DM advice: How do you NOT kill your party?

[Gardens & Goblins]

Keep the beer and tunes going.

 

[Quickleaf]

If you are planning a major combat, (such as a boss fight) one that has potential to be extremely lethal, what steps do you follow to keep the party alive?
What tactics do you use to prevent a party wipe without the party knowing you helped them out a little.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an easy DM. I've killed a few PC's in my day, and I'm good with that if it happens here. But this is a boss fight. I want them to win. But I also want it to be dramatic. I want them to survive by the skin of their teeth.

How do you guys create that illusion if you sense things are going very very badly for the party?

I have learned to use the encounter building system (Through Kobold Fight Club), but never to rely on it. I've built encounters I thought were going to crush my party and they wiped the floor with my baddies. And I have built encounters I thought would be a breeze and almost TPK'ed. I'm sure we have all experienced this.

[MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] nailed it in one. My only contribution would be foreshadow. Foreshadow like crazy, be straight forward (not overly subtle) about your foreshadowing & telegraph how difficult upcoming encounters will be. This alone makes a big difference, and encourages you as DM to think more holistically about "encounters."

For example: Say you're running a sandbox-y campaign like Tomb of Annihilation with lots of random encounters, and you roll up girallon(s) (4-armed giant aggressive apes) which are very deadly for your low-level party. Telegraph the girallons with track & sign a PC can interpret, a wrecked campsite with corpses flung about / partially eaten, and periodic deafening growls causing flocks of tropical birds to scatter from the canopy.

Thus informed, the players now have a choice: Do we engage these girallons, do we sneak around, do we try to befriend/charm/trick them, or do we radically alter course taking extra time to avoid them?

 

[Tony Vargas]

DM advice: How do you NOT kill your party?

For starters, don't begin the game at 1st level...

If you are planning a major combat, (such as a boss fight) one that has potential to be extremely lethal, what steps do you follow to keep the party alive?
What tactics do you use to prevent a party wipe without the party knowing you helped them out a little.

You should probably keep things behind the screen, anyway, it just works smoother for 5e across the board, that way. Thus you can fudge a bit when things might otherwise go south. Be wary of lockdowns that depend on a player rolling a successful save, for instance, because that happens on the wrong side of the screen.

But, it really depends on the party. Depending on the mix of classes the party will have overall strengths and weakness and blindspots. You can play to their strengths, to let them handle a very tough fight (by the numbers) with a good chance of success...

I also want it to be dramatic. I want them to survive by the skin of their teeth.

How do you guys create that illusion if you sense things are going very very badly for the party?

One way is to hammer the party's weaknesses early on, with limited-use BBeG abilities, creating the proper terror, then, as the party recovers, give them the chance to shift the battle to favor their strengths, instead...

...one key is not to let it get too bad too fast, or any fudging and soft-balling you do behind the screen can become implausible. Be well-acquainted with the party's abilities when designing the challenge, track their hps yourself (either instead of or in addition to them) so you can tune things before a bunch of them suddenly drop, know what spells they have available going into it and take them into account.
'The usual,' really.

 

[CapnZapp]

If you are planning a major combat, (such as a boss fight) one that has potential to be extremely lethal, what steps do you follow to keep the party alive?

The cold hard truth is...

... to make combats seem extremely lethal while not being so.

 

[TheSword]

IMHO, a DM should never "want" the PC's to win/survive. He/she should also never "want" the PC's to loose/die. A DM should strive to be ambivalent to the PC's plight. In short, it's not a DM's job to "keep the PC's alive" any more than it is for him to "keep the monsters alive".

...

First, don't "build encounters to the PC's capabilities". The only real thing you should kinda keep in mind is their general level. LEVEL, not Race, Class, Magic Items, Skills, etc. All you need to know is the parties average Level.

This is the exact opposite of advice I would give to any DM, new or old.

“Know thy party” is the first and most important maxim a DM can follow to make sure everyone is having a good time. If the Party is made up of fighters, rogues and barbarians and the DM keeps throwing challenges at them that can only be overcome by magic or grants rewards that can only be used by spellcasters then they are failing at their basic responsibility to make the game engaging and rewarding. If a DM wants to play this way they should make it very clear what classes and races the party should should be made up of. To each their own, but this smacks of a very top down gaming style.

The DM has total control. They decide monsters, rewards, setting, actions etc. the DM is essentially god. They have a huge amount of responsibility to make the game fair, enjoyable and possible. They are a story teller and when that story ends at level 1 with a TPK (that isn’t the result of mass stupidity) then I really do think they have failed to find the right balance. Creating new characters takes effort, creativity and a fair amount of time to do it properly. When players put that effort in they have a reasonable expectation to get a chance to use that PC. There is nothing wrong with the odd unwinnable challenge but throwing liches at players because they took the wrong path smacks of bad design to me.

If you have a party rogue, make sure they get chance to do some stealthy stuff or trap finding etc. If you have a party bard then make sure a few fights have opportunities for dialogue and negotiation. If you have a party wizard they need to find the odd scroll or staff to keep relevant. If your party fighter uses an axe and only ever finds magic long swords then you’re doing it wrong in my honest opinion.

With great power comes great responsibility. You can be fair without going easy on characters.

 

[ccs]

If you are planning a major combat, (such as a boss fight) one that has potential to be extremely lethal, what steps do you follow to keep the party alive?
What tactics do you use to prevent a party wipe without the party knowing you helped them out a little.

Does realizing that I don't have to use all of a foes options, or use them in the most efficient method, count as a tactic for this?

Otherwise? It's not my job to keep the characters alive.
And random encounter, planned encounter, or boss fight, I'm fine with killing characters, even the entire party, if that's how the dice roll. Because if the outcome wasn't in doubt, we wouldn't be rolling the dice now would we?

I roll all my dice - attacks, saves, damage, etc - in the open. Bright yellow dice with nice easy to see black #s.
I also track the enemies HPs in the open as well on the side of the battle mat (because its handy & I don't care if you know how many HPs a monster has - assuming you can read my chicken scratching/hieroglyphs upside-down/sideways from 4+ ft away....) .

 

[Shiroiken]

I generally don't worry about it. If anything, I always worry my combat's won't be hard enough!

The nature of the enemy makes a big difference. If the NPCs are intelligent, they will often take prisoners, allowing a potential future escape. In my last campaign this occurred twice, both at lower levels. I would not have done it if it didn't make sense at the time, but in both cases it prevented the campaign from ending. Unintelligent NPC/monsters are likely to just kill and eat the PCs, so they may attempt to leave the combat with their "kill" (even if just unconscious). This increases the possibility of character deaths, but lowers the chance of a TPK. I've had this happen a time or two, which changes the focus of the combat, in order to keep fallen PCs from death.

 

[TheSword]

6. Fudge stats, not die rolls.

I like to roll in front of the players. Also, while the die rolls are not sacred, I like for the dice to land where they may. Sometimes, however, if I realize that I wildly misjudged the difficulty of an encounter--either making it too easy or too hard--I may fudge the stat block or make other on-the-fly changes to the encounters. If you find that the battle is going to be too deadly for the characters consider:

• Decreasing the foes' hit points
• Decreasing the foes' AC
• Decreasing the number of minions
• Making the minions like 4e minions. If the players hit, the minion dies. Less to manage and fewer opportunities for minions to hit

This is really good advice. Probably the best I’ve seen on the boards in an advice thread.

Worst ever game encounter - fighting against a mid level boss who opened the fight with Circle of Death (In pathfinder). Rolled the dice with a ridiculously high roll and killed three of the four characters before they had chance to do anything. Campaign ended. Not at all fun and not how I want to spend an evening after a hard days work. That was a DM choice to use that power. The same could easily said for an ill timed fireball/burning hands that roasts a load of unconscious PCs on their last death save. You chose for them to have the spell and to use it. It’s gratuitous...

Maybe some players like the challenge of it all being overwhelming. Most players in groups I’ve met understands that the DM gets to make choices too and just want a fair chance at victory. Sure confound them with overwhelming force from time to time but use it sparingly. A little goes a long way.

 

[iserith]

This is really good advice. Probably the best I’ve seen on the boards in an advice thread.

Worst ever game encounter - fighting against a mid level boss who opened the fight with Circle of Death (In pathfinder). Rolled the dice with a ridiculously high roll and killed three of the four characters before they had chance to do anything. Campaign ended. Not at all fun and not how I want to spend an evening after a hard days work. That was a DM choice to use that power. The same could easily said for an ill timed fireball/burning hands that roasts a load of unconscious PCs on their last death save. You chose for them to have the spell and to use it. It’s gratuitous...

Let's imagine a slightly different scenario where the players were aware that this mid-level boss had "Circle of Death" (whatever that is) and the players had a choice of whether and how to engage with said boss. Perhaps an NPC told them previously that this villain had slain several people before his very eyes with it.

Does that change your calculation on whether it was the "worst ever game encounter?"

 

[TheSword]

If the party needs to overcome that enemy and the DM enables the acquisition of resources capable of overcoming that power then sure. Plus the DM foreshadows and allows the party have a reasonable chance of knowing that it’s possible (bearing in mind DMs often overstate player knowledge because they forget that while they see the whole picture the players only see the sum of the parts they’ve discovered). Plus the DM gives the party opportunity to react appropriately and in a timely manner rather than springing the boss on them and getting lucky with initiative.

Then yeah, the encouncter could be fun.

However that certainly didn’t happen in that case.

To be fair to the DM I’ve been back and read the AP it was in and the above wasn’t feasible without the DM changing the published adventure. Morale of the story...change the published adventure... or just don’t use the spell.