Level-Inappropriate Stories

[Quertus]

So, back in the day, potentially encountering anything at any level was considered "the right way to play". It was "realistic". The "best" group in my area a) had all new characters start at 1st level, and b) had "ancient red dragon" on the random encounter list.

Then 3.x came along, with its concept of "game balance" and "level-appropriate challenges". Let's ignore the fact that the implementation leaves a lot to be desired - it's the effect of the concept I'm interested in.

Now, I'm told that having party members of various levels in the same party really just doesn't work in 3.x, so let's ignore that part of the equation for the moment, and focus on the "level-appropriate challenges" part.

Has anyone played a game where the world was dynamic and realistic, where the PCs weren't just facing down level-appropriate encounters? Does anyone have any stories to share of playing 3.x (or, heck, even Pathfinder) in the style I'm accustomed to from old-school games?

[MesiDoomstalker]

Yes and no? I've played in a game where we could force encounters with an enemy well beyond our ability to handle, if we did all the wrong things. But none that had it happen willy nilly at the result of a die roll. I've played games where we had encounters where the best option was to run (though the chance of success was greater than 0%). But each of those instances are specific anecdotes, not a trend for those games.

In my own pathfinder game, I wanted to party (four level 4s) to fight a Flame Drake (CR 5). Through a number of short comings on their part, none of them were anywhere near the Drake when it got unleashed on the city they are defending. Two of them arrived first, then quickly retreated when they realized they were enormously outmatched. Long story short, they gathered the rest of the party and the Drake fled the city guards in the mean time. Only then, did they go outside the city (as a group) to track down and kill the Drake as a full team. The Drake, in the time since fleeing, had gotten healing and strategy tips from a friendly cleric and when the party came for it, gave the Drake some buffs. The second encounter was deadlier because the Drake had an ally, buffs and was told how to fight better (Int 6 monsters aren't the greatest strategists). So I suppose one could say I added extra difficulty for the parties failures.

The initial plan was for them to follow the plot threads and learn the Drake was going to be released at such-n-such location at a given time. They missed all the clues and pursued no leads and in general took their sweet time. It's a direct cause-and-effect of the parties actions leading to a tough and then tougher fight.

[Kesnit]

I played in a game where the DM rolled on his personal encounter table to determine what the party ran into. We could meet something way under our level, or way over, and it wasn't always possible to tell by looking what we were dealing with.

Personally, I hated it. If the encounter was too weak, there was no point in following up on it, so the time spent rolling the dice and determining the encounter was wasted. If the encounter was obviously too powerful, it was the same waste. Since rolls were random, we could spend long amounts of time just rolling on the encounter table without doing anything. Even if the encounter was within the level of the party, there was no guarantee everyone could be involved. (My wife and I once spent an hour watching the rest of the party fight dolphin-like creatures in a lake. Even if our PCs wanted to get involved, our abilities were not useful, and there was no point in us getting in the lake, since we didn't fall in to start with.)

[Uncle Pine]

I generally base my campaigns on the assumption that everything in the world (including monsters) is there for a reason. I have a more or less specific idea of what players will be able to encounter in every area, and not everything will be something they'll be able to chew. Players are aware of this, as I never fail to remind them of it at the start of each one (sometime even at the end of a particularly challenging session). Single adventures and one-shots on the other hand generally stick to level-appropriate challenges for obvious reasons.

In the last campaign, during the first session the party (five 1st level characters) got badly lost in the woods and had a close encounter with a nasty assassin willow (a reskinned assassin vine). No one died, but things got pretty hectic. Still, it was their fault for getting too close to a rather suspicious tree. Second session had them meet a 8-headed half-silver dragon hydra that lived under a waterfall in the woods (a fairly important NPC in the campaign, friendly too although they didn't know it yet) and that also went well. Third session had the party slaughter a colony of fungal lizardfolks that did nothing wrong because "they were pacific, but extremely annoying". The lizardfolks are only notable because despite there being theoretically too many of them for the party to face (I think there were six or ten) because I didn't plan them as enemy, the players still managed to kill them all. :smallbiggrin:
A bunch of other level-inappropriate encounters popped up at some point. For example, I distinctly remember a forest populated by some mountain trolls (MMIII) the party had to cross at 3rd level. The opposite also happened (when players had to face weak opponents), although it's generally far less common because if a party of adventurer is visibly stronger than a group of monsters, then these monsters will avoid to fight them and instead try to flee as far as possible and come back after the murderhoboes left.

[Efrate]

I dont have many way beyond encounters, but most encounters my party faces are 1 to 4 cr above them. Part of it is because 6pcs, part of it is because at higher levels i need to keep a feeling of danger. We had a few under cred encounters crossing some planes. I like them, shows characters how theyve grown.

Party was 15th level and faced a lone cockatrice, which hit one of the melee guys, cause 20s happen, who then rolled a 1 on his fort. So a cr 3 killed a 15th level character. It was hilarious.

Best part is no divine caster, and the arcane caster didnt know anything to help, so they had to teleport back to thier home base town and pay someone to fix it. It was highly memorable.

[GilesTheCleric]

I wouldn't say that I populate the wilderness with too many level-inappropriate encounters. They're there, but I do my best to let the party know what's up. I do frequently include many high-level NPCs, though. I like for the PCs to be able to interact with the movers and shakers, to learn about the world from their perspectives, and those types of folks are typically level 10-15 in my games.

I have had the party attempt to fight some of them - for example, two of the highest-ranking priests of the church of kelemvor had been manipulating the party for their own ends (to settle some infighting, and to take out some rival churches), and the party did eventually turn on them. One was a level 17 cleric, but she was blind, and I built her to have about ~10 hp (vs the level 5 party). Once they had bloodied her, they stopped attacking for some reason, which was good, otherwise they would have activated her pacts and contingencies. Her partner in crime was a level 12 rogue/cleric that they never made much headway in fighting (vs the level 8 party). I think they fought him twice or three times. In contrast, they saved the level 20 high priest of pelor, who had been under curses and surveillance from the church of lolth (as a 10th level party).

In my games, these types of NPCs see war as sport, so even if the party lost, they wouldn't be killed. Monsters, on the other hand, have no such restraints.

I agree with the poster above: practically, it makes sense for the majority of encounters to be level-appropriate, since those are usually more fun to play.

[HalfQuart]

That was indeed my experience playing 2e as a teenager -- there was no expectation that an encounter was manageable, so there was a fair bit of sizing things up and running away. I'm now playing in a 3.5 campaign, and I still play with the same mentality, although most of the people I play with do not. At one point we encountered an Arcane Oooze that we were ill-prepared to fight, so we ran away. One of the other players remarked that this was the first time he'd ever willingly run away from a combat (like not when Confused and forced to run away) when playing D&D. I thought that was totally absured.

I think the level of the world should be pretty much static with the same spread of levels and challenges that characters must face differently as they level up. This isn't to say that individual NPCs don't also level as PCs level, but there should be low level monsters when the PCs are high level, and scary high level monsters when the PCs are just starting out. That said, I also think DMs should provide outs for characters when they encounter a too-high CR opponent; maybe this is in lots of foreshadowing and hints about the challenge ahead of time, or maybe it is just an opportunity to run before the fight, or a chance to surrender or parlay before a TPK. But I think danger is what makes D&D exciting and enjoyable.

[JoshuaZ]

I've allowed level inappropriate encounters to occur but in story contexts where I've tried to make clear that they were not level level appropriate.

For example, in my last campaign, there was a powerful fey queen who I hadn't fully statted up (but would essentially in an encounter be something like, once a round picks a PC and if they don't make a natural 20, they are now a toad (she liked toads)). I made it clear that she was more powerful than the PCs by introducing her in part by having her teleport in in a scary way into a heavily warded area.

Another NPC in that campaign was a powerful dragon oracle, and I advertised his power level by a) making it clear that he was very old and b) that he was much larger than any other dragon they had seen.

[SangoProduction]

Think about it this way. A wolf attack might be a low level encounter. And they might well exist regardless of the party's level. But when they can only hit the party on a 20, and deal a max of 1 damage, if they get through miss chance...you're literally doing bugger all, and wasting time that could be spent...I dunno...playing. "OK guys, let's spend 20 minutes setting up combat for this trivial encounter which is well beneath your characters' notice." "I rolled a 2... damn." "Well, actually, you just killed it."

Combat takes a long ass time. So, if it's not going to be engaging, it's not worth the real-time effort.

On the other end of the spectrum. "Here's a killer bunny. Prepare for combat!" "OK...Sure." "The bunny strikes for 154 damage. Oh, sorry Jimmy, looks like you need to reroll a character, hope you weren't attached. What? I said it was a killer bunny."

That could be handled better with a warning that it looks very powerful. But guess what? Then that's turns it in to nothing more than "Hey, touch this button for a new character." And not really an encounter, since, if they don't want a new character, they just run away, and there's nothing more to it. Maybe throw in one of those every once in awhile to effectively say "you aren't all-powerful" but don't spend much time on it.

Now, for where PCs pick fights with NPCs known for their power/influence, then, well, that's the PC picking an uneven fight, for whatever reason.

[Troacctid]

Level-inappropriate story encounters can be fun. I was running Hoard of the Dragon Queen a while back and there are some cool encounters in the first chapter against a blue dragon who is one-shotting NPCs with his breath weapon and a mid-level half-dragon fighter who challenges you to single combat. The dragon is meant to scare you, but he's actually not really invested in the fight, and he can be convinced to go away. The half-dragon is designed to kick your butt while you're at 1st level and then show up later as a miniboss when you've leveled up a few times and can get some payback (although theoretically, if you're lucky enough, you might actually win the first time). Both encounters are cinematic, and are placed in the story for a purpose. My players enjoyed them.

On the other hand, if you're putting level-inappropriate encounters on a random encounter table and saying "Here, fight this," then it's probably not going to be as interesting or fun as a level-appropriate encounter.

[NichG]

The thing that makes this difficult in 3.5ed (and many other RPGs) is that often, even if you were to take enemies at your power level, running away is much harder to do successfully than just winning the fight. In part, this comes about from the actions used to actually run away being the same actions as those used to reposition in combat - meaning that if you can run away successfully or not is the same as asking 'can you successfully kite these enemies with a ranged weapon or not?'. So the system is forced to make it hard to run away, so that it doesn't become too easy to kite the other party and essentially turn good mobility into extra attacks.

When you get teleportation, this story can change - it becomes very easy to flee in a way that can't be followed, but it's quite expensive to use as a means of kiting due to each movement costing a spell slot. 'Scry and die' tactics become the equivalent of kiting, but that's usually centered around an alpha strike rather than popping in and out of attack range.

Even then though, there are issues with running away as a valid choice. Often, where there are mobility advantages in the party over the enemies such as high movement speed or teleportation, those aren't shared uniformly by the party. As such, making the choice to run away often means abandoning fellow party-members which could be unthinkable IC, and creates bad feelings OOC when someone else thinks the encounter could still have been defeated. Round-by-round actions and decisions exacerbates this - no matter what, someone is going to be the first person to decide to flee rather than to take an action supporting the party.

Things that can change this:

- Systems which separate movement from forming/breaking combat engagement, where once combat engagement as a whole the two sides can't find each-other easily to fight again. Makes sense in big wilderness environments, would be weird in tightly-defended, closed spaces like dungeons ('the enemies scatter and disappear into places they can't be found... the previous room!'). Presumably a successful retreat in this case would have to actually be a withdrawl from the dungeon as a whole or to somewhere with lots of hiding spaces, not just a withdrawl to the previous room.

- If the party has to be the one to escalate against the stronger enemy (by going into the guarded room, by drawing weapons on the powerful NPC, etc) then it can work. This does require either the DM being very clear and systematic about communicating the relative power levels of things (an ogre is always bad news until you're Lv5, a dragon is always bad news until you're Lv12, a 16ft tall flame-encased demon is always bad news until you're Lv18, ...). Good for readily identifiable monsters, bad for NPCs with totally arbitrary number of class levels. Alternately, if the system allows for ways to discern the power of a given creature, then this kind of thing can work.

- Games with a wider range of outcomes from a fight than 'victory' and 'TPK'. If a hard fight can still be won as a pyrrhic victory (consuming a lot of non-replaceable or expensive resources, for example), then you can create situations where the stronger enemy would rather let the party withdraw than chase them down and force the fight to a conclusion - because of the cost to them, but also because of the risk that the party has some kind of one-off resource they've been holding back on. Making sure this is part of the setting and communicated clearly is necessary for this to work, because the players have to believe that if they run they won't be chased before they select running as an action they'd like to try.

- Use explicit timers to change the implied goal of a combat encounter from victory to survival or escape.. 'Defeat this enemy group which is 8 CR above you' is unreasonable, but 'survive for 2 rounds against this enemy group which is 8 CR above you' can be doable. It's important that the players are aware of the timer.

- Games that explicitly make running away easy. Drama points that let you just declare 'I escape!' with no check or failure chances. This allows the party to be more daring and directly probe the strength of their enemies.

- Games that create a larger separation between failure and death. For example, you could have a setting where combats are mostly formalized things about honor rather than actual life-and-death conflicts between irreconcilable sides, where being forced to kill your opponent to win could actually be considered your loss (in the sense that, whatever the formal purpose of the combat was, you are denied the thing you fought to obtain as a result). In that case, coming up against stronger or weaker foes would be much more normal. This kind of formalized combat also allows you to have asymmetric victory conditions - maybe the society recognizes differences in power, and so the weaker fighter only needs to score a hit, while the stronger fighter needs to achieve submission. D&D's dead-at-negative-10 system combined with making nonlethal damage generally more difficult to use makes this kind of thing tricky.

[Grod_The_Giant]

One negative I've found to the "any encounter can be deadly!" paradigm is excessive player caution. Particularly if the DM is bad at communicating when something is meant to be a fair fight verses "hard but manageable" vs "just run." I've seen games devolve into reactionary paranoia sessions, where everyone is so afraid of everything that every plan gets debated for hours, plot hooks are outright avoided, and the game just gets unfun. In my opinion, non level-appropriate fights should, perhaps even by explicit degree, only exist in two scenarios:

The players choose to pick a fight they shouldn't have, or made significant strategic blunders. The word "choose" is important, because it implies an element of knowledge. If you decide to travel through White Dragon Run in midwinter and get ambushed by Icefang, that's your own damn fault; if you decided to take the left fork through Ye Olde Random Forest and get ambushed by Poisonscale the Great Wyrm Green Dragon, that's not. If you see the Tarrasque rampaging off in the distance and choose to go poke it, that's your fault; if the DM rolls on a table and says "the Tarasque jumps out of the bushes, roll initiative" that's not.
The encounter is played for drama, and the alternate goals are clearly communicated-- your trusted NPC ally going pale and screaming "RUN!", the trumpets of "thousands of orcs" on the horizon, what have you. If there's doubt, the DM should make clear that this is an unwinnable encounter by any tactic up to and including a flat metagame statement. If afterwards the players are saying "how were we supposed to know that these were Assassins-with-class-levels and not just random thugs?" or "we thought we had no choice but to fight," then the DM did something wrong.

[martixy]

IMO level inappropriate encounters can work great in 3.5.
Grod elegantly elaborated on how overpowered encounters (should) work. Purely mechanically, they can work because 3.5 is pretty optimizer friendly and there are many ways to go nova.

There has usually been at least a couple of instances in each campaign where we had taken on an enemy that by all accounts would vastly outstrip us.
Stuff like CR20s vs 12th level party(not the tarrasque), things with 40DR at L7, like that. In fact they have been one of the most memorable encounters in any session. Moments where we explicitly chose to dive headlong into something that could have ended very ugly. Note the key word. Interestingly, in most cases we actually won, sometimes with the DM holding back, but always just a bit.

However not many DMs seem to know how to handle underpowered encounters. I think the key with those is treating them as an RP opportunity, a measuring stick. Pick some memorable encounter you did 3-4 levels ago that had given the party a run for its money, throw the same encounter at them now, possibly with a twist(the nature of which can range by anything from theatrically dramatic to humorous). Allow the players to feel how much they've grown, see how easy they can deak with something, that a while ago had almost cost them their lives. The power fantasy is a big part of why a significant chunk of people play this game and this is a perfect way to validate that.

And if the encounter is so far below them, that rolling is pointless, don't require rolls! As a DM, in a purely abstract sense, you always have to know why you're doing what you're doing. If you request dice rolls it should be because they will move the story forward, one way or another. Any old tosser can fling small polyhedral solids around just for the fun of it on their own. It's up to the DM to provide a damn good reason to do so.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Minor point: the DMG says about 5% of encounters should be EL ≥ party level +5. That is, 5% of encounters are supposed to be unwinnable.

Some 15% are supposed to be difficult (EL = PL + 1-4)

And an unspecified portion of the 20% that's supposed to be "easy if handled properly" can otherwise be quite difficult (EL > PL).

The idea of "level appropriate" challenges isn't one to which one must strictly adhere. Just sayin'.

[digiman619]

Level-inappropriate story encounters can be fun. I was running Hoard of the Dragon Queen a while back and there are some cool encounters in the first chapter against a blue dragon who is one-shotting NPCs with his breath weapon and a mid-level half-dragon fighter who challenges you to single combat. The dragon is meant to scare you, but he's actually not really invested in the fight, and he can be convinced to go away. The half-dragon is designed to kick your butt while you're at 1st level and then show up later as a miniboss when you've leveled up a few times and can get some payback (although theoretically, if you're lucky enough, you might actually win the first time). Both encounters are cinematic, and are placed in the story for a purpose. My players enjoyed them.

On the other hand, if you're putting level-inappropriate encounters on a random encounter table and saying "Here, fight this," then it's probably not going to be as interesting or fun as a level-appropriate encounter.

My party actually managed to kill that dragon through insane luck and an ill-advised token from the DM that triggered my sorcerer's wild surge EVERY TIME I casted ANYTHING.

[Bucky]

I've always been suspicious of encounter table results like "1d4 trolls" as most parties for which 1 troll is a reasonable challenge would find 4 trolls unfairly difficult. But the biggest level-inappropriate non-boss encounters I've hit as a player weren't randomly rolled and haven't followed the "random encounter principle" of allowing disengagement.

In the first case, our level 7 Pathfinder party has been performing above-level for a while. The players have come to the conclusion that certain gamebreaking tactics are making encounter balance too difficult, namely Selective Channelling to heal half or more of the party's HP each round. So they decide to leave the healer behind for a session. Meanwhile, the (less experienced) GM has also noticed the party isn't being seriously challenged even when he's hitting characters for half their HP in a round, so he decides to take things up a notch.

So the party (minus their main healer and plus a temp) ran into two dudes on the road (no roll to avoid). One of them said something to the effect of "I object to what you're doing" and opened combat with a surprise Flame Strike.

The encounter had to be backed off by fiat; the table quickly retconned the Healer into sneaking after the party as an NPC and another NPC had to show up later in the fight to bail out the PCs.

(5 level 7 characters vs a Cleric 17 and his level 7 Assassin cohort; a 10 CR gap by my accounting and a 9 CR gap by the GM's)

The other case of a severely level-inappropriate nonboss encounter was simply a CR 7 with two more CR7s bursting from its corpse vs. a level 2 gestalt party. In this case it turned out that the GM was trying to temporarily kill at least one PC for plot reasons and kept cranking up the difficulty until it happened. But in this case the party actually won without casualties, largely due to getting readied actions plus attacks of opportunity on the second half of the encounter as it emerged.

(CR is difficult to calculate but at least 9; a 6 CR gap after adjusting for Gestalt)

[Deophaun]

Has anyone played a game where the world was dynamic and realistic, where the PCs weren't just facing down level-appropriate encounters?
Well, keep in mind that if randomly stumbling upon an ancient red dragon was "realistic," then, "realistically," there wouldn't be much of a population of humanoids.

The key is to look at it not as level-appropriate, but context appropriate. The context will constrain the threat level, but it's not necessarily going to prevent the PCs from stumbling upon hopeless fights. 4e actually has a good framework for this with their Heroic, Paragon, and Epic tiers.

[Afgncaap5]

I've done this in two different ways.

One had a GM with a massively fleshed out world. He knew where everything was, and if we veered off-quest too much we were likely to meet the legendary dinosaur that ruled the jungle or the aboleth in the city sewer. That was a fun game, though I had some issues with player agency (the GM would often step in and keep us from dying against these more-powerful foes, which on the one hand was good since he kept allowing us to meet them, but on the other hand it was really hard not to notice the rails of the adventure because of it. My character eventually became suicidally overconfident because of it, generally rationalizing that he could do no wrong because he kept surviving against all reason.) It was a really fun campaign, and I may actually return to it some day after the GM finishes taking time off from it.

Another GM had a habit of flipping through the monster manuals and codices and folios, finding the coolest picture, and saying "Yeah, let's have you guys play against that tonight. ...in fact, let's have you guys play against THREE of that tonight!" Often these things would be three or four levels higher than us.

...I love that GM, but there were some really, really, REALLY unfun fights in that campaign. He's a lot better nowadays, I'm happy to say.

[Larrx]

So, back in the day, potentially encountering anything at any level was considered "the right way to play". It was "realistic". The "best" group in my area a) had all new characters start at 1st level, and b) had "ancient red dragon" on the random encounter list.

Was it? Was that the norm? I certainly never experienced anything like that. Level-inappropriateness was used, from time to time, as world building and incentive. We were meant, at times, to understand that the world was larger than us. We never had a dragon show up with 'game over' written on it's chest. Because that would be stupid.


Then 3.x came along, with its concept of "game balance" and "level-appropriate challenges". Let's ignore the fact that the implementation leaves a lot to be desired - it's the effect of the concept I'm interested in.
I mean, are you trying to be offensive? Why would you come into a forum devoted to a thing that has been out of print for decades just to call it garbage? I like it. A bunch of people do.



Now, I'm told that having party members of various levels in the same party really just doesn't work in 3.x
it works just fine. It works as well as it does in any other media. Having a 'Xander exist in your story can be fun and rewarding. But outside of the story being told, there is a game to be played, and if one member of the group's only role is to be the the failure, then that's a real human (who showed up to have fun!) who is left out in the cold. So let's ignore that part of the equation for the moment, and focus on the "level-appropriate challenges" part.


Has anyone played a game where the world was dynamic and realistic, where the PCs weren't just facing down level-appropriate encounters? Does anyone have any stories to share of playing 3.x (or, heck, even Pathfinder) in the style I'm accustomed to from old-school games?

Using (fun! positive!) words like dynamic and realistic can make it seem like your point has already been made made. It hasn't. You haven't made an argument at all. Fun can be had in the 'random, maybe you'll die, prolly, and if not you'll win instantly . . . you don't even have to declare actions! You just win! Ha Ha joy! Or pain! It has nothing to do with you! scenario. But everybody else in the world for forever has realized that that's not how you tell stories.

Wouldn't Starwars have been sooooo much better if they'd all died in the trash compactor and the movie had just ended there?

No.

And no excess of finger-quotes will change that.

[Hiro Quester]

I played with a group that had a large random encounter table with many things on it that would totally annihilate us if we took them on in a fight.

But that taught us to not assume that it was possible to fight every monster we met. It required a lot more role-playing of the players.

So as group of relatively low-level characters, we could well be surprised by an ancient dragon. And we'd know that if we were going to survive, we'd have to talk our way out of the situation.

So we'd have to do something like (know your DM) propose a riddle competition, with prizes, instead of rolling for initiative. A magic item won for every riddle the other party could not answer.

[Yukitsu]

"You encounter this giant creature that's 10 levels higher than you."
"Oh, OK."
"It kills 3 of you."
"Great."
"Are you going to write up new characters?"
"Probably not."

And then the game died.

[WbtE]

"You encounter this giant creature that's 10 levels higher than you."
"Oh, OK."
"It kills 3 of you."
"Great."
"Are you going to write up new characters?"
"Probably not."

And then the game died.

This is worth raising as a difference between WotC's D&Ds and TSR's. Playing with TSR's rules, if my character dies first I can probably roll up a new one before the rest of the group has finished resolving the scene without feeling like I'm rushing anything. Some people can do that in D20, but they're probably pulling builds out of memory rather than actually generating a fresh character. For those of us without that level of system knowledge losing a character usually means losing all the time spent on the build.

(Yes, I know there's the "Thorgrad the Fifth" solution but it doesn't appeal to everyone.)

[Kelb_Panthera]

This is worth raising as a difference between WotC's D&Ds and TSR's. Playing with TSR's rules, if my character dies first I can probably roll up a new one before the rest of the group has finished resolving the scene without feeling like I'm rushing anything. Some people can do that in D20, but they're probably pulling builds out of memory rather than actually generating a fresh character. For those of us without that level of system knowledge losing a character usually means losing all the time spent on the build.

(Yes, I know there's the "Thorgrad the Fifth" solution but it doesn't appeal to everyone.)

Eh, depends on level and optimization. I rattled out a sample 3rd level rogue for one of my new players inside 10 minutes.

[Deophaun]

(Yes, I know there's the "Thorgrad the Fifth" solution but it doesn't appeal to everyone.)
"How many of those do you got?"
"50." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOUksDJCijw&t=60m0s)

[Bucky]

The group I played with, that had those encounters, was run with an understanding that players should always have one backup character on tap. If a player's backup also died it might end the session, but that never happened in practice.

[Hurnn]

I do some under cr like 1-2 and some above going up to +5, but nothing above or below unless they aren't supposed to fight it.

[Arbane]

Also consider the fact that most enemies in 3.X that you can't outfight, you probably can't outrun, either.


Level-inappropriate story encounters can be fun. I was running Hoard of the Dragon Queen a while back and there are some cool encounters in the first chapter against a blue dragon who is one-shotting NPCs with his breath weapon and a mid-level half-dragon fighter who challenges you to single combat. The dragon is meant to scare you, but he's actually not really invested in the fight, and he can be convinced to go away. The half-dragon is designed to kick your butt while you're at 1st level and then show up later as a miniboss when you've leveled up a few times and can get some payback (although theoretically, if you're lucky enough, you might actually win the first time). Both encounters are cinematic, and are placed in the story for a purpose. My players enjoyed them.


May party didn't do so well. Because REALISM!, the dragon turned our wizard into a cloud of charged particles after he got a good hit in,* which was a LITTLE BIT DISCOURAGING to me, at least.

*(There was some backplot for said wizard, so the player wasn't too unhappy about it.)


I mean, are you trying to be offensive? Why would you come into a forum devoted to a thing that has been out of print for decades just to call it garbage? I like it. A bunch of people do.


They're not wrong, you know. Aside from woefully badly CR'ed enemies like That Damn Crab and the Adamantine Horror, there's also the fact that a level 10 Fighter is allegedly the same CR as a level 10 Druid who's hiding in a tree as a squirrel and spamming Summon Nature's Ally.

[Quertus]

Thanks to everyone who has posted stories to this thread. It's nice to know the old stories aren't dead.


Well, keep in mind that if randomly stumbling upon an ancient red dragon was "realistic," then, "realistically," there wouldn't be much of a population of humanoids.

The key is to look at it not as level-appropriate, but context appropriate. The context will constrain the threat level, but it's not necessarily going to prevent the PCs from stumbling upon hopeless fights. 4e actually has a good framework for this with their Heroic, Paragon, and Epic tiers.

Not that I completely agree with the old-school PoV as realistic, but I believe the logic goes like this: assuming the dragon isn't intentionally attacking the town, it's still out hunting in the wilderness, and, therefore, one might realistically encounter it. Note that "encounter" need not equate to "fight".

Depending on the probability of such encounters, it can render the life of the traveling merchant - with limited ability to escape the notice of the dragon, what with his wagon(s) and all - rather difficult to fathom.


Was it? Was that the norm? I certainly never experienced anything like that. Level-inappropriateness was used, from time to time, as world building and incentive. We were meant, at times, to understand that the world was larger than us. We never had a dragon show up with 'game over' written on it's chest. Because that would be stupid.

I mean, are you trying to be offensive? Why would you come into a forum devoted to a thing that has been out of print for decades just to call it garbage? I like it. A bunch of people do.


it works just fine. It works as well as it does in any other media. Having a 'Xander exist in your story can be fun and rewarding. But outside of the story being told, there is a game to be played, and if one member of the group's only role is to be the the failure, then that's a real human (who showed up to have fun!) who is left out in the cold. So let's ignore that part of the equation for the moment, and focus on the "level-appropriate challenges" part.


Using (fun! positive!) words like dynamic and realistic can make it seem like your point has already been made made. It hasn't. You haven't made an argument at all. Fun can be had in the 'random, maybe you'll die, prolly, and if not you'll win instantly . . . you don't even have to declare actions! You just win! Ha Ha joy! Or pain! It has nothing to do with you! scenario. But everybody else in the world for forever has realized that that's not how you tell stories.

Wouldn't Starwars have been sooooo much better if they'd all died in the trash compactor and the movie had just ended there?

No.

And no excess of finger-quotes will change that.

Not trying to be offensive. I enjoy many systems, including the one you take me to be maligning. Merely attempting to indicate that the purpose of this thread is intended to be a bit more upbeat. While stories of, "and then we all died" are perfectly acceptable (and expected), I don't want this to be a thread dedicated to "worst DM ever" stories. There are plenty enough threads for that already. :smallwink:

Nor do I intend this thread to devolve into an argument about gaming styles, system preferences, etc. Mine are spoilered below. Mind you, I love such conversations, but I figure we've got plenty of threads for that already, too.

I intended this thread just as a place for people to tell stories, a repository for both the good and bad of old style stories in new systems that aren't necessarily designed for them. Thus all the time I spent detailing things I've seen in other threads that this thread isn't supposed to be about.

Personally, I hate games that do things because it would make a good story. If I wanted a "good story", I'd read or watch one. It would take much less time, and be a much better story.

Games that do things because it would make a good game are better. A war game where it's one person's 20 points of troops against someone else's 20,000 isn't likely to be much fun for either side.

But for an RPG, I personally happen to prefer... as close to "realistic" as is fun. So it's easy for me to describe such a style with... perhaps more cheerful words than it deserves.

And, hopefully obviously, why I'd personally enjoy stories of games of this ilk, and why I started this thread.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Was it? Was that the norm? I certainly never experienced anything like that. Level-inappropriateness was used, from time to time, as world building and incentive. We were meant, at times, to understand that the world was larger than us. We never had a dragon show up with 'game over' written on it's chest. Because that would be stupid.

Getting bent out of shape over a percieved wrong while making an error yourself. Slick.

You realize that encounter and fight are not synonymous, right? There are rules in D&DG for encountering -gods- in normal, pre-epic play. There are rules in DMG2 for chase encounters too. There's even the odd, though not terribly "fun," extortion encounter.

That said, set-piece battles can be setup in such a way as to allow you to swing -way- above your weight-class.

As for "the good old days" you realize there may be a significant age difference between you and quertus, don't you? I'll admit I'm taking a shot-in-the-dark here but are your "good old days" in the early 2000's by any chance? What Quertus describes sounds like gygaxian style OD&D, from what I gather about that version of the game.


I mean, are you trying to be offensive? Why would you come into a forum devoted to a thing that has been out of print for decades just to call it garbage? I like it. A bunch of people do.

4e PHB was published in 2008, friend. 3e hasn't been out of print for -1- decade yet. Quertus also didn't call it garbage by any stretch of the imagination that I can see. The implementation of the CR system leaves a lot to be desired and I say that as one of its advocates.

If he didn't like it, I doubt he'd be a regular here.


it works just fine. It works as well as it does in any other media. Having a 'Xander exist in your story can be fun and rewarding. But outside of the story being told, there is a game to be played, and if one member of the group's only role is to be the the failure, then that's a real human (who showed up to have fun!) who is left out in the cold. So let's ignore that part of the equation for the moment, and focus on the "level-appropriate challenges" part.

Again, you're way over-blowing things here. Being as many as 2 or 3 levels behind isn't a huge deal unless you're being stiffed out of your share of treasure by the party as well. It's also hardly a persistent state unless you have just -rotten- luck.


Using (fun! positive!) words like dynamic and realistic can make it seem like your point has already been made made. It hasn't. You haven't made an argument at all. Fun can be had in the 'random, maybe you'll die, prolly, and if not you'll win instantly . . . you don't even have to declare actions! You just win! Ha Ha joy! Or pain! It has nothing to do with you! scenario. But everybody else in the world for forever has realized that that's not how you tell stories.

See here's the source of the communications break-down, right here. You're putting the narrative element of the game first and foremost and presuming everyone else does or should do the same. That's not the case. Some of us, Quertus included it seems, hold the gamist elements as more important. For such players the narrative may be nothing more than a paper-thin veneer with which to string encounters together. The appeal is in the problem-solving elements and the random chance of the dice rolls. A way-over CR enemy isn't to be fought, it's to be negotiated with, escaped from, or tricked in some way. Or to be crushed by because you, the player, misread the situation and it's time to roll out the backup character until or unless what's left of you gets ress'ed or reincarnated.


Wouldn't Starwars have been sooooo much better if they'd all died in the trash compactor and the movie had just ended there?

Could've been. A couple of shows I've really enjoyed have the main protagonists die toward the beginning. How limited is your imagination that death -must- be the end of the story? :smalltongue:

[Yukitsu]

This is worth raising as a difference between WotC's D&Ds and TSR's. Playing with TSR's rules, if my character dies first I can probably roll up a new one before the rest of the group has finished resolving the scene without feeling like I'm rushing anything. Some people can do that in D20, but they're probably pulling builds out of memory rather than actually generating a fresh character. For those of us without that level of system knowledge losing a character usually means losing all the time spent on the build.

(Yes, I know there's the "Thorgrad the Fifth" solution but it doesn't appeal to everyone.)

I think the people at my table just couldn't be arsed to play in a game where we could spend 10 minutes and wipe in 5 without having done anything interesting.

[Arbane]

Could've been. A couple of shows I've really enjoyed have the main protagonists die toward the beginning. How limited is your imagination that death -must- be the end of the story? :smalltongue:

Pretty much by definition if they die that early, they're not actually the protagonists, unless the story's about ghosts.

And in most RPGs, dead characters don't get to do much.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Pretty much by definition if they die that early, they're not actually the protagonists, unless the story's about ghosts.

And in most RPGs, dead characters don't get to do much.

Missed it entirely. Their death is not the end of -their- story. Some come back in short order, some adventure in the afterlife, some are quickly reincarnated and the story goes from there.

Death is only the end if you let it be so.

[Yukitsu]

Missed it entirely. Their death is not the end of -their- story. Some come back in short order, some adventure in the afterlife, some are quickly reincarnated and the story goes from there.

Death is only the end if you let it be so.

Yes, but this is a game, so if half a party dies, you get to either run 2 games from then on, or kill half the team or end the story of the dead ones. I know I'm not interested in any of these "stories" when I'm there to play a game.

[Ursus Spelaeus]

So, back in the day, potentially encountering anything at any level was considered "the right way to play".

Yes, and no.

The dungeon encounter tables were designed so that you were more likely to encounter more powerful monsters as you journeyed deeper into the lower levels of the dungeon, and weaker monsters (like goblins and kobolds) on the higher levels.

Wilderness encounters were all over the place, but then you also had plenty of room to run away or sneak around.

The players had some control over the difficulty of encounters. There was a risk/reward component to it.



Has anyone played a game where the world was dynamic and realistic, where the PCs weren't just facing down level-appropriate encounters? Does anyone have any stories to share of playing 3.x (or, heck, even Pathfinder) in the style I'm accustomed to from old-school games?

Yes.

I played as a third level dwarven cleric in an AD&D campaign with a group ranging from level 1 to level 4.
We encountered an adult red dragon in a dungeon, but were able to beat it by getting the jump on it and using smart tactics.
My dwarf jumped into the dragon's mouth expecting to go to Valhalla, but survived. It turns out that the inside of a dragon's mouth is the safest place to be around a hostile dragon. When you're inside the dragon's mouth, it can only use its bite attack and breath weapon on you. When you're outside of the dragon's mouth it gets the breath weapon, bite, two claw attacks, a tail attack, wing buffets, and spell casting (as long as its mouth isn't full.) I was wearing plate armor and had the fire resistance spell active, so I was actually pretty safe.
Meanwhile, the spearmen in the party managed to get under the dragon and stab it in its soft underbelly.

The thief had his moment of glory against a high level evil cleric. The thief had earlier disarmed a trapped door with a poisoned needle, and decided to keep the needle. When he scouted ahead and found the cleric, he climbed up and positioned himself hidden on the ceiling. When the evil cleric walked by, the thief dropped down and pricked the cleric with the poisoned needle. The evil cleric failed his saving throw and died instantly.

We encountered a lot of monsters over our levels. Usually though, when we couldn't get a drop on the monster and overwhelm it, we would use reaction rolls and bribery to make the monster non-hostile, turn undead to drive it away (if undead), or stealth to avoid it entirely if no other option was available.

When we did get into fights, we employed the use of ambush tactics, poisoned darts and arrows, spear formations, caltrops, and flasks of burning oil. We were able to use tactics to win fights that would have been horribly over-CR'd in 3.5, and we reaped the rewards. We advanced really quickly and accumulated very large amounts of treasure.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Yes, but this is a game, so if half a party dies, you get to either run 2 games from then on, or kill half the team or end the story of the dead ones. I know I'm not interested in any of these "stories" when I'm there to play a game.

Ever heard of ghostwalk? Even in this game, death doesn't have to be the end of a character's career. Adapting the necessary mechanics wasn't even hard.

[Yukitsu]

Ever heard of ghostwalk? Even in this game, death doesn't have to be the end of a character's career. Adapting the necessary mechanics wasn't even hard.

I have had a party use ghostwalk, it resulted in one player being in an immortal ghost that was too strong for the DM to actually challenge with anything and a party of people who just didn't do anything thereafter since just let the ghost deal with it.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I have had a party use ghostwalk, it resulted in one player being in an immortal ghost that was too strong for the DM to actually challenge with anything and a party of people who just didn't do anything thereafter since just let the ghost deal with it.

That result hasn't been typical for my game. Let me take a guess, the ghost was a full caster class?

[tyckspoon]

That result hasn't been typical for my game. Let me take a guess, the ghost was a full caster class?

I would guess so; being permanently incorporeal is kind of a hassle for physically inclined characters, since they have to jump through hoops to be able to interact with the material world, but almost nothing but 'free' upsides for a caster. Unless the entire campaign takes place in the area of Manifest/similar areas that force or allow complete material manifestation, in which case it's just that Eidoloncer is like a bamillion times more useful than Eidolon as a class. But as the entire party weren't ghosts and the problematic PC sounds like he wasn't working on the same rules as everybody else, that probably wasn't the case.

[Yukitsu]

I would guess so; being permanently incorporeal is kind of a hassle for physically inclined characters, since they have to jump through hoops to be able to interact with the material world, but almost nothing but 'free' upsides for a caster. Unless the entire campaign takes place in the area of Manifest/similar areas that force or allow complete material manifestation, in which case it's just that Eidoloncer is like a bamillion times more useful than Eidolon as a class. But as the entire party weren't ghosts and the problematic PC sounds like he wasn't working on the same rules as everybody else, that probably wasn't the case.

Basically that, and as we've established, random encounters here, there weren't exactly combats tailored to specifically kill a ghost since things on random encounter tables rarely do. Besides, even destroying a ghost doesn't necessarily kill it so really, no risk at all.

[VoxRationis]

The one and only time I have played a character above level 10, it was an 21st-level campaign (though our characters probably weren't the best 21st-level characters you could find). For various reasons, our characters were separated, doing their own things, for a time, and the party rogue happened across a CR 4 encounter of a dire wolf with a couple of regular wolves on the road. The wolves had treed a damsel, and the rogue elected to help.
Well, it turns out that his Strength score was not very good, and so regardless of his high level, he wasn't terribly good at resisting trip attempts. So this group of wolves chain-trips him until the damsel has to rescue him.

Another time, a 9th-level cleric in one of my games decided to challenge a demigod pharaoh with the casting ability of a 20th-level cleric. The PCs were in no way prepared for a confrontation with this figure, but a confrontation was entirely optional at that point (they could have retreated to plan a better attack with the advantage of surprise, and the pharaoh was not initially hostile to them). Moreover, they were warned that this guy was powerful and arguably beyond them, both in and out of character. The cleric elected to confront him anyway. The other PCs decided to step aside and try to look like they weren't affiliated with him. After shouting "You have no power here! I will not let you pass!" the cleric cast flame strike, dealing moderate damage. The pharaoh answered with power word kill, leading the other PCs to declare their loyalty to him on the spot.

[flappeercraft]

This happened a couple of months ago actually on the current campaign im running, also this was more optimization innapropriate, for some more backround information the whole point of the campaign is to get the characters as cheesed out as you want or can with optimization with the exception of no infinite loops and no 3rd party stuff so basically all 1st party is allowed. So I tell my players if they wanted to do a One shot which would be in continuity of the campaign we were playing at the time just not with their characters and they agree. It was supposed to be that everyone makes a team of 5 21st level characters of which no more than 3 could be full casters, the other 2 needed at least 6 mundane levels. What ended up happening is that of the 3 players we had back then one of them made the team and the other 2 said they would make their teams but they just stopped responding skype messages and we don't know what happened to them. But the team I was using was the team of the BBEG they would eventually face, so I follow with completely destroying the other players team is like 2 rounds and absolutely destroying his Ubercharger, his psions, his cleric and gish without taking any damage and being completely unaffected, all that while containing himself and his team. Then I followed that with resurrecting the players team and making them work for the BBEG in a plot to kill Erythnul, Ehlonna and Bahamut. Now the player and a new player who is about as good of an optimizer (yes we only have 2 players now, we are short on players so if anyone wants to join just send me a PM) have just been sent on a quest by Erythnul to ensure his survival and that of the other gods (Yes the players are evil also). Then they will have to face the BBEG and his team again but better prepared which could go either way when that happens.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Basically that, and as we've established, random encounters here, there weren't exactly combats tailored to specifically kill a ghost since things on random encounter tables rarely do. Besides, even destroying a ghost doesn't necessarily kill it so really, no risk at all.

Wait, what? Ghostwalk ghosts don't have the rejuvination quality of undead ghosts. Being brought to -10 destroys them and forces them into the true afterlife.

As for random encounters, the tables are supposed to be constructed by the DM so it's on him if there's nothing on them that can deal with incorporeals. Gods know there are -plenty- of things that can.

[tyckspoon]

The one and only time I have played a character above level 10, it was an 21st-level campaign (though our characters probably weren't the best 21st-level characters you could find). For various reasons, our characters were separated, doing their own things, for a time, and the party rogue happened across a CR 4 encounter of a dire wolf with a couple of regular wolves on the road. The wolves had treed a damsel, and the rogue elected to help.
Well, it turns out that his Strength score was not very good, and so regardless of his high level, he wasn't terribly good at resisting trip attempts. So this group of wolves chain-trips him until the damsel has to rescue him.


Assuming 3.5, this sounds more like failure to use the rules correctly. You can defend against a Trip attempt with the higher of Strength or Dex, the wolves would have to succeed on a normal attack first in order to get their free trip attempts, and lastly (although this isn't rules as such, just people commonly don't think about it) nothing compels you to spend actions standing up to get re-tripped- you can fight perfectly well while prone. It just inflicts penalties that are very severe for an equal fight. An Epic character against some normal wolves is not an equal fight; his numbers (AC, to-hit, HP, etc) should be high enough to handle the wolves just fine from the ground... even if he was just doing a Move to stand up + standard attack he should have won that eventually, although not in the most graceful or heroic of fashions.

[vasilidor]

As a DM I have had several encounters turn out to be level inappropriate. Not that I planned them that way. Like a CR 7 sea drake monster losing half its hit points to a lucky shot from a level 5 gunslinger, or a cr 3 demon wiping half the same party (at the same level) due to the fact it was invisible, and the wizard was out, no one actually died but still...

one thing I do when I come up with something that I know to be an actual too tough random encounter is ask myself "is there a way to present this in a way that they cannot, or at least do not have to, fight this?"

I often roll for random encounters before the game, to look up stats, figure out monster motivations etc. in one instance I rolled an encounter for an ancient dragon for a level 9-11 party. Rather than throw it out I thought of ways the group could interact with this dragon without getting slaughtered by it and still be meaningful. I used it to solve how I was going to give the party a one time use item to be used in the final fight of the campaign.

I generally plan on the games I run to end in the 10-14 range that one ended at 13 I think.

on the other side of the table most of what I have seen as level inappropriate stems from either a random encounter in a AD&D game or a 3.x plot device.

[Yukitsu]

Wait, what? Ghostwalk ghosts don't have the rejuvination quality of undead ghosts. Being brought to -10 destroys them and forces them into the true afterlife.

As for random encounters, the tables are supposed to be constructed by the DM so it's on him if there's nothing on them that can deal with incorporeals. Gods know there are -plenty- of things that can.

Yes, but ghosts can also just come from the savage progression which do come with rejuvenation. Just because we're using ghostwalk doesn't mean we aren't also using other books, though of course you could just say the progression is broken. It's not the only template I've seen that has it however so you'd have to ban more than one thing.

And as for what is realistically going to win against a ghost throwing open the encounter tables, it's a very, very slim minority of possible encounters. And if a DM is so responsible as to tailor make the tables so they aren't boring or arbitrary or both they certain as hell could make sure the entire table is appropriate encounters rather than ones the players just can't deal with but honestly if I'm going to be writing up a table like that it takes less time and is more interesting to tailor design the wilderness encounters.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Yes, but ghosts can also just come from the savage progression which do come with rejuvenation. Just because we're using ghostwalk doesn't mean we aren't also using other books, though of course you could just say the progression is broken. It's not the only template I've seen that has it however so you'd have to ban more than one thing.

So your argument is that by adapting the rules for ghostwalk, then entirely ignoring them by using the dramatically more powerful MM template, it's a bad idea to use the ghostwalk paradigm. Sure, that makes sense.


And as for what is realistically going to win against a ghost throwing open the encounter tables, it's a very, very slim minority of possible encounters.

"Minority," yeah probably. "Very, very slim," hardly; literally anything with an AoE energy attack, classed humanoids are prefectly capable of carrying anti-incorporeal gear at all levels, other incorporeal creatures, etc.


And if a DM is so responsible as to tailor make the tables so they aren't boring or arbitrary or both they certain as hell could make sure the entire table is appropriate encounters rather than ones the players just can't deal with but honestly if I'm going to be writing up a table like that it takes less time and is more interesting to tailor design the wilderness encounters.

They could. they could also forgoe randomnity altogether and only have narrative-relevant encounters. Making sure that some of the things in the encounter table have AoE attacks or are incorporeal is trivial. Making it such that a few of the bits of cloth you're stapling together are a particular color is hardly tailoring.

There's a lot of middle ground between 100% random and 0% random.

[Yukitsu]

So your argument is that by adapting the rules for ghostwalk, then entirely ignoring them by using the dramatically more powerful MM template, it's a bad idea to use the ghostwalk paradigm. Sure, that makes sense.

No, I'm simply contesting that just letting players continue on when dead is not a fun dynamic for the rest of the table from experience of having been in a game where that was the attitude. Pure ghostwalk is also far stronger than a standard character but obviously less extreme.


"Minority," yeah probably. "Very, very slim," hardly; literally anything with an AoE energy attack, classed humanoids are prefectly capable of carrying anti-incorporeal gear at all levels, other incorporeal creatures, etc.

Having been on the other end of the equation against incorporeals, trying to kill them with AoE energy attacks is like pulling out your own teeth with a cucumber. It's painful and not terribly effective. Anti-incorporeal gear on the humanoid encounters starts to strain suspension of disbelief if it's on a random encounter table since each one costs over 4,300 GP and some of them won't be effective either due to them being melee, or the ghost being a caster that has defenses against archery. It has been a traditionally rare enchantment for the parties I've been in except maybe on an inferior backup weapon but typically speaking, a ghost wizard is no less defended and often more defended against a weapon attack than the


They could. they could also forgoe randomnity altogether and only have narrative-relevant encounters. Making sure that some of the things in the encounter table have AoE attacks or are incorporeal is trivial. Making it such that a few of the bits of cloth you're stapling together are a particular color is hardly tailoring.

There's a lot of middle ground between 100% random and 0% random.

It's also completely trivial to not have a party run into something level inappropriate but somehow tailoring it that way is somehow wrong. I disagree, if your argument is that "there's things in the world, it's realistic for you to encounter them on a random basis" that you can tailor that list to specifically increase the odds of it including counters to a build. That's the style of play the OP is essentially advocating. Not "tailoring the odds so they specifically encounter certain fringe things" but "realism" (which I also disagree a random table is.)

[Quertus]

"realism" (which I also disagree a random table is.)

Well, I mean, if you want to map out the ancient dragon's hunting pattern (and that of every orc tribe, wolf pack, and dung beetle in your world), sure, that'd be more "realistic" than a random encounter table, I suppose. But it would be a nontrivial endeavor. At the risk of derailing the thread, let me ask: What do you suggest to combine high levels of realism & playability?

[Yukitsu]

Well, I mean, if you want to map out the ancient dragon's hunting pattern (and that of every orc tribe, wolf pack, and dung beetle in your world), sure, that'd be more "realistic" than a random encounter table, I suppose. But it would be a nontrivial endeavor. At the risk of derailing the thread, let me ask: What do you suggest to combine high levels of realism & playability?

Ignore realism, focus on playability and verisimilitude. As an example, I live in bear country. There's a very non-trivial chance when I go walking that I encounter a bear, or a cougar or a wolf or something else of that sort. And yet, I haven't been mauled by an animal of that sort ever, despite having been in the hills and woods probably hundreds of times. Tens of thousands every year visit the parks around here and the number of bear attacks is extremely low, usually involving people feeding the bears or something idiotic. So when someone says that I have X odds of encountering a dragon every time I walk along some path feels fake, it feels like a game and not a real living world, especially if the locals don't make a huge deal of that monster that picks of X of them every day.

Often, what a DM views as "realistic" isn't. What they can do is have a game that's playable.

[Kelb_Panthera]

No, I'm simply contesting that just letting players continue on when dead is not a fun dynamic for the rest of the table from experience of having been in a game where that was the attitude.

It certainly shouldn't be done without any kind of thought beyond "that'd be neat," but that's not what I was advocating anyway.


Pure ghostwalk is also far stronger than a standard character but obviously less extreme.

No, it's really not. Literally all it gives you is incorporeality and crit-immunity, the former of which comes with significant drawbacks over the long-term and that's -if- the DM discards the calling and allows flexible ghost advancement. If he doesn't it also means that you've got a hard-limit till you perma-die and have to be ress'ed and you need to be raised before leveling if you want your prestige class. It'll get expensive in a hurry unless you're in the manifest zone, where you lose the incorporeality.


Having been on the other end of the equation against incorporeals, trying to kill them with AoE energy attacks is like pulling out your own teeth with a cucumber. It's painful and not terribly effective.

Needs more dakka. Pyro/cryohyrda come in a pretty wide range of CR's. Besides, half-damage is better than no damage, ain't it.


Anti-incorporeal gear on the humanoid encounters starts to strain suspension of disbelief if it's on a random encounter table since each one costs over 4,300 GP and some of them won't be effective either due to them being melee, or the ghost being a caster that has defenses against archery. It has been a traditionally rare enchantment for the parties I've been in except maybe on an inferior backup weapon but typically speaking, a ghost wizard is no less defended and often more defended against a weapon attack than the

Ghost touch weapons are hardly the only anti-incorporeal weapon. Ghostoil from libris mortis is only 50gp per dose. There's also serren wood, stabalized ectoplasm, and riverine at a number of price-points. If ghosts are common, so would be the means to deal with them. If they're not, the DM probably shoulnd't allow a PC to be one.


It's also completely trivial to not have a party run into something level inappropriate but somehow tailoring it that way is somehow wrong.

Not wrong, just not to the OP's taste. You get that this is first and foremost a matter of taste, right?


I disagree, if your argument is that "there's things in the world, it's realistic for you to encounter them on a random basis" that you can tailor that list to specifically increase the odds of it including counters to a build.

Semi-random. It's not realistic to run into a shark in the desert. There's a logic element and a random element at play here. That there ought to be a chance of running into dangerous things and trivial things when you're out in the widerness is true enough in a realistic world. So is the idea that a world in which incorporeal spirits are fairly common, that the means for dealing with those creatures would be too.


That's the style of play the OP is essentially advocating. Not "tailoring the odds so they specifically encounter certain fringe things" but "realism" (which I also disagree a random table is.)

Because for some reason you're imagining a wholly random table drawn from everything. That's absurd. Creatures have an environment entry for a reason.

You not only can but, according to the DMG, -should- weight the tables so that about half of the encounters -are- level appropriate while the other half are supposed to range from trivial to unbeatable in a fight. Adjusting some of the weights to include creatures for dealing with a particular trait that is common enough to be a campaign feature doesn't make any less sense.

Stop presuming killer-intent on the DM's part. Stuff you can steam-roll shows up on these charts too.

[Yukitsu]

It certainly shouldn't be done without any kind of thought beyond "that'd be neat," but that's not what I was advocating anyway.

To be honest, you were advocating it as a bandaid to fix players just dying for no good reason as a continuation of the party rather than simply forcing people to waste a load of time just making characters that will die.


No, it's really not. Literally all it gives you is incorporeality and crit-immunity, the former of which comes with significant drawbacks over the long-term and that's -if- the DM discards the calling and allows flexible ghost advancement. If he doesn't it also means that you've got a hard-limit till you perma-die and have to be ress'ed and you need to be raised before leveling if you want your prestige class. It'll get expensive in a hurry unless you're in the manifest zone, where you lose the incorporeality.

This series of conversation is only really important assuming that the team can't easily run across resurrection abilities any time soon as otherwise it's often fine just waiting a little before you get raised, so running at those levels would essentially require using one or both of those variants. If you're lucky, you're at a level where you can realistically get a raise dead before you hit the calling or that could be made into a really repetitive quest (in that if death is treated cheaply you can generally expect more character deaths). That aside, being a ghost comes with a large slough of new immunities such as being immune to hold person, poison, disease and etc. The list is actually fairly vast. They also gain free perfect flight and some deflection AC that will stack with the armour that they'll likely get.


Needs more dakka. Pyro/cryohyrda come in a pretty wide range of CR's. Besides, half-damage is better than no damage, ain't it.

Depends, I definitely don't see that a pyro or cryo hydra can deal damage to ghosts in D&D since those are EX elemental attacks meaning incorporeals are immune. If you're reading of it is that they're SU abilities then I can agree but otherwise don't. As a side comparison, dragon breath is clearly marked "SU". And if they're fighting a dragon that can easily kill a ghost with its breath weapon, it's likely you just killed the rest of the party too unless you're deliberately singling out a player. There's actually a load of attacks that are in the monster manuals that look good until you realize they don't have a normal type and that many of the remaining abilities aren't magical attacks.


Ghost touch weapons are hardly the only anti-incorporeal weapon. Ghostoil from libris mortis is only 50gp per dose. There's also serren wood, stabalized ectoplasm, and riverine at a number of price-points. If ghosts are common, so would be the means to deal with them. If they're not, the DM probably shoulnd't allow a PC to be one.

Ghost oil I've used a lot in the past but it's not a super convenient thing to use. Definitely the most likely thing on the list there but at the same time unless this random adventurer is way above the level of the party, spending a turn for every couple swings to apply some oil is going to probably not be the actual strategy used. Quick caps sure, but saying all three are loaded with that would be as suspicious as one of my players saying that's what he has in there next time he fights a ghost. Riverine on the other hand costs more than ghost touch for most weapons (nor does it explicitly seem to make the weapon deal force damage since it's an armour material with "other objects" being listed as possible.) Serren is unique to Eberron so great there but also costs as much as a ghost touch weapon. Ectoplasm is the only one that's a real bargain but even that isn't going to be something that is sensible as it decays fairly rapidly meaning many wouldn't get it in the first place. I'm not assuming a world that's just overrun with ghosts here unless that's the campaign that the DM was pitching but nothing so far seems to have indicated that it should be and I am definitely not going to let you say that you only meant any of your arguments in the specific ghostwalk setting where that material is considered normal.


Not wrong, just not to the OP's taste. You get that this is first and foremost a matter of taste, right?

Given the overall tone and words used in his opening post I have difficulty in assuming that he's merely stating it as a matter of preference.


Semi-random. It's not realistic to run into a shark in the desert. There's a logic element and a random element at play here. That there ought to be a chance of running into dangerous things and trivial things when you're out in the widerness is true enough in a realistic world. So is the idea that a world in which incorporeal spirits are fairly common, that the means for dealing with those creatures would be too.

I disagree with the bolded, as I've been in the areas where those sorts of animals are common and have never been attacked by anything and have done so enough that it's statistically unlikely that I'm just lucky. It's not realistic for me to get attacked by a shark one in however many times I've been in the Pacific, it's not realistic for me to have been mauled by a bear any time I've been in the rocky mountains.


Because for some reason you're imagining a wholly random table drawn from everything. That's absurd. Creatures have an environment entry for a reason.

The OP mentions that their level 1 group could randomly encounter an ancient red dragon on the list. Maybe they were in a mountain but frankly there's a dragon that exists in almost every biome.


You not only can but, according to the DMG, -should- weight the tables so that about half of the encounters -are- level appropriate while the other half are supposed to range from trivial to unbeatable in a fight. Adjusting some of the weights to include creatures for dealing with a particular trait that is common enough to be a campaign feature doesn't make any less sense.

Stop presuming killer-intent on the DM's part. Stuff you can steam-roll shows up on these charts too.

I actually think that the DMG does not give constructive advice in creating an effective campaign either though since it essentially advocates wiping out the party X percentage of encounters.

He does again mention that specifically, he's talking about it in the context of "Then 3.x came along, with its concept of "game balance" and "level-appropriate challenges". "

Now this doesn't mean that he's outright advocating for a killer DM automatically, but if you're not concerned with game balance or level appropriate challenges you're certainly going to be killing player characters off. If that isn't happening then it's likely that those are level appropriate challenges and you're simply too enamoured with the idea that the CR ratings are correct. You can't really do something that you know is going to result in player deaths and pretend as though it's not your fault.

[Kelb_Panthera]

To be honest, you were advocating it as a bandaid to fix players just dying for no good reason as a continuation of the party rather than simply forcing people to waste a load of time just making characters that will die.

No, I was advocating it as a narrative option. There's interesting things to be done with it if you work with it instead of just stapling it onto an otherwise normal game.

I'm actually quite comfortable with an old-fashioned meat-grinder game. The trick to making those fun is to keep the character builds simple enough you can knock 'em out in 15-20 minutes. Just because you -can- spend two weeks building a character doesn't mean you have to or should.


This series of conversation is only really important assuming that the team can't easily run across resurrection abilities any time soon as otherwise it's often fine just waiting a little before you get raised, so running at those levels would essentially require using one or both of those variants. If you're lucky, you're at a level where you can realistically get a raise dead before you hit the calling or that could be made into a really repetitive quest (in that if death is treated cheaply you can generally expect more character deaths).

The idea behind those things is to disincentivize remaining as a ghost for too long. It's not strictly necessary if you can handle ghost players is some other way.


That aside, being a ghost comes with a large slough of new immunities such as being immune to hold person, poison, disease and etc. The list is actually fairly vast. They also gain free perfect flight and some deflection AC that will stack with the armour that they'll likely get.

These are the outsider traits:


An outsider possesses the following traits (unless otherwise noted in a creature’s entry).

Darkvision out to 60 feet.
Unlike most other living creatures, an outsider does not have a dual nature—its soul and body form one unit. When an outsider is slain, no soul is set loose. Spells that restore souls to their bodies, such as raise dead, reincarnate, and resurrection, don’t work on an outsider. It takes a different magical effect, such as limited wish, wish, miracle, or true resurrection to restore it to life. An outsider with the native subtype can be raised, reincarnated, or resurrected just as other living creatures can be.
Proficient with all simple and martial weapons and any weapons mentioned in its entry.
Proficient with whatever type of armor (light, medium, or heavy) it is described as wearing, as well as all lighter types. Outsiders not indicated as wearing armor are not proficient with armor. Outsiders are proficient with shields if they are proficient with any form of armor.
Outsiders breathe, but do not need to eat or sleep (although they can do so if they wish). Native outsiders breathe, eat, and sleep.

Note the distinct lack of immunities. Even the crit immunity comes from the ghost template itself. The immunities commonly enjoyed by outsiders come from their subtypes and individual kinds. Ghostwalk ghosts are immune to precision damage, poisons and disease not tailored to them, and that's pretty much it. It takes the higher level spells than humans to affect them with stuff like charm and such but that's not immunity; resistance at best.


Depends, I definitely don't see that a pyro or cryo hydra can deal damage to ghosts in D&D since those are EX elemental attacks meaning incorporeals are immune. If you're reading of it is that they're SU abilities then I can agree but otherwise don't. As a side comparison, dragon breath is clearly marked "SU". And if they're fighting a dragon that can easily kill a ghost with its breath weapon, it's likely you just killed the rest of the party too unless you're deliberately singling out a player. There's actually a load of attacks that are in the monster manuals that look good until you realize they don't have a normal type and that many of the remaining abilities aren't magical attacks.

MM glossary says that a breath weapon is a SU unless otherwise noted.

A dragon that could torch/melt/electrocute an incorporeal doesn't do any better or worse damage to corporeal foes. It's just the same 50% miss rate he gets from other magical attacks. Sometimes the dice get you, sometimes they don't. Evasion is a thing, so are tower shields. It's not like the rest of the party is guaranteed to be more doomed than the caster. Pretty much any energy based AoE is gonna be able to affect a ghost just fine.


Ghost oil I've used a lot in the past but it's not a super convenient thing to use. Definitely the most likely thing on the list there but at the same time unless this random adventurer is way above the level of the party, spending a turn for every couple swings to apply some oil is going to probably not be the actual strategy used. Quick caps sure, but saying all three are loaded with that would be as suspicious as one of my players saying that's what he has in there next time he fights a ghost. Riverine on the other hand costs more than ghost touch for most weapons (nor does it explicitly seem to make the weapon deal force damage since it's an armour material with "other objects" being listed as possible.) Serren is unique to Eberron so great there but also costs as much as a ghost touch weapon. Ectoplasm is the only one that's a real bargain but even that isn't going to be something that is sensible as it decays fairly rapidly meaning many wouldn't get it in the first place. I'm not assuming a world that's just overrun with ghosts here unless that's the campaign that the DM was pitching but nothing so far seems to have indicated that it should be and I am definitely not going to let you say that you only meant any of your arguments in the specific ghostwalk setting where that material is considered normal.

Serren isn't unique to eberron. It was first introduced in BoED. None of them is perfect, of course, but the variety of options make it far less difficult to run into such things with believable frequency.


Given the overall tone and words used in his opening post I have difficulty in assuming that he's merely stating it as a matter of preference.

It's inherently a matter of taste and always was. Charitable interpretation is an important factor in civil conversation.


I disagree with the bolded, as I've been in the areas where those sorts of animals are common and have never been attacked by anything and have done so enough that it's statistically unlikely that I'm just lucky. It's not realistic for me to get attacked by a shark one in however many times I've been in the Pacific, it's not realistic for me to have been mauled by a bear any time I've been in the rocky mountains.

Real life predators don't predate on humans, generally. You've probably passed closer to a couple bears than you think.

If that's your concern though, the random encounter rules put the frequency of random encounters -way- too high. It's something like once a day or so in the more hospitable regions.


The OP mentions that their level 1 group could randomly encounter an ancient red dragon on the list. Maybe they were in a mountain but frankly there's a dragon that exists in almost every biome.

As you say, there's a dragon for each of the major environs and they range -quite- far. Level 1 is a bad point for making determination since there are -only- higher level threats at that stage of the game.


I actually think that the DMG does not give constructive advice in creating an effective campaign either though since it essentially advocates wiping out the party X percentage of encounters.

Depends on what you want from the campaign. This goes back to taste. Party wipes happening isn't a big deal in a world where adventurers are common enough that a segment of the economy is dedicated to them. One party wipes going to kill the big red in the mountains, the next one comes along a few weeks later.


He does again mention that specifically, he's talking about it in the context of "Then 3.x came along, with its concept of "game balance" and "level-appropriate challenges".

Yes? That was a notable paradigm shift for some players of the older versions. "Gygaxian" and "Monty haul" are terms for a reason. Heck, from what I understand, metagaming used to be encouraged.


Now this doesn't mean that he's outright advocating for a killer DM automatically, but if you're not concerned with game balance or level appropriate challenges you're certainly going to be killing player characters off. If that isn't happening then it's likely that those are level appropriate challenges and you're simply too enamoured with the idea that the CR ratings are correct. You can't really do something that you know is going to result in player deaths and pretend as though it's not your fault.

See, you're using absolutes in a probabilistic situation. You can't -know- what the tables will give you and even if it does give something horrifying it's not a guaranteed wipe. It's also not a concern unless it is. Some players like testing their mettle against the meat-grinder.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

One of the most enduring memories of a Pathfinder game I ran was from a downtime session, as players were leveling up and dealing with loot, some were getting kind of antsy, so I rolled a random encounter on the Urban table. Rolled a CR 10 rakshasa. My party was level 5.

My plan was for it to try to lure away somebody and replace them; instead, the paladin used his Detect Evil, and struck first. That didn't make me too happy, but they managed to win. Fortunately our archer had silver arrows, and our paladin had Bless Weapon. After a seemingly futile battle, the rakshasa was withdrawing, and our archer managed to kill her with a crit. I played Bon Jovi's Shot Through The Heart when that happened.

[Yukitsu]

No, I was advocating it as a narrative option. There's interesting things to be done with it if you work with it instead of just stapling it onto an otherwise normal game.

I'm actually quite comfortable with an old-fashioned meat-grinder game. The trick to making those fun is to keep the character builds simple enough you can knock 'em out in 15-20 minutes. Just because you -can- spend two weeks building a character doesn't mean you have to or should.

Right, but that lends a limit to the level you can play with, or the people you can play with. My group can't knock out a level 1 character in 15-20 minutes on average and we certainly can't make a character that's say level 5 in 15-20 minutes. I couldn't even make one I'd want to play at that level in less than 3 hours and I'm by far the fastest in my group. It's not hard to slam out someone with little though behind it and with incomplete or poor mechanics, but then I have to play that thing.


The idea behind those things is to disincentivize remaining as a ghost for too long. It's not strictly necessary if you can handle ghost players is some other way.

While I agree that is what it's for and it does a good job at that, if you're say, a level 2 character, you'll probably not be able to do anything before you permanently pass on, so while you get to play the character with those rules for a few levels longer, unless you have easy access to priests that are willing to raise you, you are dead and so the problem is delayed but not actually solved. Of course if you're more like level 7 or something as an example, you can just get a raise dead cast on you so it's a moot point if combat is super deadly although annoying to be falling further and further behind in levels if it keeps happening.


These are the outsider traits:



Note the distinct lack of immunities. Even the crit immunity comes from the ghost template itself. The immunities commonly enjoyed by outsiders come from their subtypes and individual kinds. Ghostwalk ghosts are immune to precision damage, poisons and disease not tailored to them, and that's pretty much it. It takes the higher level spells than humans to affect them with stuff like charm and such but that's not immunity; resistance at best.

Aren't most poisons physical though? I guess that there are specific anti-ghost poisons but I still don't see it as sensible that something like black lotus working on a ghost. And for things like charm person that still is immunity. It's full susceptability to higher level effects but if you're up against something that has charm monster and you're not high enough level to be immune to it regardless then the issue isn't whether or not you're immune to that one ability.


MM glossary says that a breath weapon is a SU unless otherwise noted.

The Hydra for some reason doesn't have a Breath Weapon, but instead their own unique thing. I definitely wouldn't take issue with someone running it that as though it is a glossary definition breath weapon since I kind of think it should be. As written though, it isn't.


A dragon that could torch/melt/electrocute an incorporeal doesn't do any better or worse damage to corporeal foes. It's just the same 50% miss rate he gets from other magical attacks. Sometimes the dice get you, sometimes they don't. Evasion is a thing, so are tower shields. It's not like the rest of the party is guaranteed to be more doomed than the caster. Pretty much any energy based AoE is gonna be able to affect a ghost just fine.

That's not entirely true, an incorporeal creature is slightly more likely to pass the save than the party at large since they can fairly easily have enough cover to get the bonus to the save, even when in the open. As you mention as well, they have a 50% chance to outright ignore the attack and their HP isn't any lower than the party at large. On the level average, if it can kill that ghost, odds are not bad that it also kills the living members as well. I suppose if it's purely random that you encounter this in the first place then the fact that it can do this is irrelevant anyway.


Serren isn't unique to eberron. It was first introduced in BoED. None of them is perfect, of course, but the variety of options make it far less difficult to run into such things with believable frequency.

I think barring the ectoplasm, the main problem across the board is still just the cost. If you're say, using a level 5 character, you're looking at a character that has put functionally all of his wealth into just being able to attack ghosts. By the time you get to level 10, the Serren or Riverine is a full quarter of your wealth. Having those sorts of weapons on NPCs that have about 16K available feels incredibly contrived unless there's a reason for them to be worried about ghosts more than any other type of encounter. Unless ghosts just fill your random encounter table, this really kills immersion for more than a few characters to have this kind of item.


It's inherently a matter of taste and always was. Charitable interpretation is an important factor in civil conversation.

I think even with the most charitable of interpretations, there's a definite statement of preference for one taste at the expense of the other.


Real life predators don't predate on humans, generally. You've probably passed closer to a couple bears than you think.

If that's your concern though, the random encounter rules put the frequency of random encounters -way- too high. It's something like once a day or so in the more hospitable regions.

Part of the problem is frequency but it doesn't have to be. If the DM is using "encounter" to mean "you see something" that's fine. If you're using it the way it's used in the DMG, that being you and them close enough and with enough specific potential for hostility that you get EXP for surviving, then no, I've never encountered a bear, wolf, coyote or anything else of that nature regardless of them being close or not. Maybe the OP means that the dragon just flies by, but then it fails to really be an unfair encounter.


As you say, there's a dragon for each of the major environs and they range -quite- far. Level 1 is a bad point for making determination since there are -only- higher level threats at that stage of the game.

Even by level 10, assuming the dragon is played intelligently, it's likely to beat a party really badly. Even if it's a 100 item list and you only encounter it 1 in 100 times, that's still far, far too often. And if it's a 1000 item list where the party probably won't get killed by it, and nothing else on the list is even close to that brutal, you could also have simply not used the list in the first place.


Depends on what you want from the campaign. This goes back to taste. Party wipes happening isn't a big deal in a world where adventurers are common enough that a segment of the economy is dedicated to them. One party wipes going to kill the big red in the mountains, the next one comes along a few weeks later.

Hard for me to say really. All I know is that when combat is arbitrarily deadly the players certainly aren't invested in what's happening and it's even harder to get any sense of a plot developed. I'm not actually sure what at all I'm getting from a world where X days in I just die, it doesn't seem to lend anything advantageous to the game at all from what I can see.


Yes? That was a notable paradigm shift for some players of the older versions. "Gygaxian" and "Monty haul" are terms for a reason. Heck, from what I understand, metagaming used to be encouraged.

To be fair, I don't see it as Monty Haul to not arbitrarily kill the entire party periodically. I don't even think I can find reference to that being preferable in the earliest editions of the game even though their rules seem to support it happening.


See, you're using absolutes in a probabilistic situation. You can't -know- what the tables will give you and even if it does give something horrifying it's not a guaranteed wipe. It's also not a concern unless it is. Some players like testing their mettle against the meat-grinder.

If I flip a coin enough times, I can treat it as a given that at some point it will arrive on heads. If 25% of your encounter chart is, as was recommended by the DMG completely unfair for the players, then you only need 4 encounters before it's likely to have happened. If you roll for a campaign that only lasts a month, the odds of it begin to approach guaranteed at that ratio. Probabilities definitely aren't certainties but at a certain point when you're a DM you can't use that as a defence. You can't say to your players, "you die if you roll a 1 in this room, it takes you 50 turns to cross it" and then be surprised when several of them die. Yeah it's not a guarantee that they'll die but it's a probable thing that they will and you can't blame the dice on it either. There's a point where for all intents and purposes, it's a guarantee and depending on campaign length and size of table, random encounters are one of those.

[TheBrassDuke]

Semi-random. It's not realistic to run into a shark in the desert. There's a logic element and a random element at play here. That there ought to be a chance of running into dangerous things and trivial things when you're out in the widerness is true enough in a realistic world. So is the idea that a world in which incorporeal spirits are fairly common, that the means for dealing with those creatures would be too.

It's realistic if you're running around in one of my deserts--especially if you're near one of the ruins of the Devourer--the Monastary of the Sandshark. 😏

[Larrx]

See here's the source of the communications break-down, right here. You're putting the narrative element of the game first and foremost and presuming everyone else does or should do the same. That's not the case. Some of us, Quertus included it seems, hold the gamist elements as more important. For such players the narrative may be nothing more than a paper-thin veneer with which to string encounters together. The appeal is in the problem-solving elements and the random chance of the dice rolls. A way-over CR enemy isn't to be fought, it's to be negotiated with, escaped from, or tricked in some way. Or to be crushed by because you, the player, misread the situation and it's time to roll out the backup character until or unless what's left of you gets ress'ed or reincarnated.



I also think that the game part of an Rpg is important. The narrative stuff is fun and important, but implying that one is better or more valuable would indeed lead to the kind of communication breakdown you describe. That's not what I'm attempting to put forward. In fact, if I cared about the game stuff more than the story stuff, I would be even more strict about cr than I am already. The game part needs to be fair, right? Everyone gets that, right? I'm not just screaming into the wind. Right? Please? Over the course of human history every game or competition has ended up rigorously fair, because people like that. If the playing field is level, then the contest is interesting and the resolution depends on skill at the game rather than luck.

There has never been a Super Bowl where one team was allowed twice as many players, or started with an extra 90 points, because that would be boring, predictable, and not be determined by who was better at football.

If the game was -just- tactical squad based combat, then it would need to be as balanced as chess, where even the 'winner of initiative' is rotated between rounds. A narrative focus actually allows more freedom with regards to unfair, lopsided contests.

And these can be fun, and narratively useful, if used well. But using them well requires them to not be random.

Losing because of a random die roll is fun if the contest was fair. Losing because you underestimated your place in the world can be narratively satisfying if the story is well structured. Rolling a new character because you chose to go left instead of right is unfun from both a game and story perspective.

I'm not trying to strawman here. I do believe that the op suggested exactly this. It presented the idea that danger could be anywhere and that this was more realistic than encountering reasonable threats. This is simply not the case. Real people in the real world can anticipate danger, they know where it is unsafe to tread, and they go as far as they dare. It's predictable. All of us do it every day. People make mistakes to be sure, and there are sometimes surprises, but there is only real agency if players -chose- what threats they are willing to tackle.

If players don't understand the world they inhabit, and can't make informed choices, then they aren't playing a game or participating in a story. They're watching a movie.

[Amphetryon]

The game part needs to be fair, right? Everyone gets that, right? I'm not just screaming into the wind. Right? Please? Over the course of human history every game or competition has ended up rigorously fair, because people like that. If the playing field is level, then the contest is interesting and the resolution depends on skill at the game rather than luck.Perhaps you're using the word "fair" here differently than I understand the term. Multiple sporting competitions over the course of human history have taken place where one competitor/team had such a significant skill advantage over the competition that the outcome was never seriously in doubt; the side with the skill disadvantage is called a "long-shot" at some minuscule chance of actually prevailing. Consider, for example, a Chess Grandmaster going to play a game in the park against casual players.

Move the discussion outside the realm of sporting events and no doubt more examples spring up.

[Bucky]

Chess is fair in the sense that, if a casual player makes the same move as a grandmaster, it has the same result. There's no case where the casual player's masterwork knight misses a pawn where the grandmaster's +5 knight captures it.

---

D&D is expected to be fair in a much looser sense, in that player agency matters to the outcome of an encounter and that a single reasonable but wrong decision should not result in a TPK.

[Amphetryon]

Chess is fair in the sense that, if a casual player makes the same move as a grandmaster, it has the same result. There's no case where the casual player's masterwork knight misses a pawn where the grandmaster's +5 knight captures it.

And encounters in RPGs are fair in the same sense; they are bound by the rules of the RPG. This is true whether encountering a 1HP Goblin or a 5000HP Red Wyrm.

[Yukitsu]

And encounters in RPGs are fair in the same sense; they are bound by the rules of the RPG. This is true whether encountering a 1HP Goblin or a 5000HP Red Wyrm.

To be fair, not only do both players use the same rules in chess, but they also use the same pieces. It's the skill between the players that dictates the winner, not what's on the board at the start. Not that this would be a good game if the DM just used a clone party and there was only ever one combat before the parties reset, but a 1 HP goblin using the same rules as a 50000 HP dragon or what have you isn't any more fair than a board where there's 1 King on one side and 20 Queens on the other.

[manyslayer]

A friend and I have talked about this several times. He is much more for the random result is a red wyrm then it is a red wyrm and I for more balanced encounters. That said, an unbalanced encounter (random or not) does force the PCs to think and assess but not every such encounter can lead to better role-play, especially if there is no real interaction with the encounter beyond combat or avoidance (mindless or raging monsters).

My friend says, "Well, the dragon is there so there is a chance the party encounters it. If it is too tough for them, oh well." My argument is that yes, a party wandering in the red dragon's territory would have a chance to encounter the dragon; that party got unceremoniously scorched out of existence in an uninteresting encounter and we do not hear about their story. This is the story of the adventurers that have a chance.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I also think that the game part of an Rpg is important. The narrative stuff is fun and important, but implying that one is better or more valuable would indeed lead to the kind of communication breakdown you describe. That's not what I'm attempting to put forward. In fact, if I cared about the game stuff more than the story stuff, I would be even more strict about cr than I am already. The game part needs to be fair, right? Everyone gets that, right? I'm not just screaming into the wind. Right? Please? Over the course of human history every game or competition has ended up rigorously fair, because people like that. If the playing field is level, then the contest is interesting and the resolution depends on skill at the game rather than luck.

There has never been a Super Bowl where one team was allowed twice as many players, or started with an extra 90 points, because that would be boring, predictable, and not be determined by who was better at football.

If the game was -just- tactical squad based combat, then it would need to be as balanced as chess, where even the 'winner of initiative' is rotated between rounds. A narrative focus actually allows more freedom with regards to unfair, lopsided contests.

And these can be fun, and narratively useful, if used well. But using them well requires them to not be random.

Losing because of a random die roll is fun if the contest was fair. Losing because you underestimated your place in the world can be narratively satisfying if the story is well structured. Rolling a new character because you chose to go left instead of right is unfun from both a game and story perspective.

I'm not trying to strawman here. I do believe that the op suggested exactly this. It presented the idea that danger could be anywhere and that this was more realistic than encountering reasonable threats. This is simply not the case. Real people in the real world can anticipate danger, they know where it is unsafe to tread, and they go as far as they dare. It's predictable. All of us do it every day. People make mistakes to be sure, and there are sometimes surprises, but there is only real agency if players -chose- what threats they are willing to tackle.

If players don't understand the world they inhabit, and can't make informed choices, then they aren't playing a game or participating in a story. They're watching a movie.

I can rebutt this whole thing in a single sentence; some people enjoy gambling.

I'll elaborate anyway. When you're playing a gambling game, the odds are almost never completely fair. That doesn't stop many, many people from making it a multi-billion dollar industry even before you consider addicts.

Encounters in this analogy are like a game of poker. There is an element of random chance and sometimes it just plain screws you. However, if you learn how to read the opposition and the house (the DM) you know when to fold and when to bluff (flee or negotiate with the creature). Ultimately though, you do just plain lose the hand sometimes (tpk).

And unlike a game of poker, playing the numbers game to improve your odds (counting cards) won't get your legs broken so that's an improvement. :smalltongue:

[Yukitsu]

And unlike a game of poker, playing the numbers game to improve your odds (counting cards) won't get your legs broken so that's an improvement. :smalltongue:

If someone broke your legs for counting cards in poker, I rather suspect that the cards had nothing to do with it and they just didn't like you having working legs.

[Kelb_Panthera]

If someone broke your legs for counting cards in poker, I rather suspect that the cards had nothing to do with it and they just didn't like you having working legs.

You don't often play poker with strangers, huh?

In spite of the fact it's perfectly legitimate strategy, counting cards in poker is largely considered to be cheating; to the point that legitimate casinos will ask you to leave if you're believed to be doing it and players in a seedier context will take more... dramatic measures.

[Yukitsu]

You don't often play poker with strangers, huh?

In spite of the fact it's perfectly legitimate strategy, counting cards in poker is largely considered to be cheating; to the point that legitimate casinos will ask you to leave if you're believed to be doing it and players in a seedier context will take more... dramatic measures.

You don't count cards in poker, you count outs but only if it's Texas which I don't play so I don't know as much about. Card counting would only concern the house either way in something other than poker because you don't play the house and they get paid no matter who wins.

Card counting only gets you kicked out of blackjack tables since it's been proven to yield a profit against the house. That isn't something you can do in poker since they don't have a cumulative track of cards to start stacking odds over a long period before a new set of decks are introduced, instead there's a shuffle for each pot meaning the odds reset between hands.

I mean, I can only barely count cards but I know enough about it to know that me doing it playing poker gives me no material advantage over memorizing a hand probabilities chart.

[Deophaun]

The true pros count cards at the roulette tables.




What? I'm saying their eyesight's good enough to see from there.

[Amphetryon]

Maybe I'm in the minority here, so I'll ask:

How many of you have sat around telling stories of that time your group overcame that one challenge that was, in every way, appropriate and expected for your Characters' level? Conversely, how many stories do you know of Characters overcoming extremely difficult odds?

These questions are in no way intended as sarcastic or snarky.

[Yukitsu]

Maybe I'm in the minority here, so I'll ask:

How many of you have sat around telling stories of that time your group overcame that one challenge that was, in every way, appropriate and expected for your Characters' level? Conversely, how many stories do you know of Characters overcoming extremely difficult odds?

These questions are in no way intended as sarcastic or snarky.

It depends on what the question is referring to in some respects. My experience has been that an encounter can be memorable because of a wide variety of things. My friend and I most vividly remember an encounter with a low level sapient dog that got hit by a hideous laughter spell which we then rolled into a carpet and threw into a bog. That encounter was not difficult nor intended to be.

When talking about extremely difficult encounters, I can't say I remember them very well since we didn't get to do anything about them. I recall one where our DM rolled all natural 20s and we all rolled all natural 1s but the encounter itself was not memorable in that I don't remember what the monster was or how that shook down other than loads of us dying. I also remember we encountered an extremely powerful dragon like in the random table mentioned in the OP, we simply didn't stand a chance, we lost end of story. That was also not memorable. But I also know that our party has had long, difficult struggles against seriously under CR encounters. One of my players at level 5 failed to kill a level 3 rogue and eventually died in the encounter. I also remember an incredibly meat grindery CoC game I once played where we were constantly fighting things we couldn't win against. All I remember was small rooms, narrow corridors, no option to disengage and not having a particularly good time sans when we could basically irritate the people telling us to do things, the combat was neither interesting nor memorable. I'm sure we won some encounters because we didn't constantly rewrite characters but no, none of those challenges were interesting and aren't the things we talk about at our gaming table.

According to my players, the most memorable moment I DMed wasn't a difficult fight. In fact, they "won" it even if they did nothing. It was a man in a horror setting at a butcher table using a cleaver to chop a chunk of meat and shove it into a grinder. He simply didn't stop when he ran out of meat and once most of his arm was in the grinder he keeled over into it. While they could have run in and done something about the guy, he wasn't a fight really and they had a definite easy time dealing with him (doing nothing).

[SimonMoon6]

In my 1st edition AD&D game (back when there was no such thing as 2nd edition... but Unearthed Arcana had just come out), the PCs' first adventure involved them fighting a lich (an insane lich who cast spells poorly, but still a lich). The second adventure had them fight an unmemorable chimera (but from the descriptions of it, they were supposed to think it was Tiamat). Their third adventure had them on an island full of beholders (though one PC had a plot device artifact that helped him survive... the rest of the PCs just had to take their chances).

[Quertus]

I disagree with the bolded, as I've been in the areas where those sorts of animals are common and have never been attacked by anything and have done so enough that it's statistically unlikely that I'm just lucky. It's not realistic for me to get attacked by a shark one in however many times I've been in the Pacific, it's not realistic for me to have been mauled by a bear any time I've been in the rocky mountains.


Ignore realism, focus on playability and verisimilitude. As an example, I live in bear country. There's a very non-trivial chance when I go walking that I encounter a bear, or a cougar or a wolf or something else of that sort. And yet, I haven't been mauled by an animal of that sort ever, despite having been in the hills and woods probably hundreds of times. Tens of thousands every year visit the parks around here and the number of bear attacks is extremely low, usually involving people feeding the bears or something idiotic. So when someone says that I have X odds of encountering a dragon every time I walk along some path feels fake, it feels like a game and not a real living world, especially if the locals don't make a huge deal of that monster that picks of X of them every day.

Often, what a DM views as "realistic" isn't. What they can do is have a game that's playable.

I have encountered bears, and several other creatures way above my ECL as random encounters IRL, sometimes "off in the distance", but often at terrifyingly close range (some D&D characters would have "started within melee range" without taking more than a 5' step). Fortunately for me, none of these creatures viewed this as a combat encounter.

If they had, I probably wouldn't be here today. But, if I had survived, what a story that would be! That is something that seems to be missing from this tangent: the sheer awesomeness of surviving such amazing events.

Fortunately, this does not appear to be lost on many of those whose stories now grace my thread.


Given the overall tone and words used in his opening post I have difficulty in assuming that he's merely stating it as a matter of preference.

Hmmm... Let me start with a story. I've gamed under a lot of different GMs, and most of them were bad. The most common bad trait was to put story first. They'd happily have Superman ruthlessly kill a drug-addicted Batman if they thought it made for a "good story". Under one in particular, as of the first session, it was easy enough to tell that no PC would ever die, and not just how many but which characters would still be conscious when the BBEG was finally defeated, because that was what he believed made for the best story. It made actually playing through the game... uninteresting. I'd say I'd rather just have read the book, but even the book would have been predictable and dull.

So, yes, my experiences have helped shape my belief that realism > game play > story. Since you didn't like my words, let me borrow someone else's: simulation > gamist > narrative. And, for the longest time, I thought anyone who cared about story was either wrong, or "brain damaged". Now, switching back to my words, I have learned that here, to, it is a matter if taste, and there exist people who can genuinely care about story over game play or even realism, and, to them, that's fun.

But I have a lot of practice speaking from a much less tolerant, much more zealous PoV than I now hold. And that practice doubtless bleeds into my word choice, because those are the words I am accustomed to using.

But no statement of one way being "better" was implied through any intent on my part, nor would one be correct to infer that I believe this is more than a matter of preference.

Yes, there are games that are just bad. And some of these bad games have helped forge my preferences. But choice of style is simply mastery of preference, not of any inherent superiority of one style over another.

Oh, and although I wouldn't have been able to tell you this 30 years ago, because I didn't consciously realize it, I've actually held playable / fun > realism > game play > story as my preferences.


The OP mentions that their level 1 group could randomly encounter an ancient red dragon on the list. Maybe they were in a mountain but frankly there's a dragon that exists in almost every biome.

Minor clarification: I never claimed it was my group. In fact, I have so many issues with the supposed "best" group in the area that I referenced in the initial post that I never had any interest in joining their group. And I prided myself on playing with as many groups as possible!

While they put strong effort into "realism", they left off the "playable/fun" entry in my playable / fun > realism > game play > story hierarchy.


If the DM is using "encounter" to mean "you see something" that's fine. Maybe the OP means that the dragon just flies by, but then it fails to really be an unfair encounter.

IIRC (as I said, I wasn't part of this group), when they randomly encountered said dragon, it was just flying overhead. Some idiot shot at it, and the party fled in different directions, while "toasty" got his just deserts.


You can't really do something that you know is going to result in player deaths and pretend as though it's not your fault.

This implies a style preference which is not universal. It's like claiming that the person who invented chess is at "fault" for all the pawn deaths.

Aaaand my phone is almost out of charge. I've tried to delete everything I haven't responded to; apologies if I missed something.

[Yukitsu]

I have encountered bears, and several other creatures way above my ECL as random encounters IRL, sometimes "off in the distance", but often at terrifyingly close range (some D&D characters would have "started within melee range" without taking more than a 5' step). Fortunately for me, none of these creatures viewed this as a combat encounter.

If they had, I probably wouldn't be here today. But, if I had survived, what a story that would be! That is something that seems to be missing from this tangent: the sheer awesomeness of surviving such amazing events.

Fortunately, this does not appear to be lost on many of those whose stories now grace my thread.

On this point, I wouldn't count your experiences as "encounters" as defined by the DMG or the way D&D strictly treats it. If you do, that is fine. However, I wouldn't call that an unfair or inappropriate encounter. I've seen those off in the distance as well, but I never consider myself having encountered any of them.

As for how awesome it is to survive one, it's not very. Often you just curl into a ball and cry and the bear decides you're too pathetic to keep attacking and then you go to hospital, sometimes with reports of extreme trauma and permanent disfigurement. Fighting off a bear is extremely, extremely rare. I don't honestly know of many people who would say that they thought the encounter was exciting in a positive way.


Hmmm... Let me start with a story. I've gamed under a lot of different GMs, and most of them were bad. The most common bad trait was to put story first. They'd happily have Superman ruthlessly kill a drug-addicted Batman if they thought it made for a "good story". Under one in particular, as of the first session, it was easy enough to tell that no PC would ever die, and not just how many but which characters would still be conscious when the BBEG was finally defeated, because that was what he believed made for the best story. It made actually playing through the game... uninteresting. I'd say I'd rather just have read the book, but even the book would have been predictable and dull.

So, yes, my experiences have helped shape my belief that realism > game play > story. Since you didn't like my words, let me borrow someone else's: simulation > gamist > narrative. And, for the longest time, I thought anyone who cared about story was either wrong, or "brain damaged". Now, switching back to my words, I have learned that here, to, it is a matter if taste, and there exist people who can genuinely care about story over game play or even realism, and, to them, that's fun.

Ugh, that theory. Yeah, it's not exactly conducive to coming into these conversations without trying to take a stand one way or another.


IIRC (as I said, I wasn't part of this group), when they randomly encountered said dragon, it was just flying overhead. Some idiot shot at it, and the party fled in different directions, while "toasty" got his just deserts.

This still sort of begs the question: What does a roll on a random encounter table actually represent? To me, it means, an encounter. It means if the players survive, they get EXP. A random encounter table under that system can easily be unfair since there's an expectation that this encounter reacts to and is a danger to the party. By contrast if your encounter table just means "I rolled something, you see it." then it's not really an unfair or inappropriate encounter. If a dragon isn't even heading towards the party then it is in no way unfair.


This implies a style preference which is not universal. It's like claiming that the person who invented chess is at "fault" for all the pawn deaths.

Aaaand my phone is almost out of charge. I've tried to delete everything I haven't responded to; apologies if I missed something.


And he is at fault for the pawn deaths because he designed them to be sacrificial. They're meant to be lost in large numbers. Just like players in a D&D game can end up being disposable or not based on what the DM populates the world with, he can't add in dangerous encounters that are guaranteed to kill the party and claim he's innocent when they get killed off, that DM is still a killer DM.