SSU and Simple Monster dramatic effect

[Fwiffo86]

So... I did some thinking about how sometimes your players just flatline your encounter. Especially when that encounter is supposed to be either the climax of the story, or you just want/need a good fight to go with your story.

Sometimes your players just... I don't know if get lucky is the right term here, but sometimes they just obliterate your BBEG, or your IDT, or whatever. So I have an alternate solution.

Some call it "fudging", I call it, the dramatic method. Brought to you by the SSU (standard Skeletal unit).

Simple math:
Multiply player total by 7 [2d6] (28 for a party of four)
Divide BBEG's HP by total for rounds (BBEG dragon 320/28 = 11.42)
This gives you the total rounds of combat. (11 rounds)
Critical hits subtract 1 round from this total, shortening combat.

SoS, SoD Spells: Well, handle these normally. If you need to know how many HP are left, multiply the remaining rounds by your original total (Players x 7).

Have at it.

[pwykersotz]

Interesting suggestion, I might give it a shot.

If I fudge, I usually do it at the time they'd normally take down the creature. If it hasn't been hard enough, I add the difference between the average and max hp to the current HP total and add a special attack of some sort.

[hymer]

I think it's a good thing that the players can indeed get lucky or smart and obliterate the final encounter. I have never had players react to a shocking victory with anything negative, quite the reverse. We still fondly remember the fighter who took three quarters of the goristro's hp in one round, e.g.

From a player perspective, I'd absolutely hate this. It invalidates so many aspects of the characters we've built and played with. And you could game it a whole lot, if I'm not wrong.

Don't get me wrong, if you and your players like something this, good for you.

[pwykersotz]

I think it's a good thing that the players can indeed get lucky or smart and obliterate the final encounter. I have never had players react to a shocking victory with anything negative, quite the reverse. We still fondly remember the fighter who took three quarters of the goristro's hp in one round, e.g.

From a player perspective, I'd absolutely hate this. It invalidates so many aspects of the characters we've built and played with. And you could game it a whole lot, if I'm not wrong.

Don't get me wrong, if you and your players like something this, good for you.

I've had players react well to sudden victories also, but it's usually because they know I don't pull my punches. If they win quickly, it's because they earned it through clever tactics or paying attention to the plot, not just because the dice randomly rolled high (though that helps, of course). This seems like a good thing to pull out if for plot reasons the fight should last longer than normal, and it should definitely not be told to the players.

It's kind of funny. In watching 5e grow from the playtest, I've ended up deconstructing the game a lot more than I did with 3.5 (there was SO MUCH material for that game...). But as a result of this, I've become more okay with a few gamist constructs in my adventures. I've seen plenty of times when something that didn't necessarily make sense from a simulation perspective added extra oomph to the game. Your mileage may vary, but this seems like a decent idea to keep in one's DM arsenal.