D&D 5E When you've made the battle too much to handle...

[Li Shenron]

So, damn, what do you do? I believe now the PCs should have been 9 or 10th level before this battle, my bad on that part. Too late now to correct. It's game on and if I play the Boss intelligently, it knows it's winning and simply has to spam Toll the Dead until everyone is dead. Looking for ways to throw in some (believable) chances for the PCs rather than mercilessly mow them down. Also, on a tangent, may approach the group again about limiting the # of attack cantrips one can cast between short rests. The fighter PC is probably not happy with cantrip spam at the moment...

These are my own ways to deal with the case:

Do's:

- tell them openly (in case they haven't figured out yet) they will likely all die, and remind them they can attempt to flee, hide or possibly even surrender, then obviously don't try hard to make them fail at those too

- personally I never permanently kill a PC without the player's agreement, so even in the event of a TPK I would offer them to discuss an alternative ending such as being captured, and continue the story from there

Dont's:

- fudge the rolls

- save their butts with a deus-ex-machina intervention

So by this do you mean they tried and failed or never bothered trying? If they failed, I'd want more details. If they never bothered trying, that's their mistake. Hopefully lesson learned.

My first guess was neither... it could be that by chance they simply didn't visit other locations where they could have gotten allies or supplies.

 

[overgeeked]

To me, if you’re fudging dice to give them the win anyways, why waste everyone’s time. Just tell them they won.

Same with railroading. If you’re just going to force a predetermined outcome on them anyway, no matter what they choose, just read them the story you wrote and stop pretending it’s a game where the players have any choices.

If you’re going to protect them from their own bad choice and give them the win, no matter what they do or what the dice say, just read them the story you wrote and stop pretending it’s a game where the players have any choices.

 

[Jer]

So, damn, what do you do? I believe now the PCs should have been 9 or 10th level before this battle, my bad on that part. Too late now to correct. It's game on and if I play the Boss intelligently, it knows it's winning and simply has to spam Toll the Dead until everyone is dead. Looking for ways to throw in some (believable) chances for the PCs rather than mercilessly mow them down.

At this point I will fall back onto the idea of a "campaign loss" from 13th Age. The lich will win the battle but - for its own reasons - leave the PCs alive. But once they come out of the dungeon they find that that survival comes with a cost. The lich has taken something from them that they care about - a person, a place, an item - something that the player of each character actually cares about. And if they want it back they'll have to do something for the lich. Something they likely won't want to do. (This relies on your players having something they care about in game. When in doubt you can always steal their favorite magic items, and honestly my players have been happy to keep their characters alive in exchange for their flamebrand sword, especially if I'm giving them a chance to get it back. I've also used "the bad guy has stolen one of your special abilities from you" like stealing spell slots or extra attacks, or have stolen memories or things like that, but that is really for high-level high magic type games).

Also, on a tangent, may approach the group again about limiting the # of attack cantrips one can cast between short rests. The fighter PC is probably not happy with cantrip spam at the moment...

Is that because the fighter is irritated that the spellcasters are not spending their daily spell slots and instead are casting their less effective cantrips? If that's happening that's another reason you're likely seeing the PCs fail when you think they should be winning - if the spellcasters aren't releasing their big guns on this bad guy I'd be irritated too. (I don't know that the solution to that is to limit cantrip casting but instead to have the other players say "um, Bob, can you maybe skip the Ray of Frost here and throw a fireball or something instead").

 

[iserith]

Says you.

For me, when the DM comes clean and says they f-ed up when designing this encounter (especially after we got our butts handed to us)... I am more than happy to acknowledge the DM isn't perfect and is trying to be fair and rectify things after the fact. And considering I don't use "Did our PCs live?" as the measuring stick as to the excitement of playing D&D... I can go on playing in the game and still feel the thrill of playing and the excitement of overcoming challenges in the future, even if we had that one hiccup.

I have never found hewing to the rules of the board game as the end-all-and-be-all of D&D and that everything falls apart if you don't. I think that's just silly. Because quite frankly the board game rules of D&D just aren't written that tightly or that well to put that much pressure on them to be that flawless.

Inherent in the thinking of the DM you mention though is that encounters must necessarily be something the PCs can defeat through combat and therefore must be carefully designed to that end. The CR system isn't that fine-tuned and the DMG discusses how not everything can be defeated with sword and spell. The players own decisions, a spate of unlucky dice, or unforeseen synergies between monsters, traps, or terrain can make the difficulty of a combat go way higher than what the game design may intend through no fault of the DM. I don't think the players should have any expectation that they're going to win by default. They need a plan for winning and a plan for getting out if things go pear-shaped. If they didn't prepare for the latter, that's on them regardless of whether the DM did or did not expect the difficulty to be too much for the PCs.

 

[CreamCloud0]

At this point I will fall back onto the idea of a "campaign loss" from 13th Age. The lich will win the battle but - for its own reasons - leave the PCs alive. But once they come out of the dungeon they find that that survival comes with a cost. The lich has taken something from them that they care about - a person, a place, an item - something that the player of each character actually cares about. And if they want it back they'll have to do something for the lich. Something they likely won't want to do. (This relies on your players having something they care about in game. When in doubt you can always steal their favorite magic items, and honestly my players have been happy to keep their characters alive in exchange for their flamebrand sword, especially if I'm giving them a chance to get it back. I've also used "the bad guy has stolen one of your special abilities from you" like stealing spell slots or extra attacks, or have stolen memories or things like that, but that is really for high-level high magic type games).


Is that because the fighter is irritated that the spellcasters are not spending their daily spell slots and instead are casting their less effective cantrips? If that's happening that's another reason you're likely seeing the PCs fail when you think they should be winning - if the spellcasters aren't releasing their big guns on this bad guy I'd be irritated too. (I don't know that the solution to that is to limit cantrip casting but instead to have the other players say "um, Bob, can you maybe skip the Ray of Frost here and throw a fireball or something instead").

I think they mean in general play, considering they said they were entering the lich fight with diminished resources implying they'd burnt most of their higher level spell slots already as well as that they described the cantrip matter as ‘a tangent’

 

[GMMichael]

Been doing this for a long time, but inevitably there will come a time when you'll setup a battle that you thought was appropriate and it's simply too much for the PCs to handle.

Congrats!

Setup: PCs are 8th level, a caster-heavy group drained of resources, in a battle with an "atrophied" lich (has some lair and legendary lich abilities, capped as 11th level caster, reduced DCs, no phylactery so it won't stick around if there's a chance it could be destroyed) that had a Shield Guardian hidden nearby siphoning, then regenerating, damage.

Isn't death always on the table when your active opponent is already, you know, dead? Also, I think it's not called a "phylactery" anymore.

But, it's still too much... The Guardian is now down, but the atrophied lich is still renewing spells each round, doing great on HP, and tethering to the PC wizard. He's been scrying them for weeks now, so I've tailored his strategies to defeat their abilities. The PC fighter is on fumes. The PCs have exhausted their powers trying to keep her afloat.

Seems like a waste of power keeping the fighter afloat when the opponent is a caster. They're getting what they deserve...

So, damn, what do you do?

Offer surrender (while continuing to fight if PCs do). A lich is a lich though; one PC must become a cadaver for experiments. Conveniently, it's the character of the player most willing to roll up a new one.

 

[iserith]

At this point I will fall back onto the idea of a "campaign loss" from 13th Age. The lich will win the battle but - for its own reasons - leave the PCs alive. But once they come out of the dungeon they find that that survival comes with a cost. The lich has taken something from them that they care about - a person, a place, an item - something that the player of each character actually cares about. And if they want it back they'll have to do something for the lich. Something they likely won't want to do. (This relies on your players having something they care about in game. When in doubt you can always steal their favorite magic items, and honestly my players have been happy to keep their characters alive in exchange for their flamebrand sword, especially if I'm giving them a chance to get it back. I've also used "the bad guy has stolen one of your special abilities from you" like stealing spell slots or extra attacks, or have stolen memories or things like that, but that is really for high-level high magic type games).

I think this is a good choice, but that it's best to establish this as a possible outcome in some way BEFORE the battle, not after things go wrong for the PCs. Otherwise it has the feel of being tacked on to save the players from their own decisions which in my experience is not very satisfying. If I knew going in that I might live, lose, and have to deal with some horrible aftermath, when it happens it feels a lot more organic and less like the DM fudging. It's really about setting the right expectations.

 

[Helldritch]

If they do not run, kill them.
If there is a straggler. Kill the straggler.
Players will thank you for it. It will show that their choices matter. That this is not your story, but the group's story.
You gotta to know when fleeing is the best part of valor.

 

[Jer]

I think this is a good choice, but that it's best to establish this as a possible outcome in some way BEFORE the battle, not after things go wrong for the PCs. Otherwise it has the feel of being tacked on to save the players from their own decisions which in my experience is not very satisfying. If I knew going in that I might live, lose, and have to deal with some horrible aftermath, when it happens it feels a lot more organic and less like the DM fudging. It's really about setting the right expectations.

Right - that's the best approach.

However in the circumstance where you as the DM feel like you screwed up the encounter and you weren't intending it to be as difficult as it turned out, it can also be a way to fix things. Be up front with your players that you think you screwed up the balance a bit so there's blame all around and give it to them as an out.

I think it's fine to let characters die if it's the result of the players own decisions, but when you as a DM feel like you didn't correctly anticipate the difficulty of an encounter and so weren't able to place the clues to the players that they needed to prepare better or try to avoid the encounter or consider that they might need to be able to flee instead of fight, then having an alternative to death is useful. It's not really the result of their own decisions if they had no reason to think the upcoming encounter might be extra difficult, it's just a random fluke at that point.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Inherent in the thinking of the DM you mention though is that encounters must necessarily be something the PCs can defeat through combat and therefore must be carefully designed to that end. The CR system isn't that fine-tuned and the DMG discusses how not everything can be defeated with sword and spell. The players own decisions, a spate of unlucky dice, or unforeseen synergies between monsters, traps, or terrain can make the difficulty of a combat go way higher than what the game design may intend through no fault of the DM. I don't think the players should have any expectation that they're going to win by default. They need a plan for winning and a plan for getting out if things go pear-shaped. If they didn't prepare for the latter, that's on them regardless of whether the DM did or did not expect the difficulty to be too much for the PCs.

That is all true... but not what was said that I was responding to. Here was the quote that I replied to:

"Don’t fudge dice. It’s so unsatisfying as a player to find out the dm spared you. Suddenly nothing feels like a challenge or is exciting anymore."

A declaration of universality that fudging dice is inherently unsatisfying and that all challenge is now lost for the remainder of the game. A declaration of "fact" that I find silly and not at all true.

Now, if @TaranTheWanderer wants to respond with "Okay, yes, I was exaggerating for effect and that I only meant that some people might feel the way I detailed...", then great! The DM now knows that some players could find being "saved" by the DM because they screwed up the encounter design has now irrevocably destroyed any vestige of enjoyment in the game going forward. Which... yeah, there may be some who feel that way. But then there are also others-- like I myself am-- who wouldn't care that the DM was trying to fix a mistake. And that the implication @toucanbuzz I thought made relatively clear in their post was that the encounter seems overtuned and if they just played the fight as-is... the PCs are going to be mowed down. And based on the fact that @toucanbuzz seems concerned with that happening... it seems to be an indication that just mowing the PCs is not what they or the players would probably want to see happen or would find satisfying.

There's nothing wrong with PCs dying (or having a TPK)... and if it happens as part of something of worth then most of the time the players probably understand and end up okay with it (once they get past any disappointment.) But when there is a TPK that seems worthless... I'm fairly certain most DMs know how that will be received by their players. And since @toucanbuzz specifically came here asking for ideas to not have that happen... tells us that most likely a "Let the chips fall where they may because otherwise why bother playing D&D at all and instead just read them a novel" response ain't exactly going to go over. Or at the very least is not a universal truth of playing this game that could/would/should work every time.