DM Encounter Advice

[Prophet2b]

I need some advice as a DM...

First of all, one thing I really hate in D&D is the idea that as you level up, you only ever face monsters tailored to your level. So I usually design my sessions with that in mind. Obviously, as a general rule, whatever the PC's fight they can beat - but I like to put things in the world that they just have no chance of beating at that level (because, realistically, that is the case) as well as things that don't stand the foggiest chance against them. I think it's more realistic.

The question I have is - should I stop doing that altogether? Should the PC's be able to rush in and take out everything via combat if they so choose to do? How many options should be available to them? Should it be that every encounter can be solved three ways: combat, social interaction, or stealth? I like giving them options, but...

I'm asking this after today's session, because it went something like this:

The party is 3rd level in Eberron (so, really a very decent level for Eberron) - they have a human swordsage, human cleric, orc druid, and changeling beguiler. The beguiler hasn't really gotten to use her abilities much, though, as everything has been predominantly combat oriented throughout the campaign so far - and what social interaction and other stuff they did while in Sharn she wasn't the only one doing at the time (they had a bard, too, for a while until he ran off with some bugbears to visit Xen'drik).

So I designed today's session to be very strongly tailored for the beguiler. A creature in the Eldeen Reaches had gathered together an army of ogres, kobolds, and goblins and was trying to turn them into aberrations (dolgrim, etc. - there were a lot of dolgrim in the cave). I should note here that these creatures were willingly taking part in this - though I can't say why, because some of my players read this board. Some friends (and family) of the party had been captured by said bad guys and were probably up for some aberration altering themselves.

Now, ahead of time I had prepared for a dryad to help them (in a limited fashion - but still help), a goblin (who decided he actually didn't want to become an aberration) for them to find and who might help them, some back passages into the cave system, etc. I figured that with the right advice and aid (and it wouldn't even need to be too much, at that) the party could handle it - especially using the beguiler's abilities to get in unnoticed.

I had designed the encounter so that the monsters simply could not be beaten - not all of them anyway. There were too many, the party wasn't strong enough, it was simply impossible. But it wasn't supposed to be a hack 'n slash adventure.

And when they first reached the cave entrance, things looked promising. The druid spoke with a rabbit and convinced him to go into the cave and scout things out. I thought, "Okay, hey, if they come up with something that's better than me just handing them information through the dryad or goblin - we'll see how this plays out first before I do anything else."

The rabbit runs in and several minutes later runs out - with some dolgrim behind him. The party sees the dolgrim and without waiting to talk to the rabbit about what he saw inside decided to charge them - so they did. They then pushed their way back into the cave, fighting dolgrim, ogres, goblins, and kobolds. And more just kept coming.

Two party members nearly died....... twice. The beguiler didn't do much beguiling. The cleric and druid ran out of spells. They finally had to fall back (with a near dead party member getting captured in the end). And I kept getting asked, "How were we supposed to deal with this? This is impossible. I can't believe you threw this at us."

Well... yes - it was impossible for sheer hack 'n slash fighting. I had never intended for it to be that kind of encounter.

Was that wrong? Should I design every encounter so that the party, if they so chose to do, can run in and kick every thing's a**?

The whole time I felt really bad and just kept thinking, "It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. If they had talked to the rabbit, they would have figured that out." Or if I'd have had the goblin show up... or the dryad... (I didn't do those, though, because I thought the rabbit would give them enough preliminary information to get things moving and people planning - to start with, at least).

What advice can you give to me? What am I doing wrong here? I know I'm far from a great DM. I'm still trying to learn. I do way, way better on the whole social interaction side of things than I do on the combat encounter side. But I thought this session was going to be a really fun, sneaky, stealthy session - not a "oh god, we're overwhelmed, stuck, and now fighting for our lives, while also frustrated and upset because this is completely and totally impossible" kind of session.

Advice? Please...? (Feel free to make fun of, mock, and chastise me for poor DMing, too - I have it coming. Won't take it personally. I need to learn...)

 

[Brazeku]

I don't think you did anything wrong, I just think your players have developed an expectation that anytime they see something that looks like it could be nasty, they have to kill it. You can just inform them that this isn't always the case, or you can be more subtle about it by throwing some harmless looking or openly helpful 'bridge' NPCs around to draw the party into social interactions.

Say for example you want to have the party parlay with some mindflayers one session. Well, a good way to drop some hints is to have them come across a badly wounded mindflayer, say, battling with some creature. This creature then also attacks the party (before they get a chance to act), so the party now has to work with the mindflayer just to stay alive. During the combat, have the mindflayer maybe use a curing wand on some party members, and there you have it - you've established some trust for an unusual ally to work with the party, and possibly draw them into a more socially oriented series of encounters, where regularly the impulse would be 'kill kill kill'.

 

[SiderisAnon]

"It wasn't supposed to turn out this way. If they had talked to the rabbit, they would have figured that out."

That's the best quote I've read in some time. I do believe I'm stealing it.


As for your dilemma, I believe that what you are doing is completely fair, as long as you have made your players aware that the way your world works is that sometimes things cannot be conquered by a "kick in the front door approach". My players know this and have known this for years. Yes, they still get frustrated sometimes, feeling like there's no way to defeat a challenge, but they know to look for alternatives and creative answers. All in all, it makes for a better game.

Plus, once they realize this, you can use it to your advantage. I once had an adventure where the party spent most of the session trying to figure out to get into a mine. There was this large, clanking, fire-breathing beast that had moved in and taken over. Turns out, it was a group of goblins stealing from the mine who had set up this fake monsters and were doing the fire with oil and such. It was a blast for me, because they were all terrified of what the monster might do to them. They were so terribly relieved when they finally realized it was fake and they could go after the goblins directly.

 

[Gargoyle]

I've had this type of thing happen with every group I've ever had. I find that it's best to warn them at the beginning of the campaign that sometimes they will encounter enemies that are too tough to defeat.

I don't think you were unfair, but you could try to be even more fair, so to speak. Players only perceive the world by what you tell them, and they sometimes need to be given very obvious warning signs when they are approaching a dangerous encounter. You really have to hit them over the head with obvious clues sometimes...it's not that they're stupid, they just have such a limited perception of the world. Some ideas:

- An obviously higher level group of adventurers was decimated when they went into a dungeon.
- "Aw, he's just a harmless bunny....look at the bones man!" NPC's flat out warning them
- Dreams portending their doom, fortune tellers, omens that someone with knowledge: arcane can interpret

And it's just as important to give them an out. They need to have an alternate path set before them. For instance, if you want them to negotiate, have an NPC suggest it. (or have an NPC they don't like or don't trust suggest that they NOT negotiate). Or have them learn that the bad guys don't necessarily attack on sight and may be reasoned with (or conned).

At the very least make it possible, maybe even easy, for them to escape if they have the good sense to realize they are in over their heads. Perhaps an underground river leading into the unknown could motivate them to jump on a raft to get away, or there are horses stabled near the entrance, or some other means of getting the heck out.

It's tricky to throw encounters at them that they can't beat through combat because it always risks a TPK, which usually isn't fun. I'd be cautious because some groups just don't ever get it. And remember that even an encounter they are supposed to be able to beat sometimes turns ugly due to bad die rolls or the DM making a mistake...so purposely making up encounters they can't beat isn't always necessary.

 

[billd91]

Look over the encounter design sections of the DMG. There is a discussion there about tailored vs status quo encounters. The status quo encounters do not relate to the PCs levels at all. They're simply there (like the great wyrm red dragon believed to inhabit the caves on the Mountain of Fire, or some such thing) at whatever level the DM wants them to be. If the PCs go seek them out too early, they die. Simple.

The important thing to do if you're including status quo encounters is to make sure you tell the players that there are some out there and if they fail to figure out which ones they are, either before they go there or shortly after triggering the encounter, and take appropriate measures, they will probably die.
I've done this in adventures I've run. In one, geared for PCs 1st - 4th level, there is a bullette in the area. It's pretty tough to deal with for those levels of characters. So I put in plenty of clues about what it was: churned earth, dead horse remains, etc. They figured out it was something too big for them to try to tackle and successfully avoided it. Had they fought it, they would have been lunch.
Put in the clues that the place is dangerous, put out the idea to the players that there are places in play that are too tough for the PCs below varlous levels, and you should be OK. They'll learn to go to those encounters when they are more likely to be ready.

 

[shilsen]

First of all, one thing I really hate in D&D is the idea that as you level up, you only ever face monsters tailored to your level.

That idea's a misconception. Check the suggestions in the DMG for what kind of ELs your PCs should face. I don't have my DMG in front of me, but I believe the recommendation is that something like 1 in every 20 encounters should be so powerful that it's a sure TPK if the PCs don't run, and something like 15-20% of encounters should be strong enough to probably kill 1 or 2 PCs.

So I usually design my sessions with that in mind. Obviously, as a general rule, whatever the PC's fight they can beat - but I like to put things in the world that they just have no chance of beating at that level (because, realistically, that is the case) as well as things that don't stand the foggiest chance against them. I think it's more realistic.

So do I. But do you put things in the world that have not the foggiest chance against the PCs and which they can beat up without any effort? That's an important part of realism too, as well as making players happy by letting them revel once in a while in how powerful their PCs are.

All of that being said, I think the most important thing to do is to talk to your players and explain what sort of preferences and preconceptions you're bringing to the table. Tell them that the world is going to contain many things they can't hope to face in combat and survive (especially at 3rd level!), and that their choices may bring them up against such enemies, in which case brains - and often running - will be required. Once the players know that's the case, it's far more likely that their characters will act with that assumption.

And one more suggestion - don't ever make assumptions about what the PCs will do in a given situation. If there's one thing DMing experience has taught me, it's that players/PCs are capable of doing just about anything in a given situation, however strange or off the wall or simply wrong you as a DM may think the choice is. It's far better to create the given situation and let the PCs do what they will with it. As soon as you go in thinking "It's supposed to go this way...", I think you're asking for trouble.

 

[delericho]

The question I have is - should I stop doing that altogether?

No, absolutely not. If you want to be kind, you probably want to tell your players up-front that they won't be able to handle everything they might encounter, and if they rush in where angels fear to tread then they'll find out just why the angels fear to tread there.

Besides, you should also occasionally drop in trivially easy encounters, such as 10th level PCs vs a horde of goblins. They'll walk through it, but I guarantee they'll have a whale of a time being the big damn heroes they should be.

What you should do, though, is avoid situations where the encounter difficulty suddenly ramps up without warning. If the party have been fighting kobolds, don't suddenly hit them with a Great Wyrm Red Dragon. At the least, they should see scorch marks on the walls, and probably hear the distant rumbling of the dragon's breathing. Or something.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Prophet, from reading your post I'm pretty sure you're a good DM. Your desire to give the beguiler a chance to shine is a good sign. Your original instinct to provide a variety of encounters - talking, fighting, stealth, overpowering, very easy - was 100% correct. Trust your instincts.

It's important that you make it clear to the players that some encounters will be too tough for them, so they're aware that non-combat options are sometimes required. As you say, players often have the expectation that all encounters will have the same EL as (or very close to) the group's level. This is actually not what it recommends in the DMG, which is in favour of a much wider variety of EL.

There was only one small problem with the overwhelming encounter in your post (which from the sound of things was a success anyway, as it wasn't a TPK), the players didn't get quite enough of a chance to realise how tough it was. There was just a tiny mistake imo - when the rabbit came out you shouldn't have had it being chased. That started the encounter off with the PCs believing it was a small, manageable monster group. So given that info, it was understandable that they fought. Instead you could just have had the abberrations not spot the rabbit, and the PCs would have gotten the info.

 

[Prophet2b]

Thanks for the replies, everyone! The gist I'm getting is: communicate more with the group about the types of encounters they'll... well, encounter. I probably should have thought of that - I just kind of took it for granted. Thanks. Good advice.

I was wondering... if it seems like the party is just generally more interested in running in and killing things, how much should the DM be expected to cater to that? I prefer a mixed bag - combat, stealth, and social interaction. Though, I have to admit, our individual sessions usually do end up being more focused on one, maybe two, but rarely all three. But if the players are largely not interested in a stealth-based adventure, should I just leave those out altogether? How much of the game should be (more or less) exactly what the players want, and how much should be what I want to throw at them? Most of the time, I think we'd be largely in agreement as to what we want in a session - but what about when we disagree?

There was only one small problem with the overwhelming encounter in your post (which from the sound of things was a success anyway, as it wasn't a TPK), the players didn't get quite enough of a chance to realise how tough it was.

Doug McCrae, I believe you're right. They didn't have enough information to realize the encounter was beyond their ability. Although, they did know that a much larger group of Gatekeepers and Wardens of the Wood (some of which were higher level than the PC's) had failed at attacking the cave. But, yeah, they needed more information. And next time, I'll definitely try to remember not to open up the possibility for that kind of encounter before]/i] they get all the information they need...

 

[shilsen]

I was wondering... if it seems like the party is just generally more interested in running in and killing things, how much should the DM be expected to cater to that? I prefer a mixed bag - combat, stealth, and social interaction. Though, I have to admit, our individual sessions usually do end up being more focused on one, maybe two, but rarely all three. But if the players are largely not interested in a stealth-based adventure, should I just leave those out altogether? How much of the game should be (more or less) exactly what the players want, and how much should be what I want to throw at them? Most of the time, I think we'd be largely in agreement as to what we want in a session - but what about when we disagree?

This is another thing I'd suggest talking to your players about (but then I suggest clear communication between DMs and players about just about everything). While the game should be fun for the players, it should also be fun for the DM, and if running games that are heavy on the run-in-and-kill-things angle will be boring for you, that's not a good recipe for long-term effective DMing. Tell your players that you need a little variety to enjoy yourself as a DM, and while you'll be happy to provide a lot of what they want, you'd also like to vary things and provide some of the things that you enjoy running and seeing players deal with. I don't think it should be all one-way traffic; rather, it's a question of finding a balance that caters to everyone's tastes to some degree. So talk to your players about it and see if you can't find a workable approximation thereof.