D&D 5E Beholder hunting: nasty counter-tactics to Darkness?

[KarinsDad]

The difference between our play-styles seems to involve how we frame the world. You seem to feel you frame the world as a series of disconnected events or places with creatures that the players may or may not engage. You seem to not mind creating that type of material continuously to create the illusion of a sandbox world where the PCs have more control over the direction of their imaginary lives.

I like to have a narrative the PCs follow where they participate in some grand story where there is a key antagonist they must defeat to save the world, kingdom, town, or whatever thing they are trying to save. I create scenes that are part of this narrative involving a variety of situations that lead to the defeat of this antagonist. The PCs world is generally limited to the scenes in the narrative rather than having the ability to move in a random direction of their choosing.

It is in essence the sandbox versus the railroad. I prefer the railroad and you prefer the sandbox. I feel a well-designed railroad can make for an interesting, exciting, and fun trip with a very satisfying and powerful ending that makes the PCs feel as though they accomplished something extraordinary in their lives ending as heroes of the land. All this talk of, "If I wanted a story, I would read a book or watch a movie" means nothing to me. My inspiration for playing this game is and has always been a desire to be a participant in the amazing stories I've read and seen, not wander around as some random person in a fantasy world. I wanted to be part of The Fellowship of the Ring. I wanted to go with Conan on his adventures. I wanted to be a knight in the Arthurian Tales serving Arthur and going on quests. My friends are similar to myself. I try to make them a part of extraordinary fantasy stories as protagonists that end up as the great heroes of their story. That's my preferred play-style.

I actually prefer a middle ground between the two.

I have "Squirrel!" syndrome. While saving the world from the tyrant, I enjoy finding a random crypt that has zero to do with the "campaign at large". As Lydia in Skyrim says "Hey, look, a cave. I wonder what's inside.".

The game feels more organic if there are random events, locations, and NPCs that have zero to do with the campaign du jour and more to do with the backdrop of an emulated living breathing world. There is no doubt that every DM at my table railroads the adventures to a certain degree, but as a player, I want to pick one of several options and I don't want all of the options to be steps into taking out this year's tyrant. Nothing wrong with being the hero, I just want the heroic deeds to be only part of the adventure, not the entire thing.

 

[Celtavian]

I actually prefer a middle ground between the two.

I have "Squirrel!" syndrome. While saving the world from the tyrant, I enjoy finding a random crypt that has zero to do with the "campaign at large". As Lydia in Skyrim says "Hey, look, a cave. I wonder what's inside.".

The game feels more organic if there are random events, locations, and NPCs that have zero to do with the campaign du jour and more to do with the backdrop of an emulated living breathing world. There is no doubt that every DM at my table railroads the adventures to a certain degree, but as a player, I want to pick one of several options and I don't want all of the options to be steps into taking out this year's tyrant. Nothing wrong with being the hero, I just want the heroic deeds to be only part of the adventure, not the entire thing.

I used to not mind this type of side stuff. At this point it is a waste of time. Players destroy side encounters. My players destroy almost anything I don't carefully construct. Did Kingmaker, none of the hexes were challenging. Side encounters are just extra xp and dice rolling, The exploration element provides little to no thrill any longer. It's a been there, done that situation. The only thing that still gets the thrills and tingles going is encounters designed to challenge them in a narrative where there is a chance of losing.

I imagine if I had younger players the thrill of finding a new crypt or monster would be interesting. With the grizzled vets I play with the most that kind of stuff is old hat and doesn't register. They've seen the Tomb of Horrors and everything in-between. There is almost nothing new I could throw at them other than stuff I make up.

Picking directions in fantasy worlds doesn't interest them. Show them the money is what they want as in show them where to go to kill stuff, get levels, and take treasure. For me my thrill comes from providing a story reason for doing it.

We're playing with some young players right now. They seem to enjoy side quests and the like more than we do. When everything is new to you, it's all interesting for the most part.

 

[KarinsDad]

I used to not mind this type of side stuff. At this point it is a waste of time. Players destroy side encounters. My players destroy almost anything I don't carefully construct. Did Kingmaker, none of the hexes were challenging. Side encounters are just extra xp and dice rolling, The exploration element provides little to no thrill any longer. It's a been there, done that situation. The only thing that still gets the thrills and tingles going is encounters designed to challenge them in a narrative where there is a chance of losing.

I imagine if I had younger players the thrill of finding a new crypt or monster would be interesting. With the grizzled vets I play with the most that kind of stuff is old hat and doesn't register. They've seen the Tomb of Horrors and everything in-between. There is almost nothing new I could throw at them other than stuff I make up.

Picking directions in fantasy worlds doesn't interest them. Show them the money is what they want as in show them where to go to kill stuff, get levels, and take treasure. For me my thrill comes from providing a story reason for doing it.

We're playing with some young players right now. They seem to enjoy side quests and the like more than we do. When everything is new to you, it's all interesting for the most part.

That's an interesting take that I've not heard before.

Based on what you have said earlier about your players planning out and controlling encounters, I wonder if part of the reason that your group decimates encounters might be due to cross table talk. You've mentioned that your players talk about what to do mid-encounter and obviously, 5 brains are better than 1. Our table is a lot less tactically capable, but part of it is that we let each player play their PC without the undue influence of metagaming suggestions mid-combat. Sure, someone says something every once in a while, but for the most part, I'm not really playing my PC if you are suggesting a course of action "out of character".

Part of that is that we have one player who has only played for 4 years, one player for 1.5 years, and one player for half a year. When I have new players in my group, I don't want the 3 players who have 35+ years to dominate the play of the newer players. So there has been a definitive push at our table to let players make their own decisions.

Only two of our seven PCs are heavily optimized, and we have at least two players who do not always make the best decisions in combat and as a table, we mostly let them. So our encounters are a lot more swingy. A few sessions back, a hard encounter ended up almost decimating the party (to be fair, it was a medium encounter for 6 or 7 PCs, but there were only 4 PCs there at the time, 10 foes, and the player dice rolls were extremely cold) whereas last session, an even harder encounter we wiped out in 4 rounds.

Having an entire group of "been there, done that" players with a lot of experience and optimized PCs would create challenge issues for any DM. But, side quests is not one of them. Side quests are a flavor preference. A DM can make a side quest just as challenging as his main quest line, in fact, because the players might often have less information going in, the DM can make the same encounters even more challenging.

 

[Celtavian]

That's an interesting take that I've not heard before.

Based on what you have said earlier about your players planning out and controlling encounters, I wonder if part of the reason that your group decimates encounters might be due to cross table talk. You've mentioned that your players talk about what to do mid-encounter and obviously, 5 brains are better than 1. Our table is a lot less tactically capable, but part of it is that we let each player play their PC without the undue influence of metagaming suggestions mid-combat. Sure, someone says something every once in a while, but for the most part, I'm not really playing my PC if you are suggesting a course of action "out of character".

Part of that is that we have one player who has only played for 4 years, one player for 1.5 years, and one player for half a year. When I have new players in my group, I don't want the 3 players who have 35+ years to dominate the play of the newer players. So there has been a definitive push at our table to let players make their own decisions.

Only two of our seven PCs are heavily optimized, and we have at least two players who do not always make the best decisions in combat and as a table, we mostly let them. So our encounters are a lot more swingy. A few sessions back, a hard encounter ended up almost decimating the party (to be fair, it was a medium encounter for 6 or 7 PCs, but there were only 4 PCs there at the time, 10 foes, and the player dice rolls were extremely cold) whereas last session, an even harder encounter we wiped out in 4 rounds.

Having an entire group of "been there, done that" players with a lot of experience and optimized PCs would create challenge issues for any DM. But, side quests is not one of them. Side quests are a flavor preference. A DM can make a side quest just as challenging as his main quest line, in fact, because the players might often have less information going in, the DM can make the same encounters even more challenging.

Definitely refreshing for all us to play with some younger players where all this stuff is new. The veteran players are letting the younger guys take some of the initiative. It's more fun that way. Everything is new to them. Though both our WoW players, so tactical play is very natural to them. They both know how to use their abilities effectively.

The side quest isn't a "never", more of a "rarely." I throw some stuff in that is random. I don't prefer the lots of little adventures approach. Over the years I've found players prefer to be led around a bit. Before I hear from the peanut gallery, I get that isn't 100% of players, just a good majority in my experience. Structured adventures keep players focused on a task rather than having them randomly choose tasks. A focused group leads to more focused play as long as you are creating challenging encounters as part of an engaging narrative. An occasional unrelated encounter doesn't hurt.

We recently ran Keep on the Borderlands. I consider that more of a location railroad than a story railroad. I don't mind location railroads where the party is clearing a location for no other reason than to explore, kill, and accumulate. Often the entire narrative is built on exploration and all the events that occur during. I still consider location railroads story-oriented and I work in various story elements to provide the illusion of a purpose-driven world.

I would never exclude friends from the table due to experience. I play only with well-known people at this point. I'm not adventurous with gaming groups like I was when I was younger.

 

[Zorku]

A D&D world which exists as itself does not need monsters that act in a foolish fashion that would eliminate their chances of survival. In real life creatures that act in a foolish, suboptimal fashion die. Creatures that learn to do things in an optimal fashion live. I don't see why it would be any different in a realistic world.

In terms of the general medieval wilderness settings there's just a lot of land that the humanoid races haven't yet tamed. The aberrations and beasties out there only need to be strong enough not to be someone else's meal, and continue to find their own meals.

Speaking from a biology background optimal behavior is really rare among animals in the real world. If they've lived in the same environment for a LONG time then the behavior starts to get close, but just as often the rug gets yanked out from under them and a lot of the assumptions built into a behavior or strategy are no longer accurate. Moreover biology only rarely contrives to place animals in a situation that is life or death (or infertility) in these kind of optimal competition scenarios. It's mostly one animal with a very big edge on another animal bullying it into being a new meal, and then a sudden drop off where the weaker party backs down to avoid risk to their life and limb.

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As for the beholders, why don't the last twelve go carving some tunnels and then pop up all around the snipers? Even if they can't choose their rays twelve of them working together could get a pretty speedy vertical shaft to open up right under the sniper positions. If they catch the caster they don't have to rush anymore, and after they've made swiss cheese of the landscape they'd have enough places to shoot from that the mercs would have to retreat to a new position, at the very least buying the beholders a lot of time to set up the same kind of attack.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

In terms of the general medieval wilderness settings there's just a lot of land that the humanoid races haven't yet tamed. The aberrations and beasties out there only need to be strong enough not to be someone else's meal, and continue to find their own meals.

Speaking from a biology background optimal behavior is really rare among animals in the real world. If they've lived in the same environment for a LONG time then the behavior starts to get close, but just as often the rug gets yanked out from under them and a lot of the assumptions built into a behavior or strategy are no longer accurate. Moreover biology only rarely contrives to place animals in a situation that is life or death (or infertility) in these kind of optimal competition scenarios. It's mostly one animal with a very big edge on another animal bullying it into being a new meal, and then a sudden drop off where the weaker party backs down to avoid risk to their life and limb.

-

As for the beholders, why don't the last twelve go carving some tunnels and then pop up all around the snipers? Even if they can't choose their rays twelve of them working together could get a pretty speedy vertical shaft to open up right under the sniper positions. If they catch the caster they don't have to rush anymore, and after they've made swiss cheese of the landscape they'd have enough places to shoot from that the mercs would have to retreat to a new position, at the very least buying the beholders a lot of time to set up the same kind of attack.

Hmmm. Encirclement, I like it. Will use it.