D&D 5E (2014) Mike Mearls on 5e design he regrets. Bonus Actuons.

[Emerikol]

I would say instead on "on a whim" something like "reactively" perhaps. If a DM tunes an encounter up or down before the encounter starts, does that make it less real? During the encounter?

If the DM keeps it secret to their grave, I suppose PCs might be able to believe it. Once they know though it's like losing your secret identity as a super hero. Nothing will ever be the same.

Edit: It's why as an adult I do not advise it.

 

[bsss]

If the DM keeps it secret to their grave, I suppose PCs might be able to believe it. Once they know though it's like losing your secret identity as a super hero. Nothing will ever be the same.

Edit: It's why as an adult I do not advise it.

Keeps what a secret? That the DM tuned an encounter to the party? Isn't that obvious from having created the encounter, unless they openly only use random encounter tables? I see the argument that there's no inherent truth to what the encounter "is" or "should be" before the DM creates it, over, under, or just right-tuned.

The DMG may suggest appropriate encounter difficulty, is it false to follow it? Or to not follow it? Can't that make the appropriate difficulty an "illusion"?

 

[Lanefan]

Why can't a DM just retroactively make that bluff real and the character does die but then just goes back to making all that deadliness fake?

Integrity.

Yuor example a few posts up is a good one for what I mean: while a DM who sees the party get their faces stove in might want to change the next room from a ambush-filled trap farm to a safe resting place, IMO doing so violates DM neutrality, and thus DM integrity.

The challenge, or adventure, or module, is what it is; and should be locked in once the players-as-characters start interacting with it. And yes, in this respect it's like a video game - you get what you get and it's on you-the-players to deal with it as best you can. Some today would call this adversarial DMing; I do not, instead seeing it as simply how it's done.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Keeps what a secret? That the DM tuned an encounter to the party? Isn't that obvious from having created the encounter, unless they openly only use random encounter tables? I see the argument that there's no inherent truth to what the encounter "is" or "should be" before the DM creates it, over, under, or just right-tuned.

It depends on what you mean by "tuned to". Its possible to set up encounters with a deliberate avoidance of thinking about what the PCs are like (which can, of course make it overpowered or a cakewalk, but to some GMing ethos that's still what you do). I don't think in its hard-core version that's a great idea and I doubt seriously many people do it, but its possible.

 

[Lanefan]

Keeps what a secret? That the DM tuned an encounter to the party? Isn't that obvious from having created the encounter, unless they openly only use random encounter tables? I see the argument that there's no inherent truth to what the encounter "is" or "should be" before the DM creates it, over, under, or just right-tuned.

The DMG may suggest appropriate encounter difficulty, is it false to follow it? Or to not follow it? Can't that make the appropriate difficulty an "illusion"?

The secret is not that the DM (or module author) vaguely tuned the encounter to the party ahead of time, it's that the DM changed that encounter's tuning on the fly after it had started; or changed the next encounter based on the results of this one.

And sure, a DM might be able to pull off this change-on-the-fly move once in a rare while without the players noticing; but do it at all frequently and the players will catch on, thus reducing their immersion and-or enjoyment. Patterns are easy to spot.

 

[Lanefan]

It depends on what you mean by "tuned to". Its possible to set up encounters with a deliberate avoidance of thinking about what the PCs are like (which can, of course make it overpowered or a cakewalk, but to some GMing ethos that's still what you do). I don't think in its hard-core version that's a great idea and I doubt seriously many people do it, but its possible.

As an example: a few adventures back I used a pre-written module that, as written, was way above the pay grade of any party I've ever DMed; and so I went through the module ahead of time and down-tuned some parts of it so as to give the party-level they'd be playing (I had no clue as to specific characters yet) a fighting chance.

I missed a few. Some of the things they met they shouldn't have had a chance against, and yet by good luck and some very smart and creative play they got through the adventure with their only loss being a low-level hench, who died twice and then chose to stay that way.

That said, and to their credit, they know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em - this isn't a group who expect everything to be winnable, and know that fleeing or bailing out (or, sometimes, just teleporting home!) is always an option.

 

[bsss]

It depends on what you mean by "tuned to". Its possible to set up encounters with a deliberate avoidance of thinking about what the PCs are like (which can, of course make it overpowered or a cakewalk, but to some GMing ethos that's still what you do). I don't think in its hard-core version that's a great idea and I doubt seriously many people do it, but its possible.

At its coarsest version, I would say "tuned to" is "within the realm of possibility for the players to defeat" or "not a cakewalk", and then we refine it from there. As in, if I have a party of level 8 PCs, I might as DM say...

1. I will give the players whatever encounter is appropriate for the area/random table, including CR 1/8 creatures or a nest of CR 20 creatures. [This I would say is no tuning, and it is absolutely a valid style, I'm not discounting or discrediting it.]
2. I will not throw CR 1/8 creatures at them nor am I going to throw CR 20 creatures at them, everything in between is on the table.
3. I will give them a range of CR 6 to CR 12 creatures.
4. I will follow the book's specific guidance for CR-to-party-level balancing on a per-encounter basis.
5. I will follow the book's specific guidance for CR-to-party-level balancing on a per-encounter basis, and I will fill it with tactics that tickle the party's particular composition (minions for the fighter to mow through, artillery for the rogue to do clever movement tricks to get to, not include bags of HP if the party is all low DPS, etc.).
6. I will [#5], and if a player drops or joins before the session starts, I will adjust the encounter(s) before we start.
7. I will [#6], and if a player character dies or levels up before the combat starts, I will adjust the encounter before we start it.
8. I will [#5, #6, and/or #7], and if the players look overwhelmed or bored, I will adjust the encounter mid-encounter.

I think that's a roughly ascending scale of "tuned to"-ness in my mind. I can't definitively tell you which if any of those challenges isn't "real", so I could see an argument that they're all "illusions", but I'll also readily and happily acknowledge that each DM probably has their own sweet spot, and that's fine.

 

[bsss]

As an example: a few adventures back I used a pre-written module that, as written, was way above the pay grade of any party I've ever DMed; and so I went through the module ahead of time and down-tuned some parts of it so as to give the party-level they'd be playing (I had no clue as to specific characters yet) a fighting chance.

I missed a few. Some of the things they met they shouldn't have had a chance against, and yet by good luck and some very smart and creative play they got through the adventure with their only loss being a low-level hench, who died twice and then chose to stay that way.

This is interesting and I think kind of illustrates my tuning scale above. If you hadn't missed those few, do you think the challenge would have been less real, if you'd adjusted those few as you'd adjusted the others, to not be above their pay grade? Even though the players rose to the challenge (and that's great!), do you think it would have been not as real of a challenge to have not met them at their maximum? Or were the ones you did tone down (possibly over-down-tuned, if they could raise to the others?) the false ones? I think this is the conundrum the "everything's an illusion" topic is getting at.

 

[Thomas Shey]

At its coarsest version, I would say "tuned to" is "within the realm of possibility for the players to defeat" or "not a cakewalk", and then we refine it from there. As in, if I have a party of level 8 PCs, I might as DM say...

1. I will give the players whatever encounter is appropriate for the area/random table, including CR 1/8 creatures or a nest of CR 20 creatures. [This I would say is no tuning, and it is absolutely a valid style, I'm not discounting or discrediting it.]

I'd say its a pretty rare environment where opponents with quite that range are appropriate on the same encounter table. Even OD&D didn't do quite that bad, even in outdoor encounters. Among other things, both of those cases probably just don't make sense in an in-world way.

Which doesn't mean a rational (in a world sense) can't still have too wide a range for real functionality.

The "player drops or shows up" case is arguably a metagame problem in the first place, so addressing it just seems like its engaging with the practical reality of the game.

 

[bsss]

I'd say its a pretty rare environment where opponents with quite that range are appropriate on the same encounter table. Even OD&D didn't do quite that bad, even in outdoor encounters. Among other things, both of those cases probably just don't make sense in an in-world way.

Which doesn't mean a rational (in a world sense) can't still have too wide a range for real functionality.

The "player drops or shows up" case is arguably a metagame problem in the first place, so addressing it just seems like its engaging with the practical reality of the game.

Yeah, I exaggerated the range for effect, I guess, but what I mean is the "no tuning" seems to be that some other independent entity has decided (randomly or a prewritten module or whatever) what does show up, and so it shall be. That's definitely no tuning by the DM to me --- unless! the DM wrote the tables or module in the first place, and then all bets are off again, because they may have subconsciously tuned their material to their party. So the conundrum sneaks its way in again.

And I agree regarding surprise player adds or removes. Though, does addressing the metagaming count as making the real challenge un-real? Was it real before and now not, because it changed? If it changed the same way in situation 6 as in situation 8, are those both equally real or un-real, or does the DM's intent change the real-ness? These are all, I think, slippery questions that elude a definition of "illusion".