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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 3032505" data-attributes="member: 2067">There is a middle ground, you know. A place between the players having to change the way they play and being able to walk up to the Great Wyrm of the North at 2nd level and kill it because the DM won't make it more than CR2.It's communication, and it's an under-used skill, but one of the DM's most vital. It's the DM saying to the PC's "The Great Wyrm of the North is far beyond your capabilities to defeat. If you try, you will meet a horrible end. Instead, try overthrowing the local baron. He's sitting there being a jerk at you, and at least that's a fair fight."Not always in so many words, but through plenty of hints and warnings and second chances.For instance, if I were to put such a lever in my game, and the rogue (for some reason) failed to detect the trap, I would further describe the piles of dust around it, or a sign put up by the locals in a brutal language, or have the character make a Perception check when they reached out to touch it to see if they couldn't sense the leaping black bolts of unholy death energy. I might have it covered in slightly glowing runes that the rogue uncovered, or show how it seems the ghostly afterimage of a hand was burned into the wood of the lever. It might flicker with green energy (and the piles of dust may do so as well). I never changed the trap, and persistance and bad luck could still kill a PC, but I gave them a good chance to avoid an untimely end. Changing the world so that the CR = ECL formula is always even is unfair, too. It's not fair to the world you've created. But that's not the alternative. The alternative is to make the trap fair, by getting rid of one or two of those things that make it unfair (undetectability, unrealistic implementation, unbeatable DC, etc.).</blockquote>

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