Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
That doesn't mean that dragons are an appropriate replacement.
D&D General DM Says No Powergaming?
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
My group didn't complain. They roll with disadvantage when it's dark and use the light spell the rest of the time, and they all have darkvison.
There are a few things that I think you are looking past. First off is that we are all around the same table & the group is heavily disincentivized from splitting up too much so this situation is almost never going to happen. Secondly is the bolded word here "If those things actually matter it makes the GM start looking adversarial & maybe even a killer GM". PCs are so extremely durable quick to recover & insulated from risk that they simply don't matter until the GM starts looking questionable.
What difference does it make if your hypothetical rogue needs to action disengage free action open the door & cunning action dash to flee from a monster ambush back towards the party?... none at all. It won't matter until that ambush starts looking like death by fiat or a DCC funnel. type no win scenario.
If the paragon or epic tier PCs succeed at a skill challenge to minionise the Ancient Dragon, that does not mean that "anyone" can kill the dragon on a 20. The 4e DMG even has a little paragraph or sidebar explaining the parameters of the combat rules, and the descriptions of the tiers of play in both the DMG and PHB make it clear that "anyone" is not able to pose a threat to an Ancient Dragon.
This line of thinking though, that "using the rules as presented" in a logical fashion, will lead to one being seen as a "killer DM" is a real slippery slope. I mean, where does it end?
"Sorry Bob, but Mr. Crawford says that even though you cast see invisibility, you still have disadvantage to attack".
"Casting command on those Gnolls is a great idea, unfortunately, you don't speak Gnoll, and they don't understand Common."
"Casting fireball in the brewery is probably a bad idea."
The trouble is that a trap won't matter until it slams the session to a crawl or looks very much like the embodiment of hostile/killer GM. 5e tries to downplay attrition so much that traps placing attrition type consequences simply won't matter much until it sours the session and/or makes the GM look bad. Take a Party at levels levels 1, 5 8 & 12, assume fighter cleric rogue wizard & all have 12 con for simplicity of the example.
- L1
- fighter: 12hp
- cleric : 10hp
- rogue : 10hp
- wizard : 8hp
- L5
- fighter: 44hp
- cleric : 38hp
- rogue : 38hp
- wizard : 32hp
- L8
- fighter: 68hp
- cleric : 59hp
- rogue : 59hp
- wizard : 50hp
- L12
- fighter: 100hp
- cleric : 87hp
- rogue : 87hp
- wizard : 74hp
- Lets say a trap does 2d6 damage(2-12 avg7).
- That might matter at level 1 if it rolls well or hits the wizard but to any of the others you will need many many of them to matter.
- It also almost certainly leaves the level one party so low on HP they are probably going to die if there is a fight, the low HP & resource pool for L1 PCs is a big factor here though & they will probably take a rest simply because L1 PCs are so squishy
- Bump the trap to 3d6 damage (3-18 avg 10.5).
- The L1 PCs are probably turned into a puff of red mist or demanding a rest while refusing to go further.
- The L5 PCs might have noticed it but one more of those this session & the GM can expect to see their game screech to a halt with full on tomb of horrors style ten foot pole poking of everything. Worse though it doesn't really matter because the party can take a short rest & rebound if they need to & are starting to build up enough slots to buffer hp with yoyo healing.
- L8 &12 have barely noticed & probably won't until it starts moving towards like some kind of bullethell shmup.
- Bump it to 4d6 (4-24 avg 14)
- L1 party is highly likely to result in this trap simply downing a PC even on below average rolls but the result is the cleric healing the downed PC & the party saying "LetsTakeALongRest". That ten foot pole poking is going to look positively reckless compared to what a second one of these will result in.
- The level 5 party is going to notice this & begin ten foot pole poking after the second if the first didn't. Worse though it doesn't really matter because the party can take a short rest & rebound if they need to & are starting to build up enough slots to buffer hp with yoyo healing.
- Unless it was meaningfully below average on the roll for damage the L8 &12 have noticed & probably won't until it starts moving towards like some kind of bullethell shmup. These groups however have plenty of slots for the yoyo healing needed to make trolls look squishy
- So on & so forth. Traps that deal damage simply don't matter until they are crippling.
- Blinded: If a trap needs to dusable darkvision and all other vision in order to matter that says a lot about darkvision eh?
- Charmed: Without fate style compels this does very little & charming PCs tends to be a very slippery slope.
- Deafened: Once upon a time this imposed a pretty significant chance of failure when casting spells with a verbal component & even a penalty to initiative. in 5e however it does neither
- Frightened: The Party runs away & can't move closer?.... great dungeon.... More likely the players sigh when it wears off & goes through a second third or Nth time all the while growing more & more frustrated... awesome session for /r/rpghorrorstories
- Grappled: Speed becomes zero. We've found a condition that screeches the session to a halt with more force than tomb of horrors style ten foot pole poking.
- Incapacitated: even more extreme than grappled. Speed is not zero but the player(s) stiull can't move because they can't do anything.
- Invisible: yippee! a trap that buffs them is going to matter but it's hard to still call it a trap in all but the most technical of technicalities
- Paralyzed: Like Incapacitated but more extreme because there are a bunch of autofail things & bonuses against paralyzed creatures. commence ten foot pole poking the second this ends
- Petrified: orders of magnitude more extreme than paralyzed but it doesn't usually wear off or it's not too different from paralyzed if it does. Turbo ten foot pole poking can be expected from a paranoid group moving even slower than the previous tomb of horrors style paranoia. Top it off with the group taking a long rest or two to stone to flesh/remove curse anyone turned to stone.
- Exhaustion1: disadvantage on ability checks. Either "so what, my skills aren't useful here" ten foot pole poking or "LetsTakeALongRest".
- Exhaustion2: add half speed: Either "so what, my skills aren't useful here and I'm a ranged character" ten foot pole poking or "LetsTakeALongRest" followed by "LetsTakeALongRest".
- Exhaustion3: disadvantage on attacks & saves... Three long rests followed by ten foot pole poking or "lets go somewhere else"
- Ehaustion4: Max HP halved - same as exhaustion3 but four long rests instead of only three.
- Exhaustion5: Speed reduced to zero... party just nopes out of there & takes 5 long rests before going somewhere else or finding a new table if somewhere else is not provided
- Exhaustion6: death... see exhaustion5 but add one more rest
- New homebrew conditions with targeted nerfs that matter?... that sounds like the topic for a post on rpghorrorstories
Novel traps that do things like split the party & force encounters on one or more sides of the split? This either won't much matter & will get annoying fast or flip over to DCC funnel type "encounters" depending on the split if on one side. If on both sides they become a logistical nightmare unless the game is being run in a VTT capable of simultaneously tracking locations for both sides of this annoyance.
Novel traps that alert monsters the PCs can stomp all over with impunity?... This probably won't matter until the alerting results in funnel type problems for the party
Novel traps that steal from the PCs?... yea that's going to go over well if the PCs are willing to move from the spot their gear vanished. tomb of horrors style ten foot pole poking or similar paranoia suited to the situation can be expected.
Yes, damaging traps are just a grind and not really a very good idea- I stopped using many old school damaging traps when I was playing 3e because they are largely meaningless.
The traps I favor are ones that lead to more interesting combats or challenges- the victim finds themselves in a cage or a portcullis drops, loud noises attract enemies, barriers close that impede progress or force the party to seek an alternative route.
Generally, when an area is "on alert", rather than force extra major encounters, the idea is more to make it harder for the party to bypass encounters, something I'm perfectly happy to let them do. More doors are locked, passageways are blocked, and while they will encounter guards and patrols, the numbers individually are too small to provide much of a challenge- two hobgoblins guarding an important doorway, or simply looking to spot the players, then retreat to warn others.
The difficulty of fights does increase if the enemy has good intel and can prepare an ambush, or even just fortify a position to repel an assault, but the way I always understood monster CR is that it's intended for "encountering enemies under conditions ideal to them".
So I plan the "high alert" encounter as what the "base" encounter would be. If the players can bypass the encounter, or catch the enemies off guard or less prepared, it gets easier for them, as a reward for their craftiness.
The last time I ran an adventure with Kobolds, they kept encountering small groups of kobolds, who, upon sighting the party, would maybe fire off a few crossbow shots, but very quickly would drop some caltrops and run away towards the next grouping of kobolds- the encounter budget was built including the "patrol" kobolds- if the party could kill them before they could join with the main group, they got a much easier fight.
Amusingly, my players quickly got very annoyed with caltrops, and slowed way down, instead having the Rogue take point and clear out caltrops before they proceeded. Which gave them a large supply of caltrops to use against the kobolds and their bugbear masters later in the adventure.
There is at least one good use for damaging traps, however; I'm occasionally prone to using fairly easy to spot and disable traps between encounter areas, just to slow their progress down. If they stop to disable/bypass the traps, great!
But if they decide they need to get from point A to point B in a hurry and can't be bothered to check for traps, they might take a little damage, or a leg wound that reduces their speed for their trouble- something like this happened when I had a Barbarian give chase to fleeing enemies so that he wouldn't "lose" his rage. He ended up taking a great deal of incidental damage, even with resistance as a result- but he only had himself to blame for it!
Another thing that not using light can cause you to miss are secret doors. I ran this lead-in adventure to Forge of Fury in AL that involved an extra way into that adventure, through a kobold lair.
(I think the adventure was called "One Thousand Tiny Cuts" or something like that).
The kobolds had small, cramped tunnels with secret doors all throughout the area, with small openings in the walls that they could see through, and fire blowgun darts at the party. The Rogue kept insisting that using a light source was bad, as he wanted to stealth around unseen, and kept missing both the "arrow slits" and the secret doors, allowing the kobolds to keep tabs on the intruders, and any time they got into an encounter, they were suddenly being stung by blowgun darts.
(I would have recommended the adventure as a perfect way to show how to challenge a 5e party without using ridiculously over the top encounters, but the writer had to ruin it with the final encounter against a Kobold Sorcerer armed with Haste (for his minions, a pair of those winged kobolds that have sneak attack and drop rocks on people- we used to call them Urds) and Fireball (!) against the Tier 1 party.
It was this close to a TPK, and that's when I really noticed for the first time how unfair NPC spellcasters tend to be in 5e, typically able to cast strong spells, long before PC casters can do the same.)
Now if these strategies are what people would consider a violation of the social contract, or would get me labeled as a killer DM, I dunno. I've played under killer DM's, the kind of guys who would use an AD&D random encounter table and have 2nd level characters encounter 2d4 Trolls without batting an eye.
I always tell my players that if there's an encounter you can't handle, you're going to know about it well before initiative is rolled, and it totally can be bypassed. That having been said, if you're fighting intelligent foes, you can expect them to act accordingly, giving some thoughts to their own defenses, and rarely being inclined to fight to the death if they can avoid doing so.
The traps I favor are ones that lead to more interesting combats or challenges- the victim finds themselves in a cage or a portcullis drops, loud noises attract enemies, barriers close that impede progress or force the party to seek an alternative route.
Generally, when an area is "on alert", rather than force extra major encounters, the idea is more to make it harder for the party to bypass encounters, something I'm perfectly happy to let them do. More doors are locked, passageways are blocked, and while they will encounter guards and patrols, the numbers individually are too small to provide much of a challenge- two hobgoblins guarding an important doorway, or simply looking to spot the players, then retreat to warn others.
The difficulty of fights does increase if the enemy has good intel and can prepare an ambush, or even just fortify a position to repel an assault, but the way I always understood monster CR is that it's intended for "encountering enemies under conditions ideal to them".
So I plan the "high alert" encounter as what the "base" encounter would be. If the players can bypass the encounter, or catch the enemies off guard or less prepared, it gets easier for them, as a reward for their craftiness.
The last time I ran an adventure with Kobolds, they kept encountering small groups of kobolds, who, upon sighting the party, would maybe fire off a few crossbow shots, but very quickly would drop some caltrops and run away towards the next grouping of kobolds- the encounter budget was built including the "patrol" kobolds- if the party could kill them before they could join with the main group, they got a much easier fight.
Amusingly, my players quickly got very annoyed with caltrops, and slowed way down, instead having the Rogue take point and clear out caltrops before they proceeded. Which gave them a large supply of caltrops to use against the kobolds and their bugbear masters later in the adventure.
There is at least one good use for damaging traps, however; I'm occasionally prone to using fairly easy to spot and disable traps between encounter areas, just to slow their progress down. If they stop to disable/bypass the traps, great!
But if they decide they need to get from point A to point B in a hurry and can't be bothered to check for traps, they might take a little damage, or a leg wound that reduces their speed for their trouble- something like this happened when I had a Barbarian give chase to fleeing enemies so that he wouldn't "lose" his rage. He ended up taking a great deal of incidental damage, even with resistance as a result- but he only had himself to blame for it!
Another thing that not using light can cause you to miss are secret doors. I ran this lead-in adventure to Forge of Fury in AL that involved an extra way into that adventure, through a kobold lair.
(I think the adventure was called "One Thousand Tiny Cuts" or something like that).
The kobolds had small, cramped tunnels with secret doors all throughout the area, with small openings in the walls that they could see through, and fire blowgun darts at the party. The Rogue kept insisting that using a light source was bad, as he wanted to stealth around unseen, and kept missing both the "arrow slits" and the secret doors, allowing the kobolds to keep tabs on the intruders, and any time they got into an encounter, they were suddenly being stung by blowgun darts.
(I would have recommended the adventure as a perfect way to show how to challenge a 5e party without using ridiculously over the top encounters, but the writer had to ruin it with the final encounter against a Kobold Sorcerer armed with Haste (for his minions, a pair of those winged kobolds that have sneak attack and drop rocks on people- we used to call them Urds) and Fireball (!) against the Tier 1 party.
It was this close to a TPK, and that's when I really noticed for the first time how unfair NPC spellcasters tend to be in 5e, typically able to cast strong spells, long before PC casters can do the same.)
Now if these strategies are what people would consider a violation of the social contract, or would get me labeled as a killer DM, I dunno. I've played under killer DM's, the kind of guys who would use an AD&D random encounter table and have 2nd level characters encounter 2d4 Trolls without batting an eye.
I always tell my players that if there's an encounter you can't handle, you're going to know about it well before initiative is rolled, and it totally can be bypassed. That having been said, if you're fighting intelligent foes, you can expect them to act accordingly, giving some thoughts to their own defenses, and rarely being inclined to fight to the death if they can avoid doing so.
Really? Your solution to making traps matter is to stop in a list of reasons why various types of traps don't matter at the damage breakdown showing why traps that deal damage dont matter until they start having a negative impact on the session & list off some examples of traps that were already covered?...
Split the party? Exvclude a PC from combat? Put the monsters on alert or add more?... I talked about all of those things
The players might not be able to bypass encounters?... 5e is designed so the GM is expected to cram an unreasonable number of encounters on the players & distortions in power between different players at the table are created when you start mucking with it even before you factor in the fact that the PCs are already overpowered in ways that almost certainly makes the extra encounters no big deal.... My god... what kind of grindfest do you need to run in order to make not being able to skip some encounters matter in 5e?
Yes it does, but again 5e tries to downplay attrition & raise PC durability so far that the "increased" difficulty is almost entirely academic until it starts looking adversarial.
you've already mentioned bypassing encounters....
.It sounds like you are pitching tuckers kobolds as the first last & only solution of making that -5 on passive perception matter.... Prep for tuckers kobolds has a much higher level of GM workload than almost any other style of gameplay & is far from the norm even when it gets run & that even extrends to the story it was introduced with that was about Tucker's Tuker's Kobolds.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
Doing Tucker’s kobolds is about the same amount of work as any other dungeon crawl. You just focus more on traps, read more about Vietnam, and run them far nastier than you normally would run monsters. But they’re so much fun.
It’s really odd seeing an old article reformatted to the 4E style.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
I'm not sure what all of that has to do with darkvision. Adversarial DMing is the DM trying to beat the players. That has nothing to do with following the darkvision rules. The players have a PHB and presumably have read it, so they know that they get disadvantage on visual checks in dim light. And they know that darkvision in total darkness lets them see in dim light. They have no cause to believe that the DM is being adversarial simply because he is following those rules. Especially since they can just light a torch or lantern if they want to see normally.
