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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Orlax" data-source="post: 7686095" data-attributes="member: 6801305"><p>You are missing my meaning here.  I'm not saying they make it through without question.  If they just stand there and let it happen then the monster eats them.  Bad rolls happen and you get eaten.   However if I have designed an encounter the PC's can't hardly defeat without using the exactly correct stratagem, or without expending all of their resources, for the encounter and I tpk them that is entirely a failure on the DMs part.  I literally killed my own game with poor execution.  As I've said, killing PCs is easy, keeping them alive through their own stupidity is harder (and yes all PCs do stupid things at one point or another just because they have no idea what is going on and I the DM do).  The reason we are rolling dice is because we are randomly determining the sequence of events that leads to the players succeeding.  Sometimes the dice will say that you don't succeed and that can also be fun and there is nothing that can be done about that.  However I as the DM can control what the monsters do in response to the players and I can have them make less strategic choices in favor of more rp based reasonings in order to not kill my players due to a poorly drawn or thought out dungeon.  I as the DM can obviate death saving throws by always having my monsters attack the body after the player drops, and that would in fact be the most strategic option at all times, but that's not fun for the players because they would never make it out of the first 5 levels.  I can have the monster move from the dropped, but not yet dead player character (the strategically terrible option) in order to not kill the player character and to move to attacking another standing character.  It's little decisions like that, or having half the goblins pitch spears past the shield wall, that I'm talking about.  Making strategically faulty moves because I'm almost always going to out strategy my players and could just drop rocks on all their heads and kill them should I wish to.  In the end the players are supposed to win, it is my job as the DM to convince them they won't and make them ride as close to death, without actually crossing over into it, as I can.  It isn't that death isn't always on the table, it definitely is, but it is never the goal of play.  The goal of play is for the players to succeed.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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