Those groups where no one ever dies

[Vraille Darkfang]

Fair warning.

Do you like power gaming and min/maxing? The deadlier the combat portion of your game, the more combat oriented the PC's will become.

No more Skill Focus Feats. Just Iron Will, Combat Reflexes and such. Don't expect to kill off characters left and right & expect any deep, involved character development. Those characters min/maxed & power gamed up the wazoo will be those most likely to survive, thus that is what, eventually, your party will become.

If you don't mind an entire party more built like a Video Game RPG Hack & Slash Machines that In Depth Characters, fine, But realize that an excessive emphasis on combat will force players to concentrate THEIR emphasis on combat excellance. Don't complain if the party devolves into a punch of AC Grabbing Fighters, Buffing Machine Clerics, Mobile Artillery Platform Sorcerers, and Stay Clear until the Dust Settles Rogues. Don't expect deep character interaction, complex story backgrounds or much of why many role-play rather than just slip Balder's Gate into their X-Box.

Gaming styles vary. What you are proposing usually leads to a massive shift in style many people might not like. Of course, some people will prefer that style. Just keep in mind the mindsets of your group.

Later,
Vraille Darkfang

 

[IronWolf]

Do you like power gaming and min/maxing? The deadlier the combat portion of your game, the more combat oriented the PC's will become.

Not necessarily true in all cases though. If the DM is ruthless and every encounter is designed to kill, then yes you are probably right. What I have been advocating for is simply that the PC's do *not* live in a vacuum. Sure, most the encounters that are directly related to the task at hand are manageable. But that doesn't mean they won't stumble into something that is too hard for them.

In the campaign I run, where there are some encounters that are best handled by running or other creative ways, my players are far from being guilty of min/maxing.

No more Skill Focus Feats. Just Iron Will, Combat Reflexes and such.

Again, not quite true in my game. One has several ranks in Profession, several others pump up their knowledge skills, etc. I find the way I run this style actually promotes greater role-playing and thought throughout the game.

Don't expect to kill off characters left and right & expect any deep, involved character development. Those characters min/maxed & power gamed up the wazoo will be those most likely to survive, thus that is what, eventually, your party will become.

Running the PC's in a game where the world is not a vacuum does not necessarily mean the DM is killing off characters left and right. Remember, as a DM I have told the players from the beginning some encounters could be out of their league. So far the players have been careful, used some rather ingenious plans to get out of sticky situations and tried to talk their way out of sticky situations. All more enjoyable than when players just charge in knowing every encounter is there for them to kill. So far, one character death. And that was the paladin charging into a well defended farm to buy his companions a chance to get away.

Gaming styles vary. What you are proposing usually leads to a massive shift in style many people might not like. Of course, some people will prefer that style. Just keep in mind the mindsets of your group.

Quite true. And as Lord Pendragon and I have discovered there are very subtle differences between the DM trying to kill the party and the DM setting up encounters that show the PC's as part of a larger world. While I can only speak for myself, I have had great success with this style. The players are not min/maxing, there is a large amount of role-playing and a large amount of thought when it comes to handling encounters.

 

[Doug McCrae]

BTW I'd guess that most things with 19 hit dice are going to be pretty obviously tough looking to a first level party - gigantic or demonic or bizzare looking or something.

There's not much of a correlation between size and freaky or demonic appearance and power level.

Ankhegs are large and very bizarre looking but they're only CR 3. Ghaele Eladrins OTOH are medium-sized and look like pretty much like normal elves but they're CR 13.

 

[Chimera]

To throw out an exaggerated example, say a group of 1st-level PCs are traveling through the forest and encounter an adult green dragon. Is this a good encounter? The DM might say "sure it is, the PCs can negotiate with it, and it'll let them live if they give it all their stuff," or something along those lines. Personally, I don't think it's a good encounter at all. It's placing a creature the PCs have no hope of defeating squarely in their path.

Depends. If the first level party is wandering around and suddenly there is this adult Dragon in front of them with no warning, then I'd say it's extremely unfair and unreasonable.

Any creature tends to leave marks on it's environment. If an *adult* Dragon is living in that forest, I would expect there to be very telling signs. Knocked down trees in Dragon sized landing strips, dragon sized piles of dung, ragged bits of large animal carcasses, possibly bite marks on trees, unmistakable large tracks, signs of breath weapon usage, etc.

If party encounters this Dragon with no warning, no signs (even without a Ranger) and at extremely short distance, then the GM is just plain lazy and mean.

But if a first level party is stomping through the forest and sees these signs, then they know they're in for a world of hurt and can take action to prevent an encounter.

The same goes with any other creature(s). It shouldn't take a Ranger to detect that there are a bunch of Ogres living in a swamp, or Ankhegs living in the grasslands. Sure, it may not always be obvious *what* is there, but there should be unmistakable signs that something lives there.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

But if a first level party is stomping through the forest and sees these signs, then they know they're in for a world of hurt and can take action to prevent an encounter.

How exactly do they take action to prevent an encounter? The dragon is too fast to run away from, too sharp-eyed to hide from, too acute of hearing to sneak past. Basically, if you're in its general area, there's a far better chance of it finding you, than you find it in time to run away.

The only thing I can think of to "prevent an encounter" is to simply not travel in the forest, something which, I'm assuming, is rarely feasible as there was probably a pressing reason to be in the forest in the first place.

The same goes with any other creature(s). It shouldn't take a Ranger to detect that there are a bunch of Ogres living in a swamp, or Ankhegs living in the grasslands. Sure, it may not always be obvious *what* is there, but there should be unmistakable signs that something lives there.

If it isn't obvious what lives there, then the information is worthless. Unless you are willing to metagame to the point of saying, "well, the DM wouldn't be telling us about all these claw-marked trees unless he was trying to warn us of impending danger." At which point, you're breaking believability far more than if you'd just not put in the inappropriate encounter to begin with, IMO.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Removed

 

[Chimera]

How exactly do they take action to prevent an encounter? The dragon is too fast to run away from, too sharp-eyed to hide from, too acute of hearing to sneak past. Basically, if you're in its general area, there's a far better chance of it finding you, than you find it in time to run away.

Not necessarily so. Nothing says that the Dragon has to spot everything moving through it's territory or, having spotted them, has to react. No creature is everywhere in it's territory at once.

The only thing I can think of to "prevent an encounter" is to simply not travel in the forest, something which, I'm assuming, is rarely feasible as there was probably a pressing reason to be in the forest in the first place.

That's not an entirely reasonable assumption. There could be many reasons why they decided to pass through. Perhaps they're looking for Kobolds who live in another part of the forest, or an Elf village and just happen to wander into the Dragon's territory. Good warnings will tell them that it's time to back off and find another route. (Metagaming will say "and when you get high enough level, here's a Dragon you can go after!")

If it isn't obvious what lives there, then the information is worthless. Unless you are willing to metagame to the point of saying, "well, the DM wouldn't be telling us about all these claw-marked trees unless he was trying to warn us of impending danger." At which point, you're breaking believability far more than if you'd just not put in the inappropriate encounter to begin with, IMO.

I disagree. Big claw marks on a tree should be warnings to anyone, so it is NOT metagaming to conclude that you've just recieved a warning. And signs of big chunks of ground broken up as if something large came up from underneath can tell you that there's something large that can get you from underneath. Whether that is a Xorn, Bullette, Ankheg or something completely different doesn't have to be known to make the information vital.

As far as "breaking believability", having these encounters without any environmental warning signs is what breaks my belief. Gone are the days where I'll accept Creature A in Room B without any reason for it to be there or effect on Creature C in Room D right next door.

 

[hong]

I disagree. Big claw marks on a tree should be warnings to anyone, so it is NOT metagaming to conclude that you've just recieved a warning.

Big claw marks on a tree can be 1) a Huge dragon; 2) a Large dragon; 3) a wyvern; 4) a dire bear; 5) a manticore; 6) an owlbear; 7) a dire boar. That's a potential range in CRs of 4 to 18. Yes, CRs are inaccurate and the real challenge is situation-dependent yadda yadda, but I'm sure you'll agree that a Huge dragon is still a bit more dangerous than a dire animal.

So, if I'm part of a 10th level party, what am I supposed to do when told about these claw marks? If the DM gives me this kind of information every time we meet a monster, and it has no bearing on whether the monster is a survivable fight, then it's effectively useless to me. It's just flavour, and while flavour is always nice to have, it won't affect my decision-making process at all. Now you might say that it should be a hint to be cautious and extra-careful, but if the DM has a history of having things we can't defeat pop up, then we're going to be cautious and extra-careful anyway, even without this sort of non-informative information.

Conversely, if the DM only gives me this information when the monster would be a tough fight, then we're back to metagaming again.

D&D is kinda unique among games in catering to such a huge range of character power. For that reason, it's almost impossible to avoid at least some metagaming, when it comes to creating encounters. The trick is to ensure it's the sort of metagaming that's acceptable to your players.

 

[Fenes]

I'd like to point out once again that losing a fight does not mean death. This is one reason why I am not fond of monsters as opponents. Intelligent adversaries, especially NPCs, can have dozens of reasons why they take prisoners instead of leaving corpses. Monsters hunting for food usually lack those reasons.

Trying to defeat that archmage does not have to end in a TPK, it could also end in the party taking the side-quest "escape from slavery" or "get back to our native plane from whereever we were dumped".

 

[IronWolf]

So, if I'm part of a 10th level party, what am I supposed to do when told about these claw marks? If the DM gives me this kind of information every time we meet a monster, and it has no bearing on whether the monster is a survivable fight, then it's effectively useless to me. It's just flavour, and while flavour is always nice to have, it won't affect my decision-making process at all. Now you might say that it should be a hint to be cautious and extra-careful, but if the DM has a history of having things we can't defeat pop up, then we're going to be cautious and extra-careful anyway, even without this sort of non-informative information.

I would recommend a knowledge(nature) check? Narrow it down, figure out what kind of claw marks these might be. Are there other tracks near? Big? Small? And that's if the DM didn't hint at it already and he's making you dig for it.

Flavor doesn't influence your decision making process? ::shrug:: As a DM I drop lots of subtle hints, often mixed in with the flavor portion of my descriptions. Early on my players tended to miss it. But as time went on they have actually become quite good at picking up on subtle hints and clues along the way that may influence the plot.

D&D is kinda unique among games in catering to such a huge range of character power. For that reason, it's almost impossible to avoid at least some metagaming, when it comes to creating encounters. The trick is to ensure it's the sort of metagaming that's acceptable to your players.

Quite true. It is very difficult to keep *all* metagaming out of a game, it seems someone is always doing it at some point in the game, trying to out think the DM. As you say, as long as the amount is acceptable for all players in the is probably the best goal.

In fact I think this whole thead comes down to game with a group whose ideas are similar to yours. Makes for the best gaming groups this way (most of the time). I certainly wouldn't want to push my style on everybody, I would prefer to put together a group of players with similiar gaming styles.