D&D 5E (2014) The Glass Cannon or the Bag of Hit Points

[Celtavian]

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.

Not true at all. No matter how much you tailor encounters, random dice rolls and player choices always take things in unexpected directions good or bad.

If you carefully design an encounter to be only somewhat challenging, bad dice rolls could make it deadly. You could design an encounter to be deadly and good dice rolls make it easy. Or one unlucky missed save taking out a bad guy. Or one unlucky save by a PC making the fight a ton harder. Tailoring only gets you so far. Random dice rolls and player tactical choices can take the encounter in unexpected directions and almost always do.

The fun isn't always winning or losing combat. It's figuring out why you were in the battle to begin with and watching a story unfold. At the moment one of the characters I'm running hates orcs and has killed an enormous number of them. He is known amongst the orc tribes as an orc killer. Every time he fights orcs, they are trying to kill him. Right now he is on a boat with half-orcs that know who he is. I'm playing it up big time that they hate him and fear him. He's playing it up right back doing things to scare them. It makes for great role-playing regardless of how combat turns out. You know at some point I have to make some harsh orc nemesis for him that can actually challenge him, then let the dice decide the fate of both.

You seem to be confusing tailoring with automatic success or failure. That doesn't happen in a game with random dice rolls and player choices. Tailoring just means making the encounter interesting for the PCs and having it add to the PCs story.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

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.

Oh. I've never implemented or played an adaptive difficulty game, I've only read about them in Peter Spronck's papers, but I'd assumed that the adaptive difficulty engine would give the player feedback on exactly how hard it currently was (and allow them to tweak the settings). Something more akin to skipping over level 2 if you thrashed level 1 and going straight to level 19.

If adaptive difficulty were implemented invisibly, as you describe it, it would be a very frustrating experience.

RE: 20th level encounters, I often tell my players after the fact what kind of a fight they just had. Of course they know a lot of that anyway based on XP value, but I still let them know whether it was a Deadly x4 fight or a 14th level fight or whatever. Not always, but sometimes, when I remember and I think it was important. My players are of the opinion that CR is bogus anyway, and I share that opinion, but it's still kind of fun to know what the "official" difficulty was.

But I think what is really important to the players is that "now we can tackle that beholder tyrant-ship because now we have a paladin again," which is adaptive difficulty, but self-paced. They consciously choose when to ramp it up by going after tougher things, and I just find it fun to let the know how far out of their weight class they are punching. But I don't think it's the main thing they're worried about compared to "can we find more treasure? can we establish an off-planet colony? can we get a whole fleet​ of spelljamming ships?"

 

[chriton227]

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.

I think this is the root of the issue. I don't play to experience the GM's story, if I wanted to experience someone else's story I'd just read a book or play a video game. I play in order to forge my own story from the raw materials that the GM provides. I don't want an illusion of meaningful choice, I want my choices to actually have meaning, be they good or bad. If I choose to be weak in combat, then the logical conclusion is I should then try to avoid combat, either through diplomacy or through being careful about where I go, or accept that combat is more dangerous for me. If instead the combats become easier because of my choice, it has invalidated the meaning of my choice.

I'm sure part of this is due to personal experience; I've played in games where everything is tailored to the party, and the end result was that it felt like we were on a treadmill, no matter what we did or how hard we worked, we were always going to stay in the same place. We level up, the enemies level up too. We get new abilities, they get new counter abilities. We get better gear, they get better gear. We get allies, the enemies just become more numerous to compensate. The story would proceed exactly at the pace the GM mandated on exactly the rails the GM provided. I know this is an extreme case, but there is a slippery slope leading from tailoring encounters for the desired challenge level to tailoring the encounters to get a foregone outcome to tailoring the encounters to steer the party in the desired plot direction, and many DMs are not able to stay at the top of that slope without sliding down.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think this is the root of the issue. I don't play to experience the GM's story, if I wanted to experience someone else's story I'd just read a book or play a video game. I play in order to forge my own story from the raw materials that the GM provides. I don't want an illusion of meaningful choice, I want my choices to actually have meaning, be they good or bad. If I choose to be weak in combat, then the logical conclusion is I should then try to avoid combat, either through diplomacy or through being careful about where I go, or accept that combat is more dangerous for me. If instead the combats become easier because of my choice, it has invalidated the meaning of my choice.

I think we have compatible playstyles. At my table the character you describe would be unable to go certain places or do certain things, unless and until they used their superior diplomatic/financial skills to procure an escort who was capable of supplying the necessary combat power. The world pretty much is what it is.

 

[chriton227]

If adaptive difficulty were implemented invisibly, as you describe it, it would be a very frustrating experience.

What I've read about adaptive difficulty recommends implementing it invisibly to prevent the system from being gamed by the players. For example I have a friend that was talking about the older Street Fighter games, it would adapt the difficulty and players figured out that if they sandbagged the early fights, the end-game fight against M Bison would be notably easier, but if you played to your full ability in the early fights the M Bison fight was virtually impossible. Similarly in Diablo 3, the trial at the beginning of the greater nephalim rifts sets the starting difficulty of the first rift in the series; players have figured out by going back to town at the start of the trial and letting the timer expire, they start the greater rift at the minimum difficulty, letting them rack up substantially more XP and treasure compared to what they would get if they started at the level appropriate for their power and skill. Even Mario Kart has a form of adaptive difficulty, where lighting affects players longer if they are in a better position and the blue shell always targets the leader, so players game it by staying in 2nd until the very last moment. I'm all for games having variable difficulty, I'm even okay with games making difficulty adjustment suggestions ("I see you're having trouble, would you like to reduce the difficulty?"), but as a player I want to be in control of the difficulty setting. Some days I'm in the mood for an easy casual romp, others I'm in the mood to be challenged, and I should be able to adjust things accordingly.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

What I've read about adaptive difficulty recommends implementing it invisibly to prevent the system from being gamed by the players. For example I have a friend that was talking about the older Street Fighter games, it would adapt the difficulty and players figured out that if they sandbagged the early fights, the end-game fight against M Bison would be notably easier, but if you played to your full ability in the early fights the M Bison fight was virtually impossible. Similarly in Diablo 3, the trial at the beginning of the greater nephalim rifts sets the starting difficulty of the first rift in the series; players have figured out by going back to town at the start of the trial and letting the timer expire, they start the greater rift at the minimum difficulty, letting them rack up substantially more XP and treasure compared to what they would get if they started at the level appropriate for their power and skill. Even Mario Kart has a form of adaptive difficulty, where lighting affects players longer if they are in a better position and the blue shell always targets the leader, so players game it by staying in 2nd until the very last moment. I'm all for games having variable difficulty, I'm even okay with games making difficulty adjustment suggestions ("I see you're having trouble, would you like to reduce the difficulty?"), but as a player I want to be in control of the difficulty setting. Some days I'm in the mood for an easy casual romp, others I'm in the mood to be challenged, and I should be able to adjust things accordingly.

Yuck, those games sound awful. I agree with your preference for transparency and player control of difficulty. That's how I effectively run my D&D game.

 

[Celtavian]

I think this is the root of the issue. I don't play to experience the GM's story, if I wanted to experience someone else's story I'd just read a book or play a video game. I play in order to forge my own story from the raw materials that the GM provides. I don't want an illusion of meaningful choice, I want my choices to actually have meaning, be they good or bad. If I choose to be weak in combat, then the logical conclusion is I should then try to avoid combat, either through diplomacy or through being careful about where I go, or accept that combat is more dangerous for me. If instead the combats become easier because of my choice, it has invalidated the meaning of my choice.

If you make this bad at combat character in a party where most of them are good at combat, should I exclude you from the group or force you to make a character better at combat? Or should I create encounters for a non-combat character to shine? You don't play alone. You play in a group. All of the group must be considered when designing encounters, not just one character. A DM attempting to make every player's choices meaningful will be unsuccessful if he does not tailor the game to characters capabilities be it combat or non-combat.

If a player makes a ranger and you never allow him an opportunity to use his ranger skills, I consider that a DM failure unless I tell the player in advance you can't make a ranger because I don't plan to incorporate anything meaningful for you to do other than fight. You're making these claims that you want your choices to be meaningful, but if you make a character of a certain type that doesn't ever jibe with what I'm running, how does that make your choices meaningful? Would you continue to play with a DM that pretty much defeated everything you do?

For example, let's say I ignore completely the PC's capabilities. Instead I design monsters to counter every standard conceivable method of fighting. You keep on losing because I as a DM have far more resources for defeating you than you have for defeating me, would you consider that a more entertaining game? Would you feel your choices had more meaning? Or the flip side where I open up the Monster Manual and use standard creatures that you steamroll over and over and over again, would that make you feel like your choices were meaningful? Would you have fun if I did that?

I know my players wouldn't. But maybe you would.

I know if I were to design encounters in an ideal fashion even using the xp budgets, I could kill party after party. If I looked at them and said, "Sorry, man. I'm just better at tactics than you and your group. You need to make better choices." I'm seriously doubting players would have fun in that game.

I'm sure part of this is due to personal experience; I've played in games where everything is tailored to the party, and the end result was that it felt like we were on a treadmill, no matter what we did or how hard we worked, we were always going to stay in the same place. We level up, the enemies level up too. We get new abilities, they get new counter abilities. We get better gear, they get better gear. We get allies, the enemies just become more numerous to compensate. The story would proceed exactly at the pace the GM mandated on exactly the rails the GM provided. I know this is an extreme case, but there is a slippery slope leading from tailoring encounters for the desired challenge level to tailoring the encounters to get a foregone outcome to tailoring the encounters to steer the party in the desired plot direction, and many DMs are not able to stay at the top of that slope without sliding down.

Player choice is always an illusion. That is the nature of a game. Everything is tailored.

I know the type of DM you're talking about. I don't enjoy those types of DMs either. The ones that make you feel like they're following a script and don't know what to do if the players go off script. That's not how I do things.

The tailoring for me starts from the beginning and incorporates the players' backgrounds and includes everything thereafter including how the players interact with the world. I don't quite understand how you write your own story using a DM. Do you write encounters up and hand them to the DM? Do write up NPCs and expect the DM to run them as you instruct them? Do you know a DM that will do what you want him to do whether he enjoys it or not? This is the part I never understand when someone says they want their choices to be meaningful. What do you mean by that? Are you forcing the DM to run the game a certain way and only put things in front of you that you choose? If that is not the case, the DM is indeed crafting the story and world. How detailed it is may vary, but it is still the DM creating it and putting it in your path as a obstacle unless you are writing the encounters and the adventure and handing it to the DM to run. I would never allow a player to do that. I'd tell him to run himself.

There is no slippery slope. This game has always been and will always be a gamed where the DM tailors the game. To what degree differs, but unless the player is writing the encounters and has found a DM to run them as they specify, you have not escaped DM tailoring or having a DM dictate the world to you.

 

[Celtavian]

Yuck, those games sound awful. I agree with your preference for transparency and player control of difficulty. That's how I effectively run my D&D game.

How do players control difficulty?

 

[Uchawi]

Mix it up and vary the tactics. 5E requires DM experience to be run smoothly, so broaden your horizons.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

How do players control difficulty?

By going where there are beholders, for example. Last session there was a crashed ship full of beholders, and a mercenary gnome with a mechanical arm offered them half the profits (1000 gp bounty per eyestalk) if they would take point, since his giff mercenaries don't fit well in cramped spaces. (Normally he would try to kill beholders in space, but this time the beholder ship crashed first.) They had the choice to walk away, but instead they walked straight into a ship full of 24 beholders.

In broader terms, you telegraph threats to the players (unless the threats were created by the PCs' own actions) and then the players choose whether to engage or avoid for now.