No Win Situations

[Draco_Lord]

I am just kind of curious on this idea. Should a DM create a no win situation in their stories? Is it fair to the PCs to suddenly have something that you make sure they cannot beat? How do you communicate to them that what they are going up against is in fact an unbeatable enemy, should you do it? I'm just want to see some discussion on this, as the idea is just kind of interesting to me.

[ekarney]

I'd say it's valid, either as an early introduction to BBEG, to show the players what they're trifling with or even just to spice up combat.

Personally, when I run FR, my players will end up meeting characters of all manner of hit dice and optimization.

My players tend to be accompanied by a few NPC's at most times so I've found the best way to convey it is to specifically target the NPC's first, since they lack a melee niche in the party, watching their martially orientated friends go down like dominos does the job.

Alternatively, I'll convey out of combat that initiating a fight, at least in the current circumstance isn't a good idea. I try to convey this with a lot of red flags leading up to meeting said character to let the players fill in the gaps, for example:

"You've heard rumors that the Consul of this town (located in Interior Faerun - on the surface) is a Drow noblewoman, she's from an ancient and proud house, she secured the position after fighting a long and viscous multiway battle against the town guard and several mercenary companies with but a handful of house retainers which eventually ended in a truce and government being established. However despite all the fighting it's said she doesn't bare a single scar or mark on her body..."

It's a terrible description but I'm tired and can hear my bed calling to me.

[D.M.Hentchel]

It depends ob the group. In my veteran group I regularly put them in situations where they cannot win. But with new players and players unfamiliar with my DMing style I find this usually ends up with dead characters.

Also err on the side of making things excessively obvious (maybe even outright tell your players they should run) as often times players feel like there DM wants them to fight even if they aren't sure its a good idea.

Lastly make sure it actually serves a purpose to have the fight be unwinnable, these encounters are typically unfun and should be used sparingly. The exception being when used to set up for an unconventional encounter (a chase scene, negotiations, or something).

Another note is I find that unending hordes are much better for this than one super-monster. Super-monsters tend to one shot kill players and can sometimes be hard to gauge (especially if your players just killed something big and scary), but endless hordes can demostrate to the players exactly how dangerous each creature is and gradually reveal how many there are. This allows the players to reach the concluesion, "We can't win this fight" which is exciting and creates a moment of tension when they begin the retreat.

[Zancloufer]

Best ways to make "No Win" Situtaions would either be:

A) A powerful, but not necessarily hostile, NPC. You can imply their power but the trick is not to frame it like a combat encounter. Simply meeting or passing the NPC. Perhaps the NPC is in a fight with another powerful character?

B) Don't start with rolling initiative, let the party "get the drop". They see a giant carnivorous dinosaur in a field, or a large dragon flying overhead. Let them make knowledge checks if applicable and let the party realize that the big scary thing over there, they probably can't beat. However they are NOT locked into combat yet so the choice is there.

C) The BBEG or one of his elite henchman crash the party. Something where the party thinks they have won (or accomplished a goal) only to get their party crashed. Bonus points if the enemy in question is either targeting something else, or merely wants to steal something and leave.

D) "Retiring a Character" or "Blatant Plot Hook". This only works when you AND the player want to stop uses a PC and/or when raising the dead is a little harder than going through the local church and throwing diamonds at them. In this case you are AIMING to kill a (N)PC though, for some sort of plot advancement.

The trick in ALL the cases is give the party an obvious way out.

[GrayDeath]

In short: o.



Longer: i do not Create NOWin Situations. But I DO create "chance of less than 1 in 100 to win" Situations rather often, and most of the time the PC`s know what they are stepping into.

Reason: In a Game where everything is statted, unless you cheat, there should not be a NO Win Situation. Ever.



Now this is somewhat amended by sheer player stupidity (for example, in one of my longer running campaigns, the PC`s ended up working for the local Champion of Darkness. A roughly 800 years old, massively powerful (moreso since they had just given him back an artifact holding about a third of his power) Magic user.
if the starting Character using Dark magic himself had attempted to beat him, THAT would be a NO win Situation.
Luckily he didn`t.

So to sum it up: I do not create them but sometimes they may happen.

[Darrin]

I am just kind of curious on this idea. Should a DM create a no win situation in their stories?


In general, you should probably avoid these. If you want to force one as a campaign-ender, you should approach with extreme caution... but sometimes when you force the PCs into a corner with no escape, they surprise you with something you never anticipated. Those moments are absolute gold... but they are extremely rare, and surrounded by the burnt husks of games that went horribly wrong.



Is it fair to the PCs to suddenly have something that you make sure they cannot beat?


Nope, not fair. But if you're honest with the players, and they actually enjoy that sort of challenge... sometimes it works.




How do you communicate to them that what they are going up against is in fact an unbeatable enemy, should you do it?


You have to lampshade (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LampshadeHanging) it or break the fourth wall (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BreakingTheFourthWall) (Warning: TVTropes links). Address the players directly: "I'm putting on my GM hat here and speaking to you players directly. You are not supposed to win this next fight. For plot reasons, you have to retreat or get captured. So if it's ok with you, I'm just going to narrate for a bit what happens, and then when we get to a good point to have you escape, I'll hand the narrative agency reins back to you."



I'm just want to see some discussion on this, as the idea is just kind of interesting to me.

The trick is you want the story to continue. But there may be situations where the PCs just lose all agency. You can either call a TPK and start over, or do some deus ex machina and reset the narrative. I think so long as you're honest with the players that they may have to suffer a short bit of railroading but you will get them back in control as quickly as possible, you should be ok with most groups.

[gtwucla]

It depends ob the group. In my veteran group I regularly put them in situations where they cannot win. But with new players and players unfamiliar with my DMing style I find this usually ends up with dead characters.

Also err on the side of making things excessively obvious (maybe even outright tell your players they should run) as often times players feel like there DM wants them to fight even if they aren't sure its a good idea.

Lastly make sure it actually serves a purpose to have the fight be unwinnable, these encounters are typically unfun and should be used sparingly. The exception being when used to set up for an unconventional encounter (a chase scene, negotiations, or something).

Another note is I find that unending hordes are much better for this than one super-monster. Super-monsters tend to one shot kill players and can sometimes be hard to gauge (especially if your players just killed something big and scary), but endless hordes can demonstrate to the players exactly how dangerous each creature is and gradually reveal how many there are. This allows the players to reach the conclusion, "We can't win this fight" which is exciting and creates a moment of tension when they begin the retreat.

Same story here, though I would add in situations like having a super-monster, or something of a sort, it can be apparent and really fun, but and this is a big but, that is entirely dependent on your group. In my group's case, when us group of level twos invited a newbie along for a session, we started off the night with a trip underground and then a rest. He offered to stand guard while we slept, so we did, and then he decided to do some exploring on his own (instead of guarding). Then he walked into the room with a moody, hibernating elemental prince, and unceremoniously whipped out his sword and stabbed him (and we all screamed no). So as the elemental prince wakes up all loud and angry, he runs into the room where we were sleeping and shouts 'oh no, look what i've done.' We knew we were boned and ran for it. The next ten minutes ended up being a romp. Point being though, we knew this guy was too dangerous. Un-winnable, but definitely runnable.

[ShurikVch]

Weren't all those adventurers TPKed by the Lady of Pain in literal No Win Situation?

[daremetoidareyo]

If retreat is an option, the players still have choice. They are typically just too proud to take it. D&Ds momentum towards violence railroads PCs towards conflict with the meanest toughies. And players sometimes forget that they can run away. If they pick a fight with something way out of their league, asking them " are you sure?" cools their jets a bit

[legomaster00156]

I dislike no-win situations. I believe in there being some narrow chance of victory in any encounter, if the players are both clever and lucky. However, I always try and warn them when such encounters are taking place. I let them know that there is very little chance of victory. They can then choose fight or flight.

[Jay R]

In a true sandbox game, all the possible encounters are there from the start, and the players decide to hunt kobolds at first level and dragons at tenth. In dungeons, the top levels were easy, and they got more challenging as you went down - but you decided when to go down a level. I'd been playing for years before I discovered a game in which I didn't have to avoid the dangers I couldn't defeat.

[And in one tournament game, there was a 134-hit-die monster. (No, that is not a typo. It was a hydra with one hundred thirty four heads.) It was there as a test, to eliminate parties who didn't choose to run from something they couldn't possibly survive.

We killed it.]

The "story" approach came later. And that's the type of adventure you're asking about.

You can certainly have encounters that they can't defeat. That happens every time they talk to a high-level character. Of course, in those encounters, they generally know that they are supposed to talk, get information, be given quests, etc.

What you shouldn't do is set up unwinnable encounters that they think they're supposed to defeat, without telling them that they might face non-CR-appropriate encounters. Many modern players have been implicitly trained that everything will be at the correct CR-level, and therefore they don't have "run away" in their list of possible tactics. It's not fair to give those players an unwinnable encounter without warning.

[holywhippet]

My vote is for no, unless the players do something really stupid. I had one 2nd edition DM who seemed happy to kill us off and pretty much expected a high PC body count. He set up an ambush with about a dozen second level archers IIRC after we mentioned we'd be exploring off in a general direction the following day (like literally we said something like we'd be exploring towards the east of the town). He was honestly surprised we survived it.

[Eldariel]

I don't build the encounter design around the PCs. Thus, sometimes they'll face something they are very unlikely to beat. Very rarely are they stupid enough to wander somewhere where they might actually find something they factually have no chance of beating (low level party encountering a high level caster, a deity or something on that scale). And they have control of where they go so that's on them. And even then, something like an Ancient Dragon isn't exactly going to give too many damns about a bunch of low level PCs unless it happens to find them tasty or they happen to be holding something it wants. The more powerful a creature, the less likely it needs to resort to violence after all. And if they encounter something they can't beat all they need to do is get out mostly alive. Some people might die, whatever, they can be reincarnated or whatever later. That's why the game has resurrection. If players have polled the 1125gp to just carry a Scroll of Teleport as a "GETOUTFAST"-card, they have a very decent chance of escaping most encounters even when negotiation and mundane flight fail.

[Zanos]

Weren't all those adventurers TPKed by the Lady of Pain in literal No Win Situation?
The Lady of Pain fits into the category of "Powerful, but not actively hostile." To draw her attention, you have to do a small handful of incredibly specific things to irritate her, and at that point you're just asking for it.

For my part, I sometimes put my players into situations where fighting won't get them out of it. I make these very clear. In one campaign, I had the players emerge from a delve into some catacombs dedicated to Pelor to a literal army of vampires waiting outside. The head priest said he would buy them a little bit of time to bail with the artifact sword they found. Couple hints they're not supposed to fight there. A literal army of vampires when they were 4th-5th level, a powerful NPC telling them they should run, and a couple of colossal skeletons in the background. Size is a great indicator of whether or not a creature is hard to kill, even if people have poor knowledge skills.

Other tactics for making the PCs know they're supposed to bail is to make them so famous that they don't really need a knowledge check, or make their position extremely obvious. Elminster, for example. Probably wouldn't need a knowledge check to know that fighting him is basically suicide for non-epic characters. If it's a king, you should make it clear, maybe through overheard banter, that that guy is in charge because he is the strongest in the kingdom, not because of heritage. Etc, etc. Lots of ways for PCs to understand that combat is not the solution.

While I say this in respect to 3.5, this isn't true for all systems, especially horror systems. The various Cthulhu tabletops, for example, usually expect the PCs to die. Still, I consider it bad form to drop scenarios with no possible survivable conditions on the PCs.

[SirNMN]

I just kinda put my party through a no win situation they spent the last two weeks antagonizing a powerful Red wizard and despite multiple warning from NPCs they kept at it an refused to leave his city so now one dead, one captured and the rest are scattered out side of town.

[Zanos]

I just kinda put my party through a no win situation they spent the last two weeks antagonizing a powerful Red wizard and despite multiple warning from NPCs they kept at it an refused to leave his city so now one dead, one captured and the rest are scattered out side of town.
Hoist by their own petard. I advocate against a DM just making a Great Wyrm hate the PCs out of the blue, but you gave fair warning and the NPC responded appropriately. Don't wander into a lion's den and then poke it's cubs with a stick.

[PersonMan]

If retreat is an option, the players still have choice. They are typically just too proud to take it. D&Ds momentum towards violence railroads PCs towards conflict with the meanest toughies. And players sometimes forget that they can run away. If they pick a fight with something way out of their league, asking them " are you sure?" cools their jets a bit

To be fair, DnD is also not the best system for having fights you can't win but can run from. Disengaging from melee with a big monster is difficult, and many have flight or similar abilities they allow them to pursue fleeing opponents even once they've finished off the abandoned melee guy.

[Douglas]

In one campaign I ran, a major boss was introduced 10 levels before they were expected to face him. The PCs had an out in the fact that said boss was rather distracted by the task of conquering the entire major city the PCs were in at the time. I described the thousands of troops marching out from the 300 foot tall dig-up-from-the-underdark machine, and the colossal size black dragon sitting on top of it, and the 10th level party wasted no time in running away.

I think no win situations not only are ok, but in fact should happen from time to time, you just need to make it obvious. How obvious you need to be depends on the game and the party.

[Jay R]

To be fair, DnD is also not the best system for having fights you can't win but can run from. Disengaging from melee with a big monster is difficult, and many have flight or similar abilities they allow them to pursue fleeing opponents even once they've finished off the abandoned melee guy.

Of course. This is why sneaking is crucial. The way to run from a monster who out-classes you is to see him first, and never engage.

[Afgncaap5]

I think No Win situations have their place. If anyone's read Tracy Hickman's XDM book, the "Open Matrix" (or something) story progression has scenarios that, if not "No Win", are still "impassable", and I think a No Win situation can work well in those regards. From the same book, I'd also take a piece of his advice on traps since a No Win situation is sort of a trap for the players rather than their characters: foreshadow it somehow. It can be as simple as a cold wind sending a chill up a player's spine, but do *something* to foreshadow it.

Also, it's good to remember the difference between categorical, ordinal, and interval variables. Basically, remember that "Win" has many definitions. If your only definition of "victory" is "kill the monster" or "steal the treasure" then, well, you've got a game style that might not lend itself well to stories where "winning" an encounter can include escaping.

I mean... let's say that the players are in a castle, and the Duke Darkblood has just returned with his retinue, and he's heading upstairs to the captured prince that your players were sent to rescue so that the king wouldn't be blackmailed into marrying off his daughter. You might present the options of "Fight our way out" vs. "Sneak out", and arrange it so that the Duke's soldiers aren't beatable by anything your players have ("Whoops, you forgot that the Duke employs Cold Iron Knights! Those swashbuckling nobles will be able to negate or counterspell the wizardry you were counting on via the somatic component of their swordplay!") but if you present "Sneak Out"so that it's also a "victory" then you're rewarding the players for altering tactics so that they can feel good as players rather than feeling like they've just had a crushing loss.

So... I guess I'm in favor of No Win scenarios for characters, just so long as the players can still feel like winners. For certain values of "winner".

[Jay R]

It's worth remembering that the average No Win Scenario is simply an adventure they shouldn't attack head on.

The Death Star was a no-win scenario for the Millenium Falcon. Nobody could attack it straight up and win. But they defeated it later, with more knowledge, and sneaking in to the canyons on its surface to the exhaust pipe.

Attacking Sauron's forces in Mordor with an army was a no-win scenario. "One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its Black Gates are guarded by more than just Orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep, and the Great Eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire and ash and dust, the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly." But sneaking in to destroy the Ring defeated him.

Zorro could never defeat all the Alcalde's soldiers. But with careful planning, he was able to defeat the Alcalde without facing all the soldiers.

The No Win Scenario is the large force you avoid and eventually defeat with guile.

[Darrin]

The No Win Scenario is the large force you avoid and eventually defeat with guile.

Standard murderhobo doctrine is not known for careful planning and delicate subtlety.

[Jay R]

Standard murderhobo doctrine is not known for careful planning and delicate subtlety.

No, it's not. But it makes for great games.

Last weekend, we had to try to save some children from a walled city full of demons. That's clearly a "no win scenario" if you come to the front gate and issue a formal challenge. But it was a great adventure of spying, sneaking, fighting a couple of demons, and then running quickly before the rest of them could realize that their city had been infiltrated.

[Afgncaap5]

No, it's not. But it makes for great games.

Last weekend, we had to try to save some children from a walled city full of demons. That's clearly a "no win scenario" if you come to the front gate and issue a formal challenge. But it was a great adventure of spying, sneaking, fighting a couple of demons, and then running quickly before the rest of them could realize that their city had been infiltrated.

Yeah, this is generally the attitude that a good "No Win Scenario" should foster. The direct solution may be hopeless, but it opens up good story opportunities. Murderous hobos have so much more potential to offer their game world, after all.

[HolyDraconus]

Currently running a campaign that is "supposed"* to hit epic. 3.5. Players have met two situations that they can't win: a newly minted deity (party level was at highest 11) And a pet** templated epic but currently sleeping Tarrasque, with wings, (162HD, with waaay too much stuff with two aditional homebrew abilities that truly makes it frightening, one of which the players know of, which is its abilities to eat and absorb deities). Currently though, the players are seriously contemplating leaving the madness of the current power struggle to someone else and just attempt to take over the world. Plus they encountered, and drew well, from a Deck of Many Things. Though they blew the wishes. 3 of them. Gone.. didnt have to do anything sinister.


* Supposed to because the players CAN die, easily too, and with their current trend of actions these particular characters may just outright stop adventuring. A first.
** Its believed that the kingdom that currently has it sleeping in the special moat for it has complete control over it, but the pcs, on their own I might add, came to the conclusion that if it wakes up, it will destroy literally everything. The other gods DO know of the monster's existence, but are currently occupied fighting a war against a new upstart that has killed a few of their own already.

[Pugwampy]

Should a DM create a no win situation in their stories?

This is cooperative game . There is no winning or losing / players vs DM . You guys join together to have fun and make a story bleeding a bit for the sake of "danger" and excitement .

Whats the point of a no win situation ? You can argue DM is a no win situation since he has "unlimited cosmic power." he can just look at a player as say " You die of a heart attack " Boom ! You take 1000 d6 electric damage from lightning . BOOM!! Sure you can keep doing that but sooner or later you gonna be a very lonesome DM.

Every scenario or monster you toss their way should have a fair to easy chance of being defeated . If players get cocky or spank you once too often its not unreasonable to give em a spanking back . Fact is if all players die , your game dies . Your cool idea,s , your awesome battlefield decorations , your wonderful NPC,s , date with a queen of fairies ........they all die .

[Jay R]

This is cooperative game . There is no winning or losing / players vs DM . You guys join together to have fun and make a story bleeding a bit for the sake of "danger" and excitement .

This is also a competitive game - a party of individuals competing against the various dangers in a fantasy world. Some people have fun by having real competition, in which the ending isn't already known.


Whats the point of a no win situation ?

The fun of suspense, recognizing that you should run away from some things, or start planning how to defeat them three levels from now.


You can argue DM is a no win situation since he has "unlimited cosmic power." he can just look at a player as say " You die of a heart attack " Boom ! You take 1000 d6 electric damage from lightning . BOOM!! Sure you can keep doing that but sooner or later you gonna be a very lonesome DM.

This doesn't describe anything people have been talking about in this thread.


Every scenario or monster you toss their way should have a fair to easy chance of being defeated .

Now you're assuming that all encounters are completely forced by the DM. In my world, there are dragons, giants, and many other monsters already on the map when the players start at level one. If they go into those places, that's what they will find.

Yes, I offer plot hooks, but there's always more than one way to get involved in the plot.


If players get cocky or spank you once too often its not unreasonable to give em a spanking back . Fact is if all players die , your game dies . Your cool idea,s , your awesome battlefield decorations , your wonderful NPC,s , date with a queen of fairies ........they all die .

You are assuming that players will always have their PCs deliberately fight to the death, rather than learning to make competent decisions. That's not been my experience.

A no-win scenario is not a situation in which all PCs die. It's a situation that PCs avoid until they are higher level, or have a good plan.

[Von Zinzer]

This is cooperative game . There is no winning or losing / players vs DM . You guys join together to have fun and make a story bleeding a bit for the sake of "danger" and excitement.

1,000X this—with the caveat that that attitude only works in the appropriate kind of game. Like, if you’re talking about a long campaign, with social interactions, living cities, NPCs galore, absolutely. It’s collaborative storytelling where nobody necessarily knows the ending. Sure, the GM has an idea where things are going, but there could be any numbers of twists and turns along the way. For a straightforward dungeon crawl, though? That’s more PCs vs. Monsters (the GM), so the “storytelling” aspect takes a back seat.

But not to derail the thread: I think that no-win scenarios are useful to the extent that the players recognize them as such. For example, I once had a near-TPK of level 8 characters when, after suffering damage from a collapsing tunnel trap, they just kept digging despite all indications it was a terrible idea. Give the players plenty of rope, they’ll find a way to hang themselves.

[Quertus]

In a true sandbox game, all the possible encounters are there from the start, and the players decide to hunt kobolds at first level and dragons at tenth. In dungeons, the top levels were easy, and they got more challenging as you went down - but you decided when to go down a level. I'd been playing for years before I discovered a game in which I didn't have to avoid the dangers I couldn't defeat.

[And in one tournament game, there was a 134-hit-die monster. (No, that is not a typo. It was a hydra with one hundred thirty four heads.) It was there as a test, to eliminate parties who didn't choose to run from something they couldn't possibly survive.

We killed it.]



Should there be encounters where the party is hopelessly, hilariously outgunned? Yes. The world feels unrealistic if that is never the case. Should there ever be encounters that are actually unwinable? Probably not. If you make an encounter, you should be prepared for what you will do if the party successfully "wins", just like you should be for if the party loses.

First campaign I ran, party encountered a grouping of large holes in the ground - large enough that the party could easily travel into them.

Player: Hmmm... we're part of an empire that sends scouts out into this region of the world - what have our scouts said about these holes? What do we know about what makes them?
Me: you have no intel on this.
Player: in all the centuries of scouting, not a single scout has ever returned with information about having seen something like this?
Me: nope.
Player: ... We go around! Way around!

Same campaign, a bit later. Party has gotten involved in a archmage war. They see one of their foes in the distance, and fireball him. He retaliates with a Meteor Swarm, and they unload fireballs on him like a fireworks display. When they close in to look for a body, they find none.

Inspecting the area carefully, they find that the spot where he was standing is damp. They carefully examine the damp spot, and determine that it is not blood or anything odd, simply water. Slightly cool to the touch.

Player: we just unloaded something like 60d6 of fire damage, and this water is cool to the touch?
Me: yup.
Player: which means it was ice, but he didn't seem to be carrying... Holy ****, that was a simulacrum? His simulacrum could cast meteor swarm?! Um... maybe we should hunt one of the other wizards...

Of course, other times, you have players intentionally looking for overwhelming odds.

Player: can I have my character start with a single dose of poison*?
Me: ... Sure.
Player: can I find any rumors about dragons in the area?
Me: *roll* yes, blah blah blah.
...
Player process to track the dragon back to its cave. I roll, dragon is inside, dragon is asleep. Player makes his move silently roll. Character sneaks in, levels crossbow with poisoned bolt at dragon. Player rolls a 20, and hits. Dragon rolls a 1 on its save. Dragon dies. Character becomes rich and famous.
player asks to buy more poison. Player asks for rumors of even older dragons. Repeat scenario with great queen dragon! Character becomes very rich and very famous.
*this was back in older editions, when most poison was save or die, and dragons had a listed % chance of being asleep based on color and age.


Standard murderhobo doctrine is not known for careful planning and delicate subtlety.

And this is why it is important to include such overwhelming opp position, so that standard murder hobos can learn that they need to update their playbooks. :smallwink:

[Telonius]

I'd advise any DM who's planning one to be absolutely sure they know what they're getting into. If you create a Kobayashi Maru for the PCs, they are apt start acting like Captain Kirk.