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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 8453955" data-attributes="member: 2629">This topic has been address hundreds of times on these boards.  If you want a thorough discussion, look those up.  Nothing has changed. However, here are the highlights you should pay attention to if you want to run the type of quality game I enjoy running as a DM, and I enjoy playing in as a player.1.) If every battle is a high risk life and death struggle, your PCs do not seem to be heroes - they seem to be doormats for the DM to manipulate.  Most DMs that resort to most encounters being deadly tend to be the same ones fudging dice to prevent deaths.  This results in a very lackluster experience for players where they feel like they're beat up and then saved from their own stupidity by the DM. 2.) If threat of death is the only way you know how to challenge your PCs, you're running a very bland game.  A lot of encounters I run are easy, moderate and hard - meaning no real chance of death per the DMG outside of ridiculous bad luck or horrible errors in judgment.  However, there is always something at stake, and there are a lot of times when the PCs, despite being the overwlemingly more powerful force in the encounter, fail to achieve an objective - and when they do it advances the story instead of ending the game. 3.) Encourage players to not approach the game as a strategy game, but instead as a storytelling game.  If they're making plans around short resting and long resting optimization, the story is not driving them.  Consider adding time pressures to your adventures that encourage players to push deeper into their resources.In my experience, most of the DMs that I've had the opportunity to play under that complain about the 6 to 8 encounters between LR, the "ease" of combats that are less than deadly, etc...  tend to build their adventures similarly.  Every encounter is at least hard, and most of them are deadly.  They then allow PCs to rest after every 2nd or 3rd encounter.  This creates a  less interesting cycle of difficult encounters. They designed 5E to run a certain way.  People don't run the game that way, and then complain it doesn't work.  It boggles my mind that is is still taking place after so long.</blockquote>

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