We have a party of 3 new to the game players, and at level 3 they fought a Frost Druid, losing a character. The player took it well, but the fight was quite unbalanced - despite the enemy holding back some, the Ranger died after getting knocked unconscious and then receiving more damage than his max HP in one turn, the Paladin came down to 2 successes and 2 failures on death saving throw (managed to survive on the last throw that would determine life or death) while the Druid got down to 2 HP before managing to take out the Frost Druid.
The Ranger has been replaced with a Barbarian and I'm fine with the death - the player found it funny and it was all taken in good nature - however, especially since this is his first game (second for the others), I'm keen to boost the party to avoid another death, if possible (obviously, I don't want to remove the possibility, but I don't want them to lose attachment to their characters because they're rerolling new ones each session). It could be that the characters are not optimised (everyone is new and not overly focused on getting the best stats) or it could be that the adventure isn't balanced for three characters. Ideally, I'd like to boost the power of the party rather than filling it with extra characters or detoothing the opponents.
They've just levelled up to L4, and I allowed them to have both an ASI and a free feat. I've not used feats before, so do you think that would be enough to balance the scales a bit better for them? Do you think that it would be enough? If not, what would you suggest? One possibility is that they want to spend more time in the introductory section, so while they would not normally gain levels for doing so, it's possible that I could grant then another level for doing extra quests.
What are your thoughts?
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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.
If they're out in Icewind Dale, I would do a combination of two things: Pick a IWD quest with a nonviolent solution (Angajuk's Bell; take a message to the prison) and let them level up and also one of the low level ten-towns quests so they have an easy fight and you can make sure everyone knows how their characters work. These things are written for four or five characters, so some little bit of fiddling will always need to happen.
This post absolutely contains spoilers. Be ye warned.
In my experience with the module, the entire campaign requires characters to punch ridiculously out of their weight class. Nearly every single encounter felt like we were on a razor's edge. We almost TPK'd four times (at level 2 against the duergar in Easthaven, at level 4 against the plesiosaurus in Bremen because we capsized, at level 5 in our first attempt to take Sunblight, then against the stupid flameskulls in the Caves of Hunger at level 10 because multiple fireballs suck even when you make your saves). In all, we had 5 character deaths (2 from the duergar, one from the awakened mammoth outside Dougan's Hole, and 2 at the Black Cabin). Only 2 were permanent as of the epilogue.
We started the adventure with 5 players and dropped to 4 halfway through the adventure. All had fairly well-statted characters and with a solid number of magic items. We got our butts kicked consistently in spite of having a lot of DPS and a lot of healing. Granted, our DM is more old school and doesn't tend to pull punches with combat - the dice are the dice and if you die, you die - but even he was starting to nerf the encounters because he thought they were overkill.
As for what you can do, here are some options:
- Don't have baddies fight to the death. Maybe the monsters stay put instead of chasing, or get scared and flee when they have 10hp left, or take the party prisoner.
- Have deities/other powers step in with deals. When we were drowning in Bremen, Auril offered our bard a deal to save us. He accepted, and it made for a heck of a BBEG fight later as we had to save his soul from her grasp.
- Give the party some NPC allies. Maybe Imdra or Mishann tags along for a handful of quests. Maybe the party rescues someone from the cult in Caer Dineval and he joins them in gratitude. Having another "good guy" there to hurt baddies or support allies can be huge.
- Let the party level up faster. Things got a lot easier for us after we hit level 7, and all of our character deaths happened before level 5. Sunblight, however, was crazy hard even at level 5.
I'm sure not everyone has the same deadly experience I did, but as someone who's both played and read through the module, I raise my eyebrows at many of the encounters. Still, it was a fantastic campaign and I loved it. Hope you and your players do too!
As a note, you can always adjust the encounter difficulty on the fly--the modules do a generally terrible job at balancing the encounters against the party (either being too weak or too strong, never just right) and sometimes you need to adjust accordingly.
The most useful trick--the numbers you roll on your dice are not necessarily the numbers you have to say. Your party does not know if the monster they are fighting deals 3d8+10 damage or 2d8+5 damage (even if they metagame, the DM can always adjust stat blocks to fit party level), and they certainly do not know if you rolled an 8 or a 1 on a particular dice--that's what the DM screen is for. They also should never know how much HP a monster has left. Fight lasting too long or being too dangerous? Knock 20-50 HP off the monster's hitpoint value to speed things up. Fight not epic enough? You can always add HP or a heal mechanic or the like.
Mechanics might kill party members, but a DM has the ability to intercede to save the party, without the party ever knowing. The goal should be for the party to feel like they are fully capable of being killed off, without knowing that they are relatively safe, protected by the DM screen and the DMs lies.
I'd strongly echo what Caerwyn suggested. Try to get more comfortable with modifying things on the fly. It's a tall order to rebalance the campaign for three players without knowing what they can even handle, so don't try to do it in advance. If it feels 'wrong' to fudge dice, then start encounters using the minimum possible HP for a monster, and see how they fare. If they're making light work of it, change to the average HP instead, mid fight.
Your role as the DM can be seen to be one of two things: the adjudicator of the book where you run it as written to give your players a 'true' experience (whatever that means), or the person behind the scenes, constantly manipulating the numbers on the stat blocks and the dice, to help tell the best possible story. Of course, we're all sitting somewhere in between those two points, but it's up to you what feels right.
@theologyofbagels I'd agree it's a tough campaign in spots, though I'd have to say, the groups I've run through it haven't have nearly as much trouble as your group! I'm either not running my monsters very intelligently, I'm too much of a soft touch, or your DM was really not holding back any punches. Sounds exciting though!
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We have a party of 3 new to the game players, and at level 3 they fought a Frost Druid, losing a character. The player took it well, but the fight was quite unbalanced - despite the enemy holding back some, the Ranger died after getting knocked unconscious and then receiving more damage than his max HP in one turn, the Paladin came down to 2 successes and 2 failures on death saving throw (managed to survive on the last throw that would determine life or death) while the Druid got down to 2 HP before managing to take out the Frost Druid.
The Ranger has been replaced with a Barbarian and I'm fine with the death - the player found it funny and it was all taken in good nature - however, especially since this is his first game (second for the others), I'm keen to boost the party to avoid another death, if possible (obviously, I don't want to remove the possibility, but I don't want them to lose attachment to their characters because they're rerolling new ones each session). It could be that the characters are not optimised (everyone is new and not overly focused on getting the best stats) or it could be that the adventure isn't balanced for three characters. Ideally, I'd like to boost the power of the party rather than filling it with extra characters or detoothing the opponents.
They've just levelled up to L4, and I allowed them to have both an ASI and a free feat. I've not used feats before, so do you think that would be enough to balance the scales a bit better for them? Do you think that it would be enough? If not, what would you suggest? One possibility is that they want to spend more time in the introductory section, so while they would not normally gain levels for doing so, it's possible that I could grant then another level for doing extra quests.
What are your thoughts?
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.
If they're out in Icewind Dale, I would do a combination of two things: Pick a IWD quest with a nonviolent solution (Angajuk's Bell; take a message to the prison) and let them level up and also one of the low level ten-towns quests so they have an easy fight and you can make sure everyone knows how their characters work. These things are written for four or five characters, so some little bit of fiddling will always need to happen.
This post absolutely contains spoilers. Be ye warned.
In my experience with the module, the entire campaign requires characters to punch ridiculously out of their weight class. Nearly every single encounter felt like we were on a razor's edge. We almost TPK'd four times (at level 2 against the duergar in Easthaven, at level 4 against the plesiosaurus in Bremen because we capsized, at level 5 in our first attempt to take Sunblight, then against the stupid flameskulls in the Caves of Hunger at level 10 because multiple fireballs suck even when you make your saves). In all, we had 5 character deaths (2 from the duergar, one from the awakened mammoth outside Dougan's Hole, and 2 at the Black Cabin). Only 2 were permanent as of the epilogue.
We started the adventure with 5 players and dropped to 4 halfway through the adventure. All had fairly well-statted characters and with a solid number of magic items. We got our butts kicked consistently in spite of having a lot of DPS and a lot of healing. Granted, our DM is more old school and doesn't tend to pull punches with combat - the dice are the dice and if you die, you die - but even he was starting to nerf the encounters because he thought they were overkill.
As for what you can do, here are some options:
- Don't have baddies fight to the death. Maybe the monsters stay put instead of chasing, or get scared and flee when they have 10hp left, or take the party prisoner.
- Have deities/other powers step in with deals. When we were drowning in Bremen, Auril offered our bard a deal to save us. He accepted, and it made for a heck of a BBEG fight later as we had to save his soul from her grasp.
- Give the party some NPC allies. Maybe Imdra or Mishann tags along for a handful of quests. Maybe the party rescues someone from the cult in Caer Dineval and he joins them in gratitude. Having another "good guy" there to hurt baddies or support allies can be huge.
- Let the party level up faster. Things got a lot easier for us after we hit level 7, and all of our character deaths happened before level 5. Sunblight, however, was crazy hard even at level 5.
I'm sure not everyone has the same deadly experience I did, but as someone who's both played and read through the module, I raise my eyebrows at many of the encounters. Still, it was a fantastic campaign and I loved it. Hope you and your players do too!
As a note, you can always adjust the encounter difficulty on the fly--the modules do a generally terrible job at balancing the encounters against the party (either being too weak or too strong, never just right) and sometimes you need to adjust accordingly.
The most useful trick--the numbers you roll on your dice are not necessarily the numbers you have to say. Your party does not know if the monster they are fighting deals 3d8+10 damage or 2d8+5 damage (even if they metagame, the DM can always adjust stat blocks to fit party level), and they certainly do not know if you rolled an 8 or a 1 on a particular dice--that's what the DM screen is for. They also should never know how much HP a monster has left. Fight lasting too long or being too dangerous? Knock 20-50 HP off the monster's hitpoint value to speed things up. Fight not epic enough? You can always add HP or a heal mechanic or the like.
Mechanics might kill party members, but a DM has the ability to intercede to save the party, without the party ever knowing. The goal should be for the party to feel like they are fully capable of being killed off, without knowing that they are relatively safe, protected by the DM screen and the DMs lies.
I'd strongly echo what Caerwyn suggested. Try to get more comfortable with modifying things on the fly. It's a tall order to rebalance the campaign for three players without knowing what they can even handle, so don't try to do it in advance. If it feels 'wrong' to fudge dice, then start encounters using the minimum possible HP for a monster, and see how they fare. If they're making light work of it, change to the average HP instead, mid fight.
Your role as the DM can be seen to be one of two things: the adjudicator of the book where you run it as written to give your players a 'true' experience (whatever that means), or the person behind the scenes, constantly manipulating the numbers on the stat blocks and the dice, to help tell the best possible story. Of course, we're all sitting somewhere in between those two points, but it's up to you what feels right.
@theologyofbagels I'd agree it's a tough campaign in spots, though I'd have to say, the groups I've run through it haven't have nearly as much trouble as your group! I'm either not running my monsters very intelligently, I'm too much of a soft touch, or your DM was really not holding back any punches. Sounds exciting though!