Should a tier 4 party in organized play be rewarded for great playing by ending early?

[Garrett Crowe]

This weekend I ran a tier 4 adventure for organized play, and the group managed to skip a third of the adventure through smart play. Should I have punished them for this by throwing extra waves of combat in the final battle that weren't in the module, or should I have let them enjoy their victory with an early end and no more taxing of their resources?
Check out the full description of this situation in the link to my blog below,

Should the Players Be Allowed the Rewards of Critting a Module? – Threat Detected

Garrett

 

[aco175]

In my home game, I likely would have had them get the victory and bump the encounter only a bit. Maybe have the monsters start with full HP instead of half. In a organized play or convention game, the players want to play the 4 hours, so I likely would have had more to spread things out some. Add another group to the encounter and allow all of them to have cool powers to challenge the PCs, who are tier 4 and can cast meteor swarm.

 

[Garrett Crowe]

That's certainly what I would do in a home game... still it feels like punishing the group for being too good.

 

[J-H]

If the module expects them to run into a couple of enemies with 70hp and make it be a big battle, that's on the module writers. It sounds like they didn't write robust enough encounters to deal with 20th level characters. Meteor Swarm is a nice AOE against squishies, but any of the martials can put out the same level of damage against 1-2 targets in a round or so anyway.

 

[Oofta]

Ask the group. If I sign up to play a session, I'd probably want to play for the time allotted whether we needed to or not. Especially true if it's a con and there's another session later. But it just depends on the players and their circumstances.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Ending the session early seems like a punishment not a reward, IMO. If more combat doesn’t feel right, come up with something for them to explore. Maybe easier said than done for organized play where the module doesn’t provide you any more ideas.

 

[Garrett Crowe]

I never considered ending early as a punishment

 

[MatthewJHanson]

Ask the group. If I sign up to play a session, I'd probably want to play for the time allotted whether we needed to or not. Especially true if it's a con and there's another session later. But it just depends on the players and their circumstances.

Second this. I'd probably also want play the full time at allotted.

I also don't think that concept of "punishing" your players is something that should ever be part of running D&D. If there's behavior that you don't want to see at your table you should talk to them.

In your case I don't think they did anything wrong, but I'd still talk to them and see what option they would find the most fun. End early, harder final fight, or maybe go back and see some of the scenes that they missed earlier.

 

[billd91]

I wouldn't consider ending early as a punishment, particularly if I were at a convention. That just allows me to spend a little more time in the dealer room, getting food, or getting to my next game. It also allows the players more time after play to just talk about how things went as well as other topics without it interfering with the game. There's usually a fair amount of that at AL games I've been involved in.

If they had managed to skip a third of the module by smart play and I saw on my clock that I was running WAY ahead of time, I'd probably milk more out of the final encounter - more bombastic behavior from the BBEG, more joking about and otherwise having a good time. I might even let the players know about the reduced time pressure as well.

 

[Oofta]

Second this. I'd probably also want play the full time at allotted.

I also don't think that concept of "punishing" your players is something that should ever be part of running D&D. If there's behavior that you don't want to see at your table you should talk to them.

In your case I don't think they did anything wrong, but I'd still talk to them and see what option they would find the most fun. End early, harder final fight, or maybe go back and see some of the scenes that they missed earlier.

It really depends on the situation for me. I had one game end after 15 minutes (for really stupid annoying reason) and I had to DM the next session. Since I had driven across town to get there it was a total waste of time. In another case we were told to hang out for the last session "Just in case" we were needed while we all just sat there staring at each other (for another really stupid annoying reason) when all I wanted to do was get some sleep.

So you just don't know without asking.