D&D 5E "Once an encounter begins, I will make changes to it for balance, fun, or rules reasons." (a poll)

[Lanefan]

Nah. Just a player. At least where I am there are no kings at our tables.

I hope not, given that DMs are divinity and thus greatly outrank kings - and queens, for that matter.

 

[J.Quondam]

Probably because decades of examples show random encounters = monsters who are going to attack you.

It’s not an unreasonable idea.

Yeah, i get that. I mean, I said that partly with tongue in cheek.

But more to the point, plenty of modern random encounter tables offer a broad range of encounter types, friendly and hostile, creature or not. Check out the 5e DMG section on Random Encounters: the table for "Sylvan Forest Encounters" on p.87 includes gnolls (probably hostile), a unicorn (pobably not hostile), elk (probably neither), an inanimate statue, and some mysterious music, among other stuff.
So the idea that a random encounter need not be hostile is certainly not an unreasonable assumption, either, not for today's gamers.

 

[Lanefan]

Probably because decades of examples show random encounters = monsters who are going to attack you.

And depending on the PCs' surrounding environment this can sometimes make sense; if you're in the Abyss as a mortal, for example, anything you happen to meet there is without exception going to try to kill you. But a "random encounter" can also be a trap, a sighting of something, a strange bit of weather, or even a location or site.

Once or twice in the past the players have taken a throwaway site-based random encounter" - e.g. a ruin, an abandoned cottage, a glowing pond - to be way more significant than it was ever supposed to be, to the point where they completely drop whatever they were doing before in favour of exploring this new site.

It's curveballs like this that really put my 'wing-it' skills to the test.

 

[Reynard]

And depending on the PCs' surrounding environment this can sometimes make sense; if you're in the Abyss as a mortal, for example, anything you happen to meet there is without exception going to try to kill you.

I completely disagree. They don't gain anything from your death. Depending on your power level, they are either going to try and negotiate for your soul, or try and get you to let them into the Prime. Maybe ask you to kill their demonic lieutenant. Possibly start a new lemure cult. Whatever.

My point: on the prime or in the Abyss, random encounters being boring combat problems is a GM failure every time.

 

[Orius]

I only do it for rules reasons, i.e. I screwed up somewhere important. This can affect things like the players' decision making process, so it's a matter of maintaining fairness. I do generally give them a heads up that there was a mistake somewhere, but not necessarily what the mistake was.

I don't adjust things simply because of the dice. If they get unexpectedly lucky, I roll with it, it happens. They shouldn't be penalized for having good luck, and fortune favors the bold. If they get a bit unlucky then I do things suboptimally unless they deliberately got themselves into trouble.

 

[Guest 7034872]

I've done it and I expect I'll do it again, but I agree with payn and others that it's best not to end up needing such measures. Especially when I ran my first few encounters as a fresh DM, though, miscalculation and the unreliability of challenge ratings became a theme in my mind a while.

 

[Smackpixi]

I will simply make tactical errors with the foe(s).

How is pulling punches not making changes to the battle In the middle of it?

 

[Nightfly]

I won't tweak an encounter dramatically, but I'll nudge hit points of the monsters upward or downward if I've miscalculated. I should note that I'm currently running a Pathfinder adventure that I'm converting semi- on the fly to 5e, hence the potential for "miscalculated" baddies. I'd be much less likely to that do in a published adventure that I thought was well balanced. The threat of player death has to be real.

 

[Malmuria]

In 5e, death saves are the mechanics that allows for encounters to be unbalanced without leading to character death or a tpk (at least when compared to death at 0hp).

 

[cbwjm]

I remember one encounter I reduced the hit points of a bunch of enemies in the middle of the encounter, the PCs were outnumbered around 2:1. I then turned them back because the PCs were more than capable of taking care of themselves.