D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[Lanefan]

Hey, I'm not the one claiming it. You don't need to convince me. But, apparently, adjusting encounters on the fly is perfectly in keeping with traditional play. Removing baddies from an encounter because the party is too weak due to them taking on extra encounters is perfectly in keeping with traditional play.

When done on the fly, I don't like the idea of adjustments.

When done in advance, e.g. beefing up or toning down a canned module intended for level X when the party is level X+6 or X-6, I think it's fine - no different really than if I was writing the adventure from scratch, other than less work. (I'm in the latter situation right now, in fact: the party are 8th-11th but the module is for 16th-20th, so I went through and did a bit of scaling back. They still might be in over their heads, but at least it's not a guaranteed TPK any more)

Like I said, I'm not quite understanding the difference then. If I can rewrite through improvization, setting elements based on the meta-game, then why is it bad to rewrite setting elements based on the meta-game?

My issue is when it's done on the fly just to make a specific encounter more exciting or less risky.

 

[Lanefan]

If I change it's simply to ensure a potentially difficult but winnable fight. Same as when I originally planned it. But sometimes I'll realize it's not it's not going to be the level of risk I had in mind when planning.

If you're running a level-appropriate canned module, do you run the combats as written or do you tweak them on the fly?

It's not directly related to player prep or planning. If the players were smart and precast spells or figured out some clever strategy or ambush, cool. Nothing changes. If I'm glancing through the monsters and realize I made a minor goof in my plans or, as I said above, there's an unexpectedly high level of attrition I may adjust.

Why, though? If one side or the other is getting hammered then so be it - just let it happen.

You could run the same tough combat ten times and get ten very different outcomes depending on a host of factors not least of which are dice. For me, if I'm not willing to let all ten of those outcomes occur I'm doing it wrong.

I don't see it as any different than changing it the hour or two before the game when I do quick review of what I had planned.

Ideally I do any tweaking (or, if it's a homebrew, have it fully written) before I even know which specific characters the players will have in it. At some point, though, I say to myself "that's it" and lock it in.

If the players then throw me a curveball and go off mission or do something unexpected then of course I have to wing it, but even there if I dream up something that's too easy or too hard it is what it is and they have to deal with it.

 

[Lanefan]

I change anything at any time. I don't care what is "established", as anything can happen. The idea that nothing in the game world can change ever is just silly.

But even if it is a fact that on May 5th the captain has five thugs, but then on June 5th has ten thugs, it can just happen without a big explanation to the players of "gee, look he just hired more thugs, ok"

We're not talking May 5th to June 5th, though; we're talking May 5th at 2:43 p.m. he has five thugs when the combat starts and at 2:44 p.m. somehow there's ten thugs dead on the deck.

 

[Maxperson]

You straight up said that you would change an encounter because the party deviated from your expected path, had more encounters than you thought they would have, thus the final encounter would be too difficult. IOW, you are absolutely changing things because of completely unrelated events. If you don't find failure boring, then why are you adjusting the encounter?

For the record, I would not adjust the encounter under those circumstances. I had that happen in my last campaign.

The group was way down on resources from some drow fights and instead of leaving the area to rest, they decided to rest within a few hundred feet of the main drow strong area. And they knew from the fights that some of the drow had retreated into the area warning those inside about the PCs.

The drow scried the group and sent a demon to attack. After the fight the group was not able to rest and had expended even more resources. Instead of leaving the area at that point, they decided to assault the drow stronghold down more than half of their resources and hit points.

I expected a TPK. Instead, the players' dice were on fire. They made almost every save. Damage dice for attacks and spells were significantly above average. Even with that, the fight finished with 2 of the 4 PCs unconscious and 1 dead. I was both shocked and thrilled that they won that fight. No dice were fudged. The drow tactics were to win.

When it comes to encounters and game play, I have no expected path for the PCs, so they can't deviate from something that doesn't exist. It's up to them to decide when and where to seek rest to recover, so if they hit a lot of encounters and push forward, there's no reason for me to adjust encounters.

I'd only adjust an encounter if I made an error in my judgment and the encounter was too powerful. The group shouldn't suffer for my mistakes.

 

[clearstream]

But the point is that it isn't 100% pure, unmitigated personal taste. There's more going on here.

Mathematically, other than the extra action economy, there really is a lot that is the same between adding/removing opponents in order to strengthen/weaken the opposition...and reducing/increasing damage taken in order to strengthen/weaken the opposition. Sure, it's less obvious, but obviousness isn't the criterion being cited here, since it's been made clear that things "spawning in" just out of sight isn't any better than them doing so within line of sight.

Your analogy breaks down if this isn't purely a matter of taste. The explanations given thus far don't reduce to a matter of taste. They make stronger claims than that--and those claims seem like they should apply to both cases, but they don't.

We have some cross-currents here. My post was intended to join the extended debates about fail-forward and runes, i.e. different approaches to establishing the fiction.

Yours is about kinds of fudging, right? My post isn't about that.