DMs: How Do You Clue Players In That...

[khantroll]

My players are learning, but they still make stupid mistakes. I consider it to be my fault. We played Epic Level for a little two long. Now that we're back at 1st, they've got to learn all over again. I explain to them what it is, how many there are, and ask them if they are sure they want to fight.

Last session, though, I had to resort to pure old Deus Ex Machina. They were out numbered and out gunned by the enemy (facing a regiment with magical support), and they still wanted to try to tactical defeat them. I tried warning them, obvious displays of force, etc, before I finally had to insert a different armed force and have that NPC order them off.

 

[Janx]

It used to be this dialog was all a GM needed to have:

GM: Are you sure you want to do that?
PC: um....yeah.
GM: OK, something bad happens. You're dead.

Granted, it was also fun once players were actually trained to re-think their response, to then ask that question during trivial situations as well, just to make them paranoid.

 

[Almacov]

My players are getting remarkably good at knowing when to turn tail, shake mail, and flee.
I don't think they would have become as sharp about it if they hadn't encountered a situation in which half the party charged ahead while being shredded by brass angels with lightning-spewing gear-shaped twin chakrams (waking more up from their centuries-long stasis as they pressed on further onward into a tunnel of unknown length) and the other half focused on staying alive until they had a chance to get out. The latter half saw daylight again...

It probably helps that the game I'm referring to is being run with 4e D&D though, which has long combats and generally gives you ample time to figure out that things are dire enough to warrant retreat.

 

[AntiStateQuixote]

Mixed bag for me.

Recent "over their heads fights" from Gardmore Abbey:

1. A bunch of mummies, scarab swarms, and a flameskull - party steps in, flameskull drops fireball, mummies rush. Three of party bloodied and one down in first round. They wisely decided to retreat and I didn't go all tactical on them to stop it.

2. Facing a large red dragon with lots o' kobold allies: they didn't take the hint until after one of them was dead (not down, dead) - and then just looked at me like I was a total bastard for killing one of them. Again, once they decided to retreat I pulled punches to keep from TPK, but I did take down (but not kill) another PC who was later ransomed back from the dragon.

I've used everything from the "scary detailed description" to flat out telling players "you can't handle this fight" but I prefer to let them find out the hard way every once in a while (as above). They know I run a modified sandbox game where challenges will usually be "level appropriate" but there can and will be high and low level encounters. They often get some sense of this in downtime.

For example, the party right now is level 9. They have heard about Calastryx, the three headed red dragon rampaging on the east end of the Nentir Vale. They don't know it, but they're pretty sure (and probably right) that they cannot handle the fight right now. They got that purely from storytelling and rumors while in town.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

When I posted this:

In our group, we've learned to detect the subtle clues that we are outclassed.

Phrases like "it has the drop on you", a lengthy description of a creature's majesty and awe-inspiring presence are clues, for instance. Or its cavalier acceptance of our party's appearance.

Because no DMs on our group hold back.

I should have mentioned that it is effective at least in part because everyone in the group is a veteran player who remembers stuff like:

GM: Are you sure you want to do that?
PC: um....yeah.
GM: OK, something bad happens. You're dead.

And that many DMs in the group:

...run a modified sandbox game where challenges will usually be "level appropriate" but there can and will be high and low level encounters.

 

[Janx]

When I posted this:



I should have mentioned that it is effective at least in part because everyone in the group is a veteran player who remembers stuff like:



And that many DMs in the group:

Yeah!

The "Are you sure" question is probably the most blatant way to do it without dictating a PCs response. Danny's example strikes me as a smoother way to integrate it into the flavor text.

I also would be surprised if there were any DMs who absolutely ran a perfect matching of party level to CR/EL of encounters. I have no doubt that even in the most "balanced" campaign, there's still some way to run into the monster that's too big.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I've always mixed in enough "not appropriate" challenges so that the default player response is to assume that they might not be able to handle something, then look for evidence that they can, instead of the other way around. I consciously got the group to there by telling them we were going there, and then racheting up the danger and risk slowly over the course of about six months, until we got it where we wanted it. (This was with Fantasy Hero years ago instead of D&D. It's easier to do in FH, but the attitude has carried forward ever since.)

Then, since the players really enjoy digging out information, we assume that any fight that they go into without any information could be anything from cakewalk to TPK. Accordingly, the players are quite happy to indulge their preferences and go digging for clues all the time, everywhere. I don't have to slip in a reference to some orcs that got mauled last week by the same monster to show them that it is tough. They go looking for bones, blood, etc. themselves.

Then on those rare occasions where this all falls apart, we'll go roughly one of two ways. If the players are on top of their game, reasonably alert, but have hit something tough without any information, yet decided to try it anyway, then we'll let the chips fall where they may. Sometimes, intuition and heroic action carries the day, and sometimes it doesn't. It helps using a system with some retreat or other desperation options. OTOH, if the players are really tired, and possibly zoning out on me, I'll stop the game and ask them. We spend a couple of minutes recapping what they know, and then they decide. Usually they back away in these circumstances due to the unknown, but they've surprised me, too.

Edit: I should also note that this group runs away from easy encounters (that either seem hard or where they just don't know) about twice as often as they get mauled or near mauled from tough encounters. I let them run away without clueing them in the same way I let them get mauled occasionally. Sometimes, the stuff they get into when running away provides the most memorable part of an evening.

 

[Janx]

I've always mixed in enough "not appropriate" challenges so that the default player response is to assume that they might not be able to handle something, then look for evidence that they can, instead of the other way around. I consciously got the group to there by telling them we were going there, and then racheting up the danger and risk slowly over the course of about six months, until we got it where we wanted it. (This was with Fantasy Hero years ago instead of D&D. It's easier to do in FH, but the attitude has carried forward ever since.)

I think it should be noted, that this method requires the same DM preparedness as Danny's method of including an audible clue in the flavor text.

Whether you tell the players when introducing the encounter or make them dig for it, the DM needs to be prepared with some kind of clue, evidence, indicator that this encounter is weaker/stronger. The DM should at least be thinking about it, should the question come up.

Contrast that to the extreme case of 2 orc encounters where one is 4 orcs at CR1 each and the other is 4 orcs at CR20. The GM could neglect to create any difference that a PC could see or investigate and thus have no way of knowing that the strong orcs are actually stronger.

I think Danny's way and CJ's way are both fine in that there is a way to figure out if the encounter is too strong. Whether the PCs look for it or sense it is the player's problem, as the DM has done his within industry standard tolerances.

I suspect that it may not be Generally Accepted Practice (GAP) to create an encounter that looks easy but is really a TPK with absolutely no possible indicator as to that fact.

It is probable that most GMs won't do this deliberately. I do suspect that some lesser variant of it does happen as a GM mistake. If nothing else, GM's should review their encounters before running for such a situation in the interest of fair play.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I think it should be noted, that this method requires the same DM preparedness as Danny's method of including an audible clue in the flavor text.

That's true in general, but not true in my specific case when you look at the wider picture in my games. I'm not creating the clues so that the players get the information they need. Rather, I'm creating the clues because the players like to find clues that matter--then making that useful in combat scoping as just another way of making it matter. So yeah, I need to create the clues, but I don't need to do anything "extra" to handle the combat balance issue. For me, adding in the audible clue would be entirely about combat balance, and thus would be extra work that the players probably woudn't pick up on very easily.

Naturally, everyone is a bit different on this question, but my general answer for this kind of problem is not copy the specifics of what other people do, but examine why those specifics work for them. So my general suggestion is "find things that you and the group want to do anyway, then determine how to tweak those things to handle the issue."

 

[Crothian]

I don't clue them in any more then anything else. They usually have a good idea what is going to be a tough fight or not. And frankly the TPKs we have don't come from the bosses or super tough creatures but from bad luck or just a bad situation of circumstances.