D&D 5E Build for players, or build natural?

[surfarcher]

Which do you do? I have been building for my players, taking their characters abilities and level I to account, and trying to avoid killing them. I am thinking of stopping that, and starting to build a natural world for them to face, whether it kills them or not.

Honestly, I do both in almost all games I run - however the proportion varies depending on the game.

Anyone who does the first, why?

In my main heroic game I primarily tailor to the group, with some natural world content. The parameters of this campaign were establish a decade ago and the PCs were/are meant to be epic heroes.

So in this campaign when they are following the storyline, which they have established and pursued by their own choices, we don't want them to die to a mook encounter that means nothing. There is definitely challenge, but challenge isn't all achieved by the threat of character death. There are certainly parts of this campaign where possible death is very, very relevant and at least one every couple of levels the PCs have feared for their safety. But it has usually been story relevant. Even in this scenario I do have natural world content where a poor choice can result in the party facing overwhelming odds.

The trick here is to always provide alternatives. Ideally several possible paths. Populate those paths with different challenges of different challenge level. Leave the decisions with the group, don't force them down any path.

Anyone who does the second, any tips for me?

I use the second in more casual campaigns and one-shots. One thing I really enjoy doing is playing old 1e/2e content straight-ported. Like I6 Ravenloft and X2 Castle Amber. And when I run these I do almost no conversion work - I simply use the equivalent monster from 5e. Sometimes I reskin or build a key critter from scratch (the Banshee, lesser Vampires and Strahd himself when I ran under pre-MM 5e for example).

The big tip here is to again always make sure the PCs have multiple options. And that is usually by ensuring they have suitable information to make a decision. The lethality will be higher, but if you can try to ensure that's a result of poor party decisions it can still be a hell of a lot of fun!

Anyway just my 2cp. I'm interested to hear what others think.

 

[surfarcher]

I prefer to build natural, but this leaves me with the problem of how to let my (relatively inexperienced) group know what they might be able to handle vs. what is out of their league. I don't want them consulting the MM, and even if they did, they might get the wrong impression because sometimes I tweak things. Also, there are places that they could choose to go that nobody else has been to in a long time, so asking around for advice may not work.

How do others handle this?

Getting a more experienced player into the mix will help. Or one that's keen on the game and wants to actively research it.

In any case you need to keep their info/clue feed going! Encourage them a few times to make knowledge checks. If they simply won't start to show them the repercussions. You could ease off at first but you can't keep that up forever and still consider it natural. Which is why I tend to mix the two, tailored to the group.

With a group consisting of newer players I find building to the group (say 80%) and having natural (say the other 20%) is a good start. Then you can slowly shift the percentages across to how you want it to be.

 

[S'mon]

I generally do a status-quo world, but I may often use tailored encounters within it especially if they are of the "X jumps out and attacks" type. Eg 1st level 1st session, Barbarian-1 PC & co met a group of orc slavers, status quo to that area. When he challenged their leader to a duel I made the leader a regular orc. I can imagine at level 5 I might have made the slaver leader an orc warlord or orog.

 

[TallIan]

I try to stick to natural, but take into account the PC's abilities.

For example, if no one wants to play a skill monkey (read trap finder) I'm ok with not putting traps in my dungeons. If no one wants to play a healer, lots of enemies will be carrying healing potions.

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[Caliburn101]

You can do both!

In terms of worldbuilding, I build everything with a 'fantasy biome' approach so it gives the world a real feel.

Concerns about appropriate threat levels for the player characters are dealt with more freedom and finesse in my worlds than ensuring a CR bubble surrounds the party wherever they go.

The key to ensuring TPKs and inappropriate challenges are not forced on the PCs is NPC and downtime information and communication within the game world.


Examples:

• Don't go there it's too dangerous!
• The mines of y are beyond you unless you have first defeated the three challenges of mount x
• Your research indicates a family of manticores ate the last heroes to enter the pass, so the kobold tunnels under the cliffs are your only viable path
• Legends speak of the legendary trapper who defends the forest, and how your mentor was foiled by them years ago at the height of her powers... etc.
• Just as you consider how easy it might be to pickpocket the warriors fat gold pouch, you see a known tough spit in his face after an exchange of angry words. The warrior moves with one fluid motion, his blade a blur of multiple strikes, and the tough falls in a pool of his own blood a heartbeat later...

You can also 'gate' a challenge behind in-world and in-character elements;

• The castle of the storm giant is enchanted to strike down with thunderbolts anyone flying to it with magic. Perhaps the griffin-stocked stables of the Pale Enchanter could provide mounts, if you can do sufficient favours for him by way of payment...
• The gate to the Shadowfell is hidden from those judged unworthy by the three Ebon Sages - you must prove yourself first
• Only the Order of the Sun are allowed into the badlands, by royal decree, and their fortress overlooks the road. Your reputation must be sufficient to impress them.

Obviously, the group will not always get the 'hint', think they have a damnably clever plan to bypass the gate or threat (which then succeeds or fails...) or otherwise bite off more than they can chew.

In these cases, there are various devices you can use as a GM to save their asses;

• The cavalry ride over the hill at just the right moment
• They are captured and not killed - then ransomed, or rescued, or left to escape while the bad guys are distracted, etc.
• They die, but for considerable future payment, are resurrected

Essentially, you create and run a world for the players where it really is their choice where they go and what they do. Making it fun, in summary, requires the following -and all of it in the world itself, not 'a quiet word from the GM';

1. Warnings about what may exceed their capabilities
2. Gates to prevent easy access to inappropriate challenges
3. Potential ways out of a situation which has exceeded their capabilities when it occurs

Provide most or all of these and your players will feel far more free. Roleplay of the 'professional' aspect of what it is to be an adventurer (scout out the situation, plan, use every advantage, don't underestimate a foe, have an escape plan or a plan B etc.) will improve greatly.

When groups understand that they will have 'x' encounters a day, and each will be appropriately balanced against their capabilities, even with the best will in the world, they get complacent.

What I have found from very many years of GM'ing, is that a realistically dangerous world with high levels of freedom of choice tends to produce more dramatic games and more active involvement from a wider range of different types of player.

As long as you tell your group what you are going to do with the gameworld in advance, then the likelihood is your game will see real benefits.

Try it out!

 

[Tony Vargas]

I prefer to build natural, but this leaves me with the problem of how to let my (relatively inexperienced) group know what they might be able to handle vs. what is out of their league...

Status quo encounters do lend themselves to the development of 'player skill' through experience. The players learn from the deaths of some of their first characters what low-level characters can and can't handle... they gain experience, and extrapolate from there.

How do others handle this?

Personally, by also using Tailored encounters.

 

[the Jester]

Figuring it out on your own can lead to good things too though. For example, did you know that 100 square miles of territory (26,000 hectares, or 10 miles x 10 miles) will support 13 lions? Cold-blooded creatures need less food, so you might expect to find 130 crocodiles in the same area, but they are also less social so instead of one pack of 13 lions you'd see 130 lone crocodiles. Jackals need less territory than lions (1000 hectares per jackal, about half as much as a lion--I'm not sure if they can overlap). Also, in bad terrain without much food, animal territories can requires 10x as much area as normal to feed themselves (so roughly 3x as much distance in all directions). Birds can require more territory (golden eagles require 9000 hectares each, or approximately a 3.3 mile radius territory), and some territories are measure not in areas but linearly (some gulls claim 10m to 120m of coastline as their territory).

You could stick with these same numbers in-game (e.g. call it one owlbear in a 5 mile x 5 mile valley), or you could introduce new assumptions like rodent-sized rock-eating tribbles as the foundation of your fantasy ecology to let you pack more predators into a smaller space.

Even a passing familiarity with the way real-life animal ecologies work has the potential to improve your game.

Totally agreed. (And I also agree about adding some kind of prey that allows for more monsters/predators per square mile- underground, fungus and rothe work for me, while above ground, I try to paint the world as full of life and normal creatures to make, for instance, all those damned owlbears within 10 miles of town seem reasonable.)

I also like to occasionally tweak the ecological balance of an area. For instance, last year in my campaign was a good year for griffons. The pcs spotted griffons in the sky often and had a number of encounters with them. Griffons even ate one pc who insisted on running off into the wilderness by himself despite warnings and several sightings.

I often give an area (dungeon level, valley, outdoor adventure site, whatever) a 'roster' of creatures that live there, at least of those that tend to move around instead of being found in the same place all the time. (I'd place a roper in my key, but put the 4 carrion crawlers wandering around looking for food on the roster.) My players love it when I roll a random encounter and then tell them, "Oh, you already killed that! No encounter!" They love the verisimilitude that comes from having a set number of goblins in the goblin warrens, and knowing that their behavior will change depending on how many of them are slain. (For instance, the outer caves may be abandoned once the goblins are reduced from 400 to 200 members, and once they are down to 50, they may leave the area entirely, packing up what they can and leaving the rest).

I'm also a huge fan of areas being repopulated. Leave those 200 goblins alone for a year or two? Now there are 300! Kill 'em all? Now an evil priest and his undead minions have taken over their warrens! I love re-using old areas (dungeons or the like), both with the same group later (e.g. they keep going back to explore more of the megadungeon, or five years after driving away the goblins, they discover the evil high priest and his undead army are living there again) or with another group (e.g. the various incarnations of Ravenloft; or, for my campaign, the Bile Mountain adventures- Bile Mountain; Return to Bile Mountain; Revenge on Bile Mountain; Beyond Bile Mountain; and finally the Bile Mountain Casino and Resort). I like adventure sites to have depth and history, and my favorite way to create that is in-game.

 

[Greg Benage]

I never "tailor" encounters in the sense of using any "encounter building" guidelines. For that matter, very few encounters are designed to be resolved only through combat. (I won't claim "none"...but it might be "none.") The players in my current campaign discovered the lair of an adult red dragon at, IIRC, 5th level. They got away (successfully resolving the encounter) and I assume they'll return someday to resolve it a different way.

I do try to have an idea of how difficult various encounters would be for the the characters to resolve with combat, though. I use the "eyeball method." That way I can give them the information they need -- or at least give them an opportunity to gain the information they need -- to make informed decisions. And I do intentionally provide them with encounters they can resolve with combat, as determined by the eyeball method. That's a kind of "rough tailoring." So I suppose I do a mix of both.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

The key to ensuring TPKs and inappropriate challenges are not forced on the PCs is NPC and downtime information and communication within the game world.

Yup. Status quo plus fair warning. Good way to do it.

And it's plausible, too. It's not like fully-grown dragons are just going to pop up out of nowhere. Civilized races tend to notice them and keep careful track of where they lair. Even if the party is out in the middle of nowhere, large monsters tend to leave signs of their presence. Obviously, having a ranger is best for getting advance warning, but even without one, somebody is usually doing enough Survival or Perception to justify saying, "You find claw marks. Big claw marks."

Basically, even your random encounter table (if you use one) shouldn't be a complete surprise to the players. Examine it beforehand, and think about what those monsters' presence in the area implies. And if you do have a ranger, consider just giving them the table to look at: "these are the tracks and traces you notice".

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

Which do you do? I have been building for my players, taking their characters abilities and level I to account, and trying to avoid killing them. I am thinking of stopping that, and starting to build a natural world for them to face, whether it kills them or not.

Anyone who does the first, why?

Anyone who does the second, any tips for me?

There are some tricks to make a world feal natural but take character level in account.
One trick is to imagine escalating situations in sifrent areas in the world and how they might play out if the players woulden't be there.

for example it bigins with 2 thieves guilds fighting for control of a province and could escalate in the following way.

1) guild A is planing a major heist to get enough money to hire mercenaries to finish of guild B
2) After pulling of the heist guild A hired an Ogre (or multiple) to help them fight guild B
3) the ogre contacted his chieftan about how easy the humans are to kill, and the ogre chieftan brings in more ogers trying to take control of guild A.
4) the group os ogers terrorise the province and take control of a small part of the area
5) The ogre chiftans goal changes from just raiding to conquest bringing in more ogers and calling in his allies.
6) full war where the ogers conquer most of the province. guild B and what is left of guild A with the army of the area as scouts.
7) ogers have totaly conqured the area the thieves guilds are using their thieves hideouts to run a resistance.
8) the ogers giant overlords find out they took control of the area and come in taking control from the ogers.
9) The king starts building his army to get the province back under control.
10) full out war with the giants.

Where in this escalation the situation is ticks over depends the level of thr player characters.
when the character are not in the province where this takes place rumors about the situation will reach them.
advancing the escalating situation in this way means the chalange rises with the level of the players and they will not end up facing situaltions that aren't challenging to them.