D&D General Why Unbalanced Combat Encounters Can Enhance Your Dungeons & Dragons Experience

[Campbell]

A less experienced DM is wise to run published adventures to learn the ropes, and as we know the CR is erring on the easy side, which is actually great for new DMs. Of course, the first encounter in LMoP is a textbook case of throwing DMs in at the deep-end, but as I said, WOTC sucks at teaching the game.

I think when you're starting modules are often way too big a bite off the apple. Something like Matt Collville's 3 room dungeons with a small supporting narrative are way easier to get going with.

 

[robus]

I think when you're starting modules are often way too big a bite off the apple. Something like Matt Collville's 3 room dungeons with a small supporting narrative are way easier to get going with.

Yep, I’ve long said LMoP is a great introduction to 5e rules for experienced players, but not D&D itself.

 

[Vaalingrade]

More encounters and less full modules would probably be better for totally new groups. Do some practice encounters, everyone gets a feel for it, then start stringing the encounters together.

 

[Campbell]

I did not say your post was irrelevant. I suggested it was criticizing a position that nobody in the thread has to my knowledge taken.

A couple of posters have argued for a naturalistic view of designing content without a regard for encounter difficulty rather than a more targeted view of specifically designing encounters/dungeons to pose players with challenges that require lateral thinking.

 

[iserith]

A couple of posters have argued for a naturalistic view of designing content without a regard for encounter difficulty rather than a more targeted view of specifically designing encounters/dungeons to pose players with challenges that require lateral thinking.

That's a far cry in my view from taking the position that the "naturalistic view" or the passage in the PHB regarding dying and story are a "free pass to murder PCs" which is the comment where this tangent kicked off. The poster said that the PHB passage I quoted was "not a free pass to murder PCs." My response was that nobody has taken the position that it is in this thread.

 

[James Gasik]

If you run the game with the "safeties off", as it were, it seems that a higher risk of PC death would follow, and now a DM is completely relying on their ability to gauge difficulty and account for extreme results, with their only safety net being DM fiat.

I'm not going to defend Challenge Rating or monster design; it's fundamentally flawed, and you don't have to look for very long to find monsters that are simply more powerful than others of their ilk within the same CR band. But even a primitive tool is better than no tool.

Why eyeball hanging a kitchen cabinet when a level or plumb is available?

 

[Minigiant]

A less experienced DM is wise to run published adventures to learn the ropes, and as we know the CR is erring on the easy side, which is actually great for new DMs. Of course, the first encounter in LMoP is a textbook case of throwing DMs in at the deep-end, but as I said, WOTC sucks at teaching the game.

So where do you send new DMs is the CR system is bad, the main publisher (WOTC) just converts old adventures that aren't meant for the target audience with niche design goals, and the 2nd most popular 3PP (Paizo) makes hard mode optimized time crunches.

 

[James Gasik]

So where do you send new DMs is the CR system is bad, the main publisher (WOTC) just converts old adventures that aren't meant for the target audience with niche design goals, and the 2nd most popular 3PP (Paizo) makes hard mode optimized time crunches.

Maybe some experienced DM's should get together and write a guide.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Maybe some experienced DM's should get together and write a guide.

If only we had gotten a book with the express purpose of providing guidance to dungeon masters...

 

[James Gasik]

If only we had gotten a book with the express purpose of providing guidance to dungeon masters...

Heh, well, I mean, even my favorite DMG, 1e's, while it has a wealth of information, wasn't very helpful in teaching people how to run the game. I'm not a fan of how WotC has handled 5e, but with their corpo overlords demanding maximum profit for minimal effort, it's not really a shocker that we don't have better DM-facing books. It's well known that they don't sell very well.

There was a time when we could expect DMG2's and other sundries, as well as good starting adventures that hold the DM's hand. I don't like saying "we don't need to teach DM's because YouTube", but a good guide to DMing will take effort to write, and will be a labor of love. So who has the time?