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View Full Version : DM Help What to do in an encounter that's become too grindy?



mythmonster2
2015-08-13, 07:50 PM
So, I'm a new GM and am 3 sessions into my first campaign. The PCs fought their way through a dungeon and reached the boss: a cleric protected by 3 hoplite-esque zombies. The PCs attack the zombies, and I immediately realize my mistake. I over-optimized the zombies' defense, and most of the PCs can't hit except for on a 17 or above. Even when they do hit, the zombies had respectable pools of HP. They killed the cleric through ranged attacks, but the zombies stayed in formation around the body. After about the 10th round of combat, it became obvious to me that nobody was having fun, since everyone's turn boiled down to "I attack and miss." Since it was at the end of the dungeon, everyone was about out of their special abilities, and the full caster who probably could've helped defeat the boss wasn't at this session. Thankfully, the zombies' offense didn't match their defense, so the encounter wasn't hard, just ridiculously grindy. Eventually, the zombies broke formation, which helped the PCs out a bit, but even when flanked, it was still hard to hit. By the time they finally started dying, everyone was tired and seemed rather annoyed.

So, the question I have is, what do you do when you realize you've messed up in this manner? The PCs are probably going to win, barring really bad luck, but it'll just take a long time. I've toned down future enemies' defenses and HP, and am more carefully looking at how much my PCs can do, but there is always the possibility of messing up, and you won't realize it until the fight is already going on, making it harder to just deduct an enemy from the encounter.

Vitruviansquid
2015-08-13, 07:54 PM
I guess I'd OOC ask the players if they want to just skip the combat, or if they really want to see this play out. If the players want to just skip it, that's what we'd do. You can contrive some deus ex machina event or just narratively fast forward.

Then I'd learn to not do that in the system next time.

Keltest
2015-08-13, 07:56 PM
Offer alternative solutions to just smacking at them with your weapons. Perhaps there is a pit that the party can jump over but the zombies will walk into. Perhaps they can drop the ceiling on them. Or maybe the party can just ignore them and go do something else.

Flickerdart
2015-08-13, 09:01 PM
The caster controlling the zombies just died. I would just have them either wander off or die as the magic that powers them runs out.

Ninja Bear
2015-08-13, 10:16 PM
The caster controlling the zombies just died. I would just have them either wander off or die as the magic that powers them runs out.

Or at the very least have them do something that'll lower their defenses; maybe they start degrading turn-by-turn, or maybe they go berserk. Solves your problem, and gives some flavor to the encounter.

Kol Korran
2015-08-14, 03:26 AM
There is an article written by The Angry DM somewhere, but basically it boils own to this:
- Each encounter asks a question. These usually may go further than "Do the survive and kill all opposition". Tryingto answer the question, is what gives the encounter suspense, and which drives the interest in it. Once the answer has been answered, there is no reason to continue the adventure (Unless a new answer have come up). Once everything has been figured out, playing out the grind is just a waste of time, and can turn a fun encounter into a not fun drag.

In this example: The main question was- Can they defeat the cleric? Once they had, you checked for other questions- were the zombies a real threat and the party close to death, then there was reason to continue it. But as you stated, this was not the case. So... I'd have just asked the player do they wish to play it out, and if not then just state something like "With the death of the cleric, you fight his creations some more, till you vanquish them as well." End of story. You can embellish it if you want, or even give a small hp/ resource value for what it took to end this.

No need to drag up something that no one really has an interest in playing, be it zombies or something totally else. Once you answer the main question, and if there is no other, end things.

I'd really suggest looking up that articles about making encounters awesome. They are good ones!

nedz
2015-08-14, 03:52 AM
Just end the encounter. Handwave it away along the lines of You'll probably mop this lot up shortly, or similar, and move on with the game. Now you should probably monologue a short story about what you expect to happen - but it's not essential.

JAL_1138
2015-08-14, 08:25 AM
Or at the very least have them do something that'll lower their defenses; maybe they start degrading turn-by-turn, or maybe they go berserk. Solves your problem, and gives some flavor to the encounter.

This. "[Monster's] [defense-boosting ability] begins to fade because [reason]." Different example since Ninja Bear's example of "rotting away or going berserk when the cleric's magic fades" is already ideal for zombies, with different enemies it could be "Ok, you guys ate through the Stoneskin spell, his AC's going to be a lot worse now" or "Aaand that's when the Wand of Shielding runs out of charges." Or after a hit, "The few hits you've dealt seem to have damaged the creature's thick hide. It looks like you could aim for the existing wounds" with a Bulette-ish monster.


Keltest's suggestion of environmental solutions like caving the ceiling in is also excellent. I remember an AD&D module or two that gave options like that for some otherwise-brutal, likely-TPK-inducing fights.

Geddy2112
2015-08-14, 09:16 AM
Always build a couple "outs" to end any encounter. Perhaps the enemies will run after a certain amount of losses. Call the fight and say that the party defeats the remaining 1-2 Joe Blow enemies. Cave in's, magical unmaking of zombies, etc are all great suggestions too.

neonagash
2015-08-14, 09:41 AM
Just fast forward it.

"Ok everyone the cleric is dead, you hammer it out with his minions for a while then finish them off after a long tiring fight".

Yora
2015-08-14, 10:12 AM
In pretty much any case other than zombies the enemies should flee or surrender when it becomes clear they can not win the fight.
Though it's also partially the players fault. They didn't have to stay there and slowly grind down all the zombies. Couldn't they just have left and come back later when properly equiped for cleaning up? Or looked around in the environment for things that might work better? Though I think good adventure design and GMing should train the players to look for and use such options. If usually problems are always fixed by making all opposition run out of hit points, then it is no surprise if that's the only thing they ever try.
I do recommend the Angry post mentioned above. It's really quite good. (And possibly one of the best advice pieces ever written for RPGs.)

Milodiah
2015-08-14, 11:33 AM
I accidentally ended up with an enemy who, when run well, had an AC of like 34 or something absurd like that. I was therefore delighted when my players simply pinned him under a rhinoceros by standing on a ridge above him and opening the Type 3 Bag of Tricks.

One round later he was stuck under a rhinoceros.

Telok
2015-08-14, 11:37 AM
Never put out an encounter where the PCs can just stand around and trade hits. Players can be astonishingly blind to the simplest things like their ability to outrun the monsters, shoot from saftey, or the monster being totally immobile.

Learn from my mistakes. Plan for PC idiocy. Build encounters where they can't just stand around and trade hits. Don't make where that's just a really bad idea, you already saw what happens there. Make the interaction between the PCs, monsters, and environment force people to move and act.

I once had a room in a wizard's tower with a huge animated statue. It literally could not fit through the doors to that room and I told the players that. The only thing they needed to do was cross the room and go out through the other door. Two of them nearly died while they beat the statue into rubble.

turbo164
2015-08-14, 01:01 PM
As mentioned, magic fading.

Could also add a spot check to notice an evil shrine in the lair empowering them (which would have hardness but only 5 AC so they at least get to roll damage dice more than once every 6 turns!), or onyx (un)holy symbols on their ribcage that can be sundered/Sleight of Handed, or maybe a pit trap they could be led into while they robotically follow their "chase and kill intruders" order, or notice a Wand/Scroll/Grenade Of Command Undead in the caster's pocket...

mythmonster2
2015-08-14, 02:32 PM
In regards to giving the players an out, at one point, one of the PCs' frontliners went down, with two others having to drag him out of the room. The zombies (who were an intelligent variant), gave them a chance to retreat, and, when the PCs didn't take it, broke out of formation, which did make them easier to fight. Just asking the PCs if they want to skip through it seems a bit weak, but honestly, it might've been a better choice than slugging it out. I've also found the Angry DM and the articles talked about, and am enthusiastically reading through them. Thanks for the help!

The Grue
2015-08-28, 11:11 PM
Had my own version of this last week. Skip if you're an Eclipse Phase fan who wants to play through Think Before Asking in the future.

So the main goal of Think Before Asking is to track down an antimatter bomb. The way I run this adventure, there's a bunch of great RPing and gumshoe detective work before the trail leads to Fornjot, Saturn's furthest moon. The bomb is somewhere there in an underground ice fortress - the players know it's there, but not where specifically (and its location is not relevant to this anecdote).

The party has discovered why this base is here and what the people who built it were doing, and for very good reasons decide they want to blow it up. The people who built it installed a failsafe measure: the base fusion reactor is rigged with a secondary fusion explosive that converts the whole thing into an H-bomb when triggered(the antimatter bomb is a secondary failsafe installed by Upper Management, in the event that the base staff were compromised; they have no knowledge of it). The party heads down to the basement to flip the switch, and as they enter a big scary robot death machine unfolds and positions itself between them and the button.

My private notes for the death robot are "It stays there looking menacing and doesn't act unless someone tries to move past it or shoots"; one of my players is a trigger-happy munchkin(which I say with a great deal of affection) and, as soon as he sees this thing, opens up with a full-auto rifle burst. Robot death machine, which I built to be extremely difficult to kill, soaks the damage and drops a bunch of flash grenades. Half the party is now knocked out, the other half have what amounts to tasers and pepper spray and run the other way...except the other guy, who decides he's going to duel this thing to the death.

I go easy on him because it's his first run of Eclipse Phase, but I go out of my way to make it clear that he can't take this thing alone. He has difficulty penetrating its armor. It gets four shots for every shot he takes. It has Speed 5, which means it gets to act five times per combat round (he has Speed 3). He doesn't care; he just keeps shooting and shooting and shooting.

The bot is armed with less-lethal weapons for story reasons. I'm making called shots to disable his weapon (and through luck he keeps making the saves). The bot closes up the door with freeze gel and then starts shooting at him through the wall. He bashes down the gel so he can shoot it some more. He eventually gets a string of lucky crits, which is enough to take down the bot - but by this point the rest of the table has long since gotten bored.

In short, I put a baddie into a room and try my hardest to telegraph "You aren't supposed to be able to beat this thing, find another way to deal with it", and one of my players got lucky and beat it anyway - which I don't mind, except for the part where four other players fiddled with their phones for the twenty minutes it took to play out. Where, specifically, did I go wrong here? Should I have ignored my instinct to be "fair" and gone for the killshot once the rest of the party was out? Was my putting this thing in the room a mistake to begin with (even though its presence and formidable capability is justified by in-universe logic)?

Dire Moose
2015-08-29, 12:40 AM
Never put out an encounter where the PCs can just stand around and trade hits. Players can be astonishingly blind to the simplest things like their ability to outrun the monsters, shoot from saftey, or the monster being totally immobile.

Learn from my mistakes. Plan for PC idiocy. Build encounters where they can't just stand around and trade hits. Don't make where that's just a really bad idea, you already saw what happens there. Make the interaction between the PCs, monsters, and environment force people to move and act.

I once had a room in a wizard's tower with a huge animated statue. It literally could not fit through the doors to that room and I told the players that. The only thing they needed to do was cross the room and go out through the other door. Two of them nearly died while they beat the statue into rubble.

That's funny; I had the exact opposite happen to me. My players had to assemble four idols on an altar to get into the treasury of a ruined temple. This was a set of big sliding metal double doors, which is important. The treasury was guarded by a giant burning skeleton, which I figured would be a challenging fight for my level 2 PCs.

They caught me off-guard when they attacked the skeleton, then retreated into the room with the altar, and when the skeleton pursued them one of them lifted one of the idols off the altar. The doors slammed shut and crushed the skeleton between them.