Adjusting difficulty through tactics [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

MoiMagnus

2023-11-16, 08:42 AM

It's okay as a quick fix to another GM intervention that raised difficulty.

Like you, as a GM, just introduced a new enemy or a new ability in a way totally unpredictable by the players. And you realised after introducing it that the enemy behaving in a clever way would absolutely destroy the players, and that wasn't you plan. Then it's totally fine to give him the idiot ball as a fix, because the contrary would be even more frustrating for the players.

Similarly, if you used as a hook a PC's background, and that the consequence is an encounter that would go pretty badly if the enemies were playing currently, you might want to give them the idiot ball, because otherwise players will fear to put anything dangerous in their background.

Another common example is if the GM is setting up a battle ground and saying "you all start here", then you roll for initiative and the enemy wizard wins the initiative, casting a fireball on the group of PCs, exploiting the fact that they start nearby one another, fact that was not chosen by the players but by the GM, would be of terrible taste. A temporary idiot ball of "waiting for the second turn before casting fireball" is probably warranted as a fix for this GMing's mistake.

But if it becomes regular, it should be a table convention. In other words, even if the rules are implicit, you, as a GM, should have an intuitive understanding about which kind of tactics you are banning and why.

For example, our table has for convention that whenever an enemy consider "finishing off / executing" a player character, it will always be clearly signalled in a way that give to every other player the time to intervene (they might fail to do so, but they had the opportunity). So something along the line of "and then the enemy uses the remaining of his movement to reach X's body, and intend to execute them next turn".

King of Nowhere

2023-11-16, 10:50 AM

for me, it's bad. as a player I can generally recognize when it's done, and it feels like railroading - in that it removes player agency. mixed with a bit of contempt of the "you're too dumb to notice i'm doing this" variety.
sure, there are some cases where the idiot ball is fine. a dumb brute will rarely have an advanced strategy, and even a top wizard can make mistakes in the heat of the moment. failing to use very subtle combos is reasonable, and does not count as picking the idiot ball. the players will make mistakes, the opponents should maake some suboptimal decisions too. but specifically stopping attacks on the guy who's about to die to hit someone else, that's stupid strategy of the highest caliber, and it is a mood killer for me. the one time it could have saved my life, i told the dm to go ahead and kill me, i'd rather that than having the enemy unexplicably fail to finish me (i got resurrected, but i was down a level for half of the campaign).

fudging the dice is also something that i'd rather the dm not do. if i am about to lose a fight, let me lose that fight. as a dm, i strongly encourage the players to pick up some single use telepotations for a quick escape in such cases. "thanks to your planning you narrowly escaped from this losing fight, you will heal and return better prepared" makes for a great story. "and then the enemies suddenly started acting like morons instead of killing you" does not. "and then you suddenly got extremely lucky" is only marginally better.
Also "and then your friend arrives in the nick of time to save you" can work, with an ooc explanation that yes, it was a deus ex machina to avoid a tpk. at least it's honest.

KorvinStarmast

2023-11-16, 11:19 AM

Is adjusting encounter difficulty on the fly by having one or more monsters pick up the idiot ball or display a burst of tactical acumen seen as an acceptable GM strategy around here?
Or is it something more suspect, along the lines of fudging dice?

Some examples to clarify would be:
The dragon giving up on using its breath attack, and instead landing and starting to mix it up in melee with the fighters that forgot to bring any ranged weapons.
The ogre opting to start spreading their attacks around so everyone loses a bit of health but the low health tank that just ate 2 back to back crits lives to fight another day.

Or for the reverse option
The spellcasting monster deciding to drop CC on the parties glass cannons instead of blasting ineffectually at the surprisingly burly front line for another round.
The mobile monster infiltrating the back lines and breaking the parties only light source leaving them all blind.

etc.
I have done both, but, what I do for your second example is first take a look at the INT score of the leader of the enemy, or the enemy / enemies if it's a group, and see how clever I assess them to be.

Now, if this group of foes, or some of them, have encountered the party before, then the gloves are off. Expect a better prepared enemy if you are fighting them a second time.

Sapphire Guard

2023-11-16, 11:21 AM

Can go well, can be disastrous. Your ogre might well think 'this one took two heavy hits but isn't down, I'd better try a softer target'

The problem with effective tactics is that they tend to work. If effective monsters immediately kill the party and with them the campaign, it might not be a good idea.

Atranen

2023-11-16, 02:34 PM

for me, it's bad. as a player I can generally recognize when it's done, and it feels like railroading - in that it removes player agency. mixed with a bit of contempt of the "you're too dumb to notice i'm doing this" variety.

fudging the dice is also something that i'd rather the dm not do. if i am about to lose a fight, let me lose that fight. as a dm, i strongly encourage the players to pick up some single use telepotations for a quick escape in such cases.

I agree with both, with the caveat that adjusting tactics on the fly is much, much better than fudging the dice. I roll all my dice in the open, and if I need to change an encounter, I'll pick something else; tactics, send the players reinforcements, etc. And, I will try to fit it into the verisimilitude of the world.

I tend only to do this in AL games, and only those with newer players. That's just the convention for those groups. Also, the majority of AL DMs who kill characters routinely enjoy it just a bit too much, in my experience, and I try to distance myself from that.

Monsters using optimal tactics often breaks verisimilitude just as much as poor tactics. For example, killing downed players instantly is 'optimal' in the sense of 'will help my friends in the next room survive', but doesn't seem like a likely response to the battle, not least because it makes that specific monster more likely to die. Also, anything like this (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0216.html).

gbaji

2023-11-16, 03:39 PM

I wouldn't go full on idiot ball here, but there is a decent range between that and "NPCs using the absolute maximally useful tactics". And yeah, a lot of the time, this can be dismissed simply as the fact that the NPCs don't necessarily know the makeup of the group either. You don't have to run the NPCs as complete idiiots, just not run them as absolute geniuses.

Although in the case of the group just plain having the wrong mix of abilities/weapons/whatever to win, I would focus maybe more on making this clear to them, but then giving them some sort of out that they can take to escape and return better armed and prepared. Where possible, of course. What you don't want to do is get your players used to the idea that "things will just work out" even when they make obvious mistakes or are seriously outmatched. That can lead to more problems down the line IMO.

Biggus

2023-11-16, 04:23 PM

I wouldn't go full on idiot ball here, but there is a decent range between that and "NPCs using the absolute maximally useful tactics". And yeah, a lot of the time, this can be dismissed simply as the fact that the NPCs don't necessarily know the makeup of the group either. You don't have to run the NPCs as complete idiiots, just not run them as absolute geniuses.

This is pretty much exactly what I was going to say. Making a high-Int enemy suddenly act like a total idiot is no different to fudging the dice; but using a non-optimal strategy isn't. In the heat of battle very few people, even those who are highly intelligent, are going to be able to think clearly enough to work out the ideal strategy every time.

Jay R

2023-11-16, 06:56 PM

When I write an algebra quiz, I am trying to make a fair test – one that students will ace if they understand all of the last chapter, but will fail if they can’t do any of it.

When the test begins, I start creating the key, by taking the test myself. Occasionally I discover that a question is much too hard for students who have just studied this chapter. In that case, I will stand up and say, “Excuse me. Please skip question 8.” Or perhaps, “Question 3 was misprinted. The actual question 3 is now written on the board.”

This is just being fair to my students.

Similarly, when I design an encounter, I’m trying to create a fair challenge for the party – one that they will succeed at if they play reasonably well, but that could hurt them if they play poorly.

Occasionally I discover that an encounter is much harder than I intended, either because I hadn’t figured out exactly what effect the monsters’ abilities could have, or because the party all missed a crucial saving throw, or whatever. In that case, I will adjust the encounter to be fair. There are several ways to do this.

When possible, I try to avoid the awkward and unrealistic method of making the monsters suddenly fight with poor tactics. I prefer to use:

They used some of their per-day abilities in a previous encounter.
Another group shows up to help the party. [Ideally, the party’s rivals.]
Another group shows up and attacks both the party and their enemies. [Rarely, this is the original plan.]
Some of the enemy have fewer hit points than originally planned, and fall over at the next hit.
One of them has poorer armor, and gets hit more often.
Their wand just ran out of charges (or it just became an eternal wand, with only two charges per day).
The hidden enemies that were about to start the ambush don’t exist.
The enemies have a problem that they realize the PCs could help with. [“Wait – can you cure blindness? If you heal my daughter, we will let you go.”]
Give them a new motive. “Wait – these people aren’t the lizardfolk! Stop the battle; our real enemies are still on their way.” This leads to a possible new encounter to help the orcs survive the attack of the lizardfolk.
The enemy's bombast reveals their real goals, which the players don't oppose. "You may kill us, but you will never conquer our swamp!" This lets the PCs try diplomacy. "We don't want your swamp; we're just trying to reach the Granite Mountain."
Some player makes a guess that, if true, would let them win the encounter. Suddenly it becomes true, and that player gets bonus XPs.

If I come up with a good idea, the encounter flows smoothly, and sometimes feels like it was more complex than I originally planned.

Just like in the algebra class, my job is to be fair, and that job doesn’t stop when I initiate the encounter or start the test.

The algebra class always knows I've done it. They have a printed copy of the original test. But the players don't have a printed copy of the encounter, and often don't see the change I made in the middle. If my players catch me at it, then they do. No big deal. My players generally forgive me for not killing all their characters. But my goal is to keep things interesting and suspenseful enough that they never notice.

Besides, this fits my general approach that what the players want today is a quick, easy victory. But what they will want tomorrow is to have brilliantly and valiantly turned the tables to triumphantly defeat a deadly opponent when it looked as if they were all about to die.

Anymage

2023-11-16, 09:42 PM

I find myself doing this a lot, through the fact that landing an action denial ability on an enemy feels cool but having an action denial ability take a PC out of the loop is annoying.

Gnoman

2023-11-16, 10:16 PM

I find that if you put effort into roleplaying your encounters, this kind of adjustment often happens organically. It also helps if you don't always do it, based again on roleplaying your encounters.

To pull from your examples, if you get into a dragon's head and try to figure out why they're fighting the party at all, you'll probably have plausible reasons why it wouldn't want to just keep flaming them - it would risk destroying any treasure the party might be carrying, if it simply wants to eat them it might not want to overcook its meal, etc. Alternatively, if it doesn't want anything it could decide that it doesn't need to bother these insects and just fly away.

Meanwhile an ogre that's hit your tank really hard a few times might decide to move past and start hitting the rest of the party because obviously this guy's not going to stay standing and those stupid arrows hurt.

Expanding out examples, if you've got something like an orc warband where there's a leader and a bunch of footsoldiers, and the party is losing but takes down the leader, having the rest fight worse or outright run away makes sense - the boss is gone. This also has the advantage of rewarding good tactics by the PCs.

On the other hand, if you've got the party run into a pack of assassins specifically trying to defeat them, that group's going to go in with a strong plan and won't deviate from it just because the plan's working too well.

King of Nowhere

2023-11-17, 08:38 AM

When possible, I try to avoid the awkward and unrealistic method of making the monsters suddenly fight with poor tactics. I prefer to use:

They used some of their per-day abilities in a previous encounter.
Another group shows up to help the party. [Ideally, the party’s rivals.]
Another group shows up and attacks both the party and their enemies. [Rarely, this is the original plan.]
Some of the enemy have fewer hit points than originally planned, and fall over at the next hit.
One of them has poorer armor, and gets hit more often.
Their wand just ran out of charges (or it just became an eternal wand, with only two charges per day).
The hidden enemies that were about to start the ambush don’t exist.
The enemies have a problem that they realize the PCs could help with. [“Wait – can you cure blindness? If you heal my daughter, we will let you go.”]
Give them a new motive. “Wait – these people aren’t the lizardfolk! Stop the battle; our real enemies are still on their way.” This leads to a possible new encounter to help the orcs survive the attack of the lizardfolk.
The enemy's bombast reveals their real goals, which the players don't oppose. "You may kill us, but you will never conquer our swamp!" This lets the PCs try diplomacy. "We don't want your swamp; we're just trying to reach the Granite Mountain."
Some player makes a guess that, if true, would let them win the encounter. Suddenly it becomes true, and that player gets bonus XPs.

why "letting the players lose" is not an option? why fleeing the fight is a taboo?
as i said, as a dm i encourage players to have some means of escape. as a player, i try to have one. and I don't want to win every time. if you win every time you are invincible, and invincible heroes are boring. i prefer to have to lose every once in a while.

misjudging the difficulty of the fight happens often enough. My experience is that my players will generally find a way to win regardless. if they can't, they'll just have to flee and regroup. actually, some of the most epic fights they had were ones when they accidentally engaged opponents much stronger than they were, and had to scramble to survive (in one case they were forewarned and decided to go straight for a final boss. in another they mistook the bbeg for a random mook).

although maybe we talk of different experiences, because most of my experience is with high level 3.x groups with experienced players, that is, very high power level. heck, at high levels I don't even worry about encounter difficulty anymore, I simply throw insurmontable odds at my players and expect them to win anyway; if they don't, I expect them to flee, raise any who eventually died, devise a clever strategy, and win the next time. I never try to protect such a party, it does not need any protection and it would be insulting to even imply so; the best reward for an ace student is to let them solve tasks above their level.
low level is a different experience entirely. that said, i do keep contingencies for low level parties. I generally establish some powerful character or organization taking some interest in them, which can also plausibly rescue the party if needed. or i try to make sure they have means to escape, maybe i drop a scroll of dimension door in the loot. Most of all, I make them level up fast until they are around fifth level, where it is reasonable for them to have more options

On the other hand, if you've got the party run into a pack of assassins specifically trying to defeat them, that group's going to go in with a strong plan and won't deviate from it just because the plan's working too well.
also, my plot tend to be of the political variety - both intrigue and war. therefore, this kind of scenario - intelligent, capable, resourceful foes that are trying to kill the players as their personal/ideological enemies - so those assassin scenario come up very often, i could not realistically dumb down fighting if I wanted

gbaji

2023-11-17, 02:18 PM

Those "in over your heads" situations are also where the "rarely used cause we're saving them for when we really need them" consumable items come into play. You can cover for most encounter mis-match mistakes by handing out a sufficient number of these things. But I will say that as a general rule, if the encounter is too difficult because I made a mistake, I'll fudge things or adjust tactics or whatever to fix things a bit (the PCs shouldn't have to pay for my mistake). But if it's because the players made a mistake, it's much more on them and they need to pay the price (whatever that may be) for the mistake(s).

Reversefigure4

2023-11-17, 10:40 PM

It's fairly easy to make questionable tactics on the part of monsters seem plausible with the right narration. For the two examples that you gave:

"The dragon tires of this petty game of hit-and-run. With a bloodcurdling roar, it dives into the melee, a whirlwind of talon and fang!

"Enraged, the ogre swings its club wildly, laying about it on all sides."

Neither of those events should, I think, violate a player's sense of verisimilitude, while letting you hold back on the lethality if necessary.

Bingo. What the players see "on-screen" is generally the reality.

The difference between the enemy warrior who fights to the death, the warrior who is recklessly brave and endlessly provokes attacks of opportunity, the coward who flees at 25% hit point loss, and Warrior who is deliberately trying to manoeuvre Warrior B to his death in revenge for sleeping with Warrior A's wife, is mostly a matter of narration to the players (all four warriors might well use the same stat block!). My experience is that players will neither question nor care if Warrior A's motivation and backstory were made up on the spot by the GM, as long as it's something they can interact with ("your Insight check shows a secret hatred for Warrior B by Warrior A"). Heck, you can even get plots out of them sparing Warrior A then taking him on as a hireling.

There are exceptions - if you've been building Wizard Walter as a genius for several sessions, then he behaves like an idiot, it's disappointing for the players. But that's not particularly different from the world's greatest Warrior on the Planet proceeding to roll a dozen ones and twos in a row and being crushed in his encounter. It happens.

Jay R

2023-11-18, 12:16 PM

why "letting the players lose" is not an option? why fleeing the fight is a taboo?

It is an option. It just wasn't the topic of my post.

My post was about dealing with a situation in which the encounter was much harder than intended. So I gave ways to modify it to work as intended. This is no different from sending in a second rank of orcs if they have too easy a time with the first one.

I'm quite willing to let my players destroy their own PCs with poor tactics. This can include not running away when overwhelmed. I just don't intend to destroy the PCs accidently. As a friend of mine once said, "Never hurt anybody by accident. It's the ultimate in sloppy."

From my "Rules for DMs":

a. Follow Matt Dillon’s principle from the TV show Gunsmoke: “I never hang anybody. The law does.” The DM should never kill a PC. Sometimes the game might.

A hard encounter, or poor player tactics, might kill the party. I have no intention of letting my accident do so.

why fleeing the fight is a taboo?

Because we were asked what a DM could do. We weren't talking about player options.

King of Nowhere

2023-11-18, 02:12 PM

It is an option. It just wasn't the topic of my post.

My post was about dealing with a situation in which the encounter was much harder than intended. So I gave ways to modify it to work as intended. This is no different from sending in a second rank of orcs if they have too easy a time with the first one.

I'm quite willing to let my players destroy their own PCs with poor tactics. This can include not running away when overwhelmed. I just don't intend to destroy the PCs accidently. As a friend of mine once said, "Never hurt anybody by accident. It's the ultimate in sloppy."

From my "Rules for DMs":

a. Follow Matt Dillon’s principle from the TV show Gunsmoke: “I never hang anybody. The law does.” The DM should never kill a PC. Sometimes the game might.

A hard encounter, or poor player tactics, might kill the party. I have no intention of letting my accident do so.

Because we were asked what a DM could do. We weren't talking about player options.

Well, a bit of a false equivalence here in that an encounter accidentally too hard does not mean killing somebody.
But again, we're probably thinking of different cases here. I am thinking of a situation where the accidental fight can still be won, or can be escaped. I am also thinking that resurrection spells are available, death is just a speed bump. In that case, an unexpectedly harder fight is a welcome challenge.
You are probably thinking of a situation where a tpk is inevitable, and yes, in that case i'd be looking for ways to help the party too

ngilop

2023-11-18, 02:35 PM

Nothing wrong with that. You see if done in the real world all the time.

Strategy going great and doing wonder. Suddenly stop doing said strategy for reasons, and pow! It goes based for them.

The opposite happens just as often.

Anybody who feels this is beyond their suspension of disbelief doesn't live in the same reality I do for sure

Zuras

2023-11-20, 11:10 AM

I adjust tactics all the time based on difficulty, assuming we’re talking about a novel opponent. Mostly it’s just not optimally placing AoE attacks, or just not acting aggressively as possible.

The important thing is you don’t need to play the monsters like chess pieces that don’t mind getting sacrificed, and even clever opponents might stop a turn to gloat if they did something exceptionally effective.

I usually save my most intricate tactics for lower difficulty encounters (Hard, rather than Deadly), and reserve optimal tactics for avoidable encounters. If the PCs attack another high level adventuring party, the wizard definitely could get stunned by the enemy monk and hit with a disintegrate they auto-fail to.

I specifically avoid some optimal tactics.

No ignoring the high AC fighters or raging barbarians to hit softer targets.

No passing up attacks on PCs who are dodging (I might pass up a second attack, but I assume they don’t realize an opponent assumes a defensive posture till actually attacking them at least once).

I seldom focus fire. Organized military units might do it, but ogres and even Frost Giants will expect a typical enemy to fall to a single blow.

One thing I won’t do that was given as an example is have a dragon land rather than fly around and strafe with its breath weapon. Dragons are supposed to be terrifying. On the other hand, if one PC actively insults its mother in draconic, now we’re talking! That’s a clear case of one player announcing “I volunteer as tribute”, though.

That’s another thing—it’s much more satisfying all around if your sub-optimal play is in response to good player prompts. Having the evil wizard stop to monologue after a good in-universe player delivered insult feels earned, and bothers players far less.

Jay R

2023-11-20, 01:25 PM

Well, a bit of a false equivalence here in that an encounter accidentally too hard does not mean killing somebody.

Probably true. I was led that way because of my experience designing algebra and statistics tests. In those subjects, a single question that's too hard can hurt somebody's grade very badly, just because they can wind up spending too much time on that question and not even get to several other questions.

If it's accidentally too hard, I need to fix it immediately.

But again, we're probably thinking of different cases here.

Good observation. I suspect that this is true in a lot of internet disagreements. One of the best aspects of internet discussion is the ability to go back and forth until we actually communicate.

[One of the worst aspects is the ability to keep going back and forth without actually communicating.]

Thank you for processing my writing in good faith even while disagreeing with it.

I am thinking of a situation where the accidental fight can still be won, or can be escaped. I am also thinking that resurrection spells are available, death is just a speed bump. In that case, an unexpectedly harder fight is a welcome challenge.
You are probably thinking of a situation where a tpk is inevitable, and yes, in that case i'd be looking for ways to help the party too

I think you're assigning more careful thought than I actually had. I was just following the subject, which seemed to be adjusting difficulty through tactics. I wasn't really considering how to decide when when it's needed, just how to do it when necessary.

Pauly

2023-11-22, 06:32 PM

Vahnavoi

2023-11-23, 06:37 AM

Adjusting difficulty for players by changing tactics is normal in virtually all other kinds of games and generally preferable to altering the rules or the opposition. When and where roleplayers despise it, they are typically reading a specific motive to the practice and it is the motive they truly object to, rather than the mechanism through which it is carried out.

For contrast, consider a friendly sparring match in virtually any martial art. If your opponent is less skilled or you otherwise don't have a good idea of their capabilities? Start low intensity and then ramp up the heat if it looks like they can deal with it, or go easier on them if they start to gas out early. The approach generalizes to any game with opposing player. This graph will help you understand what you're trying to do and why. (https://images.app.goo.gl/yQd54kuimByAdi49A) You're trying to keep gameplay within the space where it best matches player skill. That's the motive.

You hit limits of this strategy when you aren't capable of playing at the right level compared to player skill. Adjusting difficulty by adjusting tactics requires you to have good understanding of tactics, typically better than other players. Another limit might be that you're already employing the best (or the worst) available tactic and so don't have room to adjust in the right direction. That's when you need to think of other ways to change difficulty.

So, what are the other, objectionable motives? The one that comes up most often is the feeling of being forced towards an outcome (AKA "railroading"). Another common one is the feeling on some player being unfairly favored or discriminated. So, keep clear in mind why you are changing tactics, or adjusting difficulty in general.

King of Nowhere

2023-11-23, 11:57 AM

In any ‘fair’ fight any reasonably competent GM should wipe the floor with the PCs. The GM has the advantages of
- Complete knowledge of all combatants and their abilities.
- perfect knowledge of the terrain
- the ability to co-ordinate their team perfectly
- knowledge of the goals of the combatants

there is no such thing as a fair fight in d&d; the dm sets up the fight, so he can set up an unwinnable fight. on the other hand, the dm is supposed to let the players win, so he will set up fights where the party has the advantage. the party is always stronger than the opponents; rare exceptions when the party is weaker but they have surprise and can buff in advance.

that said, knowledge of the abilities of all combatants favors the players. they only have to specialize in using one character, while the gm has a lot of things to handle. i always play my npcs suboptimally due to the sheer complication of handling several high level 3.5 pc types. especially casters. the party wizard spent months preparing his tactics, and on an npc i just can't match that level of expertise. as for coordination, at any table i've seen (granted, there were not many) players talk and strategize together. i know in other tables it's froowned upon.

Adjusting difficulty for players by changing tactics is normal in virtually all other kinds of games and generally preferable to altering the rules or the opposition. When and where roleplayers despise it, they are typically reading a specific motive to the practice and it is the motive they truly object to, rather than the mechanism through which it is carried out.

For contrast, consider a friendly sparring match in virtually any martial art. If your opponent is less skilled or you otherwise don't have a good idea of their capabilities? Start low intensity and then ramp up the heat if it looks like they can deal with it, or go easier on them if they start to gas out early. The approach generalizes to any game with opposing player. This graph will help you understand what you're trying to do and why. (https://images.app.goo.gl/yQd54kuimByAdi49A) You're trying to keep gameplay within the space where it best matches player skill. That's the motive.

never heard of that. never seen anyone intentionally playing suboptimally in any game, except maybe at the lowest levels of training. maybe it's a martial arts thing? in chess, most people with a modicum of competence would be insulted if a stronger opponent did that. while you are right in saying that the problem is not the practice but the motivation, the issue is that the various motivations for handicapping oneself basically boils down to "you're not good enough to face me". or maybe, even worse, "you're too immature to accept defeat". basically, it shows contempt for the opponent.
have you seen one piece? when zoro challenges mihawk, and mihawk brings out the tiny toy sword? it's extremely insulting to the challenger. there's no more effective way to rub one's inferiority in one's nose. and in fact, when zoro earned mihawk respect, mihawk took out his real weapon, and ended the encounter swiftly.

in the specific d&d case, ok, the fight is harder than expected? i want to try and fix it. if it works, it will make for a cool story. if it fails, then you can use dm fiat to save me.

additionally, this one is a specific quirk of mine, but if the dm suddenly switches to suboptimal tactics, i get the impression that he thinks I am not realizing it. so i feel treated as a stupid twice; first because you don't consider me competent enough to try and fix the situation with my skill, and then because you think I won't notice that you are using dm fiat to save me. i prefer a flat out deus ex machina, or even an ooc conversation ending in some retconning; it feels more honest than trying to tweak things to make the player feel accomplished even when he isn't.

Vahnavoi

2023-11-24, 04:05 AM

never heard of that. never seen anyone intentionally playing suboptimally in any game, except maybe at the lowest levels of training. maybe it's a martial arts thing?

So you've never had a friendly sparring match, never tried teaching a new game to your kid brother, or never took on a self-imposed challenge in a casual game between friends or family to keep a game interesting for all involved players (etc. etc.)?

Comparing the practice to "lowest levels of training" is appropriate, in the sense that the point of the practice is to facilitate training. What you fail to realize that a casual low-to-no stakes roleplaying game is equivalent to training, especially when the game is unfamiliar to one or more players.

in chess, most people with a modicum of competence would be insulted if a stronger opponent did that. while you are right in saying that the problem is not the practice but the motivation, the issue is that the various motivations for handicapping oneself basically boils down to "you're not good enough to face me". or maybe, even worse, "you're too immature to accept defeat".

Neither "you're not good enough to face me" nor "you're too immature to accept defeat" are motivations. They are observations (or claims, if preceding observation), which can be either true or false. You're thinking of pride and contempt, which might motivate a person to make such statements prematurely.

Instead of Chess, consider Go. Or Golf. Or any other of myriad multiplayer games where it is customary for the (acknowledged) better player to accept a handicap. Those handicaps are codified ways to achieve the same thing I talked about: allow players of disparate skill level to play together in a way that's still interesting to both.

basically, it shows contempt for the opponent.
have you seen one piece? when zoro challenges mihawk, and mihawk brings out the tiny toy sword? it's extremely insulting to the challenger. there's no more effective way to rub one's inferiority in one's nose. and in fact, when zoro earned mihawk respect, mihawk took out his real weapon, and ended the encounter swiftly.

I have seen One Piece, yes. And I can tell you that Zoro challenging Mihawk was a extremely immature of Zoro. Zoro was rushing to a life-or-death duel in pursuit of a childhood dream. He had no grounds to be insulted by Mihawk's choice of weaponry, especially after Mihawk proved he could still defeat Zoro with the smaller weapon. In short, Mihawk was right, Zoro was wrong, and Mihawk proves his point before ever drawing his bigger blade.

You can contrast it with another scene where Zoro, as a literal kid, after losing a practice bout to Kuina, complains that the outcome would've been different if they'd just used real swords. Then they do get themselves some real swords and Zoro still loses. How Zoro behaves towards Mihawk is equivalent, and equally childish. That's why he had no respect from Mihawk at the start.

in the specific d&d case, ok, the fight is harder than expected? i want to try and fix it. if it works, it will make for a cool story. if it fails, then you can use dm fiat to save me.

A game master opting for different tactics to give you a fighting chance, is "fiat to save" you. The difference is that simply changing tactics doesn't typically require bending normal rules of a game in any way.

additionally, this one is a specific quirk of mine, but if the dm suddenly switches to suboptimal tactics, i get the impression that he thinks I am not realizing it. so i feel treated as a stupid twice; first because you don't consider me competent enough to try and fix the situation with my skill, and then because you think I won't notice that you are using dm fiat to save me. i prefer a flat out deus ex machina, or even an ooc conversation ending in some retconning; it feels more honest than trying to tweak things to make the player feel accomplished even when he isn't.

See, that's on you for going into the exchance ego first. A switch in tactics is not, by default, covert; on the contrary, it often is supposed to be overt precisely to give you something to exploit. That is the save: the game master is committing a visible tactical error to give you an opportunity to get back in the game and "fix" the situation. That is what you, as a player, are trying to accomplish. You still need to recognize the change and accomplish that task with your own skill, now the task is just easier than it was before.

Easy e

2023-11-24, 11:07 AM

Depends largely on the group and how transparent you are about it.

Let's be 100% honest though. If a DM wanted, they could TPK the party whenever and wherever they wanted. The main reason that does not happen is because that is no fun, and no one would play the game with that DM.

Therefore, monsters are always fighting with their arms tied behind their back. After all, monsters actually using tactics would never be a "fair fight". They would bring overwhelming force or not expose themselves to harm at all. They would bobby-trap the heck out of any path they know the PCs will take. They would flee all the time and get help or just avoid combat.

This would be a very frustrating game for players.

Gnoman

2023-11-24, 01:30 PM

Therefore, monsters are always fighting with their arms tied behind their back. After all, monsters actually using tactics would never be a "fair fight". They would bring overwhelming force or not expose themselves to harm at all. They would bobby-trap the heck out of any path they know the PCs will take. They would flee all the time and get help or just avoid combat.

This would be a very frustrating game for players.

This is exactly the game I've been running for almost three years now.

icefractal

2023-11-24, 05:47 PM

Well I think there's a distinction between "the existing foes fighting to their full abilities" and "the GM taking full advantage of their power and trying to 'win'".

Like, I usually do *play* foes to the best of their abilities (based on what info they have), but when I'm choosing how much resources and information to give the foes I'm guides by a combination of simulation and what would make for a good game - I'm not trying to make them as strong as possible.

Vahnavoi

2023-11-25, 06:09 AM

Well I think there's a distinction between "the existing foes fighting to their full abilities" and "the GM taking full advantage of their power and trying to 'win'".

You would be correct. Specifically, the following are distinct:

- a game master declaring by fiat that the game is over and the players lost ("rocks fall, everyone dies")

- a game master as a scenario designer making a situation that's unwinnable from the player's position ("whichever move a player makes in this Chess puzzle, they lose by checkmate in two turns" or the aforementioned "for every enemy players kill, new ones will arrive with reinforcements, until the players eventually and inevitably get overwhelmed")

- a game master exploiting their perfect information versus the players' imperfect information ("I know where the players are but players don't know where the enemies are, so I can always move enemies where they have an advantage")

- a game master being a superior player or having superior understanding of game rules ("the players challenged me to a Chess match, they didn't even know a Knight can jump over other pieces")

The ability to win by default (ab)using the first two might stem directly from just having the position of a game master, but the last two don't. In order to actually counterplay players, with or without perfect information, a game master still needs to be decent at the game being played.

Which is why, when making a claim like "the game master can TPK the PCs whenever they want", it's worth mentioning how one expects a game master to achieve this.

King of Nowhere

2023-11-25, 08:05 PM

So you've never had a friendly sparring match, never tried teaching a new game to your kid brother, or never took on a self-imposed challenge in a casual game between friends or family to keep a game interesting for all involved players (etc. etc.)?

What you fail to realize that a casual low-to-no stakes roleplaying game is equivalent to training, especially when the game is unfamiliar to one or more players.

friendly matches, a lot. but i never held back, and i never expected anyone else to do it with me. my teachers never held back against me, and i never held back against my pupils. i asked my first teacher if i should do it, he specifically said no.
beginners can get equal opponents when playing with each other. against the master, you get to see how much you have to grow. and this means that the first time you defeat him, it's special. and when you come to the point that you win regularly, you can look back and see how much you progressed. I still have a faint memory of the first time i beat one of my trainers 25 years ago. even in training, pulling your punches is just not done.

I guess it's either something of chess, or of my specific social bubble. i suppose other bubbles work differently.

Instead of Chess, consider Go. Or Golf. Or any other of myriad multiplayer games where it is customary for the (acknowledged) better player to accept a handicap. Those handicaps are codified ways to achieve the same thing I talked about: allow players of disparate skill level to play together in a way that's still interesting to both.

a self-imposed challenge is something different entirely, and codified from the beginning. I did something similar on occasions, playing blind (you can play chess without looking at the chessboard, just being told the moves; but it's a lot harder). but the key difference is that after the rules of the challenge are set, i am not pulling punches within those rules.

ultimately, i suppose it's a matter of specific gaming culture.

so, i guess the answer for the op is "depends on your players"?

I have seen One Piece, yes. And I can tell you that Zoro challenging Mihawk was a extremely immature of Zoro.

yes, it was! It cracks me up how zoro often plays the one sane man, except when it comes to his dream he goes total nuts. i love the mixture of seriousness and sillyness.
but the point is, deserved as it was, it still was extremely insulting.

See, that's on you for going into the exchance ego first.

guilty as charged. I realize I put too much of my ego into my gaming skill.
still, the point stands that I prefer to lose than to have others make it easy for me.

A switch in tactics is not, by default, covert; on the contrary, it often is supposed to be overt precisely to give you something to exploit. That is the save: the game master is committing a visible tactical error to give you an opportunity to get back in the game and "fix" the situation. That is what you, as a player, are trying to accomplish. You still need to recognize the change and accomplish that task with your own skill, now the task is just easier than it was before.

you know, if it's overt it's a lot better. but it really, really depends on how it's received by the players.

i'm probably also biased on this by personal experience. i had a nightmare dm once, who surrounded us by dmpc and made us spectators on his railroad. and every session he would throw us an encounter, and then he would add more monsters if we were winning, or dumb down the monsters if we were losing, until two hours passed and the session was over, then he let us win. of course the campaign didn't last. when i think of changing the difficulty mid-fight, I always think of that: the worst possible way to do it.

Jay R

2023-11-26, 01:55 PM

there is no such thing as a fair fight in d&d; the dm sets up the fight, so he can set up an unwinnable fight.

Certainly she can. But that's not what a "fair fight" means. A fair fight isn't one in which the referee can't decide who wins. It's a fight in which the referee ensures that either side has a reasonable chance to win, based on their skill.

The players aren't fighting the DM. The PCs are fighting the ogres.

Similarly, I try to give a "fair test" when I teach algebra or statistics. Certainly I could write a test none of the students could pass. That is not a fair test. I try to write a test that the students can make a good grade on if they have learned the material. I often have at least one question that is taken directly from the homework. Once I make this "fair test", the students then still have to earn their grade by doing well on it.

on the other hand, the dm is supposed to let the players win, so he will set up fights where the party has the advantage. the party is always stronger than the opponents; rare exceptions when the party is weaker but they have surprise and can buff in advance.

I agree with what I think you meant, but I absolutely disagree with what you wrote. The DM is supposed to make it possible, and even extremely likely, that the players will win. Then the players have to earn it, by playing competently.

that said, knowledge of the abilities of all combatants favors the players. they only have to specialize in using one character, while the gm has a lot of things to handle. i always play my npcs suboptimally due to the sheer complication of handling several high level 3.5 pc types. especially casters. the party wizard spent months preparing his tactics, and on an npc i just can't match that level of expertise. as for coordination, at any table i've seen (granted, there were not many) players talk and strategize together. i know in other tables it's froowned upon.

I allow this to a certain extent. But I will sometimes say, "The round is six seconds long. That's all the talking you get. Rob, what does Niclas do?"

never heard of that. never seen anyone intentionally playing suboptimally in any game, except maybe at the lowest levels of training. maybe it's a martial arts thing?

Well, it is certainly a martial arts thing. When I'm training a new fencer, after I teach stance, and a few attacks, and a few parries, I will "spar" with him. I will only use moves that the student has been shown, and I will make the motion broad and slow enough that an untrained eye can see it and an untrained hand can react. If I hit the student with that move, i will use that move and nothing else, slower and slower, until the student can parry it and hit me. I am trying to give the new student a "fair fight" -- one in which he might win, with his current level of skill.

Fair fight for me? Not at all. I'm not competing; I'm teaching. Just as a DM isn't playing; she's running a game, including running the characters who are fighting the PCs.

in chess, most people with a modicum of competence would be insulted if a stronger opponent did that. while you are right in saying that the problem is not the practice but the motivation, the issue is that the various motivations for handicapping oneself basically boils down to "you're not good enough to face me". or maybe, even worse, "you're too immature to accept defeat". basically, it shows contempt for the opponent.

Simply untrue. Handicapping in chess (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_(chess)) has a long established history.

You're right that sometimes people dislike it. There's a story from a major chess tournament in New York City. At one point, a grandmaster walked away from the tournament and into Central Park to relax, and saw somebody sitting down with a chessboard set up. So he walked over, sat down, and took his two rooks off the board. The guy who was already there said, "What makes you think you can spot me two rooks? You don't even know who I am."

The grandmaster replied, "I believe I can give you two rooks because I don't know who you are."

have you seen one piece? when zoro challenges mihawk, and mihawk brings out the tiny toy sword? it's extremely insulting to the challenger. there's no more effective way to rub one's inferiority in one's nose. and in fact, when zoro earned mihawk respect, mihawk took out his real weapon, and ended the encounter swiftly.

In an SCA tournament, I once took a single dagger against sword and shield, and once took dagger and buckler against a glaive. I also once took single mace against sword and shield. Yes, in all three cases, it was a handicap, and yes, its purpose was to let the newer fighter have a chance (while I would feel comfortable fighting full out).

And yes, when I matched one of them later with equal weapons, it was a compliment to that fighter's growing skill. In fact, two of those fighters eventually got better than me with those weapons.

in the specific d&d case, ok, the fight is harder than expected? i want to try and fix it. if it works, it will make for a cool story. if it fails, then you can use dm fiat to save me.

Using DM fiat is exactly the point of this thread. And yes, when I see that an encounter is more difficult than I had planned for it to be, I have to make a quick judgement call. Do I let them strive against the unintended level, or do I quietly make it what it was supposed to be?

On a math test, there's only one answer. I won't give them a test they can only fail.

In D&D, there is no single simple answer. It depends on a great many things, including who the players are, what the situation is, and consequences of failure.

I was in a game in which the DM had the giants drop Dust of Sneezing and Choking on the party. He didn't realize that the party would be completely helpless even if we made our saving throws. Instant party defeat, and by any possible interpretation of the situation, the giants would have simply killed all our characters immediately.

If I were the DM, the dust would have failed, and we'd have fought. That's adjusting it immediately. The DM had us wake up in a cell, and be rescued by somebody else. That is rescuing us by DM fiat after the fact.

In that situation, I'd have preferred for the magic item to be ineffective, and actually have a chance to rescue ourselves.

But each situation is different, and a DM has to make a judgment call each time. Not all situations have the same best answer.

additionally, this one is a specific quirk of mine, but if the dm suddenly switches to suboptimal tactics, i get the impression that he thinks I am not realizing it. so i feel treated as a stupid twice; first because you don't consider me competent enough to try and fix the situation with my skill, and then because you think I won't notice that you are using dm fiat to save me. i prefer a flat out deus ex machina, or even an ooc conversation ending in some retconning; it feels more honest than trying to tweak things to make the player feel accomplished even when he isn't.

OK, you have a preference for a single simple answer, no matter the situation. I have a preference for a DM who considers the specific situation, and considers all options.

Both preferences are real, and valid.

I hope you find DMs who run games the way you like. I've had good luck finding DMs who run their games the way I like.

King of Nowhere

2023-11-26, 05:08 PM

I try to write a test that the students can make a good grade on if they have learned the material. I often have at least one question that is taken directly from the homework. Once I make this "fair test", the students then still have to earn their grade by doing well on it.

I agree with what I think you meant, but I absolutely disagree with what you wrote. The DM is supposed to make it possible, and even extremely likely, that the players will win. Then the players have to earn it, by playing competently.

yes, that's what i mean by "the party is always stronger than the enemies". it means, barring extraordinary bouts of luck, the party can win the fight if they play well. yes, they can of course lose if they do something stupid.

Simply untrue. Handicapping in chess (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_(chess)) has a long established history.

There's a story from a major chess tournament in New York City.

and i've been regularly playing chess tournaments since I was 10, and I never saw anyone ever using it.
Maybe it's more common in united states.

Well, it is certainly a martial arts thing. When I'm training a new fencer, after I teach stance, and a few attacks, and a few parries, I will "spar" with him. I will only use moves that the student has been shown, and I will make the motion broad and slow enough that an untrained eye can see it and an untrained hand can react.

I once went to a convention, found a medieval martial arts stand, and tried some sword fighting. I treated it as sport, not a fight for life it was intended to simulate, so I was pretty reckless in attack because I considered a "mutual kill" to be a good outcome for me. Those exchanges generally left me "dead", but I often enough managed to also "wound" the instructor.
I thought I learned something about the reality of swordfighting: hitting people is not hard, hitting without opening to counterstrike is hard. somebody going full kamikaze mode can be extremely dangerous even for a much more skilled opponent, for whom avoiding a mutual kill will be hard.
Now I don't know if the instructor was intentionally holding back. was the stuff I thought I knew false? It's giving a really bad feeling to what was otherwise a good memory. If the instructor had destroied me in three seconds, then had said "ok, now I'll scale it down so you can have an actual fight" I would appreciate it much better.

You see, what I object most is not much the whole handicapped fighting - though I still consider it humiliating to do on anyone who's above novice level. it's the duplicity involved in tying to fool someone into thinking he had a certain challenge, while the actual challenge was watered down. It's about trust and accomplishment. You give me a very difficult challenge, I succeed, yay, I'm good!. I fail, ok, it was expected, the challenge was indeed very hard. if I succeed, feel great, then realize I didn't really succeed after all, that's the only scenario that really sucks. And what about future challenges from the same person? how can I ever be sure again that the next time I succeed at something difficult, it's really something I can credit my skill for?

On a math test, there's only one answer. I won't give them a test they can only fail.

On a chemistry test, I always give my students an additional "bonus" question/problem that I deem to be above their level. I clearly label it as such. The test is balanced without that "bonus". Those that can do some good on the bonus question (there are always some) get extra score. it's a way to challenge the more gifted students without impacting the others.
but we're on a tangent. a d&d game is not a school test, consequences of failure are different, stakes are different, ways to approach it are different.
In a game, where there are no consequences harsher than bruised egos, I like to be challenged to the limit of my skill. In a job (and there's probably no need to state it, but for students school tests are their job), where I have a responsibility to consistently fulfill all my obligations and others will suffer real life consequences if I screw up, I definitely want to have it easy.

In D&D, there is no single simple answer. It depends on a great many things, including who the players are, what the situation is, and consequences of failure.

on that, we agree perfectly.
It just so happens that for the kind of player I am (likes challenges), with the situation we generally have at my tables (things are though, but we still have lots of options), and the consequences of failure we have at my tables (will need to sink some money on a resurrection, no lasting harm done) then the right answer is almost always "just let us fight normally, we'll generally find a way pull through anyway".

I was in a game in which the DM had the giants drop Dust of Sneezing and Choking on the party.
... WHAT????

Seriously, dust of sneezing and choking? the 3.5 version with no saving throw? who even is the [censored] who wrote that?
that's not "a fight is harder than it's supposed to". that's "no fight, game is over, ggwp". That's also "the dm is incompetent". or possibly he just wanted to railroad the party into getting captured, which is tricky to accomplish at best. anyway, once the dm established that the dust exhist, I expect the players to find some and use it to breeze through all encounters. unless the enemies also keep getting it, in which case the game becomes "who goes first wins". which is why one should never use the dust of sneezing and choking unless one actually wants the game to devolve into that (could actually make for a different game where stealth and spreading are the main tactics, akin to modern warfare), and anyone who just casually uses that item without considering the consequences is incompetent.

OK, you have a preference for a single simple answer, no matter the situation.
I don't have a preference for single simple answers. But i do have a good table where the most extreme examples - and the most extreme answers they entail - simply don't happen.
When people say "I accidentally made the encounter harder than it should be", I assumed it to be "the party may have to flee and resurrect somebody", which is the worst kind of "accidentally too hard" that ever happened at my table. I certainly did not assume it could mean "I accidentally used dust of choking and sneezing on the party without wondering about the consequences". Yes, in that case one should definitely apologize to your players and retcon the whole accident.

In short, we have very different situations in mind. Different players, with different skill levels and different mindsets, different levels of power, different levels of "the fight is too hard".
it's clear we are talking of different things and so obviously we have different answers

Lvl 2 Expert

2023-11-28, 05:05 AM

Is adjusting encounter difficulty on the fly by having one or more monsters pick up the idiot ball or display a burst of tactical acumen seen as an acceptable GM strategy around here?

For me it's totally fine. The most common version of it is: "Okay, the fighter is down, so this guy moves on to attack the ranger." Tactically it's a very bad move in a world where that means the bard will come in to heal the fighter and now the PC's are at full strength again, while the bad guy could probably have taken the fighter out permanently in one more turn. But if the GM is not allowed to play like that that means the players basically need to avoid all combat where anyone could drop to 0 HP.

And then just sometimes the DM does not do this. Make it clear that this bad guy is for real. That he will kill given half a chance. That he will set actual ambushes rather than stand in a hallway. Bring in Tuckers kobolds.

But for the base level, yes, please help the PCs stay alive a little. This is a red vs blue game after all, the players are supposed to win.

Note: although the games I've played in may be lacking a bit in resurrection spells compared to some other tables.

Kardwill

2023-11-29, 05:58 AM

and the consequences of failure we have at my tables (will need to sink some money on a resurrection, no lasting harm done)

I think that specific point is important in the conversation, since it's specific to one particular set of games (D&D clones), where PCs don't really die unless there is a TPK.
In most games, Raise Dead is not really a supported option. Killing a character usually means that the player won't play that character anymore. It's not a "Hey, I'll do better next time" situation, the players lose characters they felt emotionally invested in. This is, in a way, "lasting harm done", especially since most games are part of long campaign, and you'll need to bring a new character to the table next week.
This means killing PCs in a long game is often seen both as a necessary possibility (to get the players excited) AND as undesirable actual result (because it's a bummer when it actually happens due to random chance), putting the GM in a bind.

I don't see combat as a contest between the players and the GM, and I tend to adjust tactics and events so that the scene is interesting rather than challenging. But on the other hand, I agree with you that fudging to help players feels disrespectful. Especially since, as a player, you usually spot it when it happens. When I realise that a confrontation is deadlier than expected, I will prefer direct, "open" DM fiat, like having a big explosion disrupt the fight or the other side offering an honest opportunity to surrender.

But since I don't like to be put in that position, nowadays, I prefer games that don't "accidentally" kill PCs : Setting different defeat conditions ("If you lose against Shelob, she'll poison and paralize you, and drag you to her pantry"), conceding a fight, hero points that allow you to be "just knocked out", that kind of things. Games where dying is on the table only if the players agree that it's appropriate for that situation, for their character. Having safeguards built in the game rules, allowing players a measure of control over their PCs mortality, means that I can set my players against strong, or even overwhelming, opposition without fear that I play "too hard"

King of Nowhere

2023-11-29, 06:15 PM

I think that specific point is important in the conversation, since it's specific to one particular set of games (D&D clones), where PCs don't really die unless there is a TPK [in my campaigns I make sure to have a contingency plan even for that].
In most games, Raise Dead is not really a supported option. Killing a character usually means that the player won't play that character anymore. It's not a "Hey, I'll do better next time" situation, the players lose characters they felt emotionally invested in. This is, in a way, "lasting harm done", especially since most games are part of long campaign, and you'll need to bring a new character to the table next week.

Having safeguards built in the game rules, allowing players a measure of control over their PCs mortality, means that I can set my players against strong, or even overwhelming, opposition without fear that I play "too hard"

very good point. i admit i also got blindsided by my own table experience, taking resurrections for granted and forgetting how many different non-fantasy games are out there. and within that safe framework, I like to treat combat as a challenge, to put my players against strong opponents, and to be put against strong opponents by my dm - i mean, story is interesting because of story, but if my actions in combat don't really matter because we're going to win without risks anyway, we may as well narrate "and you roftlstomp those puny opponents without significant issues" before moving on.

if I were to dm a different game without resurrection - and with a long campaign where you get attached to your character - I would definitely avoid permanent deaths unless agreed with the player. though i would prefer to be open about it. instead of having the enemies stop attacking the most wounded players, I'd rather say "ok, you should be dead. would you rather recover at the end of the fight?".
though having a kind of meta currency to make it a cost would probably be a good idea in case the players got too used to the idea that death is easy

Kardwill

2023-11-30, 07:59 AM

though having a kind of meta currency to make it a cost would probably be a good idea in case the players got too used to the idea that death is easy
The main advantage, I think, is that it makes it "legal". The player isn't begging for his PC's life or accepting the GM's charity (which can sour the experience or be felt as "cheating"), he's using his character points/the concession rules in the way it's meant to be used. It feels empowering to save your own character :)

but if my actions in combat don't really matter because we're going to win without risks anyway, we may as well narrate "and you roftlstomp those puny opponents without significant issues" before moving on.
I think it's a good thing to find ways for the players to lose a fight without losing their character. When you think about it, the real goal of most fight isn't "kill the other guy", but rather "protect/destroy this objective", "secure/block a route", "take control of this place", "prove your worth", "cross the monster's lair without being eaten", "disrupt/complete the Grand Ritual Of Doom(tm)", "Steal the treasure", "escape/take prisonners", "protect/abduct the princess", "Hold the pass until reinforcement arrive", "Draw attention away from the decker while she opens the door", etc... Even in a real deathfight against an alien hungry beast, it's possible to imagine endings where most heroes are still alive, but won't think of it as a victory.
If I can find a way for the players to lose a fight, and lose it badly, without dying, then I can offer them a proper challenge with a real possibility of failure.

Some games like Mouseguard even explicitly set up the stakes at the beginning of the fight, so that both the players and the GM know what will happen. But even in other games, I think it's a good thing to have a non game-breaking answer to the question "what happens when the players fail?" Bonus : those fights where stuff happens beside the killing are usually more interesting thant the default "roll initiative and kill the other guy"
And of course, some of those things that happen when players lose CAN include death of a hero. But it's more confortable if I don't have to go there every time.

For the same reason, I prefer to avoid "save the world" games, because if my players lose, I'm presented with the choice of either chickening out, or destroying my game world. "Save your hometown", "save your friend", "save your career/reputation" are just as motivating (sometimes even more, since they feel more "real"), and failing to protect those doesn't kill the campaign.

King of Nowhere

2023-11-30, 06:59 PM

I think it's a good thing to find ways for the players to lose a fight without losing their character. When you think about it, the real goal of most fight isn't "kill the other guy", but rather "protect/destroy this objective", "secure/block a route", "take control of this place", "prove your worth", "cross the monster's lair without being eaten", "disrupt/complete the Grand Ritual Of Doom(tm)", "Steal the treasure", "escape/take prisonners", "protect/abduct the princess", "Hold the pass until reinforcement arrive", "Draw attention away from the decker while she opens the door", etc... Even in a real deathfight against an alien hungry beast, it's possible to imagine endings where most heroes are still alive, but won't think of it as a victory.
If I can find a way for the players to lose a fight, and lose it badly, without dying, then I can offer them a proper challenge with a real possibility of failure.

i have actually done a lot of those. still, when push comes to shove most of those fights will result in actual engagement to the death. I mean, the most straightforward - and permanent - way to protect this objective is to kill the danger and steal his loot (getting resurrected is easy, replacing high level gear is a lot harder). take control of this place, the best way is to remove those other guys fighting for control. disrupt the ritual, the best way is to kill the caster, and the best way to complete the ritual is to kill those attempting to stop it. yes, it is possible in all those cases for the players to fail without death, but in practice all those situations are likely to come down to hard fighting - unless the party can negotiate, which happens sometimes.

my experience, instead, is that the best way for players to lose a fight without getting killed is to encourage players to get single use emergency teleportation, and possibly counters to effects that prevent teleportation. possibly drop such items in their loot if necessary. and all the while promote a culture of "fight is hard, you may have to retreat every once in a while". not that i ever had to insist much, they can all see the benefit of getting a tattoo of single use dimension door for a small fee (or, at high levels, a quickened teleport, a quickened immobile dimension door in case they are held immobile somehow, and a greater dispel magic in case they are hit by dimensional anchor).
incidentally, the enemies also use those things, which is great for me; creating a high level foe takes hours of work. getting them to escape allows me to use the villains for multiple fights :smallcool:. but it's also nice to create a personal rivality with enemy bosses that can span across multiple fights, with a few inconclusive fights where one of the parties retreat mostly in good order - generally followed by the achievement of some minor objectives, like the aforementioned capture/defend this place - until the players manage that one good engagement when they can destroy the strenght of their enemies once and for all.

rel

2023-11-30, 10:44 PM

Engineering scenarios in which failure can lead to an interesting continuation of the game is actually one of the more difficult aspects of GMing, for me at least.

Definitely harder than providing solid reasons for NPC's and PC's to not just default to slitting throats once the fighting stops.

gbaji

2023-12-01, 05:26 PM

Let's also not forget that "failure" does not have to mean "lost the fight". Generally speaking, if we assume that NPCs have goals (evil goals!), and the PCs are trying to stop those goals from happening, then it's quite easy for the PCs to win a fight, while still failing to prevent the bad guys from moving their agenda forward. To be fair though, these sorts of encounters are usually earlier things, and easier things, where the PCs are encountering mooks and figuring out what's going on with the "evil plot".

It really depends on the power level of the group and the adventure. At lower levels, just about anything could be a "we could die" situation, so the players have to be on their toes. Usually though, they're also fighting similarly wimpy opponents, so things tend to work out. Against tougher opponents (like out of their league stuff), you have to also remember that the NPCs have their own goals, and those goals usually aren't "kill this random group of wimpy people who stumbled into our area". Even powerful bad guys are unlikelyi to spend the time to kill weaker PCs (unless they've really become a problem). They're more likely to just send/leave a small number of minions there to deal with the problem, while they take care of whatever it is they are actually doing. So yeah. There should very rarely be a "fight to the death and die" situation here, unless the party bumbles their way into something that is both out of their league *and* has a direct interest in killikng them (like say a hungry monster or pack of monsters).

At higher levels, it's hard to not rationalize very deadly stuff being tossed around (on all sides), but such things are also much more rare. Intelligent NPCs just aren't going to have their own powerful guys dealing with street level stuff, so most of the time, this is still going to be the PC stomping on minions, while discovering whatever's going on. The tougher fights come when the stakes themselves get higher, and the more powerful folks will come out to play. Honestly though, this is very very game system dependent how this goes down. In high lethality games, the strategy has to be "gain intelligence on them, while not giving any about ourselves". This usually gives an advantage to the PCs, since they are the "unknown element" to the NPCs plans. The NPCs, on the other hand, are the ones constrained to whatever they are doing in the setting, which can be discovered by the PCs, and (hopefully) intelligently acted against. The longer the PCs can remain an unknown element, the better they will do in these sorts of things. So again, rarely an actual "fight or die" situation, and most of the time, the PCs will have an advantage.

Well, until they don't. This is where TPKs can happen. If the PCs mess up, become a significant enough thorn in a powerful bad guy's plans *and* reveal enough information about themselves so they can be targetted, they'd better be taking some extreme measures to avoid massive counter attack. That's where most of the "fight or die" situations come up in my game (and it doesn't happen often).

Of course, this does not preclude some fairly major endgame type encounters and battles. Some of which can be extremely difficult, and put characters are risk. Here's the thing though, I wrote the adventure. I set the powerlevel for the adventure. That climatic final battle? I wrote it. I know who the PCs are, and I scaled the NPCs and their defenses and position to that party (maybe not the specifics of the party, but at least to the general capabilities). If the players wipe there, barring some spectacularly poor tactics and/or poor die rolling (like a *lot* of poor die rolling), that's entirely on me. It should not happen. There should be risk to individual characters in the party, but a full wipe should not happen. If it did, then I failed to balance the encounter in the first place. If this is the final battle, and they have to win it to succeed at the adventure, then I'd be a real jerk GM to make it too tough for them to actually win.

Now, if they go off on their own looking for trouble, where it wasn't neccessary? That's a whole different story. I'll hit them hard and not hold back. That's their choice of encounter., so they are responsible for making sure they aren't biting off more than they can chew. The end boss final fight? That was my choice, so I'm responsible. So yeah. There are plenty of things in game settings I run that can wipe the party if they run into them. But yeah, they have to go out of their way typically to run into stuff like that. That's just how I manage things. And even when they do roam around, I make a point of providing cluies/information to allow them to make intelligent choices about where they go, and thus what they are likely to get themselves into. I'm not going to have them randomly decide to walk down a trail, and then say '"surprise, that leads to the ancient red dragon's lair. You die". They'll have plenty of opportunity to learn about what they are getting into before finding themselves in a fight (usually). I don't like deaths in games to be random and arbitrary. Players just tend not to enjoy that (well, Paranoia excepted, of course).

Duff

2023-12-10, 10:43 PM

Monsters using optimal tactics often breaks verisimilitude just as much as poor tactics. For example, killing downed players instantly is 'optimal' in the sense of 'will help my friends in the next room survive', but doesn't seem like a likely response to the battle, not least because it makes that specific monster more likely to die. Also, anything like this (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0216.html).

Agreed. Monsters are characters and combat tactics is behaviour.
Their tactics should* be as clever as they are
Their tactics should reflect their personality and motives

So, to answer the OP, there are encounters where this would be entirely appropriate because it merges seamlessly with roleplay, but others where it would not.
Clever, highly motivated and unemotional opponents probably shouldn't be doing this.
Don't hand an Illithid the idiot ball.

It's fairly easy to make questionable tactics on the part of monsters seem plausible with the right narration. For the two examples that you gave:

"The dragon tires of this petty game of hit-and-run. With a bloodcurdling roar, it dives into the melee, a whirlwind of talon and fang!

"Enraged, the ogre swings its club wildly, laying about it on all sides."

Neither of those events should, I think, violate a player's sense of verisimilitude, while letting you hold back on the lethality if necessary.

I'd suggest a dragon might be better played "hardball" - but that's a matter of taste and style.
I like my players to sit up and take notice when a dragon comes to the table

* - Within the limits of the GM's own resources of course. Preparation and research can only go so far in swapping for intellect and many games include super-human minds.

kyoryu

2023-12-11, 02:24 PM

King of Nowhere

2023-12-11, 03:08 PM

In general I prefer games where:

1. Death isn't the primary failure stake - disruption of plans or expenditure of resources is. Death can be on the table, especially during critical fights, but it's not considered the "main" risk in a fight.
2. Failure is, to some extent, expected - the players will win some, and they will lose some. Failure is not an anomaly - any encounter has the chance of "failing" from a player POV.
3. GMs can play hard against the players, and don't need to pull punches.

These three all reinforce each other.

This works if you fight dumb monsters, but when opponents are npcs - which is most of the times at high level in my campaigns - it becomes hard to swallow those npcs that have zero chances of even downing a pc, and yet fight to the death to drain some resources on the pcs. This suicide tactics could only be justified on total zealots. Otherwise, i'd expect most enemy mooks to surrender immediately, or to flee.
This is part of my reason for having death be relatively easy; the npcs would not engage unless they had some reason to assume they have a chance

kyoryu

2023-12-11, 03:45 PM

This works if you fight dumb monsters, but when opponents are npcs - which is most of the times at high level in my campaigns - it becomes hard to swallow those npcs that have zero chances of even downing a pc, and yet fight to the death to drain some resources on the pcs. This suicide tactics could only be justified on total zealots. Otherwise, i'd expect most enemy mooks to surrender immediately, or to flee.
This is part of my reason for having death be relatively easy; the npcs would not engage unless they had some reason to assume they have a chance

... I think that's where it works the best.

If you assume failure is possible, then, yes, NPCs will only attack if:

1. There's a good reason for them to be willing to risk physical violence
2. There's at least a chance that they could win, through strength or numbers

In a lot of cases, then, retreat becomes a fairly common thing, and you basically fight until it's clear which side is going to win, and meaningful NPCs (at least) prefer to retreat rather than stand and fight. But, because of the three things I like seeing, actually putting the PCs against fights that they might lose is a reasonable thing to do - you don't need to spoon-feed them fights they'll win with 95% certainty.

So, yes, trivial mooks won't fight PCs, especially by themselves. I don't see this as a problem.

(Note that this doesn't work well in situations where you really want to plan the series of encounters that the players will play through, as this means that any fight can be lost and require re-planning. But that's not my preferred style of game anyway.)

King of Nowhere

2023-12-11, 08:12 PM

kyoryu

2023-12-11, 08:47 PM

so that means that you expect the players to retreat if a fight is going poorly for them, and you expect that players needing to retreat is a significant possibility.
in that case we are substantially in agreement.

Yup. NPCs, too.

I'd go further and say I prefer it when even "loss" doesn't necessarily mean death, even if you don't retreat.

I also think that retreat should be reified as a mechanic to make it reasonable to expect, unlike a number of games (D&D 3.x comes to mind).

icefractal

2023-12-11, 09:45 PM

I also think that retreat should be reified as a mechanic to make it reasonable to expect, unlike a number of games (D&D 3.x comes to mind).That would help, yeah. IME, there's also a strong aversion in many players to retreating, but it'd at least be good if it were mechanically sensible.

The tricky part is that it's hard to create effective retreat mechanics that don't also function as "hit-and-run mechanics" unless you go 4th-wall-breaking and just say "you only get to use these mechanics if you honestly intend to retreat and stay retreated for at least a day".

gbaji

2023-12-11, 09:51 PM

... I think that's where it works the best.

If you assume failure is possible, then, yes, NPCs will only attack if:

1. There's a good reason for them to be willing to risk physical violence
2. There's at least a chance that they could win, through strength or numbers

In a lot of cases, then, retreat becomes a fairly common thing, and you basically fight until it's clear which side is going to win, and meaningful NPCs (at least) prefer to retreat rather than stand and fight. But, because of the three things I like seeing, actually putting the PCs against fights that they might lose is a reasonable thing to do - you don't need to spoon-feed them fights they'll win with 95% certainty.

So, yes, trivial mooks won't fight PCs, especially by themselves. I don't see this as a problem.

(Note that this doesn't work well in situations where you really want to plan the series of encounters that the players will play through, as this means that any fight can be lost and require re-planning. But that's not my preferred style of game anyway.)

Yup. Put me firmly in the "I don't run X encounter of Y toughness per day" category. It's kind of funny, because once you actually just walk away from this (IMO very contrived) methodology, you find that you don't have to do things like "pile on X number of mooks just to whittle resources to make the main fight for the day difficult". There's no need to make any fight particularly "difficult" at all. Some will be. Some wont. Some will be encounters that consist solely of "you notice a group of small wimpy creatures running over the hill to your left".

That's not to say that you can't use encounters to whittle away at resources, they just have to be more directed and logically based rather than just "here's three rooms of random wimpy monsters you have to plow thorugh before running into this really tough encounter" sorts of things. And yeah, some game systems themselves lend themselves better to this style of GMing than others, but even D&D can be played this way if you really want to (I've done it myself, and played in games where the GMs actively avoided this).

Honestly? This allows me to focus far more on the actual main encounters that really matter. I find that players enjoy the big/tough fights far more than a bunch of smaller/easy fights anyway. Put the focus on where the most enjoyment is. Other encounters are better addressed as setting building and background/informational than actual encounters designed to remove resources IMO. My players will run into a ton of things that are trivial if they wanted to fight them, so that's rarely the objective of those encounters. It's about learning and figuring things out... until it's time to use that information to do something. It's the "do something" at the tail end of that sequence that has to be balanced (at least in terms of combat difficulty). Everything up to that point should be more about RPing, skills use, and decision making.

At least that's how I tend to do things. And by putting that focus on that tail end encounter, I can really make that one stand out.

Mechalich

2023-12-12, 12:47 AM

That would help, yeah. IME, there's also a strong aversion in many players to retreating, but it'd at least be good if it were mechanically sensible.

The tricky part is that it's hard to create effective retreat mechanics that don't also function as "hit-and-run mechanics" unless you go 4th-wall-breaking and just say "you only get to use these mechanics if you honestly intend to retreat and stay retreated for at least a day".

There's also the problem that fantasy scenarios tend to make retreat, and its companion, surrender, more difficult than they would be in reality. In the real world, if you're in combat you're either fighting an animal or another human being. In the case of animals, running away is very effective, since for complex biomechanical reasons predators are not good are long distance pursuits compared to humans and most herbivores are not sufficiently aggressive to engage in pursuit over any distance away from territory they are trying to protect (there are exceptions, like hippos, but these are comparatively rare). In the case of humans, unless the situation is a first contact, there's probably enough cultural context to viably attempt surrender even to opponents with whom there is no common language.

Unfortunately, fantasy scenarios include enemies that never get tired, or that will never accept surrender (sometimes both, like undead) and fantasy games also often lack mechanics to account for things like stamina. In the real world, even a pursuit predator like a wolf has a rather limited window to successfully pin prey before the hunt fails because it needs to stop and pant for a while, but in D&D a wolf can pursue forever.

OOC, part of the problem with retreating is that, especially in games where battles are lengthy (which includes basically every version of D&D), it feels to the players like they've wasted their time. RPGs tend to be highly reward mediated and spending two hours fighting a battle only to get nothing is a miserable experience, something that is well documented in the world of MMOs. Inducing retreat in a party is therefore much, much easier before the battle has actually started rather than once attrition has set in midway through.

King of Nowhere

2023-12-12, 02:55 PM

OOC, part of the problem with retreating is that, especially in games where battles are lengthy (which includes basically every version of D&D), it feels to the players like they've wasted their time. RPGs tend to be highly reward mediated and spending two hours fighting a battle only to get nothing is a miserable experience, something that is well documented in the world of MMOs. Inducing retreat in a party is therefore much, much easier before the battle has actually started rather than once attrition has set in midway through.

My group has never displayed such negative attitude. they (correctly) treat retrets as useful lessons, because they learn from the fight and they return better prepared the next time. "that bodyguard has blocked a lot of attacks, we need to take him down first" "that dragon dealt a lot of damage in melee, we should work to keep it away from us" "we must spread out more to survive the area effects". it is not unusual that the party suffers the first time they face a new boss opponent, but comes back with better tactics and wins the next time. And it makes for a great story on both sides; the players feel that they earned their victory through cunning and skill instead of having it handed down, and I feel that my world is alive and populated by several power players that are at least nearly equals to the party, rather than a glorified kindergarten made for the players to roflstomp their way through as a not-so-subtle attempt to gratify their egos in a power fantasy.
I'd go as far as to say that "party loses and narrowly escapes the first time, comes back better prepared and win" is the best possible thing that can happen. It's no coincidence that many stories use the same structure. And unlike the "underdog defeats stronger opponent" narrative that often requires somebody picking up the idiot ball, this one can be reproduced with some reliability in an rpg: make an opponent that's roughly equal to the party in terms of raw power, and trust on your players to have four brains against your one and be able to find better tactics than you if you really put their mind to it.

plus, retreating from a fight against a strong opponent should give xp. in fact, sport experience shows that most often a defeat teaches more than a victory. so, even players that are in it only for the reward should get something out of it.

I can't talk about mmo because they tend to have different mechanics and i'm not failiar with the community. heck, I can't even talk about the general rpg community, since I was lucky to have two united groups lasting for years and so my whole experience is reduced to how a dozen people will react.