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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hillsy7" data-source="post: 7190825" data-attributes="member: 6689191">I think the stressors between GMs and players when it comes to managing the ‘difficulty level’ revolves a lot around all sides playing the same sort of game.I think GMs can get a little bit nervous when players are blowing through encounters easily because there’s one or two optimisers in the party, and the game is pitched at a more leisurely level. If someone starts disengaging because it’s too easy, then I think it’s totally understandable for a GM to start cranking up the difficulty so as to not “lose” that player. However, that becomes an issue if the other half of the party is more casual and looking for heavy RP, and so has less focused characters, and they start getting demoralised because the encounters.I think it’s important for a GM to not be in a position where his group’s expectations are too far apart they finds themselves leaning on the difficulty lever because one player or another starts complaining because they aren’t getting the game they want. This pressurizes the GM into making changes, which can lead to a general tendency to hike up the difficulty by default.I’ve Gm’d an online game where I had one player complaining his sorcerer was woefully underpowered and he couldn’t hit anything. In reality, he had one of the highest attack bonuses, he’d just rolled poorly for a few fights in a row, and the encounters were designed to be challenging and rare. It happens he just wanted his combat to be more towards loads of dice and high damage numbers, which is totally fine and lots of fun. But because it was an online game with strangers, I didn’t get my pitch right and he had differing expectations. I literally ended up building him Something focused entirely on Attack roll, and low in lots of other areas.But that experience could easily have subconsciously altered my natural difficulty setting, all because one player made a hooooge fuss about his character. Thankfully now though I've learned enough tips and tricks to manage it better on the fly so I can use story and narrative to keep the threat level up, while decreasing the lethality if required.....</blockquote>

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