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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 7157338" data-attributes="member: 20323">[MENTION=6876021]kagayaku[/MENTION] Happy to pass along any hard-earned insights that make your game better. I really cut my teeth figuring all this out for myself. Good luck <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Two follow up things:That's really exactly true in a medieval warfare scenario. I realize this is D&D, but to give you an example...armored warriors often carried thin daggers in case they defeated a foe with a helmet. According to the sources we have, it seemed fairly common practice to do something like this: Hold the thin dagger to slit in the helmet or other vulnerable point in the armor and demand the person's lineage – if they weren't noble they got killed, if they were noble they got held for ransom.Another example: In medieval combat you don't have, say, 50 longbow men line up and get directed to "shoot down the one with the red feather helmet." They're launching volleys of arrows on a much larger scale.In your "Helm's Deep" scenario, you shouldn't be targeting the PCs with multiple goblin attacks each, for example, unless the sh-- orc-- really hits the fan (probably as a result of the PCs drawing undue attention to themselves).This is why I recommend battle zones, translating stuff like this from "hundred monster attack" paradigm to a "hazard of war" paradigm. So you can better foresee what you're actually planning to run them through.[SBLOCK=As an aside...]As an aside, recently I placed a chamber in a high-level dungeon with 99 flameskulls. I knew that running it as a combat would be A Bad Idea, so instead I focused on "what's interesting that the PCs can do here? how might they might circumvent these monsters in a creative way? and how do I make sure they have enough time/ways to avoid getting killed till they manage to do so?" I ended up designing it as a trap using <a href="https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/0227_UATraps.pdf" target="_blank">Unearthed Arcana: Traps Revisited</a>.[/SBLOCK]In your scenario not knowing exactly is probably OK, as long as they know it's "something bad."I should have emphasized that it's the immediate and ongoing visual prop that matters.It's the Jenga tower effect in Dread (a terrific little indie horror game where you draw pieces of a Jenga tower as you tell the story/play the game, with collapse of the tower leading to some grisly fate for that hero). Having a physical prop – even just a die you keep turning down – that the players can constantly reference helps sustain the tension when players might otherwise forget.</blockquote>

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