Should the players always win?

[Deadguy]

Well said Someone (!).

I've played in several campaigns that were great fun, based on the notion that we would at least not die, if not always meet our objectives (though we often did, in a 'sort of' fashion). The quid pro quo was that as characters we would behave as though death were a real possibility. So no throwing yourself into volcanoes expecting to survive, or expecting to win in a toe-to-toe battle with Scylla and Charybdis. Like I say, this was generally a lot of fun, and it meant we poured a lot of effort into characterisation and individualisation of the PCs. Now I appreciate that this would be very dull for some players. But it worked for us (for oh, 8 years).

On the whole, I play to have fun, and success is enormous fun!

 

[Someone]

Not exactly what I was saying. Concisely, players must be absolutely convinced that they can die and fail if they don´t give the best of themselves. And they don´t have to be right.

 

[tzor]

No. D&D is a game whose purpose is not to "win" but to "have fun." Sometimes it is possible to play a game where it is easy to win but not have fun. (Tiger Woods playing a golf game against me is a perfect overkill example. I'd only slow Tiger down, taking three or four strokes for every one he makes. Yes I am that bad a golfer.)

I've been playing role playing games and D&D for decades and you want to know something? I can describe every character death in bardic detail, but ask me to describe any major successful "win" and I'll draw a blank every time.

In this case even the no win scenario can be fun if done right. Dark Sun was the no win scenario. You know, deep down that sooner or later everyone was going to die and tht everything was doomed. But the short term goals of merely surviving the next day proved exciting in and of itself.

 

[The Shaman]

No, players and their characters shouldn't always win. Success is earned, and luck is always a factor.

 

[FireLance]

I think Someone pegged what some players are looking for when they play D&D: the illusion of the possibility of failure. They play D&D to "win", but they want to be challenged by the encounters, too. The DM's job is to calibrate the challenges so that they do not become too tough (TPK) or too easy (walkover).

Frankly, when I DM, I expect the PCs to win. That doesn't mean that they always do. Poor choices and sheer bad luck have turned supposably easy encounters into near failures.

Do you think that a 95% chance for a party of 4 PCs to defeat a challenge of equal CR is too high? Well, go ahead and do the math. The D&D rules are set up so that the party needs to overcome about 14 such challenges before they gain a level. 0.95^14 is a little less than 0.5. That's right, even with a 95% chance of defeating a challenge of equal CR, chances are, the party is more likely than not to lose at least once before making a level.

If losing means death, then less than half of 1st-level PCs will never make it to 2nd level. Less than half of those will make it to 3rd level. Less than half of those will make it to 4th. Were you planning for your campaign to reach 16th level or higher? At a 95% chance to defeat a challenge of equal CR, you'd have about a 1 in 500 chance of doing it.

So maybe I should turn the question around. Is a 95% chance of defeating a challenge of equal CR too high? Or not high enough? If your players realized that in order to have a 53% chance of reaching 16th level, their chance of defeating a challenge of equal CR would have to be about 99.7%, would it spoil their fun?

 

[drothgery]

I don't expect the PCs to succeed in every encounter. Sometimes the PCs run away. Sometimes the BBEG runs away. Sometimes a few PCs die. But unless there's a TPK, I expect the PCs to accomplish most of their long-term goals eventually.

In my current tabletop game we had a mind flayer that kept plane shifting away before we could finish him off. He took down some prominent NPCs, and even one PC (later resurrected). And in something like our fourth encounter with him, this time finally on our terms, with everyone prepped and various strategies in place to kill him quickly and/or keep him from running away, we took him out with a crossbow bolt of aberration slaying fired by a wizard who'd cast True Strike.

 

[Crothian]

No they shouldn't always win. No they shouldn't always even have a chance to win. If the PCs choose to fight a god at first level I'm noty going to handicap the god so they have a chance.

 

[GSHamster]

No they shouldn't always win. No they shouldn't always even have a chance to win. If the PCs choose to fight a god at first level I'm noty going to handicap the god so they have a chance.

Sometimes the chance to win comes before the actual fight.

 

[the Jester]

I vote not just No, but Hell No!

Sometimes the only way to make the big victories really truly sweet is to make the potential failures devastating.

 

[werk]

Option 3: yes and no.

Yes, as a DM you are obligated to pose a challenge to the PCs that they can overcome.

No, stupid players should not be coddled and made to stay alive.

Winning is the epic in epic fantasy roleplaying, but not everyone is up to the challenge