D&D 5E The Glass Cannon or the Bag of Hit Points

[chriton227]

You should carefully construct the creature to challenge the party you are running.

I agree to an extent, but you have to be careful not to do this too much unless you want an adversarial relationship with frustrated players. When you tailor encounters to counter the party's abilities, you risk negating the value of their choices. If a PC creates an archer and the DM makes sure every enemy can quickly close to melee range to ruin their ability to use their bow, they will feel like they should have created a melee fighter instead, but if they had created a melee fighter the DM would instead be throwing fast ranged attackers or flyers at them that negates their ability to attack in melee. So regardless what the PC's choice was, the DM is forcing it to be the wrong choice. If you look at it as rock-paper-scissors, the DM always gets to see what the players threw first, so they can always negate it and "win" if they choose.

I've played with DMs who have taken this too far, even to the point where a player who lost a PC to one of many traps encountered rolled a new character as a rogue, and from that point on there were no more locks, no traps, and the majority of the enemies were immune to sneak attacks, because the DM wanted to "challenge" the player. When a player selects a class or ability or spell, the subtext of what they are saying is "I think this will be fun to use", and if you choose to overwhelmingly negate that you are telling them you value "challenge" more than their enjoyment of the game.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I agree to an extent, but you have to be careful not to do this too much unless you want an adversarial relationship with frustrated players. When you tailor encounters to counter the party's abilities, you risk negating the value of their choices. If a PC creates an archer and the DM makes sure every enemy can quickly close to melee range to ruin their ability to use their bow, they will feel like they should have created a melee fighter instead, but if they had created a melee fighter the DM would instead be throwing fast ranged attackers or flyers at them that negates their ability to attack in melee. So regardless what the PC's choice was, the DM is forcing it to be the wrong choice. If you look at it as rock-paper-scissors, the DM always gets to see what the players threw first, so they can always negate it and "win" if they choose.

I've played with DMs who have taken this too far, even to the point where a player who lost a PC to one of many traps encountered rolled a new character as a rogue, and from that point on there were no more locks, no traps, and the majority of the enemies were immune to sneak attacks, because the DM wanted to "challenge" the player. When a player selects a class or ability or spell, the subtext of what they are saying is "I think this will be fun to use", and if you choose to overwhelmingly negate that you are telling them you value "challenge" more than their enjoyment of the game.

So much this. This is one reason I try to avoid even knowing the details of my players' PCs, and even when I deliberately design an encounter for a certain challenge level (e.g. "missile tactics should not dominate") I do it against a theoretical platonic "test party" and not against actual PCs. As I told my players last night, "If you go in that ship, what is there is what I there. I don't even know what level all you guys are and I'm not going to change what's there when I find out."

Players' decisions should matter, including chargen decisions. Customizing encounters to PCs abnegates those decisions.

 

[Celtavian]

I agree to an extent, but you have to be careful not to do this too much unless you want an adversarial relationship with frustrated players. When you tailor encounters to counter the party's abilities, you risk negating the value of their choices. If a PC creates an archer and the DM makes sure every enemy can quickly close to melee range to ruin their ability to use their bow, they will feel like they should have created a melee fighter instead, but if they had created a melee fighter the DM would instead be throwing fast ranged attackers or flyers at them that negates their ability to attack in melee. So regardless what the PC's choice was, the DM is forcing it to be the wrong choice. If you look at it as rock-paper-scissors, the DM always gets to see what the players threw first, so they can always negate it and "win" if they choose.

I've played with DMs who have taken this too far, even to the point where a player who lost a PC to one of many traps encountered rolled a new character as a rogue, and from that point on there were no more locks, no traps, and the majority of the enemies were immune to sneak attacks, because the DM wanted to "challenge" the player. When a player selects a class or ability or spell, the subtext of what they are saying is "I think this will be fun to use", and if you choose to overwhelmingly negate that you are telling them you value "challenge" more than their enjoyment of the game.

The tailoring should be both to create a significant challenge and to allow your PCs to shine. If they are good at fighting a particular way, it's also good to create encounters that allow that PC to shine like a raging barbarian or a wizard using fire spells.

I find designing encounters expected to be challenging without knowing PC capabilities often leads to weak challenges if the PCs know how to deal with most things easily.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The tailoring should be both to create a significant challenge and to allow your PCs to shine. If they are good at fighting a particular way, it's also good to create encounters that allow that PC to shine like a raging barbarian or a wizard using fire spells.

Very true, and especially so in D&D, particularly 5e, which both needs that kind pro-active DMing (as do most other eds) and actively encourages it with it's DM Empowerment attitude.

I find designing encounters expected to be challenging without knowing PC capabilities often leads to weak challenges

Well, unpredictable challenges, unless you assume...

if the PCs know how to deal with most things easily.

Sure, PCs who have it all cracked need amped-up challenges tailored against their abilities and optimal tactics.

 

[chriton227]

The tailoring should be both to create a significant challenge and to allow your PCs to shine. If they are good at fighting a particular way, it's also good to create encounters that allow that PC to shine like a raging barbarian or a wizard using fire spells.

If the encounters are always tailored to the PC's capabilities, is there any value to the player's choices with regard to their PC's abilities? If they make sub-optimal choices, they will face encounters that are a mix of significant challenges and opportunities to shine. If they make optimized choices, they will face encounters that are a mix of significant challenges and opportunities to shine. If the choose to focus on being really good at one area to the detriment of others, they will face encounters that are a mix of significant challenges and opportunities to shine. If they choose to be moderately skilled in many areas instead of specialized in one area, they will face encounters that are a mix of significant challenges and opportunities to shine. So regardless of their choices, the end result is the same.

This reminds me of video games with adaptive difficulty, where no matter how good or bad you are at the game, you'll still progress at roughly the same rate and challenge relative to your skill. While that doesn't look bad on paper, it completely removes any incentive to get better at the game, since if you get better the game will just become harder to compensate.

Unless there is an in-game reason for an encounter to be tailored to the party, I'm just not a fan of the practice. If the BBEG has been watching the party and sends a hit squad after them that is tailored to fight them, that is understandable. If the orc patrol they encounter just happens to be tuned to their capabilities even though that doesn't fit the in-game expectation of an orc patrol, that isn't okay to me.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The tailoring should be both to create a significant challenge and to allow your PCs to shine. If they are good at fighting a particular way, it's also good to create encounters that allow that PC to shine like a raging barbarian or a wizard using fire spells.

I find designing encounters expected to be challenging without knowing PC capabilities often leads to weak challenges if the PCs know how to deal with most things easily.

A good middle ground is to tailor adventures to a platonic party of PCs who do not actually exist but could exist. For example, throw in occasional locked doors and mechanical traps for a thief to deal with; include some mind flayers with 90% MR for mundane fighters to deal with; have some odd languages and maps for a Comprehend Languages wizard to read and some non-hostile but foreign-speaking creatures for a monk or warlock to negotiate with; have a super-tough encounter guarding a treasure for a rogue to sneak through and steal without fighting; have a vertical canyon with fights on the cliff ledge for an Aarakocra to deal with, for a monk to jump down, and for an Athletics bard or Repelling Blast warlock to push people off; have a shipful of beholders to fight for which a Paladin's Aura + Bless spell would be really nice to have around; have a room full of gnolls for a wizard to Fireball; and do all this even if your current PCs are are bunch of pure Champion fighters.

My experience is that two things will happen: the players will take advantage of these opportunities with the characters they already have, and they will create a wider variety of PCs going forward to take care of more of these opportunities.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

This reminds me of video games with adaptive difficulty, where no matter how good or bad you are at the game, you'll still progress at roughly the same rate and challenge relative to your skill. While that doesn't look bad on paper, it completely removes any incentive to get better at the game, since if you get better the game will just become harder to compensate.

Isn't there some value still in knowing that you're playing on 99% difficulty instead of 60%? That's how old school arcade games always worked; they would always adapt and get harder until you reached your breaking point, and then you'd get to brag about how far you got. It seems like that would remain fun even if it stabilized just before your breaking point instead of going beyond it.

It's fun to know that you beat a 20th level Medium encounter with a level 4 party. My players enjoy it anyway[1]. Amping up difficulty in 5E is never a problem on any scale I've ever encountered.


[1] And I enjoy crushing 8th level PCs with a 3rd level Hard encounter! Or both ways in rapid succession. Last session I was rolling 1d10-5 to determine how many beholders were in each room that they explored of the beholder hive ship. It was very swingy; the first time they tried, both PCs died to a single beholder. The second time (after a "reload" which earned me a karma point) they beat two beholders at once, thanks to improved tactics and some stolen drow sleep poison.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

Well, here's my 2¢...

I think "you" are doing it backwards. Don't increase the HP of the monsters or increase their offensive capabilities. Leave them as-is. What you need to do is decrease the PC's.

Now, seeing as 5e is out and in print, your players may try and fight you tooth and nail against this... after all, you are "taking away their toys", so to speak. For my next campaign, PC HP's will be of the diminishing returns style; the higher level you go, the less HP you gets per level. I haven't decided on the details yet, but I'm thinking "-1 HD Type per 5 levels; after d4, it's a flat +1hp/lvl". So a Fighter (d10) would get d10 up to 5th level, then d8's from level 6 to 10, then d6's for level 11 to 15, then d4's for level 16 to 20. A Wizard would get d6's for level 1 to 5, then d4's for level 6 to 10, then a flat +1hp per level from 11 up to 20. That said, my players PC's (three of the six) just broke the 4th level barrier and have achieved the lofty height of Level 5. Highest anyone has ever gotten since we started playing 5e back with the Starter Set.

Anyway, even at level 4, we have seen that HP's seem to be the end-all and be-all of the system. If you don't have the HP's to last in a fight, you loose, plain and simple. Needless to say, this is not sitting well with us. We'd much rather have a Hackmaster 4e style of HP's.... where you can have a lot of HP's, but with Critical Hits and Penetration Damage, as well as the Follow Through damage, your HP's can quickly dwindle. Kept everyone on their toes and made fights actually seem deadly... even the ones against "walk-over" adversaries had that little twinge of fear. All it takes is a lucky hit from that giant rat, and a kick-ass roll for the crit and BOOM! Your 80hp fighter just lost use of his left foot, is laying on the ground screaming in pain for the next 5 rounds, and about to get nibbled on by the whole pack (which can now hit more easily, and their crits can actually be in the dangerous areas...like neck, head and groin...). What 5e could use is a bit of that "HP's are great, but don't count on them to keep you alive for X number of rounds" type of play.

Without integrating some kind of Hackmaster or Rolemaster/HARP style "critical hit system", I think the easiest way is to just reduce the PC's ability to take obscene amounts of damage once they get higher and higher in level.

If my HP reduction thing doesn't seem like it's going to pan out, I may very well be forced to trying to import some "critical hit" type of system into the game. On the plus side, 5e is written with just that sort of modularity that it shouldn't be too hard to do!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[chriton227]

Isn't there some value still in knowing that you're playing on 99% difficulty instead of 60%? That's how old school arcade games always worked; they would always adapt and get harder until you reached your breaking point, and then you'd get to brag about how far you got. It seems like that would remain fun even if it stabilized just before your breaking point instead of going beyond it.

It's fun to know that you beat a 20th level Medium encounter with a level 4 party. My players enjoy it anyway. Amping up difficulty in 5E is never a problem on any scale I've ever encountered.

Most old video games were a normal difficulty progression (either by levels or over the same amount of time) independent of player skill, which is why some players would die on level 1 and others could get to level 100. Adaptive difficulty games would be more like a game that if you beat level 1 quickly with perfect accuracy, the enemies in level 2 would suddenly be a lot tougher and more accurate, while if you barely completed level 1, the enemies would only be slightly better (or possibly even easier) than the enemies in level 1. So the end result would be something like the good player and the bad player both probably dying around level 5, and both able to complete the game after dumping in around 10 quarters for continues. As a result, there is no bragging rights for making it to level 5 since everyone makes it to level 5, and the only bragging right for beating the game is that you were willing to dump in enough quarters.

In the games I've been in, the party usually wouldn't know if it was a 20th level Medium encounter or a 5th level Medium encounter, they just know how hard it was to succeed, how long it took them, and what it cost them. Even if they did know, it's not like there is anyone they can brag to that would care what level encounter they defeated. If they come up with a new tactic that they think will save them time and/or resources, and suddenly the encounters get correspondingly harder so that they are still spending the same time and resources while using the new tactic, what incentive would they have to put the effort into continuing to improve? The GM is deciding beforehand the whether or not the the PCs' abilities will be effective in a given encounter and how difficult the encounter will be, so it is the GM's decisions that matter to the success of the encounter, not the players' decisions. At some point, the GM might as well just hand-wave the encounter, narrate it to the players, and tell them how many resources to mark off their character sheet. That would be a much faster route to the end result of the encounter tailored according to the specific party's abilities.

 

[Celtavian]

If the encounters are always tailored to the PC's capabilities, is there any value to the player's choices with regard to their PC's abilities? If they make sub-optimal choices, they will face encounters that are a mix of significant challenges and opportunities to shine. If they make optimized choices, they will face encounters that are a mix of significant challenges and opportunities to shine. If the choose to focus on being really good at one area to the detriment of others, they will face encounters that are a mix of significant challenges and opportunities to shine. If they choose to be moderately skilled in many areas instead of specialized in one area, they will face encounters that are a mix of significant challenges and opportunities to shine. So regardless of their choices, the end result is the same.

This reminds me of video games with adaptive difficulty, where no matter how good or bad you are at the game, you'll still progress at roughly the same rate and challenge relative to your skill. While that doesn't look bad on paper, it completely removes any incentive to get better at the game, since if you get better the game will just become harder to compensate.

Unless there is an in-game reason for an encounter to be tailored to the party, I'm just not a fan of the practice. If the BBEG has been watching the party and sends a hit squad after them that is tailored to fight them, that is understandable. If the orc patrol they encounter just happens to be tuned to their capabilities even though that doesn't fit the in-game expectation of an orc patrol, that isn't okay to me.

Sure there is value in the player's choices. That's why you tailor the encounter to challenge them or let them shine. If you're always as a DM using the optimal options to design encounters, the players will feel overwhelmed. If you're always creating encounters straight out of the book and using suboptimal tactics, they'll steamroll everything. They'll get discouraged if every fight is a nightmare and bored if every fight is a walkover.

Value in the player's choices? I don't even think about that other than to tailor my campaign to challenge them and make them shine as heroes. The whole game is an illusion. It's up to you make the player choices relevant in the context of the illusion. That is what tailored encounters do.

The largest problem in games like 3E with the caster-martial disparity for example was DM's just tossing encounters together by the book and throwing them out there without regards to the PC's capabilities. Then the wizard just comes up with some spell combination he knows will defeat the encounter and the martial PCs stand around watching this happen because the DM didn't bother to account for the capabilities of the caster. Casters always have the ability to set up circumstances in their favor be it terrain or attacking the weak area of an enemy. If you don't take this into account when designing encounters, you'll create a game with martial characters that feel disempowered and bored. Why would I want to do that because I think that somehow validates player choices?

Player choice is for the most part an illusion. The game designers decide what each class can do. They do so based less on balance and more on what they feel is appropriate for a given archetype. It's up to you the DM to allow a player to make that archetype according to their view of it and create for them a fun, challenging, and meaningful story based on their character including their combat capabilities. That is how I make the game fun for my players.

A DM that can't accurately assess their players' capabilities would have a hard time running a fun, challenging, long-term campaign in my opinion. DM's are illusionists. Part of the illusion is making PC choices meaningful regardless if they are optimal or suboptimal. Learning the game is up to the player's tastes. I know some players that know how to make an optimal character, but choose not to because they have fun role-playing something different. So should I force that player to choose better options by punishing his choices?

As a player, I would hate that. One time I myself made a priest of Ilmater, a broken god. He had broken limbs on a rack. He was dedicated to peace. He was a cleric that only healed and wouldn't do harm to anyone, even monstrous enemies. He was seeking a death as a martyr. I had a blast playing the character. If the DM had run the campaign in the standard fashion, he would have been too much of a weakness to a standard adventuring party. The DM tailored the encounters so they weren't so difficult that I needed to be an optimized healer and provided opportunities for me to exercise my beliefs. I found it entertaining and the party found it amusing. He eventually gave his life to save the party slowing down a demon by holding a doorway against it and preventing it from teleporting while it killed him.

I know people play the game for different reasons. I play the game to construct story using the combat resolution system and player choice to add randomness to the plot elements I've incorporated. I very much tailor most things to make them work like I would like them to work, then let player choice and random rolls act as fate taking encounters in directions I may not have foreseen. I imagine that is a difference in play philosophy.