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

[chriton227]

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.

Usually we talk as a group about the general theme and style we want to play, and work together to make a party, not a random assemblage of characters. If I choose to make a character bad at combat in a combat heavy party, the consequences of that should flow naturally. If I bring something else to the table (money, social ability, contacts, etc.), maybe the rest of the party will pick up my slack. We may decide to stick to safer areas to reduce the risk. If my character doesn't bring other things to the table, maybe the rest of the PCs will tell my PC that things just aren't working out, and then recruit a new PC that is a better fit (note PC, not player). He might decide that these lunatics lead too dangerous of a life and as a result he retires early. Or maybe he'll just have an early demise. But whichever of those happens, it is a natural consequence of the choice I made.

If a player makes a ranger and he knows going into the game is framed as primarily an urban campaign, that is his choice, and the consequences are his to deal with. His skills may open avenues for the party to do other things, like rather than take that sea voyage down the coast through pirate infested waters, they could go overland instead. Maybe the "fish out of water" concept is one the player wants to explore and is using it for the role-playing opportunities. Or maybe the player has some ideas up their sleeve that you don't know about, like using their ranger skills as a springboard towards being something more like a bounty hunter that isn't as reliant on the wilderness environment. It's true that not every PC fits every party or every campaign, just like in the real world not every career choice is a good fit for each individual's circumstances. Someone who decides to pursue a career as a professional surfer while choosing to live in the Himalayas is going to have a rough go of it, but it is the natural consequence of the choices made.

The encounter issues you are describing appear to me as only an issue if your PCs don't have any choice in where they go or the encounters they engage in. I expect a game world to be like the real world in that some areas are more dangerous than others, with some areas being perfectly safe, while others may carry a significant risk of death. Just like in the real world, there should be some information available to give the PCs a clue as to which areas are more dangerous than others, although that information may not always be perfectly accurate. Even just info like "that's the area where local families go for picnics" or "we don't know what is through that pass, no one has ever returned to tell us". Working to ensure that the encounter compositions makes in-game sense also helps with the balance. Unless orcs in your world are known for having a substantial mage presence, it wouldn't make sense for every orc patrol to have a powerful orc wizard, even if that would make for the most challenging encounter. Underground races making an incursion to the surface world probably aren't going to be using longbows instead of more culturally appropriate weapons unless there is a good reason how they got them and the training to use them. A manticore, an aboleth, and a bullette probably aren't going to be working together even if that happened to make a powerful encounter. And if any of these things did happen, that would be a clue to the party that there is something unusual going on that they may choose to look into further.

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.

I don't expect the GM to come to the game with a story to tell. I expect them to come to the game with world with interesting things happening, and the story is what the PCs decide to do in that world. Maybe it is a coastal town with an active thieves guild, pirates off the coast, with a dwarven stronghold nearby. Spice it up with some factions vying for political control of the town, and maybe some ruins not far away. Then let the party decide what they want to do. Do they want to hunt pirates? Get involved with the local politics, maybe working with (or against) the thieves guild to bolster their power? They could always explore the ruins, or maybe make their fortunes establishing a trade route between the town and the dwarven stronghold. Think of how things would progress if the players weren't there to interfere (good or bad, not everything should have cataclysmic consequences), and then let that happen unless they do interfere. If they ignore the pirates, there might be some shortages they have to deal with in town as merchant ships can't come and go as easily. Maybe that is a problem that the PCs would want to deal with, or maybe they are content letting the merchants deal with it, after all they have enough money they could hire someone else to help them with the problem. Or maybe that shortage provides a perfect opportunity for the party, they could find a way to bring supplied in some other way, or maybe even make a deal with the pirates to cut them in on the profits if they let them through unmolested. If the town is attacked by a plague of undead, the players can decide whether they want to try to stop it, try to go for help, or just leave and never look back, with each choice leading to a different story and different consequences. There is no reason why you can't still incorporate the players' backgrounds; if a PC has an uncle who was a merchant, he could be a contact in the town or someone they could travel to talk to for advice. If a PC was a veteran of a recent war, the town may be recovering from the war and struggling to reintegrate all the returning soldiers, or even experiencing a boom as the widows of the fallen solders are spending the compensation they received, not to mention the influx of male suitors attracted by the abundance of suddenly wealthy single women. Any of these could make an interesting story, and it would be the player's story resulting from their choices, not from a story the GM brought to the table. This is what I mean by the players forging their own story from the GM's raw materials. The GM provides the pieces, and the players choose which pieces they are interested in to assemble into their story. If the GM had come into the game with the preconceived story that the players would explore the ruins and in the process find the mcguffin they can use to defeat the pirates, it may be a good story, but it closes off all of the other stories that may be better or worse.

Ideally in this style, the players should communicate clearly with the GM what is catching their attention and what they plan on following up on to give the GM time to prep. For the abandoned ruins, the GM could just have a note like "old mine, inhabited by kobolds on the lower level, magic weapon in a hidden chamber", and then if the party expresses interest the GM can take the time to flesh it out or find a published adventure to use for it. If they choose not to go that way, the GM hasn't invested much work in it, but even the quick notes might give them some hooks they can use in the future, like maybe umber hulks have broken through into the mine, driving the kobolds to the surface where they start causing trouble, or maybe a local woman wants the party to see if they can find a family heirloom sword, last seen when her great-grandfather died in a mine collapse decades ago. Likewise, if there is something that the players show no interest in, the GM can let it fade away if he wants. Questions the players ask may give hints of things they would be interested in doing, like a player asking merchants arriving in town if they had heard of any humanoid incursions on the borders, or looking in the marketplace for vendors selling treasure maps. The GM could say no, or the GM could take the idea and run with it, adding new elements to their game. Just because they weren't explicitly mentioned before doesn't mean they weren't there all along. And sometimes the players can be blunt about things; a perfect example is I'm running a Monster Hunter International game set in modern Detroit, and one of my players emailed me a link to an article about a very controversial religious display happening in the real world that they think might be an interesting addition to the game. They didn't give me an adventure to run, but they did give me a hook that they would be interested in to do with as I please. I also do a rumor mill of things the PCs hear during down time and many of the things in it are little tidbits that players have suggested, they may be nothing, they maybe true, or they could be something that is completely different from what it seems. They help me with hooks, I decide where I want those hooks to lead, and the players decide what hooks to follow, how, and how far. They've even had some that they followed only to realize they were about to bite off more than they could chew, and decided to leave it alone and try to call in the big guns to take care of it instead.

Granted this style is a lot of work, can require a fair amount of improvising, and only works when you have players that will take initiative and not try to wreck the game. But when it works, at the end of the campaign instead of the players having experienced the GM's story, the whole group (players and GM) will have experienced a story that they all built together.

 

[Celtavian]

Usually we talk as a group about the general theme and style we want to play, and work together to make a party, not a random assemblage of characters. If I choose to make a character bad at combat in a combat heavy party, the consequences of that should flow naturally. If I bring something else to the table (money, social ability, contacts, etc.), maybe the rest of the party will pick up my slack. We may decide to stick to safer areas to reduce the risk. If my character doesn't bring other things to the table, maybe the rest of the PCs will tell my PC that things just aren't working out, and then recruit a new PC that is a better fit (note PC, not player). He might decide that these lunatics lead too dangerous of a life and as a result he retires early. Or maybe he'll just have an early demise. But whichever of those happens, it is a natural consequence of the choice I made.

If a player makes a ranger and he knows going into the game is framed as primarily an urban campaign, that is his choice, and the consequences are his to deal with. His skills may open avenues for the party to do other things, like rather than take that sea voyage down the coast through pirate infested waters, they could go overland instead. Maybe the "fish out of water" concept is one the player wants to explore and is using it for the role-playing opportunities. Or maybe the player has some ideas up their sleeve that you don't know about, like using their ranger skills as a springboard towards being something more like a bounty hunter that isn't as reliant on the wilderness environment. It's true that not every PC fits every party or every campaign, just like in the real world not every career choice is a good fit for each individual's circumstances. Someone who decides to pursue a career as a professional surfer while choosing to live in the Himalayas is going to have a rough go of it, but it is the natural consequence of the choices made.

The encounter issues you are describing appear to me as only an issue if your PCs don't have any choice in where they go or the encounters they engage in. I expect a game world to be like the real world in that some areas are more dangerous than others, with some areas being perfectly safe, while others may carry a significant risk of death. Just like in the real world, there should be some information available to give the PCs a clue as to which areas are more dangerous than others, although that information may not always be perfectly accurate. Even just info like "that's the area where local families go for picnics" or "we don't know what is through that pass, no one has ever returned to tell us". Working to ensure that the encounter compositions makes in-game sense also helps with the balance. Unless orcs in your world are known for having a substantial mage presence, it wouldn't make sense for every orc patrol to have a powerful orc wizard, even if that would make for the most challenging encounter. Underground races making an incursion to the surface world probably aren't going to be using longbows instead of more culturally appropriate weapons unless there is a good reason how they got them and the training to use them. A manticore, an aboleth, and a bullette probably aren't going to be working together even if that happened to make a powerful encounter. And if any of these things did happen, that would be a clue to the party that there is something unusual going on that they may choose to look into further.




I don't expect the GM to come to the game with a story to tell. I expect them to come to the game with world with interesting things happening, and the story is what the PCs decide to do in that world. Maybe it is a coastal town with an active thieves guild, pirates off the coast, with a dwarven stronghold nearby. Spice it up with some factions vying for political control of the town, and maybe some ruins not far away. Then let the party decide what they want to do. Do they want to hunt pirates? Get involved with the local politics, maybe working with (or against) the thieves guild to bolster their power? They could always explore the ruins, or maybe make their fortunes establishing a trade route between the town and the dwarven stronghold. Think of how things would progress if the players weren't there to interfere (good or bad, not everything should have cataclysmic consequences), and then let that happen unless they do interfere. If they ignore the pirates, there might be some shortages they have to deal with in town as merchant ships can't come and go as easily. Maybe that is a problem that the PCs would want to deal with, or maybe they are content letting the merchants deal with it, after all they have enough money they could hire someone else to help them with the problem. Or maybe that shortage provides a perfect opportunity for the party, they could find a way to bring supplied in some other way, or maybe even make a deal with the pirates to cut them in on the profits if they let them through unmolested. If the town is attacked by a plague of undead, the players can decide whether they want to try to stop it, try to go for help, or just leave and never look back, with each choice leading to a different story and different consequences. There is no reason why you can't still incorporate the players' backgrounds; if a PC has an uncle who was a merchant, he could be a contact in the town or someone they could travel to talk to for advice. If a PC was a veteran of a recent war, the town may be recovering from the war and struggling to reintegrate all the returning soldiers, or even experiencing a boom as the widows of the fallen solders are spending the compensation they received, not to mention the influx of male suitors attracted by the abundance of suddenly wealthy single women. Any of these could make an interesting story, and it would be the player's story resulting from their choices, not from a story the GM brought to the table. This is what I mean by the players forging their own story from the GM's raw materials. The GM provides the pieces, and the players choose which pieces they are interested in to assemble into their story. If the GM had come into the game with the preconceived story that the players would explore the ruins and in the process find the mcguffin they can use to defeat the pirates, it may be a good story, but it closes off all of the other stories that may be better or worse.

Ideally in this style, the players should communicate clearly with the GM what is catching their attention and what they plan on following up on to give the GM time to prep. For the abandoned ruins, the GM could just have a note like "old mine, inhabited by kobolds on the lower level, magic weapon in a hidden chamber", and then if the party expresses interest the GM can take the time to flesh it out or find a published adventure to use for it. If they choose not to go that way, the GM hasn't invested much work in it, but even the quick notes might give them some hooks they can use in the future, like maybe umber hulks have broken through into the mine, driving the kobolds to the surface where they start causing trouble, or maybe a local woman wants the party to see if they can find a family heirloom sword, last seen when her great-grandfather died in a mine collapse decades ago. Likewise, if there is something that the players show no interest in, the GM can let it fade away if he wants. Questions the players ask may give hints of things they would be interested in doing, like a player asking merchants arriving in town if they had heard of any humanoid incursions on the borders, or looking in the marketplace for vendors selling treasure maps. The GM could say no, or the GM could take the idea and run with it, adding new elements to their game. Just because they weren't explicitly mentioned before doesn't mean they weren't there all along. And sometimes the players can be blunt about things; a perfect example is I'm running a Monster Hunter International game set in modern Detroit, and one of my players emailed me a link to an article about a very controversial religious display happening in the real world that they think might be an interesting addition to the game. They didn't give me an adventure to run, but they did give me a hook that they would be interested in to do with as I please. I also do a rumor mill of things the PCs hear during down time and many of the things in it are little tidbits that players have suggested, they may be nothing, they maybe true, or they could be something that is completely different from what it seems. They help me with hooks, I decide where I want those hooks to lead, and the players decide what hooks to follow, how, and how far. They've even had some that they followed only to realize they were about to bite off more than they could chew, and decided to leave it alone and try to call in the big guns to take care of it instead.

Granted this style is a lot of work, can require a fair amount of improvising, and only works when you have players that will take initiative and not try to wreck the game. But when it works, at the end of the campaign instead of the players having experienced the GM's story, the whole group (players and GM) will have experienced a story that they all built together.

Nothing you listed is other than DM tailoring. A group talking beforehand about what to make together does not change that the DM will tailor to that group after they have decided. You think because the DM has created the world prior where you can make choices of what direction to go in is other than DM tailoring. Those are what is known as story hooks. Once a hook is chosen, a story must be developed including the motivations of the enemies or do you intend to participate in developing the enemy's motivations and tactics as well so they are known to you in advance?

What you seem to be asking for is the DM to design a place with several different options to go in. Then somehow create a story on the fly for you to participate in with encounters and motivations for the enemies. Like a campaign world with a bunch of adventure hooks the DM fleshes out once the players choose to go to that area. You still expect the DM to produce an entire story...sorry that is what it is...that you participate in possibly on the fly. He will still have to produce an enemy for you to fight. That enemy will have to be interesting and challenging, otherwise it will take up zero time defeating it and is pointless to run, hand waving as you say encounters because rolling out a fight between high level PCs and a low level thieves guild isn't interesting. One guy making skill checks to prosecute them isn't that interesting either.

Yes, that style is a lot of work. It still requires GM tailoring to work at all. You seem to think if the Dm fleshes out areas after you have chosen to go to those areas, that makes any difference. If you choose to go to a particularly dangerous area like 1st level characters going to a lich's area, then the campaign doesn't last very long unless...duh, duh, duh... the DM tailors it to last such as making the lich decide not to kill the party.

Like I said, player choice is an illusion. Has been in every edition.

The encounter choices are only a problem if I don't give the players choices? You just stated yourself you want the option to go to dangerous areas. Now you want me to tell you exactly how dangerous they are? You want me to say this is a 1st level area with kobolds, you can go there. Don't go to this 5th level area with an orc warlord? How is that a meaningful choice? Even if you choose to go to the low level area, if I play the kobolds optimally, they can probably kill a 1st level party. Like most humanoids don't wait around six at a time to kill someone, right? When a party comes upon a small group of humanoids set up rather conveniently for a party to kill, that is DM tailoring. In your mind, you would rather I play the humanoids as individuals as competently as possible for them. Rush you en masse with the intention of killing as fast as possible. You would rather I do this with every encounter regardless of your level of health, how many fights you have had that day, or what not. Do you expect to survive if I run it this way? Or should I tailor it where you at least have a chance at victory?

The reality is that the only reason this game works is because a DM uses the available DM tools and his experience to tailor the game so you do live. Unless you're writing up the encounters, the story is very much a DM creation. Your part in that story is the random part generated by dice rolls and player choice of what to do with what the DM puts in front of you. When a DM generates a world with several different adventure hooks, that is just several story hooks the players have to choose from. Once the player chooses, it will still be the DM's creation they face including the story why that creation exists and what they are doing. It's all a DM illusion. If in your mind the illusion of choice requires several different story hooks the DM fleshes out as you go, so be it. Not how I play or ever will, but I've heard plenty ask for it because it makes them feel like their character is making more meaningful choices even when it isn't the case. It's what they refer to as a sandbox adventure. Multiple story/adventure hooks that gives the player an option to choose their direction.

I've run that type of campaign as well. It very much is still my story. Choosing a direction is not writing a story. Your story is your background and the PCs/NPCs you choose to interact with that I place in front of you. They will react off your choices as I the DM deem appropriate for their character. If I'm doing my job right, you will believe your character is real and that his choices matter. That has always been the job of the DM. D&D has always been cooperative story-telling. The DM tailors it to make that cooperative story-telling by doing as you stated earlier: learning what his players respond to.

 

[Celtavian]

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.

Players always have that option. Doesn't mean the DM didn't tailor the encounter, though I'm dubious as to how a group can survive 24 well-played beholders unless they are a particularly large, high level group with a lot of magic items or alternative options outside the rules the DM is allowing.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Nothing you listed is other than DM tailoring. A group talking beforehand about what to make together does not change that the DM will tailor to that group after they have decided. SNIP

the campaign doesn't last very long unless...duh, duh, duh... the DM tailors it to last such as making the lich decide not to kill the party.

What if the DM had predetermined that the lich's behavior will be determined by its evaluation of intruder threat vs. utility? Or by Persuasion rolls, or tribute, or whether the party disturbs the lich in its lab? Auto-hostility isn't a given, no matter what level/composition of the party. That isn't tailoring, because tailoring is bespoke.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Players always have that option. Doesn't mean the DM didn't tailor the encounter, though I'm dubious as to how a group can survive 24 well-played beholders unless they are a particularly large, high level group with a lot of magic items or alternative options outside the rules the DM is allowing.

They are not all in one room. I rolled 1d10-5 beholders per room. They met one and both died horribly to it; spent karma on a "reload", changed tactics and beat one lone beholder and then two at once, thanks to luck and drow poison. Beholders are very smart but also crazy, so I'm playing them smart but not cooperative or optimal--optimal would be a mass attack instead of piecemeal defense, but the hive mother died in the crash so they won't do that. Maybe that is a form of "tailoring" but I don't think it is, it's just part of the scenario. The point is, players choose their own difficulty by choosing to go in even though they KNOW I could roll five beholders together.

 

[chriton227]

Nothing you listed is other than DM tailoring. A group talking beforehand about what to make together does not change that the DM will tailor to that group after they have decided. You think because the DM has created the world prior where you can make choices of what direction to go in is other than DM tailoring. Those are what is known as story hooks. Once a hook is chosen, a story must be developed including the motivations of the enemies or do you intend to participate in developing the enemy's motivations and tactics as well so they are known to you in advance?

What you seem to be asking for is the DM to design a place with several different options to go in. Then somehow create a story on the fly for you to participate in with encounters and motivations for the enemies. Like a campaign world with a bunch of adventure hooks the DM fleshes out once the players choose to go to that area. You still expect the DM to produce an entire story...sorry that is what it is...that you participate in possibly on the fly. He will still have to produce an enemy for you to fight. That enemy will have to be interesting and challenging, otherwise it will take up zero time defeating it and is pointless to run, hand waving as you say encounters because rolling out a fight between high level PCs and a low level thieves guild isn't interesting. One guy making skill checks to prosecute them isn't that interesting either.

Yes, that style is a lot of work. It still requires GM tailoring to work at all. You seem to think if the Dm fleshes out areas after you have chosen to go to those areas, that makes any difference. If you choose to go to a particularly dangerous area like 1st level characters going to a lich's area, then the campaign doesn't last very long unless...duh, duh, duh... the DM tailors it to last such as making the lich decide not to kill the party.

Like I said, player choice is an illusion. Has been in every edition.

The encounter choices are only a problem if I don't give the players choices? You just stated yourself you want the option to go to dangerous areas. Now you want me to tell you exactly how dangerous they are? You want me to say this is a 1st level area with kobolds, you can go there. Don't go to this 5th level area with an orc warlord? How is that a meaningful choice? Even if you choose to go to the low level area, if I play the kobolds optimally, they can probably kill a 1st level party. Like most humanoids don't wait around six at a time to kill someone, right? When a party comes upon a small group of humanoids set up rather conveniently for a party to kill, that is DM tailoring. In your mind, you would rather I play the humanoids as individuals as competently as possible for them. Rush you en masse with the intention of killing as fast as possible. You would rather I do this with every encounter regardless of your level of health, how many fights you have had that day, or what not. Do you expect to survive if I run it this way? Or should I tailor it where you at least have a chance at victory?

The reality is that the only reason this game works is because a DM uses the available DM tools and his experience to tailor the game so you do live. Unless you're writing up the encounters, the story is very much a DM creation. Your part in that story is the random part generated by dice rolls and player choice of what to do with what the DM puts in front of you. When a DM generates a world with several different adventure hooks, that is just several story hooks the players have to choose from. Once the player chooses, it will still be the DM's creation they face including the story why that creation exists and what they are doing. It's all a DM illusion. If in your mind the illusion of choice requires several different story hooks the DM fleshes out as you go, so be it. Not how I play or ever will, but I've heard plenty ask for it because it makes them feel like their character is making more meaningful choices even when it isn't the case. It's what they refer to as a sandbox adventure. Multiple story/adventure hooks that gives the player an option to choose their direction.

I've run that type of campaign as well. It very much is still my story. Choosing a direction is not writing a story. Your story is your background and the PCs/NPCs you choose to interact with that I place in front of you. They will react off your choices as I the DM deem appropriate for their character. If I'm doing my job right, you will believe your character is real and that his choices matter. That has always been the job of the DM. D&D has always been cooperative story-telling. The DM tailors it to make that cooperative story-telling by doing as you stated earlier: learning what his players respond to.

I don't expect the PCs to automagically know exactly how dangerous an area is, but there should usually be in-character clues available for observant PCs. Just like how you probably know (or could easily learn) what areas of your local city are relatively safe and which areas you don't want to walk around alone at night, or the assumption that you are less likely to end up in a gunfight in Disneyworld than in contested areas of the Middle East. And with that knowledge, the PCs can choose where they attempt to go. Nothing is saying that PCs can't get mugged at Disneyworld, or that they won't have a peaceful night in a back alley in the bad part of town, but they have at least limited control over where they go and the dangers they anticipate based on that in-character knowledge.

If I'm in a 1st level party and we knowingly choose to go after a lich, then either we think we have a brilliant plan that may succeed despite impossible odds, or we are choosing to commit character suicide and end the campaign. If the DM isn't giving the lich information it wouldn't actually have, it wouldn't know initially that we were only 1st level, so we might be able to bluff it for a short time. If it ended up in a combat, I wouldn't expect the GM, or the lich by extension, to pull punches to spare my feelings. If I didn't want my L1 character to get steamrolled by a lich I shouldn't have gone after the lich in the first place. Part of meaningful choices is sometimes the meaning is "that was dumb, guess it is time to roll a new character." In a recent Shadowrun game, my character cornered a quartet of gangers solo to give a friendly NPC a chance to get away. The gangers flashed their guns at me to get me to move, but in the situation my character wasn't intimidated and wouldn't have drawn his weapon (blowing his cover), so he just said "Oh yeah? Go ahead and shoot me." If that had resulted in my character dying in a hail of gunfire, so be it, that would be the consequences of my choice. It was a calculated risk based on how important it was for me to let the NPC escape vs. how dangerous I thought the gunfire would be. I knew how tough I was, and I know what guns they had showed me (I had the same gun), but I didn't know how good of a shot they were,whether they were packing anything heavier, or whether they had allies I hadn't spotted. And the choice was meaningful; I survived, and as a direct result of my choice we got information from that NPC that we wouldn't have otherwise had, making a later part of our mission easier. To me a meaningful choice is one where I could choose X or Y, where I have some knowledge about the possible outcomes of X or Y (not just random chance), and depending on which I choose the resulting outcome is materially different. If I have two doors to choose between and they both go into the same room in the same basic situation, it isn't a meaningful choice. If one door goes into a room and the other is labeled balcony and goes to the balcony overlooking the room where I think I could observe unnoticed, the choice of doors is meaningful.

I don't think we are ever going to come to a full agreement on this topic. Part of it might be semantics. I don't consider an NPC reacting to a PC's actions according to the NPC's knowledge and motivations to be tailoring, to me that is just role-playing the NPC. Intentionally giving an NPC characteristics particularly because of how those characteristics will interact with specific characteristics possessed by the PCs on the other hand I do consider tailoring (like using elves against the party just because a PC likes to cast sleep). Likewise, when I refer to a GM presenting a plot or story, I am thinking of a preconstructed outline of events that the party is expected to follow, for example the party is supposed to be ambushed by goblins, then follow the goblins trail back to their hideout where the party will find an NPC they are seeking, at which point then will proceed to town and confront the local bandits. We may very well be agreeing with each other on everything except the way we define the terminology used.

If I understand you correctly, you feel that by the very action of running a game, you are tailoring the game to the PCs and creating the story. I feel that a GM can run a game without tailoring encounters to fit some predecided challenge level, and although the game should be tailored to interests of the players, it should not just be a plot (or series of plots) created by the GM that the players are playing through, but instead the plot or story should develop naturally from the starting situation based on the actions of both the NPCs and the PCs. By definition anything created by the GM prior to the PCs being created is not tailored to the PCs, as it could not have been tailored to PCs that did not exist at the time. The same process that a GM could use to create something prior to the creation of the PCs can also be used after the PCs are created if the GM so wishes.

At the most basic level, I feel that crafting adventures without tailoring encounters to the party has been done thousands or millions of times by people running modules as written, where the limit of tailoring would be the GM picking a module in the a given level range or on the flip side, or having the players bring characters of the right level for the module (tailoring the party to the adventure instead of the adventure to the party). I even have adventures for some systems that don't specify any sort of level range; Shadowrun adventures are a great example of that where the situation and opposition are what they are, and it is up to the players to figure out how use their abilities to be successful. Campaign setting books aren't usually tailored to a level or particular party, but they demonstrate plenty of things available for PCs to explore and do. Published mega-dungeon usually aren't tailored either except maybe that most get more challenging as you get farther from the entrance, and even that isn't always the case (see Ruins of Castle Greyhawk with 12 armored trolls hiding in an entrance staircase). I've got the 2e City of Greyhawk box set sitting on the shelf next to me, it has enough info on the city and surrounding environs to give a party of almost any level plenty of choices of things to do and plenty of events that have been set into motion that the players can interact with or ignore as they choose, and there is nothing stopping a party from pursuing things above or below the assumed difficulty for their level or experiencing the consequences of their pursuits.

As a GM, I can easily say "There is a pirate ship over here. I think a L6 fighter/rogue sounds about right for a captain tough enough to keep his crew in check. His first mate is probably around L4, lets call him a pure fighter. If his ship is big enough to allow him to board a merchant ship, he probably has around 20 crew, say 10 L1 fighters and 10 L2 fighters to represent the recent recruits and the more experienced crew. They probably have a doctor on board, say a L2 cleric, perhaps of a god of trickery or thieves, or maybe even just of a god of the sea. And just to make it interesting, let's throw in a noble prisoner that is slowly coming to think this pirate life isn't so bad." You don't have to tell the players what level the pirates are to convey the danger. If they ask the survivors of an attack, they can get an idea of how the fight went. Asking around or knowledge checks can turn up that as a GM you've decided the average merchant ship sailing in this area has a crew of 10 sailors and usually only about 4 marines on board, and it's pretty common for those marines to be recruited from the ranks of the local town guard. It might even turn up that the pirates have left larger ships with more crew alone. The party could easily watch as the local guard goes through some of their basic training, and through observation figure out that the guards are basically local citizens with the bare minimum training to handle their weapons safely, or in game terms probably level 1. If you want, you can even drop in some motivation for the pirate, say he was a local businessman years ago that was driven to bankruptcy by unscrupulous merchants, and now he want revenge. Nowhere in there did I base things on the party's specific abilities or level, or even think about the party except in the most general sense. The party might be L1, in which case taking on the pirate ship in a direct fight is suicide. The party might be L20, in which case the pirate ship isn't even worth their time. My consideration was purely what would make sense in the world. It wouldn't make sense for the pirate crew to all be level 15 unless they were the most renown pirates in all the seas as opposed to a single ship harassing small merchant vessels, nor would it make sense that a crew of 4 L1 pirates would be terrorizing merchant ships with over a dozen crew, and regardless of their level the pirates must have some motivation for being pirates, otherwise they wouldn't be there in the first place. The backstory of how they came to be is like the the PCs' backstory, it sets the stage and informs the reactions, but it doesn't define the story going forward or establish an end point for the story of the interaction between the PCs and the pirates.

At this point, I've presented the party with a situation. The story comes from what they do with the situation. They could ignore the pirate threat and turn their attention to other things. They could try to join the pirates, either legitimately or as a covert attempt to assassinate the captain or to foment a mutiny. They could try to fight the pirates on the open seas. They could set a trap for the pirates using a merchant vessel full of soldiers instead of cargo. They could try to find out where they pirates dock (you can't stay on the water forever) and try to ambush them. They could bargain with the pirates, maybe asking around and doing the legwork to find out some of the captain's history, and either appealing to his better nature or offering to help him get revenge on the unscrupulous merchant who wronged him. They could even try going and doing other things to increase their power until they feel they can confront the pirates head on. The choice the party makes affects both how challenging it will be and where the story goes next, making it a meaningful choice in my opinion. There isn't a preexisting plot or story written for the interaction with the pirates, there is just a situation where the involved parties (PC and NPC alike) have motivations and abilities and some knowledge of the current state of the situation, and the story comes from how those parties interact. Just as there are limits to the party's knowledge of the pirates (based on what actions the party takes), there are also limits on the pirates' knowledge of the players (they don't share in the GM's omniscience about the game). The party doesn't know exactly how tough the pirates are, and the pirates don't know exactly how tough the party is.

Repeat the process a few times with different hooks, using what makes sense in your game world. For example with the mine, kobolds aren't tactical geniuses, there is only so much space in the mine, and they have to eat. They are probably spread out some just due to how many can fit in a given chamber or tunnel. Choose to storm the front entrance and let them raise the alarm, and you're going to have a rough encounter as they all come running. But I'm sure they don't send the entire tribe out as a single group to hunt for game; they probably go out in small groups so they don't spook all the prey. After a hunting party or two have been picked off, they'll probably be more cautious and send out larger groups, or maybe two groups with one watching the other. Or maybe a stealthy infiltration can pick off the guards before they can raise the alarm. As a result, this hypothetical kobold tribe may be able to be wiped out by a L1 party with good tactics and good luck, or may be a challenge for a L6 party who charge headlong through the front door. They could try to smoke the kobolds out, or even collapse the entrance to the mine. As far as how the party knowing what they are getting into, they could do some recon to get some estimates of the tribe's size, or do some research to find out how extensive the mine was when it was in use, or capture and interrogate a kobold. And once again, the tribe just is what it is based on what makes sense for the world, not based on the party.

Rather than a world built around and for the PCs, I am interested in a world built apart from the PCs, where the PCs can be inserted to allow the players to explore an interact with the world. If everything is about the PCs and tailored to the PCs it shatters my suspension of disbelief, because I know in the real world not everything is about me and tailored to me. I need it to be a world containing my PC, not a world about my PC.

 

[Celtavian]

What if the DM had predetermined that the lich's behavior will be determined by its evaluation of intruder threat vs. utility? Or by Persuasion rolls, or tribute, or whether the party disturbs the lich in its lab? Auto-hostility isn't a given, no matter what level/composition of the party. That isn't tailoring, because tailoring is bespoke.

Predetermining and tailoring are two different things. You cannot predetermine a situation in a game with random dice rolls and players making decisions.

Tailoring is creating a monster or situation that in some way makes for an interesting situation for the PCs to participate in. That is in no way predetermining the outcome. When you tailor a creature, you don't assume the creature is hostile. You write it out including determining its motivations, its capabilities, and ways whatever conflict exists can be resolved. Then the players participate in the encounter.

You and Chriton seem to be confusing tailoring with predetermination. That is not tailoring. When you tailor something, you are trying engage the players with something that is challenging or interesting. You take into account their capabilities because that is how you make something challenging or interesting. It does you no good to toss something out there that will utterly rip the party apart with no possible other outcome or to throw things in their way they walk over with no other possible outcome.

Tailoring encounters is specifically done to engage the players.

 

[Celtavian]

They are not all in one room. I rolled 1d10-5 beholders per room. They met one and both died horribly to it; spent karma on a "reload", changed tactics and beat one lone beholder and then two at once, thanks to luck and drow poison. Beholders are very smart but also crazy, so I'm playing them smart but not cooperative or optimal--optimal would be a mass attack instead of piecemeal defense, but the hive mother died in the crash so they won't do that. Maybe that is a form of "tailoring" but I don't think it is, it's just part of the scenario. The point is, players choose their own difficulty by choosing to go in even though they KNOW I could roll five beholders together.

It is a form of tailoring given you're allowing something called karma to reload. That is your method of allowing the players to halt the natural process of their death.

A scenario is tailoring. If your PCs have no possibility of winning without you playing something in a suboptimal way even if your reasoning is the beholders are crazy, then you are tailoring. I've done the same thing myself. This creature is crazy, so they will use suboptimal tactics allowing the PCs a chance to win if they can take advantage of the situation.

This seems like another semantical argument where one side considers tailoring predetermination and the other side considers tailoring constructing encounters that are specifically made to engage and challenge the players.

Just to be clear, tailoring to me means I create encounters to specifically engage and challenge the players. I like them to have a chance to achieve victory. I want them to find the challenges interesting. I want them to feel as though they are using their abilities in an interesting, meaningful way against a challenging enemy. Their powers are not meaningful if they get pasted too easily and not meaningful if they win too easily. I haven't found players that find such games enjoyable. I know I certainly don't enjoy games with too much of an extreme. I don't want to feel the DM is pulling punches to keep me alive or is too lazy to design challenging encounters. In either scenario, I feel like I've wasted my time designing my character.

 

[Celtavian]

I don't expect the PCs to automagically know exactly how dangerous an area is, but there should usually be in-character clues available for observant PCs. Just like how you probably know (or could easily learn) what areas of your local city are relatively safe and which areas you don't want to walk around alone at night, or the assumption that you are less likely to end up in a gunfight in Disneyworld than in contested areas of the Middle East. And with that knowledge, the PCs can choose where they attempt to go. Nothing is saying that PCs can't get mugged at Disneyworld, or that they won't have a peaceful night in a back alley in the bad part of town, but they have at least limited control over where they go and the dangers they anticipate based on that in-character knowledge.

How can you possibly do this without using metagame knowledge? That would break suspension of disbelief. How does a PC in character know what he can or cannot take on if he doesn't through experience carefully constructed by a DM? Does he go, "Oh I'm 1st level, better look for some kobolds" and once he reaches level 15 go, "Oh those kobolds are too weak. Better look for a lich."

A DM wants to ensure the player never has to think about such things by tailoring encounters that fit what he can take on at a given time. Then he never has to ask himself how would my PC know the difference between what he could take on at 1st level and what he can take on at 15th level. What if the lich is the biggest threat the town he lives in? He wants to eliminate that threat, not look for kobolds because he can't take the lich on at level 1. So if the party is trying to kill a lich, you want to place challenges in their way that allow them to level up to where they can take on the lich without them ever having to worry about their level. You want the entire process to feel organic as though the players are making choices that allow them to one day defeat the lich threatening their town. If done right, players have an amazing time and feel they accomplished something extraordinary through by virtue of their choices.

If I'm in a 1st level party and we knowingly choose to go after a lich, then either we think we have a brilliant plan that may succeed despite impossible odds, or we are choosing to commit character suicide and end the campaign. If the DM isn't giving the lich information it wouldn't actually have, it wouldn't know initially that we were only 1st level, so we might be able to bluff it for a short time. If it ended up in a combat, I wouldn't expect the GM, or the lich by extension, to pull punches to spare my feelings. If I didn't want my L1 character to get steamrolled by a lich I shouldn't have gone after the lich in the first place. Part of meaningful choices is sometimes the meaning is "that was dumb, guess it is time to roll a new character." In a recent Shadowrun game, my character cornered a quartet of gangers solo to give a friendly NPC a chance to get away. The gangers flashed their guns at me to get me to move, but in the situation my character wasn't intimidated and wouldn't have drawn his weapon (blowing his cover), so he just said "Oh yeah? Go ahead and shoot me." If that had resulted in my character dying in a hail of gunfire, so be it, that would be the consequences of my choice. It was a calculated risk based on how important it was for me to let the NPC escape vs. how dangerous I thought the gunfire would be. I knew how tough I was, and I know what guns they had showed me (I had the same gun), but I didn't know how good of a shot they were,whether they were packing anything heavier, or whether they had allies I hadn't spotted. And the choice was meaningful; I survived, and as a direct result of my choice we got information from that NPC that we wouldn't have otherwise had, making a later part of our mission easier. To me a meaningful choice is one where I could choose X or Y, where I have some knowledge about the possible outcomes of X or Y (not just random chance), and depending on which I choose the resulting outcome is materially different. If I have two doors to choose between and they both go into the same room in the same basic situation, it isn't a meaningful choice. If one door goes into a room and the other is labeled balcony and goes to the balcony overlooking the room where I think I could observe unnoticed, the choice of doors is meaningful.

Outcomes are determined by PC action. Tailoring is not predetermination.

I don't think we are ever going to come to a full agreement on this topic. Part of it might be semantics. I don't consider an NPC reacting to a PC's actions according to the NPC's knowledge and motivations to be tailoring, to me that is just role-playing the NPC. Intentionally giving an NPC characteristics particularly because of how those characteristics will interact with specific characteristics possessed by the PCs on the other hand I do consider tailoring (like using elves against the party just because a PC likes to cast sleep). Likewise, when I refer to a GM presenting a plot or story, I am thinking of a preconstructed outline of events that the party is expected to follow, for example the party is supposed to be ambushed by goblins, then follow the goblins trail back to their hideout where the party will find an NPC they are seeking, at which point then will proceed to town and confront the local bandits. We may very well be agreeing with each other on everything except the way we define the terminology used.

Part of tailoring is determining an NPCs personality and how it will react to specific situations. All this stuff is made up. So it is all tailored as in created in the mind of the DM to engage the players. Just like your PC is tailored to your specifications. It does appear to be a semantical disagreement.

If I understand you correctly, you feel that by the very action of running a game, you are tailoring the game to the PCs and creating the story. I feel that a GM can run a game without tailoring encounters to fit some predecided challenge level, and although the game should be tailored to interests of the players, it should not just be a plot (or series of plots) created by the GM that the players are playing through, but instead the plot or story should develop naturally from the starting situation based on the actions of both the NPCs and the PCs. By definition anything created by the GM prior to the PCs being created is not tailored to the PCs, as it could not have been tailored to PCs that did not exist at the time. The same process that a GM could use to create something prior to the creation of the PCs can also be used after the PCs are created if the GM so wishes.

I consider any world I make to be tailoring. I will not waste my time throwing encounters in the way of a party that will either destroy them or they will destroy with ease unless that is my intention to begin with. That is wasting my time and the PCs time for some fictitious idea that there is choice in fiction. This entire game is a fiction that must be tailored to even exist.

At the most basic level, I feel that crafting adventures without tailoring encounters to the party has been done thousands or millions of times by people running modules as written, where the limit of tailoring would be the GM picking a module in the a given level range or on the flip side, or having the players bring characters of the right level for the module (tailoring the party to the adventure instead of the adventure to the party). I even have adventures for some systems that don't specify any sort of level range; Shadowrun adventures are a great example of that where the situation and opposition are what they are, and it is up to the players to figure out how use their abilities to be successful. Campaign setting books aren't usually tailored to a level or particular party, but they demonstrate plenty of things available for PCs to explore and do. Published mega-dungeon usually aren't tailored either except maybe that most get more challenging as you get farther from the entrance, and even that isn't always the case (see Ruins of Castle Greyhawk with 12 armored trolls hiding in an entrance staircase). I've got the 2e City of Greyhawk box set sitting on the shelf next to me, it has enough info on the city and surrounding environs to give a party of almost any level plenty of choices of things to do and plenty of events that have been set into motion that the players can interact with or ignore as they choose, and there is nothing stopping a party from pursuing things above or below the assumed difficulty for their level or experiencing the consequences of their pursuits.

And if you run those modules as they are out of the box, you have heard the numerous complaints that they are not challenging enough. That module designers do a poor job of challenging PCs. It is essential that the DM assess his PCs and provide them with challenging and engaging material. A module designer does not know the party and will have tremendous difficulty creating challenges for PCs with capabilities he cannot foresee. That is where the DM makes his bones as they say.

As a GM, I can easily say "There is a pirate ship over here. I think a L6 fighter/rogue sounds about right for a captain tough enough to keep his crew in check. His first mate is probably around L4, lets call him a pure fighter. If his ship is big enough to allow him to board a merchant ship, he probably has around 20 crew, say 10 L1 fighters and 10 L2 fighters to represent the recent recruits and the more experienced crew. They probably have a doctor on board, say a L2 cleric, perhaps of a god of trickery or thieves, or maybe even just of a god of the sea. And just to make it interesting, let's throw in a noble prisoner that is slowly coming to think this pirate life isn't so bad." You don't have to tell the players what level the pirates are to convey the danger. If they ask the survivors of an attack, they can get an idea of how the fight went. Asking around or knowledge checks can turn up that as a GM you've decided the average merchant ship sailing in this area has a crew of 10 sailors and usually only about 4 marines on board, and it's pretty common for those marines to be recruited from the ranks of the local town guard. It might even turn up that the pirates have left larger ships with more crew alone. The party could easily watch as the local guard goes through some of their basic training, and through observation figure out that the guards are basically local citizens with the bare minimum training to handle their weapons safely, or in game terms probably level 1. If you want, you can even drop in some motivation for the pirate, say he was a local businessman years ago that was driven to bankruptcy by unscrupulous merchants, and now he want revenge. Nowhere in there did I base things on the party's specific abilities or level, or even think about the party except in the most general sense. The party might be L1, in which case taking on the pirate ship in a direct fight is suicide. The party might be L20, in which case the pirate ship isn't even worth their time. My consideration was purely what would make sense in the world. It wouldn't make sense for the pirate crew to all be level 15 unless they were the most renown pirates in all the seas as opposed to a single ship harassing small merchant vessels, nor would it make sense that a crew of 4 L1 pirates would be terrorizing merchant ships with over a dozen crew, and regardless of their level the pirates must have some motivation for being pirates, otherwise they wouldn't be there in the first place. The backstory of how they came to be is like the the PCs' backstory, it sets the stage and informs the reactions, but it doesn't define the story going forward or establish an end point for the story of the interaction between the PCs and the pirates.

How does your level 1 party determine this? How does your level 20 party determine this? Do they think of themselves as having levels? What is the point of placing a pirate ship in their path where their character choices are rendered meaningless because the challenge is either too strong for them or too weak to provide them with an interesting or engaging challenge? How does that make your choices more meaningful if a DM doesn't bother to make something challenging for the specific PCs he is running? If you run these squash or get squashed encounters, would it keep your players engaged? It would not keep my players interested.

At this point, I've presented the party with a situation. The story comes from what they do with the situation.

And what you the DM determine the NPCs do in that situation either by constructing their personalities prior or improvising their personalities during. If you're improvising that often, I doubt your characters have much depth to them.

They could ignore the pirate threat and turn their attention to other things.

Thus wasting their time and yours.

They could try to join the pirates, either legitimately or as a covert attempt to assassinate the captain or to foment a mutiny. They could try to fight the pirates on the open seas. They could set a trap for the pirates using a merchant vessel full of soldiers instead of cargo. They could try to find out where they pirates dock (you can't stay on the water forever) and try to ambush them. They could bargain with the pirates, maybe asking around and doing the legwork to find out some of the captain's history, and either appealing to his better nature or offering to help him get revenge on the unscrupulous merchant who wronged him. They could even try going and doing other things to increase their power until they feel they can confront the pirates head on. The choice the party makes affects both how challenging it will be and where the story goes next, making it a meaningful choice in my opinion. There isn't a preexisting plot or story written for the interaction with the pirates, there is just a situation where the involved parties (PC and NPC alike) have motivations and abilities and some knowledge of the current state of the situation, and the story comes from how those parties interact. Just as there are limits to the party's knowledge of the pirates (based on what actions the party takes), there are also limits on the pirates' knowledge of the players (they don't share in the GM's omniscience about the game). The party doesn't know exactly how tough the pirates are, and the pirates don't know exactly how tough the party is.

These are tactical choices you should have taken into account prior to constructing the encounter. Unless of course you intend to improvise all of that. That is improvising a story as you go. And I doubt most DMs can improvise better than a DM that had constructed these eventualities in advance.

Repeat the process a few times with different hooks, using what makes sense in your game world. For example with the mine, kobolds aren't tactical geniuses, there is only so much space in the mine, and they have to eat. They are probably spread out some just due to how many can fit in a given chamber or tunnel. Choose to storm the front entrance and let them raise the alarm, and you're going to have a rough encounter as they all come running. But I'm sure they don't send the entire tribe out as a single group to hunt for game; they probably go out in small groups so they don't spook all the prey. After a hunting party or two have been picked off, they'll probably be more cautious and send out larger groups, or maybe two groups with one watching the other. Or maybe a stealthy infiltration can pick off the guards before they can raise the alarm. As a result, this hypothetical kobold tribe may be able to be wiped out by a L1 party with good tactics and good luck, or may be a challenge for a L6 party who charge headlong through the front door. They could try to smoke the kobolds out, or even collapse the entrance to the mine. As far as how the party knowing what they are getting into, they could do some recon to get some estimates of the tribe's size, or do some research to find out how extensive the mine was when it was in use, or capture and interrogate a kobold. And once again, the tribe just is what it is based on what makes sense for the world, not based on the party.

And a DM that constructs these things in advance will provide a much deeper, richer experience than a DM that attempts to improvise encounters of this kind on the fly all the time. That is why so many DMs talk about preparation. It works. It is very much tailoring encounters.

Rather than a world built around and for the PCs, I am interested in a world built apart from the PCs, where the PCs can be inserted to allow the players to explore an interact with the world. If everything is about the PCs and tailored to the PCs it shatters my suspension of disbelief, because I know in the real world not everything is about me and tailored to me. I need it to be a world containing my PC, not a world about my PC.

I am not interested in this world. I consider it lazy DMing. I've been gaming long enough I can destroy any DM that attempts to toss encounters taken from the Monster Manual or constructed without knowing party capabilities prior to doing so unless he is punching so far above my weight as to make that impossible.If you're pulling punches to keep me alive, you take choice out of my hands. If you're not taking the time to construct encounters that will challenge a highly optimized party using good tactics, I'll roll over the campaign like a steamroller. That will also bore me by making my choices meaningless because they always achieve victory with little threat. If you're not putting any work in to challenge me and attempting to improvise all the time, when I and the other players are carefully constructing our characters to be effective, you're being what I refer to as a lazy DM. I've dealt that that in my years of gaming as well. It was fun when I was young and we just made stuff up and gave ourselves great treasure switching off as DM. As I've grown older that style of DMing started to bore me. Too much system mastery causes you to reach a point where anything other than encounters tailored to specifically challenge a party are trivial.

My players would look at the type of world your describing and not even think about it in real terms. We would just metagame the world picking off the low hanging fruit and working our way up to the high hanging fruit. It would become trivial and boring if the DM wasn't putting work into encounter design. I know I no longer enjoy wandering about looking for useless things to do. I want a hard challenge. I want a DM that constructs that challenge appropriate to my level of capabilities. I want a DM that does so in a way that my suspension of disbelief is not affected. I want to feel like the enemies are worthy of my notice and that I am worth of their notice. I want to play in an interesting tale that takes me to a worthy endpoint where I feel I accomplished something extraordinary.

I don't feel I would get that in a world like you are outlining. It sounds like the expectation is that the DM improvises nearly everything. He is expected to provide a challenge to an organized, tailored party while doing no tailoring himself and expect to challenge them without using DM caveat in anyway. I've never seen anyone accomplish that with any success. Every quality DM I know spends hours preparing a campaign. The player choice happens when improvising within a tailored framework where resolutions are determined by random dice rolls and player choice.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It is a form of tailoring given you're allowing something called karma to reload. That is your method of allowing the players to halt the natural process of their death.

No, tailoring is bespoke content creation and has zero in common with karma, which is a runtime metagame construct. In point of fact, it is how I completely obviate the need to tailor anything at all. It means there is always a price for failure, but that price is never unfair.

Your logic would imply that IWD2 "tailors" itself to each player, which is obvious nonsense. If the game-makers made that claim they'd get sued for false advertising.

You're mistaken BTW about my motives for playing the beholders erratically. It's not about giving the PCs a break, it's just more realistic and more fun for me than a coordinated battlegroup led by a live hive queen. I want these beholders to be a static threat that mostly self-destructs instead of taking over the whole kingdom, ergo the hive queen is dead in the crash. This would be true if the PCs were first level or twentieth. And again, this while discussion arose from you asking how self-paced adaptive difficulty can exist in D&D. Well, that's how.