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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fiendish Dire Weasel" data-source="post: 1474272" data-attributes="member: 12951">(Incoming lots of biased opinions: )I think this is one of the hardest parts of running D&D games and somthing I see often:Killing PCs always kind of sucks, one way or another, and is generally somthing you want to avoid. On the other hand, if there is not threat of loosing, there is no real sense of victory and challenge. This is one of the most difficult balancing acts a DM will face in my opinion. While the occasional trivial encounter can be fun, you need encounters where the PCs feel somthing important hangs in the balance, thier lives or somthing else important to them. With no sense of the possiblity of real loss of defeat there is less enjoyment of the win. If I didn't feel like I earned my victory through skill it just doesn't mean as much to me. On the other hand, part of this issue is the PCs faults as well. I think too many players think combat is the point of D&D and get set upon the idea that any encounter the DM puts in front of you the group is able to overcome it, thats why it's there, right? In my opinion though, it is the story that is the point of the D&D game and combat is just a part of that. As is things like negotiating your way through an encounter, fleeing encounters or sneaking around them. Somtimes the PCs need to be reminded of this. We frustrate my DM all the time in one game for avoiding things he clearly wants us to do ("We can't go down there! It's infested with demons, lets leave and keep going to the city we are heading for.") and fight when we know we aren't supposed to ("I tell the huge, fiendish shadow dragon to kiss my ass and draw my sword" we were level 6 or so at the time <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ). We do these things though because we are acting on what our characters would think of doing and try our best to avoid the metagame line of thought. We knew perfectly well we were supposed to go kill the demons and not fight the dragon out of character, in character though, neither made a lot of sense at the time. I think it is somtimes important to remind characters that the game is about a story, not just slaughtering things, and to avoid thinking in metagame terms. At the same time a DM need to be sure to reward PCs when they do things like run away from encounters they should run away from or find non-combat solutions to problems. I don't think enough DMs do this creating a "Well, if we don't kill it we won't get any XP" attitude in thier players.Ok, I think I've lost my point and started rambling so gonna stop now. Hope someone makes sense of that post <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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