DMs are too easy on their players

[Arkhandus]

According to some people on this board if you so much as intentionally plan an encounter that has a definite chance of killing a PC or two your an adversarial DM.

I'm not sure anyone here has said anything like that.

What Edena was describing in the first post was constant, unceasing threats to the PCs and a determination to harass them until they die or quit the game. That is basically, by definition, adversarial (Me versus Them). The DM wants to hound the players and throw impossible threats against them sometimes just because; to see if they can squirm their way out of dying, if that's even possible.


I challenge my players pretty often, but most of the time they're relatively safe and unmolested, traveling and crafting and roleplaying without any expectation of doom. They've come close enough at times to worry, but they know I won't go PKing or TPKing on them as long as they avoid doing anything too stupid with their PCs.

The PCs in my games have faced near-TPKs several times, and have asked more than once if there was any way they could even win those fights. Of course they did win every time, albeit with the occasional PC death or many PCs falling unconscious, because I was only trying to give them a challenge. But my players know well enough that despite my frequent challenging of their abilities, I've never actually killed many of their PCs, and they know I won't actually TPK them unless they do something stupid (they've come close at times, since there is at least one impulsive/hot-headed PC in every game, but so far they've managed to avoid the worst foes lurking in every territory they've traveled through).

The PCs hadn't made enemies of any kind of uber-foe, so as long as they didn't go putzing around in the lair of anything truly powerful, they weren't really in any danger of facing an impossible foe (though they're often convinced that any major foe, be it a chuul or an allosaurus or a dark elven wizard, is probably going to exterminate them; they just tend to be mostly wrong on that account, cuz I never throw anything impossible at them as long as they avoid actively doing anything to get the attention of such things).

 

[Arkhandus]

However, the elven wizard bought a Stonestone scroll (old version of Stoneskin, allowed in my game), cast it earlier, and is Stoneskinned.

The dragon, thanks to it's heavy plate, does not pass onward ... the mage does not pass right through the dragon because the dragon's momentum is carrying it onward.
Instead, the dragon is simply stopped, dead, it's armor crushing under the impact with the mage. It accrues considerable damage as it goes from full speed to 0 speed instantaneously.

Then, the dragon falls to the ground with a wham. And it takes one heck of a lot more damage as it hits that solid ground far below.

The fight is on.

An example that uses a houseruled and, probably broken, spell (no 4th-level spell should make you impervious to a meteor, or Gruumsh himself punching you in the head, or an ancient dragon slamming into you at high speed, let alone protect you from multiple such impacts; this is not 1E or 2E, and mages do not have quite the same drastic weaknesses as they did back then) is not a very good example.

And anyway, the dragon would've just burned them to a crisp or whatever with a breath weapon. It could always snatch up their charred corpse as it falls, and then play with its food.

If you throw impossibly tough enemies at your PCs when they haven't really done anything to draw such creatures' ire, then you are being adversarial. The PCs are the protagonists, they're not Red Shirts just standing around waiting to die from Random Unforeseen Threat of the Week #47. Thus why I take issue with that kind of viewpoint; it's alright if everyone at the table is there to wargame against one another, rather than carrying pretensions of roleplay and adventuring. That just isn't the case with most people, because most people have different preferences.


I'm not sure if any of this is getting through, but I just wanted to try addressing these points.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

Ok, time to set the record straight.

My first post was meant to send a message, but also to be humorous.

Here is what should REALLY happen:

- A group of friends gets together, and considers how to have a good time.
- They decide to play D&D.
- They ask if anyone will volunteer to be the DM (and perhaps, DMing will be a rotating job.)
- Someone volunteers to be DM.
- The DM and his *FRIENDS* sit down and discuss what kind of game they'd like to play, be it hard or easy or roleplaying heavy or roleplaying light or whatever.
- The DM and players agree on what kind of game would satisfy them all.
- The DM and players work out the rules they will use for play.
- The players create characters. The DM selects his adventure.
- Everyone plays D&D, and hopefully everyone has a good time.
- After the game, the group of *FRIENDS* discusses how to increase the fun the next time around ... and who will DM next, what kind of game they want next session, what changes in rules should occur, and so on.

I was bluffing in my first post, and a lot of you fell for the bluff.
I played Evil DM, and you believed it.
But a good DM and his friends would discuss matters beforehand. If the DM was going to be blustery, in-your-face, evil and nasty, and all that stuff, the players would know about this beforehand, expect it, and - most importantly of all - the players would have AGREED to it.
Or, as follows:

The DM: ARRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH.
The Players: We knew you were going to do that!
The DM: ARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH.
The Players: Break out that 2 litre bottle of pepsi, could you?
The DM: Sure thing.

I rarely, if ever, kill PCs.
When I have killed PCs, I have always made options available for resurrection and the regaining of items.
I learned from that experience where the DM had his devil NPC take everyone's souls (mentioned in an earlier post in this thread.) I was 11 years old at the time. I saw what that did. I saw the anger and misery that caused. I vowed never to make that mistake when I DMed.

-

The problem, is how to defeat BOREDOM.
In this, I'm faced with a paradoxical problem that has plagued DMs since Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson created the game.
As a DM, I need to challenge my players, and D&D involves a risk of dying ... that's a part of the challenge, that PCs can die.

But if I kill PCs, feelings get hurt. You know that. I know that. You can say people are 'mature' and can take it, but we all know very well that nobody likes losing characters.
Besides, these are my friends. I'm DMing to help them to a good time, not an unpleasant experience.

But ...

If I do not challenge my players, do not make the threat of death a reality, then they grow bored. Boredom will eventually kill the campaign. Boredom also leads to group fighting that might break up the group. I've seen both happen.
I can mitigate the onslaught of boredom with roleplaying emphasis, with puzzles, with all manner of challenges that don't relate to life-and-death situations, but in the end the game drags us all back to that life-and-death situation. It's just inherent in the game. (Look at the rules ... most of them involve how to kill things, or how things kill the PCs. That's the way D&D is, like it or not.)

I don't want my players to be bored. That's no fun.
I don't want to hurt feelings by killing PCs. That's no fun.
What to do?

Well ...

Bluff. Illusion. Make the players think there is a threat, when there isn't.
In my first post in this thread, I pulled this bluff on you. And even though I stated specifically in that post that I wasn't about killing characters at all, the bluff worked so well that many of you bought it ... to the point of depicting me as this maniacal killer of an antagonistic DM from hell.

Well, if I can bluff you, I can bluff my players.
As long as they *think* they are in danger, they (if they enjoy challenges) will enjoy themselves.
But since they are not losing their characters, no feelings are hurt, and the game ends happily. (Or, if a character is killed, a way out to bring that character back mitigates any hurt feelings, while amplifying the illusion.)

That dragon above is such an illusion. I went to the trouble of re-reading Ancient Wyrm Red Dragons in the Monster Manual. This beastie is up against a party of 6 5th level characters.
Of course there will be mitigating circumstances, that give the party an edge. The point, is to make these mitigating circumstances subtle enough the party doesn't realize I did anything. The houseruled Stoneskin is a case in point.
The player of the elven female wizard, will think she thought up the Stoneskin idea, heroically flew up to face the dragon, and downed it with a CRASH and a WHAM!

Why didn't the dragon fire his breath weapon? Because he wanted a fresh and tasty elven girl morsel to eat! No need for a breath weapon against one puny humanoid!
Dragons suffer from pride and overconfidence (especially when faced with one little humanoid girl.) Dragons are arrogant and condescending. Dragons know they are supreme, and the world had better realize this or pay the price!
And thus THIS dragon came in for the tasty morsel and ... well ... CRASH, WHAM!!

The party will not think I, the DM, went easy on them.
The party will think the dragon, in his overwhelming power (and it is overwhelming, compared to theirs) just decided to eat the elven girl for lunch, and got a nasty surprise instead.

The dragon, now dazed on the ground and unable to take any action for several rounds, offers the party a chance to either risk trying to kill it (while it's still helpless) or getting the heck out of there (before it recovers.)

And in any case, I pointed out that I would throw various CR encounters at the party. Not all encounters will be with CR 20 dragons!!! This is a singular encounter. Nearly all encounters will be weaker than this.
(Incidentally, it was a CR 18 encounter, really. No Dragonfear.)

So what if the elven girl did not take the tactic I described?
There were other tactics available, also employing house rules (and that, also, is a part of the illusion ... the party thinks they are weak, but actually they are much more powerful than they think.)
Yes, the other party members had tactics ready. Tactics that might have worked. (If all else failed, they could have - before the dragon arrived - climbed into the Rope Trick (old version) the bard cast, and then have been totally safe.)

-

The problem with my approach is that eventually even the best bluff is seen through (many of you saw right through my bluff in the first post, of course.)
Once my players see through my bluff, and realize there is no danger or little danger, the threat of boredom sets in again.
Then I have to figure out what to do as an alternative. And the first thing I will do is consult with my players, asking them how we can renew the fun.

 

[Mort]

That's my feeling as well. When I heard that 3.0 was going to be striving for "Balance", my I was overjoyed, but really all I was wanting (and expecting) was a basically equal power level amongst the PC classes.

I don;t really need (or want) the EL system, I'm not certain what was so idealized about a party of 4 being able to get through an encounter with 25% of their resources gone.

This seems to be the biggest misconception with the EL/CR system. There is no decree that says "thou shalt deplete the party of 25% of their resources in an equal CR fight" or "thou shalt only put the party up against an opponent of appropriate CR." The CR system is simply a tool that gives DM's guidelines. It is useful (though far from perfect) means for DMs to estimate the effectiveness of their party against certain challenges and gives an idea where a challenge should stand against certain parties.
It's also fairly easy to adapt -for example, my first 3e group were (all but one) complete newbies - I found quickly that an equal CR encounter was very difficult for them and A CR of +2 or higher was something they would need to run from - thus I knew what to expect. After a few years, they really adapted, in our 2nd campaign any encounter with a CR of lower than +2 was likely to be a complete push over (theyr tactics got that much better). In any case it's leaps and bounds better than no system at all.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

Thus, I'm saying I can't be a Tough DM, unless my players allow it. I'm not joking! That's how it is.

What we need, are for more PLAYERS to urge their DMs to be Tough DMs, to challenge them, to expect the best out of them, to not settle for boredom and inaction and using only a small part of their intellect and experience as players.

So, let's change the title. We don't need more Tough DMs. We need more players willing to accept Tough DMs.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

And, incidentally ...

ENWorld is a messageboard of extremely intelligent people. It shows. It's obvious very quickly once you start posting here.
I'd put the level of intelligence on ENWorld as being higher than that of the average college student.
Having been on ENWorld for 8 years, since nearly it's inception, I can say this with confidence.

If *I* - rushing, half asleep, groggy, and disorientated - can figure out a way for that party of 6 5th level characters to toast that dragon, then I'm quite sure that the rest of you could figure out a hundred different ways that party could fry that dragon.
Within the 3.5 rules.
Not within the 3.5 rules.
Either way, don't insult my intelligence (I am intelligent? ) by telling me that party can't beat that dragon.

There is nothing clever, devious, persistent, fiendish players cannot do ...

 

[3catcircus]

At high level, D&D has always been a superhero game. Incidentally, 'superhero' is the title of an 8th level fighter in 1e.

High level D&D is *heroic*, but it isn't "The Super Friends and Zan and Jana Hour."

 

[3catcircus]

Surely a game with harder challenges encourages exactly these sorts of uber characters? I see it in our games. The fights get tougher, the weaker characters die. Players create new more min-maxed PCs to survive in the harsher environment.

The problem I see is that the players are min-maxing and using magic items as a crutch to make up for doing things that would be considered "stupid" if done in real life (e.g. using a magic item and jumping off a building instead of *climbing* down.)

 

[ThirdWizard]

What I do is throw a CR 7 dragon at a level 5 group and let them have an interesting tactical combat where their actual abilities or tactical decisions can make or break the battle. That way there's no fudging going on, I'm not pretending to be big bad while really rooting for them, and I can play the dragon to the hilt of its abilities knowing that the battle could go either way. That seems much more fun to me.

The problem with the CR 20 dragon with fudging DM vs. level 5 party is that a level 5 wizard killing a great wyrm red dragon really really lowers the threat level of a dragon. That 1000 year old dragon there? Yeah, Bob the Apprentice took him out the other day. He had been terrorizing the country for hundreds of years and had devoured hundreds of adventurers foolish enough to face him, but he couldn't withstand the might of a 5th level guy.

How could PCs see that happen and not think that the game is a pushover?

 

[Bloodstone Press]

Amen.

When players complain that my games are too hard, I usually tell them, "If it was easy, it wouldn't be an adventure."