Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Retreater" data-source="post: 3311856" data-attributes="member: 42040">The group I DMed for had a similar problem. I think the term for our problem was "turtling." Like a turtle, the group would retreat in its shell (a safehouse) and wait for the trouble to pass. In another module, the village was raided by orcs and its temple was looted, with a powerful holy relic stolen. The adventurers decided to not pursue the orcs (as the module assumed) and decided instead to stay behind to help rebuild damaged buildings and chicken coops. I didn't know what the problem was. Why would the group resort to non-heroics in a game that rewards action (not only with XP and treasure but also with a fun experience)? Why did the group quit modules in midstream, fleeing the towns that desperately needed their help? Were my players to blame?Here's what I've come to realize after a couple of years of incredible frustration. It was the level of challenges I was throwing against the party. I enjoyed running knock down, drag out fights, and it scared the players. The players were so fearful for the survivability of their characters that they decided to not act at all. It was frustrating for me and no fun for the players either.So what I decided to do was to power-down the modules for a change to give the players (and their characters) a more than reasonable chance of succeeding. How I did it was to directly base the challenges off the abilities of the party. If I knew the fighter was +5 to hit, then I had most mooks with an AC of 13 (so the fighter could hit on a roll of 8 or higher - a 60% chance of hitting); I'd make sure the villains' ACs across the board were suitably low to allow most every party member to contribute at least 75% of the time. I dropped ACs, saves, hit points, damage, spell capacity of all baddies and gave the players a chance to revel in their own heroics. Running weakened combats was much more fun for me than running none at all (because the players avoided all of them before). After a couple months of this, I can throw in the occassional tough fight (the kind I like), and the party doesn't run away, but they deal with it. So ask yourself if the reason the party is asking for backup and feels they need to have full hp - is that because you've presented situations in the past that the group feels is too powerful? If so, consider bumping down the challenges for a bit. Definitely tell the group out of character that you realize the encounters have been a little difficult, but that their characters are properly equipped and powerful enough to deal with the menace. Give them a pep talk. Be their coach at half time; they're down a few points, but can rally to win.Now with your current situation, here's my advice. Have the guard captain respond realistically, whatever you think is realistic in your setting. Does he have some high level guards (or is he, himself, high level)? What about high priests or retired adventurers in the town? If you've built your town according to the DMG guidelines, you should be able to pull a few helpers out of your DM hat of tricks. Let them confront the big bad guy. Give the party a few low level mooks to take out (or perhaps having to pilfer the artifact while the BBEG is distracted in combat). Let them take a course of action that suits their interests and gives them the sense that even though their characters aren's the most powerful in the world, they can do something positive. Then I'd try to make future encounters easier as I described above.Retreater</blockquote>

Verification