Adjusting and justifying difficulty in-game

[Thrawn4]

Hello everyone.

We all know that difficulty is a matter of taste and different groups like different things, but in my experience there are many groups who favour a style which offers the potential of loss and death. The problem is that sometimes people have a different understanding of what that entails; and even if they are on the same page, the death of a character can be unpleasant for the player or the DM.

Therefore I would like to discuss ways for the DM to justify and adjust the difficulty, so that even if a character dies neither the player nor the DM can say it wasn't fair.

I have come up with
1. Put the player's in a dangerous situation, but offer them an easier solution if they think it through (e. g. solving a riddle to avoid the conflict or make the battle easier)
2. Let the player's decide how much they want to risk (e. g. "Now that you have rescued the damsel in distress you can leave.... or you could take on the other guards to get to the treasure room".)

Any more ideas?

[draken50]

This is a good question... Ultimately though I feel that the relationship inherent between a GM and the players is unfair.

As such, I think trust is more important in that regard as I can point to numbers ect. whether challenge ratings or other stats that say "This is fair", but really it's most important that players trust their GM to give them a fair shake.

[Beta Centauri]

We all know that difficulty is a matter of taste and different groups like different things, but in my experience there are many groups who favour a style which offers the potential of loss and death.

Difficulty doesn't have to have anything to do with death. The characters could all survive and still lose. That's a pretty common outcome in stories, actually: the protagonists lose repeatedly at the beginning and then begin to turn the tide.

The problem is that sometimes people have a different understanding of what that entails; and even if they are on the same page, the death of a character can be unpleasant for the player or the DM.

In that case, those people didn't actually favoure a style which offers the potential of loss and death. That's fine: like you say, there are sometimes different understandings. Therefore, it's important to clarify, as much as possible, and throughout play, what it is that the players want. Even players who enjoy a risk of character death may not feel that every possible death is one they would enjoy.

Therefore I would like to discuss ways for the DM to justify and adjust the difficulty, so that even if a character dies neither the player nor the DM can say it wasn't fair.

Ah, yes: blame. Why not just take the blame? Why not agree with the player that it wasn't fair and ask for how they would have preferred to have it go, and then do that? Doing things over is not how I'd like to do it, but if there hasn't been good communication to that point, it's at least happening then: you finally know one thing the player doesn't like. If you'd known ahead of time, you probably wouldn't have done that, so if it's in your power to undo it, just undo it. Keep the lines of communication open to find out from the players what they consider fair (and be prepared to do things over when, upon experiencing what they said they thought was fair, they decide they don't think it's fair).

I have come up with
1. Put the player's in a dangerous situation, but offer them an easier solution if they think it through (e. g. solving a riddle to avoid the conflict or make the battle easier)

Inadvisable, since the easier solution might not be hit upon. Then the players are blamed for not getting the easier answer, and the GM is blamed for making the answer too obtuse.

2. Let the player's decide how much they want to risk (e. g. "Now that you have rescued the damsel in distress you can leave.... or you could take on the other guards to get to the treasure room".)

Yes, but more than that, let them decide exactly what the risk is and what the stakes are. Collaborate on them to figure out what "winning" and "losing" mean in a particular situation. Do they have to "take on" the other guards, or just get past them? Will the guards kill, or just lockdown the treasure room and sound the alarm?

It's not perfect, but if the players themselves are involved in setting the risks and the stakes, they will have much less incentive to lay blame. If they always have to stake their characters and don't always know what the risk and reward are, then they're not always going to be happy with death.

In addition, make an effort to give the monsters goals other than the deaths of the characters. If you do, it makes sense for the monsters to leave the PCs alive after thrashing them: killing them doesn't help accomplish the goal. For instance, an assassination. The assassin might avoid the PCs entirely, but if he's confronted he doesn't have to kill them, just keep them from stopping him. Knocking them out, or immobilize them would be adequate.

Other than that, you can try changing how death is handled. Raise Dead exists for precisely this reason: so that no one has much to complain about if a character dies. It costs a bit of gold, but the character is back, good as new. Yes, I know that "takes the sting out of death" or whatever, but if the player is blaming the GM, then that player didn't really want the sting of that death. If they ever do have a character death that stings in a way they enjoy, then they can have their character's spirit decline to return.

[Thrawn4]

This is a good question... Ultimately though I feel that the relationship inherent between a GM and the players is unfair.

As such, I think trust is more important in that regard as I can point to numbers ect. whether challenge ratings or other stats that say "This is fair", but really it's most important that players trust their GM to give them a fair shake.

Although you are right, I think that a good design can also help a lot. I think it just feels better that way. And I know that I as a DM occasionally wonder whether a challenge is to difficult or not, so I like having different challenges when it comes to critical plot points.


Oh:
3. Have the difficulty be dependant on previous achievements and failures (e.g. villain less powerful when players bribed his allies or stole his magic sword)

[Milodiah]

My near-universal difficulty adjustment system for games is:
1. Who did you piss off?
2. What's the next level of capability to which they can escalate?

If your story arc is about a series of completely unrelated dungeons just getting knocked over one after the other, you've got a problem. You do have to fill each dungeon with arbitrarily larger threats each time, because there's no other justification. However, the second the players are working at cross purposes with an organization, that's when you can spring that stuff. You take out the first-wave guys who are just essentially security guards; the organization sends you a wake-up call in terms of enemies much more suited to kill you; you beat them, they reorganize and send something else.

The real key is to justify someone or some group thinking, in-universe, in a similar way to you as the GM. "How can we escalate against these guys to deal with the threat without unnecessarily tying up more resources than we need?"

You aren't really putting yourself in the situation that sometimes happens where the PCs are Public Enemy #1 to these guys, and yet they still won't send the big guys until you just so happen to be the right level for them to be an even match...the key is to ensure that your players realize that if they're going up against a major enemy that has the capability of wiping them off the map, they'd better be strategic about how they deal with said enemy, because they can wipe them off the map if they so decide.

[Beta Centauri]

This is a good question... Ultimately though I feel that the relationship inherent between a GM and the players is unfair.

It doesn't have to be.

As such, I think trust is more important in that regard as I can point to numbers ect. whether challenge ratings or other stats that say "This is fair", but really it's most important that players trust their GM to give them a fair shake.

Numbers are a cop-out. If something doesn't seem fair to the players, pointing at the rules isn't likely to make them feel better. Even if they do stop blaming the GM, they'll just take to blaming the game (or the GM for trusting the game).

And I know that I as a DM occasionally wonder whether a challenge is to difficult or not, so I like having different challenges when it comes to critical plot points.

I have stopped worrying if challenges are too difficult. I'll throw whatever I think is interesting into the mix. When I worried about the difficulty, I would tend to err on the side of caution, leading to trivial encounters, and even then it would sometimes end up being too hard. Trying to balance on "challenging" without falling into "impossible" is more work than I want to put it, so I work with the players to make sure "impossible" doesn't mean "ruins the fun."

Oh:
3. Have the difficulty be dependant on previous achievements and failures (e.g. villain less powerful when players bribed his allies or stole his magic sword)

That's a good example of alternate goals. They go to steal the magic sword, but find it guarded. The guards just have to fight them off, or get the sword to safety. The PCs just have to escape with the sword. None of that necessarily requires deaths on either side, and failing doesn't end the plot, so you can more safely err on the side of being too difficult.

[Thrawn4]

Inadvisable, since the easier solution might not be hit upon. Then the players are blamed for not getting the easier answer, and the GM is blamed for making the answer too obtuse.

First off, you use the word blame very often. I just wanted to say that this is less about accusations and more about game design.
Anyway, I don't see your point. If the players didn't get the easy way, that's fine. But they had a chance to improve their situation. It's like having an additional skill check, but rather than depending on a die they have a riddle or something.

Yes, but more than that, let them decide exactly what the risk is and what the stakes are. Collaborate on them to figure out what "winning" and "losing" mean in a particular situation. Do they have to "take on" the other guards, or just get past them? Will the guards kill, or just lockdown the treasure room and sound the alarm?

Correctly conveying the situation is indeed important, but IMHO that is true for every given situation. And yes, by take on I meant overcoming an obstacle.

[Thrawn4]

You aren't really putting yourself in the situation that sometimes happens where the PCs are Public Enemy #1 to these guys, and yet they still won't send the big guys until you just so happen to be the right level for them to be an even match...the key is to ensure that your players realize that if they're going up against a major enemy that has the capability of wiping them off the map, they'd better be strategic about how they deal with said enemy, because they can wipe them off the map if they so decide.

I think we could turn this into
4. Give plenty of warnings in-game and have the players come up with some preparations.

[ComaVision]

I think communication is the biggest part of it.

My players know that I'm going to throw reasonably difficult encounters at them, and I won't pull punches if they do something stupid. I've also told them that there will occasionally be encounters they aren't meant to be able to fight, so that's something they need to keep in mind (I use this sparingly, thrice in the last eight months).

Additionally, when there's an encounter that's meant to be particularly difficult, there will be some sort of warning. Most recently, a group of mercenaries attacked my group. I described the streets as being unusually empty, and the group knew something was up. They even saw the mercs ahead of time but they were taking a while to discuss what to do so I started initiative. 2 PCs and an NPC died (out of 5 PCs).

As a result, I'm never at "blame" when a character dies. It's always perceived as directly attributable to the PCs actions.

[kyoryu]

1) Yeah, trust is key.

2) Failure doesn't have to mean "death". Sometimes it will, and that's fine, but 99% of the time what the opposition wants *isn't* "kill the characters". It's "prevent them from getting in" or "defend my lair" or "kidnap the girl" or some variation on that theme.

3) Communicate with your players about how often they will potentially face defeat, what that will typically mean, and what they should expect.

[draken50]

It doesn't have to be.

Please elaborate on this.

I have found as the person running the game the obstacles and challenges available to me are limited only by imagination. I can have literal gods, thousands of monsters, and even the very forces of nature at my disposal. If I decide a supervolcano erupts beneath Athkatala while the players are in it, there's very little a group of level 1's can expect to do successfully.

As a player, I have the reasonable actions of a single character bound by not only by the limits of logic I impose but those the GM may allow. I can state that my level 1 Barbarian throws his axe into the ground which such force that it drives deep within the earth to kill the fire demon, that by his tribal superstitions must obviously be the cause of this destruction to the area. To have the GM respond: "You throw your axe at the street it bounces with a shower of sparks and lands next to a pile of horse poo."

Edited to reply to Thrawn as well

Although you are right, I think that a good design can also help a lot. I think it just feels better that way. And I know that I as a DM occasionally wonder whether a challenge is to difficult or not, so I like having different challenges when it comes to critical plot points.

Personally I consider this to be a mark of a good GM. Your concerns about difficulty are frankly warranted and something I struggle with as well. Design in that regard also relies strongly on the game master understanding the mechanics of not just the games, but additionally that of the party and the enemies used. I have had a number of situations in my last game where the party annihilated in a quick manner enemies I expected to provide much more in the way of challenge. In each case, I learned about how to effectively use those enemies and scale their individual difficulty via situation.

Often sadly, this requires a deft feel, when combined with the randomness inherent in a dice system can cause battles to swing very wildly from their expectations.

Such a system to plainly amount would require parameters for attacking and defending distances at start, availability of cover, choke points and other environmental variables, as well as comparisons related to ranged weapons, relative chances to hit, and action economy. Additionally, you have other variables related to the considered victory or defeat. As an example, in a fight goblins where the player characters win, is it considered a victory by the players if half or even just one or two of the PCs died? Or did they have an NPC to protect, or other variables that may have affected their decision making or behavior.

Again, I applaud your willingness to investigate this sort of thing, and the consideration you put into your games. I'm just not sure if there's ever really a way to make things "fair." Ultimately, while I often try to account for things myself, I really have to rely on my players trust that I am not trying to outright murder them, and that I am running the game with the sole purpose of entertaining them, and that I will never outright create a situation where one of their characters dies "for the sake of the story". A character may die, and it will serve the story, but I will never make unavoidable, and it should always be a result of the combination of their actions, and the results of the dice.

[Maglubiyet]

Often sadly, this requires a deft feel, when combined with the randomness inherent in a dice system can cause battles to swing very wildly from their expectations.

I had this happen where I killed TWO long-standing characters of one player due to freak dice rolls on what should have been an easy challenge. This was a D&D 2e Planescape campaign. The party, around 5th level I think, got into a fight with some minor, easily-defeatable monsters (don't even remember what now). I rolled a natural 20 on two attacks that hit the two characters, which was 2x dmg, and then I proceeded to roll max damage for each attack. It was like 2d12 and 3d6 or something bizarre. Dead, both of them.

With this group there were no secret dice rolls behind the GM screen, everything was out in the open, so I couldn't even fudge it. The PC's were in a remote area where Raise was not available. Anything I did would be obviously "cheating". We had had some issues which is why everything had to be rolled out in the open.

The player stared for a while and then just crumpled up both his character sheets. It sucked because he was a good friend, had been the best man at my wedding, and things were weird between us ever since. He never played RPG's again after that either.

[ComaVision]

The player stared for a while and then just crumpled up both his character sheets. It sucked because he was a good friend, had been the best man at my wedding, and things were weird between us ever since. He never played RPG's again after that either.

... Really?

I killed my best friend's character on Sunday DMing and he considers it one of our funnest sessions. I've had people be disappointed when their characters die but this blows my mind.

[Maglubiyet]

... Really?

I killed my best friend's character on Sunday DMing and he considers it one of our funnest sessions. I've had people be disappointed when their characters die but this blows my mind.

Yeah, don't really know what happened. He said it didn't matter, that he didn't care, but I could tell he did.

Then we just sort of drifted apart after that. A lot in our lives changed around the same time so maybe it was unrelated. He's not one to ever give a straight answer, so I'll probably never know.

[Beta Centauri]

Please elaborate on this.

It doesn't have to be unfair because just because a GM can do anything doesn't mean they will.

... Really?

I killed my best friend's character on Sunday DMing and he considers it one of our funnest sessions. I've had people be disappointed when their characters die but this blows my mind.

I used to have the same response, but the reality is that things affect different people in different ways, even when everything else is equal (which often won't be the case). It can seem odd, but they're not necessarily irrational or immature. Which you didn't say they were, but I find that that's a common assumption.

[Jay R]

This is a good question... Ultimately though I feel that the relationship inherent between a GM and the players is unfair.

It feels unfair if you consider the GM to be one of the players. It's perfectly normal, natural, and fair to the extent that you consider the GM to be the referee.

As such, I think trust is more important in that regard as I can point to numbers ect. whether challenge ratings or other stats that say "This is fair", but really it's most important that players trust their GM to give them a fair shake.

Trust is crucial. But for trust to develop, both the players and the GM must be trusting and trustworthy.