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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dragonwriter" data-source="post: 5239385" data-attributes="member: 54988">Honestly, it depends on what style of game you want to go for (and it can't be called "Bad DMing" anyway): a by-the-rules, hard-and-fast, lethal game or a more relaxed experience. The two online games I'm running tend to have some serious fights, and character death has occurred somewhat regularly, as I don't pull monster's punches (or claws, fangs, etc. <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=";)" />). But even with those styles, pulling a punch or ending a fight so the character(s) live should never be considered "Bad DMing." You can make it work for you, also, by making it into a hook. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" />[sblock=My own story about such a thing...]Saturday online game I run is around level 6/7. They head into a swamp, don't find what they were supposed to find and start a stakeout at a place the monsters were and left. Night passes, nothing happens. They build a HUGE fire and it attracts a pair of manticores. Big fight, Druid blows most/all his spells, party badly injured, yadda yadda... Fight attracted a Juvenile Black Dragon, being in his territory. He demands tribute in either meat or coin, from inside a fog cloud the Druid created during the fight. Party doesn't pay up and makes the dragon really mad, starts a fight. They manage to beat the dragon up and it retreats...Dragon follows them from high above until they make camp. In the middle of the night, it starts doing flybys and strafes with its breath weapon... 1 person in the group has legit Darkvision, and he only has a few throwing hammers/axes left. Since I knew they couldn't get out of this alive, Dragon offered them a deal... Deal turned out to be almost as dangerous, but it kept them from getting killed. (...Mostly. 1 almost died and the Druid's beastie-buddy got eaten.)[/sblock]Sometimes high-power CRs happen when you don't mean them to... I've seen groups take on stuff that should have been nasty fights and turned it into a slaughter, when simple, weakling fights got bad thanks to crappy rolls... Part of it is, of course, the dice. Other times, it's the players not thinking things through.Of course, it also makes a difference that you don't have a full party working on this, at the moment. Thok and Kye can only do so much... When you have the whole group together, you be a little more assured, as long as the dice don't turn one way or the other. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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