The_Warlock
Explorer
Sounds like a very entertaining set-up and design. It also sounds like a campaign style that would be well served by the old "Side-Treks" in older dungeon magazines - things you can plop in whenever the party is traveling from here to there and comes across something...odd.
From direct experience...not always. Players can get frustrated if they frequently have to think "off the sheet" (rather similar to "out of the box"). Yes it can be fun, yes it is a challenge, but if it happens too often, especially in a row, some players can see it as - "I'm succeeding and surviving NOT because I'm good at what I do, but because I did something so incredulously unlikely that no opponent could've seen it coming, and I nearly died in the process." Whether their characters were actually that close to death or not, it can be perceived that way. This can also cause a perspective that that type of luck is going to run out.
Having had a party that was higher in their levels, but on more than one occasion taking on things that they hadn't reconnoitered effectively regarding power and resources, or sometimes taking on things simply bigger and tougher than them without thinking through the possibilities, they were quite frequently coming up against creatures that rendered their 15th level awesomeness somewhat inadequate. And every time they won by pulling off a series of creative, impressive, improbable tactics after gettting lambasted early on. While I saw them as succeeding in the face of amazing advesity and that they should proud and amazed, the players felt they were simply getting overwhelmed and countered - which wasn't my intent, but I also wasn't pulling punches on the more static world encounters that were more powerful. So, it led to a group of adventurers who wanted to hide in a hole.
So, while such encounters can be a LOT of fun, depending on your player's personalities and play styles, it's better to use them sparingly so that they generate those great gamer stories everyone talks about for years, rather than frustrating your players with seemingly frequent level-inappropriate encounters that make them think that their characters should take up farming - since voles and ground moles are easy villains to counter in their new, pastoral life.
Back to the thread at hand...good luck with this campaign, sounds great.
Pbartender said:
mhensley said:
From direct experience...not always. Players can get frustrated if they frequently have to think "off the sheet" (rather similar to "out of the box"). Yes it can be fun, yes it is a challenge, but if it happens too often, especially in a row, some players can see it as - "I'm succeeding and surviving NOT because I'm good at what I do, but because I did something so incredulously unlikely that no opponent could've seen it coming, and I nearly died in the process." Whether their characters were actually that close to death or not, it can be perceived that way. This can also cause a perspective that that type of luck is going to run out.
Having had a party that was higher in their levels, but on more than one occasion taking on things that they hadn't reconnoitered effectively regarding power and resources, or sometimes taking on things simply bigger and tougher than them without thinking through the possibilities, they were quite frequently coming up against creatures that rendered their 15th level awesomeness somewhat inadequate. And every time they won by pulling off a series of creative, impressive, improbable tactics after gettting lambasted early on. While I saw them as succeeding in the face of amazing advesity and that they should proud and amazed, the players felt they were simply getting overwhelmed and countered - which wasn't my intent, but I also wasn't pulling punches on the more static world encounters that were more powerful. So, it led to a group of adventurers who wanted to hide in a hole.
So, while such encounters can be a LOT of fun, depending on your player's personalities and play styles, it's better to use them sparingly so that they generate those great gamer stories everyone talks about for years, rather than frustrating your players with seemingly frequent level-inappropriate encounters that make them think that their characters should take up farming - since voles and ground moles are easy villains to counter in their new, pastoral life.
Back to the thread at hand...good luck with this campaign, sounds great.
