Players who think out of the box

[pogre]

This seems like an ideal time to refer your players to some of the old 500-page long falling damage threads!

In all seriousness, it sounds like your players are pushing you if they are threatening to quit the campaign over this. Just be honest and say - I thought the trap was great, but I should have told you the potential damage output beforehand - my mistake. Let's keep playing.

If they threaten to leave if you don't change your ruling and you do change your ruling - it seems like you will have this over your head in what will become a very contentious atmosphere every time you want to make a ruling. That's not a fun situation for a DM IMO.

 

[Ancalagon]

15d10 is a *ton* of damage. I'm surprised that they aren't happy with that...

 

[mrpopstar]

Hi everyone it’s been a little while since I’ve posted but I’ve encountered a new issue with my group that I’m dming. Just to keep everyone up to date, all of the information and recommendations were awesome. I was able to keep my group together and we are still gaming together.

We we are currently playing in a new homebrew world. It has a little of everything but most of it comes from old world steampunk technology.

I created rules using the DMG to make most of the firearms and other gear scattered throughout the world. Most of them are variants on ranged weapons with diffferent die codes and drawbacks to keep them check.

However last night I ran into a big issue and it stopped our game for about 2 hours while my players, 1 who is an engineer in real life, started calculating out a trap they were setting. Long story short they dropped a 5 ton boulder with bombs attached which crashes through the roof of my Bad guys keep and crushed him.

Here is my frustration, they completely slipped past 2 weeks of planning for a big showdown with this NPC. When I told them I would have him autofail the save to avoid the boulder and I gave them 15d10 dmg for coming up with such a good trap. They lost their minds saying he should be dead. I tried to reason and asked how they would feel if I sprung a similar trap on them, only to be told I would be pety and doing so would ruin the fun of the game. For what it matters the party is made up of of 5 8th level characters. . A cleric, fighter, Druid, rogue, and a bard.

Im not sure how to proceed, I don’t want my game to stop and implode because they feel I’m being unfair. Should I have just had the bad guy die on the spot?

I recommend emphasizing the role of the dice as neutral arbiters in these types of carefully crafted situations, and I caution against the practice of promising failed saving throws as a reward for player ingenuity.

I believe you ran into trouble by openly demonstrating a willingness to bend the rules in service to the narrative, but then refused to let the narrative be served in a way that met player expectation. That can feel arbitrary and dissatisfying, especially after such meaningful planning.

It helps me to invite players to collaborate with me on adjudication. If everyone is on the same page with how things will shake out, it's much easier to deliver an experience that pleases.

 

[iserith]

15d10 is a *ton* of damage. I'm surprised that they aren't happy with that...

It's all relative to the hit points of the target though. Maybe it would have been better to set the damage to average 120 points (which is how many hp the villain had).

 

[Les Moore]

See that’s the beauty of gaming it can be both, they won’t always have these opportunities, so I applauded the coming up with such a great idea, and it had the chance to kill the enemy. But the dice didn’t fall that way. I’m all for creativity and I will reward it. My keep encounter will still happen, just not the way I planned and I’m fine with that, I’m just trying to get them to understand that perfect planning does not determine an automatic win. We use moral quandaries in our games that sometimes cause them to side with bad guys because they feel, the game world hero’s are the real villains. So they will side with lesser evils to make fights or encounters easier for them. I guess I need to sit them all down and make sure we all understand each other and move past this and continue to have great games.

"Perfect Plan" goes with "DM cheating", in my book. Any plan is an abstract construct, in order to deal with a complicated problem:

1. "perfect" is almost a meaningless concept, in that plans almost never go the way you intend them to. So, IME, there are good plans which work, bad plans
which don't. More of a pass/fail situation in the overall scheme of things.

2. They should be happy their plan succeeded to the degree it did. It, therefore, was a good plan, passed the test. Auto-death is an issue, AFAIAC. There are too many variables, IMO.



Now, what about the 482 minions which were living under the Boss's lair? Only 3D100 got crushed in the initial attack. The rest are swarming towards your
party, as we speak...

 

[Krachek]

My questions:
How the Pc manage to find and throw the boulders.
5 tons, you need leverage, machinery, they work unnoticed?
And The boss, he was sitting in his bath, wandering, What the hell is that red cross paint on the ceiling?

 

[5ekyu]

Hi everyone it’s been a little while since I’ve posted but I’ve encountered a new issue with my group that I’m dming. Just to keep everyone up to date, all of the information and recommendations were awesome. I was able to keep my group together and we are still gaming together.

We we are currently playing in a new homebrew world. It has a little of everything but most of it comes from old world steampunk technology.

I created rules using the DMG to make most of the firearms and other gear scattered throughout the world. Most of them are variants on ranged weapons with diffferent die codes and drawbacks to keep them check.

However last night I ran into a big issue and it stopped our game for about 2 hours while my players, 1 who is an engineer in real life, started calculating out a trap they were setting. Long story short they dropped a 5 ton boulder with bombs attached which crashes through the roof of my Bad guys keep and crushed him.

Here is my frustration, they completely slipped past 2 weeks of planning for a big showdown with this NPC. When I told them I would have him autofail the save to avoid the boulder and I gave them 15d10 dmg for coming up with such a good trap. They lost their minds saying he should be dead. I tried to reason and asked how they would feel if I sprung a similar trap on them, only to be told I would be pety and doing so would ruin the fun of the game. For what it matters the party is made up of of 5 8th level characters. . A cleric, fighter, Druid, rogue, and a bard.

Im not sure how to proceed, I don’t want my game to stop and implode because they feel I’m being unfair. Should I have just had the bad guy die on the spot?

There is a difference between thinking "outside the box" and thinking "outside the rules" and by that i mean trying ti construe a way to bypass core mechanics.

Way too often thats what passes for "creative" and in 5e iirc there are guidelines in the dmg for hazards represented as damage.

 

[DragonKnight88]

It's all relative to the hit points of the target though. Maybe it would have been better to set the damage to average 120 points (which is how many hp the villain had).

Yeah, well I went with the Chart on the DMG for setting traps and have it a little extra. I feel 15d10 was more than enough because it’s about double if not triple what the players could throw at an enemy. To average it would have meant adding another 7d10.

 

[Dausuul]

Im not sure how to proceed, I don’t want my game to stop and implode because they feel I’m being unfair. Should I have just had the bad guy die on the spot?

No, what you did was more than fair. 15d10 with no save is a monster blast of damage. It could have killed the villain outright, and if it didn't, it would surely turn a tough encounter into a cakewalk. Kudos to you for being willing to let smart play bypass a planned encounter. The players are whining because you gave them the moon and stars and they didn't quite get the sun.

(I might add that if I were running a game and the players spent 2 real-life hours doing engineering calculations, the villain would crash in on the PCs while they were sitting in a tavern knee-deep in scrolls and abacuses. I don't set aside an evening out of my week and spend hours preppping so I can sit at the table watching someone else do math.)

I tried to reason and asked...

I understand the impulse to reason with players who want to argue about stuff like this, but experience has taught me that it's a mistake. Hear out their arguments; consider them as fairly as you are able; then make your call and leave it at that. If they want to keep arguing, just say, "I've made my call. Move on, please." Don't allow them to reopen the subject.

You'll probably get a bunch of grumbling and whining the first few times you do this. Ignore it.

 

[iserith]

Yeah, well I went with the Chart on the DMG for setting traps and have it a little extra. I feel 15d10 was more than enough because it’s about double if not triple what the players could throw at an enemy. To average it would have meant adding another 7d10.

Sure, I get it. Sometimes we make these calls in the moment using the standard guidelines for a nonstandard event and it doesn't quite work out. That's okay. A good rule of thumb for future use in these kind of does-the-villain-die-in-one-go-or-not situations is to start with the hit points as the average damage, then work backward to arrive at the damage roll.

The only thing I would say, and have, is to lay out those stakes before you jump to resolution so that the players can agree with your call or renegotiate based on their expectations. That might have avoided some problems. Also, I would add don't let the amount of time you spent on your prep influence your decision-making. Either accept that your prep is part of the lonely fun of DMing and it might not see the light of day (this time...) or work on your improvisation skills and do less prep in general.