The other simple answer is to use smaller numbers of higher hit point monsters. Area effects are for groups, if you're just using 1-3 creatures it's easy to spread them out, and they probably have enough hit points to soak up all those spells anyway.
And in addition to what Pantagruel said, it is less likely a spellcaster is going to want to "waste" the AOE alpha strike on a single target. Unless they know they will only be in one encounter per long rest or something.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
My CR 6 creature Called Lightning and... I killed a character.
Yikes.
At what level? An outright kill (as opposed to zero hp) is pretty hard to achieve with call lightning, even upcast to a level 6 spell that's only 6d10. Easier to accidentally kill with something like Moonbeam or Wall of Thorns, as either spell will happily toast downed characters.
Probably the best GM that I ever had back in my old Champions days, would simply have the villains do back to the PCs what the PCs do to the villains. We focus fire on one villain at a time, starting with the weakest and working up? His villains did the same thing. Man did it suck when they determined YOU were the weak character on the board. (He was a good GM, so he worked it out so that each team or unit you fought had different strengths/weaknesses, so it wasn't always one PC getting picked on.. but still, it sucked for that battle.) But it was hard to complain because, well, good for the goose...
In a situation with a party that does a bunch of AOEs... I can easily picture him having the PCs clumped together and the bad guys doing fireballs right back to us. Ouch. And yeah... probably someone(s) would die from that.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
My CR 6 creature Called Lightning and... I killed a character.
Yikes.
At what level? An outright kill (as opposed to zero hp) is pretty hard to achieve with call lightning, even upcast to a level 6 spell that's only 6d10. Easier to accidentally kill with something like Moonbeam or Wall of Thorns, as either spell will happily toast downed characters.
I think one thing that can be said about GM's is that they tend to become very "non-tactical" when approaching fights against players. Like GM's generally put on the kiddie gloves, they aren't actively trying to win fights against the players, their is almost always an intention to let the players win.
It comes from a lack of trust in the balancing aspect of the CR system and rightfully so but most people judge the CR "under powered". Meaning that if you create a "normal" encounter, most PC groups will bulldoze through it without any trouble, but I think this is more because the GM is pulling punches then it is because the CR system is so off. I mean I agree its a really imperfect system, but IF you are actually intentionally creating balanced encounters, then you should not pull punches. Really give it to your players, do everything in your power within the confines of that encounter to murder the PC's.
What you will realize is that you as the GM can make encounters a lot harder for them by actually thinking tactically, by trying to win. More than that, players will come to respect encounters as dangerous because even a seemingly "easy win" can be made tough with some good tactical thinking on the part of the GM. Your players are going to win anyway most likely, their characters just have much better resources then any monsters within their CR scale will have, but that is my advice. Don't pull punch it.. really stick it to them, try to kill them and don't feel bad about it.
What will happen is that your players will realize that they really need the whole team. Those fireballs are going to still be key to fights, but their will be no room for side line PC's, everyone will need to pitch in when you suddenly start running goblins who are thinking tactically and leveraging their assets better.
It is a fine line between challenging the players, and killing them off. For a DM, that only comes with experience, and likely a few dead chars. But yes, I can think of nothing less enjoyable that being a player cake-walking over everything. Except being the player watching another player cake-walk through every encounter while your char sits on the sidelines not helping in the fight.
I can think of nothing less enjoyable that being a player cake-walking over everything.
Thinking about the magic item shop thread, and how players like magic item shops so they can get the perfect magic item to ramp up their character's power level... it is kind of ironic that players always seem to be trying to make their character more powerful, which is only going to make all the challenges in the future easier to overcome, apparently never realizing that as fun as it sounds to become more "uber," the less fun most people will actually have.
As for challenging vs. killing players... Not all monsters are smart, and not all monsters fight tactically well. This is RP for the DM (like the session Saturday when my PCs were fighting giant crabs), playing the monsters "correctly." However, it can sometimes lull the party into a sense of overconfidence, so that when they fight an intelligent and tactically savvy enemy, the party is used to the "attack the nearest target" algorithm, as it were, from the monsters, and they are unprepared for an intelligent response. This can sometimes lead to deaths or even wipes unexpectedly.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Probably the best GM that I ever had back in my old Champions days, would simply have the villains do back to the PCs what the PCs do to the villains. We focus fire on one villain at a time, starting with the weakest and working up? His villains did the same thing. Man did it suck when they determined YOU were the weak character on the board. (He was a good GM, so he worked it out so that each team or unit you fought had different strengths/weaknesses, so it wasn't always one PC getting picked on.. but still, it sucked for that battle.) But it was hard to complain because, well, good for the goose...
In a situation with a party that does a bunch of AOEs... I can easily picture him having the PCs clumped together and the bad guys doing fireballs right back to us. Ouch. And yeah... probably someone(s) would die from that.
If this makes sense: The environment was a cove where a ship was anchored halfway inside a cave so sound bounced around the cavern. The one thing with this party is they did not do stealth while the players were on a rowboat trying to get to the ship and board it because the boat was captured by eelfolk and they were spotted. (I don't recommend players using a high pitch whistle and open conversation in a cave.). the enemy spellcaster saw the players in a boat and cast call lightning on them and since they were all packed in the boat they were impacted by the five-foot point and all of them were zapped. Fortunately, the Ranger was able to get three hits on the spellcaster to which it failed the concentration check so the spell dissipated after one round of use.
So it was...sort of...shooting fish in a barrel moment.
I don't think you did anything wrong. They were incautious and paid the price.
They also got to see what it is like to be subjected to an enemy AOE alpha-strike... again, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Players should expect enemies to do things back to them that they do to enemies. If they open up with AOE alpha strikes against the monsters, they should expect the monsters to do it back to them. If they hack at downed enemies to make them "fail their death saving throws" (assuming that the DM gives those to the bad guys, which I personally do not), then they should expect the monsters to do it back to them, and so forth.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
So it was...sort of...shooting fish in a barrel moment.
Not my proudest moment.
Why not? Nothing wrong with the occasional dead PC. Mean would have been applying the lightning damage to the boat as well as the PCs (probably best not to do that sort of thing; naval battles are pretty dysfunctional if AoE spells get applied to the ships).
Yeah, I know. I'm ok with the turnout as the players RP really well to handle the death and their plans to try to raise the dead on the felled player. Though the funny part was the killed player stated "This is the DM getting back at us for mopping the floor with our own AOE spells last game."
Random on the topic of Call Lightning: This question came up during the game if a player had Dispell Magic could that been applied to the Call Lightening storm cloud to end the spell?
Yeah, I know. I'm ok with the turnout as the players RP really well to handle the death and their plans to try to raise the dead on the felled player. Though the funny part was the killed player stated "This is the DM getting back at us for mopping the floor with our own AOE spells last game."
Random on the topic of Call Lightning: This question came up during the game if a player had Dispell Magic could that been applied to the Call Lightening storm cloud to end the spell?
The cloud appears to be a 'magical effect' so I'd think yes?
Yeah, I know. I'm ok with the turnout as the players RP really well to handle the death and their plans to try to raise the dead on the felled player. Though the funny part was the killed player stated "This is the DM getting back at us for mopping the floor with our own AOE spells last game."
Random on the topic of Call Lightning: This question came up during the game if a player had Dispell Magic could that been applied to the Call Lightening storm cloud to end the spell?
The cloud appears to be a 'magical effect' so I'd think yes?
Yeah, Dispel Magic works on any spell, within the limitations of the Dispel Magic spell itself. The Cloud is a Magical Effect, so fair game.
Dispel magic - The spell says, "Choose one creature, object, or magical effect within range." -- So yes, it is a magical effect within range.
the killed player stated "This is the DM getting back at us for mopping the floor with our own AOE spells last game."
Well... yes and no.
It's not that the GM is "getting the players back" -- that would be flatly ridiculous. If you didn't want AOE spells to work you could just give the monsters invulnerability to AOEs or something absurd. And the GM, if he/she is being reasonable, isn't annoyed or angry that the players won, because most of the time GMs want the players to win. We design monsters to be beaten, enemies to be defeated, traps to be overcome, and puzzles to be solved. That's what those things are there for.
The reason a GM might complain about regular AOE alpha strikes mopping the floor with enemies is that this tactic makes battles (a) monotonous and (b) boring. We, as players of a game, do not generally want to find the same thing happening over and over again, and that same thing, worse, being boringly easy. The GM is trying to challenge the players and therefore wants to design encounters they will find challenging and fun, so that everyone is cheering by the end of the night, not "ho hum, another explosion/auto-win." The GM gets annoyed when players alpha-crush an encounter not because the monsters lost, but because the GM was unable to challenge the players and the encounter was boring instead of fun.
The purpose enforcing an "If you can do it to the monsters, the monsters can do it to you" rule, is to raise the stakes and make the game more challenging. If they players know that opening with alpha AOEs against monsters, is going to lead to monsters doing it back to them, this will have 1 of 2 effects: either they keep doing it, in which case some times they get alpha'ed back, and those battles are going to be tough (thus achieving the goal: challenge), or else the players will stop alpha'ing, and the various combats will be harder than if they had alpha'ed (thus, again, achieving the goal: challenge). Either way, the GM is making the game more challenging, and therefore, hopefully, more fun and rewarding.
It can be hard to get out of the "GM vs players" mentality, especially for players. The GM is usually purposely setting up adventures to be fun but winnable, but the players, while they are in a battle or an adventure, can't know the GM did this, and if the GM is playing the monsters "right" sometimes it will feel like the GM is out to get the party. This isn't the case ("I'm not trying to kill your character; the monster is trying to kill your character" -- Matt Coleville), but it can sure feel that way. Especially if the GM has made up a very challenging encounter and is RPing the monsters really well. It can help in these cases to remind the players that you are just running the monsters as fairly as you can.
Dispel magic - The spell says, "Choose one creature, object, or magical effect within range." -- So yes, it is a magical effect within range.
the killed player stated "This is the DM getting back at us for mopping the floor with our own AOE spells last game."
Well... yes and no.
It's not that the GM is "getting the players back" -- that would be flatly ridiculous. If you didn't want AOE spells to work you could just give the monsters invulnerability to AOEs or something absurd. And the GM, if he/she is being reasonable, isn't annoyed or angry that the players won, because most of the time GMs want the players to win. We design monsters to be beaten, enemies to be defeated, traps to be overcome, and puzzles to be solved. That's what those things are there for.
The reason a GM might complain about regular AOE alpha strikes mopping the floor with enemies is that this tactic makes battles (a) monotonous and (b) boring. We, as players of a game, do not generally want to find the same thing happening over and over again, and that same thing, worse, being boringly easy. The GM is trying to challenge the players and therefore wants to design encounters they will find challenging and fun, so that everyone is cheering by the end of the night, not "ho hum, another explosion/auto-win." The GM gets annoyed when players alpha-crush an encounter not because the monsters lost, but because the GM was unable to challenge the players and the encounter was boring instead of fun.
The purpose enforcing an "If you can do it to the monsters, the monsters can do it to you" rule, is to raise the stakes and make the game more challenging. If they players know that opening with alpha AOEs against monsters, is going to lead to monsters doing it back to them, this will have 1 of 2 effects: either they keep doing it, in which case some times they get alpha'ed back, and those battles are going to be tough (thus achieving the goal: challenge), or else the players will stop alpha'ing, and the various combats will be harder than if they had alpha'ed (thus, again, achieving the goal: challenge). Either way, the GM is making the game more challenging, and therefore, hopefully, more fun and rewarding.
It can be hard to get out of the "GM vs players" mentality, especially for players. The GM is usually purposely setting up adventures to be fun but winnable, but the players, while they are in a battle or an adventure, can't know the GM did this, and if the GM is playing the monsters "right" sometimes it will feel like the GM is out to get the party. This isn't the case ("I'm not trying to kill your character; the monster is trying to kill your character" -- Matt Coleville), but it can sure feel that way. Especially if the GM has made up a very challenging encounter and is RPing the monsters really well. It can help in these cases to remind the players that you are just running the monsters as fairly as you can.
I mentioned before, I had the great luxury a couple times of creating monsters and the encounter, and had a guest DM jump in to play the monsters/ NPC's, while I then sat back and adjudicated both sides. I think the players enjoyed the encounters more, as they realized that the other guy was the adversary, not me, and they knew the other DM was not going to pull any punches, or be able to fudge numbers behind a screen.
My experience is that having someone other than the DM run the monsters is that it's an excellent way to kill off PCs, because of a difference in objectives. As a DM, I want to make the fight fun for everyone, so I'll avoid un-fun combat tactics such as focus firing and obliterating one character, or stun locking people, or the like, whereas if I'm only running the monsters using Disintegrate on someone who's at 50 hp is "Score!".
My experience is that having someone other than the DM run the monsters is that it's an excellent way to kill off PCs, because of a difference in objectives. As a DM, I want to make the fight fun for everyone, so I'll avoid un-fun combat tactics such as focus firing and obliterating one character, or stun locking people, or the like, whereas if I'm only running the monsters using Disintegrate on someone who's at 50 hp is "Score!".
It can be a great learning experience for players who think the DM is "being mean to them." Until they see what it would actually look like if a DM is being mean to you. It's not pretty... "Oh, so THIS is how the bad guys would act if the DM were playing them to the max. Wow."
There is an old quote from Champions about why the heroes usually win. It was an article about what to do with killer "heroes" -- so-called hero PCs willing to sacrifice hostages to get at the bad-guys, brazenly kill enemies without letting them get due process, and so forth. The author (probably Aaron Allston) asks, "Why do the heroes usually win against the bad guys?" Is it that they are more powerful -- no, hardly ever. Is it because they are smarter? Again, hardly ever (in many cases they are up against an actual "mastermind"). So why do they win?
He argues, the heroes win because their acts of bravery and self-sacrifice on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves earns them something the evil, selfish, murderous villains can never have: the GM's good will. He then points out that the killer-hero is going to have problems for just this reason - being a killer, letting the hostages die, failing to bother saving the innocents, loses that PC the GM's good will, and now the GM is going to just let the dice fall where they may. Good luck. (Which by the way, you can forget ever having....)
The same sort of thing happens in D&D. Most typically, the PCs are a party of heroes, who end up sacrificing their own selves and safety to do things like free slaves, rescue townsfolk from undead, defeat evil necromancers who are harvesting innocent souls, and the like. Parties have the DM's good will because they are being heroic. The DM wants them to win, just like the Champions GM wants the Hero League to defeat the Emissaries of Evil.
But the "guest GM" does not care about that. The guest GM is playing the Emissaries and has no concern for what the heroes have done in the past. So the players don't have the Guest GM's good will like they have the main GM's good will. What you are describing, "score!" -- that is what happens when the party doesn't have the DM's good-will.
The other simple answer is to use smaller numbers of higher hit point monsters. Area effects are for groups, if you're just using 1-3 creatures it's easy to spread them out, and they probably have enough hit points to soak up all those spells anyway.
And in addition to what Pantagruel said, it is less likely a spellcaster is going to want to "waste" the AOE alpha strike on a single target. Unless they know they will only be in one encounter per long rest or something.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
My CR 6 creature Called Lightning and... I killed a character.
Yikes.
At what level? An outright kill (as opposed to zero hp) is pretty hard to achieve with call lightning, even upcast to a level 6 spell that's only 6d10. Easier to accidentally kill with something like Moonbeam or Wall of Thorns, as either spell will happily toast downed characters.
Oops.
Well, they can always try to Raise Dead....
Probably the best GM that I ever had back in my old Champions days, would simply have the villains do back to the PCs what the PCs do to the villains. We focus fire on one villain at a time, starting with the weakest and working up? His villains did the same thing. Man did it suck when they determined YOU were the weak character on the board. (He was a good GM, so he worked it out so that each team or unit you fought had different strengths/weaknesses, so it wasn't always one PC getting picked on.. but still, it sucked for that battle.) But it was hard to complain because, well, good for the goose...
In a situation with a party that does a bunch of AOEs... I can easily picture him having the PCs clumped together and the bad guys doing fireballs right back to us. Ouch. And yeah... probably someone(s) would die from that.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Double One’s on Death Saving Throws.
It is a fine line between challenging the players, and killing them off. For a DM, that only comes with experience, and likely a few dead chars. But yes, I can think of nothing less enjoyable that being a player cake-walking over everything. Except being the player watching another player cake-walk through every encounter while your char sits on the sidelines not helping in the fight.
Thinking about the magic item shop thread, and how players like magic item shops so they can get the perfect magic item to ramp up their character's power level... it is kind of ironic that players always seem to be trying to make their character more powerful, which is only going to make all the challenges in the future easier to overcome, apparently never realizing that as fun as it sounds to become more "uber," the less fun most people will actually have.
As for challenging vs. killing players... Not all monsters are smart, and not all monsters fight tactically well. This is RP for the DM (like the session Saturday when my PCs were fighting giant crabs), playing the monsters "correctly." However, it can sometimes lull the party into a sense of overconfidence, so that when they fight an intelligent and tactically savvy enemy, the party is used to the "attack the nearest target" algorithm, as it were, from the monsters, and they are unprepared for an intelligent response. This can sometimes lead to deaths or even wipes unexpectedly.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
If this makes sense: The environment was a cove where a ship was anchored halfway inside a cave so sound bounced around the cavern. The one thing with this party is they did not do stealth while the players were on a rowboat trying to get to the ship and board it because the boat was captured by eelfolk and they were spotted. (I don't recommend players using a high pitch whistle and open conversation in a cave.). the enemy spellcaster saw the players in a boat and cast call lightning on them and since they were all packed in the boat they were impacted by the five-foot point and all of them were zapped. Fortunately, the Ranger was able to get three hits on the spellcaster to which it failed the concentration check so the spell dissipated after one round of use.
So it was...sort of...shooting fish in a barrel moment.
Not my proudest moment.
I don't think you did anything wrong. They were incautious and paid the price.
They also got to see what it is like to be subjected to an enemy AOE alpha-strike... again, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Players should expect enemies to do things back to them that they do to enemies. If they open up with AOE alpha strikes against the monsters, they should expect the monsters to do it back to them. If they hack at downed enemies to make them "fail their death saving throws" (assuming that the DM gives those to the bad guys, which I personally do not), then they should expect the monsters to do it back to them, and so forth.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Why not? Nothing wrong with the occasional dead PC. Mean would have been applying the lightning damage to the boat as well as the PCs (probably best not to do that sort of thing; naval battles are pretty dysfunctional if AoE spells get applied to the ships).
Yeah, I know. I'm ok with the turnout as the players RP really well to handle the death and their plans to try to raise the dead on the felled player. Though the funny part was the killed player stated "This is the DM getting back at us for mopping the floor with our own AOE spells last game."
Random on the topic of Call Lightning: This question came up during the game if a player had Dispell Magic could that been applied to the Call Lightening storm cloud to end the spell?
The cloud appears to be a 'magical effect' so I'd think yes?
Yeah, Dispel Magic works on any spell, within the limitations of the Dispel Magic spell itself. The Cloud is a Magical Effect, so fair game.
Dispel magic - The spell says, "Choose one creature, object, or magical effect within range." -- So yes, it is a magical effect within range.
Well... yes and no.
It's not that the GM is "getting the players back" -- that would be flatly ridiculous. If you didn't want AOE spells to work you could just give the monsters invulnerability to AOEs or something absurd. And the GM, if he/she is being reasonable, isn't annoyed or angry that the players won, because most of the time GMs want the players to win. We design monsters to be beaten, enemies to be defeated, traps to be overcome, and puzzles to be solved. That's what those things are there for.
The reason a GM might complain about regular AOE alpha strikes mopping the floor with enemies is that this tactic makes battles (a) monotonous and (b) boring. We, as players of a game, do not generally want to find the same thing happening over and over again, and that same thing, worse, being boringly easy. The GM is trying to challenge the players and therefore wants to design encounters they will find challenging and fun, so that everyone is cheering by the end of the night, not "ho hum, another explosion/auto-win." The GM gets annoyed when players alpha-crush an encounter not because the monsters lost, but because the GM was unable to challenge the players and the encounter was boring instead of fun.
The purpose enforcing an "If you can do it to the monsters, the monsters can do it to you" rule, is to raise the stakes and make the game more challenging. If they players know that opening with alpha AOEs against monsters, is going to lead to monsters doing it back to them, this will have 1 of 2 effects: either they keep doing it, in which case some times they get alpha'ed back, and those battles are going to be tough (thus achieving the goal: challenge), or else the players will stop alpha'ing, and the various combats will be harder than if they had alpha'ed (thus, again, achieving the goal: challenge). Either way, the GM is making the game more challenging, and therefore, hopefully, more fun and rewarding.
It can be hard to get out of the "GM vs players" mentality, especially for players. The GM is usually purposely setting up adventures to be fun but winnable, but the players, while they are in a battle or an adventure, can't know the GM did this, and if the GM is playing the monsters "right" sometimes it will feel like the GM is out to get the party. This isn't the case ("I'm not trying to kill your character; the monster is trying to kill your character" -- Matt Coleville), but it can sure feel that way. Especially if the GM has made up a very challenging encounter and is RPing the monsters really well. It can help in these cases to remind the players that you are just running the monsters as fairly as you can.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I mentioned before, I had the great luxury a couple times of creating monsters and the encounter, and had a guest DM jump in to play the monsters/ NPC's, while I then sat back and adjudicated both sides. I think the players enjoyed the encounters more, as they realized that the other guy was the adversary, not me, and they knew the other DM was not going to pull any punches, or be able to fudge numbers behind a screen.
Yes well, not all of us have the luxury of "guest DMs."
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Yeah, I know. Experience is the only friend most DM's ever acquire for a session.
My experience is that having someone other than the DM run the monsters is that it's an excellent way to kill off PCs, because of a difference in objectives. As a DM, I want to make the fight fun for everyone, so I'll avoid un-fun combat tactics such as focus firing and obliterating one character, or stun locking people, or the like, whereas if I'm only running the monsters using Disintegrate on someone who's at 50 hp is "Score!".
It can be a great learning experience for players who think the DM is "being mean to them." Until they see what it would actually look like if a DM is being mean to you. It's not pretty... "Oh, so THIS is how the bad guys would act if the DM were playing them to the max. Wow."
There is an old quote from Champions about why the heroes usually win. It was an article about what to do with killer "heroes" -- so-called hero PCs willing to sacrifice hostages to get at the bad-guys, brazenly kill enemies without letting them get due process, and so forth. The author (probably Aaron Allston) asks, "Why do the heroes usually win against the bad guys?" Is it that they are more powerful -- no, hardly ever. Is it because they are smarter? Again, hardly ever (in many cases they are up against an actual "mastermind"). So why do they win?
He argues, the heroes win because their acts of bravery and self-sacrifice on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves earns them something the evil, selfish, murderous villains can never have: the GM's good will. He then points out that the killer-hero is going to have problems for just this reason - being a killer, letting the hostages die, failing to bother saving the innocents, loses that PC the GM's good will, and now the GM is going to just let the dice fall where they may. Good luck. (Which by the way, you can forget ever having....)
The same sort of thing happens in D&D. Most typically, the PCs are a party of heroes, who end up sacrificing their own selves and safety to do things like free slaves, rescue townsfolk from undead, defeat evil necromancers who are harvesting innocent souls, and the like. Parties have the DM's good will because they are being heroic. The DM wants them to win, just like the Champions GM wants the Hero League to defeat the Emissaries of Evil.
But the "guest GM" does not care about that. The guest GM is playing the Emissaries and has no concern for what the heroes have done in the past. So the players don't have the Guest GM's good will like they have the main GM's good will. What you are describing, "score!" -- that is what happens when the party doesn't have the DM's good-will.
As Aaron Allston said -- it ain't pretty.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.