Players getting cocky (4e)

[Rekka360]

My players have handled everything I've thrown at them so far pretty handily. Despite my efforts they have only really had one close encounter with death in the form of a bugbear ambush.

Now their walking the streets of Calimport with some swagger feeling unstoppable and I think its high time I brought this frame of mind crashing down around them like flaming timbers.

My answer? The Mists of Ravenloft.

Why you ask? I think Strahd barely letting them sleep because of constant wolf/bat/zombie attacks so they can't refresh all those daily powers/healing surges is a good start. It's bad to have the attention of a villain who would rather just toy with you then kill you outright.

I also think trapping them in places like the House of Lament where I will begin to test the limits of their sanity with fear and horror checks, watching them panic as all that power they have becomes useless in a haunted house that wants to eat their souls. Driving their characters steadily over the edge until at least one of them loses that last sanity point and ends up a raving lunatic that the others have to deal with.

Then there is the people living in the Mists. Barely any of them a language any of the PC's would understand, a few broken words of Forgotten Realms common in a heavy accent at best. The exception to this being the Vistani, who are more likely to trick, lie to, or steal from the players, while informing Lord Strahd about their weaknesses, strengths and actions in Barovia.

Finally of course there is the suppression of divine power in most Realms of the Mists, the Paladin might find his powers going wonky and healing might be harder to come by. No, your gods can't save you here.

Welcome to the "Demiplane of Dread" boys, I'm going to love teaching you why its called that.
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That being said, how would you, as a DM, deal with a party that has become overly confident?

 

[Janx]

why is it your job to "deal with them"

Let them be overconfident. apparently they earned it.

Otherwise, based on what your saying, you have some duty to destroy their PCs, because the players have been successful.

That doesn't sound fair to me.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

This is exactly the wrong way to use Ravenloft, and why it has such a negative reputation among so many players and DMs. Railroading the campaign into a new setting explicitly to give yourself carte blanch to screw with the players is uncool. Ravenloft is a very specific kind of playstyle/campaign, and if the player didn't sign up for it, it is unfair to force them into it, especially because you think they've gotten too "cocky".

If you want to make things more difficult for players, there are loads of ways to do that without spiriting them off to another dimension with arbitrary rules to screw players. You might try:

Playing around with diseases. There are some nasty ones out there, and with the new assisting rules they can really put a cramp on the players style for a time.

Throw wights at them early in an adventure to drain off surges, then hit them with a higher level encounter in an unfavorable environment.

Create hazards, and then design enemies specifically to take advantage of those hazards. For example, put them in a fight on a bridge over a massive chasm, then attack them with flying enemies with forced movement powers. When one or two bad rounds can send you plummeting to your death, "cockiness" is a fast track to suicide. Or put them in a house that is burning to the ground, while fighting a fire resistant monster. That sort of thing. It is very, very possible to create incredibly nasty fights while staying within the suggested xp budgets and encounter guidelines for 4e, you just need to recognize that doing so generally comes not from enemies whose powers are insanely uber, but rather from looking at the encounter as a whole and designing it to be deadly.


If you need to railroad them into another dimension to put the fear of the DM in 'em, you're doing it wrong.

 

[Doug McCrae]

That being said, how would you, as a DM, deal with a party that has become overly confident?

I just use more powerful monsters. More numbers, higher level. Like if the PCs can beat 5 monsters of equal level easily, try 6, then 5 plus an elite, or 5 at level + 1 or + 2. Hopefully the players will enjoy 'punching above their weight'. If they lose I try to justify them being captured or robbed instead of killed.

Another option is a seemingly invincible monster with only one weakness. Like the 50s monster movie, 'The Blob', where the monster can only be killed by cold. However it's very important with this approach to allow other reasonable methods of beating the monster to work too. So it's more like 'one or more' weaknesses but I only know about one so far.

Let's say I put the party up against an indestructible mummy that can only be hurt by a particular magic dagger. The PCs manage to trick it into falling into lava. I could quite reasonably rule that the lava kills the mummy, even though there's nothing in my notes about it.

 

[Rekka360]

My opinion is that if the game becomes too easy, my players will get bored with it. My intention isn't to kill off the whole party of even kill any of them in particular. I just want to challenge them, batter them, make them work hard to survive. They need to feel pressured.

If I just wanted to kill them I would, I wouldn't go through all the effort of sending them to Ravenloft, I would just toss some "Tomb of Horrors" type traps at them coupled with some heavy hitter monsters and be done with it.

PC's become interesting characters when they have to overcome challenges and considering that most of the older Ravenloft Modules start with with the ability to pull players from other worlds into the Demiplane of Dread via the "Mists of Ravenloft" this seems like the appropriate way to use Ravenloft. The players have mentioned on more than one occasion that they want to visit other planes of existence, so I hardly see this as railroading them into something they don't want to do.

If Ravenloft has a bad "rep" among players then that's news to me.

 

[awesomeocalypse]

If Ravenloft has a bad "rep" among players then that's news to me.

Ravenloft has a bed reputation precisely because so many of its modules did one or several of the following:


Pulled players in to Ravenloft from some other setting (usually FR) without their prior consent or knowledge. If someone shows up psyched to play high fantasy and is thrown into gothic horror against their will, it generally won't sit well.

Introduce arbitrary mechanics to deny players of their abilities. Most infamous are a number of modules which saw all the players be killed in the very beginning before being cloned by evil beings in new bodies, but without equipment, and thereafter forced to do the bidding of the creature who cloned them. But many, many others took less extreme, but still problematic routes, like mists or auras which deprived players of their powers or deprived them of their items, or threw them into dungeons without equipment.

Over the top grimdarkness with little real subtlety, in a mistaken belief that cranking up the gore to 11 and using a color pallette out of a Tim Burton movie=scary.


When handled well, Ravenloft can be great. But thats true of nearly every aspect of RPGs. More often than not, however, Ravenloft is handled badly, which is why you tend to find a lot of detractors out there.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Give em a taste of Ravenloft BEFORE they've done anything wrong. Preventive punishment I say!!!

 

[Rekka360]

I'm going to run Ravenloft a bit more subtly than a Tim Burton movie. The campaign so far has the PC's involved with the Twisted Rune (a coven of Liches based in Calimshan) so I don't think the setting of Ravenloft is actually that far out of their element as far as horror is concerned, its been fairly dark so far. It isn't going to be a permanent change, just a leg of the campaign before they get back to what they were doing.

I can see how players being whisked onto another plane suddenly and without warning by the "Mists" could be taken as harsh railroading...but as a DM I think you have to throw them a curve now and then. My players have a lot of freedom, if they don't want to deal with the Twisted Rune, they are free to flee Calimshan, its up to them. I wouldn't permanently put them in Ravenloft, that would be unfair, however if they decide that they like it and want to stay, I would be ok with that. I imagine however they are going to want to settle the score with the liches of Calimshan eventually.

 

[Fifth Element]

My opinion is that if the game becomes too easy, my players will get bored with it. My intention isn't to kill off the whole party of even kill any of them in particular. I just want to challenge them, batter them, make them work hard to survive. They need to feel pressured.

That's a common opinion, but the question is: is it true for your players? If your are doing exactly what they want to do, and they really enjoy doing it, then it would be a very bad thing to take that away from them.

Even if it's true that most people find a challenge more fun, are you sure it's true about your group specifically?

PC's become interesting characters when they have to overcome challenges

Just make sure they're on the same page. Maybe they don't care about interesting characters. Maybe they like being swaggering badasses.

This is not to say, of course, that you shouldn't consider what you find fun as well. You're part of the group as well. But if everyone else enjoys playing in a certain way, then you should not impose your preferred playstyle on them. That's not cool.

 

[jcayer]

I've found the easiest way to push my players is 2 things. Use more brutes. They make for quicker encounters, less grind, but can really dish it out.

Second, don't let them take that extended rest. Give them 5 or 6 or 7 tasks to accomplish in one night. They won't have the option to rest. Or have them travel through the shadowfell and always hound them when they try to rest. A great example of this was they were supposed to help retake a city, so they had to do a whole bunch of things in one night, so the invading forces would stand a chance.