Do people really enjoy close battles?

[Talakeal]

In the last episode of Fear the Boot, several of the hosts were talking about how nothing feels better than when you have what looks to be an unwinnable situation or a TPK in progress, but you manage to buckle down, pull through, and just barely scrape by.

Lots of the gaming advice books, blogs, podcasts, and videos take it for granted that PCs love winning a close fight. Heck, most people also follow that same logic for narratives or for sports, that a close match-up is always more interesting.

Likewise, I have heard quotes like "Players want to be like John Mclaine, they want to be the hero in the end, but they want to be struggle for it and be beat to hell in the process," or "Players want an easy victory in the moment, but when looking back on it want to to have been the toughest thing ever."

But, is this actually true?

My players always freak out in a close encounter, and usually just get angry and start acting out OOC, or get depressed and give up. After winning, they always bitch about how it was too hard, too stressful, too close, to costly, and dwelling on how badly it could have gone. Even years later, rather than telling stories about how they overcame impossible odds due to how awesome they are, they instead tell stories about how horribly they were screwed over and put into unfair situations.

And, further, when I ask for advice on the forums, it seems that most people agree with them.

For the record, I don't run an old school meat-grinder or anything of the sort. I pretty much stick to the encounter guidelines in modern DMGs (i.e. averaging four equal CR encounters each adventuring day each using up ~20% of the party's resources); we tend to have one "nail-biter" that could go either way every ~20 combats, and only about 1:10 of those actually results in the party's defeat or a PC death. Actual TPKs are all but unheard of and usually the result of something really weird going on.

TLDR: In your experience, do players actually prefer tough battles were they struggle to pull through in the end, or do they prefer easy victories where they clearly outclass their opposition?

[KorvinStarmast]

TLDR: In your experience, do players actually prefer tough battles were they struggle to pull through in the end, or do they prefer easy victories where they clearly outclass their opposition?

yes to both. Sometimes, they want to ROFLstomp the foe, and sometime when they barely make it out of the encounter by the skin of their teeth they rejoice.

Your attempt at a false dichotomy is not well done. It's not an either/or deal.

[Talakeal]

Your attempt at a false dichotomy is not well done. It's not an either/or deal.

That's because it isn't a false dichotomy. It is asking for a preference between two poles.

"What is your favorite ice-cream, chocolate or vanilla," is a false dichotomy as it precludes all the other flavors, asking "Which ice-cream do you prefer, chocolate or vanilla?" is not, it is merely asking which amongst the two people prefer; and as this is a forum people are free (and encouraged) to give in depth answers if a simply one or the other doesn't suffice.

[Imbalance]

My players always freak out in a close encounter, and usually just get angry and start acting out OOC, or get depressed and give up. After winning, they always bitch about how it was too hard, too stressful, too close, to costly, and dwelling on how badly it could have gone. Even years later, rather than telling stories about how they overcame impossible odds due to how awesome they are, they instead tell stories about how horribly they were screwed over and put into unfair situations.

No offense to your friends, but I don't think I could run games for people who are that neurotic. I also agree with Korvin, both as a player and DM - bring on the easy challenges as well as the heart-thumpers, but a difficult encounter always makes the victory sweeter.

[JNAProductions]

That's because it isn't a false dichotomy. It is asking for a preference between two poles.

"What is your favorite ice-cream, chocolate or vanilla," is a false dichotomy as it precludes all the other flavors, asking "Which ice-cream do you prefer, chocolate or vanilla?" is not, it is merely asking which amongst the two people prefer; and as this is a forum people are free (and encouraged) to give in depth answers if a simply one or the other doesn't suffice.

Except what you want can vary, especially in a matter like this. It's not like "I prefer chocolate over vanilla," which will usually always lead to you picking chocolate over vanilla if given the choice.

It's more like asking "Would you rather watch an amazing action movie or listen to an awesome song?" Sometimes, you'll want the movie. Other times the song. Likewise, sometimes you've had a long day, you want some minimal-investment make-believe murder, and so you'd rather crush the foe effortlessly. Other times, you're fresh on your feet, and you're ready to really get into the nitty-gritty, using every ability at your disposal for a hard-fought victory. Still other times, you'll have another situation entirely.

[GentlemanVoodoo]

No offense to your friends, but I don't think I could run games for people who are that neurotic.

+1 to this.

As to your question OP, the answer is going to be yes to both. Like the players you describe they are the type that want to clearly outclass the opposition for an easy victory and more so expect each battle to be as such. Then there are the players that know tough battles are going to happen. Typically it is at the point of facing off against the final villain but there are the instances of randomness occurring in combat.

People have their reasons for wanting each but personally I find such individuals like those you describe reason enough to leave the table. It is a game after all and if you lose or have a TPK, oh well life goes on. The thing a player should have in mind is did they enjoy spending time with others of the group, have fun, and enjoy contributing to a story weaved by the group.

[False God]

I think the "magic number" of danger in a fight varies from table to table, and fight to fight.

And I think my players enjoy a mix of fights, some tough, especially when they're tough because the enemy is strong, smart, and resourceful,. But also some easy ones, where they can demonstrate their cool UNLIMITED POWER they've worked so hard to earn.

I've got cool stories about times when I barely beat the boss, and I've got stories about times when I turned whole armies to dust in the blink of an eye, and I've even got cool stories where I lost. I enjoy the variety, provided that variety stems from something other than RNG.



I honestly can't figure your players.

[Kyovastra]

Like a lot of other gaming preferences, this is best thought of as a personality thing more than anything else. Some people enjoy being challenged and struggling, some people find that stressful and don't get that at all, and others are somewhere in-between - for example, they might enjoy being challenged and struggling, but only if they feel like it's "fair" from their perspective and a result of their choices; they'll be stressed out if you just spring a tough encounter on them they couldn't have prepared for, rather than either never enjoy that in the first place or still take it as a fun challenge of their abilities like some may. It's kind of two opposite ends that exist on a spectrum, from what I can tell. Your players sound like they're more on one end than the other, but then you're hearing advice from people on the opposite end.

I think popular RPG design has moved away from the challenge-and-struggle side of things over time, even though there's still a lot of people who find that fun, which has also made a lot of people less exposed to struggle, failure, and so on in RPGs, and of course a lack of exposure to those outcomes will make them seem worse and more stressful than they otherwise would be to a lot of people (whether or not they're on the end of the spectrum that prefers that kind of playstyle in the first place). I think this leads to some of the "neuroticism" in some players as others here called it. Whether or not you enjoy deadliness or having your characters die, it's gonna seem a lot worse if it's never happened and is discouraged by design, for example.

[Pex]

It's personally subjective, but it depends if I think the DM provided a fair fight. If I get the impression the DM stacked the deck in the bad guy's favor I'm not having fun. We still win, but I don't enjoy the victory because I was miserable playing it. This doesn't mean I think the DM was being a tyrannical killer DM, but he overdid it trying to make a tough challenge. When the bad guys are just tough monsters and/or the battlefield is unusual it can be a real blast. It's difficult to explain how a combat is stacked against us. It is subjective, and I can admit sometimes maybe I'm being the donkey about it because the other players are having fun and I'm already trusting the DM I just think he erred.

I suppose a defining trait I can name where I think the deck was stacked is when a surprise round or round 1 is an almost TPK. Not necessarily anyone even dropped, but when even the warriors want to cry Medic! it leaves a sour taste. If it's not damage it's a Save or Suck effect where you lose the first two rounds of play doing nothing or you suffer a debilitating effect for the entire combat. I know this can sound petty and immature, but the context matters. I'm ok with the party getting hit by a mind flayer's Psionic Blast when we know we will be facing mind flayers, but when all we're doing is walking in a cavern not knowing there will be mind flayers and suddenly four appear and blast the party then we get attacked by umberhulks, I want the combat over with already.

I have confidence the DM is not trying to kill the party on purpose. If I thought he would do that I wouldn't be playing. I enjoy the tough battles when it's a war of attrition. The tension builds. It's round 6, and the fight is still going. I don't enjoy the battles when retreat looks like a good option, and Round 1 is not even half-way done.

[Ionathus]

My players enjoy both, and they've intentionally asked me to run both. I went through a phase where I worried if I didn't truly challenge them every time, I was failing as a DM. But they were clear in their feedback: nail-biters are fun, but they can be overwhelming without quicker, easier fights that let the players feel competent. If your players favor those easier fights, you can always include more of them in an adventuring day, to tax their resources a bit without breaking out the big guns.

If you're looking for ways to change up the fights and keep them interesting/tense without making them obsess about TPKs, try varying the objectives. Maybe they need to keep enemies from escaping, or protect hostages, or subdue the foes in a short time limit! Adding a secondary condition like this can make an otherwise-easy fight with a bunch of goblins into a fight that's interesting, even if it's not frightening.

yes to both. Sometimes, they want to ROFLstomp the foe, and sometime when they barely make it out of the encounter by the skin of their teeth they rejoice.

Your attempt at a false dichotomy is not well done. It's not an either/or deal.

OP's friend group is clearly a different dynamic than yours, but that's no reason to dismiss their question or accuse them of setting up fallacies. The question seemed like it was asked in earnest.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Somewhat tangentially, but perception matters. And I've found that what seems like a cakewalk to the DM often doesn't seem that way to the players, because they couldn't see all the pieces. So what seems like a close fight to the DM was probably way over the line for most folks.

Personally, I don't get anything from close battles. Challenge is not one of the things I care about. And I've seen where really close battles weren't a matter of skill at all--it was pure luck with the dice. One bad roll on our part or one good roll on their part and we'd have been dead without any hope. And that's not very fun, at least for me. I want to win because I did well, not because the dice said the enemies can't roll above a 5 on their saves. I want to lose because we did poorly, not because the dice said that we kept whiffing and they couldn't not crit. Etc.

[Saintheart]

Lots of the gaming advice books, blogs, podcasts, and videos take it for granted that PCs love winning a close fight. Heck, most people also follow that same logic for narratives or for sports, that a close match-up is always more interesting.

Bad analogies in that second sentence. By definition, if you are reading a narrative or watching a sport, you are a spectator. You can afford to have the luxury of being bored if the result is 200-0 in your team's favour. Or being bored if the protagonist is a Gary Stu/Mary Sue who cruises through every challenge thrown at him.

Being a player on that sporting field is something else entirely. Absent you being either the best or top 10 player of sportsball in the world, no player on a sports field wants to win by a tiny margin just for the sake of being "challenged". When you're a sports player, you want to win. Higher score means more probability of a win and less probability of a loss. The sports analogy also doesn't hold because it's harder to be overtly slamdunked by the outcome of a single dice roll in a sportsfield situation - team sports, and even individual sports, hide the randomness of their outcomes behind considerable opacity, i.e. the illusion is that skill matters a lot more than it does in playing a game controlled by random dice rolled in the open where it literally doesn't matter how high your attack bonus is, 5% of your swings will always be misses.

Gaming advice books/blogs/podcasts/videos take it for granted that PCs love winning a close fight. What said b/b/p/vs don't tell you, and what they really should before offering up fortune cookies like that, is that people's wants and preferences can and do change, particularly with hindsight. I've been in RPGs as a player where the result went down to the wire. Hated it at the time. Stressful. Hated the natural 1s as they cropped up again and again. Hated watching the hitpoint counters drop to single digits. But a few months later, realised that it was actually fun. And that, I think, was because I'd transitioned from being a player in the game to a spectator of the event in my memory. Or maybe I'd had some sort of catharsis or whatever.

Which is to say: nobody knows much of anything about what players, i.e. people, enjoy, and that's why everyone says "It depends on the player". And that's fine. Psychology (whether evolutionary or otherwise) only gets you so far, and real world causes are a lot more opaque than they seem.

[Lacco]

I think Jay R summed it up pretty well:

3. What the players want today is a quick, easy victory. But what they will want tomorrow is to have brilliantly and valiantly turned the tables to barely survive a deadly encounter where it looked like they were all about to die.

While there are exceptions - notably people who like the adrenaline of a close combat, 'combat masochists' or personalities that like high stakes - I would say most of the players enjoy close battle as any other battle (except the obvious paper tiger roflstomp). That said, it's a matter of perspective: some players care about their character to the extreme and views their HP as "meat" (meaning: loss of 1 HP out of 10 HP is a wound, not just loss of 10% of their capability). The perception can be also shifted due to previous combats, having some knowledge about what is coming, or generally knowing the world/system (example: loss of 6 HP is a big deal for a level 1 character; now imagine that a first attack in a combat hits the level 15 tank in DnD 3+ and drops him).

Close combat may be thrilling, but as someone else stated, long time ago, if all you get are close combats, the novelty slowly drains off and you get tired of being on your toes. You need a change of pace - it's the same as if you always ate vanilla ice cream as a snack - and nothing else. After some time, you would get tired of it.

Overall, we can say mainly that players enjoy victories and may come to enjoy defeats they turn to a victory later. Close combats are enjoyable when you can tell the story, but when all you get are close combats - or most of the time - it can get pretty tiring fast.

[Satinavian]

TLDR: In your experience, do players actually prefer tough battles were they struggle to pull through in the end, or do they prefer easy victories where they clearly outclass their opposition?

I don't like it and i know many other players who don't like it but i know at least one player who reallly does like it and some who are indifferent.

So yes, it depends on the player.

My players always freak out in a close encounter, and usually just get angry and start acting out OOC, or get depressed and give up. After winning, they always bitch about how it was too hard, too stressful, too close, to costly, and dwelling on how badly it could have gone. Even years later, rather than telling stories about how they overcame impossible odds due to how awesome they are, they instead tell stories about how horribly they were screwed over and put into unfair situations.

Seems like your players don't like it. Which is consistent to what else you told us about them and as per above far from rare/strange in my experience.

Likewise, I have heard quotes like "Players want to be like John Mclaine, they want to be the hero in the end, but they want to be struggle for it and be beat to hell in the process," or "Players want an easy victory in the moment, but when looking back on it want to to have been the toughest thing ever."

And just to make sure, don't mix up "wanting a close fight" with "wanting to earn their victories and struggling along". I personally like an easy win that has been easy through perfect preparaction and a good plan, bonus points if backup-utilities/abilities prepared log times ago just in case could be employed successfully. But that is just me. You will find on this board certain very vocal players hating on Shadowrun with its long preparation, legwork and playnning and the resulting smooth execution it often produces.

[Onos]

Every player - and therefore table - is different. In particular, your usual bunch of players seem to be way outside the curve for what they enjoy.

To go down a video game example, some folks like Dark Souls and want to pound their heads through a brick wall (bonus points for a limited rez mechanic and a death spiral). Some prefer Torment, where the combat is pretty much completely extraneous and it's all about skills and dialogue. Heck, some prefer the Sims and just want to dress characters up and wander around the world with no stakes.

Some people want genuinely difficult fights with strategic depth and don't mind losing/dying. Some want the illusion of challenge but to unfailingly beat every encounter. Some just want to outright steamroll anything that gets in their way and a few things that don't.

It's a bit like pretty much any form of media - there's plenty out there that explores themes and characters effectively, and plenty full of shallow, one-dimensional Mary Sue's. Sometimes the Mary Sue's are on purpose, like the Expendables!

My point is, you're probably not going to get an answer suitable for your table without speaking to your table about this.

[Lacco]

Personally, I don't get anything from close battles. Challenge is not one of the things I care about. And I've seen where really close battles weren't a matter of skill at all--it was pure luck with the dice. One bad roll on our part or one good roll on their part and we'd have been dead without any hope. And that's not very fun, at least for me. I want to win because I did well, not because the dice said the enemies can't roll above a 5 on their saves. I want to lose because we did poorly, not because the dice said that we kept whiffing and they couldn't not crit. Etc.

A "gambler's high" of rolling several crits in a row and finishing the enemy one turn before TPK can be rather pleasant feeling... but yeah. I'd also prefer my skill to overcome dice before dice winning a fight for me.

So, additional variable: player preference of skill vs. luck.

[Batcathat]

It's personally subjective, but it depends if I think the DM provided a fair fight. If I get the impression the DM stacked the deck in the bad guy's favor I'm not having fun. We still win, but I don't enjoy the victory because I was miserable playing it. This doesn't mean I think the DM was being a tyrannical killer DM, but he overdid it trying to make a tough challenge. When the bad guys are just tough monsters and/or the battlefield is unusual it can be a real blast. It's difficult to explain how a combat is stacked against us. It is subjective, and I can admit sometimes maybe I'm being the donkey about it because the other players are having fun and I'm already trusting the DM I just think he erred.

Very much agree with this. I can probably get about as upset at the GM fudging things in my favour as in the enemy's. Whether as a player or GM, I expect the GM to set the scene and then let the dice fall where they may – no deus ex machinas to help either side, thank you. (I'm not saying Pex necessarily agrees with all of this, it is indeed quite subjective).

As for the general question: yes, I very much enjoy a close battle. Curb stomping the enemies can be fun too, even if it tends to get old fast. Even getting brutally beaten can be fun, as long as we manage some cool looking escape.

As seems to usually be the case, I don't think your players are very representative, Talakeal.

Personally, I don't get anything from close battles. Challenge is not one of the things I care about. And I've seen where really close battles weren't a matter of skill at all--it was pure luck with the dice. One bad roll on our part or one good roll on their part and we'd have been dead without any hope. And that's not very fun, at least for me. I want to win because I did well, not because the dice said the enemies can't roll above a 5 on their saves. I want to lose because we did poorly, not because the dice said that we kept whiffing and they couldn't not crit. Etc.

I agree with the conclusion (about winning because of my skill rather than the opponent's bad luck) but I don't see how that's opposed to a battle being close.

[Mastikator]

I think if every encounter feels close then the campaign will feel like a meat grinder. Sometimes you want to outclass the opponents and feel powerful, in D&D and other power fantasies all the more so.

As for players who whine and complain, that has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with the player. On the other hand I don't know where y'all are finding these perfect players who don't have any obvious flaws, I wish I could meet them and play with them. I've never met a person I could say didn't have an outstanding flaw (lack of empathy, or introspection, or foresight, or enjoys being annoying, or whines constantly, or cheats, or rule's lawyers, etc).

[Batcathat]

I think if every encounter feels close then the campaign will feel like a meat grinder. Sometimes you want to outclass the opponents and feel powerful, in D&D and other power fantasies all the more so.

This is a good point too. As with most things, variation is pretty nice.

[Vahnavoi]

Firstly: Talakeal, don't try to generalize how your players operate. Understand what makes them special instead. They are a special people, with special sort of metagame.

As for the title question, I feel like whipping out this type of diagram once again. A "close battle" typically exist near the intersection of game difficulty and player skill. The enjoyable feeling tends to be one of arousal, control or flow, as a player figures something out and a previously unmanageable problem becomes manageable. If that "aha!" moment causes the difficulty to plummet dramatically, there can also be catharsis as previous anxiety or worry is traded for relaxation.

It should be obvious, then, that for any given "close battle" to fit these criteria, the players need to be up to the task. As PhoenixPhyre's opinion, above, attests, merely surviving due to a random roll has nothing to do with it. (Except in the case when players don't understand randomness and attribute random good results to their own skill, which admittedly happens.) The exercise has to happen in a context where it is the skill and internal motivation of the players causing a change in the game.

On the flipside, a battle doesn't have to be particularly close to create a positive feeling. It only has to have a particular relation to a player's skill. This is what NichG recent thread about challenge and resistance is largely about: creating a game where you don't really have an explicit fail condition but still feel like you're pushing against something.

[Recherché]

Personally I don't enjoy constant close battles. If it happens occasionally that's cool, but as an all the time thing, it gets stressful.

Easier fights actually give me more space to role play. They let me make mistakes in character without worrying about needing to take actions against a character's personality in order to survive. That doesn't mean I want only easy fights but having a breather occasionally lets me relax tactically and get into role playing my character.

I do often like overcoming impressive odds and pulling off upsets, but that's different from a very close battle. A lot of the time I'll try to arrange the odds to be heavily stacked in my favor before the party even rolls for initiative. I find a certain satisfaction in being able to strategize myself into a great position and utterly destroying enemies via tactics. There's a reason why one of my favorite characters is a cleric with a bunch of divination spells and a tendency to ask her god for exactly the right spells to turn encounters into a cakewalk. The joy isn't from the nail biter of a fight, it's from outthinking the GM several moves ahead so that they're beaten before the conflict begins.

It should be noted that this style of long term chess works best with a GM and player that communicate well and signal their intentions well beforehand. I will let my GM know about any crazy plans and loophole abuse I intend long before I actually put it into play. I don't spring big surprises on my GM if I can help it. This requires trusting my GM to not use this info to be an ass about it, but just to use it to know what's going to happen before I start blowing up their world building. In return I ask that my GM give me plenty of information about the setting, enemies and how abilities interact so that I can make clever plans. I'm not asking to know more than what my character would know, but I figure a smart character will know a lot about how their world works.

For an example of how this works, in a recent game there was a bad guy who was very highly placed in the city government and was considerably more powerful than our party. Via mind reading one of his minions, we knew about multiple heinous crimes he had committed but that evidence could not be entered in court. The party came up with a plan on how to magically transform our rogue to look like the bad guy and then have him publicly confess to the crimes we knew the bad guy had committed. We also came up with a bunch of plans on how to forge false evidence of the his crimes and frame him for things he had actually done. My group talked through all our plans on Discord with our GM able to read everything. We trusted our GM to not use the info we were giving against us, but to take our plans into account when he was prepping the next session. Our GM actually pointed out a few weak spots in the plans where we had misread the rules and suggested ways that we could tweak things to work better with the rule system. When the time came, there weren't any barriers to our plans working. Our GM hadn't changed the world to account for our scheming at all. However he was absolutely prepped for telling the story of the political fallout from our actions. We did actually end up getting our bad guy taken out by the city guards and arrested without us ever fighting him directly. We won and in a very satisfying way. It wasn't a pitched battle by the skin of our teeth though. It was via trickery and lateral thinking.

Sometimes the most satisfying victory isn't the hardest won but the smartest won. Sometimes the best victory is a satisfying story even if it's not even technically a victory. A dramatic and entertaining defeat can be an amazing story if it's role played right.

[MoiMagnus]

TLDR: In your experience, do players actually prefer tough battles were they struggle to pull through in the end, or do they prefer easy victories where they clearly outclass their opposition?

You're missing the second axis: how much effort they have to put to win, how focussed they need to be, etc.

In my experience, groups of PCs tend to have two different power level. The one more "casual", where they play with their intuition, with little coordination other than what feels right RP-wise, and the one when they are in "serious mode", where they are scrapping for every little bonus, every possible clever use of the environment, and giving advice to each other ("don't you have a spell that can do X?" or "I think you forgot this class feature of yours").
[If you're playing on a grid, "serious mode" is the moment where the players start to actually look at the exact distance between the enemies to see which enemy would be able to reach them depending on where they end their movement]

If you calibrate an encounter to be a close combat for their "serious level", very few will actually enjoy such level of difficulty. On the other hand, if you calibrate an encounter to be a walk in the park for their "casual level", for most intent and purpose, this is not actually a combat encounter, this is just a playground where they will get bored if it lasts for too long.

In my experience, most fight should be in the in-between, where it is a struggle to win in "casual" mode, and easy to win in "serious" mode.

[icefractal]

IME, not that often. Sometimes, yes. The majority of battles? No. Even 50% of battles? No. It's an ingredient, but it doesn't need to be the bulk of things and (again IME), most players don't want it to be the bulk of things.

I enjoy the tough battles when it's a war of attrition. The tension builds. It's round 6, and the fight is still going. I don't enjoy the battles when retreat looks like a good option, and Round 1 is not even half-way done.

Hadn't thought about it this way, but I think I agree. Which means the enjoyably-tough battles are going to be the long ones - another reason you don't necessarily want them in the majority.

Easier fights actually give me more space to role play. They let me make mistakes in character without worrying about needing to take actions against a character's personality in order to survive. That doesn't mean I want only easy fights but having a breather occasionally lets me relax tactically and get into role playing my character.

I do often like overcoming impressive odds and pulling off upsets, but that's different from a very close battle. A lot of the time I'll try to arrange the odds to be heavily stacked in my favor before the party even rolls for initiative.

...

Sometimes the most satisfying victory isn't the hardest won but the smartest won. Sometimes the best victory is a satisfying story even if it's not even technically a victory. A dramatic and entertaining defeat can be an amazing story if it's role played right.

Also, this. Managing to do something beyond what you expected, that's satisfying. Having a close or even overwhelming fight and winning it is one way that can happen, but not the only way and not always the best way. Similarly, close fights can be memorable, but so can a lot of other things.

[Quertus]

"which do you prefer, steak or pizza?" This is very much an, "either, depending on their mood", and an "eating nothing but either would be unhealthy" situation.

IME, both Challenge and ease are required for a health RPG diet.

IME, which the players are in the mood for - or in the mood for more of, or how much of each they're in the mood for - will vary. Some of that variance is on them ("what they've eaten today"), and some of it is on the GM ("how they've fixed the food", "how they've set the atmosphere", "what appetizers they've given").

And, personally (and this is where the metaphor gets a little rough), I don't want the GM *forcing* them to be either. I don't want, "this creature is supposed to be tough" to prevent us from SoD killing it before it gets to go, or "these mooks are supposed to be easy" to prevent us from struggling (often done with a handwave, "after you defeat the orcs" or even a "tell me how you defeated the orcs").

So, what I want is my BDH party, who slays the ancient Dragon (and 95+% of all other foes) before they get to go, but struggles to convince the townsfolk that we're here to help. I want Quertus, my signature academia mage for whom this account is named, whose net contribution to combat for ~10 levels could have accomplished with a bag of flour, but whose allies, fame, research, book publishing, custom spells, and all but unparalleled mastery of space and time (and most anything else magical - especially information-gathering) let him trivialize certain other challenges.

Personally, I want… versimilitude, I suppose. I want to come by my wins and losses, my challenges and cake walks, honest.

And, personally, I want Agency. Of the Combat as War variety. I want my actions to be able to affect the Challenge of the encounter - trivializing or even making it impossible (been there, done that, locked away or handed the BBEG the McGuffin of "only thing that can defeat them"), as versimilitude demands.

But, most importantly, with your players' constant complaints of things being too hard, I suspect that they don't appreciate how much steak you've been serving.

Also,

Somewhat tangentially, but perception matters. And I've found that what seems like a cakewalk to the DM often doesn't seem that way to the players, because they couldn't see all the pieces.

this reminds me, have you given any more thought to the 5-point plan, of providing maximum transparency (among other things)?

[DigoDragon]

My experience as a GM says that the context of what the players are facing in a close battle is important. Random encounters in the middle of the night while camping generally do not sit well, but that BBEG fight at the end of the adventure arc? For sure. They're invested in taking the boss dude down, and (hopefully) you telegraphed that the boss will be a difficult fight needing prep.

I try to reserve the close battles for what really is important to the players' goals. As stated earlier, too many can turn off some players.

[NichG]

For me, I don't generally want really close battles for their own sake, but I'll accept a really close battle as a price to be paid in exchange for being over-ambitious or gaining access to something I shouldn't be able to, intentionally trying something that I know will be risky, or in some but not all cases as the cost for making a significant mistake (the 'some but all cases' has a lot of nuance as to whether I could personally have prevented it versus if its a mistake the party made).

So a close battle that I'm forced through as part of the campaign will not at all appeal to me. A mysterious glowing orb with the writing 'shatter me to challenge fate and ascend to godhood' that we could just leave in a dusty bin somewhere, but which spawns a solo fight at CR+5 and gives you divine rank 0 if you win I can accept. It's not that I want to struggle against the solo fight at CR+5, but that in that context I can accept that that's a path that is open to me and it can make it worthwhile to try to figure out how I might overcome it. Or if I'm not in the mood for it, I won't shatter the orb. I've been in campaigns with optional downtime 'arena battles' and the like, with things significantly harder than you'd expect to face as part of the actual campaign activities, and as gamey as that is, I've found that it worked for me pretty well and I enjoyed it.

For that kind of thing I also strongly prefer fights that might be close but become easy when you figure out the right way to approach them versus fights which are close regardless of what you do. I'd be fine with having unavoidable 'close if brute force' fights on the main line of a campaign (that is, fights which would be close if you just landed on the field and did your standard operating procedure), as long as there were ways to make them easy and the difficulty of different approaches is well-telegraphed before the fight starts.

I'm not a fan of things where you have no choice but to go and see if you're going to win or lose. If it looks like there's something like that on the horizon - a coin flip that you can't tell or modify the odds, and which seems to have more than a ~10% chance of losing - I'll basically always try to look for third paths that avoid the fight entirely or start to build plans which will work starting from the assumption that we will lose.

Edit: Also, I suspect I might appreciate scary fights more than close fights, though again if they're unavoidable that becomes much less true. Fighting something I know I can beat but which deals 1 permanent point of reduction to my max HP is different than fighting something I feel like I can't beat.

I would also expect most players to potentially have completely different tastes from me on these matters. Nothing I've said here is universal.

[Spriteless]

I mean, does it feel cheap or earned? If the players are paranoid and prepare for every situation, then there had better be a story explanation for why something is bypassing their plans. Maybe that explanation is the PCs bit off more than they can chew, maybe it's someone more paranoid is watching them, as well. But, it should be someone the PCs know of.

But really, it depends on the players. If they are kicking in the door, then let the scales call for a retreat half the time. If they want an easy win, empower them to find it themselves. And if they complain out of character, let them know the mistakes they made out of character. Also let them know the price of failure is... whatever logically happens if they run away. Put solutions to their problems in their mind, and they will feel more empowered and be less prone to whinging.

I myself prefer close battles, because I have a chip on my shoulder and if you're going easy on me I feel condescended to. I came here to shank bad guys not be insulted by these minions!

So the answer is, PCs don't like to feel helpless and out of control.

[Corsair14]

Never had an issue with one of my games. My players know if it is a meaningful fight and not just some minor random encounter that they need to be on their toes. I reward smart tactics and play style and I use my mobs and NPCs tactically and at a level with their intelligence. The kobolds are not just going to have a stand up fight, they are going to hit you in ambush with ranged poison weapons from defendable locations, and they will fall back and regroup to fight later if something happens. If at least one character isn't lying on the ground at some point in the fight, the fight wasn't hard enough.

[Alcore]

I do not enjoy the battles that are close; they are often high stress affairs i try to avoid.


That said if i win i can look back positively on it. They are also the most well remembered. If i had to choose i would prefer easy encounters but then i also like Harvest Moon; i could spend a few hours watching him fish and call it good gaming...


Try talking to your (future?) players. We will give as many answers as there are bodies.

[KorvinStarmast]

Firstly: Talakeal, don't try to generalize how your players operate. Understand what makes them special instead. They are a special people, with special sort of metagame.

We only hear one side of the story.

I think if every encounter feels close then the campaign will feel like a meat grinder. Sometimes you want to outclass the opponents and feel powerful, in D&D and other power fantasies all the more so.

As for players who whine and complain, that has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with the player.

We appear to have a GM who complains about his players as the OP. It's a two way street, I think.

A "gambler's high" of rolling several crits in a row and finishing the enemy one turn before TPK can be rather pleasant feeling... but yeah. I'd also prefer my skill to overcome dice before dice winning a fight for me.

So, additional variable: player preference of skill vs. luck.

Nice point that I wish I'd have included in my answer.

I want to win because I did well, not because the dice said the enemies can't roll above a 5 on their saves. I want to lose because we did poorly, not because the dice said that we kept whiffing and they couldn't not crit. Etc.

I usually feel that way, but I've noticed that plenty of players don't fit my own approach.

OP's friend group is clearly a different dynamic than yours, but that's no reason to dismiss their question or accuse them of setting up fallacies. The question seemed like it was asked in earnest.

I answered the question as asked, to whit:

TLDR: In your experience, do players actually prefer tough battles were they struggle to pull through in the end, or do they prefer easy victories where they clearly outclass their opposition?

That question is set up as a false dichotomy.

As to his players, the OP has a track record of complaining about his PCs on this forum.
At length.
{Scrubbed}

@DigoDragon:
My experience seems to fit closely to yours.