D&D General Why Unbalanced Combat Encounters Can Enhance Your Dungeons & Dragons Experience

[cbwjm]

As long as you're adequately telegraphing the threat in a way the players understand so that they can make reasonably informed decisions, go nuts, I say.

Reasonably informed, if not intelligent decisions. I was reading a story about a player of a dwarf who was terribly unoptimised for "the story" who decided it would be a good idea for him and the team of level 3ish PCs to attack a hill giant because it was what his character would do.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Many Dungeon Masters fret and worry about the balance of their combat encounters. I'm here to tell you there is no need to lose sleep or overprepare battles in Dungeons & Dragons, at least when it comes to ensuring they are mechanically sound and balanced. Simply balance your combat encounters and any encounter really on what makes sense in the context of the campaign.

However, suddenly swapping to this style of play isn't right. If you are the type of DM or GM who looks at challenge rating, experience budgets, average damage, and the exact action economy, let your players know you are switching to a new style of preparation when it comes to combat. It's cordial. It's kind. Players of DMs who prepare adventures in the heavily-balanced style usually know the encounter is beatable when it begins. When you begin to use what makes sense in the greater adventure or scenario and toss what is rules-as-written balanced, this may not always be true. The players may pit their characters against unbeatable foes that require more than what's clear to overcome. That's where the fun begins!

Let's explore this method of D&D prep together.

Full article link: Why Unbalanced Combat Encounters Can Enhance Your Dungeons & Dragons Experience

I'm not sure whether this comes from the department of the obvious, there are genuinely a lot of DMs who don't realise this, or the department of game design strawmen.

I'll start with the final one. It is trivial to run an unbalanced combat in a balanced system but almost impossible to run a balanced combat in an unbalanced system. Let's say that you want to run an unbalanced combat in a system with a perfectly balanced CR system. Nothing is actually preventing you from dropping a CR 17 Adult Red Dragon on a first level party. Bam. You've just made an unbalanced encounter. Go you! There is literally nothing preventing you from using unbalanced encounters in a balanced system - you just can't use balanced ones in an imbalanced system. And from the department of the obvious the encounter level should reflect the setting not the PCs other than that you expect PCs to be in roughly level appropriate areas (unless they deliberately aren't - just as you could dive down to low levels on a dungeon).

Are there really DMs who only world design with level appropriate threats all the time and don't have e.g. the BBEG as more powerful? Because if not I'm not sure what this is arguing against.

 

[BookTenTiger]

As long as you're adequately telegraphing the threat in a way the players understand so that they can make reasonably informed decisions, go nuts, I say.

This is the key right here.

I enjoy making campaign worlds in which the characters encounter high level threats early on, but you really need to telegraph it. If I put a CR 1/2 orc next to a CR 8 Orc Beserker Chief, most players will just see two orcs. It's not fair then to gleefully slaughter the characters.

In my last campaign, the players knew there were big, powerful threats. So they worked really hard at negotiating, deceiving, or finding resources to take them down. It made for really great stories, and a few very memorable character deaths.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

There's nothing more boring than a "balanced" encounter.

Only if we define "balanced encounter" to mean "perfectly in lock-step with the party and guaranteed to be winnable."

Why use a definition that makes badness axiomatic? It just makes the argument circular.

This is the key right here.

I enjoy making campaign worlds in which the characters encounter high level threats early on, but you really need to telegraph it. If I put a CR 1/2 orc next to a CR 8 Orc Beserker Chief, most players will just see two orcs. It's not fair then to gleefully slaughter the characters.

But if you know that the fight is "not fair," you already know what it is balanced for. It just isn't balanced to be in lock-step with the party. It's balanced to be a high-level threat, which the party stands little chance of defeating...unless they get creative or change the conditions of the fight.

In my last campaign, the players knew there were big, powerful threats. So they worked really hard at negotiating, deceiving, or finding resources to take them down. It made for really great stories, and a few very memorable character deaths.

How do you know what a big, powerful threat is if you don't have a scale for measuring the difficulty of an encounter?

 

[James Gasik]

Reasonably informed, if not intelligent decisions. I was reading a story about a player of a dwarf who was terribly unoptimised for "the story" who decided it would be a good idea for him and the team of level 3ish PCs to attack a hill giant because it was what his character would do.

That sounds familiar.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm not sure whether this comes from the department of the obvious, there are genuinely a lot of DMs who don't realise this, or the department of game design strawmen.

I'll start with the final one. It is trivial to run an unbalanced combat in a balanced system but almost impossible to run a balanced combat in an unbalanced system. Let's say that you want to run an unbalanced combat in a system with a perfectly balanced CR system. Nothing is actually preventing you from dropping a CR 17 Adult Red Dragon on a first level party. Bam. You've just made an unbalanced encounter. Go you! There is literally nothing preventing you from using unbalanced encounters in a balanced system - you just can't use balanced ones in an imbalanced system. And from the department of the obvious the encounter level should reflect the setting not the PCs other than that you expect PCs to be in roughly level appropriate areas (unless they deliberately aren't - just as you could dive down to low levels on a dungeon).

Are there really DMs who only world design with level appropriate threats all the time and don't have e.g. the BBEG as more powerful? Because if not I'm not sure what this is arguing against.

I mean, level appropriate is what, CR +4, +5? That's enough room to have more powerful enemies, isn't it?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I mean, level appropriate is what, CR +4, +5? That's enough room to have more powerful enemies, isn't it?

The 5e CR system is perfectly designed to ensure that appropriate CRs are somewhere between 0 and 30. Or, if you prefer it in the language of CR relative to party level, somewhere between -20 and +29.

 

[BookTenTiger]

Only if we define "balanced encounter" to mean "perfectly in lock-step with the party and guaranteed to be winnable."

Why use a definition that makes badness axiomatic? It just makes the argument circular.


But if you know that the fight is "not fair," you already know what it is balanced for. It just isn't balanced to be in lock-step with the party. It's balanced to be a high-level threat, which the party stands little chance of defeating...unless they get creative or change the conditions of the fight.


How do you know what a big, powerful threat is if you don't have a scale for measuring the difficulty of an encounter?

I think we may be defining "balanced" differently?

To me, balanced means that the characters, as they are, have a good chance of defeating the threat without any other needed resources. When I populate an adventure with balanced challenges, some will be a little easy, some a little hard, some just right. It's basically Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

When I put in "unbalanced" encounters, it means I'm making choices based not on what the characters can face, but what would be natural or interesting for the adventure. A Hill Giant boss in a den of goblin thieves for a 1st - 3rd Level adventure is an unbalanced encounter. A vampire lording over a starting town is an unbalanced encounter.

To me, as long as I communicate the level of threat, an unbalanced encounter unlocks a lot of interesting gameplay! In my experience, the players have to rely on a broader range of gameplay skills and narrative possibilities.

This goes the other way, too. A population of kobolds living in a Level 8-10 dungeon is an unbalanced encounter. The characters could easily wipe them out, but because kobolds would be so easy to defeat, it actually invites other gameplay possibilities. Should we take over the tribe? Trick them? Intimidate them? Or just Fireball?

 

[AnotherGuy]

I'm actually facing such a scenario now, where the characters (PCs and NPCs) of levels 9-13 are depleted of many of their resources, some even carry levels of exhaustion, and are in the midst of a conversation with a BBEG which will result in combat.

They're caught within a Time Loop (the ultimate railroad and one of the most ambitious storylines I've done)...their characters' death will likely result in resetting some parts of their past history. Some players are excited about that fact should it happen, others aren't. I have no idea how it's going to end or how I'm going play it put should it go the route of a TPK.

 

[Andvari]

As long as you're adequately telegraphing the threat in a way the players understand so that they can make reasonably informed decisions, go nuts, I say.

Yep, my current wilderness encounter list has several creatures that can wipe out my current party. If I roll up a bulette, I'll simply come up with an encounter where it's entirely up to them what'll happen. Perhaps the party sees horses grazing nearby. Suddenly the ground bursts apart as the creature appears, easily lifting one of the horse into the air and snapping it in two. The remaining horses flee as the massive creature begins to feed. It eyes the party but seems more interested in the dead horse... for now.

At least for my group, this would be sufficient for them to understand that they can choose to stay... but that a fight probably isn't going to be in their favor. It also shows that these creature exist in the world and makes it more satisfying if they encounter one later when they are strong enough to take it.