NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 8200774" data-attributes="member: 2629">You and your players seem to be focused on risk of death as the metric of difficulty.  I'd suggest that you look to other challenges, other than deadly fights, to keep the PCs struggling, and give them a chance to fail miserably, without their characters dying every few sessions (which is the end result of making every challenge a life and death struggle).  Trying to rebalance D&D into something it is not is going to result in unsatisfactory results more often that you'd like.  For example, if you cut HP in half, then a single spell or breath weapon could result in a TPK, for example, and that just feels ... boring and anti-climatic.  As an alternative to try, you can provide them with other ways to fail.  They fail to save someone.  They fail to stop someone from getting away.  They fail to find something before it is lost.  And give these failures consequences.  Let the success or failure of an action determine how the story unfolds.  For example: The PCs are walking through town and they see two thugs burst out a door and drag a young person into a carriage.  There is a scream from the door pleading for help.  That is the surprise round.  Now what happens?  Can they stop the carriage from being drawn away?  I've run that scenario dozens of times, and had PCs be very excited about the entire scenario that surrounded it, without the PCs ever being at a risk of death, even remotely.  Further, how the PCs respond can have a massive impact on the entire campaign.  For example, in one such scenario, the parents of the abducted youth was the leader of the Underworld in the city.  Saving the kid, accidentally killing the kid, failing to save the kid ... each can have a huge impact on the story that is going to unfold.  Do they end up with the leader of the Underworld owing them a favor, wanting them dead, or just hiring them to recover the kid?  It creates a more interesting encounter than just an appropriately difficult number of bandits being added to an encounter to make it a deadly challenge.</blockquote>

Verification