Difficulty levels in D&D?

[NoWayJose]

Just a thought experiment...

Various threads (like All Roads Lead to Rome?) highlight a diversity of opinions on what makes the perfect D&D and that there is no one optimal formula. If it's a choice between heroic fantasy vs gritty fantasy, for example, you'll probably choose between entirely different systems.

RPG-action video games have a starting difficulty level like Casual, Normal, Veteran, Hardcore and Insanity. Is it possible to do something like this for tabletop RPGs?

With D&D, there's an ability point buy system, but I don't know how that affects the feel of the game after character creation. DMs can make encounters more difficult (although combat itself doesn't necessarily become more fast and furious for both sides). You can introduce houserules like critical tables.

Myself, I've always played at the "default" level, so I don't have any hands-on experience with that.

Has anyone ever played or DM'ed with a variation on the difficulty level to achieve a different feel, and did it work for you?

Do you think that D&D could or should explicitly detail some sort of easy, unobtrusive mechanism for varying the difficulty of a D&D campaign (ie., casual, normal, and gritty)? Or is the point buy system good enough?

 

[the Jester]

Point buy is a crappy way to set the difficulty of your game imho. Much more effective are well-designed tough encounters with smart and tactical foes.

I've run games under a variety of different "no money no prizes" sorts of house rules over the years, including a side trip to an extremely low-magic campaign for nigh-epic 3e pcs. I prefer a lower-than-default-in-3e magic style, limbs-get-chopped-off type of play and use colorful critical hits to help with that.

I don't know what kind of easy mechanism you could have to adjust the difficulty; a lot of the difference is more qualitative than quantitative. But if there were a good way to do it, that would be cool!

 

[Mark CMG]

Point buy works well enough to level the playing field between players but not so much as a way to set difficulty level of play, particularly since other factors in the overall formula tend to get changed also (like rarity of magic, types of creatures introduced in play, number of encounters and number of opponents per encounter, etc.).

 

[ThirdWizard]

To ramp up difficulty, you could start with EL+3 as a standard encounter and go up from there. Don't use higher level monsters, just more monsters, as it works out better, in my experience.

 

[Diamond Cross]

Actually it is very possible to have these kinds of encounters.

Especially in 3.5e.

However, it is simulated with number of hit dice. A mini boss will have more HD than a grunt and a boss might be few levels (or CR in 3.5e).

Here's an example. In one encounter you can have a pack of dogs. There are ten normal wolves but the alpha male is a dire wolf, which would be more powerful than the normal wolves.

A DM is pretty much free to determine the HD and HP of any given creature he wants.

Many creatures have ranges of HD, such as say 6 to 13. The more HD the more powerful a creature is.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

To ramp up difficulty, you could start with EL+3 as a standard encounter and go up from there. Don't use higher level monsters, just more monsters, as it works out better, in my experience.

This is one good way to accomplish a higher difficulty level in D&D. Especially using more critters tends to even out the action economy, which generally favors the players when they gang up on fewer, more powerful foes.

 

[jedavis]

At one point I wrote a script to generate monsters using random ability scores, rolled on 3d6, to increase variation (as a counter to the Spreadsheet Warriors, so you can't assume that any given goblin has AC15 and 3 HP, and then use it to optimize your power attack bonus). I then decided to extend it to 4d6 drop 1 and 5d6 drop 2; my group was playing with 5d6 drop 2 at the time, so I was curious to see how much of a difference 10s vs. 5d6 drop 2 made for monster ability scores. The players were sufficiently scared of the "turbo owlbears" that we all agreed to use 4d6 drop 1 thereafter.

Along a similar vein, I keep meaning to try a "3d6 in-order ability scores" campaign; I imagine it would increase difficulty (and casualties) by a fair bit...

On the encounter design end of things, I agree in general that increasing number of weak foes is a better idea than increasing hit dice; if you increase hit dice, you risk making it impossible for PCs to save against a creature's abilities, or being trivially torn to pieces as a result of higher BaB, or being unable to effect the creature with spells because its saves are too high. With more creatures, you can increase the encounter difficulty without creating degenerate odds for any given roll (granted, you'd have to add a lot of HD... but still).

Also, adding templates tends to be much easier mathematically than adding HD. I especially like Pathfinder's Simple Advanced template for this purpose.

 

[howandwhy99]

It depends upon the kind of difficulty you're talking about.

Some games focus on emotional difficulty for the situation the players are addressing.

Others work more like puzzle difficulty with low difficulty being akin to tic-tac-toe and the high end being games like chess.

Another thing difficulty may refer to is simply odds. It's chance as in gambling games. The chance of success on the randomizing mechanism can be higher or lower based upon past outcomes.

In D&D terms, here are some examples of each.

1. The PC is viewed by the player as a hero, but something happens and now other characters aren't treating him or her as such. This can lead to interesting stories, but it also is challenging the player to work out who the PC is and what they want them to be.

2. The PC party is 1st level, but decided to try and get as far down the dungeon levels as possible. Now they are facing opponents not just numerically more powerful than before, but significantly more complex in combat tactics, out of encounter strategies, similarly powered allies, and commensurate quantity and effect in ability options. 5th level is not simply higher odds to a roll, but a more complex structure within which to learn how to accomplish one's goals.

3. This is easiest really. The ACs of your foes, their attack bonuses, the DCs for your dice rolls, are all at a statistical chance. If you're in the 4th level part of the dungeon (world) and about a 4th level party, you stand a solid chance at die rolls. The same party in an easier part of the dungeon faces easier odds. And conversely, they face lower odds for levels above the group's.

IME, much of D&D play is mastering type 2 challenges to avoid type 3 difficulty (die rolls) in order to advance quickly and/or achieve one's goals more adeptly.


Another type of difficulty often seen in videogames is the manual dexterity needed for joystick use. With different interfaces this type of challenge has really expanded with consoles like Wii.

Mario Bros. level 1-1 may be dead simple to most given the year is currently 2011, but when videogames first arrived most players weren't as capable with a game controller as they are now. Level 8-4 requires significantly greater dexterity. By playing the game that ability is increased by a dedicated player. This is part of computer game design, the learning curve the game requires for the actions the players are performing.

Computer games really are "The greatest game of thumb wars ever created".

 

[NoWayJose]

It depends upon the kind of difficulty you're talking about.

Yes, I realized that the definition of "difficulty" is still up in the air. You mentioned emotional (maybe moral) choices, puzzles, etc. I can also imagine that "difficult" means realistic and gritty, as in you're 5th level but a lucky dagger strike from a petty goblin can still unexpectedly drop you (forget the bloodied buffer). I don't know if D&D could succeed in creating that experience, and if it would be any fun.

I remember those Fighting Fantasy choose-your-adventure books. When you face certain obstacles, there was usually a clever way of circumventing it, if you said the right thing or used the right item. The alternative was just to fight, but the book might 'punish' you by forcing you to fight a high Strength, high Stamina monster.

Movies are another example. Some action movies is just one battle after another, and there's no real tension. Other action thrillers may have only one or two fast and furious action scenes which really puts you at the edge of your seat because the protagonist seems so human and you're not entirely confident that he'll make it through alive.

And if you're playing a video game on Insanity, you're probably not going to rush into battle like you would on Normal difficulty, so you play more carefully and methodically.

I was wondering if D&D might succeed in this fashion by increasing the difficulty levels. Instead of expecting you to fight every encounter, the adventure module might almost expect you to think of alternatives, especially if the players don't feel confident that they will beat every encounter like they're used to in a standard D&D game. This might seem contrary to the spirit of D&D, and especially to the philosophy of 4E, but for someone like me who considers consecutive battles to be often repetitive and tiresome (tactics is not the end-all-be-all for me), could it work to increase difficulty to tweak the feel of D&D?

And like a video game, could the difficulty level be layered over the standard adventure so that you could play one way or another without segmenting your customers?

 

[Scott DeWar]

i do not know if any one has mentioned Trailblazer or pathfinder encounter design, but they have a system that allows for varieing levels of difficulty. i would reper to you the pages, but I have been drinking and things are getting a bit blury for me. Sorry. I can tell you that it is in the oathfinder core rule book for patfinder and the trailblazer document can be found here on en world. It was created by Wulf ratbane of bad ax games i think.