When facing a monster that has a dangerous ability like an instant death poison, you don't go into that fight swinging.
According to the actual rules, you aren't supposed to know the monsters have a save or die attack. Players are not supposed to read the monster manual.
Surprise exists. Huge spiders surprise on a 1-5 on 1d6.
Monsters that lack ranged options are usually placed in dungeons in locations where sight lines are short enough that you have no choice.
If you run old school games like a combat simulator you are not following the rules or using the mechanics of the game nor running it as instructed by the rulebook. Nothing about old-school D&D encounters or abilities is arbitrary.
First of all, I have no idea what actual instructions you are talking about; there is nothing in the DMG that says 'always make sure the PCs have adequate information to avoid hazards', though there is a section that says players should not know how the game works. Second, actual modules are a better example than statements of intent from the DMG.
Surprise exists. Huge spiders surprise on a 1-5 on 1d6.
Huge spiders leave spider webs everywhere you go, if you walk into a place with no webs before you get there and get jumped by a spider, your DM sucks at his job.
Spiders are ambush predators. If they aren't ambushing players, you're playing them wrong.
Monsters that lack ranged options are usually placed in dungeons in locations where sight lines are short enough that you have no choice.
To put it plain and simple, if your DM puts you in a situation where you have no choices, your DM sucks at his job.
Many types of normal spiders like cramped dark spaces, why would giant spiders be different? Monsters should be placed in a way that's rational for the monster, and that means the proper way for a spider encounter to work is 'you turn a corner and run into a web; make a save or get stuck. If any PC gets stuck, the spider comes out of its hole and tries to kill them'.
A typical dungeon does have a way to avoid every encounter if the PCs have perfect information, but the PCs should almost never have perfect information. You can improve your odds by caution, but sudden death because you didn't predict a particular hazard is normal.
In the context of a simulated fantasy world based on our own, I'm sure that is all logical, but D&D is not about replicating reality, it's about telling a story, creating a fantasy, setting the players up to be the stars of the show. D&D is a fantasy mapped on Tolkein's middle earth story, it's from there we take our queues about the depiction of the atmosphere, its what the expectations about how the game plays out are inspired by.
Old School D&D is a game about going into dungeons, slaying, and looting. All that stuff you're talking about is way more modern.
I understand that you want that to be true so that you can justify modern gaming as some sort of savior of D&D
I think nothing of the sort. I got my first D&D set in 1977, and the game you claim it was simply does not match my actual experiences (as far as being a savior, 5e was mostly attempting to save the brand from the threat of Pathfinder, which it seems to have succeeded at; 3e was a legitimate savior, as D&D was dying in the late 90s).
I do understand how that might not match your experience, but it really wasn't that uncommon for really old-school gamers to not really grasp the concept of role-playing, after all the game was originally based on war games and tactical miniature games. We still see a lot of that even today in the OSR. That doesn't change the fact that the core instructions of the game is "this is not a combat game" and this is true for OD&D, B/X and 1st edition AD&D.
Old-school gaming is not how the books were written. It is how people actually played the game.
Are you suggesting that your personal experience is representative of how everyone else was playing the game?
No, but how modules were written is. We're talking a game system where in a major introductory adventure (module B2), the NPCs don't even have names, let alone personalities.
Ok guys if you haven’t figured it out yet you aren’t going to convince each other either way so maybe it’s time to let go. As another old school gamer you both significant pieces of what those old games were, we all experienced it differently so differences in “take” should be accepted. Now back to he OP’s question about failure. As an old school DM I told my players I typically had around a 25% kill rate ( it was probably more like 10% but if I said that they would ignore it 😁) but that good play could lower that and that I followed Heinlein’s comment about death being the eventual consequence of stupidity. As a 5e DM I still say that and it helps set the tone for games. I also play (more than DM actually) and in a recent session we split the party (yes I know but…) and of course it nearly killed half the party. The rogue was grappled and trying to escape, then monk was held and my ranger/sorceror was fighting 3 foes at once and losing HPs rapidly. Good play (I used a thunder wave spell to knock back 2 of the foes with the sound alerting the rest of the party so they rushed back to save us) won the day but was a close thing and sort of what some of the other players needed to remind them of party rules not just ROLEplaying their character. I’ve also seen it go really strange and have the dice by themselves convert a TPK into a win after a very stupid move by most of the party. So sometimes excrement occurs no matter what you plan as a DM or player.
Ok guys if you haven’t figured it out yet you aren’t going to convince each other either way so maybe it’s time to let go. As another old school gamer you both significant pieces of what those old games were, we all experienced it differently so differences in “take” should be accepted. Now back to he OP’s question about failure.
Fair enough, though for the record, while contentious, I thought it was an interesting discussion and certainly don't hold any ill will towards anyone.
As an old school DM I told my players I typically had around a 25% kill rate ( it was probably more like 10% but if I said that they would ignore it 😁) but that good play could lower that and that I followed Heinlein’s comment about death being the eventual consequence of stupidity.
While the DMG's of D&D rarely talk about the management/handling of character death in any significant detail, I do agree that this is about what it comes down to. Like, characters need to be put at risk of death in order for the dangers of the game to feel threatening so that players have the anxiety of the possibility, while at the same time, it's not particularly fun if you know going into a D&D session that you might just die from statistical anomalies of dice. So I agree that generally speaking when a character dies, the player should be able to link it back to something they did, a decision or choice they made that lead to their character's death. They should be able to look back on the session and say "If I had done that, instead of this, I would have survived" rather than "Well if I rolled better I would have lived".
I think a big part of the reason old school D&D has a reputation for having "kill mechanics" is because people typically ignored some of the most fundamental core rules for the game. For example, like the rule says that players shouldn't roll the dice. I know that is very contentious rule (it was even back then), but the purpose of that was to ensure that the DM could fudge the dice at their leisure and the DMG very much advised you to do that. It really wasn't intended for the game to be as deadly as the mechanics make it out to be, that adaptation is something that was actually born out of the revival of D&D years later. Not rolling dice was also intended to keep the "gamist" aspect of the game out of the reach of players, their job was to role-play, not fuss with mechanics because again, old school D&D was very firmly in the narrative camp as far as the players were concerned, it was the DM's job to run the mechanics. In fact there was a core expectation in the game that the players not read the DMG at all and should be kept largely ignorant of most of the mechanics.
Combat was one of the exceptions I think most DM's made when it comes to "letting the dice tell the story" as this was meant to be a bit of a crapshoot, but this is why there were a lot of steps in old school D&D as part of the combat rules that would allow them to avoid fights. Avoid Engagement was an actual combat step in 1e for example which offered the opportunity to flee from most fights. Attempt to parely was the next step (of combat mind you), another chance to avoid actual fighting.
Which illustrates how whether you fight or not is a decision point, once you make it, if you die in the fight, it was on you as the DM was kind of expected to give players outs in any situation and good role-players would know when to run and when to fight, something that came from experience.
As a 5e DM I still say that and it helps set the tone for games.
I agree but 5e handles this part of the game differently than old school D&D by creating a system of balancing encounters, so the players typically don't have a decision point, when they brush up on an encounter setup by the DM or an adventure module, the assumption is that they WILL fight but there is an expectation on the part of the players (and the game) that the encounter will be balanced for their level. Hence when a player in 5e dies as a result of an encounter, it will typically be because of poor tactical decisions during the fight.
Now in both cases there are obvious exceptions, so it's hardly a rule. In 1e there were encounters you couldn't avoid no matter what you did and in 5e encounters can be avoided through narrative means. As a core mechanic however there are these built-in triggers in 1e that existed that put the decision "do we fight or not" in the hands of the players and it was expected that the DM would honor those mechanics as part of fair play, in the same way when playing 5e, the DM will create balanced encounters for the players as part of fair play in that edition of the game.
I’ve also seen it go really strange and have the dice by themselves convert a TPK into a win after a very stupid move by most of the party. So sometimes excrement occurs no matter what you plan as a DM or player.
This last part is one thing some players and DM's have a hard time accepting but you are absolutely right. All of these mechanics in any edition exist as control mechanisms that create styles of play, balance and conceptually define the game, but in the end, a game with dice is going to periodically create wildly unpredictable results that give outcomes that are completely crazy and that is just something you have to accept about D&D (of any edition). Its a hard pill to swallow when it happens, but its part of the game.
To address the OP more directly, I think there is a concept most DM's need to learn which is called "failing forward" and I didn't read all the replies so perhaps it was already mentioned, but this is a fundamental lesson. The idea here is that you let players fail, but you fail the story forward.
For example, the Wizard failed to decipher the runes and it turns out they are explosive runes and they injure the whole party, but afterward the Wizard realizes some fundamental piece of the puzzle anyway that leads the adventure in the right direction.
Or as the OP's scenario points out, maybe the sea serpent sinks the boat and the players find themselves on a deserted island, but end up being exactly where they were trying to get to anyway but now in addition to the adventure at hand they will eventually have to find a way off the island since they no longer have a ship. I do agree with the OP that players shouldn't succeed all the time, but generally speaking, even in failure, the story must go on and I tend to agree with any DM that says it should go on as planned. I mean, I do like the concept of open world gaming and letting the chips fall where they may, but if you are running an adventure module or you have prepared a campaign yourself, you need to get players back on track to play the planned content so you can't let a failed check or a fight that went badly completely re-define what the adventure is about. To some degree the story is the story and the players need to stay on the rails.
I think one thing that happens when DM's enter a game as players is that they are very conscious of all the "tricks" the DM is pulling behind the screen. You know the process, you think like a DM so you are more aware of "what is really going on" than perhaps a person who doesn't ever DM would be. I think Gygax understood really well that crossing the line and becoming a DM changes the game for you permanently. You will never again see the game in the same light the way a player does that never DMed before. You have peeked behind the curtain as Gygax said and in a way, that does spoil some of the mystery. Perhaps this is what the OP is experiencing.
Yeh, that's what I'm saying. I'm mainly pressing on the storytelling side of things. Combat encounters don't do much for me if they don't make significant changes. I would have preferred a scenario like the one that you described, where the ship sinks and we get stranded or it gets damaged and we lose all provisions, forcing us to find a way to survive in the open sea. I don't think that three characters would be able to save a small fishing vessel from a gargantuan creature, regardless of how well we perform as players. It's just out of my control as a character in this story.
I paid for the ship, it's sad that I have to lose it BUT maybe there is treasure on the deserted Island. Maybe we can buy a better ship when we get back to society. We failed at defending it, we had no chance, but we can transform that failure in a small victory. A story should be made of ups and downs.
Knowing what's going on behind the screen sure is spoiling a bit of the fun for me but I knew that was going to happen, can't really do much about that. That's not really the issue for me I think. What I feel the main issue here is, is that our DM is afraid of taking things away from us. "You bought the ship, I can't take it away from you like that", that's what I think he is thinking but in that case what's the point of the encounter? We are not even playing with EXP so what's left after we defeat the big monster? Nothing really. The story hasn't changed and my character now believes that she is a God among mortals because nothing bad can ever happen to her.
It's worth mentioning that "my character now believes that she is a god among mortals because nothing bad can ever happen to her" is a choice. It's an understandable direction to take the character, but it's not like it's the only possible response. Just as an example, she might feel like she got incredibly lucky, and doesn't think she's likely to get so lucky again, so maybe she wants to quit the adventuring game while she's ahead (until someone convinces her otherwise, of course).
I say this because I feel like you don't really have an antagonistic relationship with your DM here, and this risks creating one. If you think your DM doesn't really recognize the damage he's doing, well, it would be like when a DM kills a PC over a trap the PC would've easily noticed, because the player didn't say "I check the well-lit floor for any obvious vipers" before saying "I enter the room." Does that... Does that make any sense? I'm kinda losing my mind for unrelated reasons while I'm typing this. Work stuff.
One of the problems with the way 5e handles death is that it's inordinately hard to have PC deaths without a (likely campaign-ending) TPK. It would be an interesting exercise to run absolutely standard encounters, but a PC dropped to zero hit points is dead. At that point, the standard descriptions of encounter difficulty might actually be accurate; a CR 9-10 monster isn't going to beat a fresh level 5 party, but doing the 38 damage it takes to drop a typical level 5 PC from full to zero (d8s, 14 Con) is just modestly lucky.
It's worth mentioning that "my character now believes that she is a god among mortals because nothing bad can ever happen to her" is a choice. It's an understandable direction to take the character, but it's not like it's the only possible response. Just as an example, she might feel like she got incredibly lucky, and doesn't think she's likely to get so lucky again, so maybe she wants to quit the adventuring game while she's ahead (until someone convinces her otherwise, of course).
I say this because I feel like you don't really have an antagonistic relationship with your DM here, and this risks creating one. If you think your DM doesn't really recognize the damage he's doing, well, it would be like when a DM kills a PC over a trap the PC would've easily noticed, because the player didn't say "I check the well-lit floor for any obvious vipers" before saying "I enter the room." Does that... Does that make any sense? I'm kinda losing my mind for unrelated reasons while I'm typing this. Work stuff.
Sure thing but neither of these specific scenarios are particularly interesting by themselves though, at least not to me. I'm fine with a character thinking she is immortal but only if she gets smacked in the face and goes back to reality, it makes the story more entertaining for me and I feel I miss that part of the experience because that's not what's happening here. We just keep winning so my character doesn't feel the need to change or to grow because nothing forces her to. Going back to your example: she could lose the will to go adventuring, maybe somebody could convince her to go back. But if the adventure keeps going in the same direction, she would be at square one.
Regarding the antagonistic relationship, yeh it could. Depending on how it plays out. But being a DM myself I know how to avoid it. I hope. Otherwise you'll see me posting in the group finding section of the forum in a bit.
Jokes aside, the idea is that I just want the story to be more dynamic. I would prefer the campaign to challenge my character in a way that helps me develop it. I want to lose something to gain something else. That being said, this is my DM's first campaign, so I'm not trying to say the he should change the way he does stuff, I'm sure he will find his way. This discussion was mainly an exercise to help me decide what kind of feedback I should give him.
Knowing what's going on behind the screen sure is spoiling a bit of the fun for me but I knew that was going to happen, can't really do much about that. That's not really the issue for me I think. What I feel the main issue here is, is that our DM is afraid of taking things away from us. "You bought the ship, I can't take it away from you like that", that's what I think he is thinking but in that case what's the point of the encounter? We are not even playing with EXP so what's left after we defeat the big monster? Nothing really. The story hasn't changed and my character now believes that she is a God among mortals because nothing bad can ever happen to her.
I can understand but I think its actually a common tragedy of modern gaming culture, players have become severely risk-averse and the concept of ownership (what is on my character sheet) is personal, aka, it belongs to the player, who is the DM to take it away from me. The whole thing is pinned under the guise of "it's not fun to lose stuff and we are here to have fun", but as you kind of illustrates here, a game that lacks challenge, risk vs. reward and potential for loss is not worth playing and a game can't be challenging if you aren't risking anything. It's why Texas Holdem is a shit game until you put some money in the pot, the betting is what makes it so good.
I recall when Critical Role had their first permanent death of a character in the game, the internet (aka modern D&D players) completely lost their minds, that poor bastard took a lot of shit from the fan base because he dared to actually play D&D.
Suffices to say, some lessons DM's have to learn for themselves and I think even in modern gaming culture people are starting to catch on. D&D stories are ultimately meaningless and not actually fun at all unless the DM is ready and willing to punish the players for mistakes and failures.
True! I know in fact that some other players in my group would not take this kindly. At least not without telling them first so I guess I would need to see what they think about this. Weirdly enough though, they are usually ok when I do it in my adventures. I guess the fact that this is my DM's first campaign is playing a part in the way they respond to the concept of losing, maybe. It could be that they don't trust him because of his inexperience. Probably not even consciously.
One of the problems with the way 5e handles death is that it's inordinately hard to have PC deaths without a (likely campaign-ending) TPK. It would be an interesting exercise to run absolutely standard encounters, but a PC dropped to zero hit points is dead. At that point, the standard descriptions of encounter difficulty might actually be accurate; a CR 9-10 monster isn't going to beat a fresh level 5 party, but doing the 38 damage it takes to drop a typical level 5 PC from full to zero (d8s, 14 Con) is just modestly lucky.
And yet there have been multiple PC deaths without campaign-ending TPK in every 5e campaign I've played.
One of the things I did early on in the solo campaign I'm running for my fiancee was put the fear of death in her. Thus far we had only ever played games in big parties where death was rare and reversible, and so I wanted to make sure she wouldn't run in expecting every encounter to be laid out so she could win it.
So I threw a pair of cockatrices at her. By no means a deadly encounter, but she got pecked and failed the con save, and I described her turning to stone, and then everything going black. I then paused for long enough, pretending to be trying to work out what to do next, for her to think that her character had died, half an hour into the first session.
Then she recovered (cockatrice petrification is temporary) and took away from the encounter that bad things can happen. This has helped keep her responding to threats accordingly!
> I'm sure he will find his way. This discussion was mainly an exercise to help me decide what kind of feedback I should give him.
That's a good attitude to have. That's really all I was getting at, was to give him feedback rather than jump straight to potentially unpleasant in-game consequences.
A TPK 5 in 5e happens for very different reasons than a TPK in old school like 1e. The CR system in 5e makes a TPK a statistical anomaly at best and a DM mistake more typically. If you have a TPK in 5e its almost always going to be because the DM ignored or got the CR rules wrong. Unless you are dealing with intentionally sub-optimal character builds run by very inexperienced players the CR system is never going to produce an encounter the PC's can't handle.
It is however worth noting that WotC doesn't follow their own CR system in adventure modules, so if your DM is running official adventures, you may end up facing encounters waaaaaay outside the CR for your group.
Well, technically there's no cap on Deadly, it's perfectly legitimate to toss an entire adventuring day's worth of adjusted xp into a single encounter. Also, in any sandbox you can run into an encounter that is properly tuned...for a level other than the actual level of the PCs.
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First of all, I have no idea what actual instructions you are talking about; there is nothing in the DMG that says 'always make sure the PCs have adequate information to avoid hazards', though there is a section that says players should not know how the game works. Second, actual modules are a better example than statements of intent from the DMG.
Spiders are ambush predators. If they aren't ambushing players, you're playing them wrong.
Many types of normal spiders like cramped dark spaces, why would giant spiders be different? Monsters should be placed in a way that's rational for the monster, and that means the proper way for a spider encounter to work is 'you turn a corner and run into a web; make a save or get stuck. If any PC gets stuck, the spider comes out of its hole and tries to kill them'.
A typical dungeon does have a way to avoid every encounter if the PCs have perfect information, but the PCs should almost never have perfect information. You can improve your odds by caution, but sudden death because you didn't predict a particular hazard is normal.
Old School D&D is a game about going into dungeons, slaying, and looting. All that stuff you're talking about is way more modern.
I think nothing of the sort. I got my first D&D set in 1977, and the game you claim it was simply does not match my actual experiences (as far as being a savior, 5e was mostly attempting to save the brand from the threat of Pathfinder, which it seems to have succeeded at; 3e was a legitimate savior, as D&D was dying in the late 90s).
Old-school gaming is not how the books were written. It is how people actually played the game.
No, but how modules were written is. We're talking a game system where in a major introductory adventure (module B2), the NPCs don't even have names, let alone personalities.
Ok guys if you haven’t figured it out yet you aren’t going to convince each other either way so maybe it’s time to let go. As another old school gamer you both significant pieces of what those old games were, we all experienced it differently so differences in “take” should be accepted. Now back to he OP’s question about failure.
As an old school DM I told my players I typically had around a 25% kill rate ( it was probably more like 10% but if I said that they would ignore it 😁) but that good play could lower that and that I followed Heinlein’s comment about death being the eventual consequence of stupidity. As a 5e DM I still say that and it helps set the tone for games. I also play (more than DM actually) and in a recent session we split the party (yes I know but…) and of course it nearly killed half the party. The rogue was grappled and trying to escape, then monk was held and my ranger/sorceror was fighting 3 foes at once and losing HPs rapidly. Good play (I used a thunder wave spell to knock back 2 of the foes with the sound alerting the rest of the party so they rushed back to save us) won the day but was a close thing and sort of what some of the other players needed to remind them of party rules not just ROLEplaying their character. I’ve also seen it go really strange and have the dice by themselves convert a TPK into a win after a very stupid move by most of the party. So sometimes excrement occurs no matter what you plan as a DM or player.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Yeh, that's what I'm saying. I'm mainly pressing on the storytelling side of things. Combat encounters don't do much for me if they don't make significant changes. I would have preferred a scenario like the one that you described, where the ship sinks and we get stranded or it gets damaged and we lose all provisions, forcing us to find a way to survive in the open sea. I don't think that three characters would be able to save a small fishing vessel from a gargantuan creature, regardless of how well we perform as players. It's just out of my control as a character in this story.
I paid for the ship, it's sad that I have to lose it BUT maybe there is treasure on the deserted Island. Maybe we can buy a better ship when we get back to society. We failed at defending it, we had no chance, but we can transform that failure in a small victory. A story should be made of ups and downs.
Knowing what's going on behind the screen sure is spoiling a bit of the fun for me but I knew that was going to happen, can't really do much about that. That's not really the issue for me I think. What I feel the main issue here is, is that our DM is afraid of taking things away from us. "You bought the ship, I can't take it away from you like that", that's what I think he is thinking but in that case what's the point of the encounter? We are not even playing with EXP so what's left after we defeat the big monster? Nothing really. The story hasn't changed and my character now believes that she is a God among mortals because nothing bad can ever happen to her.
It's worth mentioning that "my character now believes that she is a god among mortals because nothing bad can ever happen to her" is a choice. It's an understandable direction to take the character, but it's not like it's the only possible response. Just as an example, she might feel like she got incredibly lucky, and doesn't think she's likely to get so lucky again, so maybe she wants to quit the adventuring game while she's ahead (until someone convinces her otherwise, of course).
I say this because I feel like you don't really have an antagonistic relationship with your DM here, and this risks creating one. If you think your DM doesn't really recognize the damage he's doing, well, it would be like when a DM kills a PC over a trap the PC would've easily noticed, because the player didn't say "I check the well-lit floor for any obvious vipers" before saying "I enter the room." Does that... Does that make any sense? I'm kinda losing my mind for unrelated reasons while I'm typing this. Work stuff.
One of the problems with the way 5e handles death is that it's inordinately hard to have PC deaths without a (likely campaign-ending) TPK. It would be an interesting exercise to run absolutely standard encounters, but a PC dropped to zero hit points is dead. At that point, the standard descriptions of encounter difficulty might actually be accurate; a CR 9-10 monster isn't going to beat a fresh level 5 party, but doing the 38 damage it takes to drop a typical level 5 PC from full to zero (d8s, 14 Con) is just modestly lucky.
Sure thing but neither of these specific scenarios are particularly interesting by themselves though, at least not to me. I'm fine with a character thinking she is immortal but only if she gets smacked in the face and goes back to reality, it makes the story more entertaining for me and I feel I miss that part of the experience because that's not what's happening here. We just keep winning so my character doesn't feel the need to change or to grow because nothing forces her to. Going back to your example: she could lose the will to go adventuring, maybe somebody could convince her to go back. But if the adventure keeps going in the same direction, she would be at square one.
Regarding the antagonistic relationship, yeh it could. Depending on how it plays out. But being a DM myself I know how to avoid it. I hope. Otherwise you'll see me posting in the group finding section of the forum in a bit.
Jokes aside, the idea is that I just want the story to be more dynamic. I would prefer the campaign to challenge my character in a way that helps me develop it. I want to lose something to gain something else. That being said, this is my DM's first campaign, so I'm not trying to say the he should change the way he does stuff, I'm sure he will find his way. This discussion was mainly an exercise to help me decide what kind of feedback I should give him.
True! I know in fact that some other players in my group would not take this kindly. At least not without telling them first so I guess I would need to see what they think about this. Weirdly enough though, they are usually ok when I do it in my adventures. I guess the fact that this is my DM's first campaign is playing a part in the way they respond to the concept of losing, maybe. It could be that they don't trust him because of his inexperience. Probably not even consciously.
And yet there have been multiple PC deaths without campaign-ending TPK in every 5e campaign I've played.
One of the things I did early on in the solo campaign I'm running for my fiancee was put the fear of death in her. Thus far we had only ever played games in big parties where death was rare and reversible, and so I wanted to make sure she wouldn't run in expecting every encounter to be laid out so she could win it.
So I threw a pair of cockatrices at her. By no means a deadly encounter, but she got pecked and failed the con save, and I described her turning to stone, and then everything going black. I then paused for long enough, pretending to be trying to work out what to do next, for her to think that her character had died, half an hour into the first session.
Then she recovered (cockatrice petrification is temporary) and took away from the encounter that bad things can happen. This has helped keep her responding to threats accordingly!
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> I'm sure he will find his way. This discussion was mainly an exercise to help me decide what kind of feedback I should give him.
That's a good attitude to have. That's really all I was getting at, was to give him feedback rather than jump straight to potentially unpleasant in-game consequences.
Well, technically there's no cap on Deadly, it's perfectly legitimate to toss an entire adventuring day's worth of adjusted xp into a single encounter. Also, in any sandbox you can run into an encounter that is properly tuned...for a level other than the actual level of the PCs.