Do you feel cheated if an encounter isn't hard?

[Dogbrain]

What are other people's thoughts on this? In your opinion, Is it ok to have some encounters where the party basically steamrolls and uses only a small amount of resources

Absolutely. As a player, it's fun to just wade in once in a while and have some fun being "so darn buff". As a DM, I notice that players like it, too--not as a steady diet, of course. It also makes sense with my own DMing prejudices. The world isn't "balanced", so some encounters should be walkovers. By the same token, PCs need to learn when to run like scared rabbits.

 

[Trainz]

I like tough encounters. I like encounters that make me, as a player, think deeply about all the different options I have - items, possible attacks, spells, movement, with the total knowledge that a mistake could cost my character's life. The fun encounters are the ones where I'm not sure I'm going to make it out alive. The boring encounters are the ones where I'm pretty sure I'm going to get through it ok.

Heh.

In the last game in which I play a sorceror, I just got to level 10 and had to pick ONE single 5th level spell.

I choose Teleport.

RIGHT after that, we had a wilderness encounter. Long story short, the rogue was in negative hit points, the fighter was prone at 4 hit points, the druid was more or less stable, and I was the only one unscathed, and the critter still had well over half it's hit points. I told the druid to touch the other two and I teleported our asses out of there. If it hadn't been for that very newly acquired teleport, TPK.

I do like tough challenges, but once in a while I like challenges that are a cakewalk, or an unbeatable challenge that I have to flee, so that I don't feel that the world is always custom made to my current level.

Verisimilitude.

 

[Hypersmurf]

By the same token, PCs need to learn when to run like scared rabbits.

Absolutely

Can lead to some amusing situations for the DM, too.

"Gosh... a party of four 6th-level PCs just ran away from a CR2 Fiendish Hobgoblin... maybe I overdid the flavour text?"

-Hyp.

 

[Umbran]

I'm more interested in having every encounter be constructive to the story. Sometimes, the story calls for something tough, sometimes for something easy.

 

[the Jester]

Both as a player and as a dm, I like variety in my encounters.

Some too hard to face head on. Some tough fights. Some cakewalks.

What I really find amusing (as a dm) is when the epic-level party beats the EL 22 encounter in one round, but takes twelve to defeat the single CR 15 monster! I also like weird tactical situation (pack the ceiling with stirges with breath weapons, 4 per 5' square, and cover the whole dungeon with 'em; that makes a ton of CR 2 monsters that collectively pose a threat even to most high-level adventurers.)

 

[Taneel BrightBlade]

I HATE contenous cupcake fights. However I really like mid-power fights. In a campane I'm in we (level1/2 group) just finished the dread guard that was the boss of the kobald dungeon we were in. The most annoying thing about the game it I'm twice to three times the power of any other member of the group (do to playing a hunderd times more than any one but the DM.) So every other member of the group was needed to beat a room with four kobalds when I wouldwin scatchless so the rest of the group was having tough in counters I breathed though them like, well, something weaker than a house cat. don't beleive me? Check the Monster Manual. so every onewas getting in big battles while I went into the next room (identical) and massacred them all. So tough enconters would be nice.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I think I'm annoyed by lots of easy fights because they make the game feel kind of video-gamish. Fight though mooks then reach the Boss.

 

[Creamsteak]

As a player, my hat of encounters that would have been harder if I was the one DMing knows no limit. I've probably DM'd too much and written far too many combat oriented encounters, so if I'm fighting a reasonably intelligent opponent, I expect them to use their abilities to the best they can think. If the target is in the "super intelligent" department, they better be able to think about more than just the current round of combat, and consider what they are going to do next round.

Maybe it's because I'm used to thinking of encounters from the DMs side, but when an opponent provokes an attack of opportunity that could be completely negated by a 5 foot step or less, I feel cheated a bit. It makes sense for the Troll to attack the nearest target and fail to consider moving into the optimum position for reach, but if it's a 6th level spiked-chain master of sorts, I expect to be tripped and disarmed and attacked to the best of their abilities. And if it's a Mind Flayer with lots of class levels in a casting class, I want them to think before they try to use their tentacles on the fighter when there is a rogue who could flank or a wizard who seems to have readied a spell.

Easy fights are fine, as long as they are easy because the enemy fights to it's best and that's not nearly good enough. Easy fights are fine when it's the dice. Easy fights are fine when the players choose to make it easy by expending extra "umph" in the form of resources. However, I don't want a fight to be easy because the DM doesn't realize that an encounter should not always be handled like your bread and butter "orcs attack you" method. A kobold assassin is not a slightly stronger kobold, and a cloud giant is not an ogre.

On the other side of the coin, if your "bread and butter" encounter is to ambush the characters or some other method, try something else once in a while. I've played with a group where every single encounter the group has ever been in was someone ambushing the group. The DM was convinced that he should run encounters to their most difficult, which seems to always be to get a surprise round and hammer the group with every spell you can get and attempt to coup de grace characters who are asleep. Sure, every encounter was challenging... but sometimes the reason why it was challenging amounted to "they killed half the party in their sleep, cast a save or die spell on the rogue, and then shot volley after volley of ranged weapons into the campsite until the group finally managed to struggle up the hill and kill the attackers (and most of the time due to DM fiat and fudging).

 

[Acid_crash]

I like a mix of easy and tough encounters. I like a mix of encounters with combat and non-combat, and to have all encounters combat is way too boring. I was in a game that was all combat, even all random encounters turned into slugfests because the DM though it was fun. I suggested to him that he might want to tone down the amount of combats he had, but he didn't listen, and two of us have left his group since.

On a side note, whoever thinks kobolds are easy all the time is gravely mistaken. In the other game I am currently still in, our party was tracking a group of kobolds through a forest, and the tracks led to a kobold encampment, with a few tents and we could see probably twenty kobolds milling about. Some on dire weasels, some unarmored, and a strange blue-colored kobold (who was a half-dragon, but at that time we didn't know that). These kobolds had attacked a couple wagons, and we wanted to try to save anyone we could find, and the ranger wanted to just kill them (favored enemy kicked in).

We lost one person, the barbarian cleric was taken down to 3 hp, the druid down to 1 hp, the ranger down to 5 hp, and mine was down to 12 hp (Monk2/Fighter1/half dragon). That was a blast, and when the fighter fell and the half dragon of theirs blew it's lightning at the fighter, we all ran. Not only that, but all the kobolds were at least 2nd level warriors/sorcerers. And we killed 16 kobolds and there were still over 20 left (some were in the tents when we attacked).

 

[Gez]

Depends. I can tell you that, when you're accustomed to have weak characters against strong opponents, getting a few easy encounters from time to time is good.

Of course, I imagine that it could get tiresome, but really, when you have your first fight of the month that don't ends up with at least one character in the negative and the party's entire supply of healing potions/scrolls/wands exhausted, it's refreshing.