Glass-Cannons, Whinging, and Blame

[Anonymouswizard]

To be honest, most sources of miss chance could be modelled as +AC, the main issue is things like invisibility where a realistically massive AC boost could send you to 'basically unhittable'.

Of course, in 3.X I believe you could stack miss chance to 'literally unhittable' levels.

Really, the most mechanics you need for defence in an RPG are a plus to passive defence, a plus to damage reduction, and maybe some kind of active defence option. Outside D&D it's not uncommon for passive defences to be zero by default, but also not uncommon to see them be more variable. But even in systems where attack rolls are all effectively against DC10 unless you sirens actions to defend there's normally some way of getting a passive defence, it might just be a really rare item or hard to get Talent.

One of the more interesting defence ideas I've seen recently was in Jackals, where you had to spend Clash Points in order to get a defence, which in melee combat allows you to land a hit if you win. It's hard not to want to invest in, as for melee defending runs off the same skill as attacking, a successful defence in melee harms your opponent, and your average PC probably has the Clash Points to defend against a few attacks and they refresh every round. It also feeds into how spellcasters work, each spell has a Clash Point cost as well as a Devotion Point (MP) cost, which doesn't matter outside of combat but means that casting in a battle takes away your ability to react to danger. A simple and believable way to weaken magic a bit, of course messing with the spirit world takes at least some of your concentration (coupled with only a handful of spells per tradition).

[Thrudd]

One option for making players feel less like you're trying to do a "gotcha" in combat is to sometimes let the dice decide who gets targeted by an opponent.

Only when it makes sense, of course, either assign equal odds to each potential target and/or make an intelligence or wisdom roll of some kind to see if the enemy discerns (as you do) the most effective action. Of course, a creature isn't going to leave a melee with one character to go after another, and will prioritize someone that has actually attacked it or threatened it over someone that has not (unless it is very intelligent and perceptive). Things that are obvious to you might not be obvious to every NPC or creatures they encounter.
Let the players know you are rolling to determine the target and let them see the roll, saying something like "1-3 it goes for you, 4-6 it goes for him".

I agree that if the game has rules and abilities for information gathering, social reactions, etc., those things need to have consequences. Especially if the players need to choose between combat abilities and non-combat abilities, someone investing in the non-combat abilities should help make combats easier in some detectable way (through having more allies/fewer enemies, having foreknowledge of situations, identifying creature's strengths and weaknesses, etc.) It might help players to understand the effects of their choices by "gaming" this process more than people typically do, especially if they clearly don't understand the utility or possibility of those abilities.

Develop rules that lay out exactly what sort of effect each type of knowledge/social skill can have on an upcoming expedition or adventure. For instance, one character may make a social roll that can result in finding one or more allies to help them fight in their next battle, once per session or defined period of time. One hostile creature or group can be turned neutral (provided the players haven't already attacked). Make sure every skill and ability the players have the option of choosing has a defined game effect in addition to the generic description (rather than just "knowledge:topic means you know about topic"). If you don't see how some abilities can be "gamified" in this way, or it is so niche that it will rarely come up, consider allowing these abilities to be purchased from a different pool of character build points than the abilities that have concrete and almost always applicable effects. Don't limit the effects of these abilities because "role playing" or "verisimilitude", or else the players will be correct in identifying them as poor replacements for combat abilities that always work. Rather, come up with verisimilitudinous descriptions for how and why they achieve the pre-defined results of their rolls.

As for the glass-cannon thing, I really don't understand everyone wanting to do that. It seems like a profound misunderstanding of the game math to eschew all defenses, but I would think that a number of character deaths or characters dropping in every combat would teach them the value of some level of protection.

[Calthropstu]

That works, until you get into a situation where a strong enemy who can see through illusions.

I don't disagree that playing smarter is usually better than playing harder, but you should probably have numbers to fall back on in case you make a mistake or come into a situation where your tricks don't work. Likewise, not all builds are able to pull that off.

And yeah, miss chance is often more cost effective than AC, but I prefer to have both. Likewise, with the exponential costs of bonuses, I find a little of everything is often the best strategy.

At higher levels d20 often gets to the point where the dice roll doesn't matter. At that point, yeah, armor is meaningless. But through a combination of degrees of success and bounded accuracy that is never the case in my system, each level of armor is guaranteed to reduce damage by at least 10%, unless you are actually fighting one of the few things that outright ignores armor.

That's why I had 2 non illusion options in there. Dimension door and fog cloud. 3.5/pf it's a VERY solid defense, especially if you use summons from inside the cloud.

I've worked absurd levels of defense with those 5 spells. And true sight? Most people forget that only extends to 120 feet. Stay high up in the sky protected by cloud illusions? Even the most powerful outsiders won't spot you. Good way to summon tons of air elementals and wreck someone's day.

[Duff]

Its not feasible for me to create an entire campaign world before the game even begins. I don't have that kind of time or motivation, and it would have to come across as pretty rail-roady. I can create a module in advance, but the players can still blame me for targeting their weakness, whatever it is. Likewise, even if they have no weakness, they can still whine that I am attacking them more or whatnot.

Party advances to 6th level. Responds to a hook.
Talakeal opens the envelope marked "Early 6th level"
"OK, this is an adventure built for early 6th. We all know this was written to be interesting for any reasonable party, so you can be sure there's nothing here that was designed to target your specific characters."

Also note, having the reasonably clever, muscular bugbear grapple the squishy wizard would be fine at any reasonable table (Though the wizard's player might whinge at the fighter for letting the bugbear get that close...)
OTOH, the owlbear should probably attack whoever's closest and if there's a whole dudgeon of ropers (or other grapple specialists) the wizard has a point if they whinge

[Calthropstu]

Party advances to 6th level. Responds to a hook.
Talakeal opens the envelope marked "Early 6th level"
"OK, this is an adventure built for early 6th. We all know this was written to be interesting for any reasonable party, so you can be sure there's nothing here that was designed to target your specific characters."

Also note, having the reasonably clever, muscular bugbear grapple the squishy wizard would be fine at any reasonable table (Though the wizard's player might whinge at the fighter for letting the bugbear get that close...)
OTOH, the owlbear should probably attack whoever's closest and if there's a whole dudgeon of ropers (or other grapple specialists) the wizard has a point if they whinge

To be faie, a reasonavle wizard would say "hey guys, this dungeon is full of ropers. Let's nuke every room before going in. We'll scout for anything important using the rogue beforehand and then blast with fireballs."

[kyoryu]

I agree, 1 is the most likely; although contribution is not necessarily direct cause or "fault".

Don't shy away from the word fault. We all do things that lead to suboptimal outcomes. There's no shame in that - just observe the results, try different things, and see if that gets the results you want.

It may also be something that I am not doing.

Those are for all practical purposes the same thing.

However, there are other likely explanations, players in my group teaching bad behaviors to new comers, me being more accepting of players that other groups would (or have) kicked out, or just an emergent tactic when they learn that they can save their characters by bitching.

Most of that is point #2. Some of it is still point #1.

I agree with you in principle.

I think you are way overstating the effect though, its typically a very small thing, with a relatively minor effect on the outcome, a few points here and there. The actual difficulty of any one encounter, let alone session, swings wildly.

So, here's the thing. If a player gets through a combat with 10% health remaining, they might say "I should bring a potion next time". Their expectation would be that next fight they would get through with higher resources, due to expending the potion. If that's not enough, they'd bring more. Either way, they're learning the strategy that "bringing healing potions" is a good way to ensure that they come out of combat with more hit points.

Now... if you do the "adjust encounter difficulty based on how they're doing" thing to an extreme (which I'm not saying you are, to be clear, this is a hypothetical situation), they would see that no matter how many healing potions they brought (mostly within reason, there's action economy and stuff too), they ended up with the same health. They would then conclude that it didn't matter how many potions they brought, and would stop bringing potions. I mean, that's reasonable, right? They'd probably, at that point, only worry about getting gear that was permanent bonuses...

Of course, while I say this is hypothetical, can I point out that you have complained of these exact statements and behaviors from your players?

Which gets me to the other thing.... in the game industry there's a piece of general advice - "when the players say there's a problem, they're probably right. When they say how to fix it, they're probably wrong." IOW, players know when they're unhappy, even if they're often wrong about what, exactly, is causing the unhappiness. And it's always useful to figure that out. OTOH, most of your posts about players have framed them as about one inch shy of completely irrational, and has framed each of their complaints as completely irrational and baseless.

That's probably not the case.

In a lot of cases, you have pointed out situations where it was all very logical to you, based on hints that you put down (when of course you knew what they were hinting at). I think you'd do very well to presume that your players are more rational than perhaps you're giving them credit for, and to try to find a reason for what they're saying beyond "they're whiners and crazy and...". And remember it's not about right and wrong, it's about getting together and having a good time. It's about trying things, and seeing if people have fun with them, and if not adjusting them so people do have fun.

I honestly think I am a very "dice fall where they may" sort of DM; and I often care about player choice and setting verisimilitude to a fault. I honestly think I would have a lot less problems if I were more willing to fudge the numbers and "let the players win".

See? Here you're framing this as the players just wanting to always win. Not really looking very deeply at what the cause is.

Keep in mind that player agency (which is not choice) is dependent on people having not only a choice, but enough information to make an informed choice. And ideally, there should be multiple viable choices, not just one correct choice. Seriously, the more you push the emphasis of choices to "both of these have advantages and disadvantages, but both are viable, which do you want?" rather than "figure out the right choice or SUFFER" the less players will complain about that.

(Which is, to be clear, not the same as "all choices are correct and there are no wrong ones", which is just another form of choices not mattering).

Also note that "gotchas" are another consequence of player behavior, the type I think we both agree not to rob the players of. By choosing not to scout, or prepare divination spells, or put points into lore skills they are choosing to go in blind, and just telling them everything up front robs characters who do put resources into information gathering.

Honestly, depends. Some of that is game play preference - how much prep/action is everyone willing to tolerate? Some of that is based on how much advantage you get from scouting. Some is how much you telegraph that it's useful to scout in this case. Some of it's based on how "out of the blue" stuff is. Some of it is based on how much you penalize people for going off on their own.

Constantly scouting every stinking room and path becomes boring quickly, especially if the scout is hit for his vulnerability every time.

Again, talk to the players about this. Why aren't they doing it? And take their complaints seriously - even if you disagree, and even if you think they're wrong, there's a reason they say what they do, and that can help you figure out how to make it better.

It's actually a good skill to practice, even outside of games. When people do things, ask yourself "why would they do this?" and leave the option of "they're irrational" off of the table. Ask yourself what information, or values, or pressures they might have that would cause them to make that particular decision, or say that particular thing, or give you that particular information. It's a super useful skill to have, both in RPGs and life as a whole. It's practically a super power.

Party advances to 6th level. Responds to a hook.
Talakeal opens the envelope marked "Early 6th level"
"OK, this is an adventure built for early 6th. We all know this was written to be interesting for any reasonable party, so you can be sure there's nothing here that was designed to target your specific characters."

Also note, having the reasonably clever, muscular bugbear grapple the squishy wizard would be fine at any reasonable table (Though the wizard's player might whinge at the fighter for letting the bugbear get that close...)
OTOH, the owlbear should probably attack whoever's closest and if there's a whole dudgeon of ropers (or other grapple specialists) the wizard has a point if they whinge

All of this. Though I'd probably just make a list of 6th level encounters by 'theme' and go from there (easy, medium, hard), rather than have the entire adventure statted out.

[Segev]

Perhaps you hand each player a pre-gen to play alongside their PC. Use the same chargen rules you permit them, but build the pregen to be survivable. I doubt they'll complain about having a "sidekick" character. Don't tell them you're doing this to teach them a lesson or anything. Just hand them out as a thing.

Let the dice fall where they may, and let them see which are more survivable. If they whine that you're targeting their characters specifically in some "grudge" sort of way, suggest that they can have the same defenses that their pregens have and not be so vulnerable.


Though another way to make them have to face that you're not doing it to them would be to have a game where they fight in an arena match. Make them fight each other.

Alternatively, do the mirror-match where you literally clone their characters and pit "evil" versions of them against the PCs. Same mechanics. See what they do to exploit their own weaknesses.

[icefractal]

Also note that "gotchas" are another consequence of player behavior, the type I think we both agree not to rob the players of. By choosing not to scout, or prepare divination spells, or put points into lore skills they are choosing to go in blind, and just telling them everything up front robs characters who do put resources into information gathering.

Coming back to this, scouting / preparation is one area where meta-game factors tend to discourage people from doing it. Namely, that while it might be realistic and effective, spending half the session watching one PC scout, or playing twenty questions with divination, is boring to the majority of players.

For example, the "divination heavy" style sometimes advocated here as how a Wizard should be played? Where you spend at least one day divining for every day of adventuring, so you can prepare the ideal spells and contingencies each day? I have never been in a group who did that for anything except the few most important situations, or would even have accepted someone doing it on a regular basis.

Now lore skills - yeah, there's no reason not to take those. Automatic information gathering like that doesn't cause any issues. But I could see a group deliberately avoiding Shadowrun-level preparation because they don't find it interesting, regardless of how effective it is.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Coming back to this, scouting / preparation is one area where meta-game factors tend to discourage people from doing it. Namely, that while it might be realistic and effective, spending half the session watching one PC scout, or playing twenty questions with divination, is boring to the majority of players.

For example, the "divination heavy" style sometimes advocated here as how a Wizard should be played? Where you spend at least one day divining for every day of adventuring, so you can prepare the ideal spells and contingencies each day? I have never been in a group who did that for anything except the few most important situations, or would even have accepted someone doing it on a regular basis.

Now lore skills - yeah, there's no reason not to take those. Automatic information gathering like that doesn't cause any issues. But I could see a group deliberately avoiding Shadowrun-level preparation because they don't find it interesting, regardless of how effective it is.

Count me into that set. Some prep? Sure. Multiple days of in game, DM-interactive prep (ie can't just handwave/fast forward the time)? No thanks.

[Duff]

To be faie, a reasonavle wizard would say "hey guys, this dungeon is full of ropers. Let's nuke every room before going in. We'll scout for anything important using the rogue beforehand and then blast with fireballs."

Lol. Also true. Though the point stands; Enemies targeting weaknesses is fine, Encounters targeting weaknesses should happen rarely enough that they feel incidental (unless there's an enemy deliberately running things) and whole adventures or arcs targeting weaknesses is strictly for games where there's a high level of trust between player and GM or an explicit agreement at session 0 that this will be a thing.

[Thrudd]

Count me into that set. Some prep? Sure. Multiple days of in game, DM-interactive prep (ie can't just handwave/fast forward the time)? No thanks.

I agree. Let alone entire game sessions of players just talking and discussing what to do next (Critical Role, I'm looking at you). That's why I like a game that has some way to make down time and prep (if it's needed at all) an activity that all the players can mechanically interact with. Spend X amount of in-game time, roll some dice, get some results. There should be "downtime turns" the same way there are combat turns and travel/exploration/dungeon turns.

Ex.:Want to find a merc to help you? Roll your charisma, or whatever, DC based on the location. You spend 1 week downtime spreading word around merc hangouts, and if your roll succeeded someone responds to your offer.
Player 2 wants to scry the next adventure destination. Spend 1 week, make a roll or two, based on the result the GM gives you a little or a lot of information. Etc.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I agree. Let alone entire game sessions of players just talking and discussing what to do next (Critical Role, I'm looking at you). That's why I like a game that has some way to make down time and prep (if it's needed at all) an activity that all the players can mechanically interact with. Spend X amount of in-game time, roll some dice, get some results. There should be "downtime turns" the same way there are combat turns and travel/exploration/dungeon turns.

Ex.:Want to find a merc to help you? Roll your charisma, or whatever, DC based on the location. You spend 1 week downtime spreading word around merc hangouts, and if your roll succeeded someone responds to your offer.
Player 2 wants to scry the next adventure destination. Spend 1 week, make a roll or two, based on the result the GM gives you a little or a lot of information. Etc.

My current game has most of the prep happening via Discord text chat between sessions. A mix of in character and out. That's worked really well so far. Especially since it gives me a window into what they want to do next and what's important. And lets me drop lore, backstory, and portents, dreams, and other omens asynchronously.

That leaves sessions for moving the narrative onward. Where onward is usually in some direction I didn't have entirely planned, but can roll with. I don't plan plots, but the narrative has a mind of its own, and insists on things I never thought of.

[Thrudd]

My current game has most of the prep happening via Discord text chat between sessions. A mix of in character and out. That's worked really well so far. Especially since it gives me a window into what they want to do next and what's important. And lets me drop lore, backstory, and portents, dreams, and other omens asynchronously.

That leaves sessions for moving the narrative onward. Where onward is usually in some direction I didn't have entirely planned, but can roll with. I don't plan plots, but the narrative has a mind of its own, and insists on things I never thought of.

Yeah, that's actually a great idea, to take advantage of today's reality. Get everyone prepped ahead of time so you can get right to the adventure with your precious gaming time. I'm still thinking like it's 1995, before everyone had 4 forms of real time communication in their pocket at all times, lol. I don't get out much.

[Anonymouswizard]

Count me into that set. Some prep? Sure. Multiple days of in game, DM-interactive prep (ie can't just handwave/fast forward the time)? No thanks.

On the other hand the most prep work I tend to see is 'let's go back to the hideout and pick up our guns'. That's if I'm lucky, and I now spend a lot of time enforcing weapon regulations. But just once I'd like for the players to take time out to see if they can get the floor plan or all their contacts for information. It doesn't have to be a whole season, but I'd like for important locations to have actual security without the PCs dying and blaming it on me.

[Telok]

On the other hand the most prep work I tend to see is 'let's go back to the hideout and pick up our guns'. That's if I'm lucky, and I now spend a lot of time enforcing weapon regulations. But just once I'd like for the players to take time out to see if they can get the floor plan or all their contacts for information. It doesn't have to be a whole season, but I'd like for important locations to have actual security without the PCs dying and blaming it on me.

So much this. I've had parties start interstellar wars and fail simple anti-piracy missions at the same time just by not talking to anyone and not asking for any more information. Even my directly asking in game "Are you sure about this? Do you want to do anything like calling contacts or research?", twice... Twice. It's the old, "you can make it available but you can't effectively force them to use it" thing.

One thing I've seen, mostly limited to specific players, is a tendency to find "power builds" on the internet and try to play them without understanding their tactics or limits. Since most theoretical optimization character builds tend to be hyper focused on a single aspect, trying to play one without understanding both it's role and limits generally goes badly. I mean things like a player taking a ranged blaster mage build and then self buffing for three rounds in combat before starting to make melee spell attacks. That could be an issue that's happening too.

[Anonymouswizard]

So much this. I've had parties start interstellar wars and fail simple anti-piracy missions at the same time just by not talking to anyone and not asking for any more information. Even my directly asking in game "Are you sure about this? Do you want to do anything like calling contacts or research?", twice... Twice. It's the old, "you can make it available but you can't effectively force them to use it" thing.

Yeah, I managed to run a Shadowrun campaign that should have ended Inc a three way fight between two corporations after the local ghouls used the PCs to raid a lab they'd already raided once for a Mega (I think AAA, it might have been a AA). That group refused to do legwork, and I just didn't want to deal with the consequences.

To be fair to my last group, the raid they did before the campaign all fell apart they realised that as they were robbing a museum exhibit they could spend most of the day going around and mapping everything out in their heads. Didn't think to do any research to see if [real person] actually owned any steins, but that's me deciding to mess with the Dipsomancer. But they did shell out for a high quality forgery, so I wish that group had lasted more than two sessions.

They also left their weapons at home, partially because most of them didn't own any and partially to minimise legal trouble. Sadly they didn't think to cover their faces despite one of the players facing a contact in the Met (who they hadn't assigned a unit to, and so just happened to be in the right one to be investigating such thefts).

One thing I've seen, mostly limited to specific players, is a tendency to find "power builds" on the internet and try to play them without understanding their tactics or limits. Since most theoretical optimization character builds tend to be hyper focused on a single aspect, trying to play one without understanding both it's role and limits generally goes badly. I mean things like a player taking a ranged blaster mage build and then self buffing for three rounds in combat before starting to make melee spell attacks. That could be an issue that's happening too.

Yeah, that's likely, alongside trying to apply principles from one system into another (in this case I think D&D principles into s homebrew system). But I've seen it occasionally, even done it once or twice myself. If there isn't a gaming law for 'a good build played poorly is worse than a bad build played adequately' then there should be

[Talakeal]

That's why I had 2 non illusion options in there. Dimension door and fog cloud. 3.5/pf it's a VERY solid defense, especially if you use summons from inside the cloud.

I've worked absurd levels of defense with those 5 spells. And true sight? Most people forget that only extends to 120 feet. Stay high up in the sky protected by cloud illusions? Even the most powerful outsiders won't spot you. Good way to summon tons of air elementals and wreck someone's day.

I am absolutely not saying that these tactics don't work or that it is better to play smarter rather than play harder.

I am saying that these are all highly situational, require a good deal of prep, and do have counters, so it is a good idea to also have something else to fall back on.


To use a personal example, one of my players had a sorcerer who used various teleportation spells to escape combat, and so he invested nothing in other defenses. This works fine until he came up against an enemy who was better at teleportation than he was and was able to keep pace with him, and took him out in a single round. To this day the player still holds a grudge against me for the "unfair encounter".

Party advances to 6th level. Responds to a hook.
Talakeal opens the envelope marked "Early 6th level"
"OK, this is an adventure built for early 6th. We all know this was written to be interesting for any reasonable party, so you can be sure there's nothing here that was designed to target your specific characters."

That's actually what I did for the last campaign, but because I did it without the sealed envelope every sessions still came across as a "gotcha".

I currently don't have the time or inclination to prep the entire campaign in advance, and I already know what characters my PCs are going to be playing in the next one, but I suppose that might work for some hypothetical future game.

...if there's a whole dudgeon of ropers (or other grapple specialists) the wizard has a point if they whinge...

Here's the thing though, sometimes you will get themed dungeons just because it makes sense, and sometimes those themes will happen to overlap with a character's weakness. Roper nests do exist in the world, and the party is as likely to encounter them as any other monster with a similar population.

Those are for all practical purposes the same thing.

Most of that is point #2. Some of it is still point #1.

If you define it so broadly though, it is basically a non statement. Its basically answering "What should I do?" "You should something!"

Coming back to this, scouting / preparation is one area where meta-game factors tend to discourage people from doing it. Namely, that while it might be realistic and effective, spending half the session watching one PC scout, or playing twenty questions with divination, is boring to the majority of players.

For example, the "divination heavy" style sometimes advocated here as how a Wizard should be played? Where you spend at least one day divining for every day of adventuring, so you can prepare the ideal spells and contingencies each day? I have never been in a group who did that for anything except the few most important situations, or would even have accepted someone doing it on a regular basis.

Now lore skills - yeah, there's no reason not to take those. Automatic information gathering like that doesn't cause any issues. But I could see a group deliberately avoiding Shadowrun-level preparation because they don't find it interesting, regardless of how effective it is.

Obviously there is a happy midpoint.

Lol. Also true. Though the point stands; Enemies targeting weaknesses is fine, Encounters targeting weaknesses should happen rarely enough that they feel incidental (unless there's an enemy deliberately running things) and whole adventures or arcs targeting weaknesses is strictly for games where there's a high level of trust between player and GM or an explicit agreement at session 0 that this will be a thing.

How do you actually handle that though?

Like, if one character has really bad will-saves, and the DM want's to run a campaign arc with illithids as the main villains, does the DM need to come to the player and ask his or her player's permission first?

This seems limiting, patronizing, and also likely to spoil the plot in advance.

Or is the DM just limited to only using villains which don't target any of the PCs weaknesses? Which are pretty few and far between given most groups I have seen.

So much this. I've had parties start interstellar wars and fail simple anti-piracy missions at the same time just by not talking to anyone and not asking for any more information. Even my directly asking in game "Are you sure about this? Do you want to do anything like calling contacts or research?", twice... Twice. It's the old, "you can make it available but you can't effectively force them to use it" thing.

One thing I've seen, mostly limited to specific players, is a tendency to find "power builds" on the internet and try to play them without understanding their tactics or limits. Since most theoretical optimization character builds tend to be hyper focused on a single aspect, trying to play one without understanding both it's role and limits generally goes badly. I mean things like a player taking a ranged blaster mage build and then self buffing for three rounds in combat before starting to make melee spell attacks. That could be an issue that's happening too.

I frequently have similar issues when the players are too paranoid to talk to friendly NPCs out of fear of betrayal, and thus walk into a situation lacking vital context.

So, here's the thing. If a player gets through a combat with 10% health remaining, they might say "I should bring a potion next time". Their expectation would be that next fight they would get through with higher resources, due to expending the potion. If that's not enough, they'd bring more. Either way, they're learning the strategy that "bringing healing potions" is a good way to ensure that they come out of combat with more hit points.

Now... if you do the "adjust encounter difficulty based on how they're doing" thing to an extreme (which I'm not saying you are, to be clear, this is a hypothetical situation), they would see that no matter how many healing potions they brought (mostly within reason, there's action economy and stuff too), they ended up with the same health. They would then conclude that it didn't matter how many potions they brought, and would stop bringing potions. I mean, that's reasonable, right? They'd probably, at that point, only worry about getting gear that was permanent bonuses...

Totally agree here.

I am not talking about anything like that though, I am just talking about putting slightly more effort into the NPCs tactics when they are the underdogs, and giving the players a bit of a break when they are losing.

I am not talking about ignoring rules, fudging dice, or breaking immersion / verisimilitude, or metagaming, I am merely saying that when I am RPing an NPC, adhering to the expected difficulty of the encounter is one of the many factors that goes into my decision.

Honestly I don't think it makes much of a difference, and would be fine just having the monster roll an intelligence check in such situations if it becomes an issue.

Of course, while I say this is hypothetical, can I point out that you have complained of these exact statements and behaviors from your players?

Could you please give an example? I would love to discuss the actual issues rather than vague hypotheticals, and I think some specifics would really help me out here.

See? Here you're framing this as the players just wanting to always win. Not really looking very deeply at what the cause is.

That statement has nothing to do with players or their preferences; I am talking about DMs who fudge dice or monster HP to ensure that combats are exactly as challenging as they feel they should be; although I suppose a jackass GM could also do this to railroad the players into defeat instead of "letting them win".

To respond to this point, I don't think anyone would ever say they want you to "let them win," but on the other hand people have a tendency to get really mad and blame other people whenever they lose, and I do have a few players who are pretty bad at this.

Again, this isn't exclusive to gaming, I think everyone does this at time, including myself. Heck, my nobody will play golf with my dad because every time he misses a shot he finds some excuse to berate someone for "distracting him" in some way or another.

Honestly its kind of a conundrum.

Keep in mind that player agency (which is not choice) is dependent on people having not only a choice, but enough information to make an informed choice. And ideally, there should be multiple viable choices, not just one correct choice. Seriously, the more you push the emphasis of choices to "both of these have advantages and disadvantages, but both are viable, which do you want?" rather than "figure out the right choice or SUFFER" the less players will complain about that.

(Which is, to be clear, not the same as "all choices are correct and there are no wrong ones", which is just another form of choices not mattering).

I wholly agree.

I don't think I have ever had a problem with this though. If you could recall a specific instance I would love to discuss it, but in my memory all I can think of are situations where players tried one tactic that didn't work for one reason or another and then panicked / got frustrated and assumed it was impossible.

The closest I can recall is when the players couldn't win a fight on their own, I gave them a choice of three allies, and the players rejected them all for one reason or another and spent a long time looking for a fourth option that didn't exist.

Honestly, depends. Some of that is game play preference - how much prep/action is everyone willing to tolerate? Some of that is based on how much advantage you get from scouting. Some is how much you telegraph that it's useful to scout in this case. Some of it's based on how "out of the blue" stuff is. Some of it is based on how much you penalize people for going off on their own.

Constantly scouting every stinking room and path becomes boring quickly, especially if the scout is hit for his vulnerability every time.

I don't really see how scouting is boring, its basically just changing up the order you get the descriptive text in. I can't see it taking more than a couple more sessions per minute; unless the scout is taking a lot of actions solo, in which case it might be boring for the rest of the group, but gives the scout some great spotlight time.

In my experience the odds of a scout actually getting caught are close to negligible; most "rogue" type PCs are optimized enough that they can't fail a stealth roll without doing something exceptionally risky.

[icefractal]

Like, if one character has really bad will-saves, and the DM want's to run a campaign arc with illithids as the main villains, does the DM need to come to the player and ask his or her player's permission first?

This seems limiting, patronizing, and also likely to spoil the plot in advance.

Ask permission? No.
Warn the player at char-gen? Yes.

If the Illithids are a twist, luckily there are *many* things that cause Will saves in D&D. All you need to say is:
"In this campaign, Will saves that low will be a *big* weakness that comes up frequently. Are you ok with that, or do you want to adjust your build?"

[Jay R]

There are DMs who think their job involves preventing the party from dying. There are players who think that PC death should never happen (or should always be the players' choice).

If this player comes from that tradition, then he is right -- armor does nothing.

If he believes that the DM is supposed to keep his player alive, then when the PC dies, he will blame the DM, not the lack of armor.

You must make sure in advance that your players know that their characters can die. If all their PCs were kept alive in previous games, then they can be forgiven for believing that their PC will be kept alive in this one.

The only answer is to communicate. And it is sometimes very difficult for DM to communicate with their PCs.

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”

-- George Bernard Shaw

[Talakeal]

Ask permission? No.
Warn the player at char-gen? Yes.

If the Illithids are a twist, luckily there are *many* things that cause Will saves in D&D. All you need to say is:
"In this campaign, Will saves that low will be a *big* weakness that comes up frequently. Are you ok with that, or do you want to adjust your build?"

Note I said arc, not the entire campaign.

Its easy enough during session zero, a little less so if I decide to have a long illithid based storyline six months in when the PCs are already mid level.

[Telok]

The only answer is to communicate. And it is sometimes very difficult for DM to communicate with their PCs.

Oh communicating with a PC is easy, the DM just says that the sky opens up and a booming voice says something like "without armor you will experience butt-hurt". Getting it through to the player now, that's the challenge.

Sorry. Couldn't help myself.

[Anonymouswizard]

There are DMs who think their job involves preventing the party from dying. There are players who think that PC death should never happen (or should always be the players' choice).

If this player comes from that tradition, then he is right -- armor does nothing.

I honestly think that anybody who wants a game should read Fate's Taken Out and Conceding rules, or something like First Fable (which is admittedly aimed at kids) where the player is allowed to decide what level of risk they want. There's ways to run games where PCs don't die without making armour useless, you just either have to use a system that makes taking a substantial hit bad.

One system I've designed doesn't actually have rules for character death but instead has each hit on a PC give Wounds that apply penalties to all rolls, and as you reduce all Wounds by 1 at the end of a session with an optional rename getting a bunch of small hits is better in the long run then one big hit. Sadly it doesn't work with the dice system, even a -1 is a big deal, but I'm saving it for another project where a couple of minor wounds isn't a big deal (and getting decent armour is much harder). Character death is instead considered a way to retire a character and is discussed alongside them becoming an established NPC or falling to villainy.

[Maat Mons]

Okay, I've skipped reading large portions of the responses because I plan to go eat soon. So if what I say duplicates a response already given, I apologize.



In a way, armor does do nothing. What I mean is, a character's AC doesn't actually change based on what armor they wear. Okay, that still probably sounds weird. It's just that, the sum of max Dex bonus and armor bonus is more-or-less constant across armor categories. A high-Dex, light-armor character will have about the same AC as a low-Dex, heavy-armor character. Padded armor is +1 and +8, so +9 total. And full plate is +8 and +1, so +9 total.

There's no dichotomy where light armor characters take fewer hits, and heavy armor characters take less damage per hit. There's just a "defense goodness" number that doesn't care how you go about your defense. So you pick your armor to match your Dex. Or you pick your Dex to match your armor. And there's no game mechanic that makes the different character types feel different in play. It makes defense an abstract number that doesn't reflect anything about how your character's style of combat.



My advice is to never, ever tailor encounters to the players. As a player, I find it incredibly disheartening to imagine that my choices in character creation don't do anything. It doesn't matter if it takes the form of the DM deliberately building enemies to be immune to my best attacks. Or if it takes the form of the DM making sure I never face enemies that exploit my glaring weaknesses. It doesn't matter if it takes the form of the DM making sure to never pick monsters that require spellcasting, because we're all playin mundanes, and he wants us to have a chance. Or if the DM decides to "punish" our group of mundanes by setting us up against enemies that only magic can defeat, to "teach us a lesson."

If a DM tells he adjusts challenges to the group, he's basically telling me that all the pages of the book dedicated to character options are so much waste paper. It doesn't make any difference what I play. If the DM's plot requires me to succeed, I will find myself in a situation where my capabilities, whatever they are, are sufficient to pull off a victory. And if the DM's plot requires me to fail, I will find myself in a situation where my capabilities, whatever they are, just aren't enough. At that point, we could just throw out the dice and numbers and just straight up play pretend.

I remember a comment on these boards a while back, along the lines of "Why would you learn the Plane Shift spell? If the adventure requires going to another plane, and you don't have it, the DM will just add a convenient NPC who can take you there." I didn't say it then, by I immediately thought something like "Why build a party that can win fights? If you play a party of venerable Commoners, the DM will only give you challenges that venerable Commoners can deal with."


There is a saying, "The best defense is a good offense." This can be very true. Dead enemies aren't going to be landing any attacks on you. In fact, making enemies dead is the only way to prevent all forms of attack. AC can prevent physical attacks. Mind Blank can prevent mental attacks. But only enemy death prevents every single possible thing that enemy could ever do to you.

There is one major caveat though. This completely falls apart if the DM tailors encounters to the players. The offensively-focused playstyle is all about achieving a fast victory. Because if you don't win fast, you lose. But if your DM's response to you winning fast is to make your future fights harder, you will very quickly find all your offensive power canceled out by bigger-defense-number-having enemies. If the DM won't rest until he sees you bleed, you will bleed. The fact that you invested all your build resources in making enemies too dead to hurt you wont avail you anything in the face of the DM's mighty powers of fiat.

Against the encounter-tailoring DM, the only thing you can do that will actually influence you success or failure chances long-term is a bizarre kind of metagaming. You need to make sure you struggle. Even if you have awesome abilities and you're fighting easy opponents, find a way to struggle. Maybe just never use any of your good abilities. Finish every day with wasted, unused resources. Say you're saving them "just in case." Make deliberately bad strategic decisions. The DM will try to compensate by giving you easier battles. But just keep screwing up. No matter how hard you have to work to very nearly lose, do it. That way, whenever you find yourself in actual danger, you can just momentarily display competence. The DM gets drawn-out encounters, with everyone taking a little damage, just like he wants. But you're never actually in danger of dying, because you're basically an Olympic swimmer in a kiddie pool, pretending you only know how to dog paddle.



So I recommend using pre-published modules, and making absolutely no adjustments. Anything else, at best, creates the illusion of meaningful character creation. At worst, you can get either a DM-vs-player mentality, or a hand-holding story time campaign.

[Darth Credence]

Okay, I've skipped reading large portions of the responses because I plan to go eat soon. So if what I say duplicates a response already given, I apologize.

In a way, armor does do nothing. What I mean is, a character's AC doesn't actually change based on what armor they wear. Okay, that still probably sounds weird. It's just that, the sum of max Dex bonus and armor bonus is more-or-less constant across armor categories. A high-Dex, light-armor character will have about the same AC as a low-Dex, heavy-armor character. Padded armor is +1 and +8, so +9 total. And full plate is +8 and +1, so +9 total.

Wait, what? A 20 Dex character wearing padded has an AC of 16. An 8 Dex character with plate has an AC of 18. What are you meaning by this +1 and +8 statement? (serious question, I want to know if I'm missing a rule.)

There is a saying, "The best defense is a good offense." This can be very true. Dead enemies aren't going to be landing any attacks on you. In fact, making enemies dead is the only way to prevent all forms of attack. AC can prevent physical attacks. Mind Blank can prevent mental attacks. But only enemy death prevents every single possible thing that enemy could ever do to you.

This is funny in light of a game that features a wide variety of dead creatures that can stand up, brush off the grave dirt, and eat your face.

[Maat Mons]

What I mean is, If your Dex is 22, you'll wear leather armor and have an AC of 18. If your Dex is 20, you'll wear studded leather armor and have an AC of 18. If your Dex is 18, you'll wear a chain shirt and have an AC of 18. You just look at your Dex, pick the armor that matches, and you wind up with an AC of 18.

Or if you're a building a Fighter, and your first draft has Dex 12, you'll equip him with full plate, for an AC of 19. Then if you say to yourself, "No, I want to be harder to hit than that. I'll pump my Dex," rearrange your build decisions, and come back with a Dex 36 Fighter... you'll notice that your AC is the same. "But of course," you may say to yourself, "I forgot to change his armor. I'll give him something that allows him to take advantage of his massive Dex." Then you switch him to padded armor... and the AC you wind up with is 19.

Alternately, maybe you're playing a Barbarian with 16 Dex who wears a breastplate. And you decide "Man, I'm getting hit too much. I'll take a dip in Fighter for heavy armor proficiency. Then I can wear full plate and get better protection!" You take your dip, and buy your armor, only to wind up with the same 19 AC as you had before.

Wizards built the armor system with the deliberate intention of keeping everyone's AC within certain bounds. You can get outside of these bounds by having so little Dex that you can't even hit the max Dex bonus of the heaviest armor available to you. Or you can have have so much Dex that you transcend armor completely. Or you can make objectively bad decisions and wear armor that isn't a good match for your Dex score. But in practice, outside of the lowest levels, where the cost of mundane armor is relevant, or classes that are deliberately designed to have restricted armor choices, you'll wind up with about the same AC whether you build high-Dex light armor or low-Dex heavy armor.

So Wizards succeeded in their goals. But I'd have much rather seen a system where light-armored characters dodged out of the way of attack, and heavy-armored characters negated some of the damage of each hit, and this was reflected in the mechanics. As it stands, you've just got an AC, and whether attacks glance off your armor or you dodge out of the way doesn't enter into the mechanics.

[Cluedrew]

My advice is to never, ever tailor encounters to the players. As a player, I find it incredibly disheartening to imagine that my choices in character creation don't do anything. [...] So I recommend using pre-published modules, and making absolutely no adjustments. Anything else, at best, creates the illusion of meaningful character creation. At worst, you can get either a DM-vs-player mentality, or a hand-holding story time campaign.

"A mercenary, a naive mystic and a reality TV show host (with camera crew) walk into a bar." That isn't the set up to a joke that is actually how one of the best campaigns I ever played in. The other two PCs were a well equipped yet underprepared wildlife photographer and a local hunter with a plane.

I challenge you to dig up a pre-made module that can handle that group of PCs, getting them all hooked in and giving them all a chance to contribute. And there is the whole expression aspect, there are plenty of decisions you make during character creation that don't have to do with picking tactical options.

Also I believe Talakeal is using a homebrew system.

[Thrudd]

You know, after all this, has anyone suggested just rolling the dice in front of the players, especially in combat?
You can't really be blamed when they can see the numbers for themselves. It should then be obvious how their choice to invest in defense would make a difference.

If the problem is really that they think you are only using enemies that specifically can avoid their special abilities...are you? I mean, being good at physical combat isn't something they should be surprised to see in almost every enemy they encounter, right? So going lightly armored would be something they know will have an effect in every combat, and seeing heavily armored enemies likewise should be no surprise. It seems that they are investing in special offensive capabilities and are frustrated by how often they don't work. Were they unaware of the actual success chances of these abilities when they chose them? If a majority of enemies have defenses against these abilities, is the character creation cost of choosing them unjustified? If you feel the creation process is balanced, perhaps again more communication prior to character creation is required. Warn that the reason ability x is as cheap as it is, is due to the fact that it often won't succeed.

If characters are choosing abilities that they can reasonably assume will work a majority of the time (based on a straight reading of the rules), but allowing this to happen would unbalanced or disrupt the way you think the game should proceed, then maybe the problem is with the mechanics of the ability itself. There would need to be rules adjustments, whether it is for always or for just one campaign. Communicate these changes and the reasons for them prior to character creation, or else you will get the players trying to take advantage of what they see as exploits or at least disproportionately effective character builds, and will be surprised and upset when they find things aren't the way they assumed.

[Lacco]

Got me. Lot's of stuff. Something specific you are getting at?

Mostly I was trying to ask if you have some idea for the common denominators - after all, you are the only source of information we have. So: are there any commonalities?

There is of course the old de motivational poster answer "You are the common factor in all your failed relationships," which is really a non-answer in an advice thread as people wouldn't be asking a question if they didn't think they could modify their behavior to change it. Unless that's the point?

You are definitely one of the factors, not necessarily the only one. And it's always good to take into account yourself first, because you can modify your behaviour directly - and we can provide you with inputs/suggestions/advice to do so. We can also try to analyse what causes the behaviour of your players, but we can not modify it directly - so I will focus mostly on you if you do not mind (basically my intent is: I can't talk to your players to tell them how to change their behaviour, I can only talk to you).

Also, some people ask questions with the intention of getting sympathy/praise/understanding, not to modify their behaviour. And it is something that can be done in good faith - especially when you are frustrated and need someone to confirm it's not just you. But when asking for sympathy, you should state it directly - otherwise you'll get a lot of advice and no sympathy most of the time. And please, bear in mind that while we can assume why you do what you do, I'd like to ask before assuming: would you like advice or sympathy? (and this is in no ill will, just to be sure we provide what you actually want)

This is mainly from my experience where people wish for sympathy, state they want advice, and then get frustrated by the answers. Would like to avoid that one.

Oh I think I was intentionally being irritating. I was more than a little frustrated myself after having spent the entire morning being raked over the coals for how overpowered my warband was.

How do you respond at game table when players frustrate you? Ideally, do you have a specific example?

But I can't think of a better way to illustrate my point as white room discussions of probability just get dismissed. Any advice?

I'll not dismiss white room discussions of probability. There are some things that are discussed easier this way.

Also, I noticed you have very strong assumptions about some issues. I know each of us has some knowledge/experience (also about discussing here), but I'd like to ask you to approach this with open mind.

And if there are some assumptions we should take into account for the discussion (e.g. you are playing homebrew system but your players are very familiar with it), please state those - it will help a lot.

Those formats are totally different though. I can't imagine getting much useful data from them.

Au contraire!

The small online group - ideally if you recorded the whole thing - would provide lots of data and would provide us with possibility to see how you act/react, consider the unwritten parts of social contract you follow, see your body language, hear your voice and be able to see how you provide information to the players. That's a lot of information. Also: stress points and reaction to discomfort.

If people from this forum were involved, we'd also get direct feedback.

PbP and play by chat would not give us so much info, but still - the communication style usually remains very similar, especially with chat.

You can get data even from the discussions here.

Yes, you are correct - these formats are wildly different, which means they can provide each its own, useful data. Question is: which one'd you prefer?

Playing a monster "hard" all the time is mentally exhausting, and it seems mean to stomp someone into the ground when they are already losing. I don't think this is just a GM thing either, as a player I also try harder when things are going hard, even in single player video games.

On the other hand, playing "soft" all the time makes the game a farce, both from a mechanical level and from a setting level; its hard to take a world seriously when its monsters and villains are complete idiots who can be taken out by a group of wandering adventurers without any effort.

Okay, so: your preference - even as a player - would be is playing a monster "hard", but going softer when it seems to be an issue? Or did I misunderstand?

Also, how do you manage the game difficulty at the table?

Now, we can look into deeper game philosophy here and say its an important psychological mechanic. Its pretty well agreed upon that most people want a challenge, or at least the illusion of it; most sport's fans agree that close games are the best and many video games give you damage resistance when your life is low or damage boosts when your ammunition is low to give the illusion of a close call. I personally don't really know how much I agree with this though, it seems good in principal, but my players pretty universally throw tantrums at anything that isn't a cake walk, hold grudges for years over close calls, and I don't really trust myself to have that tight a grasp on game balance or on player psychology anyway.

There are different players and different mentalities. Assuming your players are not members of the bizarro world (let's go into the white room discussion), the tantrums and grudges should usually come from a feeling of being mistreated/played unfairly/cheated - not from "the game is too hard".

Now with this in mind: can you construct a cake walk encounter? No stats, just basic info, tactics - just for me to get an overall feeling of how you construct these. Since I do not know your homebrew system and am not too familiar with D&D, there will be others that will take a look at that, but I'd prefer low-level D&D (I am a bit familiar with that).

Also, whiterooming a hard encounter as an example would help.

You know, after all this, has anyone suggested just rolling the dice in front of the players, especially in combat?
You can't really be blamed when they can see the numbers for themselves. It should then be obvious how their choice to invest in defense would make a difference.

I think this was more about tactics than dice - when the mindless monster attacks the physically weak spellcaster first just because he has no defences, it can be seen as unfair even if your roll dice in front of the player. Not so much when a genius-level enemy does the same - but I still know players that would grumble.

Of course, building monsters specifically to overcome strengths of a PC can cause grief - but having monsters that will have certain aspects that make them dangerous is normal. Still, players do not know - by default - which one of these is happening.

Still, I think the only moment when I roll dice in secret is when I go for horror. It works great for the tension.

[MoiMagnus]

Something quitte important to note is that this mindset feed itself.

When you have no defense, your play style is "if things go wrong I m dead". Having slightly more defense won't change this play style, it will just make the case where things go wrong slightly less deadly, but still deadly.

This is why you only see peoples care about defense when they focus on it because it actually change their play style, and they can now afford to frontline as a main strategy.

They see defense as a "lose less" mechanism, and expect to never lose with good enough decision making. But that's wrong. Taking damage should also be part of the winning plan.

Have you tried to make a one-shot where between-fight healing is cheap (if not automatic full heal) and increase the enemy number accordingly? This might help to teach your players that HP is a resource to use.
EDIT: Also, give them ONE amulet of health (the item to put Constitution to 19), and watch them realise that Constitution is OP.

[Xervous]

EDIT: Also, give them ONE amulet of health (the item to put Constitution to 19), and watch them realise that Constitution is OP.

If the party is dysfunctional this will only lead to arguments over who gets it. It’s not like they can all realize the stat is useful and rebuild on the spot. Then there’s the matter of stat fixing items being terrible for the game IMO, and the likelihood that Talakeal is running a custom system.