Glass-Cannons, Whinging, and Blame

[Willie the Duck]

It's not 100% this, but isn't this broadly what Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is based on?

In very broad strokes, it is the premise of Zelda games in general (although with many of the early games, the amount of actual alternate orders you could do things in was relatively limited).

[kyoryu]

Hold the hell on. You are actually saying that because I try and have enemies within the PC's level range, they trust me LESS?

Like, seriously? You think they would trust me more if I just went "OOPSIE! CR 20 DRAGON AGAINST LEVEL 3 PCS! YOU DIE NOW!"

No. Obviously not.

What he's saying is that if you know you're entering the dragon's lair, and there's a CR 20 dragon, and you get bit, that's maintaining consistency with the world.

If you go into a kobold cave, and there's kobolds there, that's maintaining consistency with the world.

If you go to the dragon's cave, and there's magically CR3 enemies (assuming you're level 3), and you go to the kobold cave and the enemies are CR3, then the players know that their choices don't matter much. And if the players want to go beat up kobolds? So be it. That's their choice. If they want to throw themselves at a dragon? So be it.

Dude, if people seem to be saying something that sounds insane, trust that they're not, and figure out the reasonable interpretation, or ask without the aggressive tone. Everyone in this thread is trying to help.

[Telok]

But more importantly, in most RPG's putting an enemy the players literally cannot defeat in front of them and not telling them that is almost always going to lead to bad results. That's the real problem with what happened.

I didn't hear "literally cannot defeat" from his info example, I heard "your party at this time can't face-sword it to death". He indicated in the post that there were potentially multiple ways to deal with the threat that weren't combat, in addition to some combat ways the party didn't currently possess. It's like a tarasque, if they don't have a wish spell they can't kill it and nobody complains about that.

To me an encounter that can't be defeated in combat is roughly similar to an encounter that can't be completed by non-combat actions. Something that can only be solved by hit point damage is by definition immune to stealth, social abilities, restraint, illusions, charms, trickery, etc. And nobody complains about that. Nobody bashes you for having encounters that can only be solved by hit point damage. But something hit point damage doesn't solve? That's "naughty icky bad DM" stuff for some reason.

I've had a D&D 3.5e mid/high op 10th level party of five almost TPK on a gelatenous cube. It was a enormous one, something like 25' across and 1100+ hit points (long ago, numbers may be inexact). It was also trapped in a room with only wide 10' & 5' high entrances, and had a total move of 20' a round. They obviously IDed it immedately, and went to melee it. Three of them died, including a monk-like super punch build. It sounds like Tak's party acts like that a lot (mine only do so occasionally and claim they had brain farts afterwards).

So he didn't perfectly communicate the entirety of the monster/npc defenses to the players? Apparently they only ever asked a single question, which got an answer. I think everyone understands there are some communications issues in every group sometimes. Most of which could usually be solved by people (players & DMs) asking for clarity or a few more questions. This particular example just sounds like one of those. Someone asks a general question, gets a general answer, makes a wrong assumption and acts on it. In this case there was just no follow-up information asked for and the assumptions were never questioned.

[Quertus]

There is way too much going on in this thread - I can't possibly process all of it, let alone responded to all of it.

But here's a few pieces I did notice:

Toxic environment

There's a lot of toxicity in your games. I don't know what to tell you here. Based on my friends with therapists, you may actually crave and seek out such toxicity. Even if that's not the case, I, personally, don't know how to address the sheer level of toxicity I read from your group, and can only encourage you to go overboard on addressing the parts that I do understand, in the hopes of bringing the overall toxicity down noticeably.

Information: lore, foreshadowing, etc

There is a time to be cryptic. That time is *not* "when your players don't trust you", that time is not now, nor any time soon.

Just give everything as very straight answers: "there is no known way to harm this creature; it is believed to be invulnerable to harm." And even that might not be direct enough.

The big nose Ogre? That falls under… hold on…

The problem occurred when the player who got hit with the sneeze attack accused me of making it up on the spot to screw him. Personally, I felt the big nose clue should not have telegraphed this, but should have made it seem apparent in retrospect (as they say, the perfect riddle seems impossible when you only know the question but obvious once you know the answer). Also note that if I had used a standard D&D style fomorian, with the single eye that inflicts psychic damage, this whole situation would have been significantly worse for the player; not only would they have DIED rather than being knocked down with the melee, but I could have also opened up a Monster Manual when they accused me of making it up on the spot.

So, for the big nosed Ogre, under a GM I trusted, that would be fun. It would be "impossible at the time, obvious (that you didn't make it up on the spot) in retrospect.

But it would be bloody terrible as foreshadowing, as giving useful informing.

You need to throw out whatever part of yourself wants to make "gotcha!" moments like this, and focus on plain, straightforward information dumps. Heck, try just handing party the monster's stats at the start of combat for a while, until you get used to the idea of what clear communication might look like.

Role-playing vs suboptimal play

One need not behave hideously suboptimally in order to roleplay. There's 6 Orcs, and an Ogre. The tactically correct action for my character is to attack an Orc.

If my character is Vengeful, they'll favor attacking the Orc that attacked / damaged them. If they're Protective, they'll favor attacking the Orc that attacked / damaged their allies. If they're OCD, they'll favor… maybe starting at one end, and working their way down.

And they might have other considerations, like whose line of fire they block, how likely who (including themselves) is to be attacked by what based on what their final position is, how far they strayed from / how well they can see someone / something from their new position, etc.

And the things that they say, and/or the descriptions I give, will reflect this - if, perhaps, often only in a "big nosed Ogre" way, that makes those in the know smile knowingly, and leaves those ignorant of their motivations still equally ignorant, rather than in an "in your face" way.

One need not be Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, in order to roleplay in combat. Granted, I prefer less toxic groups, where I can play a Sentient Potted Plant if I want to.

But, yes, we are likely able to view the "it's what my character would do" thread through not entirely dissimilar lenses.

Character competence

I am very curious how you see it.

I already gave you examples: Superman trivially tanking a tank shot or lifting a car, Sherlock trivially noticing clues, Quertus trivially comprehending magic, your medic being the answer to the Divination of the best answer for healing someone.

You are constantly trying to challenge your players. That doesn't make their PCs seem cool. Showcasing what isn't a challenge for their PCs, the things that they can do that others (even in their own party) might well find impossible? That demonstrates how cool they are.

Your examples showed how cool your adventures were (which is your good), but that's a very different thing from how cool the PCs are.

Until you learn to scratch that itch in a productive way, expect your players to continue to want to bully the NPCs.

…what?

Got me. Its really more of a player issue than a character or game design issue. I would imagine the answer has something to do with asking leading questions so the players come to the right decision while thinking it was their idea, but I am not at all skilled in that sort of thing.

No! "The right decision" is of the railroad side of the force (as is most of the rest of that). Do not go down that path, or forever will it dominate your destiny!

Never mind that tricking your players is a really bad way to try to handle trust issues, or that the whole thing is a bad way to address the issues you described.

So you said…

1: There is no objective measure of difficulty - have you tried playing war games, with a 50% chance TPK? Not that I think that that is sufficient.

2: Players remember limits more than capabilities - have you tried end of session recap group bonus XP for cool moments like grappling a dinosaur? Or NPCs addressing them by their publicly-known (thank you Podrick) cool moments?

3: Players (not just my current group, and again myself included) tend to bumble around like idiots when confronted with a mystery or a puzzle - have you considered throwing dozens of really trivial puzzles at them?

Superman

Don't get me wrong, I like Superman when he is well written. IMO the best Superman is in For the Animals where he is metaphorically buried under a stack of letters from people who are asking him for help and the knowledge that even with all of his power he can't save everyone, while the worst is the one whose title I don't remember where Lois Lane is injured too badly for modern medicine to save her, so Superman simply stops time, reads every medical textbook ever written, and then uses his laser vision to become the world's best surgeon. Way to crap on all the effort that real world heroes put into saving lives.

I kinda take the opposite tack here.

From your descriptions, Superman saving Lois represents him becoming motivated to creatively use his abilities, to actually fulfill his potential. Him not doing so previously to save people, him not using his medal skills going forward, nor using his ability to stop time to actually help everyone in "for the animals", OTOH, represents his selfishness and failure.

"It's what you do with what you've got that counts". Only one piece of that saw Superman fulfilling his potential. The rest was him being lazy, selfish, and unheroic.

Railroading

Talakeal, in this case, I can see why players would feel like you're railroading and not giving enough information. You have one particular solution in mind, and seemingly that's the only solution that can work. That's a hallmark of railroading. You then give them foreshadowing that, despite you believing it is practically telling them everything, very clearly drives them down an incorrect path of thought. This leads to a sense that not only are the rails the only way to advance the plot, but FINDING the rails is going to be harder than finding a one-square-big ship in Battleship. It feels like a guessing game, where you have to guess the DM's intended solution despite your best guesses matching what clues you've been given.

Now, I believe you've indicated they don't go and do more research IC. That's a problem. But how do they do research and not wind up with that being "railroading" as you're defining it? Doing research means they get either the information they need to identify the solution you've thought up, which is railroading because you're telling them what to do (by how you've described it), or it means they get "facts" that are open-ended enough that they need to still guess what the one true solution is in order to get the train advancing down the rails again.

I am sure you have objections to my characterization of this. I am not trying to tell you that that's definitely what you're always doing. I am, however, trying to tell you why your players have low trust. This picture I've just painted, I believe, will sound familiar to you: it's probably a lot of what your players have complained your games are. They perceive them to be this way because you've set them up to either actually be this way, or to appear this way due to how you give information.

When we tell you to spoon-feed them more than you think they need, we're not advising you to railroad or play their characters. We're telling you that they need to be spoon-fed to be shown that they can act on information they gain and find that it's useful. If they complain that the information isn't useful, have the sources they got it from tell them where they might find more. Provide options of buttons to push to get particular kinds of results, and give them those results when they push those buttons.

If there's railroading going on, it's in how you set up your scenarios to have particular solutions in mind. I'm not saying railroading definitely is, but if it is, that's almost certainly where it's hiding from your awareness. Not telling them the solution you have in mind isn't avoiding railroading; it's just making it hard for them to find and follow the rails.

I also have issues with your characterization of this - or would, if you hadn't explained it as, "I can see your players seeing things this way".

So… a) how would you encourage Talakeal to describe that encounter; b) what solutions would you want Talakeal to be prepared to accept, to keep his adventure from being a linear railroad; C) how could Talakeal have presented this encounter (other than pre-publishing it) to be able to *demonstrate* to the players that it wasn't a railroad / to build trust?

[Segev]

I also have issues with your characterization of this - or would, if you hadn't explained it as, "I can see your players seeing things this way".

So… a) how would you encourage Talakeal to describe that encounter; b) what solutions would you want Talakeal to be prepared to accept, to keep his adventure from being a linear railroad; C) how could Talakeal have presented this encounter (other than pre-publishing it) to be able to *demonstrate* to the players that it wasn't a railroad / to build trust?

Scenario as I understand the DM knows it: There is a monster who cannot take damage, and must be dealt with by non-violent means. It needs to be sneaked past, negotiated with, tricked, run away from, trapped, or otherwise circumvented.

What the DM needs to convey to the party, at an absolute minimum: There is no known way to damage the monster, and nobody has any clue about any secrets to doing so. It is not unstoppable and not infallible, but you can't damage it.

How the DM response to player actions: If they indicate they are going to research to see if any weaknesses can be discovered, there are three crucial pieces of information to get them.

1. What its capabilities are
   
   • Strength limitations
   • Speed limitations
   • Senses it may have and how good it is at using them
   • How much damage it can do (either explicitly, or by comparison of what it has damaged/destroyed and how easily)
2. Some ways others have survived encounters with it
   
   • Running away, and how they managed it
   • Did anybody sneak by it? How hard was that? What did they accomplish doing so?
   • Can it be restrained?
   • Can it be reasoned with?
3. OOC, if they keep looking for/talking about "the secret way the DM expects us to hurt it" or anything of the sort, just flat-out tell them: "It can't be damaged. While I don't have any specific intended solution in mind, I do intend you to think of something other than physically killing it as a solution."

Without stepping OOC, the way to present it through foreshadowing is to give examples from point number 2. This paints a picture of means to engage with it productively that the DM is demonstrating works. When players are looking into how to handle it and assuming the DM has a solution in mind (in this case, it seems they expected a fetch quest for The Magic Sword or something), the DM should give them guidance via examples of how it's been dealt with.

Alternatively, if it's brand new and nobody's ever faced it, instead he should make it clear that even if there's a way to damage it, nobody's found any hint of that, yet. Then, reiterate whatever the goal in actually confronting it is, and have some suggestions from other NPCs if needs be.

It is crucial to point out that the solutions to the problem need not involve actually harming the creature, somehow. Doing so OOC, if needs be.

[kyoryu]

Scenario as I understand the DM knows it: There is a monster who cannot take damage, and must be dealt with by non-violent means. It needs to be sneaked past, negotiated with, tricked, run away from, trapped, or otherwise circumvented.

What the DM needs to convey to the party, at an absolute minimum: There is no known way to damage the monster, and nobody has any clue about any secrets to doing so. It is not unstoppable and not infallible, but you can't damage it.

...

Without stepping OOC, the way to present it through foreshadowing is to give examples from point number 2. This paints a picture of means to engage with it productively that the DM is demonstrating works. When players are looking into how to handle it and assuming the DM has a solution in mind (in this case, it seems they expected a fetch quest for The Magic Sword or something), the DM should give them guidance via examples of how it's been dealt with.

Alternatively, if it's brand new and nobody's ever faced it, instead he should make it clear that even if there's a way to damage it, nobody's found any hint of that, yet. Then, reiterate whatever the goal in actually confronting it is, and have some suggestions from other NPCs if needs be.

It is crucial to point out that the solutions to the problem need not involve actually harming the creature, somehow. Doing so OOC, if needs be.

It's worth pointing out that a successful Lore check was made, so the players had the information. At this point step OOC if needed. The GM telling you what your characters know is OOC, and figuring out what the GM means isn't part of the challenge any more. What to do with the information is.

[Talakeal]

Let us guess. The 1 time in 20 that they roll terrible or just blow up their own plan and it fails they complain about railroading. Right?

Could you convince them to take a break and run through a module? Would they learn anything by being shown what an actual railroady adventure is like?

I have tried modules in the past.

The players show active disdain for them and go out of their way to break them.

Although, admittedly, the module designer is often the target of more bitching that I am.

I did get a very back handed compliment once though, they told me they have a standing policy of ignoring any boxed text I read because it isn't as good as what I come up with on my own.

That's obviously not in any way what I said or meant. You used much stronger language to describe how you create encounters: "Now, I do scale the monsters power to be as close to the PCs as possible without disrupting verisimilitude". All I'm suggesting is you don't try to get the enemies power to be as close to the PCs as possible every time. Get it close sure. But as close as possible is a whole different thing.

What I mean here is, to use D&D terms, that the encounter's CR is as close to appropriate for the party's level as I can get it. So, for example, if I want a red dragon fight for a level 8 party, I will probably use a young (CR 7) or a Juvenile (CR 10); again assuming it is plausible. The giant dragon who has been a scourge of the entire region for centuries is probably going to be at least an adult regardless of what level the party is.

Yeah, I can see how if you were taking me way more literally than I meant, with every encounter being precisely evenly matched against the PCs (with the resultant 50% loss rate) that would be way too much.

This is more where I'm coming from: "behaviors that allow it to survive" sounds an awful lot like "behaviors that allow it to counter PC tactics". Am I wrong?

Sort of. But it certainly isn't tailored to counter the specific PCs or their tactics.

Basically, I think about how the monster has existed this long; why it hasn't been killed by the locals or other monsters. I think about what it would do if faced with several common scenarios; attacked at range, attacked from the air, attacked by a more mobile opponent, attacked by an opponent it can't damage, etc.

Then I adjust its environment and its tactics accordingly.

This serves the dual purposes of explaining why the monster is still alive and feared, and prevents stupid in-game scenarios like the level 2 party kiting a hydra around a football field pecking it to death with hundreds of arrows.

It does not, however, negate truly clever or exceptional plans and abilities the party might utilize, nor does it ensure the monster's victory or the PC's death, often times the monster's plan is merely how to escape.

Few fights in my game will ever use up more than 25% of the party's resources or come anywhere close to killing them.

Talakeal, in this case, I can see why players would feel like you're railroading and not giving enough information. You have one particular solution in mind, and seemingly that's the only solution that can work. That's a hallmark of railroading. You then give them foreshadowing that, despite you believing it is practically telling them everything, very clearly drives them down an incorrect path of thought. This leads to a sense that not only are the rails the only way to advance the plot, but FINDING the rails is going to be harder than finding a one-square-big ship in Battleship. It feels like a guessing game, where you have to guess the DM's intended solution despite your best guesses matching what clues you've been given.

Now, I believe you've indicated they don't go and do more research IC. That's a problem. But how do they do research and not wind up with that being "railroading" as you're defining it? Doing research means they get either the information they need to identify the solution you've thought up, which is railroading because you're telling them what to do (by how you've described it), or it means they get "facts" that are open-ended enough that they need to still guess what the one true solution is in order to get the train advancing down the rails again.

IMO, there is a huge difference between an obstacle and a puzzle.

Obstacles have only a few wrong solutions and a plethora of right ones, puzzles have only a few right solutions and a plethora of wrong ones.

Example of an obstacle: A locked door with a difficulty too high for the party so succeed.
Possible Solutions: Cast Knock, Break it down, dig under it, go in the window, blow open a hole in the wall, find someone to let you in, hire a better locksmith, teleport to the other side, find the key, etc. etc.

Example of a puzzle: An indestructible door with an unpickable lock in an anti-magic zone with nobody on the other side that is the only entrance to an indestructible building with impenetrable walls, ceiling, and floors.
Possible Solutions: Find the key.


So, in this case my encounter, was, imo, an obstacle; a monster with unusual immunities.
Things that wouldn't work: HP damage, reasoning with it.
Possible Solutions: Stealth, trickery, tying it up, knocking it out, tranquilizing poison, entangle spells, nets, causing a cave in to trap it, walls of force, polymorphing it into a harmless form, certain esoteric high end magics, starvation, maybe suffocation or petrification, distraction, illusions, outrunning it, getting the artifact out without entering the shrine using magic or contraptions, sleep spells, paralyzing spells, mind control spells, etc.


Again, I flat out told the players they couldn't kill it, but they had it in their heads I was running a puzzle, not an obstacle, and was intentionally playing word games to trick them. So they focused on looking for "non-violent" ways to kill it, assuming it had some special magical weakness that would make it drop dead if they did the right magical thing. Also, for some crazy reason they tried killing it a couple of times using various means before the random stuff in case I was out and out lying to them, ensuring there would be extra guys to fight.


Railroading is similar to a puzzle; its basically the DM coming up with excuses for why perfectly good ideas won't work because they want to force a very specific outcome.


I don't use puzzles, and try to avoid railroads. The closest I come is branching paths, and even then I am generally open to a third option if it is a good one that makes sense in universe.

stuff.

Agreed.

I'm also rather curious. The unwinnable encounter they engaged in. Did they get TPK'd as a result of it?

Ok, buckle in, this is a long one with no clear answer.

First off; unkillable =/= unwinnable.

So I went back and looked at my notes; it was two years ago and my memory was a little fuzzy.

Basically, it was an optional encounter that took place in a shrine where the god of violence was destroyed a millennia before, but it still existed as a vestige and was slowly pulling itself back together. The magic weapon that originally destroyed it was stored in the shrine. When someone enters the shrine, an avatar of violence is spawned, he is a tough (but not exceptionally so) human warrior who attacks in a mindless rage, think fantasy Jason Voorhes. Then, when anyone is killed in the shrine, be they avatars or intruders, the god feeds off the violent death and spawns two more avatars.

Avatars fade away after an hour, and they won't leave the shrine except to chase someone carrying the artifact (but it doesn't have particularly good tracking abilities and will die of thirst pretty soon thereafter if someone manages to give it the slip.)

OOC, this was based on two of Hercules' stories, The Hydra and Strife. Both of which taught him the lesson that sometimes brute force sometimes makes the situation worse instead of better. It was a totally optional "puzzle encounter" trying to encourage the PCs to think outside of the box and teach them that sometimes a non-violent solution works best.

The first time, the party entered, saw the magic item, killed the avatar, two more spawned, they killed them and four spawned, they killed one of them, two more spawned, and then called a retreat.

They went to town, did some research, and rolled a lore test. They asked me how to kill the monster (technically they were killing it and spawning more, but I knew what they meant) and I told them that as the monster was born of violence, it cannot be killed* by violence. Now, I thought this was a plain statement of fact, but my players took it as a cryptic puzzle; in essence I presented an obstacle and they felt I was presenting a puzzle (see above).

*In retrospect I should have said "defeated" not "killed", but I didn't think that there was going to be a miscommunication at the time.

So they went back in, grabbed the artifact, and let the monster beat on them while they did all sorts of random things. Eventually, when they were close to death, I asked them what they were doing, and they explained that they were looking for its "secret weakness" the "nonviolent means to kill it". I explained that they weren't going to find one, and they said it was no problem, they would just "let it kill them and then respawn in town with the loot".

As I explained up thread, the PCs were being super slow and cautious, and I removed player death to try and get them to be a little bit more adventurous, with HP representing morale and exhaustion rather than meat, and running out of HP meaning the party had the fight beaten out of them and could call a retreat with no penalty.

So, I said that will technically work, even though I feel it kind of goes against the spirit of the game, but it is going to get all of their hirelings killed. At which point the players exploded, accused me of trying to trick them, railroad them, and violating the "gentleman's agreement" by not extending the no PC death rule to NPC followers. Lots of screaming, swearing, name calling, and threatening to leave the game.

At that point I backed down and let them have the magic item and all of their followers.

I already gave you examples: Superman trivially tanking a tank shot or lifting a car, Sherlock trivially noticing clues, Quertus trivially comprehending magic, your medic being the answer to the Divination of the best answer for healing someone.

You are constantly trying to challenge your players. That doesn't make their PCs seem cool. Showcasing what isn't a challenge for their PCs, the things that they can do that others (even in their own party) might well find impossible? That demonstrates how cool they are.

Your examples showed how cool your adventures were (which is your good), but that's a very different thing from how cool the PCs are.

Until you learn to scratch that itch in a productive way, expect your players to continue to want to bully the NPCs.

But my players do stuff like that constantly.

Again, you may have some distorted perception of me, but I am not one of those GMs who scales the world to the players; they pass dozens, perhaps hundreds, of normal rolls each session that are trivial for them but would be very difficult if not impossible for ordinary people.

I guess I could do more to narratively call attention to it, but like I said it happens so often that would get tiresome and drowned out; normally I save the "ego stroking" to exceptional rolls or ideas.

[icefractal]

Not to insult your players unduly, but are they adults? I don't recall if this was specified, and if not it explains a lot.

Because, really, this ...

At which point the players exploded, accused me of trying to trick them, railroad them, and violating the "gentleman's agreement" by not extending the no PC death rule to NPC followers. Lots of screaming, swearing, name calling, and threatening to leave the game.

The fact that you did cave about this and weren't willing to have people who swear at and insult you leave your game leads to a hypothesis though -

You are much more invested in running a game than your players are in playing one. They're willing to skip playing if they can't (mostly) get their way, you aren't. And they know this, and they take advantage of it.

YMMV, but the next time someone threatened to leave the game, I'd let them. Be casual about it, mention that they're free to re-join later if they want to, but if it's "their way or the highway", then the door is right there. Of course there is the possibility that your entire batch of players is like this, and thus no game until a new group can be established; you'll have to decide whether that's worth the risk.

Also, you should consider the possibility that your oldest, most-contentious player is "poisoning the well" and bringing new players over to this way of thinking. Is he the one who usually escalates things to threats? Does he encourage other players to complain about things they weren't otherwise?

[Quertus]

Not to insult your players unduly, but are they adults? I don't recall if this was specified, and if not it explains a lot.

Oh, man, that was funny. While, yes, there definitely seems to be a lack of emotional maturity at times, iirc they're all supposedly adults.

I have tried modules in the past.

The players show active disdain for them and go out of their way to break them.

Although, admittedly, the module designer is often the target of more bitching that I am.

I did get a very back handed compliment once though, they told me they have a standing policy of ignoring any boxed text I read because it isn't as good as what I come up with on my own.

OK, improvement. That's good.

What did they still complain about regarding your style of running the game?

And, why not, (if you recall,) what complaints did they level against what module? Because *that's* something we can actually evaluate. (Hint, hint)

What I mean here is, to use D&D terms, that the encounter's CR is as close to appropriate for the party's level as I can get it. So, for example, if I want a red dragon fight for a level 8 party, I will probably use a young (CR 7) or a Juvenile (CR 10); again assuming it is plausible. The giant dragon who has been a scourge of the entire region for centuries is probably going to be at least an adult regardless of what level the party is.

Yeah, I can see how if you were taking me way more literally than I meant, with every encounter being precisely evenly matched against the PCs (with the resultant 50% loss rate) that would be way too much.

But even this isn't exactly good for a sandbox. It removes (some of) their agency to choose their difficulty.

And also discourages them from gathering intel.

So, don't do that. Place everything in the map at static DC, and don't have the gorge be as big or magical as it needs to be in order to be a challenge when they get there, let it be as trivial or impossible as it really is.

Same for the monsters.

Sort of. But it certainly isn't tailored to counter the specific PCs or their tactics.

Basically, I think about how the monster has existed this long; why it hasn't been killed by the locals or other monsters. I think about what it would do if faced with several common scenarios; attacked at range, attacked from the air, attacked by a more mobile opponent, attacked by an opponent it can't damage, etc.

Then I adjust its environment and its tactics accordingly.

This serves the dual purposes of explaining why the monster is still alive and feared, and prevents stupid in-game scenarios like the level 2 party kiting a hydra around a football field pecking it to death with hundreds of arrows.

It does not, however, negate truly clever or exceptional plans and abilities the party might utilize, nor does it ensure the monster's victory or the PC's death, often times the monster's plan is merely how to escape.

Fwiw, I'm on your side on this one.

But to get players' trust, you may need to pre-publish your monsters, before the party exists.

But my players do stuff like that constantly.

Again, you may have some distorted perception of me,

When I asked what your Players were able to accomplish to make their PCs seem cool, you seemed confused by the idea.

So, again, can you give good examples of things that the PCs have done that make them seem cool?

but I am not one of those GMs who scales the world to the players; they pass dozens, perhaps hundreds, of normal rolls each session that are trivial for them but would be very difficult if not impossible for ordinary people.

And difficult for each other? Superman isn't understanding magic while Sherlock is tanking a tank shot, Quertus sewing someone's organs back in, and your medic noticing the impossible clue, is he?

And they "pass dozens, perhaps hundreds, of normal rolls each session"? That doesn't sound special. How often do they roll to balance on a cloud? To see a phenomenon like a bleeding wall, understand the underlying magic theory, and counteract or reproduce it? Know from the way the Avatar of Hate looks at their weapons that it is invulnerable? Have NPCs interactions with them *obviously* (to them, not just to you) be based on their past deeds (including famous actions, but also personal past interactions with the PCs) - even something as simple as, "from rumors in the tavern, you learn that the princess you rescued just gave birth to twins", or "I've got an idea for those floating rocks… if you have any left."?

And there's lots more issues, like, "are these rolls required by 'the story', or are they initiated by their own personal freedom?". How much freedom they feel could impact their desire to showcase their coolness at your NPCs' expense.

"I guess I could do more to narratively call attention to it, but like I said it happens so often that would get tiresome and drowned out; normally I save the "ego stroking" to exceptional rolls or ideas.

"Quertus, make a spellcraft check, DC 20."

”… 117.”

How many of their PCs' actions look like that, and what do you do to make them seem special?

[Cluedrew]

To build off what Quertus said, do they know emotionally/intuitively know that they are stronger than normal people? Probably doesn't matter for them but still intellectually knowing that you have a higher stat than an average character doesn't amount for much when you don't show it.

To Talakeal: This just occurred to me. Have you ever asked your players why they are interested in a pen-and-paper role-playing game instead of just playing a computer game? Which honestly seems to be what they are after.

[Talakeal]

You are much more invested in running a game than your players are in playing one. They're willing to skip playing if they can't (mostly) get their way, you aren't. And they know this, and they take advantage of it.

Absolutely true.

Decent players are hard to come by. This is especially true when you generally run homebrew systems and are relatively introverted and not at a university or the like where you can regularly meet new people.

We are all in our mid to late 30s.

OK, improvement. That's good.

What did they still complain about regarding your style of running the game?

And, why not, (if you recall,) what complaints did they level against what module? Because *that's* something we can actually evaluate. (Hint, hint)

Its been a long while, but iirc generally the same stuff; monsters are over balanced, railroading, puzzles with only a single solution.

Of course, when its a module I usually agree with them.

But even this isn't exactly good for a sandbox. It removes (some of) their agency to choose their difficulty.

And also discourages them from gathering intel.

So, don't do that. Place everything in the map at static DC, and don't have the gorge be as big or magical as it needs to be in order to be a challenge when they get there, let it be as trivial or impossible as it really is.

Same for the monsters.

No, I don't do it in a sandbox, that's the other thread. I don't normally run sandboxes though.

When I asked what your Players were able to accomplish to make their PCs seem cool, you seemed confused by the idea.

So, again, can you give good examples of things that the PCs have done that make them seem cool?



And difficult for each other? Superman isn't understanding magic while Sherlock is tanking a tank shot, Quertus sewing someone's organs back in, and your medic noticing the impossible clue, is he?

And they "pass dozens, perhaps hundreds, of normal rolls each session"? That doesn't sound special. How often do they roll to balance on a cloud? To see a phenomenon like a bleeding wall, understand the underlying magic theory, and counteract or reproduce it? Know from the way the Avatar of Hate looks at their weapons that it is invulnerable? Have NPCs interactions with them *obviously* (to them, not just to you) be based on their past deeds (including famous actions, but also personal past interactions with the PCs) - even something as simple as, "from rumors in the tavern, you learn that the princess you rescued just gave birth to twins", or "I've got an idea for those floating rocks… if you have any left."?

And there's lots more issues, like, "are these rolls required by 'the story', or are they initiated by their own personal freedom?". How much freedom they feel could impact their desire to showcase their coolness at your NPCs' expense.



"Quertus, make a spellcraft check, DC 20."

”… 117.”

How many of their PCs' actions look like that, and what do you do to make them seem special?

I am still kind of confused by the idea.

Generally, there is at least one PC at the table who can hit the hardest difficulties in the game, and does so frequently, while succeeding at merely challenging difficulties 100% of the time. And no, the other PCs generally wouldn't have a chance at pulling that sort of thing off.

People don't generally balance on clouds or roll 117 because the game is a lot more grounded, both in mechanics and fiction, than epic level D&D, we generally stick to action movie levels of competence rather than tall tale stuff.

They routinely do pretty incredible stuff; the knight took hits that would incapacitate a battle tank, the artificer created all sorts of crazy gizmos, the swordswoman fought 100 elite soldiers by herself and regularly one-shot demigods, the rogue could sneak unseen through an actively watched room or pickpocket something from someone's hands while they were using it, the face could stare down a t-rex and bluff her way into impossible situations which she had no knowledge about beforehand (like the time she talked the party onto an enemy sky-pirate ship by claiming to be the official zeppelin inspector), the medic performed microsurgery with only her fingernails and some plant fiber, the monk could run up smooth walls, perform triple jumps, and run down a wire in an ice storm, and the sorceress routinely cast spells that would normally be the domain of the gods.

Is that the sort of thing you mean?

[Quertus]

Its been a long while, but iirc generally the same stuff; monsters are over balanced, railroading, puzzles with only a single solution.

Of course, when its a module I usually agree with them.

Well, yeah. Most modules are terrible. But, if they're gonna complain anyway, running a module sounds less stressful, IMO.

The downside is, your description makes their complaints sound sane.

No, I don't do it in a sandbox, that's the other thread. I don't normally run sandboxes though.

Fair enough. My mistake.

I am still kind of confused by the idea.

Generally, there is at least one PC at the table who can hit the hardest difficulties in the game, and does so frequently, while succeeding at merely challenging difficulties 100% of the time. And no, the other PCs generally wouldn't have a chance at pulling that sort of thing off.

People don't generally balance on clouds or roll 117 because the game is a lot more grounded, both in mechanics and fiction, than epic level D&D, we generally stick to action movie levels of competence rather than tall tale stuff.

They routinely do pretty incredible stuff; the knight took hits that would incapacitate a battle tank, the artificer created all sorts of crazy gizmos, the swordswoman fought 100 elite soldiers by herself and regularly one-shot demigods, the rogue could sneak unseen through an actively watched room or pickpocket something from someone's hands while they were using it, the face could stare down a t-rex and bluff her way into impossible situations which she had no knowledge about beforehand (like the time she talked the party onto an enemy sky-pirate ship by claiming to be the official zeppelin inspector), the medic performed microsurgery with only her fingernails and some plant fiber, the monk could run up smooth walls, perform triple jumps, and run down a wire in an ice storm, and the sorceress routinely cast spells that would normally be the domain of the gods.

Is that the sort of thing you mean?

Superman tanked a tank, then lifted it up? Yeah, I want him on my team!

Sherlock knows why you came to visit him from the clues visible on your person? Yeah, I want him on my team!

Quertus understands magic at a level beyond the gods of magic, and nonchalantly admits that he has invented spells to guide the formation of magical phenomena? Yeah, I want him on my team!

the face could stare down a t-rex and talked the party onto an enemy sky-pirate ship by claiming to be the official zeppelin inspector? Yeah, I want her on my team!

the swordswoman fought 100 elite soldiers by herself and regularly one-shot demigods? Yeah, I want her on my team!

You tell these stories, and the PCs sound cool, sound like someone you'd want on your team.

(EDIT: normally, I think, I'd word it more as, "remember the time <face> stared down a T-Rex? (That was awesome!)")

Although you have a bit of a different idea of what "grounded" means than I do, I think.

[Frogreaver]

Well, yeah. Most modules are terrible. But, if they're gonna complain anyway, running a module sounds less stressful, IMO.

The downside is, your description makes their complaints sound sane.



Fair enough. My mistake.



Superman tanked a tank, then lifted it up? Yeah, I want him on my team!

Sherlock knows why you came to visit him from the clues visible on your person? Yeah, I want him on my team!

Quertus understands magic at a level beyond the gods of magic, and nonchalantly admits that he has invented spells to guide the formation of magical phenomena? Yeah, I want him on my team!

the face could stare down a t-rex and talked the party onto an enemy sky-pirate ship by claiming to be the official zeppelin inspector? Yeah, I want her on my team!

the swordswoman fought 100 elite soldiers by herself and regularly one-shot demigods? Yeah, I want her on my team!

You tell these stories, and the PCs sound cool, sound like someone you'd want on your team.

(EDIT: normally, I think, I'd word it more as, "remember the time <face> stared down a T-Rex? (That was awesome!)")

Although you have a bit of a different idea of what "grounded" means than I do, I think.

It's very well possible the players want those kinds of things in the game and don't know how to say it, but they very well could not either. That kind of over the top fictional 'power' seems a bit orthogonal to the discussion. Though if the OP hasn't checked with his players if they would like stuff like that better - it's possible most everything that's occurring could just be about mismatched expectations about how 'grounded' they want the game.

[Talakeal]

The downside is, your description makes their complaints sound sane..

Lot's of modules ARE super rail-roady and full of puzzles that require you to be a mind reader to solve.

For example, in a Dragonlance module I ran, the only way to convince one of the NPCs to do something which is vital to move the plot along is to ask her "What would your father do in your place?". The module says that any other argument is unaffected and stalls out the module.

In a Delta Green adventure I ran through recently, the only way to get the "good ending" is to smash a mirror with an elder sign. Now, smashing the mirror is a possible outcome, although it is rather limited and not likely to be something every group thinks of, but you have to do it with an elder sign. The thing is, there is no clue to this, there is no elder sign in the adventure, and there is nothing in the adventure that even gives the PCs a clue that elder signs exist, let alone what they do. They literally have to get an elder sign from another module, bring it with them, and then use it unprompted in a very specific way. That's nuts.


The problem in my group is that I don't generally use "one solution" puzzles, but my players, for whatever reason, are convinced I do. So if their first solution to an obstacle doesn't work, they just get into a defeatist mindset and assume that one has to be a mind-reader to proceed.

Although you have a bit of a different idea of what "grounded" means than I do, I think.

More grounded than high level D&D. As I said, I tend to use "Hollywood" levels of competence.

My games tend to look like Van Helsing (the one with Hugh Jackman, not the anime), Willow, or Princess Mononoke. Top end characters are like "badass normal" superheroes; Batman, Captain America, Hawkeye, Richard Dragon, etc.

Facing a hundred men is the type of feat The Bride or Cyrano DE Bergerac are said to have done, although perhaps it is exaggerated. Many real world military victories claim to have inflicted a hundred casualties for everyone that they took, although it isn't a solo effort. Its something that is wildly implausible, but theoretically possible.

Truly competent people in real life are pretty damn impressive, and can do things that most people wouldn't believe if they saw them, and these are real people, not fantasy heroes.

And, of course, as I mention in every "guy at the gym / martial vs. melee" thread; high level characters do have magic items boosting their abilities, and it is sometimes hard to say where innate competence ends and the magic item begins. For example, the Knight in my party can easily tank cannon balls or attacks from titanic monsters, but probably not without her enchanted adamant armor and cloak of regeneration; without them she is merely Rasputin tough, not quite Wolverine levels.

[Angelalex242]

Interesting. I've always built my Paladins with defense in mind. It's why I prefer Oath of the Ancients, and my VHuman starts life with Heavy Armor Mastery.


I have smites for offense.

[Quertus]

Lot's of modules ARE super rail-roady and full of puzzles that require you to be a mind reader to solve.

For example, [horrible modules]

The problem in my group is that I don't generally use "one solution" puzzles, but my players, for whatever reason, are convinced I do. So if their first solution to an obstacle doesn't work, they just get into a defeatist mindset and assume that one has to be a mind-reader to proceed.

Yeah, those modules you described were pretty bad.

However, what keeps you from bringing a sealed envelope with a copy of the puzzle & solutions you've pre-accepted, and handing it to players who complain wrongly that you use "one solution" puzzles?

How many times do you need to hit your players with a (mental) clue-by-four before they level reasonable complaints / stop leveling unreasonable complaints?

It's very well possible the players want those kinds of things in the game and don't know how to say it, but they very well could not either. That kind of over the top fictional 'power' seems a bit orthogonal to the discussion. Though if the OP hasn't checked with his players if they would like stuff like that better - it's possible most everything that's occurring could just be about mismatched expectations about how 'grounded' they want the game.

More grounded than high level D&D. As I said, I tend to use "Hollywood" levels of competence.

My games tend to look like Van Helsing (the one with Hugh Jackman, not the anime), Willow, or Princess Mononoke. Top end characters are like "badass normal" superheroes; Batman, Captain America, Hawkeye, Richard Dragon, etc.

Facing a hundred men is the type of feat The Bride or Cyrano DE Bergerac are said to have done, although perhaps it is exaggerated. Many real world military victories claim to have inflicted a hundred casualties for everyone that they took, although it isn't a solo effort. Its something that is wildly implausible, but theoretically possible.

Truly competent people in real life are pretty damn impressive, and can do things that most people wouldn't believe if they saw them, and these are real people, not fantasy heroes.

And, of course, as I mention in every "guy at the gym / martial vs. melee" thread; high level characters do have magic items boosting their abilities, and it is sometimes hard to say where innate competence ends and the magic item begins. For example, the Knight in my party can easily tank cannon balls or attacks from titanic monsters, but probably not without her enchanted adamant armor and cloak of regeneration; without them she is merely Rasputin tough, not quite Wolverine levels.

This is of interest to me, as it may be instructive regarding some of the disconnect with your players.

So, to me, many of the stories of how cool your PCs are are much more "over the top" / much less "grounded" than any game I've played outside superheroic / divinity games.

Which, to be clear, is not in any way me dissing your style or anything - i have zero cares for how "grounded" a game is (beyond "not completely" - I like magic, dagnabbit ).

No, I am merely saying that from a communication / stylistic perspective, those stories sound much less grounded / make your PCs sound much more fantastic than those of games I've been in, to me.

Combat prowess? You say the swordswoman fought 100 elite soldiers by herself and regularly one-shot demigods? Best I remember is solo a half-dozen minotaurs, unarmed, or going "punch for punch" with a god of war (and losing) before the Epic 3e Monk who chain reaction exploded Balors before they got to go.

Social skills? You say the face could stare down a t-rex and talked the party onto an enemy sky-pirate ship by claiming to be the official zeppelin inspector? Best I can remember is accidentally bluffing a Balor (or setting someone up to accidentally bluff a Balor) when a Paladin stepped up to make it look like the Protection from Evil spell was lasting forever -> making us apart far more powerful than we actually were, or seducing Mystra.

"Thief skills"? You say the rogue could sneak unseen through an actively watched room or pickpocket something from someone's hands while they were using it? Best I can remember is team thief sneaking in to a boss fight, and trying to loot everything on their person without engaging (and even that was more of a white room discussion).

Healing? You say the medic performed microsurgery with only her fingernails and some plant fiber? I've seen a few characters perform CPR (and, in a superhero setting, one used selective phasing to remove a bullet).

Just from the stories of their exploits / accomplishments, I'd say that the PCs in your games sound more talented and more fantastical than those in mine.

Do you hold that your stories are more grounded than mine? If so, are we using the word differently?

But then there's some suspicious failures.

Magic? You say the sorceress routinely cast spells that would normally be the domain of the gods? That says little, if the most powerful god can barely conjure a tepid bowl of weak broth. And nothing about *how* they could accomplish such, to make that feel special.

And there's nothing about your PCs seeming smart, or knowledgeable, or wise, or cunning. The Paladin in my example was… "cunninger than the Abyss". Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, doesn't adventure for treasure or XP, but for knowledge, and it shows, both in his approach, and the sheer amount of knowledge and skill that he has accumulated.

You've told us a lot about how they seem foolish - and a lot of that is on you, with communication issues, and how you choose to describe things.

So, since you're clearly doing a great job of making their PCs seem awesome (at least to us/me, if not to the players) in other vectors, perhaps if you focus on the mindset of making their PCs seem awesome in more cerebral pursuits, your players will stop trying to feel good about their PCs at the NPCs expense.

Worth a shot, right?

[Talakeal]

However, what keeps you from bringing a sealed envelope with a copy of the puzzle & solutions you've pre-accepted, and handing it to players who complain wrongly that you use "one solution" puzzles?

They find an excuse why each of these ideas is something that no reasonable person would ever come up with and say I developed a situation where only a mind reader could get a right solution.

For example, none of the list of 20+ things that could have bypassed avatar of violence encounter were considered by them, and they had an excuse why each was unrealistic, even though my elderly non-gamer parents were able to come up with a number of them when I called them up to ask.

This is of interest to me, as it may be instructive regarding some of the disconnect with your players.

So, to me, many of the stories of how cool your PCs are are much more "over the top" / much less "grounded" than any game I've played outside superheroic / divinity games.

Which, to be clear, is not in any way me dissing your style or anything - i have zero cares for how "grounded" a game is (beyond "not completely" - I like magic, dagnabbit ).

No, I am merely saying that from a communication / stylistic perspective, those stories sound much less grounded / make your PCs sound much more fantastic than those of games I've been in, to me.

Combat prowess? You say the swordswoman fought 100 elite soldiers by herself and regularly one-shot demigods? Best I remember is solo a half-dozen minotaurs, unarmed, or going "punch for punch" with a god of war (and losing) before the Epic 3e Monk who chain reaction exploded Balors before they got to go.

Social skills? You say the face could stare down a t-rex and talked the party onto an enemy sky-pirate ship by claiming to be the official zeppelin inspector? Best I can remember is accidentally bluffing a Balor (or setting someone up to accidentally bluff a Balor) when a Paladin stepped up to make it look like the Protection from Evil spell was lasting forever -> making us apart far more powerful than we actually were, or seducing Mystra.

"Thief skills"? You say the rogue could sneak unseen through an actively watched room or pickpocket something from someone's hands while they were using it? Best I can remember is team thief sneaking in to a boss fight, and trying to loot everything on their person without engaging (and even that was more of a white room discussion).

Healing? You say the medic performed microsurgery with only her fingernails and some plant fiber? I've seen a few characters perform CPR (and, in a superhero setting, one used selective phasing to remove a bullet).

Just from the stories of their exploits / accomplishments, I'd say that the PCs in your games sound more talented and more fantastical than those in mine.

Do you hold that your stories are more grounded than mine? If so, are we using the word differently?

Do keep in mind these are high powered specialists assisted by magic items rolling well in their fields. These are not normal occurrences.

But, most of them are merely implausible, not outright impossible, most people just have a very narrow understanding of what truly gifted people can do in the real world.

To use a personal example, my druggie friends has such a high tolerance for drugs that when he finally got arrested for having a psychotic breakdown after doing massive quantities of every drug you have ever heard of and some you haven't, every single person who reviewed his case (police, lawyers, judges) said that the toxicology report wouldn't stand up in court because if it were accurate he would be dead many times over.

Also, one shotting demi-gods is actually a lot more possible in my system than most games because damage is actually lethal rather than D&D style big ole' bag of HP.

Magic? You say the sorceress routinely cast spells that would normally be the domain of the gods? That says little, if the most powerful god can barely conjure a tepid bowl of weak broth. And nothing about *how* they could accomplish such, to make that feel special.

Resurrecting the dead without body, creating artifacts, creating new worlds, making life from nothing, destroying souls, traveling time, destroying entire cities, altering the laws of physics (at least locally / temporarily), becoming omniscient over a certain area, that sort of thing.

OOC, he can do it because he invested more points in magic than anyone else. In character, well he doesn't really care about backstory, but in the case of his mystic-theurge wizard type, it was because she was a living spell cast by the creator goddess before her death to preserve the balance of magic in the universe, and in the case of her pyromancer sorceress it is because she was the grand-daughter of a legendary hero who bound a fallen fire elemental prince to himself to gain superhuman strength.

And there's nothing about your PCs seeming smart, or knowledgeable, or wise, or cunning. The Paladin in my example was… "cunninger than the Abyss". Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, doesn't adventure for treasure or XP, but for knowledge, and it shows, both in his approach, and the sheer amount of knowledge and skill that he has accumulated.

You've told us a lot about how they seem foolish - and a lot of that is on you, with communication issues, and how you choose to describe things.

So, since you're clearly doing a great job of making their PCs seem awesome (at least to us/me, if not to the players) in other vectors, perhaps if you focus on the mindset of making their PCs seem awesome in more cerebral pursuits, your players will stop trying to feel good about their PCs at the NPCs expense.

Worth a shot, right?

The problem is that cleverness and wisdom are generally supplied by the player, not the character, and I don't know how to change that as a GM without actually railroading people.

And I don't know if its just my players, although I think there is a certain amount of learned / willful helplessness going on; when I am playing in a game I feel much stupider than I do in real life as well.

[Segev]

The problem is that cleverness and wisdom are generally supplied by the player, not the character, and I don't know how to change that as a GM without actually railroading people.

And I don't know if its just my players, although I think there is a certain amount of learned / willful helplessness going on; when I am playing in a game I feel much stupider than I do in real life as well.

I think that is because as a player, the DM is your only window on the world. You can't see what your character sees, and the DM, if he's trying to "not railroad" by not "giving too much information and common sense advice," is leaving you feeling "stupid" because your character SHOULD know things instinctively that you have a hard time remembering due to not being him, not growing up him, and not seeing, hearing, smelling, etc. what he senses.

When your players come up with an idea that you feel obviously shouldn't work, tell them things their characters know that would make that clear. And do so while explaining that they know why their solution wouldn't work. Then, work with them to see if they can come up with ways to overcome the problems you've outlined. One major issue some GMs have is that they will say "that can't possibly work," and then see the players trying to get at WHY it wouldn't work as the players trying to game the system.

Well, yes, they are. They are literally trying to play the game, which is the system, so they're gaming the system exactly how D&D is supposed to be gamed.

Don't be afraid to offer some solutions that might work. If you feel you're "railroading" them, so be it, but the key here is to clearly explain what it is their PCs know (and you've already revealed to their characters) that would point to this solution working. If they insist "no reasonable person" would come up with that, well, there's no much you can do, other than ask them why not.

Chances are, they'll have some unhelpful snark and defensiveness, given how you've described them, but buried in that will be pieces of information they'll indicate - consciously or not - that they didn't have. The core "unfairness" of a DM having a railroady, unrealistic solution tends to be that the DM somehow failed to give the players relevant information that would have made the solution something they could think of.

One common thread I keep seeing is that you feel that if you give them more information, your thought-of solutions become so obvious that you're railroading them into them. Abandon that fear. Tell them more and more as they get confused. Don't be afraid that you'll give it away. There will come a point where they figure it out, and it's "given away" then anyway. The more you have to give, the more you know you probably aren't as obvious as you think you are. This isn't a problem, as long as you keep giving more and more information until they can "Get it."

[BRC]

Re: Puzzles and the Avatar of Violence.

I am not in general a huge fan of Puzzles. I like your definition of a "Puzzle" vs a more general "Obstacle".

I find that in these cases, the thing you need to be sure of is that you have the PC's goals properly oriented.

If I'm reading the scenario right, the goal is "Get the Treasure from the Shrine", not "Destroy the Avatar of Violence".

The PC's seem to have been operating under the assumption that the goal was to Destroy the Avatar.

Now, my guess is that the following bit had not properly been conveyed

Avatars fade away after an hour, and they won't leave the shrine except to chase someone carrying the artifact (but it doesn't have particularly good tracking abilities and will die of thirst pretty soon thereafter if someone manages to give it the slip.)

Specifically, your parenthetical there.

The goal is to Steal The Treasure, this can be done in many ways (Bypassing or tricking the Avatar, grabbing it and just tanking hits while you run out of the shrine and escape). Unless it is specifically called out that the Avatar is bad at tracking and will die of thirst, and that escaping from the shrine and losing it in the wilderness is an option, your PC's are going to assume that just grabbing it and running means dealing with a constant stream of angry avatars of violence, since for something with the description "Avatar of Violence defending a shrine", requiring food/water, and having bad tracking are not inherently weaknesses that come to mind.

A lot of this comes down to unspoken assumptions. You described the avatar as follows :

he is a tough (but not exceptionally so) human warrior who attacks in a mindless rage

To YOU, that means he has all the weaknesses of a mindless berserker human.

To your Players, they're more likely to see the Avatar as some sort of spirit or construct that takes the form of a human, and exists to guard this treasure. So ideas like "escape into the wilderness where he can't track us and he dies of thirst because he cannot feed himself" are not going to come to mind unless you make it clear that, for all intents and purposes, this Avatar is just some really angry dude.

The bigger thing is that, once your PCs got it into their head that their goal was to Destroy the Avatar, they were never going to find an acceptable solution, since the core of YOUR goal for this puzzle was that the Avatar cannot be destroyed (Well it can, but it just spawns more), and that THEIR goal was to Get The Treasure.

Funnily enough, this is kind of the opposite of the classic "Outsmarted the GM" story, which is usually the GM thinking up an encounter around a specific goal (Destroy the Avatar), and the Players realizing that the True Goal (Get the Treasure) Could be met through other means, and doing that.


The final thing to think about is the "Shiny Thing" phenomenon.

I was once in a game at a convention, the GM described "A big glowing rock that looked like a brain with some froglike entities on it". The Rock was not quite IN the way to our destination, but it was pretty close.

We spent at least half an hour real time staring at the rock, trying to find ways around it, trying to prepare in case it was a trap, or the frogs attacked us.

Later, the GM mentioned "Why did you spend so much time at the Rock", it was just a cool setpiece, the Frogs would only have responded if we attacked.

The answer is, we were shown something big and shiny, and we assumed that the point was to Engage With The Interesting Thing.


The Avatar of Violence is a cool puzzle, but it's a puzzle that is solved by Not Engaging With It. The solution is to distract or endure the guard, grab the loot, and escape, and, like with the glowing brain-shaped frog-rock, players are generally going to discard any solution that does not involve Engaging With The Shiny Thing, because the assumption is that you, the GM, put the Shiny Thing there so they will engage with it, and will have blocked, or otherwise punish, any solutions that simply bypass it without engaging.


How I would have changed your "Avatar of Violence" Scenario. The Avatar Cannot Leave The Shrine. Don't say "The avatar CAN leave the shrine, but will only do so to pursue the treasure, and it's bad at tracking and will die of thirst". The Avatar Cannot Leave the Shrine. If you get the shiny out of the shrine, you're home free.

When they retreat, the Avatars chase them, it's a mindless berserker, but cannot cross the threshold of the shrine. Make it clear that the Avatar Cannot Leave The Shrine, since that's the intended solution.


Edit: This is why I don't like puzzles, especially magical puzzles that introduce some new ruleset. It's dependent on what the players can Deduce, and figuring out how hard it is to deduce something is difficult.

Even puzzles firmly grounded in reality can be frustrating, since one person's assumptions about the obvious will differ from another.

The only way to really make something like this work IMO is to either make sure the PCs can see the vague outline of the solution (Get the Thing, Get out alive), or make a big list of every fact and make sure each one is communicated somewhere.

Like

1) If you enter the Shrine, an Avatar spawns.
2) If you kill an Avatar within the shrine, Two more spawn.
3) The Avatar cannot be reasoned with,
4) The Avatars vanish after one hour.
5) The Avatars will only leave the shrine to chase the treasure.
6) The Avatars are, in all ways, identical to an ordinary human warrior, albeit a skilled one with no goals except to protect the treasure and inflict harm on trespassers in the shrine.

And even then I'm probably missing something crucial. You then have to hand the PC's each of these pieces, because you never know what bit you thought was obvious, but is actually key to the whole thing.

[Quertus]

They find an excuse why each of these ideas is something that no reasonable person would ever come up with and say I developed a situation where only a mind reader could get a right solution.

For example, none of the list of 20+ things that could have bypassed avatar of violence encounter were considered by them, and they had an excuse why each was unrealistic, even though my elderly non-gamer parents were able to come up with a number of them when I called them up to ask.

I'm just going to leave you with the outline of my response. See if, after you read my response below, you can see what I was going to say.

Dismissive

5-year-old

Rule of Three

see what I did there?

The problem is that cleverness and wisdom are generally supplied by the player, not the character, and I don't know how to change that as a GM without actually railroading people.

And I don't know if its just my players, although I think there is a certain amount of learned / willful helplessness going on; when I am playing in a game I feel much stupider than I do in real life as well.

Well,

I think that is because as a player, the DM is your only window on the world. You can't see what your character sees, and the DM, if he's trying to "not railroad" by not "giving too much information and common sense advice," is leaving you feeling "stupid" because your character SHOULD know things instinctively that you have a hard time remembering due to not being him, not growing up him, and not seeing, hearing, smelling, etc. what he senses.

This pretty much says it all.

However, you do seem to game in Bizarro World, so let's see what I can add.

when communicating with the players

Don't give them the sneezing Ogre - don't give them your platonic idea of a riddle that is "obvious" in retrospect, but impossible at the time.

Don't give them the Avatar of Hate, that is filled with flowery language that is easy to misinterpret into a red herring of "ooh, shiny!".

Give them direct, "your characters would know that won't work because" statements, like, "your characters wouldn't wait for nightfall, to navigate by the stars, because they would know that there are no stars on this world", or "your characters have no concept of 'tide' because it doesn't happen in this world - there is no moon, as was mentioned in session 0".

Watch your tone - don't come off as, "we covered this, what's wrong with you"; aim closer to… "I am prepared to listen to why you didn't hear this, but hoping you'll say 'oh, yeah, I remember that now¹'." And, if they do say, "that's not what I heard" - even if they word it as, "how the **** was I supposed to get that from 'big nose' / 'cannot be killed by violence' / whatever", actually listen to their complaint. Understand that they are probably (hopefully) the worst people in the world at communicating *why* they dislike something, but look forward to the puzzle of self-improvement that they are providing you (yes, there is probably only one right answer, and lots of wrong answers, and the right answer almost certainly isn't the obvious one from what they've said, but hey, the reward for the heroic is self-improvement, the bestest reward of all).

¹ "Oh, I remember that now" is a highly underutilized super power. Entire threads could be dedicated to the power of the recap, to finding ways of reminding players of facts that their characters learned, to training players to recognize and remember the important bits.

when giving information to the characters

Follow the Rule of Three, giving them anything they need to know on at least three separate occasions (yes, this is more railroady than sandbox): "legends say Thor, Conan, Wolverine, Superman, and Talakeal's swordswoman all fought the Avatar of Hate ineffectively as a distraction until the nearby town was evacuated", "supposedly, Bilbo of the Shire was able to best it", "violence can but cause hate to multiply. So great was his hate that it is believed that nothing can vanquish it."

Note how these are not dead ends: the party can research any of these legends, can speak with any of the living involved, or even Speak with Dead. They might travel to the Shire, or perform Divinations of, "is there anything that can vanquish it?". If they feel that they want more information¹.

Do not word it as a railroaded single solution: "legends say Thor, Conan, Wolverine, Superman, and Talakeal's swordswoman all fought the Avatar of Hate ineffectively as a distraction while Bilbo snuck in and stole The One Ring".

¹ setting people up to be able to accurately judge whether or not they know enough is… a big topic, and outside the scope of this thread.

[Segev]

Note how these are not dead ends: the party can research any of these legends, can speak with any of the living involved, or even Speak with Dead. They might travel to the Shire, or perform Divinations of, "is there anything that can vanquish it?". If they feel that they want more information¹.

Importantly, if the players do take steps to look into something, don't be afraid to have good enough research just give them at least one workable solution. I suspect, from how you've described them, that if you GAVE them at least one solution that would work, unless they really really hated the solution, they wouldn't complain about "Railroading" nearly so much. Your players, from your description, are LOOKING for the rails, because they don't trust that anything but a nice, safe train ride will get them to a conclusion and fear that wandering from the rails, even in ignorance, will get them killed by the invisible invincible T-Rex waiting in every direction but the one the rails are leading down.

Try giving them literally all of the information needed for at least one solution (preferably, lay out two or three) when they do even a modicum of research, and see if that improves the table's level of trust. And, of course, if they come up with something based on these solutions that is different, don't be afraid to let it work.

Further, when they seem to be floundering or acting like they think they have a solution when they're wrong (e.g. when they start looking for the macguffin that the DM surely must have for hurting the invincible avatar), give them suggestions of places they could go to get more information. Then, when they go looking for that information, give it to them. Don't be cryptic. Don't be afraid of "railroading" but "telling them too much."

[Talakeal]

Ok, serious question.

IMO, it is not the GM's job to give players solutions, merely give information. "The monster is weak to fire" is ok, but "You need to put down your swords and start swinging your torches" is not.

Do you think if I gave in and started giving players solutions that would actually help them build trust, or do you think it would make the problem worse by further convincing them that there is only one right solution and make them even less willing to think on their own?

Also, Quertus, a lot of your examples require excellent communication on the part of the PLAYERS as well. I don't know what they are thinking, and they rarely tell me. In your navigate by the stars example, the players wouldn't say "we wait until nightfall to navigate by the stars," they would say "We wait until nightfall." Then only once nightfall had come do they ask to navigate by the stars and I tell them that there aren't any stars.

good stuff

I think having unable to leave the shrine makes for a very different encounter.

First, it makes it trivially easy, as the shrine was only about twenty yards across.

Second, it makes it obviously a smash and grab scenario, rather than one teaching them about ways to subdue an enemy using non-lethal means.

1) If you enter the Shrine, an Avatar spawns.
2) If you kill an Avatar within the shrine, Two more spawn.
3) The Avatar cannot be reasoned with,
4) The Avatars vanish after one hour.
5) The Avatars will only leave the shrine to chase the treasure.
6) The Avatars are, in all ways, identical to an ordinary human warrior, albeit a skilled one with no goals except to protect the treasure and inflict harm on trespassers in the shrine.

They had all of this information.

The information they didn't have that tripped them up was "There is not some super secret way to kill it for good."

[Segev]

Ok, serious question.

IMO, it is not the GM's job to give players solutions, merely give information. "The monster is weak to fire" is ok, but "You need to put down your swords and start swinging your torches" is not.

If I were the DM and telling the players, "the monster is weak to fire," was leading to them still, for some reason, attacking with their swords, I would probably ask them, "Why aren't you using fire damage?"

Assuming their answer to that question in some way indicated they believed they didn't have any fire damage, I would point out to them that they have torches. And possibly fireball spells, or what-have-you.

In a recent session of a Pathfinder game I'm in, we were confronted by a ghost and we were having a devil of a time with it because we don't actually have much in the way of magical weapons or spells that deal with the incorporeal or undead in a hostile way. The DM reminded us that we have multiple vials of oil of ghost touch. I know none of us felt "railroaded" nor like there was "one true answer" to the fight; if we'd had other means, we would have used them, but this was a key-shaped object for a lock-shaped hole.

Now, in the "you have torches" example vs. the creature vulnerable to fire, the players may have some very legitimate reasons they didn't think to use them. A big one I can think of is that they may believe it is vulnerable to fire, but not so much so that whatever vulnerability it has would make the torches do more damage than their own weapons, with which they have special abilities and bigger dice and more bonuses, or what-have-you. They key thing about reminding them they have torches is that this encourages the players to explain WHY they haven't thought to use them, and you can see if they are right, or if they are operating under a misconception.

If, for instance, the reason torches would be better is because not only is the monster vulnerable to fire, but it also is invulnerable to weapons, you have just learned that the players didn't know it was invulnerable to weapons.

Do you think if I gave in and started giving players solutions that would actually help them build trust, or do you think it would make the problem worse by further convincing them that there is only one right solution and make them even less willing to think on their own?

I think, if you start pointing out the key-shaped objects that fit the lock-shaped holes, they will at the least feel like you're reminding them of tools they have. I think that, if you lay out multiple possibilities that you believe their characters SHOULD be able to perceive, especially if you give them as "rewards" for them trying to research the thing in question, they will feel they have choices, at the very least, that they trust will work.

By laying out multiple possibilities, you can also invite them to extrapolate or elaborate on them, and you can allow them to work or explain what it is they're missing about something if it won't.

So, yes, I think it will build trust, but you have to start by letting them feel that you're at least sharing the "true answer" with them. Let them feel confident they CAN overcome something and don't have to read your mind to do it. Give them multiple options, so they at least can choose WHICH one they work with, and, again, be open to others that would work (not that I doubt your word that you would be).

Also, Quertus, a lot of your examples require excellent communication on the part of the PLAYERS as well. I don't know what they are thinking, and they rarely tell me. In your navigate by the stars example, the players wouldn't say "we wait until nightfall to navigate by the stars," they would say "We wait until nightfall." Then only once nightfall had come do they ask to navigate by the stars and I tell them that there aren't any stars.

As DM, sometimes it's your job to to elicit that communication.

"What do you hope to achieve by waiting for nightfall?" is a question you can and possibly should ask, especially if you see a major problem with them doing so that you believe their characters would also see. Once again: YOU are their window into the setting. They perceive NOTHING you don't tell them, unless they imagine it (and then they're likely wrong). If you don't understand why they're doing something, and you think it serves no purpose, you should ask them what it is they are planning. You can then tell them anything they would know would make that not work, or you can even tell them if there's something obvious they are not acting upon. Make sure, even if they tell you, "We're navigating by the stars," and you think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, you also point out whatever problems waiting for nightfall may make happen. Listen to them when they tell you why they're doing something. If it doesn't make sense to you, ask them why they think that's a good idea.

Yes, this risks them huffing that you're throwing up obstacles in the way because it's not "the one way your railroad requires," but they're going to do that, anyway, so don't let fear of that stop you from asking them what it is they expect to achieve.

I think having unable to leave the shrine makes for a very different encounter.

First, it makes it trivially easy, as the shrine was only about twenty yards across.

Easily fixed by making it unable to leave "the shrine grounds." Maybe "the hill the shrine is on," or "the sacred ground surrounding the shrine." Or just making the shrine bigger.

Think Japanese Shinto shrines - the whole hill is usually a sacred ground to the shrine, and multiple buildings are on said ground, even if the shrine itself is only a few yards across, or even is just an outdoor altar with maybe a small roof to shelter it from the rain. Or churches where the entire grounds are sacred.

Second, it makes it obviously a smash and grab scenario, rather than one teaching them about ways to subdue an enemy using non-lethal means.

If your goal is to teach them something, tell them what the lesson is about. Don't make it something they have to guess or deduce. You don't teach somebody algebra by telling them about the adventures of number-ninjas who disguise themselves as letters and need to follow specific rules to figure out what they really are. You tell somebody you're teaching them algebra, then you teach it to them.

Even if you're doing it via a game, or the like.

In video games, when a new mechanic is being taught, they spell out how to use it. They work you through multiple ways to use it, holding your hand most of the way, before showing you puzzles specifically designed to be solved with it. You know, even if you don't know the solutions and techniques that will be needed, that the puzzle is asking you to figure out ways to use the new thing.

This could be as easy as making the Shrine of Violence a local test for aspiring monks or policemen or something, where they demonstrate their ability to nonlethally subdue or overcome a foe as a rite of passage, because they can't cheat it by killing it.

They had all of this information.

The information they didn't have that tripped them up was "There is not some super secret way to kill it for good."

That's important information to give them. If they keep searching, eventually just tell them, "you're not finding it because it doesn't exist." It's nicer if you can get that across without stepping OOC, but ultimately, if they're metagaming it, you need to, as well, because as long as they think, "You can't find any information on that," just means they haven't guessed the right button to push or rolled a high enough result on an investigation roll, you're going to have to metagame it to tell them, "Look, if there was something to find, you'd have found it. you've exhausted all the means of looking. There is, to your characters' knowledge, no way to kill it permanently that's ever been discovered, and there are no hints they're finding that might tell them how to do so. The reason for this is that there IS no way to kill it. That's not the nature of the trial it represents in this world."

[kyoryu]

All the stuff on communication.

So, yes, I think it will build trust, but you have to start by letting them feel that you're at least sharing the "true answer" with them. Let them feel confident they CAN overcome something and don't have to read your mind to do it. Give them multiple options, so they at least can choose WHICH one they work with, and, again, be open to others that would work (not that I doubt your word that you would be).

Give them examples of possible solutions, as well as the possible downsides. It's easy to couch this as "your character would know."

"Yeah, so you're going to go into the Forbidden Fortress of Forbiddenness? Cool. You could try to find a back way in, which would take longer, and the General might have escaped by then. If you go in fighting, you know that's going to be difficult, but there's usually a skeleton crew at night, so that'd probably make more sense anyway. There might be other ways, though, but those are the ones that come to mind to me!"

[Talakeal]

Easily fixed by making it unable to leave "the shrine grounds." Maybe "the hill the shrine is on," or "the sacred ground surrounding the shrine." Or just making the shrine bigger.

Think Japanese Shinto shrines - the whole hill is usually a sacred ground to the shrine, and multiple buildings are on said ground, even if the shrine itself is only a few yards across, or even is just an outdoor altar with maybe a small roof to shelter it from the rain. Or churches where the entire grounds are sacred.

If your goal is to teach them something, tell them what the lesson is about. Don't make it something they have to guess or deduce. You don't teach somebody algebra by telling them about the adventures of number-ninjas who disguise themselves as letters and need to follow specific rules to figure out what they really are. You tell somebody you're teaching them algebra, then you teach it to them.

The encounter was not created in a vacuum though, but as part of the world.

In a previous game, set ~1300 earlier, the PCs defeated the demon god of violence; which had possessed a mobile fortress. The dungeon happened to be the half buried ruins of that fortress, which had since been taken over by a crazy doomsday cult. The artifact in question was the same one the previous PCs had used to kill the demon, and when the cultists found its remains but also found that it was protected by the vestige of said demon, they converted it into a shrine and then left it alone.

[Segev]

The encounter was not created in a vacuum though, but as part of the world.

In a previous game, set ~1300 earlier, the PCs defeated the demon god of violence; which had possessed a mobile fortress. The dungeon happened to be the half buried ruins of that fortress, which had since been taken over by a crazy doomsday cult. The artifact in question was the same one the previous PCs had used to kill the demon, and when the cultists found its remains but also found that it was protected by the vestige of said demon, they converted it into a shrine and then left it alone.

Then you need to indicate that the avatar stops chasing after a certain point. Yes, that point is "when it dies of hunger and thirst," but merely saying something like, "Get three days' travel from it," or otherwise make it clear that it WILL stop chasing them. You can tell them the avatar eventually dies of hunger and thirst, or how long it takes, or anything similar, but you need to get that info across, because expecting them to guess it is expecting them to read your mind.

[Talakeal]

Then you need to indicate that the avatar stops chasing after a certain point. Yes, that point is "when it dies of hunger and thirst," but merely saying something like, "Get three days' travel from it," or otherwise make it clear that it WILL stop chasing them. You can tell them the avatar eventually dies of hunger and thirst, or how long it takes, or anything similar, but you need to get that info across, because expecting them to guess it is expecting them to read your mind.

Again though, I was not setting up a smash and grab operation (indeed as this was one room in a larger dungeon, that would have been very counterproductive), and their characters have no way of knowing this information.

[Telok]

and their characters have no way of knowing this information.

Something I've taken to doing (might help, might not) is trying to consider tradition, history, story, and myth.

"Traditionally entities like this are bound to the area they originally died in."
"Historically the ice trolls of the north are not afraid of fire because they are too cold to burn."
"Stories abound of vampires, but they don't agree about crossing runnin water or a dependence on graves or coffins. They do all have the blood lust thing."
"The myths of the Dagon cult are all doomsday prophecies that the cultists always try to fulfill."

Generally as a way to impart more background information that the characters would/could normally know, but that the players might not remember or be thinking about. I grew up reading about the old greco/roman myths, if I were going into a ruin from that time I'd be thinking of those. Now I don't have any scholarly depth in those myths, I don't retell them as stories to anyone, but I remember them. It's not enough knowledge that would warrant a "proficiency" or anything, but it's background cultural information.

Edit: had to put someone down for a nap...
Now, I don't tell the players their characters know these things. I leave that up to the players. I just add info that people of the area/culture would know.

Of course a newly discovered land (well, new to the PCs) they won't have that and will have to researxh or ask a local.

[BRC]

Again though, I was not setting up a smash and grab operation (indeed as this was one room in a larger dungeon, that would have been very counterproductive), and their characters have no way of knowing this information.

I mean, it sounds a bit like you were, at least as I understand the scenario.

Fighting the Avatar was not a solution, all solutions were based around bypassing or otherwise preventing the avatar from stopping you from grabbing the treasure and getting out.

Unless part of the idea was that they would stall the Avatar, (Say, they push it into a closet and barricade the door), then escape, and once it battered it's way out it would chase them, and part of the challenge was surviving the Avatar chasing them until it died of thirst.


Which, "Survive being pursued by the avatar until it dies of thirst" is a fine part of the challenge, but it's one that needs to be very carefully communicated that doing so is both possible, and part of the plan.


You say "The PC's had all the information", but was it made very clear to them that the Avatar would eventually die of thirst, and that avoiding it until it did would end the threat? (it sounds like not, you specifically say they had no way to know that information. And yet, it was crucial to the solution)

Because that's not something that I think the players would reach on their own. Unless explicitly told that was part of the solution, I think most people would assume either 1) It doesn't need to eat, drink, or sleep. It's a mystic avatar of the god of violence. OR 2) It has enough wherewithal and self-preservation to forage for food and water while it tracks us down. From what I hear from your description, that's the very specific end-goal you had in mind for a successful solution. The Avatar dies of thirst trying to get the treasure back.

The intent of the challenge here was "Subdue an implacable enemy using nonlethal means". You didn't care WHAT methods the PC's used to subdue it, you just wanted them to do so.

You presented this by having the Avatar be unkillable. Okay, good start, but we run into the communication issue.

1) The difference between "Cannot be killed" and "Cannot Die". Your end-goal had the Avatar dying, just not from violence. Since literally every version of a successful solution to this puzzle involves the Avatar dying of thirst, you need to make it very clear that is something that can happen. The avatar doesn't just look like a dude, it IS a dude.

Because you're dealing with Magic Rules, you need to make the endstate very clear (Get out, avoid the Avatar until it dies of thirst), since the PC's have no way of knowing what Rules are in place, and it's very easy to make assumptions, especially since your chosen answer involves Not Engaging, which is something most players are going to dismiss out of hand.


2) You DIDN'T want a Smash-and-Grab, you wanted them to specifically Subdue the Avatar nonlethally. There was a Lesson you were trying to teach them, a very specific skill you wanted to test.

That's fine, but it's relevant information, because it means YOU had a criteria for a Successful Solution that they did not have.

If the goal is 'Keep the Avatar alive and get out with the Thing', you need to be building your scenario beyond "Unkillable enemy", while there are certainly parties that will deal with an unkillable foe by trying to incapacitate it nonlethally, unless that's clearly part of the solution, they'll just assume they're going to spend the rest of their lives chased by unkillable avatars of violence.



With that in mind, I would do something like this:

The Relic is held in the hand of the dead god, the skeletal hand is basically indestructible.

You can cause the hand to open by saying "Lord of the Battlefield, I come to you in the heat of conflict, grant me your treasure!" or some similar incantation. This will start the process of the Hand opening very, very slowly, it will take about 10 minutes for the hand to open to the point where you can retrieve the relic.

The incantation only works while the Avatar is alive. If you kill it, it takes an hour to respawn, and the hand will close up again. It is therefore impossible to retrieve the artifact while the Avatar is alive.
The above can all be learned through research or experimentation.

The Solution is therefore to start the Incantation, and then using your means of choice, incapacitate but do not kill, the Avatar while the Hand opens up.

Obviously, nobody has gotten that far yet, so there's no good way for the PC's to communicate that the Avatar won't chase them forever after that point, but you've already established that the Avatar IS killable, you just can't get the relic while it's dead, it's a lot less scary. Once the PC's have the relic, they can kill it, get an hour's head start, and maybe kill it again if it catches up.

Especially if the Avatar "Respawns" at a specific space in the Shrine, making it clear that, if they leave, get chased, and kill the Avatar, it won't respawn at it's old body and resume the chase.


You had in mind that you wanted them to nonlethally incapacitate a foe. So you presented them with an unkillable foe. They had it in mind that you wanted them to Kill an Unkillable Foe.


This is where the difference between a "Puzzle" and an "Obstacle" comes in, and also why I hate Puzzles in RPGs, especially puzzles based on magical rules. There always comes a point where you need to guess what the GM is thinking, which is a frustrating experience on both sides.
(This is not to be confused with a Mystery. A Mystery is a complete scenario, you can find evidence, and verify your guesses by finding more evidence to support them, until eventually you confirm your conclusion. Mysteries can be frustrating in of themself, but unlike Puzzles, getting Closer to the solution can help a lot, and reinforce that you're getting closer. With a Puzzle, you're just guessing at rules and being told you're wrong.).


An Obstacle on the other hand is about challenging a specific skillset. You can make it clear what the general shape of the solution is supposed to be (Incapacitate the Avatar nonlethally), and leave the actual IMPLEMENTATION to the PC's as a creative and strategic exercise. Since that was your goal, lean into it. Make the challenge about incapacitating the Avatar, not about figuring out that you need to incapacitate the Avatar.

[Frogreaver]

Again though, I was not setting up a smash and grab operation (indeed as this was one room in a larger dungeon, that would have been very counterproductive), and their characters have no way of knowing this information.

You are the DM. You decide what information their characters can know and can't know.