Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="DM_Blake" data-source="post: 4101437" data-attributes="member: 57267">I must be a "very terrible DM" then. Because I do, frequently, allow players to rest when they want to.Suppose I have a dungeon. It's small, maybe only 10 rooms. Some have no encounters, others have guardians, traps, whatever. The last room has the big bad boss.My players head into the dungeon. They use some spells, some healing, some potions, and they get through 8 rooms. But now the wizard has only a couple low-level spells remaining, and the cleric has only a few low-level heals. They have 15 charges on their wand of cure moderate wounds, but they suspect the next fight might be more devastating than the occasional charge (averaging 12 hp per round) can handle. So they retreat out of the dungeon and set up camp a safe distance away.If this final encounter really needs them to be near full capacity, and they are not, then they will probably TPK if they push on.Now as a DM, I can tell them "No, you can't go camp", but I cannot justify that with any reason other than railroading, so I let them decide.During the night, I can punish them with "random" encounters. End result, they use more resources and are in worse shape in the morning. They still refuse to enter and die at the hands of the big bad boss, so they camp another day. More "random" encounter punishment? Will they ever face the boss if their resources continue to dwindle?During the night I can have the big bad boss decide to come out and face them. He's smart enough to know they retreated due to lack of resources and figures now is his best chance to beat them. If it truly is an encounter that requires the players to be near full capacity, then this might result in a TPK. I would only use this option if I feel confident that they could take the big bad boss in their current state.During the night I can have the big bad boss run away. He decides facing adventurers is too scary, picks up his most valuable loot, and heads for distand lands. Maybe the players will see him again in the future, maybe they won't. In this case their decision to camp might have saved their lives, but it cost them the XP, loot, and closure of defeating the big bad boss.During the night I can have the big bad boss reinforce his lair. Realistically, he can't just hop on phone and call Monsters-R-Us to have some new monsters overnighted to his lair. So his ability to reinforce is probably fairly limited. Maybe he is a mage, so the next day he memorizes several trap spells and sprinkles them around his home. Maybe he animates some dead minions to defend him in undeath. Maybe he finds a good place to ambush the PCs to improve his odds of winning. Or maybe I will just adjust the big bad boss to be a wimpier version of himself and go out to assault the camping PCs, or maybe I will adjust him to be a tougher version of himself so the fully refreshed PCs face a harder fight after camping.I have done all these things over the years DMing. Which of course means that sometimes I have not allowed the 15-minute adventuring day to work (making me not a "very terrible DM"), but sometimes I have allowed it to work (making me a "very terrible DM").</blockquote>

Verification