D&D 5E How do you, as a player, judge "appropriate" difficulty?

[Quickleaf]

Let's say your DM is writing a module for distribution, whether via DM's guild or via friends or some other method. He's billed this module as "suitable for 4-5 PCs of levels 7-9." He's had a couple of other DMs run the module once or twice, and he's run it himself for two different groups, one of which was your group, so there is some playtest data as well as whatever purely analytical data he used to design it.

Now he's asking you whether it's the right difficulty level for the advertised number and levels of PCs. My question for you is, how do you personally make that determination?

If I am, for example, playing a rogue (thief) in your 7th-9th level adventure, I'd expect "appropriate difficulty" to encompass...

• I don't want to be doing simple "fetch" quests or "save the village" scenarios.
• I want to be "spotlighted" at some point(s), ideally using my 7th-9th level features like Evasion and Supreme Sneak.
• I want really challenging encounters that I can, through my cleverness & quick-thinking, undermine, sabotage, or otherwise overturn expectations.
• I want most life-threatening challenges to be telegraphed by the DM, so I know when I'm "going in hot."
• I want occasional surprises, which can be deadly, so long as they evoke a "oh cool!" reaction in me, and give me an interesting choice.
• Deadliness – at least the feeling of it – is something I want, but I also want my choices and ideas to be able to outwit those deadly challenges; if my DM has trouble thinking on his or her feet, I want a module that will support him/her in doing that.
• I want to disarm a trap, and potentially re-purpose it to spring it on the monsters.
• I want treasure that feels better than what I was getting at 1st-4th. If it's cursed, I'd mostly like that to be part of the story or telegraphed, so I can make the decision to have my rogue PCs "greed win over good sense." I'd especially like an optional Big Treasure in a Risky Situation, that I can choose to instigate...possibly to the chagrin of my fellow players.
• I want at least one easy encounter where my sneak attack / surprise attack can take out a monster sentry before the alarm is raised.
• Optional: I want to be able to tell a petulant nobleman to shove it, and possible defenestrate him.

Related question: if your DM were about to run an adventure for you of "appropriate" difficulty for your level and party size, what definition of "appropriate difficulty" would you hope he is using?

An appropriate difficulty adventure is one where the encounters we face mostly (75%) feel like they make sense for our party's strength – both in terms of narrative scope and mechanical challenge. Some under-powered or over-powered challenges are perfectly fine, though in the case of over-powered challenges I'd expect there to be (a) a clearly defined puzzle/trick to the challenge that the DM communicates well, or (b) the option (both mechanically & narratively) to run away or sneak past, or (c) good foreshadowing so we know what sort of mess we're getting ourselves into.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I wonder if it might not make sense to have two ratings for a module: one for the basic "95% chance you'll succeed using average tactics" that you'd probably want in a sandbox campaign or other infinite game, and one for "50% or less chance you'll succeed using average tactics" that you'd want for a one-shot or other finite game.

E.g. "Appropriate for 4-5 characters of levels 7-9; deadly for 1-2 characters of levels 5-7."

The goal here would be to avoid having players be disappointed at the end of a module with how easy it was to win/how hard it would have been to lose. Also, Combat As War DMs will probably want to pick modules more in line with Deadly instead of Appropriate, in order to motivate and reward CAW mindsets. (If you already have an overwhelming force advantage, CAW may be indistinguishable from CAS: just kill the other team with a few die rolls, and move on.)

 

[MechaPilot]

Let's say your DM is writing a module for distribution, whether via DM's guild or via friends or some other method. He's billed this module as "suitable for 4-5 PCs of levels 7-9." He's had a couple of other DMs run the module once or twice, and he's run it himself for two different groups, one of which was your group, so there is some playtest data as well as whatever purely analytical data he used to design it.

Now he's asking you whether it's the right difficulty level for the advertised number and levels of PCs. My question for you is, how do you personally make that determination?

Not sure where it fits on your spectrum, but I'd go with this:

The players are interested and engaged, and a lvl 8 Champion Fighter, a lvl 8 Evoker Wizard, a lvl 8 Life Cleric, and a lvl 8 Thief Rogue have a roughly 80% chance of them all making it out alive.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Not sure where it fits on your spectrum, but I'd go with this:

The players are interested and engaged, and a lvl 8 Champion Fighter, a lvl 8 Evoker Wizard, a lvl 8 Life Cleric, and a lvl 8 Thief Rogue have a roughly 80% chance of them all making it out alive.

I don't have a spectrum--the list was just to get discussion started. Thanks for the data!

 

[S'mon]

Not sure where it fits on your spectrum, but I'd go with this:

The players are interested and engaged, and a lvl 8 Champion Fighter, a lvl 8 Evoker Wizard, a lvl 8 Life Cleric, and a lvl 8 Thief Rogue have a roughly 80% chance of them all making it out alive.

Yeah I think the 80-20 rule is a good guide. For a typical group at level 8 I'd expect ca 80% chance full success. Probably lower at levels 1-2.

 

[Quickleaf]

I wonder if it might not make sense to have two ratings for a module: one for the basic "95% chance you'll succeed using average tactics" that you'd probably want in a sandbox campaign or other infinite game, and one for "50% or less chance you'll succeed using average tactics" that you'd want for a one-shot or other finite game.

E.g. "Appropriate for 4-5 characters of levels 7-9; deadly for 1-2 characters of levels 5-7."

The goal here would be to avoid having players be disappointed at the end of a module with how easy it was to win/how hard it would have been to lose. Also, Combat As War DMs will probably want to pick modules more in line with Deadly instead of Appropriate, in order to motivate and reward CAW mindsets. (If you already have an overwhelming force advantage, CAW may be indistinguishable from CAS: just kill the other team with a few die rolls, and move on.)

Not to get too psychological, but I think the optimum success rate for humans is around 75-80% IIRC. There are lots of studies on it. If I'm remembering right, they revolve around Psychology of Flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.

The key principle, as it applies to gaming (the studies are for video games, but I think it applies to tabletop too), is that it's OK to have really hard challenges where the players could fail, but you don't want that failure to interrupt their experience of "flow" / "being in the zone."

That is an art. There are various ways an adventure designer can accomplish that. But it probably is a discussion beyond the scope of your original question.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Not to get too psychological, but I think the optimum success rate for humans is around 75-80% IIRC. There are lots of studies on it. If I'm remembering right, they revolve around Psychology of Flow by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.

Huh. The number I remember from Pieter Spronk's research on adaptive difficulty is about 60%; but anyway, the success rate for average tactics and the success rate your players will actually experience are two different things: they don't have to use average tactics. Presumably they will seek out about a 60% success rate (or perhaps 75-80%) on their own, if you give them consistent metrics to measure adventures by.

 

[S'mon]

Huh. The number I remember from Pieter Spronk's research on adaptive difficulty is about 60%; but anyway, the success rate for average tactics and the success rate your players will actually experience are two different things: they don't have to use average tactics. Presumably they will seek out about a 60% success rate (or perhaps 75-80%) on their own, if you give them consistent metrics to measure adventures by.

60% success works well for each individual die roll, but across an entire session 80% success (eg kill main bad guys, no PCs permanently dead) is a better metric. Likewise for an AP type campaign I think designers are well guided if they go for "typical PCs will ultimately succeed 80% of the time & fail ca 20% of the time". Failed campaigns can be fun and rewarding, and the possibility of failure is important, but no one wants to fail 80% of the time. I had a
stretch ca 2009-2013 where most of my campaigns ended with PC failure (often TPK) and it was a bit disheartening as GM. I like how 5e is a bit 'kinder, gentler' so I get close to the 80% success rate without having to nerf my GMing.