likely. You can have players that want to be challenged to use tactics, but also want to get to the resolution of their character's story.
"Problem"? What's the point of resurrection spells if you never get to cast em?