I have made a fatal mistake I think that could possibly be dangerous to my campaign.
I have put my players up to near-impossible tasks. To the point that most of them openly voice it to me. I have put them up against much too challenging encounters and I somehow can't fix this problem. Everytime I come up with an encounter it, midway through the fight, turns out to be far too dangerous. So far they have managed to get by by the teeth of their skin.
What should I do?
They are already quite loaded on magical items and I have thought of having them become a higher level but they have only quite recently leveled up. I'm also afraid that if I give them more magical things they will become a little too strong for encounters balanced to their level while still being too weak for the tougher encounters.
I have been thinking of purpousefully making many of their future encounters no harder than "easy" just to give them a few good victories. I myself get very happy if I manage to overcome a fight that was very challenging but I feel like not everyone shares this with me. Do people normally enjoy a fight more if there is no real chance for failure?
Everytime I come up with an encounter it, midway through the fight, turns out to be far too dangerous.
What's stopping you from reducing the difficulty of the encounter mid-fight?
I myself get very happy if I manage to overcome a fight that was very challenging but I feel like not everyone shares this with me.
I think you're misjudging the issue. Most players understand that occasionally they might be in over their heads or only win by the skin of their teeth. The problem is that not every encounter is supposed to be that way. You need some easy encounters to give the players a break, let them see how far their characters have progressed, and make the hard encounters more memorable.
I'd take what you learned about their limit, and just throw easy encounters that are more thoughtful than challenging.
Use cool unique stories that set something up. Look up quest story hooks for inspiration. Also, adding a few weak minions to a strong opponent can make things interesting. Distract the party with weaklings, while the main bad guy can last a few rounds in combat without getting destroyed by the party instantly.
Can you describe a couple of the encounters and the creatures you used? It would be useful to know how much too powerful you are making the encounters or whether the issue is more bad luck than bad encounters.
As was mentioned, you don't want every encounter to almost kill off the party since it actually is less fun to just barely survive all the time. It is also fun to have a challenge where there is some risk to one or two characters but you pull through fairly handily as a team.
One way to dynamically balance encounters is with reinforcements. Start off with whatever you think is good or maybe slighly weak. Schedule another group to join the fight around turn 3. If the players are having trouble, delay or skip the reinforcements. If they are having an easy time, bring the reinforcements in a bit earlier. However, don't use this on every battle or the players will get used to it.
If they’re winning, that sounds like it was actually balanced. Skin of teeth victories are the most fun. But I subscribe to the idea that I want the players to win, but I want them to have 1hp left when they do.
To me it seems like the problem would be they are only going to want to have one encounter per long rest if the fights are that close. I do like the idea of throwing in some easy ones, though. It’s good to have a mix. A really fun thing can be to throw at them the same enemies they barely beat 4 levels ago, since it really helps them understand how much stronger they’ve gotten.
Are they dead? Sounds like they are all safe and well. Bumps and bruises.
A tpk happens two ways. Either a super overpowered fight or just bad dice rolls. Super overpowered is the fault of the DM not knowing the party limitations. Bad dice rolls are no one's fault.
In a story there is a balance between hard fights and simple ones. They all matter as long as the story goes on.
Your players have hard fights but sounds like no one has died so those fights were not hard enough. But those hard fights should have a reason behind it. Not a sub quest. Hard fights where players can actually die are meant for story arcs either player character or story line.
Add challenge in ways other than monster hp/attacks... even a bunch of goblins can present a challenge if their tactics are good. Make the combat interesting with enemy strategy over strength. Hack and slash is fun at times, but for many it can become boring. Try to keep roleplay active during combat - I think a lot of time dm's and pc's have an imaginary line between the two (roleplay | combat) erase that line and treat your monsters like NPCs with thoughts and desires and objectives and sneaky ideas or maybe cowardice or sadism or...
I recently ran an encounter with a handful of harpies as the enemy. I raised the DC on their luring song a little bit but I gave them a tactic... They intentionally try to split a part, drawing some into a spiders nest and others into a wolf den and another into kobold territory. With the party split, they can attack whoever was not charmed and pulled away. The way it played out was a lot of fun. None of the monsters had tons of hit points, and none would have survive more than a round or two against the full party together. It was challenging for the players to figure out what was actually going on and find ways to foil the strategy rather than just give a beat-down. Of course... there needs to be the occasional beat-down experience - it is D&D after all.
First thing to check is if you're actually using the rules correctly, because encounters at standard difficulty are actually pretty easy. The most common mistake I've seen is to not notice the rules on Modify Total XP for Multiple Monsters, typically resulting in fights that are 2-3x stronger than they're supposed to be.
The only way you can salvage the situation is to kill your players and bury their bodies in the woods. Then, find new players who won't remember your heinous DMing. I feel like I must now explicitly mention that this is a joke and I am not advocating murder as a solution to the problems of your D&D table.
Like others have already said, if they aren't dead, then you aren't playing too hard. However, a few easier encounters might satisfy them. If I had real advice, I would say try to give them time to do things towards their goals that are safe periods. It really helps lighten the mood of despair caused by a series of near deaths. It only works if your players are into that stuff, but giving them the opportunity to just ... go to a restaurant or go shopping or otherwise do something silly and fun can really raise party morale. Don't try and make it funny or spoil it. Just play it relatively straight.
If they’re winning, that sounds like it was actually balanced. Skin of teeth victories are the most fun. But I subscribe to the idea that I want the players to win, but I want them to have 1hp left when they do.
This was my thought. If they're winning by the skin of their teeth -- why are they complaining? To me, as a player, this is the ultimate fun in combat in D&D, winning, but just barely.
Do they want fights to be a walk-over?
And if so, why are you not able to provide it? It seems easy enough unless they are all first level.... just give them an encounter with a much lower CR. They're level 5? Have them fight a group of goblins specced out for a level 1 party. They should win that easily.
And if they can't, something is wrong with them.
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.
If you want to level them up, give them a few sessions of RP with some minor fights/interrogation bits. Info gathering on the big bad, that leads up to the next fight session!
So, I'll go the other way here. You want fights to have varying levels of difficulty. They shouldn't *all* push your party to the limit. There *should* be some easy fights to make the party feel heroic.
Sometimes, you go to take out a dangerous band of bandits and your sorcerer vaporizes half of them off the bat. The rest of them run away, because they were basically punk teenagers causing trouble.
Sometimes a pack of wolves is just a pack of wolves - you smack three or four and the rest run away.
An sometimes the unassuming old fruit vendor is actually a gigantic demon in disguise that's about to summon in half a dozen barghests...
First place you should start is figuring out each players play style. Some players want very tactical realistic combat. Some want power fantasy where they're basically Superman. Some prefer a thinking man's game with more intrigue and social situations or puzzles. Some players look to escape and become someone or something they can't be in the real world.
Every player has a different style they like. For now watch the players closely the next few encounters and see what get who excited who enguages with what. And build from that to create encounters they find fun. Fix this in the future by always having a session zero
As a rule of thumb encounters should start of fairly easy when the party hits a new lvl to represent their growth in power and become more difficult as the party gets more and more xp as they struggle with new challenges.
Variety makes things interesting. Hard fights are only memorable if they aren’t all that way. Furthermore, mixing it up with encounters will give them confidence in their abilities and may help evoke the feeling—as opposed to mere knowledge—that they’re getting more powerful. One way I like to do this is to throw enemies that were formidable/scary as hell when PCs were low level at them again to show how far they’ve come but usually more of them or in more difficult settings.
This is a thing were emotional intelligence, and/or just explicit communication out of game is useful. Read the room or check in.
From a more ‘games perspective, this approach seems to create an emphasis solely on tactics—maneuvers, actions, etc—rather than strategy—I.e—thinking that may include the current encounter but also go beyond that, which seems like a missed opportunity.
Ultimately it’s your call but observing and listening to your players is vital. If they’re enjoying the game they’ll do all sorts of cool, crazy, and sometimes surprising things. If not, there’s no point.
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Dear dungeon masters,
I have made a fatal mistake I think that could possibly be dangerous to my campaign.
I have put my players up to near-impossible tasks. To the point that most of them openly voice it to me.
I have put them up against much too challenging encounters and I somehow can't fix this problem. Everytime I come up with an encounter it, midway through the fight, turns out to be far too dangerous.
So far they have managed to get by by the teeth of their skin.
What should I do?
They are already quite loaded on magical items and I have thought of having them become a higher level but they have only quite recently leveled up.
I'm also afraid that if I give them more magical things they will become a little too strong for encounters balanced to their level while still being too weak for the tougher encounters.
I have been thinking of purpousefully making many of their future encounters no harder than "easy" just to give them a few good victories. I myself get very happy if I manage to overcome a fight that was very challenging but I feel like not everyone shares this with me.
Do people normally enjoy a fight more if there is no real chance for failure?
What's stopping you from reducing the difficulty of the encounter mid-fight?
I think you're misjudging the issue. Most players understand that occasionally they might be in over their heads or only win by the skin of their teeth. The problem is that not every encounter is supposed to be that way. You need some easy encounters to give the players a break, let them see how far their characters have progressed, and make the hard encounters more memorable.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
It would help to know the party info. Classes, levels, number of players.
What encounters have you been throwing them into?
They are lvl 6, 5 players. Paladin, Sorcerer, Rogue, Fighter/warlock & Bard.
All encounters have just been heavily unbalanced in powerscale. Mostly having high saves and hitpoints
Well, seems like a pretty tough party.
I'd take what you learned about their limit, and just throw easy encounters that are more thoughtful than challenging.
Use cool unique stories that set something up. Look up quest story hooks for inspiration. Also, adding a few weak minions to a strong opponent can make things interesting. Distract the party with weaklings, while the main bad guy can last a few rounds in combat without getting destroyed by the party instantly.
Can you describe a couple of the encounters and the creatures you used? It would be useful to know how much too powerful you are making the encounters or whether the issue is more bad luck than bad encounters.
As was mentioned, you don't want every encounter to almost kill off the party since it actually is less fun to just barely survive all the time. It is also fun to have a challenge where there is some risk to one or two characters but you pull through fairly handily as a team.
One way to dynamically balance encounters is with reinforcements. Start off with whatever you think is good or maybe slighly weak. Schedule another group to join the fight around turn 3. If the players are having trouble, delay or skip the reinforcements. If they are having an easy time, bring the reinforcements in a bit earlier. However, don't use this on every battle or the players will get used to it.
If they’re winning, that sounds like it was actually balanced. Skin of teeth victories are the most fun. But I subscribe to the idea that I want the players to win, but I want them to have 1hp left when they do.
To me it seems like the problem would be they are only going to want to have one encounter per long rest if the fights are that close. I do like the idea of throwing in some easy ones, though. It’s good to have a mix. A really fun thing can be to throw at them the same enemies they barely beat 4 levels ago, since it really helps them understand how much stronger they’ve gotten.
Are they dead? Sounds like they are all safe and well. Bumps and bruises.
A tpk happens two ways. Either a super overpowered fight or just bad dice rolls. Super overpowered is the fault of the DM not knowing the party limitations. Bad dice rolls are no one's fault.
In a story there is a balance between hard fights and simple ones. They all matter as long as the story goes on.
Your players have hard fights but sounds like no one has died so those fights were not hard enough. But those hard fights should have a reason behind it. Not a sub quest. Hard fights where players can actually die are meant for story arcs either player character or story line.
Add challenge in ways other than monster hp/attacks... even a bunch of goblins can present a challenge if their tactics are good. Make the combat interesting with enemy strategy over strength. Hack and slash is fun at times, but for many it can become boring. Try to keep roleplay active during combat - I think a lot of time dm's and pc's have an imaginary line between the two (roleplay | combat) erase that line and treat your monsters like NPCs with thoughts and desires and objectives and sneaky ideas or maybe cowardice or sadism or...
I recently ran an encounter with a handful of harpies as the enemy. I raised the DC on their luring song a little bit but I gave them a tactic... They intentionally try to split a part, drawing some into a spiders nest and others into a wolf den and another into kobold territory. With the party split, they can attack whoever was not charmed and pulled away. The way it played out was a lot of fun. None of the monsters had tons of hit points, and none would have survive more than a round or two against the full party together. It was challenging for the players to figure out what was actually going on and find ways to foil the strategy rather than just give a beat-down. Of course... there needs to be the occasional beat-down experience - it is D&D after all.
First thing to check is if you're actually using the rules correctly, because encounters at standard difficulty are actually pretty easy. The most common mistake I've seen is to not notice the rules on Modify Total XP for Multiple Monsters, typically resulting in fights that are 2-3x stronger than they're supposed to be.
The only way you can salvage the situation is to kill your players and bury their bodies in the woods. Then, find new players who won't remember your heinous DMing. I feel like I must now explicitly mention that this is a joke and I am not advocating murder as a solution to the problems of your D&D table.
Like others have already said, if they aren't dead, then you aren't playing too hard. However, a few easier encounters might satisfy them. If I had real advice, I would say try to give them time to do things towards their goals that are safe periods. It really helps lighten the mood of despair caused by a series of near deaths. It only works if your players are into that stuff, but giving them the opportunity to just ... go to a restaurant or go shopping or otherwise do something silly and fun can really raise party morale. Don't try and make it funny or spoil it. Just play it relatively straight.
This was my thought. If they're winning by the skin of their teeth -- why are they complaining? To me, as a player, this is the ultimate fun in combat in D&D, winning, but just barely.
Do they want fights to be a walk-over?
And if so, why are you not able to provide it? It seems easy enough unless they are all first level.... just give them an encounter with a much lower CR. They're level 5? Have them fight a group of goblins specced out for a level 1 party. They should win that easily.
And if they can't, something is wrong with them.
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 you want to level them up, give them a few sessions of RP with some minor fights/interrogation bits. Info gathering on the big bad, that leads up to the next fight session!
From Within Chaos Comes Order!
So, I'll go the other way here. You want fights to have varying levels of difficulty. They shouldn't *all* push your party to the limit. There *should* be some easy fights to make the party feel heroic.
Sometimes, you go to take out a dangerous band of bandits and your sorcerer vaporizes half of them off the bat. The rest of them run away, because they were basically punk teenagers causing trouble.
Sometimes a pack of wolves is just a pack of wolves - you smack three or four and the rest run away.
An sometimes the unassuming old fruit vendor is actually a gigantic demon in disguise that's about to summon in half a dozen barghests...
First place you should start is figuring out each players play style. Some players want very tactical realistic combat. Some want power fantasy where they're basically Superman. Some prefer a thinking man's game with more intrigue and social situations or puzzles. Some players look to escape and become someone or something they can't be in the real world.
Every player has a different style they like. For now watch the players closely the next few encounters and see what get who excited who enguages with what. And build from that to create encounters they find fun. Fix this in the future by always having a session zero
As a rule of thumb encounters should start of fairly easy when the party hits a new lvl to represent their growth in power and become more difficult as the party gets more and more xp as they struggle with new challenges.
Maybe it's because the dice went bad?
Variety makes things interesting. Hard fights are only memorable if they aren’t all that way. Furthermore, mixing it up with encounters will give them confidence in their abilities and may help evoke the feeling—as opposed to mere knowledge—that they’re getting more powerful. One way I like to do this is to throw enemies that were formidable/scary as hell when PCs were low level at them again to show how far they’ve come but usually more of them or in more difficult settings.
This is a thing were emotional intelligence, and/or just explicit communication out of game is useful. Read the room or check in.
From a more ‘games perspective, this approach seems to create an emphasis solely on tactics—maneuvers, actions, etc—rather than strategy—I.e—thinking that may include the current encounter but also go beyond that, which seems like a missed opportunity.
Ultimately it’s your call but observing and listening to your players is vital. If they’re enjoying the game they’ll do all sorts of cool, crazy, and sometimes surprising things. If not, there’s no point.