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

[Mercule]

A bit of both. Ecologies tend to have their major players in balance. There may be outliers in any area, but there's a reason it's stable.

What that means, in play, is that any given "dungeon" will tend to be homogeneous in CR (i.e. within bounds of "tailored"), but the players should always be cognizant of surprises (oh, look, the lich just wants to be left alone). Also, they can certainly find dungeons that are well above or below their capabilities (though I never underestimate cunning players), there will always be clues about the general difficulty (I wonder why no one has retrieved the sword of killing gods before now) and/or a bit of gentle nudging on my part.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

What that means, in play, is that any given "dungeon" will tend to be homogeneous in CR (i.e. within bounds of "tailored"), but the players should always be cognizant of surprises (oh, look, the lich just wants to be left alone).

I don't think a balanced ecology implies homogeneous in CR. A lion is not the same CR as a gazelle. What a balanced ecology means is that there are a lot more gazelles than lions.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

While ecology is important, and can add a lot of depth to a setting, they're also a lot of work. Sometimes, I just side-step the whole issue with magic - not so much of the "creating a magic food source for the monsters" or "rock-eating rodents that are indigenous to the underdark" type, but more of the "goblins are actually a type of demon that creeps into our world naturally in dark places, so they don't need to eat or sleep and it's perfectly okay to kill them" variety.

 

[Mercule]

I don't think a balanced ecology implies homogeneous in CR. A lion is not the same CR as a gazelle. What a balanced ecology means is that there are a lot more gazelles than lions.

Fair criticism. Maybe an ecology isn't the right comparison. While orcs may work for a lich, they will be in sufficient numbers to be worthwhile for the lich to employ -- or, they will be in a corner and act as relief from the rest of the danger the PCs face. The point being that dungeons would "naturally" fit to the same sort of range as a "tailored" math would set them at. It's a lair. Granted, there are times where there's a disparity, but most often, it just makes sense for the BBEG to use troops that would appear competent to him. Or for even short-lived, but noteworthy, territorial disputes to occur between comparable parties.

 

[pemerton]

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.

I build the game around the interests/inclinations etc demonstrated by my players (via PC building, backstory, etc): what could be called, loosely but reasonably accurately, "indie" style.

An example is here, which goes through the first session of a new Dark Sun campaign. The game started in the arena in Tyr, because one of the players specified, as the opening scene for his gladiator PC, standing over a defeated enemy about to deal the death blow when the crowd turned away, distracted by cries that "The tyrant is dead!" This also established the starting point for the game in the Dark Sun timeline - namely, at the moment of the successful revolution in Tyr.

I don't coddle my players at all - I let them decide what they can and can't handle. The game is just so much better when the players actually have to think about what they are doing, rather than just trusting that the DM won't make an encounter that they likely wouldn't win.

This strikes me as orthogonal to the idea of whether encounters are built around the players/PCs, or not.

Should the PCs join the revolution, or oppose it, or try to exploit it for self-aggrandisement? If the game forces the players to answer that question, and hits them with consequences whichever way they go, then they are not being coddled - but this has nothing to do with the mechanical difficulty of particular encounters.

 

[WarpedAcorn]

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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This is where my style falls into. In the game I'm running, no one has invested in Knowledge skills and the Bard dumped his Int score, so putting difficult Knowledge checks into the adventures would provide an unfun roadblock. But that doesn't mean I don't have tertiary checks and give out partial information, hinting that maybe more could be had if someone had a specific skill or background. Its also

However, I am supremely guilty of presenting most enemies as defeatable. Outside of an early encounter, my players have pretty much only squared off against enemies they could realistically beat. That being said, they have run away at times so maybe I'm not as guilty as I think.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

A mix of both actually. I mostly use official adventures these days. I play them as is... except that I do combin encounters a lot, since my players approach is sometimes questionable... alert enemies and the give them time to regroup.
When I do I try to not overwhelm them by tooo far. At least I usually gove them a chance to notice their mistake and run.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Almost everyone does both, to some extent. I'm sure there are some exceptions, but for the most part you would need to do both.

I lean mostly to a living world, but when I create adventures and campaigns, I do design them with certain level parameters in place. I won't adjust, eliminate, or add encounters just because the PCs did something off script though. That clan of ogres up there in the hills? They are still there regardless if the PCs are level 1 or level 10. However, I would advise that the PCs not get blindsided a lot and surprised by these off balance encounters. E.g., if the PCs are in town and are asking about, they probably will hear about the clan of ogres, or the dragon, or whatever. They'll hear whatever makes sense in the game world and what actions they do. That means if the PCs aren't proactive, they may in fact be surprised. That isn't me being a bad DM. That's them learning really quick to find out about an unexplored wild area as much as possible before just blindly heading out.

I ascribe to the advice given in the AD&D 1e DMG. If the PCs have given it their best, then maybe some adjustment might be made to keep the adventure going (say, by placing a raise dead spell capable priest in town or something). However, if bad things happen through poor planning on their part, such is life. It's about being fair, and understanding it's not you as the DM against the players, but you as the DM to be impartial and run all the NPCs/monsters as they would normally behave.

And in my 35 years of experience, the vast majority of players prefer a game where they aren't assured of victory in every encounter via combat. Almost all of them find that boring because there is no risk, and those encounters surely aren't memorable.

 

[S'mon]

I definitely tend strongly to status quo on non-combat stuff like traps and knowledge checks. I'm happy to have the party zapped with traps because no one took Perception, or have them spot everything because of the Monk with passive Per 20. This is one reason I like using published adventures, even an AP creates a sort of status quo environment since the author didn't know my PC group composition. With combat I much more tend to use a mix of status quo and tailored. A dungeon will be status quo, as will wandering monsters typically (though CR will vary a lot by area, PCs naturally tend to be in a CR-appropriate area), but I'll throw in an occasional tailored encounter especially as a narrative "Bang" to get things moving eg at the start of a campaign.

 

[steenan]

I definitely tailor my adventures to my PCs - but, like pemerton, more in the sense of themes and motivations than difficulty of encounters.

As for difficulty, it varies wildly and I don't try to keep them "balanced". But the ruleset I use is good at handling it. On one hand, it has nonlethal defeats, concessions etc., so I don't have to keep fights "defeatable" to avoid killing PCs. On the other hand, I'm able to create interesting opponents quickly, so I don't feel like I wasted my preparation time when an encounter becomes a cakewalk.