Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Any D&D/D20

Shadowrun

World of Darkness

Palladium

Other (feel free to post about it)

[Hanslanda]

Luckily it would be over rather quickly. 

Not if you built the entirety of your character around NEVER receiving damage ever. No other abilities considered, just, "I must not be touched!"

[Telgin]

Not to interrupt the discussions on DnD character builds, but does anyone ever feel really discouraged as a GM because you're bad at encounter balance, leading you to fudging rolls all over the place?  And then you feel like you've effectively removed all threat, and as a consequence, half of the point of playing?

I kind of feel like I learned to fudge results as a bad habit when I was a much younger GM and GMed for a single player: my younger brother.  If I killed off his character, the game ended, so... I usually went very loosey goosey with the rules when that looked like it might ever happen, and frequently soft balled encounters.  When I overshot, something would happen magically that gave him an edge to win.  It helped that we used to play in the D6 system, which arguably made it way easier to fudge results than D20.  With D6 you're using lots of dice and the necessary mental arithmetic and gymnastics gave me a chance to cook the books, so to speak, much more simply than I could with a single d20 roll.  Not to mention the GM section of the old D6 Star Wars RPG told me that fudging the numbers was okay sometimes if I needed to do it.

Trouble is, I keep doing it.

To make a very long story only sort of long, I'm running a D6 game for a group of friends online (play-by-post), and I'm doing the same stuff.  The players have largely walked all over encounters so far, which was somewhat deliberate since I was trying to emulate a heroic 90s Saturday morning cartoon, but we're at the finale and I wanted to give the players an encounter with some bite to it for a change.  I statted up a squad of robots for them to fight and up came the robots' first turn.  The robots were very tough, skilled and had powerful weapons.

So I started rolling dice, and the numbers terrified me.  Following my somewhat broken house rules for rapid fire weapons, the robots scored many extra hits with their already powerful weapons.  One NPC tagging along with the party was thoroughly killed, and the other NPC was only very killed.  One PC was looking at a severe wound, although death was unlikely.

I stared at my typed up post for minutes while I tried to decide what to do.  None of the PCs were dead, but I was very skeptical of their ability to win at that point.  I know the players are resourceful, but this was the kind of encounter where escape was almost impossible (they were in a sealed room).

Then the itch flared up, and I started reconsidering things.  I'd never shown these robots before, so I could change the stats without the players knowing!  I dialed back the damage a bit on their weapons, but the results barely changed.  Both NPCs were still dead.  I tried changing the weapons from being rapid fire high damage weapons to single shot very high damage weapons, and the results marginally improved.  Only one NPC was dead now, but the PC was probably going to die from his hit.

Finally, I realized that I could have the robots go for nonlethal attacks, since that was kind of justified, and the numbers suddenly looked much better.  The two NPCs were now alive but badly injured, and the PC that was shot at was now missed by the robots.

Though it filled me with great shame, I hit the post button with those results, and spent the next 30 minutes pondering my decisions as I tried to fall asleep.

Bad encounter design is always a problem, I guess, but I felt bad about it because I've been very careful to avoid Quantum Ogres in this game.  But in the end, it's kind of the same problem, only presented a different way.  If I don't let the PCs fail, what's the point of even rolling the dice?  It doesn't help that one of the other players, a veteran GM, is very deliberately open about his dice rolls when GMing to prevent exactly this kind of behavior.  I want to be like that, but have so far failed.

[Egan_BW]

Well. I say let some things be horrifyingly deadly, but let them be things that your players walk into. Death should be the result of their choices (including deciding to do nothing), and not the result of the GM dropping them into a room full of unbeatably high-statted things.
And then, when it's time, don't be afraid to kill the characters. It's what they're there for, after all. Dying is an acceptable ending, too.

Of course, it's a big advantage of play-by-post that you can change whatever you want before hitting post. If it's evident that the stats that you've come up with are unreasonable, go ahead and change them. It's just preferable that you do so before rolling. To me, rolling the dice is signing a contract that you'll accept whatever the result is, even or you don't like it.

[Gentlefish]

The real trick is the illusion of threat. Fudge your dice lightly while they're playing smart. Maybe make every third crit not-a-crit (I wish my DM would do this he literally rolls at least one 20 every combat turn, if not more. They're called his PK dice for a reason.) and garnish damage.

If they start getting bold, let the dice do the speaking. Let (don't make!) one of them die, then they'll go "oh shi-" and realize you're not actually pulling punches. So they think. And always fail forward. They need to get through a door? Cool, let them get through is disastrous consequences if they forgot the key or the macguffin.

[NullForceOmega]

Gentlefish pretty much has the right idea here, you, as the DM, are there to make sure the game is enjoyable for everyone.  That means helping the players out sometimes, and breaking their hearts others, it's a balancing act between too forgiving and too harsh.

This changes between groups however, some groups are completely down with the 'hurt me plenty' mindset.

[Telgin]

I probably really should have just stuck with the results this time, since they really were kind of asking for trouble in this case, and it was intended to be the finale of sorts.  Especially since it was just NPCs that were killed.

I kind of backed myself into a corner there though, by soft balling everything up to that point.  I didn't want it to be jarring with a sudden increase in deadliness, especially given the tone I was trying to stick to, but then if I want to fix my behavior I have to start somewhere.

Funny aside about crits: we actually had to house rule that already.  The D6 system uses dice pools and has this notion of the Wild Die.  One die out of every dice pool, whether that's a skill roll, damage, or whatever, is the Wild Die.  If it comes up a 6 you can reroll it until you stop getting 6s.  If it's a 1, the GM is supposed to make something bad happen.  It can be a minor complication, like a gun's magazine running dry, you can subtract it and the highest die rolled, or you can choose to have nothing happen.  These 1s came up so often (1/6th of the time, of course) that we agreed for me to adjust the dice roller to have to confirm them on an additional coin flip.

Of course, it's a big advantage of play-by-post that you can change whatever you want before hitting post. If it's evident that the stats that you've come up with are unreasonable, go ahead and change them. It's just preferable that you do so before rolling. To me, rolling the dice is signing a contract that you'll accept whatever the result is, even or you don't like it.

That's generally how I feel too, and what I want to stick to, but at least in this case it wasn't until after I rolled that I realized how messed up things were.  In fairness though, it could have just been bad luck in that particular round, but it looked like I way overdid things based on the results.

To put it to some hard numbers, the NPCs that should have died had 30 HP and 6d6 and 6d6+1 damage resistance.  They were being attacked by weapons that did 6d6 of damage.  So, on average, I expected less than one point of damage to go through per hit.  Each was shot 4 times I think, and so, on average, should have lost about 3-4 HP and been fine.  However, what ended up happening was one shot ended up doing 40 points of damage because of a crit, and the NPC rolled 10 to resist and dropped to 0 immediately on the first hit.  Oops.  Next shot took her negative and that was that.

I probably should have expected the randomness to take a toll like that, but... well, I guess talking about the numbers is trying to pass the blame off to the system instead of me.

[Egan_BW]

Ah. If they're asking for trouble, give 'em trouble. They're superheroes or something so they probably won't stay dead anyway. :V

[Rolan7]

Speaking of superheroes, here are my next character's stats after the devil dice:
18 STR, 2 DEX, 15 CON, 19 INT, 12 WIS, 18 CHA
(5th edition DND)
...Isn't it a little weird that CHA is primary for three spellcasters, INT for one?  And INT no longer determines general skill points, just a relatively large set of skills.  Whereas CHA still governs, you know, interacting with characters.  Who's the dump stat now, heh?

Not that I'm complaining, obviously, this spread is amazing.  I'm almost tempted to finally make a wizard.
...  Except that both my partymembers ended up with horrible CON and high INT, and went wizard.  They were statistically likely to get 1HP per level *anyway*, might as well learn abjuration.

Soo, I'm going to finally play a paladin.  Which I should *never* do in 3.5, ha, but 5th's oaths seem much less... rulesy.  And there are options which can work with my murderhobo-when-bored colleagues.  I think.  They seem extremely vague, probably to avoid said intraparty issues.

We also all independently went human, heh.
So our party concept (joining the DM's established world, updated for 5e) is anime-style mageschool classmates.  My paladin is on athletic scholarship.  And carries their books.  And has 19 INT, thank you, but her calling is to protect and heal.

As a human, I'm totally taking Inspiring Leader as my level 1 feat to like double their HP.  Through arcane abjurations, speeches about friendship, and videogame-style 1hp lay-on-hand revives, we shall get through this!!

(since it's 5e, maybe actually?  It's so hard to die in this unless the healer's down)

Edit:  Oh yeah I meant to ask for advice!  We each get a "+1 book" to pick from, like in the official games.  Anything we should know about?  A potent low-level abjuration, or a way for paladin to heal better?  Anything like that.

[scriver]

(What's a +1 book)

[Rolan7]

I only learned about it from Googling.  Basically in "official" games you generally get the players hand book "plus one" other book.  Like Volo's guide to monsters (if you want to play a weird race, IIRC) or xanthumgum's guide to everything.

[Biowraith]

Edit:  Oh yeah I meant to ask for advice!  We each get a "+1 book" to pick from, like in the official games.  Anything we should know about?  A potent low-level abjuration, or a way for paladin to heal better?  Anything like that.

Depending what level you start and are likely to reach, I'd personally be very tempted by Xanathar's Guide to Everything, purely for Find Greater Steed (level 4 spell) for a flying mount (or a rhino).  Also a couple more oath options and potentially the Prodigy feat (+1 skill prof, +1 tool prof, +1 language, and expertise in 1 skill).

[Rolan7]

It's starting at level 1, probably ending at 4 in a month as we switch GMs.  We're likely to come back later, though.

And yeah, derp, I was fondly regarding the Oath of Redemption (Oaths) which would require Xanathar's Guide.  I like it mechanically, it meshes well with my instinct (and lucky CHA roll) to do diplomacy when possible, and it allows me patience when my party members resort to violence first.

I mean, we're probably talking about goblins here.  But I can be the positive role model who mostly gets ignored - that's a pretty funny and fun role.  And since this GM does tend to like nonviolent resolutions, maybe occasionally I'll talk things down.

[Biowraith]

(since it's 5e, maybe actually?  It's so hard to die in this unless the healer's down)

It's starting at level 1

I've recently started playing in a level 1 campaign and a character was insta-killed on the first attack of the second battle of the campaign - a CR 1/4 spider bit them, got a crit, and they failed their Con vs poison save by 1.  31 points of damage in one attack to their 10hp frame :p

[Rolan7]

Even on a crit (double damage?  And only for the bite), that seems like a lot of damage for a 1/4 CR creature O_o
Some brief googling also suggests (inconclusively) that the poison would be a separate damage source.

Regardless though, massive damage will definitely destroy them at later levels, given they're getting 1HP per level.  Level one characters would usually be the most vulnerable in 5e if I understand correctly, but certainly not for these.

Fortunately we sometimes retire characters *without* them dying, at appropriate points.  Moving on to rewarding lives as NPCs.
"we" pretty much being me, but still.

[Biowraith]

Hmm, yeah now that I check that maybe shouldn't have been an instakill (poison damage not doubled and separate source).  It'd still have been awfully close though - 12 damage from the bite (rolls of 6 + 5, +1 modifier), then 9 from the first poison damage roll.

Mostly I just meant to illustrate that level 1, even in 5e, is very prone to player deaths.  Though if you're playing only 1HP per level, higher levels will definitely be much worse.