D&D 5E (2014) "Once an encounter begins, I will make changes to it for balance, fun, or rules reasons." (a poll)

[Reynard]

a counter point would be to say that you don’t understand why you let dice ruin stories and eliminate fun characters when it makes everyone feel bad. I mean, that’s why we have GMs, to adjudicate what happens.

Everyone should play the way that brings them the most joy, of course, but I absolutely am not interested in some predefined "story" as a GM or player.

Simply put: if you invoke the dice gods, you accept their judgment.

 

[Hussar]

Everyone should play the way that brings them the most joy, of course, but I absolutely am not interested in some predefined "story" as a GM or player.

Simply put: if you invoke the dice gods, you accept their judgment.

I think it might be better to have a somewhat more nuanced view on it. Stepping in to put a finger on the scales a couple of times in a campaign is very much not a "predefined story". Doing it several times a session? Sure, ok. That's probably indicative of larger problems. But, it's five minutes into the session and the campaign is at a point where parachuting a new PC into the game isn't really feasible, maybe giving a nudge to the dice to keep things moving along isn't the worst thing in the world.

There's a really, really excluded middle here.

 

[CleverNickName]

Honestly confused at this point.

Original post said 'entertain and keep characters alive no matter what', next one said 'losing/dying often', and historically, losing in this game is death because people don't believe in any other stakes.

Sorry, I got swept up in the waves of hyperbole. The tide in the thread started to drift from 'make changes to combat' to 'stack the odds in the party's favor' and so forth...I lost sight of the shoreline for a minute. One minute I'm musing about whether or not the players expect their DM to fudge in their favor, and before I know it I'm shouting about character death.

The buoy I was swimming toward was: losing a battle isn't a bad thing. It's not a symptom of a poorly-designed encounter, or evidence of an adversarial DM. It's just a thing that can happen per the rules. Even if characters get killed, character death needn't be permanent, and usually isn't permanent thanks to magic. It's been my experience that characters die very rarely in 5E, and when they do it's even more rare for them to stay that way. The idea that a character would become unplayable forever because they died during an encounter is strange to me.

 

[Maxperson]

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

There was no implication of that in my statement.

 

[Reynard]

I think it might be better to have a somewhat more nuanced view on it. Stepping in to put a finger on the scales a couple of times in a campaign is very much not a "predefined story". Doing it several times a session? Sure, ok. That's probably indicative of larger problems. But, it's five minutes into the session and the campaign is at a point where parachuting a new PC into the game isn't really feasible, maybe giving a nudge to the dice to keep things moving along isn't the worst thing in the world.

There's a really, really excluded middle here.

I was responding to a specific statement talking about "ruining the story."

 

[CleverNickName]

How many TPKs did you have??

Only two. The first one was in 3.5E, and the second was in Pathfinder 1E.

I have had two of my own characters die in 5E, however. My warlock was swallowed by a kraken, and my paladin was stabbed to death by shark-people. In both cases the DM asked me if I wanted to roll up a new character or keep playing the old one, and I chose to start over.

 

[Guest 7030100]

I often wonder why people assume that "random encounter" automatically means "combat." Random encounters have encounter distance and reaction rolls and in-fiction context and evasion procedures all working AGAINST them defaulting to combat.

Of course they will be combat if you have murder hobo PCs, but honestly there's something truly satisfying about a random encountering wiping a murder hobo party because they started the fight.

Heck, I often wonder why some people assume a "random encounter" automatically means a creature.

 

[Irlo]

Yes, I make changes to encounters while they're in progress. The main reason for that is that I don't assiduously prep everything, and that requires improvisation during the game. I have a monster stat block in front of me, but I don't list every piece of equipment that monster has on hand. If they get disarmed and it makes sense for the monster to have a dagger, there will be a dagger. I have barebones descriptions of areas in dungeons, without a full accounting for all details and dungeon dressing, so I often make it up as I go, and that can affect how an encounter unfolds. If there are reinforcments arriving on the scene, I might time those randomly or might chose a dramatic moment.

I don't outline monster tactics in detail in advance, since those usually get rendered moot after a few PCs have their turns. So I change up tactics on the fly, which has a much greater effect on the outcome of an encounter than lowering a monster's hit points or changing a crit into a regular damaage roll would ever have.

Sometimes during my prep time I think of cool and awesome stuff. Sometimes I don't think of the cool and awesome until I'm in the heat of battle, so I use it when I think of it.

 

[Hussar]

Heck, I often wonder why some people assume a "random encounter" automatically means a creature.

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

It’s not an unreasonable idea.

 

[Lanefan]

a counter point would be to say that you don’t understand why you let dice ruin stories and eliminate fun characters when it makes everyone feel bad. I mean, that’s why we have GMs, to adjudicate what happens.

There's a ve-ery big difference between adjudicating what happens and determining what happens; and I think you're using the former term when in fact you mean the latter.

Adjudicating what happens means you act as a neutral arbiter of the rules; included in this is letting the dice fall how they may regardless of what that might lead to.

If you start changing things in order to mitigate the dice rolls you're then into determining what happens; and many a previous thread here has gone way too far down that rabbit hole.