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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 6908984" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya!Magic Items: Yeah, I left that one out because I'm seeing AP's give out magic items, and I'm pretty sure the number of and power of said magic items that DM's are giving out in their own campaigns varies far too much for it to be a factor. As in, if he doesn't use them at all...then monsters may be a bit harder (or MUCH harder). And if the DM hands them out like it was a 1e module, then the PC's are going to be SIGNIFICANTLY tougher. Too much of a range to cover.Extra Attack/3rd Level Spells: Nope. Never been a factor. In my experience as a DM (any edition I've DM'ed [BECMI/1e/2e/3.5e/PF]), it's not really how fast the PC's can deal damage to kill the baddies that is the main problem....it's the other way around. If it gets to the point where the PC's are shrugging off or otherwise nonchalantly saying"Oh, another fire giant patrol? I guess we'll just keep cooking lunch and let Snag the Barbarian and Mr.Wizard over there deal with them"... that is a problem. The total lack of the fear of death is what kills suspense...not really if it takes PC's 7 rounds to kill the bad guys in stead of 12.Not Getting Past 7th Level: TPK's or NTPK's (nigh TPK; as in only one PC survives). I'm a pretty harsh DM. I grew up learning Basic D&D on my own back in '80/'81. Nobody told me "don't do this", or "make sure you do that"...school of hard knocks and all that. This is one thing that bothers me about DM's nowadays; they have the internet to tell them typical pit falls of DM'ing. But that's a 'nother thread. Anyway...yeah. As I said, I don't pull punches, I let the chips fall where they may, and pretty much let the players screw themselves of they want to. I'm quite content with the PC's starting an adventure, going half-way, then deciding to leave for whatever reason. The bad guys might then recuperate, then find out who and where the PC's are, and then send assassins after them, or bribe Lords/Mayors/Captains to "dispose of" the PC's as they see fit. One campaign actually was a NTPK because of this. The PC's left in the middle of an adventure...a few sessions later, I had them all make Con saves one night. One guy lived...all the others died in their sleep via poison (mind you, most of the folks who ate/drank at that inn also died...but bad guys really don't care about collateral damage!). The players were initially upset (like, for 3 or 4 seconds), until I told them why and how. Then they all kicked themselves in the ass for underestimating the bad guys 'conviction', rolled up new characters, and we played on. "Death comes easy to the unwary". <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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