Preserving the Fear Inherent in 1st Level

[Kobold Boots]

This is one of those conversations that goes around the world more than it needs to.

If you want to maintain the level of fear inherent in first level play, then it's pretty easy to just amp things up through a combination of smart enemy play, using the rules the players use for builds for bad guys and keeping an eye on player resources and encumbrance.

Essentially all the things that most DMs don't do for prep time reasons. This, more than anything else is the reason why you lose player fear. DMs don't prep or adapt well.

Really nothing more to say here in my opinion, but I'm sure we'll go all charty and optional rule crazy. It's really unnecessary. (again IMHO)

Be well
KB

 

[Quartz]

Just make sure to kill characters regularly. If the monsters in a Hard or Deadly encounter focus fire on a single character they will go down quickly and possibly die. Removing Raise Dead and similar spells from the game also helps.

I dislike this as it means players will be less willing to invest in front-line characters.

 

[Satyrn]

What if you significantly lowered the character's maximum hit point total at higher levels - like, after 3rd level they don't gain any more, or whatever makes sense. So now the PCs aren't seemingly endless bags of hit points guaranteed to soak up damage for several rounds. Every fight would be scary starting with round 1.

To offset this, you'd make out of combat healing much easier - perhaps by spending hit dice after a 5 minute rest - so that the players can start each fight near their maximum.

(And of course, you'd have to reduce the damage on a lot of monster attacks. Like, a big dragon's breath weapon would have to be lowered so that it won't take out a barbarian that makes his save)

 

[tglassy]

Or, instead of nerfing people’s characters and taking away their awesomeness, you could, I don’t know, let them fight things that could actually kill them. Give them a challenge. So when they kill it, they feel awesome.

Which is better, “We just took on an entire hive of Mind Flayers and destroyed that elder brain! Yeah! Oh no, one of the mind flayers got ahold of Larry’s Barbarian, Mikey the Powerful, and put a tadpole thing in his ear? What do we do now?”

Or “Oh man, that fight with the bandit chief that my Lvl 15 Barbarian just had was so intense! He almost killed me with his long sword because my health was arbitrarily reduced because the DM wanted me to feel my mortality!”

 

[Reynard]

Or, instead of nerfing people’s characters and taking away their awesomeness, you could, I don’t know, let them fight things that could actually kill them. Give them a challenge. So when they kill it, they feel awesome.

Which is better, “We just took on an entire hive of Mind Flayers and destroyed that elder brain! Yeah! Oh no, one of the mind flayers got ahold of Larry’s Barbarian, Mikey the Powerful, and put a tadpole thing in his ear? What do we do now?”

Or “Oh man, that fight with the bandit chief that my Lvl 15 Barbarian just had was so intense! He almost killed me with his long sword because my health was arbitrarily reduced because the DM wanted me to feel my mortality!”

What you've presented here isn't really a question of tension but genre preference. Some people don't like gonzo fantasy independent of how they feel about character vulnerability. I'm not one of them, btw. I like high weirdness. I'm just suggesting it's not related to whether characters should feel death hovering constantly, which I also like.

 

[Satyrn]

What you've presented here isn't really a question of tension but genre preference. Some people don't like gonzo fantasy independent of how they feel about character vulnerability. I'm not one of them, btw. I like high weirdness. I'm just suggesting it's not related to whether characters should feel death hovering constantly, which I also like.

And on top of that, there was nothing in my brainstorming suggestion that would prevent the gonzo fantasy.

There would have to be significant work on the DM's part to lower the damage all the gonzo monsters like mind flayers deal, but all their cool features could still be kept.

 

[Kobold Boots]

What you've presented here isn't really a question of tension but genre preference. Some people don't like gonzo fantasy independent of how they feel about character vulnerability. I'm not one of them, btw. I like high weirdness. I'm just suggesting it's not related to whether characters should feel death hovering constantly, which I also like.

There's a tendency shown by some on the forums to take an example and go literal. It creates thread drift and I've done it from time to time, but it's unnecessary here.

It's entirely possible to have CR 15 orcs. Just stat them. Blammo, effective non-gonzo challenge.

 

[Reynard]

And on top of that, there was nothing in my brainstorming suggestion that would prevent the gonzo fantasy.

There would have to be significant work on the DM's part to lower the damage all the gonzo monsters like mind flayers deal, but all their cool features could still be kept.

My apologies. You used a gonzo element in your fun/positive example and a mundane one in your boring/negative example, so I thought you were conflating them.

 

[Satyrn]

My apologies. You used a gonzo element in your fun/positive example and a mundane one in your boring/negative example, so I thought you were conflating them.

That wasn't me. [MENTION=6855204]tglassy[/MENTION] did that in a not-so-subtle attempt at shouting my idea down as unfun.

I was happy to see that you saw through that.

 

[tglassy]

No, I was just grabbing a high CR monster vs a low CR monster. If you want mundane, great. Use high CR mundane creatures. There are a lot of them now, I think, with three books filled with stat blocks. And if any one isn’t, use a bunch of them! Throw an entire clan of Kobalds at them. Or like the previous example, a CR 15 orc.