D&D 5E last encounter was totally one-sided

[Flamestrike]

Seems true...but I would honestly say that if the CR system is so rigid and can't handle deviation...that's a problem.

And thats a fair criticism.

Zapp just keeps trying to force a round peg into a square hole, and keeps blaming the peg for being the wrong shape.

You mention that Zapp "chooses not to enforce it." How does a DM "enforce" this structure when players decide when they go on or not?

1) Timed adventures. Most of your adventures should feature time constraints (save the princess/ destroy-recover the macguffin/ kill the BBEG) before (time X) or else (bad thing Y) happens.

Most books/ movies/ stories feature heroes doing stuff in a race against the clock (as does real life). Why the heck should your campaign (and adventure) be any different.

2) Environment. Heroes nuke the dungeons 1st room and fall back to long rest? The BBEG moves the macguffin (taking the treasure with him) and the PCs fail. Or he comes after them in force while they rest with the entire dungeons contents all in one encounter and they all die.

If the PCs were in a home base, and baddies killed a bunch of their henchmen on the bottom floor, what would they do?

3) Random (or not so random... wink wink) encounters.

Only so many adventures can have a time-limit feature, right? 4e tried to motivate with the concept of milestones, but even that didn't work often enough.

You dont need to do it every time. Just enforce enough longer adventuring days till your players come to expect it as the default. They then hold back, marshal resources (with this as the expectation) and the everything balances nicely.

Then, just to mess with them - throw them in a 10 encounter day [by 'day', I mean 'period between long rests']. Then give them a day where they get just the one encounter. Then throw a day with 3 encounters (but a chance to short rest after each one). Then throw a few standard days at them. Then maybe back off a bit and let them nova for a few days. Then hit them with another long (8 encounter) adventuring day.

Mix it up. But keep the [6ish encounter/ 2 short rest] adventuring day as your default (enough that the Players come to expect it and marshal resources accordingly).

Its an art more than a science. If the players get comfortable, nuke em. They should be always wary as hell to nova (and avoiding it) because there is a damn fine chance that there is gonna be another encounter (or 10).

Timed encounters give them a good indication and let them plan. Even then, throw em a curveball from time to time. Go down the street to 'house X' and 'kill Y' before 'he does Z' might sound like a single encounter adventuring day, but when the PCs blast a ton of resources nuking the wizards simulacrum (thinking its the wizard) only to find a secret door leading to catacombs beneath the house...

It's happened to me more than once: 5-6 encounters of relatively easy challenge, then the players decide to call it a day before the big 7th one. Sigh.

BBEG notices his mook henchmen are dead and flees with the macguffin/ the princess dies/ the demon is summoned at midnight/ the death star blows up Yavin/ the evil General kills Matrixs daughter/ Sauron conquers Gondor.

You fail and [bad thing] happens.

Depending on the 'bad thing' this could be really bad.

Gamist/ simulationist/ narrativist players - it doesnt matter. DnD players are competitive animals. 'Failing' is something they try to avoid. They invariably use their PCs as personal avatars and pretty much all imagine them to be 'super awesome badass loners with a mysterious background and bi colored eyes and katanas etc' who never lose.

Make them lose. And lose bad. Have it make life more difficult than if they had have won. Have them not get paid or miss out on goodies (they would have got if they succeeded). Have NPCs troll them. Show them the magic item the BBEG had that you custom designed for a PC as his share of the loot and sigh wistfully that 'if only the PCs did that one more encounter...'

They'll catch on. Plus, a bad failure makes the eventual win so much better (novels are based on this idea in fact).

If that fails, just say 'you can rest if you want to but you recover no abilities for so doing because [the Gods say so/ you dont sleep well due to a sleepless night/ I'm the DM and I said so/ you still owe me 5 bucks from last week] or whatever.

It's inelegant and to be avoided, but its your ace up the sleeve for particularly douchebag players. Hit them with an equally douchebag DM move. You win.

I mean; you're the DM. If you cant man up and manage the game, and police the 5 minute adventuring day, you should probably quit at once, crawl from behind the DM screen, and go back to playing.

 

[Eric V]

I mean; you're the DM. If you cant man up and manage the game, and police the 5 minute adventuring day, you should probably quit at once, crawl from behind the DM screen, and go back to playing.

You were doing well, and I was considering your opinion until here, where you decided to be a @$$hole for no good reason.

Oh well.

 

[Sacrosanct]

The actual problem at Capns table is (as DM) he either willfully ignores this game assumption (despite it being pointed out to him dozens of times) or chooses not to enforce it. He cant exactly claim ignorance of it.

That's only half of the problem, at least with the OP's description of that scenario. It doesn't matter what else you do, if you don't prepare your familiarity with the monsters you're running and play them up to their abilities, nothing else will matter, especially if you don't prep the boss fights (even if you don't prep every battle, the boss fights certainly should be). He was running a party that included literal high level geniuses who were also casters, including a diviner, who only has ONE job. the curb stomping the PCs did may or may not have had anything to do with their system mastery, but I doubt it. I play with lots of people who couldn't care less about system mastery and they would have curb stomped this encounter as well because the NPCs were played horribly inept. From the description, I have this image in my head of the DM just putting the NPCs down like pieces on a chessboard when combat started, without them doing anything out of combat to prepare, and ignoring half of their abilities for very spurious reasons when combat did start ("the DK didn't use it's powerful ranged AoE ability because it was a fighter type, and fighters don't do that")

You can't blame the system, or the designers, for that.

 

[CapnZapp]

It's perfectly valid to want an RPG that does that. Personally, the large number of encounters per day is by far the biggest problem I have with 5e. And 5e has some flexibility where it bends before it breaks - for instance you can repeatably run 4 hard-to-deadly encounters in a day with a short rest between them and have it work out. But to work outside the default bounds requires more DM work, which circles back to the issue of dropping foes into an encounter and running.

That's not a design fail, it's using the wrong tool for the job. Taking the designers to task for making a hex wrench when you wanted a phillips head screwdriver isn't their fault. You might just be able to make the hex wrench do what you need, but it'll be a lot more work.

I have a three-layered problem with this.

First, I'm not entirely sure this is the full truth. I don't believe 5E is that specialized, or that they have consciously moved away so far from previous editions. I simply can't.

Which leads me to second: "That's not a design fail, it's using the wrong tool for the job." I don't care what tool they've built, as long as it plays D&D. If they have built a tool I can't use, then NO WAY that's not their fault. If they've built something that merely goes by the name of D&D but really doesn't support the game and adventures I know and love, NO WAY they're coming off the hook.

I mean, almost all of us agree 4E was an example where they gave us a hex wrench when we all wanted phillips screwdrivers. But nothing to me suggests 5E is anything like 4E in the way it staked out a new direction. If anything it's emphatically sold in to cater to traditionalism and nostalgia. If it looks like a hex wrench and quacks like a hex wrench, why isn't it then a hex wrench?

Leading to number three: a far too accepting stance on this presumed state of affairs. I'm not saying YOU belong to this group, but there certainly are a few vocal ENWorld posters that defend WotCs every move, every design decision, denies any flaws or shortcomings. They are rather trying.

It all leads up the one and the same conclusion: the way these posters hang all their hopes on one solution and one solution only would be galling by itself. But when I clearly see that adventures simply aren't changed to follow or enforce that One Solution, their whole case simply falls apart.

There's nothing different with the official published adventures. There's nothing particularly different with the characters (though they're quite robust and powerful). It's only that monsters and challenge levels and encounter guidelines significantly fail to match these robust and powerful adventurers to meet our expectations, as if designed by interns that have never played the game before and not by a firm with decades of experience and four previous editions under their collective belt.

What is the solution then? It sure isn't as simple as "just add more encounters", that's for sure.

 

[Flamestrike]

You were doing well, and I was considering your opinion until here, where you decided to be a @$$hole for no good reason.

Oh well.

The point wasnt 'you're a bad DM'. The point was, if you (as DM) cant think of a way to police the 5 minute adventuring day, you should probably quit DMing (or switch to a system that doesn't balance around your ability to do so).

I mean; you're the DM. You control the PCs reality. You can use 'in game' reasons. And you have an infinite number at your disposal.

And even if they dont work, you're the DM. As a last resort, just say 'no'. Provide an in game reason if you can (you dont recover anything from long resting because of your sleepless night...).

If you cant come up with a reason, sit back, and explain to your players (as part of the social contract of DnD) man to man the resource system, why its important to the game you're all playing and that if they try and game it via 5 minute adventuring days, despite this fact, rocks fall and they all die.

I mean, I hope your players have enough respect for you to get the message and play nice. If they dont respect you and fight you on it, either you shouldnt be the DM, or you need to find yourself new players.

Right after the rocks fall.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Leading to number three: a far too accepting stance on this presumed state of affairs. I'm not saying YOU belong to this group, but there certainly are a few vocal ENWorld posters that defend WotCs every move, every design decision, denies any flaws or shortcomings. They are rather trying.

Like who? Who refuses to admit any flaws or shortcoming? You keep saying "people" but won't name any names. If you're talking about me, then you're completely wrong. I have, fairly often, voiced my concerns of the things I haven't liked about 5e. But just because I (or anyone else) don't agree with you blaming the designers for your problem doesn't make me an apologist like you keep saying.

What is the solution then? It sure isn't as simple as "just add more encounters", that's for sure.

No, it's not. The solution is what has been said to you over and over and obviously you keep ignoring it because what you just paraphrased is NOT what people have said. The solution: Play the monsters/NPCs up to their abilities like they would normally act in a living world, and prepare your encounters ahead of time by being familiar with their abilities and strategy they would use.

That solution would have resulted in a completely different result in your OP.

 

[CapnZapp]

If I can summarize Capns position:

You can't. Please stop summarizing my position in a way that allows you to conclude you were right all along.

 

[CapnZapp]

If you cant man up and manage the game, and police the 5 minute adventuring day, you should probably quit at once, crawl from behind the DM screen, and go back to playing.

This is classic Flamestrike. If you don't want to DM things his way, you're doing it wrong.

 

[CapnZapp]

You were doing well, and I was considering your opinion until here, where you decided to be a @$$hole for no good reason.

Oh well.

I hope you continue to play and love D&D, despite this.

 

[CapnZapp]

You can't blame the system, or the designers, for that.

You're way past the point of no return, but for anyone else still reading: I didn't.