NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5868783" data-attributes="member: 5143">I don't want this to happen.  But I hate running random encounters.  It feels like a waste of my time and the players'.  I look at the adventure I'm running and think "Awesome, this is the session I get to run the cool trap with the waterfall I created" and instead end up with a session of "Random encounters with Orcs 4 times".  I tried it.  It didn't so much stop the 15MAD.  The adventurers would just make sure to retreat from the dungeon and rest somewhere without random encounters.  Or use a spell that would protect them from random encounters.Which brings me to solution 2: Replenish the dungeon so that the PCs don't want to retreat from the dungeon, therefore forcing them to deal with random encounters.  Not only does this force me to run random encounters, which I don't like doing in the first place...but if I do replenish the dungeon it requires me to run the exact same combats over and over again.  I tried this once and ended up running a battle against 12 human guards who were guarding a door 6 times before I got so bored of rolling continual crossbow bolts that I didn't replenish them them the 7th time.  Each session consisted of "So, you go back into the dungeon, roll for initiative against the guards at the gate."  An hour later, they'd walk to the location they last left off in the dungeon(I only replenished the guards, because it was only a day later and it was impossible for the dungeon to replenish most of the other people inside...people like 10th level clerics).  So, every session, we were spending an hour running through the same battle against 12 nameless guards who the PCs could beat without much of a problem.  The PCs didn't really take damage from the battle so they didn't care if they had to face it over and over again in order to do the 15MAD.  In fact, they started getting happy it was there because they were gaining levels faster than the purchased adventure I was running expected them to, so they were beating all the other encounters easier.As for timed adventures...I kind of hate them.  They end up ruining what I consider the most fun outcome if anything goes wrong, even dice rolls.  One encounter along the way to the BBEG go poorly for the PCs?  Now they are in a lose-lose situation.  They've used too many resources to survive the BBEG, so they'll die if they continue...but if they go back and rest, then the time limit on the adventure will be up.  Then, I'm going to be unable to run the next adventure I had planned where the princess, happy to be saved invites the PCs to a banquet in their honor and the king dies.  Instead I have to run an adventure that I don't want to run where the PCs are kicked out of the kingdom and aren't allowed back for allowing the princess to die.The only real way around this is to run extremely easy encounters that have no chance of going badly for the PCs.  I stopped doing that in 2e.  I used to spend 12 hours running a session in 2e and it entirely consisted of "You open the door.  Behind it are 3 kobolds playing a game of dice.  Roll for initiative.  15 minutes later, you win without taking damage.  You open the next door.  It has 5 kobolds behind it....."IMHO, none of these are solutions.  At least for my game.</blockquote>

Verification