Hey, I've played with that cleric! His name is Brian, though that's not what the other players called him....
Brian's response to the healing request? "No, you'll just lose it again anyways." and he goes on with whatever spell he had been planning. Wich it turns out is NOT more effective than keeping the multi-attacking fighter up & swinging for another round.
So the fighter goes down. Two other foes are now freed up to step over his body & they proceed to drop another character.... and so on. A TPK occurred - with the DM intentionally saving the stupid cleric for last.
I often wonder how much should a DM be willing to punish the entire group of players (note: not the PCs, I'm saying the
players), due to the tactic choices of a single player. I'm saying this because too many DMs forget these four things:
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#1: 5e is designed and balanced along this concept:
"Fights are perfectly doable without a healer, but a healer helps a lot."
And not this:
"Fights are super hard without a healer, but doable with a healer's helps."
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#2: Short/Long Rest vs Number of Encounters game balance:
Second, way too many DMs tend to forego the "party can last up to a maximum 6-8 medium to hard encounters between Long Rests" as an important balancing thing, sseeing it as what should be the default most frequent situation, instead of valid only for some rare exceptions. Because really 5e (for good or for worse) is balanced around that! Most DMs avoid this "6-8 adventuring day" with very good reasons: campaigns nowadays are much more about logical stories where there is not constantly an artificial time pressure, rather than mere dungeon crawls. This does't mean they don't have to FIX something.
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#3: Difficulty not the same as actual Challenge Budget + overstimating non-combat encounters "size".
Third, way too many DMs also think that anything can count as an encounter, not just fights. This is true to a degree, but with the following caveat (which is valid EVEN for fights):
"A party can face up to a max of 6-8 encounters of medium-hard difficulty" implies a
limit. This implies some form of
attrition. This implies some form of ressource
expenditure. No matter how easy or hard you design an encounter, combat or not, what a DM should keep in mind is not how hard the encounter actually is, but how much resources the encounter is
designed to make the party
spend.
For example, a long series of 100 antimagic rooms, each containing an ancient sleeping frost dragon in it (Deadly XP Budget!). But they are all in rooms with a very obvious lever right at the entrance. PCs can super duper easily guess that pulling the lever closes and seals the room and lets a hige torrent of lava flow into the room (for 20d6 fire dg per round!). Also, the stone is juuuuusst 1 millimiter outside the dead magic zone, and ehcnanted to be as hard as reniforced adamatine. Effectively the party can kill the frost dragon super easy without spending resources, right?
Or a long series of 100 rooms, each with a single DC 40 Persuasion check to let an NPC "genie" in there give the PCs 10000 gold upon success, on the condition that no magic is used. Super duper hard encounters!
Clearly the 6-8 encounter limit doesn't apply at all in BOTH cases (exagerated to show what is occuring here,m sure, but the point remains valid always). In both cases the party can "face" up to an unlimited (or at least, much higher or lower than normal) amount of "challenges", be they super super easy or super duper hard.
Thus our 6-8 medium-hard limit is -obviously- to be based more on some actual "planned" resource expenditure, than on how "hard" the challenge really is. Also, say if a "Medium" fight typically makes the party spend let's say 4 spell slots (or HD) on average (both in the fight and to heal back up afterwards), but a trap, no matter if it is "easy" or "hard", is designed to make the party expand only one spell slot, then that trap encounter should not count for all that much in the "the party can face up to this number of challenges" guideline. Even if the Trap DC was 40, it's still an encounter that made the party spend only 1 spell slot.
Thus, DMs tend to grossly overestimate the "XP value / challenge" of non-combat encounters. Also many combats where factors such as terrain or whatnot greatly change the actual level of challenge, but most DMs can at least SEE that such factors affect the combat XP budget. But for non-combat encounters all they see is "Hey this is a DC 30 check so it's HARD", forgetting that despite the near-impossible DC, that encounter will be a negligible drain on the party's ressources.
Similarly, a single roleplay encounter that takes an entire game session is not made any "bigger" in terms of ressource expenditure. Unless there is a
real cost involved, in terms of ressources, then it does not really count for as much.
Similarly, if you are garanteed to long rest right after an encounter, and the PCs know this, then they can go "nova", making any planned encounter
much easier.
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#4: Fourth, only 1 or 2 encounters in a day creates a game of "nova strike rocket tag".
Generally, more powerful monsters means that many PCs can be downed in a single Round. Similarly, PCs can also opt to go nova with their ressources, and thus wqwhen doing so can easily down any enemy in a single round, too. So, the "single huge fight per day" philosophy" ends up throwing game balance out the window. It becomes a game of glass cannons. PCs drop enemies like flies
anbd enemies drop PCs liker flies, too. IMHO that ain't a fun way to play at all.
Often combined with the moronic DM attitude that make them equate in their mind:
"PCs must win the fight by the skin of their teeth... else it's no fun !"
This makes such DMS make every fight super duper tough.
Well, nopew, it ain't "fun" that way. Quite the opposite: deadly fights can be fun yes but only in OCCASIONNAL setups, with lots of foreshadowing. When the PCs know they're in for a very tough
special fight. Emphasis on this
special. If it's instead the norm, most fights are extra tough, then it's just something stressful and frustrating and also mentally
draining.
The DM finds this fun, sure, BUT OFTEN HE'S THE ONLY ONE!
When after the fight the players seem more HAPPYLYRELIEVED than GLORIOUSLY VICTORIOUS,m it is a surefire sign that the DM should drop this "they must win by the skin of their teeth" attitude. It's cheap. It's bad.
If you want your players to have fun, you have to make them feel extra-heroic
most of the time!
The "norm" should be that they can
easily explode
many enemies in
many fights. Read a bit about Shell Shock and PTSD! I've had a campaign that eventually failed because of exactly this problem: Putting the PCs too regularly in "extreme death" situations, you will just end up psychologically
burning out your players. So, keep those "Deadly" fights for the rare
final boss fights. After lots of easier fights. If for a solid fraction of their fights the PCs win only by a hair, they will NOT feel "heroic". They will NOT feel that this big harder figght is "special", too. It will be the expected instead. They will feel more like prisoners on some death row prison because no matter what they do, death is always only some hear's breath away! Becoming "close to death" shoud be an
infrequent event not the
norm.
If you do the too frequent "one game session, one huge fight, then one long rest" style, then obviously you are not doing a dungeon crawling style of campaign... Else, why would the rest of the monsters in the dungeon always wait a full night to react to invaders? Even INT 6 is far from moronic intelligence.
So, maybe you should adapt maybe like this:
- Most of those "boss fights" aren't really "deadly boss fights". They are much easier fights vs much less powerful mini-bosses.
- Use some form of the DMG Gritty Variant: Example: Short Rest is 1 night in a "Sanctuary" (a safe spot, say a secret room in the dungeon, a cave half a day's walk away, an easily defended isolated NPC community not far from the adventure), with some Sanctuaries usable only once. Long Rest is 1 week
back in town. It is much, much easier to insert any form of "time pressure" over say 1 week of time, than over a single day. And breaks and sleep remain "needed" even when out of those safe spots: to avoid "stress" or "lack of sleep" penalties.
It also makes random encounters much more relevant (resdources spe4nt ffor those are NOT going to be available fror the rest of the adventure) and also avoids the wizard going supernova. Personally, I also don't recommend following the "every adventure there is exactly 1 random encounter between the last town and the dungeon and not ewhen coming back, no matter how close or how far in the ewilderness the dungeon really is." That just feels cheap, forced, and artificial. Setup a house rule for the the odds of a random encounter based on the terrain (patrolled, wilderness, etc.), and how hard they are too, and make dang sure that, unless the travel distance is HUGE or in super deadly areas, odds of some random encounter remain low. And to avoid the "amusement park" syndrome, put dangerous dungeons not just 1 or 2 days walk away from town.
Little recommandation: some published module have a "final dungeon" with too many monsters and rooms, clearly assuming the party uses "two adventuring days" to clear those areas. I recommend splitting such big dungeons in two parts, each in quite different geographical locations. This also gives the advantage that instead of a lengthy dungeon-crawl style slog with most sessions full of mostly only fighting (plus occasionnal puzzzles annd roleplay with some baddies right inside the dungeon), the PCs get more travel time, more downtime, and more social encounters opportunities, etc.
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In summary, in all cases, it has to always go both ways: So, the true encounter limit should be interpeted more like this:
"A party can last up to a maximum 6-8 medium to hard combat encounters between Long Rests, counting both combat and non-combat encounters based on how much resources they should in theory make the party expend, not on how they are actually hard."
Note that this is determined
before the actual encounter. If the party played especially badly/well/luckyly/unluckyly/wellpreepared/badlyprepared, and thus end up spending more or less ressources than originally planned, then that is 100% on them. The XP is based on the planned ressources expenditure, thus once the encounter stars, the eventual XP reward is "locked in place".
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I have a couple questions for you
ccs:
- How many game sessions from Campaign Start to this TPK, and over how many levels? (TPK is quite ok at level 1 to shoew how dangerous a campaign wqorld really is, but after 8 levels, player investment is huge).
- Did the campaign survive the TPK well? Were there any rage quitting?
- Aftermath / Player reactions? (not PCs reactions, I'm talking players here).
and regaining strength after resting), then what are we to make of the damage types? What (if any) difference does the damage make if it's slashing vs bludgeoning? To me it's simply the way the weapon potentially strikes and the loss in hit point (ton the PC side) is the effort needed to repel the attack if it's slashing or absorbing the punishment if it's bludgeoning. But what about an unarmoured wizard? How do they handle a piercing attack?
