D&D General Should difficulty increase to match optimization

[Jack Daniel]

A spin off from the optimization poll. The question is simple, when players optimize should difficulty be dialed up to match?

According to the philosophy behind my preferred play-style? Absolutely not. The world is the world; the campaign milieu exists independently of the player characters, and it's the players' business to deal with what's there. If a tribe of 25 ogres lives on the top of Mt. Ogreface, then 25 ogres live there—and the number won't change, and they won't get downgraded to orcs or upgraded to hill giants—regardless of whether the players never visit the mountain, or they go there with a party of six 1st level characters, or nine 3rd level characters and an entourage of henchmen, or a dozen 10th level characters and an army. Exploration is the central activity at hand, and it would be meaningless to explore a world whose contents are in flux, not just due to the ordinary sort of dynamism needed to simulate a living world, but as an arbitrary response to the player characters' inherent qualities.

It's one thing if you can draw a line of causality from the players' party to the effect in game — they went into the dungeon with 30 people, so they're making a lot of noise and stirring up the denizens and encountering more random monsters than a small and sneaky party would — but it's quite another thing if they're just meeting artificial level-appropriate challenge after artificial level-appropriate challenge. That degree of quantum ogreing is far too much "spooky action at a distance" to be believable.

 

[bloodtide]

I'm a yes, but I also believe in the set world. The gate guards of the great city are stone golems. So if some 3rd level characters attack the city, they die with a couple stone punches.

Also my world is already quite a Hard Fun world as foe use intelligence, tricks, traps, tactics, stratagey and common sense at the very least. The typical players that just causal play and stumble around while they are on thier phone the whole time don't last long in my game.

 

[TheSword]

I'm a yes, but I also believe in the set world. The gate guards of the great city are stone golems. So if some 3rd level characters attack the city, they die with a couple stone punches.

Also my world is already quite a Hard Fun world as foe use intelligence, tricks, traps, tactics, stratagey and common sense at the very least. The typical players that just causal play and stumble around while they are on thier phone the whole time don't last long in my game.

Do you have a regular group?

 

[Gradine]

Depends on why the player is optimizing.

Are they optimizing because they want to feel epic and dominate everything? Then nah, let em wreck shop (at least until the really important battles).

Are they optimizing because they want to face incredible challenges and be appropriately prepared for them? Then yeah!

 

[jgsugden]

The poll results explain why optimization often ruins the game, and results in TPKs.

Let's say you have a group of 5 PCs. 2 are optimized, primarily on offensive capabilities, with the other 3 very efficient PCs. The DM observes these 5 PCs blow away deadly encounters without breaking a sweat. Like so many DMs, they think this will get boring, so the DM includes more monsters of a higher CR. The next few encounters are a good challenges for the PCs. Then they have an encounter where the two powerhouses fail a saving throw early in the combat and are knocked out of commission. This is to be expected as the monsters are tougher than you'd expect for PCs of their level to face, and it is only the offense, not the defense, of these PCs that is optimized. That leaves the other three to survive when vastly overpowered by foes. The result - TPK.

Players are unhappy that the DM 'cheated' with an overpowered foe. The DM is unhappy because their storyline s ruined by a TPK, and that everyone is angry at the DM.

I've seen this far too many times over the years. It has been a long time since I experienced it as a DM, but I still run into it as a player in a number of different groups.

My solution: Don't worry about the power levels. Overpowered PCs can still be challenged in combat if you understand their powers. If the players wants an overpowered PC - so they can feel like an amazing hero - cool. Run with it. Celebrate how cool they are and let that be their part of the spotlight. Focus the storylines around the other PCs to give them a star spot in the story to give them their spotlight. There are a lot of ways to be the hero of the story. After all, they write comic books about Super-man, but they also write them about Batman, Daredevil and Black Widow.

D&D is an RPG. A role playing game. Characters play a role in the story. The game is at its best when the story is great. You'll have the most fun when the combats are best used in the story, not just when they're the best strategy game challenge.

 

[tetrasodium]

The poll results explain why optimization often ruins the game, and results in TPKs.

Let's say you have a group of 5 PCs. 2 are optimized, primarily on offensive capabilities, with the other 3 very efficient PCs. The DM observes these 5 PCs blow away deadly encounters without breaking a sweat. Like so many DMs, they think this will get boring, so the DM includes more monsters of a higher CR. The next few encounters are a good challenges for the PCs. Then they have an encounter where the two powerhouses fail a saving throw early in the combat and are knocked out of commission. This is to be expected as the monsters are tougher than you'd expect for PCs of their level to face, and it is only the offense, not the defense, of these PCs that is optimized. That leaves the other three to survive when vastly overpowered by foes. The result - TPK.

Players are unhappy that the DM 'cheated' with an overpowered foe. The DM is unhappy because their storyline s ruined by a TPK, and that everyone is angry at the DM.

I've seen this far too many times over the years. It has been a long time since I experienced it as a DM, but I still run into it as a player in a number of different groups.

My solution: Don't worry about the power levels. Overpowered PCs can still be challenged in combat if you understand their powers. If the players wants an overpowered PC - so they can feel like an amazing hero - cool. Run with it. Celebrate how cool they are and let that be their part of the spotlight. Focus the storylines around the other PCs to give them a star spot in the story to give them their spotlight. There are a lot of ways to be the hero of the story. After all, they write comic books about Super-man, but they also write them about Batman, Daredevil and Black Widow.

D&D is an RPG. A role playing game. Characters play a role in the story. The game is at its best when the story is great. You'll have the most fun when the combats are best used in the story, not just when they're the best strategy game challenge.

In 5e the reason that five PCs can "blow away" LOLdeadly encounters is not because of "optimization" 5e itself allows nearly zero room for all but the most basic &trivial of "optimization" that fault lies in the fact that d&d is a game swimming in magic items and feats are almost the expected default while 5e's math is designed around the idea of 6-8 medium to hard encounters per adventuring day with no feats and no magic items despite everything already mentioned on top of the fact that 6-8 medium to hard is so deep into the grindiest of grindfests that it makes the thought of playing games like risk to total conquest of Australia seem absolutely casual.

 

[Shiroiken]

I suppose it depends on how you want to look at it. Deciding to run a campaign on hard/nightmare mode is perfectly fine, but to adjust the presumed difficulty just based on the power level of the characters is really a punishment to those players (and worse to the rest of the party). They basically fell into a treadmill, where because they're stronger, they really aren't stronger at all.

 

[MGibster]

I typically adjust the difficult of encounters to the abilities of the PCs. I don't do this for every encounter, I'm not going to have a random street thug be a challenge to a 6th level Fighter, but if the PCs are able to punch above their weight class I try to give them a decent challenge.

 

[FireLance]

I vote no because the players should deal with the natural consequences of their optimization, i.e. boring fights if the PCs are too optimized. Just like magic items, ability scores of 16 in a PC's weapon attack or spellcasting ability score at 1st level should be nice to have, but not required.

 

[MGibster]

I vote no because the players should deal with the natural consequences of their optimization, i.e. boring fights if the PCs are too optimized. Just like magic items, ability scores of 16 in a PC's weapon attack or spellcasting ability score at 1st level should be nice to have, but not required.

While I see where you're coming from, that would make the fights boring for me as the DM. I want to have fun too and encounters where the PCs are constantly steamrolling the challenges I set up aren't fun for me.