How challenging should encounters be?

[Jhaelen]

I voted for 75%, but that's not really true. Actually 90-95% would be closer to the sucess rate I enjoy.

Your poll has a big problem, though: Either you have no idea of probabilities or your descriptions are completely off.
A success rate of 90% is basically a game that is _very challenging_! D&D (at least from 3e onward) generally assumes that it takes around 10 encounters to gain a level. IOW: at every level you faced an encounter that you didn't win. That's plenty!

In the 3e DMG there was a pretty good guideline for encounter difficulties that I used for my campaign:
10% easy (EL lower than party level)
20% "easy if handled properly" (EL 1-4 higher, unless the party does the 'right' thing)
50% challenging (EL equals Average Party Level)
15% very difficult (EL 1-4 higher)
5% overwhelming (EL 5+ higher)

In addition, it was assumed that a challenging encounter would drain 20% of the party's 'resources', so you could at most survive 5 challenging encounters before the party had to take a rest.

Given a party of five characters, that means there was a (very small) chance of a single character dying in a challenging encounter, namely if 5 times 20% = 100% of a single characters resources were drained, while everyone else didn't get so much as a scratch. Many of the official adventure modules made the mistake of only including 'challenging' encounters resulting in a 99+% of success overall.

Every increase in the Encounter Level (EL) should result in an additional 20% of party resources lost. That's why an overwhelming encounter is almost a guaranteed loss: every character will lose 100% of its resources - usually a TPK.

The risk of character death increases rather dramatically with each additional EL since resources are rarely depleted uniformly. With increasing monster levels, as really deadly abilities become more common, this becomes even more pronounced.

As my campaign has shown, character death became a common thing after the average party level reached 10. At level 13-15 (at which point the campaign was also finished), there would be 1-2 dead characters in almost every encounter. Luckily, raising the dead is no longer a big problem at such levels.

TL;DR: If 5% of the encounters are designed to be 'too hard to win', that's more than enough for the most challenging campaigns.
Having only a 25% chance to succeed in an encounter would make it impossible to run anything but a one-off session - it would be hard complete even a single adventure.
Having a 50% chance of success basically means that every encounter is a coin toss. Not many players would enjoy that. That degree of difficulty would make playing a meaningful campaign of any length impossible.
At 75% chance of success, campaigns can work, but they'll tend to be short.

 

[steenan]

Jhaelen - not every game is D&D.


Losing an encounter does not need to result in character death. In many playstyles, it does not.

Watch Star Wars, Indiana Jones or Pirates of the Caribbean. How often do the characters run away, get defeated or only cause the situation to escalate when they try to face a challenge? The success rate is definitely below 50%.

How boring would the movies be if they succeeded every time (or succeeded every time until the "hard encounter" at the end that they would fail)? The same stands for games based on this genre.



On the other end of the spectrum, in a horror game, trying to face the monster is a desperate attempt that's nearly guaranteed to fail. If it could be defeated in combat with any reasonable chance, there would be no reason to be scared of it. In one of the games based on Cthulhu Mythos (don't remember which) it's just "If you try to fight with a Mythos monster, you die, no rolls".

 

[Argyle King]

An in-game story that is created by you, the players (collectively or as a dictat by one - doesn't really make a difference). In making this story you have some criteria and guidelines, even if you don't consciously acknowledge what they are, for what is "acceptable" and what isn't. Thus, a "formula". The idea that "story" or "game reality" is somehow meted out by an independent force is frankly risible; the only agents present are the players (including the GM), so the source of anything in the game is - guess what - the players.


Oh, hey - do you have a source for what those "tactics which make sense" are? I would be agog to discover it if you do. So, I imagine, would all the world's military leaders, several generations of martial artists and every writer on military history who ever lived. Because I read a lot of stuff written about combat and tactics by such folk and I see no firm concensus upon this matter whatsoever.

Of course, you might alternatively be using what you imagine to be what makes sense - which is what many, many folk do in this situation. Which is just as "meta" as a set of game rules, when it comes down to it, but suffers from the enormous disadvantage that only you are privy to its rules. Which is even less suitable for roleplaying than a "metagamy" set of written rules is, since it implies that characters - even supposedly expert fighters - who have lived all their lives in the game world have no real evidence or information upon which to base their own mental model of how the world works...

Obviously, not everyone will agree 100%. However, yes, I do imagine that there is a general ballpark which fits into the collective human consciousness.

Examples of things that make sense to me personally: If the PCs set of an alarm, an encounter will likely be more difficult. Generally speaking, holding a choke point is a good tactic; using a crew serve weapon to cover an avenue of approach likewise tends to be good. Many things found in a FM 7-8 tend to serve as good basics; while there certainly are situations when other things work better, the ideas found there weren't just random guesses concerning what to do.

Examples of things that often don't make sense to me personally (outside of the game rule context):
Intentionally getting surrounded to gain combat bonuses as a regular thing; the PCs alerting the enemy to their approach and the encounter difficulty remaining the same based only on because the rules say the encounter should be X difficulty at Y level.

Such things aren't necessarily game breakers for me or things that ruin my fun. I can and do often enjoy things that don't completely adhere to how I imagine things. (To give an example, firing a weapon on full auto doesn't typically increase accuracy; however, one of my favorite rpgs handles things that way. )

As for in game story, I believe things can (and should) happen outside of the PCs.

 

[Umbran]

Jhaelen - not every game is D&D.

Watch Star Wars, Indiana Jones or Pirates of the Caribbean. How often do the characters run away, get defeated or only cause the situation to escalate when they try to face a challenge? The success rate is definitely below 50%.

How boring would the movies be if they succeeded every time (or succeeded every time until the "hard encounter" at the end that they would fail)? The same stands for games based on this genre.

The problem, however, is that in a book or movie, the way the protagonist fails is strictly controlled - the author *decides* if an encounter will be a success or a failure. In these media, success or failure is designed, ultimately guaranteed, one way or the other. Movie and book characters live in a universe of predestination.

Meanwhile, they typical RPG (being D&D or a direct descendant thereof) is not designed and controlled in that way. If the bad guys are shooting at Indiana Jones, you *know* they won't kill Indy. If the orcs are shooting at your PC, you have no such assurance. Games that try to emulate the movies typically put mechanics into play to emulate this fact. Even in the d20 Star Wars, players have resources they can spend to make it so characters do not die. In FATE, players can choose lose, and in so doing control how they lose, and take death off the table. These games are often designed to allow characters to "fail forward", as opposed to having the GM maybe tack that on to the failure, and maybe not.

This means that the games that are designed to emulate the movies, "failure" has a somewhat different meaning than in your typical D&D game, and so the question in the OP is actually different for different games.

Rather than disagree with folks about the answers, it is perhaps better to realize that we may each be answering different questions.

 

[Celebrim]

Watch Star Wars, Indiana Jones or Pirates of the Caribbean. How often do the characters run away, get defeated or only cause the situation to escalate when they try to face a challenge? The success rate is definitely below 50%.

How boring would the movies be if they succeeded every time (or succeeded every time until the "hard encounter" at the end that they would fail)? The same stands for games based on this genre.

No, it doesn't. Because playing a game is entirely a different experience than watching a movie. The later is passive; the former active. This is such a huge difference in the medium, that you can't expect that story telling mode of one to necessarily inform the other. The way stories are generated in a game compared to a movie is vastly more different than the way stories are created in movies or novels. Attempting to emulate how drama is created in the movies in a game is likely to be problematic. You'd be better off making comparisons to baseball if you must make analogies. But better yet is to not make analogies at all and speak on the thing itself.

It's pretty trivial to show that Gygaxian D&D - usually held up as the standard for DMs working to challenge players and DMs acting as antagonist to the player's interests - did not always or even usually result in PC death as a result of a failed encounter. Gygaxian D&D assumed adventures would play much as commando style hit and run raids, where PCs would retreat as soon as their momentum faltered and the odds turned against them. Success could be defined as simply not losing, and "running away and living to fight another day" was the expected strategy. It wasn't necessary or expected to 'win' every encounter, just to gradually wear down foes by attrition until victory was available (or conversely, to be worn down by attrition until inglorious defeat finally occurred). Any Dungeon foray you could walk away from carrying at least a coin was a good one. So given that, how does it really help the discussion to produce a generality like, "Losing an encounter does not need to result in character death. In many playstyles, it does not."

In one of the games based on Cthulhu Mythos (don't remember which) it's just "If you try to fight with a Mythos monster, you die, no rolls".

Which, interestingly enough, isn't even verisimilitude to the Lovecraft stories. Instead, it's verisimilitude to a sort of received wisdom about how Lovecraftian stories should play out - not genera emulation but genera emulation emulation.

 

[Grogg of the North]

I have to agree with [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION]. The pace of the adventure influences the encounters. Sometimes you just want the big bad to take that barbarian's axe to the chest and laugh. Sometimes the PCs just have to cleave a path of destruction and carnage through the kobold lair. And sometimes for the PCs to survive, they've got to think on their feet and be smart about their tactics.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Another thing is how optimized and/or tactical a party is. If a party is smart, they can trivialize encounters that would kill the average group.

 

[Balesir]

Examples of things that make sense to me personally: If the PCs set of an alarm, an encounter will likely be more difficult. Generally speaking, holding a choke point is a good tactic; using a crew serve weapon to cover an avenue of approach likewise tends to be good. Many things found in a FM 7-8 tend to serve as good basics; while there certainly are situations when other things work better, the ideas found there weren't just random guesses concerning what to do.

Military manuals and such generally have some good advice, but they don't try to be totally prescriptive for the very good reason that experience shows that to be a bad idea. Since I'm not American (let alone in the US forces) the only FMs I have access to are somewhat dated, but much of the advice really doesn't age. It's just not complete. The best give concepts to think about, not rules to follow.

Oh, and on medieval close quarters combat, they generally suck...

Examples of things that often don't make sense to me personally (outside of the game rule context):
Intentionally getting surrounded to gain combat bonuses as a regular thing; the PCs alerting the enemy to their approach and the encounter difficulty remaining the same based only on because the rules say the encounter should be X difficulty at Y level.

Subject to the emphasis I added, I really have no problem with these "issues" but, seriously, what RPG systems really support them in any way?? I can't think of any.

As for in game story, I believe things can (and should) happen outside of the PCs.

Since the PCs don't exist, of course stuff happens outside of them. Outside of the players, though, is impossible, since they are all there is in the game (by definition - "players" = "everyone playing", here).

 

[Janx]

I think the best encounters are the ones where the PCs go into them thinking they're all going to die/there's no way we can win - and, in the end, the PCs pull through by the skin of their teeth through a combination of good tactics and good rolling. I had a really big group before as DM and encounters took so long at higher levels that almost every encounter had to be critical to the story, so I had to throw one big encounter per session at them. I got to be really good at coming up with those "Oh My God, We're All Gonna Die!" encounters - i.e., after that Balor dies and explodes in the middle of the party, the lich that gated it in walks into the room, fully buffed and ready to rumble... and, it has a grudge against the party.

For the BBEG, this is the kind of feeling I like to get as a player, and to instill as a GM.

What's actually happening might vary by the GM, but to the player's eye, it should be look dire. Perhaps the plan was good, and then something goes wrong. Then the party rallies, gets a good idea/tactic and turns the battle around.

As a GM, I am wary of forcing outcomes or limiting solution choices. I see each encounter having 6 basic styles of solution (fight, run, sneak, magic, trick, talk). The moment I put a monster that is much higher level than the PCs, I have choked off some of those solution choices. Which feels railroady, because now you have to talk or runaway from the uber-dragon, because everything else is going to fail due to its power-level. And as a GM, I almost HAVE to let that work because the uber-Dragon really should just munch down the party.

So I prefer to design the adventure with content that is within party-level reach for success by combat. In this way, my assumption is the other choices are also likely viable, should the party roll badly or feel talkative. There are of course obvious exceptions, but it works for us.

 

[Argyle King]

Military manuals and such generally have some good advice, but they don't try to be totally prescriptive for the very good reason that experience shows that to be a bad idea. Since I'm not American (let alone in the US forces) the only FMs I have access to are somewhat dated, but much of the advice really doesn't age. It's just not complete. The best give concepts to think about, not rules to follow.

Oh, and on medieval close quarters combat, they generally suck...


Subject to the emphasis I added, I really have no problem with these "issues" but, seriously, what RPG systems really support them in any way?? I can't think of any.

Since the PCs don't exist, of course stuff happens outside of them. Outside of the players, though, is impossible, since they are all there is in the game (by definition - "players" = "everyone playing", here).

I'm not expecting manuals (or games) to be prescriptive. They do offer a good baseline and a federal ballpark though. I do agree that experience often teaches things outside of the basics; I have access to both. That doesn't take away from the merits of those basics though, and a common underlying general ballpark does exist. Even if we're talking a fantasy game with fantasy tactics, I personally believe that the basic principles still remain (or at least should remain) generally the same. That doesn't require everyone to agree 100%.

What has a tendency to bug me is when I feel like a game rewards what I feel wouldn't make any kind of sense in any context outside of the game. I completely understand that playability is a concern; I'm completely willing to make sacrifices to make a game more accessible and playable. However, I feel that sometimes a game can take things too far and cause encounter design and combat to play out in a way which is completely at odds with the general ballpark of what makes sense or the general ballpark of how I imagine the narrative/story.

There are some aspects of D&D which are intimately tied to such things; the degree of that intimacy varies depending on edition.

My previous post wasn't assuming medieval combat, but my opinion and preferences are still largely the same.

The players aren't always aware of everything; even if some of those things are happening or being decided while they're present.