Power is Relative

[Sunseeker]

Fundamentally, with a few exceptions, if the players encounter a fight that I have "tuned for them" I expect them to win. I do much the same as you do, and adjust my fights to fit the party, but they're still always designed to be favorable to the players, unless there is a specific reason for them not to be. But you have to understand my definition of "favorable" is that: the party wins with only one character down.

But I have no problem with letting my players trample over things that aren't challenges. And I present them with non-challenging encounters from time to time. They put in a lot of effort to feel powerful, why not let them feel powerful once in a while?

 

[Satyrn]

If your DM is going so far as to scale everything to your capabilities, then the villain becomes un-wimpified as soon as you re-equip yourself. No matter what your stats or equipment, you have a 70% chance of hitting and it takes 3 hits for an enemy to drop (or 3 hits per party member if it's a solo boss).

Aye. The fighter is a bad example, since the DM can see the equipment. It works better with a wizard who only ever uses the worst spells, but keeps the best ones in reserve for that one big combat

Unless the DM is changing the foe mid-combat. Then I'm walking from the game




to the beer fridge.

 

[Iry]

I don't know if it is reasonable for adventures, but they could be an exception (as I have also noted in further posts in this thread). The closest contemporary and historical thing I can think of to adventurers would be mercenaries, and I don't know enough about them to speak about how much they really optimized themselves. I imagine even within that select group, their is a range of optimization, but I don't have the data.

Mercenaries are a good comparison, but a better one would probably be Fire Fighters because we know much more about them. They routinely go into dangerous “dungeons” to save innocents, use their skills to circumvent “traps”, overcome dangerous skill challenges, and risk serious injury or death on a regular basis.

 

[dave2008]

Mercenaries are a good comparison, but a better one would probably be Fire Fighters because we know much more about them. They routinely go into dangerous “dungeons” to save innocents, use their skills to circumvent “traps”, overcome dangerous skill challenges, and risk serious injury or death on a regular basis.

That is good too, but Mercs are better. Fire, though dangerous, is not consciously trying to kill you. It is also different because Fire Fighters are supported by the government. Their gear is provided for them, they don't have to buy it and can't upgrade it on their own.

 

[CapnZapp]

Power is relative. Viola!

You're welcome

 

[Gavin O.]

I feel like players who like to optimize their characters brag to much about the fact that they're optimized, because you're right, the DM has an effectively infinite difficulty slider.

Therefore, the most optimal strategy is to deliberately undersell your character's power and not let anyone know what you're truly capable of.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Aye. The fighter is a bad example, since the DM can see the equipment. It works better with a wizard who only ever uses the worst spells, but keeps the best ones in reserve for that one big combat

Unless the DM is changing the foe mid-combat. Then I'm walking from the game

That sounds a lot like you're trying to game the DM. You're abusing their willingness to scale foes to your power level by intentionally under-representing your power level.

I'm just going to assume that this is a joke which isn't translating well in this format.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

To was one of my points. We don't truly ask our Players to make decisions like their Characters would because we conveniently allow them to forget the real world things that would pull their Characters in different directions.

But who is to say whether those real-world factors would even exist in a fantasy world? Does a fighter suffer PTSD after killing a thousand orcs? Does the rogue suffer nutritionally from living off of stolen trail rations for six months?

I would assume not, because this is a fantasy world, and we don't want to deal with that. In deciding to wear heavy armor all day, I am making the decision that my character would make, because heavy armor (in the game world) is not uncomfortable and does not provoke negative reactions from unarmed civilians. Unless you're playing GURPS or something, where those things are factors, and the character may well decide to make different choices in light of that.

My comments were about your statement that you want your Players to make decisions that their Characters would. My only point was that their Characters would not always make the most optimal decision in reality..

I guess it was a miscommunication, then. I agree that most characters and most players possess limits as to their own rationality, and players may sometimes wish to play characters who are less rational than themself, though there is absolutely no mechanical benefit to doing so.

 

[Hjorimir]

You're welcome

I'll admit, I'm confused.

 

[5ekyu]

Definitely adapt power levels to abilities. For instance if there is a rogue that has put a hell of a lot of effort into lockpicking (expertise, max Dex, feat, magic item etc) then there is no point having all locks at DC 15-20 to open. By doing so you are not allowing the rogues choice to matter.

Instead you should keep most locks as normal and simply don’t ask for the roll as it only takes a 3+ to open them. Then you should build some extraordinary locks into the adventures - vaults, complicated dimensional prisons, and picking locks in exceptional circumstances (while fighting, while blindfolded, while falling). Sure this changing power levels for the rogue but it is also letting them do awesome things that they wouldn’t already be able to do.

For me, for my game, the approach is to have consistency in DCs.

Drawing from the dmg, if the thing they are trying to beat was done by or setup to prevent high ability high skill its hard DC 20. Drop one of those, 15. Drop both 10.

If the setup had extra or insufficient resource/upkeep, up/down 5 more.

As sich, the 5th level PCs had to best a 3 way lock challenge against DC 25 two weeks ago and had to throw every edge advantage etc at it, including extra time (failures not only work towards failure but disadvantage.)

If they encounter similar at 10th, it will again be 25, while the hotel coat room is still likely 10, maybe 15.

Key thing is, this does tend to naturally work upward as it's more likely the places they go after have higher resources at higher level.