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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PapersAndPaychecks" data-source="post: 2226014" data-attributes="member: 28854">An encounter that the player characters cannot overcome through combat is fine, imo, provided there's another option. It only becomes a problem if they can't anticipate it - or if they can anticipate it, they can't avoid it, sneak past it, or talk their way past it. One of the early 1e adventures, aimed at a party of starting characters, included a room full of 32 kobolds. If they charged the room, a wipe was pretty much inevitable; but the encounter was avoidable. The adventure designer simply assumed that the PCs would scout ahead, or would capture an earlier kobold and interrogate it, or would otherwise have some means of reconnaissance on hand. And, crucially, the adventure designer also assumed that it is okay to wipe the party if they fail to scout effectively. I imagine that every DM here has used encounters the players couldn't beat in combat. Those encounters where a bunch of lowbie PCs has to tiptoe past a slumbering Giant are fine. Those encounters where a bunch of lowbie PCs have to talk their way past an alert but stupid Giant are also fine. The alternative is to fill endless dungeons full of rooms that the PCs can definitely beat. The problem with this is that superior players will simply waltz through such a place, cherry-picking the encounters that they want to work on and dodging the ones they don't, and therefore it presents no challenge to them - but inferior players will simply charge, room by room, boot door, kill monster, grab treasure. Frankly, a lot of people who've been playing for a long time still suck at D&D because they've never learned better. You can tell these players because they fail to scout ahead, fail to take captives, fail to interrogate captives on the rare occasions when they do get some, and then whine when they run into an encounter they can't hack their way through. Often they will charge in without a plan and whine when they die. They fail to search for traps and then whine when a trap kills them. They fight to the death and often the idea that they can surrender to monsters doesn't even occur to them. They squabble and separate and even duel each other in dungeons. These players who suck often continue to get away with it because when they die, they blame the DM for creating encounters that they couldn't handle. And all too often the DM believes them and tones back the encounters so that they can continue to suck at D&D without losing any characters. I call it Sandbox D&D. The players play in a nice, safe sandbox where the DM has carefully removed the nasty sharp objects that could hurt them. If there's a difficult encounter coming up, the DM carefully flags it up for them and gives them plenty of warning. (I keep imagining dungeons with big signs on some of the doors saying "Health warning: This encounter could be harmful!") Treasure's contained in nice, helpfully-obvious containers scattered evenly throughout the dungeon, with some of the containers having predictable traps that will cause nothing worse than mild inconvenience if triggered. Heaven forbid that anything would actually be hidden effectively. The problem with this comes when you get people who've only ever played Sandbox D&D playing around in a non-Sandbox dungeon. They get hurt on the nasty sharp edges and they think the DM's being unfair to them (classic example: Tomb of Horrors - players with any actual skill at D&D can get through it without casualties; Sandbox D&D players get wiped around room 7). Sometimes, there are tears.</blockquote>

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