I always liked the idea of encounters where the metric for victory is to escape or make it past an un-winnable encounter. Not every encounter has to be a fight to the death encounter.
Absolutely. My recent campaign that just ended I made a point to do this for several of the major combats and it was fantastic. Defending people casting rituals or surviving an unending assault for X rounds until rescue arrives. At a table that isn't very lethal this is a good example of a place where I might make it so that they have to survive the dragon while knocking down magical columns around the map and then escape as the cavern collapses around them with minions giving chase. Feels climactic as heck. That said, even though my table is light on death, if I tell my players out of game that "THING IS GOING TO BE BAD" and they do thing, there's no complaining about a TPK.
I almost always include this kind of encounter early in a campaign, preferably in the first session to express to players that they ALWAYS have the option to handle things however they think makes sense, and not every monster can, should, or will be killed. There’s a reason modern militaries drill things like defense in the retrograde or breaking contact. Sometimes an encounter poses too much threat to either the unit, the mission, or the conflict as a whole to be carried out aggressively. I think campaigns where opportunities to do something besides just meet the bad guys in all out combat and defeat them are somewhat boring compared to ones where other methods are possible, preferable, or even necessary (at least necessary if the party doesn’t want a TPK or to fail their current “quest” or mission.
In "Into the Abyss" (spoiler)..... .... ... ... .... .... .... .... Demogorgon attacks the village the players are in, there's no way they'd win, it's clear fleeing is the route to "success". That official campaign has lots OP situations, including the Drow right at the start.
I believe most creatures won't fight to the death, angry feral pigs aside. If I think the creature should (bloodied), they disengage and run. The players get full XP for winning the fight. If they pursue, maybe have it turn and attack with insane ferocity. In this example, the dragon may 'toy' with the characters demonstrating their strength, mettle, etc. first. Decide to let their dragonkin minions clean up this minor nuisance...
1) Make it clear to the players that this encounter may not be winnable if they are thinking of a straight up direct fight 2) Use in world ways to convey the risk (the cleric or paladin's god/goddess issues a warning, the Warlock's patron, a scrying friendly wizard sends a Sending,.etc.) 3) Create a series of challenges before they get to that challenge (rivers of lava, excessive heat, etc.), e.g. use the environment to force the PCs to rethink what they are doing. Sure one canny or prepared player may be able to get past or resist them, but likely not all
Last one is a really good idea... The heat is so intense you take damage and exhaustion as you progress. At this point, if the party decides to proceed it is 100% their fault if they wipe, so when they back off they go do some research and find out about some MacGuffin that will protect them from the heat.
One of my greatest moments as a player was when an ancient white dragon came home to a lair we were looting. One breath and 2 of our party were dead. and my goblin ranger taunted it to chase him ( and eventually kill him) while 3 of our party were able to escape. It was one of the most heroic things I have ever done. So yay for potential TPK's
Similarly, I had a rogue/warlock and we were up against a lich. The lich was targeting our wizard and keeping him out of the fight. I don't remember the specifics, but it had us pinned down and we were fighting it at range. My character had a Cube of Force, ran up to the lich and activated the button which prevented spells passing through to the party. The cleric gets the wizard back up in the fight, the martials can focus on the lich, but my character got turned to dust on the lich's next turn.
14:08 The G.W.R.D. is a "level 28" Mythic Mortal Monster. It uses an extrapolation of the standard P.C. class level scaling for Proficiency Bonus (+6 at lvl17 | +7 at lvl21 |...| +11 at lvl 28). It has Proficiency & Mastery in the "Perception" Skill, that also applies to its "Passive Perception"... passively: [2×(+11Prof)]+[(+6WIS)+10base]=38 It does not have True Sight, so an invisible, flying, lvl15 Rogue (20 DEX, Expertise Stealth) with a Ring of Spell Storing (casting Pass Without a Trace ); rolling a 10 [guaranteed by Reliable talent] & getting a reaction boost from Bardic/Flash... -> It has a "coal chance in Hell".
One of the campaigns I've ran ended via TPK through an unwinnable encounter. The players just decided to put down everything and chase blindly after this creature they have met, that was too powerful. The chase took them four sessions, through which they have seen the devastation wrought by the creature and were plainly told by numerous trusted allies, including one god, that they should stop and leave the fight for later. As they encountered the monster, the BBEG himself showed up and told them to get the hell away from there, and fought on their side. They never turned back and they all died. The whole thing was super weird and I don't understand why they would honestly want to keep pushing. I feel like something else may have been at play, like them being tired with the campaign or wanting to end it for some other reason, but that's just my speculation. Either way, this was a great video.
It's also possible they thought you were bluffing or deploying some other type of psychology or misdirection (maybe the god is in the pocket of the enemy?). Once you realised they weren't accepting it in character, maybe a last resort out of character "If you do this your PCs all die" would have made them realise, but as you say perhaps something else was happening.
@@willmena96That depends. My setting has a BBNG (big bad neutral gal) who is more concerned with the current order not collapsing than she is with your plans, so she may well ally with you temporarily and then stymie you later -- though if you cross her, expect to get vaporized. She is literally the only 20th level wizard in the galaxy and probably always will be now that we've made a decision to stop at 15 for all new characters.
I think the key is making it clear to the players. I'm thinking when *spoilers* Demogorgon shows up at the beginning of Out of the Abyss. Clearly if you're painting the picture correctly the lvl 2-3 party should know they're supposed to flee from the demon lord.
One of my favorite GM moments was when I had created a horror scenario with a monster that was essentially impossible to beat and the players had to navigate around a castle while avoiding the monster. And they loved it. They gave me some nice positive feedback for the whole thing and that was a great feeling.
So much you could do there. Have the dragon's minions fight them. If its a close battle, they'll realise they're not ready for the dragon yet and retreat. Have the dragon be impressed with their boldness and set them a quest or a challenge. Maybe even have the dragon insult them, say they're not worth it's time, and fly away. Make them want to find where it went and go on a whole other set of quests, levelling up as they do until they are ready to fight it.
Great advice as always and I am basically in full agreement with everything you said. I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with "impossible" encounters provided there's an underlying purpose, I don't like to make a habit of setting my players up for failure, but when there is agency involved and a decision is made knowing that this could result in death... well that's a different story. We have always had a good understanding of that social contract at our table. Everyone knows the decisions they make are theirs and those decisions can potentially influence much larger moving parts but that I'm not simply going to eliminate a challenge just so they don't die when they've made a bad decision or had poor luck. It's all part of the game :) Great video.
I think unwinnable encounters are essential to preserving the fact that danger is real. But... I always communicate clearly with the players when an opponent is way out of their league, and I always plan a couple "escape hatches" into the encounter. My "trick", if you can call it that, is that I leave placing and timing a bit flexible so that I can be sure that my players search for the whatever ends up being in the right place, or the last ditch rush to flee isn't down a dead end tunnel. I don't fudge rolls, and the trade off is that I never hide something that I NEED to happen behind a roll.
I love how it's called "Broken Homebrew Dragon" XD Honestly I think, except the paralyzing fear, this is a fine boss for a very high level party. Instantly locking the entire party up with paralysis is kinda jank though.
In my opinion, yes there should be rare circumstances where there is an encounter that is impossible to win. But this encounter should be locked so far behind exposition (everyone knows that this is the most powerful dragon etc.) and severe to extreme difficulty encounters that act as gatekeepers (“we barely survived the fight with those fire giants, so we probably shouldn’t go further into this volcano”). Just as there are trivial encounters, there should be impossible ones as well. I believe this makes the fantasy world more plausible. And avoids the coincidence of all the encounters leveling up with the PCs.
For what it's worth, I think that the Perception +28 is based on the assumption that a creature's proficincy bonus increases every four levels/CR and that (like many high-CR dragons) it has a hidden expertise in Perception. With that, 11 x 2 + 6 WOULD equal 28. But, uh, even a natural 20 on a character with +17 to Stealth (the normal maximum) couldn't beat a passive of 38, and it's highly unlikely that everyone in the party could reach beyond that with magic, so this just seems like a way to make the impossible encounter unavoidable if the party steps into the room.
@AnaseSkyrider You start getting into iffy territory when you consider advantage/disadvantage due to unknown factors (e.g. is theblair noisy, does the creature have advantage normally, etc.), but even a 33 is a difficult number for EVERYONE to avoid. Without magical aid, you need at least a 14 DEX minimum and Stealth Expertise to beat a 33 with a Nat 20. The odds are just way too stacked against the party.
In my current campaign, at level 3 (i think, it was over a year ago now) we watched our level 20 mentors get annihilated by the BBEG of the campaign. It was obviously an unwinnable encounter, and we barely escaped with our lives. I thought it was a stroke of genius on my DM's part. It really set up the BBEG as a fearsome entity, and showed us that we need to be very well prepared before we face him again. There are times when an unwinnable encounter can really drive home a point, or become a pivotal moment for the PCs. The important thing is communication between the players and DM. If players ignore the signs and warnings, its on them. But the DM does need to give them those signs and warnings!
A problem I've run into more than once when running an impossible encounter is that the players will fail to see the escape method I've thought of and just kind of give up on the encounter and just attack anyway because they can't think of anything else to do. If your players are like mine, I've learned that I need to treat my impossible encounters the same way I treat running a mystery and provide my players with hints and clues on what they can do. If they choose to do something else, that's great, but some players need more creative guidance than others.
I played a campaign one time where the party was recruited by the king to take out an Illithid who started collecting cultists to try and over throw the king and take his place, essentially. I think we were like level 6, and my Shadow Monk had Silenced the ritual area, where the Mindflayer, at this point revealed to be an arcanist, effectively stopping the ritual while he shadowstepped forward and grappled the Mindflayer. Somehow, and for some reason the portal was completed, even though the chanting was silenced, and we as a party were catapulted into the future. Not my favorite moment as a player. The other one was being force captured by a prince after realizing his "mithral armor" somehow made him immune to non magical attacks and allowed him to dispel my wall of fire. And that my strength save of 19 wasn't enough to break out of his Bigby's Hand. We were low level, and this same DM all gave us an item that allowed us one use of a 4th level spell.
My party recently had an impossible encounter, and it was perhaps my favourite moment of the campaign so far. We had ended up imprisoned by this really creepy guy who was doing experiments on people to create these horrifying, mutated creatures. We'd been told that if we put on a good show in his gladiatorial contest, we'd be allowed to leave. So we agreed, and while waiting to enter we heard from another prisoner that no one had ever survived the mystery creature that was kept in the arena. We got put in the arena and had to fight what I now know is a Barlgura. Thinking this was the mystery monster that no one had ever beaten, we burned a lot of our resources right away but our sorcerer nearly died anyway. Once we beat it we were told we were told we could leave through Gate 12. It turns out we were in the middle of a maze and Gate 12 was somewhere on the outside. The other prisoner (the one who told us about the mystery creature) told us he knew where Gate 12 was but led us straight into another Barlgura. As we were preparing ourselves for another fight, shadowy tentacles sprung out of the darkness and wrapped around the Barlgura, tearing it limb from limb. We instantly realised our mistake and ran for our lives, scattering throughout the maze. And so ensued a nail-biting chase scene, where we simultaneously had to avoid the creature and find the exit. At one point, I was so sure I would die that I had decided to to charge the creature in the hopes of buying the party time to escape, and we later found out that multiple PCs were one failed save away from taking enough damage to instantly die. The DM even had intensse music playing in the background. I was genuinely scared sh*tless, and I think this is the most fun I've ever had in dnd. In conclusion, if done right, impossible encounters are f*cking awesome.
I really like the idea of having a solid field of once molten gold and other precious materials to give a hint to the players that the dragon has done this before. Maybe signs of multiple caveins and holes in the ceiling where the dragon has dropped the ceiling on other foolish intruders. Or oooh, 'Hiroshima shadows' of adventures that have fallen before. These background elements could be really spooky with the proper show don't tell as the players put the hints together to foreshadow their own fate. Depending upon the campaign, the dragon might be willing to throw the party back in and waiting for them to ripen into a real challenge? Make it very clear that the dragon /chose/ to spare them and its unlikely to happen again if they annoy it.
Thank you, the creative juices are bubbling on this task. Alternatively- 'Oh good, my new slaves are here' and have a session or two where the party needs to play an escape from their new 'employer' possibly working with other slaves to do a revolt... or an escape.
Curse of Strahd is amazing, btw, our DM did some homebrew to make it more difficult, and it was so satisfying being able to go all out with our team tactics. We managed to kill a beholder with a level 4 party, and only 1 PC got disintegrated during it. I also died during that one but luckily it was only the death ray that killed me, I got resurrected later. We never discussed our social contract but that battle was when we realized we were all on board with the same expectations. One of the most memorable and favorite encounters I had as a player was one in that campaign that ended with us running away. We had carefully planned this whole mission and all agreed that if that if this 1 antagonist wizard was somehow there (and we were very careful to make sure he shouldn't know what we were doing) we had to get out immediately. It became obvious at the start of combat they had been expecting us, and a few rounds in we saw him and realized he orchestrated a trap. It was thrilling, using all our wits and resources to escape. It also made us feel significantly more unified as a team, because we all knew if we had only looked out for ourselves, it's likely at least half of us would have died. Instead, we all survived. I agree that "Impossible" encounters can be good for the story if they are done right. In our case, it led us to realizing we needed to approach each target differently if we wanted to have the upper hand, since the moment we took one mark down, Strahd would find out how we did it, get the word out, and all our future marks would account for the possibility of us doing that again. Also our next mission was to ensure we were protected from divination magic.
I don't see why not. Our group agrees that it would be more realistic and fun if there are more powerful beings out there and the world doesn't just resolve around us like some sorts of main character syndrome. As long as the encounter is carefully warned and set up (basically have a tons of way to avoid), like if the players purposefully anger gods and get killed then that's on them. Fights that you lose but it's like a special cutscene that you don't die outside are fine too.
I will never give players an impossible encounter without some sort of very blatant signal that it is impossible to win. In the past, my signals were too weak and players ignored them. Not anymore. Now, it’s, “As the beast fixes its terrible eyes on you, you feel in your bones that you have no chance of standing up against it. You have two choices: escape, or die.”
Pretty solid advice all around I'd say. To expand on this away from the original question that prompted the discussion, sometimes an "impossible encounter" can be more narrative set dressing than a straight up "encounter". I had a (short lived) game of Star Wars Saga Edition where our crew was ambushed by Imperial forces during a smuggling drop-off. As a player and character, I knew we weren't equipped to take on multiple vehicles and a small platoon of soldiers, but we weren't surrounded and had access to speeder-bikes, so from a character standpoint it made sense to attempt a getaway and from a player standpoint I knew the adventure wouldn't be a spacefaring one so our ship didn't matter and we'd likely be encountering the local rebellion and working with them. Meanwhile, another player pissed and moaned about the GM creating an unfair encounter as he pulled out a rocket launcher, when to me it was clear this was never meant to be a "roll initiative" encounter. An "impossible encounter" could also be the start of a potentially thrilling chase sequence, if the game has good mechanics for that or you find good homebrew rules for it. A chase sequence where it's the players being chased can also be a great roleplay opportunity; if someone fails a skill check and falls behind and is at risk of being caught, do you fall back to help them or is it every man for themselves? Of course, said chase sequence shouldn't guarantee everyone's survival; everyone should have the abilities needed to survive if they think about it, but not everyone may be able to escape. But just imagine narrating a desperate chase that ends with the party battered but alive, feeling like they cheated certain death, and already considering how they'll be better prepared next time. There is also the matter that not all encounters need to end in death (and this goes both ways). The PCs being captured, when it narratively makes sense, can throw an interesting wrinkle into a campaign. Surrender, again when narratively appropriate, can be on the table if the battle is looking one sided and escape unlikely. Dragons aren't stupid, so maybe the PCs can turn this around in the example into a social encounter where the PCs "apologize" for their foolishness and try to play to its vanity, offering themselves as servants, and that leads to a situation of them needed to wiggle out of the magical servitude they used to escape death. Assuming everyone's on the same page of a social contract where the PCs are not the center of the universe, death should always be on the table, but not always in a binary manner. Unless the players are genuinely doing something utterly suicidal (with some leeway if it's an end-of-campaign suicide mission where mutually assured destruction is seen as a victory), there should always be some kind of out for them so the campaign can continue, whether that be simple fleeing, surrendering, negotiating, or something else clever with magic, cunning, or a heroic sacrifice. Then it becomes a matter of if the players can find an out and how successful they are in executing it. I firmly believe "there's always a bigger fish" should be an element of most campaigns.
I ran one for one of my players session 0. He wanted to be a Paladin that took hexblade pact during mission that went sideways. I offered to make it his session 0. So he went in knowing it would end badly, but not many level 3 players expect to face an army of undead and a necromancer with two oathbreaker paladins that power word kills somebody next to them. The pact he made happened mid fight as a voice entered his mind and required him to kill his friend to escape with his life. Once he took the pact, he was temporarily coated in an anti-magic field and hasted to get away. It was dark, but he says it was his favorite session he's been a part of. Unwinable moments can make for incredible story moments if done right.
Great topic Chris! It's important to know your intent with an encounter. What is the "win condition" for the players? My players were after a party members uncle, who was chased into a cave by the Orc warchief. The map was designed to compliment the Warchiefs features, forcing the party to clump together in tight corridors. They were ravaged, one character died. After a reminder of their objective, the attitude shifted, and they were successful It was a great introduction for my villain after they heard so much about her, the party ran with a tail between their legs.
I have a guideline I think I saw in a writeup of West Marches that I read a long time ago. Big dangers are always telegraphed so the party can avoid them. Unexpected dangers are always small enough that the party could overcome them if they're smart about it. I also like to warn players if they're about to do something potentially fatal (free climb down a cliff in the rain, dive into the underground river with no knowledge where it leads, etc.), assuming the warning won't break the immersion.
One option I can think of is to have the dragon in an area that the players can't even get to without taking damage, like having the main part of the lair in an area where they would have to go below the surface of a magma pool to enter. Have the party start fighting the dragon, maybe even dropping one of the PC's, then have a bigger threat fly over the volcano. The dragon would then either be attacked by the other creature or fly after it. If the creature attacks the dragon, this would give the ability of the dragon to eventually chase after the damaged creature. Either way, the dragon would be leaving the lair without "running away" from the party and the party will now know what kinds of challenges they need to overcome to get to the treasure and may become a long term goal for the campaign.
Use a very visual warning, similar to the intro to Vecna Lives module. Very powerful npcs being devastated by the bbeg. Or, given the beasties' power, have it just toy with them, amused by their audacity, it doesn't kill them, just humiliates them in some way. Or, as a last idea, have them proceed, tpk, and the awake back in the last camp with the knowledge that it was a vision of the future from some powerful being, and that they need to prepare better. Last one is not as food, it still creates a sense of can't lose and that if they die they will get a mulligan, but it will let them learn without losing time invested.
In Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, my party encountered Arveiaturace (ancient white dragon) twice. Once in the middle of the snow, and once on her own lair. Both times they had to escape, the first one they entered a deal with the dragon, promising her to restore her eyesight. The second time however, it was not going to be so easy. The artificer casted Rope Trick in the middle of the lair, and they had to climb one by one while the dragon and a bunch of kobolds were trying to kill them.
Love all your videos but your DM advice/encounter design videos have been some of the ones I go back to the most. I feel like there is always good advice that accounts for the personal aspect presented in a practical way that understands the mechanics. Always enjoyable
Excellent advice. I love how you handled it. I would have gone down a different route. No collapsing its own lair entrance. Why would it do that? I take my philosophy from AJ Pickett, "Never nerf the lich." If they pick a fight with this dragon, they will be feeding their character sheets into a paper shredder. Instead, I'd do a little bit of homebrew to give them one last opportunity to live. Let's have the CR39 Great Wyrm Red Dragon start the encounter asleep, 450 feet away. And let's make the Frightful Presence a passive ability that triggers on a creature the first time they set eyes on it. No range limit. No effort on the dragon's part. This thing could be flying miles overhead, and the entire city sees it. Every single creature makes a DC29 Wisdom saving throw. A level 15 Cleric or Druid, with 20 Wisdom and proficiency has a +10 to wisdom saves, and so must roll a 19 or better to avoid/end the effect. Or maybe there's an 18Charisma Paladin standing next to them, and they only need a 15 or better. EVERYONE ELSE is paralyzed with fear for a minute. Even if you have an 18 Charisma Paladin standing within 10 feet of you (and this party of 6-8 players might), if you don't have 20 Wisdom or proficiency in the save, there is no hope for you. And oh boy. Each round, the DM tells them what new thing they notice or remember hearing about the dragon. They learn about this thing's size, ripping muscles, huge claws and teeth, how the heat inside the friggin volcano lair increases every time the dragon breathes out. They remember hearing tall tales in the tavern about a city being wiped off the map after someone picked up a coin that fell off its scales when it flew over. They remember reading about the volcanic eruption that happened when this dragon first moved into this lair -- some said it was caused by a fight with the previous occupant, who got pulled into the lava below and torn limb from limb. Each round, they roll their saving throw. After 10 rounds and an absurd number of failed saving throws, the players get their agency back. They have been warned. It was epic, they have an opportunity for role play, and that's where I plan for this encounter to end, with the players quickly running away. If they're dumb enough to still attack the dragon, they're all going to die. No doubt about it. 870 health, resistance to bludgeoning/piercing/slashing from magic weapons, advantage on saving throws against magic spells, 150 fly speed, massive fire breath every round (NOT ON A RECHARGE), and a creature smart enough to dive into the lava if it runs into any trouble (fire damage heals it). And that's before you consider its minions, lair actions, and what tools it has collected in its armory over the centuries. We'll take a pass on setting traps in its lair -- most dragons would, but this one doesn't need to. If they so much as LOOK at the dragon's hoard before running away, I'm going to send the dragon's servants after them who demand that they give back the memory they stole. The dragon's servants intend to forcibly use Modify Memory on each player to wipe all traces of the dragon's horde, leaving everything else untouched. The dragon isn't playing around, either. The players got ambushed in the middle of the night by creatures that would threaten a TPK in any scenario (except in this case TPK means forced memory wiping, not death). But personally, I wouldn't let it come to a fight. If the players think about fighting, I would make sure that the players know damaging the dragon's possessions would enrage it. It would be a declaration of war, which is equivalent to signing their own death warrant. They can choose to fight, but they would no longer be an irrelevant nuisance, but an affront that must be addressed and obliterated. Their social contract does not give them any plot armor if they make this dragon mad / embarrass the dragon in the eyes of its peers. They will die. And not just them. This powerful creature will destroy everything around them. This cruel and intelligent creature will also take particular care to hunt down everyone they love. But let's roll back time. Maybe the players don't fight or run. They've got agency. The dragon is 450 feet away and sound asleep. If they try to sneak closer, they can probably get to about 300 feet away before they make a sound, and the dragon's ear twitches, sending a small treasure flying over 100 feet away. (There isn't a god who can help them if they continue forward and pick it up -- hopefully they'll notice that the dragon is now only pretending to sleep). And of course, if they somehow sneak to within its 120-foot blind sense -- it senses them. It wakes up. I don't have anything past this planned out -- it shouldn't have happened. I don't want to simply kill them in combat after all that....okay. Let's have each the dragon talk to each character in turn. The dragon's authority and presence dominates the conversations. Disrespecting, interrupting, or challenging the dragon's dominance results in instant death. I don't know what the players will do. Maybe they'll join the dragon's servants. Maybe they'll hand over all of their possessions, watch a good portion of them be deemed worthless and brushed aside into the lava, and flee in their underwear. Maybe they'll each get killed in gruesome ways -- pierced through by the razor sharp tail, tossed effortlessly aside into the lava pit, bitten in half, vaporized by the fire breath -- get creative. This is a smart creature. Small insults are amusing and the insult gets matched with an amusing death. And for the inevitable bard -- I don't have any patience for that trope. Their failure will be met with a quick and horrifying death. Their unlikely success will also result in a quick and horrifying death. Probably not then and there, probably the bard will be separated from the party and never seen again. It won't be fun. Death by snu snu with a 100-ton creature is quick and horrifying, but not very fun.
I just want to say, while I enjoy your optimization and (rather PC focused) game mechanics content, this video about encounter building is amazing and very insightful. I would love more of it.
One thing I like to add is that there is a chance such a powerful enemy likes to toy with his prey, specially if they're evil and sadistic. That might give players a few turns to think about finding a way to run with their lives, before the dragon gets bored and decides to finish the job.
1. Let player know unwinable encounters exist. + How you intend to telegraph this fact. 2. Set up good forshadowing prior to dangerous fights. Empty rooms in dungeons are great for breaks but also to use the details in am environment to forcast what lives in an area. As a warning to players+ clues to how to counter whar lies ahead. 3. As states minions and lieutenants are excellent uses of situations. Honestly in the set up in the vid. I would use a set of lieutenants that the party has yet to encounter that is just above their lvl.... To give them a good hard semi possible fight. Knock down their resources and then have the big bad poke his nose into the situation. Either to capture the party. ( Using that paralysis) or nailing a npc/ pc and forcing the rest to flight. The point is to use up the parties resources. Sometimes a scouting / probing attack is advantagus. Allow it. However and this is 4 4. Make sure when it gets dicy give pc's an opportunity to flee. A teleport option. A flight option. Jumping to another plane. Drop them into the underdark or leave a chasm / pit accessable with feather fall available. Player hate retreating. But If you use npc's to make sure they know the danger. + Use npc's to give them possible ways out when it gets bad. + If player are falling on the feild and the party can't fix the issue. Using a npc that was in the camp / backline..... To slink forward and rescue players from edges of the battle field... At least some of the party could be salvaged. 5. If you have promised danger. Do not disappoint. Im not saying to fudge but. Remember action economy is a massive game game changer in battle. + The average damage rules in the dmg exist. Allowing a large group of creatures properly equipped and coordinated to take down players.... If all else fails. Reminder you can invent on the spot and then justify later. Though it is always better to forshadow and then reveal.
One of the most tense and rewarding moments for me as a player was almost the exact scenario you described. The party had decided to engage a legendary warrior emperor, his sorcerous advisor, and a contingent of his generals and imperial guards in his throne room, and after the opening few rounds the bulk of the encounter was us trying to figure out how we could escape while grabbing as many of the dead PCs' corpses as possible on the way out.
When building an encounter I always put a "thesis" statement at the top of my outline which is what goal of the encounter is. Kill all the enemies diffuse the bomb, escape the tunnell ect. It helps you define what "winning" the encounter is
I kind of have something like this planned for my next campaign (no CR 39ers tho lol). Bascially, ny around level 2 or 3, my party will find themselves in a recently unearthed ancient dungeon. It starts off normal, with thematic monsters for the party to chew their way through. On the final level, however, will be a giant chamber, with around 10 huge statues. Once they trigger it, the entrway closes, and the statues begin mowing through them. Their goal? Solve the puzzle written on the floor involving the details of the statues/room, before they all die. The puzzle has 3 phases, and those who survive, get Dark Gifts I've reflavored so they seem less evil, as well as an obsidian sphere. This dungeon is tied to future plot points for the party to uncover, and I've put in precautions to avoid a TPK. Edit: my precautions include the statues being siege monsters having low attack modifiers (unlikely to hit, but extra damage to terrain to show the danger), a unique magic item similar to the cube of force, and several pillars the players can use to pin the statues and buy some extra time
I haven't really gotten to see how people design encounters very often. While this is certainly a unqiue kind of encounter, it was enlightening to see how you approach encounter design. I'd love to see more content like this!! I also like the idea of you finding community scenarios or things like this and discussing them, this is awesome!! The very first encounter in the first campaign I ran with level 1-3 (dont remember exact level) players involved an Ancient White Dragon attacking the city that I had just narrated that they all found themselves in, however the players weren't the focus of the fight- the Dragon had it's own win conditions to meet that didn't involve the players. (However, I didn't figure out what that win condition was yet, I don't know if I've just since forgotten what in-world purpose this attack had or just didn't make one, it's been a good few years but I think I could do a better job at this encounter now). Instead, the Dragon's Kobold minions were on the ground to ensure things went smoothly with little resistance, which where the few encounters my players fought through. I did have the Dragon occasionally swooping down and creating random big walls of ice with it's breath to sell the city attack and change the battle dynamic. It was pretty cool!
By the way, an interesting strategy (which you need to be careful with) is *not* rolling initiative in these sorts of cases. In particular, if you're the kind of DM who doesn't really vary the difficulty of encounters and you've trained your players to switch on "combat brain" the moment initiative is rolled, then *not* rolling it can be a string sign that they need to think of solutions to what is in front of them other than "reduce it to 0 HP". Doing this will ultimately reinforce the "we can kill everything we get in a real fight with" way of thinking because you've now told them you won't let them fight things that are too strong... But that might actually be a completely acceptable balance for some tables.
I love it when the world feel dangerous and fights aren't trivial because you feel protected by plot armor. One of the most memorable moments in a campaign was when we had to rescue a wizard from a crypt filled with undead comming to life. We would clearly all die if we stayed and fought so it was a stressful escape where you felt like anyone falling behind would be left behind and eaten
Excellent point about the social contract. Personally, I would iterate to the players that the world is the world and not everything is balanced to their level. They may drastically overcome some encounters or they may be forced to flee. And then if the players bungle their way to the bbeg, then the bbeg eats them for lunch and that's what happens.
The first thing I thought of was the "social contract" and it's the first thing you brought up. When I DM, I always tell the players that there is chance they could die. I'm not out to kill them, but I balance the encounters to make them challenging and fun. I always give enough in-game warning that an encounter could be dangerous/fatal; whether it's through environment clues, NPC dialouge, or a wink and a nudge. Most times a player has died, it is because the players choose to ignore the warning signs, or they deviated from the plan they made heading into an encounter (Leeroy Jenkins), or didn't plan ahead at all.
Loved this video! So helpful! I play in a regular one-shot where the DM uses a clever system to compose the plot based on cards drawn from a Deck of Many things. There is always the chance we draw something that makes a TPK, or near TPK, inevitable. It is soooo much fun! I guess there's less investment in a one shot but people do put a lot of work into characters all the same.
My general rule of thumb is that fights that come to the players should always be winnable, fights the players seek out should always be lose-able. With a clear sliding scale from 'effortless victory' to 'impossible encounter' depending on the situation. With exceptions being designed on a case by case basis.
I LOVE these types of encounters, I love to drop in a crazy encounter to show the players that the world isn't warping itself around them. That said: 1. Yeah you need that social contract in place. 2. It is on the DM to clearly illustrate the danger. The last time i did this, my party (at level 3) watched an adult green dragon lay waste to a lot of soldiers, that the party already learned are pretty tough, relative to them. This definitely falls into a "show dont tell" situation.
We once went up against a creature our DM had fully intended us to run from. He didnt outright tell us, but he did make a pretty clear "uuh, okay, are you SURE about that?" So we got the picture. But yea, we were pretty confident we could win, and we did.. Not beause he changed the encounter, but because we had a plan. Felt great.
Ha ha, those "eagles" (9:58) were actually Falcons, but anyway... This content about the social contract is so important for new (and some not-so-new) DMs and players to hear. Unlike games like Call of Cthulhu, many DnD tables, whether consciously or not, subscribe to a fantasy where the PCs should have a chance of winning any fight they get into (or beating any trap they fall into, solving every puzzle, etc). As you say, it's more immersive to have unwinnable encounters, but everyone needs to be on the same page about that possibility, and there needs to be a purpose to the encounter and a satisfying outcome available. Also, it’s very important that the unwinnable encounter is *clearly* unwinnable to the PCs at a point where they still have a chance to withdraw! Springing a foe on them that looks beatable but can unbreakably grapple them all in one go and is immune to all their abilities, or having the lair be a special DC45 forcecage which closes and seals them in with the overtuned foe, will not just end the campaign, it will probably end that DM ever running anything for that group, and it might end friendships. On the other hand, the scenario you laid out really takes the campaign up a notch with the PCs knowing so much more about what they face and possibly what they need to do to defeat it, and as a player I would love that.
I had a situation where a level 3 party decided to go somewhere I wasn't expecting, and bumped into a CR 8 creature. What I decided in the moment was that there was no reason for the creature to be initially hostile to people it did not consider a threat, long story short: the monster offered to reward them if they killed some other nearby monsters, and off they went! (to one of the encounters I had expected them to find)
The first time my party fought (buffed) Strahd, they were level 8, didn't have the Fated items, but Ireena just Woke Up to her past, and became the Ally. It took a few rounds, but he dropped all of them, and finally teleported away when he realized he decked Ireena... The players were actually excited, because despite them all falling, they got him down to quarter health before he healed with bites 🤪 I was gonna have medics run in to stabilize everyone after Strahd left (they were at the pool in Krezk), but they actually *wanted* to roll out their death saves to see who bled out 😮 (resurrections were eventually available for everyone, because that's part of our Social Contract). I thought that was a real successful "no win" encounter.
I've done this multiple times. My best advice when designing such an encounter is to always have a "fail forward" (as in, the plot can go on even if the characters chose to fight and are defeated) story option prepared. This is because, even when they are clearly informed that the battle is probably impossible, a good chunk of the players will chose to try and fight to the end anyway, mostly because on the ludic level they are actually engaged in the idea of a very hard battle (an by personal experience, this could happen even if 7:40 is in effect); many parties also dislike the idea of fleeing away mid combat if even one member of the party is unwillingly. A trick I like in this situations is to have a scenario in case the party is defeated and captured and to do a flash foward and switch the narration to a temporary party for 1-2 gaming sessions, show the consequence of the player's failure and use the temporary party to go on the rescue of the regular PCs. Itf you realy need to force a retreat it's usually better if the scenario is presented in a way that even the basic combat options of the players are unusable or ineffective (Think Sul Khatesh from Eberron: having a first impossible fight were the party cannot use any magic nor magical items, but a the same time they cannot hurt her because she is immune to nonmagical damage is a great way to present her as a Major treat and force a retreat) because in this situation the players cannot engage in any way with the battle at the mecanical/ludic level and fleeing become clearly the only proper gaming option. That said this should be reserved only for very major treats/villain and shouldn't be used more than once per campaign (otherwise players will fell frustrated for the continuos loss of agency).
One important way to approach this is perhaps not look into what "winning" may look like, but into what "losing" would look like. For example, one thing I did in my games is removed dying! Which may sound weird at first, but here is the thing... if party TPKs, one of the following happens: 1) The party is saved by an ally (either established one or made up on the spot) who yoinks their beat-up bodies from the battle at nurtures them in the coming weeks. However, in this time, whatever dramatic thing that was going on escalates hard, and it escalates NOT in PCs favour. If you were protecting a village from goblins, sorry: only charred logs remain there now. 2) The party is saved by an ally who wins the battle for them (this one is used when not only TPK in unacceptable but also loss of battle itself in unacceptable, too). They really do win, but at a great cost. Kingdom's noble knights burst into the scene, but it effectively costs most of their force to make it though this one, and this loss has huge ramifications on the global state of affairs and is effectively one less ally for PCs to ba bale to call upon. These 2 paths ensure that complete loss still has big negative dramatic effects that ensure that loss is still something very much real, but without needing to worry about campaign spontaneously combusting. And it's this last part that really matters - see, if loss is completely Unacceptable, then your solution to unwinnable encounter (like the ones in the video) has to be Perfect. Like, looking on that example from the video, imagine some unlikely rolls happen early on and PCs don't get the message of needing to get the heck out of there fast enough, or rolls would dramatically favour the dragon before PCs can do anything. So it's not really a fully satisfactory solution! But if you remove worrying about "oh no this ends the campaign!!" from the equation, then the video's solution, and solutions from the comments here start being good enough. Of course, this is assuming that TPK that results in the campaign end is absolutely undesirable. If you think it's fine actually, then it's fine to leave it on the table. Though, most groups I've seen would rather keep the campaign, so... (obviously, do have a conversation with your group if you are homebrewing death out of the game)
My players bit off more than they could chew given the starting conditions, and after the first round pretty quickly figured out that this was unwinnable. They managed to escape by the skin of their teeth and it made an epic session. They're already discussing ways to get the boss away from his minions, lure him out of the open, sneak up on him, or find some way to gather proof of his misdeeds so they can defeat him another way.
Q: Are there cases in fantasy fiction where the heroes found themselves having to flee from or find some other way to deal with an enemy they couldn't beat in a direct fight? A: Yes, tons. Q: Is it possible to design a fun gameplay scenario where players recreate such cases? A: Yes. So, there must be *some* cases where recreating such a scenario in tabletop is justifiable. The main difference is that since you're dealing with players with agency and so the story is not predetermined, you have to account for that. But if you have players who might occasionally be willing to find themselves recreating those sorts of scenarios, especially when it feels like a natural consequence of their own prior decisions, then there's no problem.
Impossible encounters can be fun, its just a matter of creativity. For example, maybe the objective isn't to actually defeat the impossible monster, its to survive for X rounds while a device powers up or a ritual completes in the next room. Or maybe the goal is to save as many NPCs as possible. Maybe its a heroic story sacrifice for one or more of the PCs that was worked out ahead of time. Or maybe its a straight-up fight, but the monster captures the PCs at the end, or causes a cave-in that separates it from them, or maybe the PCs black out and wake up elsewhere, or maybe they even die and come to on a different plane or in the bodies of their descendants. There are endless possibilities more interesting than simply handing them blank character sheets and shrugging.
My players get in session 0 some advices. One advice, the world is not adapting to them, they adapt to the world. If they hear in tavern that a dragon is roaming the area and they see it, hide, cover, sneak away or die. If 50x trolls ambush you, run. Mightiest weapon of players sits between the ears. Use it, or perish. Same with getting arrested/captured. I told them, original triology of Star Wars is so awesome, because the protagonists get captured so often.
My most important suggestion I would have for the DM is conveyance. If I, as the DM, have conveyed properly that a specific encounter for example will be almost to near impossible and the players proceed they take their characters' lives into their own hands. The social contract is important in this discussion but that should be conveyed to the players at session zero or session one. Also, a trick I learned from Extra Credits Design Club series about Durlag's Tower in Balder's Gate 2, is to utilize gate guardians. Essentially if the players are going to encounter difficult fights in a dungeon that they may or may not be prepared for put gate guardians there. The encounter just outside or just inside should be more difficult than most if not all encounters in the dungeon save the boss. If they survive that then they can proceed with confidence or if they fail retreat while it is much easier to.
I love the idea of an encounter in the hoard of an impossibly tough dragon where the players may find great loot, but every minute or round they spend looking, they risk getting found or killed by the dragon. Maybe one of the first things they find after initiative is rolled is an item that lets them teleport away, but if they use it as early as possible to minimise risk of death, they miss out on all the cool loot they could find throughout the hoard. Of course, getting anything from this would require that the party plays smart and divert the dragon’s attention in such a way that the high investigation rogue gets some rounds to search before the whole party finds a way to escape, through the teleport item, a crack in the map they may find or other PC abilities or ideas that help them escape. Sure, the chances of slaying the dragon at their current level is next to none, but its their choice how hard they dial up the risk and reward.
One thing to realize is how player psychology usually means that they will never run. When a fight turns sour, one of the party will bring up fleeing. When a pc goes down, they start making a plan to leave, but one player still wants to get off a powerful turn. Then two are down and the action economy is fully against them. Fleeing won't work by the rules at that point. Nice video.
For momentous occasions I have made impossible encounters because I trust the players will make them possible. Presenting a problem but not knowing the solutions yourself can be a powerful tool when you know the group and their capabilities.
Part of it does need to be Session Zero or even Re-Session Zero territory to assess the game that everyone (to include the DM) wants to play. The other part of it ought to be narrative. You can have NPCs or in-game documents speak of the danger of a specific monster. It would be cool to see the occasional quest that is a suicide mission just for the purpose of inconveniencing the foe.
Agree with your video, and our situation was eerily similar to the OP setup. We were just a team of three (11th level bard, fighter/warlock, and me as an artificer, not an optimized crew really), and my friends decided to rob the current plot hook instead of run his errand. They didn’t do much recon (I missed that session), so we busted into his place. Little did we know that the BBG was an adult green dragon, and we drew him, his lackey sorcerer, 4 stone golems, and a couple of phase spiders to boot. Our bard tried The Scanlan approach to dragons without even having seen Vox Machina (using his immovable rod after dimension dooring inside it), and it had about as much effectiveness (I.e not much). That was round one, and I decided we had to get the f out of dodge. Through fly and liberal use of vortex warp, we got out of there just barely. That loss was one the most fun encounters IMO.
My initial reaction to the scenario presented by the OP was, yeah... the players literally ignored your warnings and dug the hole they're in. It was the player's agency that brought them to that dragon. It sounds very much along the infamous Keyleth "we're basically gods" moment. And in the situation of a chaotic evil red dragon, I can't think of any reason they wouldn't just squash the ants invading their lair. Though there is some DM fiat to drop the players to 0, but not kill them outright, and have the dragon leave or an underling carry the bodies away to a classic trope unguarded location while the players roll to see who stabilizes; it's unlikely all of them would fail their death saves, so the remaining can pick up the pieces, and find a way to ressurect their allies (unless the dead player wants to create a new character). But I do agree in a meta sense everyone at the table should be of the understanding that character death is a possibility, and the DM won't handhold them from getting in over their heads, from session 0. And it's also important when you arrive at those moments, for the DM to stop and frame the situation for what it is which it sounds like they had been trying to do.
As TM said, really depends on the players. You could always have the players run in to some butler dressed creature that apologizes profusely that the master is not in at the moment. He can then reassure the party that the master will not be gone long, he simply left to go burn down their kingdom, or some place which is valuable to them. In the mean time, he can entertain them. Give them a difficult fight that will really tax the party, so they won't be so keen to face down the great wyrm, and once the battle is concluded have signs of his return. If that isn't enough intimidation then, well, some people need to learn the thin line between valor and recklessness unfortunately.
This has become a bit of an issue in my campaign. The party had a TPK when they entered a cavern that was sealed off and protected by a powerful guardian. This was meant as a hard "you're not supposed to be here yet" moment, and an NPC traveling with the party repeatedly told them this monster was beyond their skill. So, of course, they engaged and promptly got slaughtered. Fast forward to a brand new party who have been rewarded with some powerful magic artifacts to help them escape such scenarios..and they still choose to engage all the time. Other examples: A powerful cleric with a small army at her command has been trying to thwart the party from afar - so they sent a message to this cleric stating exactly where to find them at their base of operation. What happened? She descended upon them in force and they were forced to escape or be TPK'd again. Or when they were searching for someone in the Underdark and found a large drow camp and the surface elf in the party decided to just walk up and say hello to them. Now I've had a few conversations with the players and they seem frustrated that I've made things too difficult, when from my perspective they've been making really bad decisions and facing the consequences for them.
I've never DM'd a game, but the way I'd handle them fighting a creature early would depend on what kind of creature. For a wizard/lich/etc. - This enemy is likely in the process of gaining more power, so it's not maxed out yet. It would attempt to flee if the party manages to damage it enough. I would then either boost the proper fight to show they worked a bit harder due to this close call, or turn up the timeline to say they worked a bit faster because of it. For a dragon/etc. - This enemy is likely already at full power, so maybe it has a gem on it's chest. It also flees, and when the party learns more, they find out someone had sealed some of its power with that gem. Maybe the creature is seen clawing at the gem to no avail before choosing to flee, showing it wants to unleash the rest of its power. And it will do that at the proper time, but for now, the party gets to see it early.
I think the most important is that the encounters are consistent within the universe, so the characters and the players slowly gets a reference for the world. There should be many possible encounters the players should learn never to force, if they do it should be a party kill. But it is never fun if the DM is forcing encounters like this on the players, it should be something that happens if the players take bad decisions and do not think of the consequences.
I have an idea for a campaign which starts with an unwinnable encounter, a TPK, and the entire party Reincarnated by Druids. So they're alive again, but not themselves, with random race rolls. But then that's not really about the fight--it's about the aftermath. It's about the Dwarf who was Reincarnated into a Tiefling, and doesn't know how they fit into their tightly knit family and clan anymore. It's about the Halfling-turned-half-elf who's too tall for their home, or vice versa. And then the campaign keeps going, as close to normal as the players make it. Other than that, I guess my view is that it's worth players knowing the risks and being given the opportunity to avoid peril, redefining "victory" so that winning the encounter isn't the same as killing the monster, and trying not to goof as a DM and set the bar too high.
I immediately thought of Curse of Strahd. We had the option early on of heading up to Ravenloft, and briefly toyed with the idea, but ultimately we made the decision not to TPK our party and to build ourselves up to a point where we could defeat Strahd. Frankly, it was actually nice to be able to make that decision ourselves.
My latest session began where the last had left off. My players made a deal to trade one of their party members with 2 evil organizations working together, but they were planning on double crossing the organizations and taking the items they were promised. The issue is they never actually had or made a coherent plan of how this was going down. So when they came to the meeting place, and saw that they were vastly outnumbered and the leaders of the organizations were present, they decided to be greedy instead of trying to flee they attacked. After downing my monk on the first turn the party said "ok we might need to run for our lives" then got the monk up and proceeded to not run. Then 2 were knocked and they said "we need to run" potioned up and again proceeded to stay and fight" then 3 were knocked all the while my Paladin (the one to be traded) is still saying we can do this. I omitted a lot of important details of how they messed up but basically my paladin kept trying to get the party to stay in this terrible situation instead of running. So I killed their horses which they had called over to use as an escape (but literally chose not to run) then I prepared myself for their TPK but then I decided to just kill the paladin and leave the 2 monks bleeding out on the floor in fate's hands with 2 and 2 death fails and successes. Long story shorter one of the monk insisted that he was only following the instructions of the Paladin and I said "since when was the Paladin your leader?" You all risked everything because someone else essentially told you to die. You knew that the best option was to flee but *you* chose to stay. So if every character except the barbarian died in that battle that was their fault for putting themselves in that situation
There's a lot of necessary subtlety in the answer to this question. As a DM, I prefer the occasional "deadly" encounter that has within it's design 3 things: Lairs & Lair Actions (Inspired in design from MCDM's Where Evil Lives boss battle supplement. Good game design re-flavored for whatever campaign (and players) I am running. Two escape routes: The shorter but more difficult route, and the longer easier route. Even escaping an encounter is part of the battle. Alternate Victory conditions: This one has to be built more than explained. In a Mastodon (Giant Shark) Attack against four 4th level players had them taunting the shark towards a known threat: a trapped giant sea chest in the bottom of a cave. They used the significant damage from the trap to injure the creature in a way that allowed them to finish it off by using many of their resources.
What a cracking video! I wish more effort was put into the "social contract" and the framework of "session zero[es]", because it can get messy dealing with shizzle on the fly...
I've done an impossible encounter before,only once, and I think it was handled fine. For context, my players had an arc where they were hunting down a false god worshipped by snakefolk that had an..extremist tilt to their (there were yuan-ti that were more moderate that were forced out of their city because the extremist summoned their own rendition of the god they worshipped and wanted to replace everything the moderates had with their own. The false god would have been a threat to the surrounding area) The players took on an assortment of naga, snake-hybrids and yuan-ti, and were already sort of worn out by the previous encounter. They had round 1 with the false god, and they saw that they COULD actually damage it, but they were running on fumes as is. They ended up losing, but instead of dying, the false god destroyed the sandboat they were in to have them fall into a cavern. So I think why it worked in my specific situation is because of the fact that the players SAW they could actually DAMAGE, the monster, and it gave the impression that if they weren't worn out by its minions, then they would have won. A proud moment for myself personally, I think impossible encounters can be done right but I think the point is to not make the players feel COMPLETELY powerless.
Funnily enough I've actually done the whole "Big Bad shows up to kill the super boss." Few caveats though: Super boss had a few gimmicks, including instant Resurrection 3 times, growing a size each time. The players already managed to properly kill it 3 of the 4 times. Party had met with the Big Bad a couple of times, but recently really, *really* angered him, and blew off invitations to his castle (if you know, you know), so story-wise, they drug him here as much as the Super Boss evoking his rage. The Big Bad did *not* just one shot the Super Boss. No no no, he simply diverted attention and tanked for two turns while the party continued to pour damage into the Super Boss. It was essentially a shaky alliance. The encounter did not end when the Super Boss was dead. The Big Bad wasn't particularly hurt mind you, but the instance warped into a social encounter where the PCs had to convince the Big Bad to let them get just a liiiittle bit stronger so that they'd be an actual challenge, and they could have the romanticized Adventuring Heroes vs the Irredeemable Monster clash. All in all, the players loved it because it set the stage for the final battle, reinforced the overarching reach of the Big Bad, and most importantly, they understood that this wasn't me sending him in to save them, or taking away their glory. It was a show of just how close they really were to the insurmountable mountain the Big Bad was. Was it an unwinnable encounter? Nope! They had already won it 3 times in a row, and this was the struggle to end the marathon.
In my western marches style game I've made it clear there are powerful things on the map they can't win against. Sometimes these things are telegraphed. As a consequence they scout 100% of the time and avoid encounters they have any doubt about.
I think that there should be different ideas on what it means to “win” an encounter. Why are the characters going to fight the dragon? Is it because the dragon is an active threat? Does the dragon have a magic item in its horde that someone wants? In each case, there can be interesting ways to resolve the conflict beyond killing the dragon. Perhaps the party can negotiate with the dragon, offering some treasure in exchange for their objective. If they are looking for a magic item, the party could just grab the item and run.
I continue to remind my players that I am lazy and do very little balancing (not anymore, I do double check things now). "Running is always an option" is something I say every few sessions and they know dangerous regions have dangerous encounters.
I just put one of the biggest bads in my campaign in an encounter with my PCs, but it was built up enough and my PCs know there is real risk in this game, so they were smart and remained hidden rather than trying to take him out. So it can work, but 100% on the social contract being required.
I remember throwing a leviathan against a lvl 3 starting ground, the campaign was a ship wreck campaign, so the leviathan was more like a way to play out how the campaign started. The group seemed to enjoy it. I also suggest this monster for it because for whatever reason, it’s damage output is very low, so it shouldn’t 1shot any characters, or at least not more than one, allowing the players to get them up and run
Wow, the timing, I am running an Impossible Encounter(“s”) this weekend. My players are in The Grand magic tournament in Melitis Theros to win a magic boat so the can sale to a distant island to beat the BBEG. I have a zombies or wave survival for this round of the Games. The teams have to work together to Defeat an endless wave of Enemies. Though they will get 10 minutes rests after Boss waves. If a player character “Dies” they teleported to an observering box to watch and they get to control some of the monsters. Or leave early if they wish. So the players will “lose” this fight eventually but never actually “lose”. They do not know of course but they will automatically make it far enough to move on to the next round but it will affect there seed for the next turnament round. So its kinda impossible to win and impossible to lose at the same time lol.
You should also have this dragon do absolutely unbelievable things. Have him take a player 100 miles away and plant him in the ground and sprout a volcano
I personally like lethal campaigns. I’ve had plenty of characters die, and it reminds you that you’re not all powerful. There is always something, or someone, stronger
Yes I definitely agree there should be unwinnable encounters, you should however give them some clue as to the danger level in advance and give them chance to realize they should not be there. Also the objective of such an encounter could be specifically getting past/away from whatever creature it is, or maybe survive x rounds until something happens.
I think another valid way to do an unwinnable encounter is for the opponent to have a goal other than the players' deaths. Maybe he wants something they have and will just beat them down and take it. I had a robin-hood type rob the party once, as a way of building party unity. It worked like a charm. They spent the rest of the campaign plotting to kick his ass.
"If he dies, he dies." --Ivan Drago Treantmonk is right. Players need agency. Players need to be involved in the storytelling, but there have to be risks to fully enjoy the award.
The DM always designs the encounters and decides how high the stakes will be. It takes a lot of rewriting in prewritten adventures unfortunately or else there's usually either no stakes at all or too hard. The DM exists here to adjudicate the rules and ensure that the difficulty level is solid so there is challenge and excitement where there should be. They prepared everything and saw the rules in advance before the players even arrived to the scene. The DM has the power to intervene and ensure that the game night gets that fun boss fight. Not just a 1turn thing or instant TPK. As a DM I learned that players often want to make the heroic choices. They want to go on the adventure despite the risk. They want to fight the BBEG despite the risk. They want to search the dark forest despite the risk. This isnt the players' fault. This is what almost all tables are like and what DMs should expect. It's not enough to say that that dragon looks big and dangerous. That makes it sound like it's not impossible but a heroic victory in the making. Make checks. Tell them how their father, a more seasoned adventurer and his party all died to a dragon half this size. If you put a BBEG in front of most players. Especially if you tell them how evil and dangerous this antagonist is... ofcourse they will still try to find a way to defeat them. If you give them no other ways forward or tools to work with, they might attack the CR 22 endgame boss at lvl 5. They dont understand. They dont know what CR is. This is why stories usually prevent the hero from immediately attacking the BBEG and usually by storytelling tropes like mcguffins. "Find the 3x and do Y and the boss can be killed!". They are the heroes of the story. You told them that they should design characters that wants to go on this adventure. You asked them to create backstories to hate this antagonist. And you placed this antagonist directly in their path. This entire cascade of events was created by the DM. You can EASILY in any situation delay the fight with the BBEG in a thousand different ways. Or you can admit that you are tired of the campaign and just kill off all PCs you worked on for so long. It's all up to the DM. The party might decide to attack the BBEG because you set it up like this. It's very common. You almost tricked them into fighting the BBEG too early by presenting it as time critical and a rare opportunity suddenly appears. Most parties are a little foolhardy and takes risk. This is a common choice. Not the stupid choice. They want action. Stakes. Drama. You created the situation. Now make the most of the situation. Give them what they asked for but not how the expected. Not just a TPK and say "I warned you!". That's the easy and boring way out. Punishing them for having fun and taking risks is a terrible precedent. Examples of how to get out of a similar situation: - Have the BBEG kill 1 players as a symbolic act and throw them out. The body of the PC is hung from the tallest tower to prove a point. - The way to the BBEG is locked or protected in some way. A pretty big adventure to get this sorted - including fighting the BBEGs lieutenants and finding that magical key or whatever. - The BBEG shows no interest in the players or isnt even there. Perhaps he is off burning down a castle or capturing another prince to put in its tower. - The BBEG talks with the players and attempts to buy them off, make them offers or in some other way talks to them. Giving them opportunity to join the... cultist ranks and learn more about the situation or similar. - The players arrive at the BBEG and challenges the boss. The boss dont see them as a challenge but as small animals not worthy of killing. Cute in their efforts. Perhaps if they train harder they might prove a challenge - finally - something not seen for long. The BBEG might even help them on their way and ask them to return within a year or he burns their home towns down. - The players might approach the BBEG and due to a series of failed checks including critically failing a persuasion check there is a fight to the death with the BBEG and well TPK is it. It happens - but they had a chance to get out of it. - Something disturbs the fight. Think gandalf/witch king when the horns sound outside gondor. This BBEG simply has better things to do. The BBEG leaves and sais sorry, I have things more important to deal with than pesky flies. - The BBEG offers them patronage and offers them each a cursed weapon tied to the BBEG and sends them on a quest for power. - The BBEG tries to put the players under a spell or perhaps sends them off to defeat a rival dragon in the next mountain over. They are also given a poison that works great on that type of dragon. Like an eternal flame that is hidden in a stone. Thrown into the mouth of a white dragon is a sure death sentence! But completely harmless to this red drake. - The players all die and arise as undead controlled by this dragon. - The players are resurrected by a wandering cleric and this cleric is now blackmailing them for the material costs. Oftentimes, just because a situation is dire does not mean it is over. If you look at the common plot devices from the films that DND often seek to replicate parts of - it usually looks like its over several times. Each time the heroes overcome the problems. Almost every time. Leave a small risk for TPK but dont make it a certain thing. If you did - you are probably the one who did wrong or your descriptions of the risk were simply exciting - not good warnings. This does not always need to be the case but I dont TPK my party for fun. We have books of backstory. Hundreds of lose ends slowly being woven towards a story that spans ten years of roleplay. We dont just kill off all of the PCs for fun. This isnt tomb of annihilation. But perhaps you are running a random weekly slaughterfest where you throw them all into the arena. This with beer is fantastic too. By any means, just kill them off. Just keep in mind that it wasnt necessary. You decided to do it. There is always a way to move forward in another way. For me personally, I try to have atleast a high stakes battle near the end of each arc and as well as a very very very high stakes battle near the end of the campaign. I never ever include an auto TPK as one of the roads to take. "oh sorry we chose the left so we all died" doesnt cut it for my table. I want there to be a RISK for TPK. I want the party to feel the risk. To feel the stakes. Just give up and look at where their backup characters are.
I once had a DM make an encounter with a monster we weren't supposed to be able to win. He was thinking that we would have to negotiate or some such after realizing that we basically couldn't hurt him. Instead, I banished it on my first round and we took the extremely powerful home-brewed treasure it was guarding (which had further consequences and led to some future encounters with minions - after all, the demon wasn't dead and could report what we'd done and what we had). Completely ruined the DM's plans for the session.
Make it talk and know the party is weaker than it. Have them say it in the fight. Make it really obvious this beast is too much. Prime example, if they must leave someone to die, have that character be imprisoned as a trophy in a cage instead of eaten. Rescuing their ally suddenly becomes the new mission, and have a new character with an idea to do that be the player's new character until they can save their old character. The grey part is exactly what Treant was referring to. Defeating this foe is impossible, but the encounter itself isn't. Maybe they get really lucky and escape unscathed. This leads to the dragon marking them as the only ones who have, sending people after them. This recklessness will haunt them, as normally safe areas might have enemies now. This choice will change things, but a tpk may not need to be what they suffer.
I always liked the idea of encounters where the metric for victory is to escape or make it past an un-winnable encounter. Not every encounter has to be a fight to the death encounter.
Absolutely. My recent campaign that just ended I made a point to do this for several of the major combats and it was fantastic. Defending people casting rituals or surviving an unending assault for X rounds until rescue arrives. At a table that isn't very lethal this is a good example of a place where I might make it so that they have to survive the dragon while knocking down magical columns around the map and then escape as the cavern collapses around them with minions giving chase. Feels climactic as heck. That said, even though my table is light on death, if I tell my players out of game that "THING IS GOING TO BE BAD" and they do thing, there's no complaining about a TPK.
it's just important the players know they're in that kind of adventure
I almost always include this kind of encounter early in a campaign, preferably in the first session to express to players that they ALWAYS have the option to handle things however they think makes sense, and not every monster can, should, or will be killed.
There’s a reason modern militaries drill things like defense in the retrograde or breaking contact. Sometimes an encounter poses too much threat to either the unit, the mission, or the conflict as a whole to be carried out aggressively. I think campaigns where opportunities to do something besides just meet the bad guys in all out combat and defeat them are somewhat boring compared to ones where other methods are possible, preferable, or even necessary (at least necessary if the party doesn’t want a TPK or to fail their current “quest” or mission.
In "Into the Abyss" (spoiler).....
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Demogorgon attacks the village the players are in, there's no way they'd win, it's clear fleeing is the route to "success". That official campaign has lots OP situations, including the Drow right at the start.
I believe most creatures won't fight to the death, angry feral pigs aside. If I think the creature should (bloodied), they disengage and run. The players get full XP for winning the fight. If they pursue, maybe have it turn and attack with insane ferocity.
In this example, the dragon may 'toy' with the characters demonstrating their strength, mettle, etc. first. Decide to let their dragonkin minions clean up this minor nuisance...
1) Make it clear to the players that this encounter may not be winnable if they are thinking of a straight up direct fight
2) Use in world ways to convey the risk (the cleric or paladin's god/goddess issues a warning, the Warlock's patron, a scrying friendly wizard sends a Sending,.etc.)
3) Create a series of challenges before they get to that challenge (rivers of lava, excessive heat, etc.), e.g. use the environment to force the PCs to rethink what they are doing. Sure one canny or prepared player may be able to get past or resist them, but likely not all
Last one is a really good idea... The heat is so intense you take damage and exhaustion as you progress. At this point, if the party decides to proceed it is 100% their fault if they wipe, so when they back off they go do some research and find out about some MacGuffin that will protect them from the heat.
One of my greatest moments as a player was when an ancient white dragon came home to a lair we were looting. One breath and 2 of our party were dead. and my goblin ranger taunted it to chase him ( and eventually kill him) while 3 of our party were able to escape. It was one of the most heroic things I have ever done. So yay for potential TPK's
Similarly, I had a rogue/warlock and we were up against a lich. The lich was targeting our wizard and keeping him out of the fight. I don't remember the specifics, but it had us pinned down and we were fighting it at range. My character had a Cube of Force, ran up to the lich and activated the button which prevented spells passing through to the party. The cleric gets the wizard back up in the fight, the martials can focus on the lich, but my character got turned to dust on the lich's next turn.
That's the spirit!!
14:08 The G.W.R.D. is a "level 28" Mythic Mortal Monster.
It uses an extrapolation of the standard P.C. class level scaling for Proficiency Bonus (+6 at lvl17 | +7 at lvl21 |...| +11 at lvl 28).
It has Proficiency & Mastery in the "Perception" Skill, that also applies to its "Passive Perception"... passively:
[2×(+11Prof)]+[(+6WIS)+10base]=38
It does not have True Sight, so an invisible, flying, lvl15 Rogue (20 DEX, Expertise Stealth) with a Ring of Spell Storing (casting Pass Without a Trace ); rolling a 10 [guaranteed by Reliable talent] & getting a reaction boost from Bardic/Flash...
-> It has a "coal chance in Hell".
Yeah, it's a calculated risk... but boy is that rogue bad at math
For me, the biggest takeaway today is to NOT assume the Social Contract. I plan on reviewing this again on the next session. Thanks Chris! 😊
One of the campaigns I've ran ended via TPK through an unwinnable encounter. The players just decided to put down everything and chase blindly after this creature they have met, that was too powerful. The chase took them four sessions, through which they have seen the devastation wrought by the creature and were plainly told by numerous trusted allies, including one god, that they should stop and leave the fight for later. As they encountered the monster, the BBEG himself showed up and told them to get the hell away from there, and fought on their side. They never turned back and they all died.
The whole thing was super weird and I don't understand why they would honestly want to keep pushing. I feel like something else may have been at play, like them being tired with the campaign or wanting to end it for some other reason, but that's just my speculation.
Either way, this was a great video.
It's also possible they thought you were bluffing or deploying some other type of psychology or misdirection (maybe the god is in the pocket of the enemy?). Once you realised they weren't accepting it in character, maybe a last resort out of character "If you do this your PCs all die" would have made them realise, but as you say perhaps something else was happening.
When the BBEG decides to join you in a fight, you know it's serious business lmao
@@willmena96That depends. My setting has a BBNG (big bad neutral gal) who is more concerned with the current order not collapsing than she is with your plans, so she may well ally with you temporarily and then stymie you later -- though if you cross her, expect to get vaporized. She is literally the only 20th level wizard in the galaxy and probably always will be now that we've made a decision to stop at 15 for all new characters.
I think the key is making it clear to the players. I'm thinking when *spoilers* Demogorgon shows up at the beginning of Out of the Abyss. Clearly if you're painting the picture correctly the lvl 2-3 party should know they're supposed to flee from the demon lord.
One of my favorite GM moments was when I had created a horror scenario with a monster that was essentially impossible to beat and the players had to navigate around a castle while avoiding the monster. And they loved it. They gave me some nice positive feedback for the whole thing and that was a great feeling.
So much you could do there.
Have the dragon's minions fight them. If its a close battle, they'll realise they're not ready for the dragon yet and retreat.
Have the dragon be impressed with their boldness and set them a quest or a challenge.
Maybe even have the dragon insult them, say they're not worth it's time, and fly away. Make them want to find where it went and go on a whole other set of quests, levelling up as they do until they are ready to fight it.
Great advice as always and I am basically in full agreement with everything you said. I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with "impossible" encounters provided there's an underlying purpose, I don't like to make a habit of setting my players up for failure, but when there is agency involved and a decision is made knowing that this could result in death... well that's a different story. We have always had a good understanding of that social contract at our table. Everyone knows the decisions they make are theirs and those decisions can potentially influence much larger moving parts but that I'm not simply going to eliminate a challenge just so they don't die when they've made a bad decision or had poor luck. It's all part of the game :)
Great video.
Escaping with something is both satisfying and opens up a potential story plot.
I think unwinnable encounters are essential to preserving the fact that danger is real. But...
I always communicate clearly with the players when an opponent is way out of their league, and I always plan a couple "escape hatches" into the encounter. My "trick", if you can call it that, is that I leave placing and timing a bit flexible so that I can be sure that my players search for the whatever ends up being in the right place, or the last ditch rush to flee isn't down a dead end tunnel.
I don't fudge rolls, and the trade off is that I never hide something that I NEED to happen behind a roll.
I love how it's called "Broken Homebrew Dragon" XD
Honestly I think, except the paralyzing fear, this is a fine boss for a very high level party. Instantly locking the entire party up with paralysis is kinda jank though.
In my opinion, yes there should be rare circumstances where there is an encounter that is impossible to win. But this encounter should be locked so far behind exposition (everyone knows that this is the most powerful dragon etc.) and severe to extreme difficulty encounters that act as gatekeepers (“we barely survived the fight with those fire giants, so we probably shouldn’t go further into this volcano”).
Just as there are trivial encounters, there should be impossible ones as well.
I believe this makes the fantasy world more plausible. And avoids the coincidence of all the encounters leveling up with the PCs.
I agree!
I also think that giving players an escape route can be a viable option for players who surprise you.
For what it's worth, I think that the Perception +28 is based on the assumption that a creature's proficincy bonus increases every four levels/CR and that (like many high-CR dragons) it has a hidden expertise in Perception. With that, 11 x 2 + 6 WOULD equal 28. But, uh, even a natural 20 on a character with +17 to Stealth (the normal maximum) couldn't beat a passive of 38, and it's highly unlikely that everyone in the party could reach beyond that with magic, so this just seems like a way to make the impossible encounter unavoidable if the party steps into the room.
Can we assume that it has disadvantage from sleeping, and therefore a -5 to its passive, bringing that 38 to a 33?
@AnaseSkyrider You start getting into iffy territory when you consider advantage/disadvantage due to unknown factors (e.g. is theblair noisy, does the creature have advantage normally, etc.), but even a 33 is a difficult number for EVERYONE to avoid. Without magical aid, you need at least a 14 DEX minimum and Stealth Expertise to beat a 33 with a Nat 20. The odds are just way too stacked against the party.
@@MegaZed The fact that ISN'T a rule is one of the reasons I hate 5e, honestly. It's so painfully obvious.
In my current campaign, at level 3 (i think, it was over a year ago now) we watched our level 20 mentors get annihilated by the BBEG of the campaign. It was obviously an unwinnable encounter, and we barely escaped with our lives.
I thought it was a stroke of genius on my DM's part. It really set up the BBEG as a fearsome entity, and showed us that we need to be very well prepared before we face him again.
There are times when an unwinnable encounter can really drive home a point, or become a pivotal moment for the PCs. The important thing is communication between the players and DM. If players ignore the signs and warnings, its on them. But the DM does need to give them those signs and warnings!
A problem I've run into more than once when running an impossible encounter is that the players will fail to see the escape method I've thought of and just kind of give up on the encounter and just attack anyway because they can't think of anything else to do.
If your players are like mine, I've learned that I need to treat my impossible encounters the same way I treat running a mystery and provide my players with hints and clues on what they can do. If they choose to do something else, that's great, but some players need more creative guidance than others.
I played a campaign one time where the party was recruited by the king to take out an Illithid who started collecting cultists to try and over throw the king and take his place, essentially. I think we were like level 6, and my Shadow Monk had Silenced the ritual area, where the Mindflayer, at this point revealed to be an arcanist, effectively stopping the ritual while he shadowstepped forward and grappled the Mindflayer. Somehow, and for some reason the portal was completed, even though the chanting was silenced, and we as a party were catapulted into the future. Not my favorite moment as a player.
The other one was being force captured by a prince after realizing his "mithral armor" somehow made him immune to non magical attacks and allowed him to dispel my wall of fire. And that my strength save of 19 wasn't enough to break out of his Bigby's Hand. We were low level, and this same DM all gave us an item that allowed us one use of a 4th level spell.
My party recently had an impossible encounter, and it was perhaps my favourite moment of the campaign so far. We had ended up imprisoned by this really creepy guy who was doing experiments on people to create these horrifying, mutated creatures. We'd been told that if we put on a good show in his gladiatorial contest, we'd be allowed to leave. So we agreed, and while waiting to enter we heard from another prisoner that no one had ever survived the mystery creature that was kept in the arena. We got put in the arena and had to fight what I now know is a Barlgura. Thinking this was the mystery monster that no one had ever beaten, we burned a lot of our resources right away but our sorcerer nearly died anyway. Once we beat it we were told we were told we could leave through Gate 12. It turns out we were in the middle of a maze and Gate 12 was somewhere on the outside. The other prisoner (the one who told us about the mystery creature) told us he knew where Gate 12 was but led us straight into another Barlgura. As we were preparing ourselves for another fight, shadowy tentacles sprung out of the darkness and wrapped around the Barlgura, tearing it limb from limb. We instantly realised our mistake and ran for our lives, scattering throughout the maze. And so ensued a nail-biting chase scene, where we simultaneously had to avoid the creature and find the exit. At one point, I was so sure I would die that I had decided to to charge the creature in the hopes of buying the party time to escape, and we later found out that multiple PCs were one failed save away from taking enough damage to instantly die. The DM even had intensse music playing in the background. I was genuinely scared sh*tless, and I think this is the most fun I've ever had in dnd.
In conclusion, if done right, impossible encounters are f*cking awesome.
I really like the idea of having a solid field of once molten gold and other precious materials to give a hint to the players that the dragon has done this before. Maybe signs of multiple caveins and holes in the ceiling where the dragon has dropped the ceiling on other foolish intruders. Or oooh, 'Hiroshima shadows' of adventures that have fallen before. These background elements could be really spooky with the proper show don't tell as the players put the hints together to foreshadow their own fate.
Depending upon the campaign, the dragon might be willing to throw the party back in and waiting for them to ripen into a real challenge? Make it very clear that the dragon /chose/ to spare them and its unlikely to happen again if they annoy it.
Thank you, the creative juices are bubbling on this task. Alternatively- 'Oh good, my new slaves are here' and have a session or two where the party needs to play an escape from their new 'employer' possibly working with other slaves to do a revolt... or an escape.
Curse of Strahd is amazing, btw, our DM did some homebrew to make it more difficult, and it was so satisfying being able to go all out with our team tactics. We managed to kill a beholder with a level 4 party, and only 1 PC got disintegrated during it. I also died during that one but luckily it was only the death ray that killed me, I got resurrected later. We never discussed our social contract but that battle was when we realized we were all on board with the same expectations.
One of the most memorable and favorite encounters I had as a player was one in that campaign that ended with us running away. We had carefully planned this whole mission and all agreed that if that if this 1 antagonist wizard was somehow there (and we were very careful to make sure he shouldn't know what we were doing) we had to get out immediately. It became obvious at the start of combat they had been expecting us, and a few rounds in we saw him and realized he orchestrated a trap. It was thrilling, using all our wits and resources to escape. It also made us feel significantly more unified as a team, because we all knew if we had only looked out for ourselves, it's likely at least half of us would have died. Instead, we all survived.
I agree that "Impossible" encounters can be good for the story if they are done right. In our case, it led us to realizing we needed to approach each target differently if we wanted to have the upper hand, since the moment we took one mark down, Strahd would find out how we did it, get the word out, and all our future marks would account for the possibility of us doing that again. Also our next mission was to ensure we were protected from divination magic.
I don't see why not.
Our group agrees that it would be more realistic and fun if there are more powerful beings out there and the world doesn't just resolve around us like some sorts of main character syndrome.
As long as the encounter is carefully warned and set up (basically have a tons of way to avoid), like if the players purposefully anger gods and get killed then that's on them. Fights that you lose but it's like a special cutscene that you don't die outside are fine too.
I will never give players an impossible encounter without some sort of very blatant signal that it is impossible to win. In the past, my signals were too weak and players ignored them. Not anymore. Now, it’s, “As the beast fixes its terrible eyes on you, you feel in your bones that you have no chance of standing up against it. You have two choices: escape, or die.”
Pretty solid advice all around I'd say. To expand on this away from the original question that prompted the discussion, sometimes an "impossible encounter" can be more narrative set dressing than a straight up "encounter". I had a (short lived) game of Star Wars Saga Edition where our crew was ambushed by Imperial forces during a smuggling drop-off. As a player and character, I knew we weren't equipped to take on multiple vehicles and a small platoon of soldiers, but we weren't surrounded and had access to speeder-bikes, so from a character standpoint it made sense to attempt a getaway and from a player standpoint I knew the adventure wouldn't be a spacefaring one so our ship didn't matter and we'd likely be encountering the local rebellion and working with them. Meanwhile, another player pissed and moaned about the GM creating an unfair encounter as he pulled out a rocket launcher, when to me it was clear this was never meant to be a "roll initiative" encounter.
An "impossible encounter" could also be the start of a potentially thrilling chase sequence, if the game has good mechanics for that or you find good homebrew rules for it. A chase sequence where it's the players being chased can also be a great roleplay opportunity; if someone fails a skill check and falls behind and is at risk of being caught, do you fall back to help them or is it every man for themselves? Of course, said chase sequence shouldn't guarantee everyone's survival; everyone should have the abilities needed to survive if they think about it, but not everyone may be able to escape. But just imagine narrating a desperate chase that ends with the party battered but alive, feeling like they cheated certain death, and already considering how they'll be better prepared next time.
There is also the matter that not all encounters need to end in death (and this goes both ways). The PCs being captured, when it narratively makes sense, can throw an interesting wrinkle into a campaign. Surrender, again when narratively appropriate, can be on the table if the battle is looking one sided and escape unlikely. Dragons aren't stupid, so maybe the PCs can turn this around in the example into a social encounter where the PCs "apologize" for their foolishness and try to play to its vanity, offering themselves as servants, and that leads to a situation of them needed to wiggle out of the magical servitude they used to escape death.
Assuming everyone's on the same page of a social contract where the PCs are not the center of the universe, death should always be on the table, but not always in a binary manner. Unless the players are genuinely doing something utterly suicidal (with some leeway if it's an end-of-campaign suicide mission where mutually assured destruction is seen as a victory), there should always be some kind of out for them so the campaign can continue, whether that be simple fleeing, surrendering, negotiating, or something else clever with magic, cunning, or a heroic sacrifice. Then it becomes a matter of if the players can find an out and how successful they are in executing it. I firmly believe "there's always a bigger fish" should be an element of most campaigns.
I ran one for one of my players session 0. He wanted to be a Paladin that took hexblade pact during mission that went sideways. I offered to make it his session 0. So he went in knowing it would end badly, but not many level 3 players expect to face an army of undead and a necromancer with two oathbreaker paladins that power word kills somebody next to them. The pact he made happened mid fight as a voice entered his mind and required him to kill his friend to escape with his life. Once he took the pact, he was temporarily coated in an anti-magic field and hasted to get away. It was dark, but he says it was his favorite session he's been a part of. Unwinable moments can make for incredible story moments if done right.
Great topic Chris!
It's important to know your intent with an encounter. What is the "win condition" for the players?
My players were after a party members uncle, who was chased into a cave by the Orc warchief. The map was designed to compliment the Warchiefs features, forcing the party to clump together in tight corridors. They were ravaged, one character died. After a reminder of their objective, the attitude shifted, and they were successful
It was a great introduction for my villain after they heard so much about her, the party ran with a tail between their legs.
I have a guideline I think I saw in a writeup of West Marches that I read a long time ago. Big dangers are always telegraphed so the party can avoid them. Unexpected dangers are always small enough that the party could overcome them if they're smart about it. I also like to warn players if they're about to do something potentially fatal (free climb down a cliff in the rain, dive into the underground river with no knowledge where it leads, etc.), assuming the warning won't break the immersion.
One option I can think of is to have the dragon in an area that the players can't even get to without taking damage, like having the main part of the lair in an area where they would have to go below the surface of a magma pool to enter. Have the party start fighting the dragon, maybe even dropping one of the PC's, then have a bigger threat fly over the volcano. The dragon would then either be attacked by the other creature or fly after it. If the creature attacks the dragon, this would give the ability of the dragon to eventually chase after the damaged creature. Either way, the dragon would be leaving the lair without "running away" from the party and the party will now know what kinds of challenges they need to overcome to get to the treasure and may become a long term goal for the campaign.
Use a very visual warning, similar to the intro to Vecna Lives module. Very powerful npcs being devastated by the bbeg. Or, given the beasties' power, have it just toy with them, amused by their audacity, it doesn't kill them, just humiliates them in some way. Or, as a last idea, have them proceed, tpk, and the awake back in the last camp with the knowledge that it was a vision of the future from some powerful being, and that they need to prepare better. Last one is not as food, it still creates a sense of can't lose and that if they die they will get a mulligan, but it will let them learn without losing time invested.
In Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, my party encountered Arveiaturace (ancient white dragon) twice. Once in the middle of the snow, and once on her own lair. Both times they had to escape, the first one they entered a deal with the dragon, promising her to restore her eyesight. The second time however, it was not going to be so easy.
The artificer casted Rope Trick in the middle of the lair, and they had to climb one by one while the dragon and a bunch of kobolds were trying to kill them.
Love all your videos but your DM advice/encounter design videos have been some of the ones I go back to the most. I feel like there is always good advice that accounts for the personal aspect presented in a practical way that understands the mechanics. Always enjoyable
Excellent advice. I love how you handled it.
I would have gone down a different route. No collapsing its own lair entrance. Why would it do that? I take my philosophy from AJ Pickett, "Never nerf the lich." If they pick a fight with this dragon, they will be feeding their character sheets into a paper shredder.
Instead, I'd do a little bit of homebrew to give them one last opportunity to live.
Let's have the CR39 Great Wyrm Red Dragon start the encounter asleep, 450 feet away.
And let's make the Frightful Presence a passive ability that triggers on a creature the first time they set eyes on it. No range limit. No effort on the dragon's part. This thing could be flying miles overhead, and the entire city sees it.
Every single creature makes a DC29 Wisdom saving throw. A level 15 Cleric or Druid, with 20 Wisdom and proficiency has a +10 to wisdom saves, and so must roll a 19 or better to avoid/end the effect. Or maybe there's an 18Charisma Paladin standing next to them, and they only need a 15 or better.
EVERYONE ELSE is paralyzed with fear for a minute. Even if you have an 18 Charisma Paladin standing within 10 feet of you (and this party of 6-8 players might), if you don't have 20 Wisdom or proficiency in the save, there is no hope for you.
And oh boy. Each round, the DM tells them what new thing they notice or remember hearing about the dragon. They learn about this thing's size, ripping muscles, huge claws and teeth, how the heat inside the friggin volcano lair increases every time the dragon breathes out. They remember hearing tall tales in the tavern about a city being wiped off the map after someone picked up a coin that fell off its scales when it flew over. They remember reading about the volcanic eruption that happened when this dragon first moved into this lair -- some said it was caused by a fight with the previous occupant, who got pulled into the lava below and torn limb from limb.
Each round, they roll their saving throw. After 10 rounds and an absurd number of failed saving throws, the players get their agency back.
They have been warned. It was epic, they have an opportunity for role play, and that's where I plan for this encounter to end, with the players quickly running away.
If they're dumb enough to still attack the dragon, they're all going to die. No doubt about it. 870 health, resistance to bludgeoning/piercing/slashing from magic weapons, advantage on saving throws against magic spells, 150 fly speed, massive fire breath every round (NOT ON A RECHARGE), and a creature smart enough to dive into the lava if it runs into any trouble (fire damage heals it). And that's before you consider its minions, lair actions, and what tools it has collected in its armory over the centuries. We'll take a pass on setting traps in its lair -- most dragons would, but this one doesn't need to.
If they so much as LOOK at the dragon's hoard before running away, I'm going to send the dragon's servants after them who demand that they give back the memory they stole. The dragon's servants intend to forcibly use Modify Memory on each player to wipe all traces of the dragon's horde, leaving everything else untouched.
The dragon isn't playing around, either. The players got ambushed in the middle of the night by creatures that would threaten a TPK in any scenario (except in this case TPK means forced memory wiping, not death). But personally, I wouldn't let it come to a fight. If the players think about fighting, I would make sure that the players know damaging the dragon's possessions would enrage it. It would be a declaration of war, which is equivalent to signing their own death warrant. They can choose to fight, but they would no longer be an irrelevant nuisance, but an affront that must be addressed and obliterated. Their social contract does not give them any plot armor if they make this dragon mad / embarrass the dragon in the eyes of its peers. They will die. And not just them. This powerful creature will destroy everything around them. This cruel and intelligent creature will also take particular care to hunt down everyone they love.
But let's roll back time. Maybe the players don't fight or run. They've got agency. The dragon is 450 feet away and sound asleep. If they try to sneak closer, they can probably get to about 300 feet away before they make a sound, and the dragon's ear twitches, sending a small treasure flying over 100 feet away. (There isn't a god who can help them if they continue forward and pick it up -- hopefully they'll notice that the dragon is now only pretending to sleep).
And of course, if they somehow sneak to within its 120-foot blind sense -- it senses them. It wakes up. I don't have anything past this planned out -- it shouldn't have happened. I don't want to simply kill them in combat after all that....okay. Let's have each the dragon talk to each character in turn. The dragon's authority and presence dominates the conversations. Disrespecting, interrupting, or challenging the dragon's dominance results in instant death. I don't know what the players will do. Maybe they'll join the dragon's servants. Maybe they'll hand over all of their possessions, watch a good portion of them be deemed worthless and brushed aside into the lava, and flee in their underwear. Maybe they'll each get killed in gruesome ways -- pierced through by the razor sharp tail, tossed effortlessly aside into the lava pit, bitten in half, vaporized by the fire breath -- get creative. This is a smart creature. Small insults are amusing and the insult gets matched with an amusing death.
And for the inevitable bard -- I don't have any patience for that trope. Their failure will be met with a quick and horrifying death. Their unlikely success will also result in a quick and horrifying death. Probably not then and there, probably the bard will be separated from the party and never seen again. It won't be fun. Death by snu snu with a 100-ton creature is quick and horrifying, but not very fun.
I just want to say, while I enjoy your optimization and (rather PC focused) game mechanics content, this video about encounter building is amazing and very insightful. I would love more of it.
One thing I like to add is that there is a chance such a powerful enemy likes to toy with his prey, specially if they're evil and sadistic. That might give players a few turns to think about finding a way to run with their lives, before the dragon gets bored and decides to finish the job.
1. Let player know unwinable encounters exist. + How you intend to telegraph this fact.
2. Set up good forshadowing prior to dangerous fights. Empty rooms in dungeons are great for breaks but also to use the details in am environment to forcast what lives in an area. As a warning to players+ clues to how to counter whar lies ahead.
3. As states minions and lieutenants are excellent uses of situations. Honestly in the set up in the vid. I would use a set of lieutenants that the party has yet to encounter that is just above their lvl.... To give them a good hard semi possible fight. Knock down their resources and then have the big bad poke his nose into the situation.
Either to capture the party. ( Using that paralysis) or nailing a npc/ pc and forcing the rest to flight.
The point is to use up the parties resources. Sometimes a scouting / probing attack is advantagus.
Allow it. However and this is 4
4. Make sure when it gets dicy give pc's an opportunity to flee.
A teleport option.
A flight option.
Jumping to another plane.
Drop them into the underdark or leave a chasm / pit accessable with feather fall available.
Player hate retreating.
But
If you use npc's to make sure they know the danger.
+ Use npc's to give them possible ways out when it gets bad.
+ If player are falling on the feild and the party can't fix the issue. Using a npc that was in the camp / backline..... To slink forward and rescue players from edges of the battle field...
At least some of the party could be salvaged.
5. If you have promised danger.
Do not disappoint.
Im not saying to fudge but.
Remember action economy is a massive game game changer in battle.
+ The average damage rules in the dmg exist.
Allowing a large group of creatures properly equipped and coordinated to take down players....
If all else fails. Reminder you can invent on the spot and then justify later. Though it is always better to forshadow and then reveal.
One of the most tense and rewarding moments for me as a player was almost the exact scenario you described. The party had decided to engage a legendary warrior emperor, his sorcerous advisor, and a contingent of his generals and imperial guards in his throne room, and after the opening few rounds the bulk of the encounter was us trying to figure out how we could escape while grabbing as many of the dead PCs' corpses as possible on the way out.
When building an encounter I always put a "thesis" statement at the top of my outline which is what goal of the encounter is. Kill all the enemies diffuse the bomb, escape the tunnell ect. It helps you define what "winning" the encounter is
The token chatting was a nice touch.
I kind of have something like this planned for my next campaign (no CR 39ers tho lol). Bascially, ny around level 2 or 3, my party will find themselves in a recently unearthed ancient dungeon. It starts off normal, with thematic monsters for the party to chew their way through. On the final level, however, will be a giant chamber, with around 10 huge statues. Once they trigger it, the entrway closes, and the statues begin mowing through them. Their goal? Solve the puzzle written on the floor involving the details of the statues/room, before they all die. The puzzle has 3 phases, and those who survive, get Dark Gifts I've reflavored so they seem less evil, as well as an obsidian sphere. This dungeon is tied to future plot points for the party to uncover, and I've put in precautions to avoid a TPK.
Edit: my precautions include the statues being siege monsters having low attack modifiers (unlikely to hit, but extra damage to terrain to show the danger), a unique magic item similar to the cube of force, and several pillars the players can use to pin the statues and buy some extra time
I haven't really gotten to see how people design encounters very often. While this is certainly a unqiue kind of encounter, it was enlightening to see how you approach encounter design. I'd love to see more content like this!! I also like the idea of you finding community scenarios or things like this and discussing them, this is awesome!!
The very first encounter in the first campaign I ran with level 1-3 (dont remember exact level) players involved an Ancient White Dragon attacking the city that I had just narrated that they all found themselves in, however the players weren't the focus of the fight- the Dragon had it's own win conditions to meet that didn't involve the players. (However, I didn't figure out what that win condition was yet, I don't know if I've just since forgotten what in-world purpose this attack had or just didn't make one, it's been a good few years but I think I could do a better job at this encounter now).
Instead, the Dragon's Kobold minions were on the ground to ensure things went smoothly with little resistance, which where the few encounters my players fought through. I did have the Dragon occasionally swooping down and creating random big walls of ice with it's breath to sell the city attack and change the battle dynamic. It was pretty cool!
By the way, an interesting strategy (which you need to be careful with) is *not* rolling initiative in these sorts of cases. In particular, if you're the kind of DM who doesn't really vary the difficulty of encounters and you've trained your players to switch on "combat brain" the moment initiative is rolled, then *not* rolling it can be a string sign that they need to think of solutions to what is in front of them other than "reduce it to 0 HP".
Doing this will ultimately reinforce the "we can kill everything we get in a real fight with" way of thinking because you've now told them you won't let them fight things that are too strong... But that might actually be a completely acceptable balance for some tables.
I love it when the world feel dangerous and fights aren't trivial because you feel protected by plot armor.
One of the most memorable moments in a campaign was when we had to rescue a wizard from a crypt filled with undead comming to life. We would clearly all die if we stayed and fought so it was a stressful escape where you felt like anyone falling behind would be left behind and eaten
Excellent point about the social contract.
Personally, I would iterate to the players that the world is the world and not everything is balanced to their level. They may drastically overcome some encounters or they may be forced to flee.
And then if the players bungle their way to the bbeg, then the bbeg eats them for lunch and that's what happens.
The first thing I thought of was the "social contract" and it's the first thing you brought up. When I DM, I always tell the players that there is chance they could die. I'm not out to kill them, but I balance the encounters to make them challenging and fun. I always give enough in-game warning that an encounter could be dangerous/fatal; whether it's through environment clues, NPC dialouge, or a wink and a nudge. Most times a player has died, it is because the players choose to ignore the warning signs, or they deviated from the plan they made heading into an encounter (Leeroy Jenkins), or didn't plan ahead at all.
this video is going to be a timeless classic
Loved this video! So helpful! I play in a regular one-shot where the DM uses a clever system to compose the plot based on cards drawn from a Deck of Many things. There is always the chance we draw something that makes a TPK, or near TPK, inevitable. It is soooo much fun! I guess there's less investment in a one shot but people do put a lot of work into characters all the same.
My general rule of thumb is that fights that come to the players should always be winnable, fights the players seek out should always be lose-able. With a clear sliding scale from 'effortless victory' to 'impossible encounter' depending on the situation. With exceptions being designed on a case by case basis.
I LOVE these types of encounters, I love to drop in a crazy encounter to show the players that the world isn't warping itself around them.
That said:
1. Yeah you need that social contract in place.
2. It is on the DM to clearly illustrate the danger. The last time i did this, my party (at level 3) watched an adult green dragon lay waste to a lot of soldiers, that the party already learned are pretty tough, relative to them.
This definitely falls into a "show dont tell" situation.
Announce the Threat. After that. It's up to the players to do what they want.
Loved this video. Please do more videos on encounter building.
We once went up against a creature our DM had fully intended us to run from. He didnt outright tell us, but he did make a pretty clear "uuh, okay, are you SURE about that?" So we got the picture.
But yea, we were pretty confident we could win, and we did.. Not beause he changed the encounter, but because we had a plan. Felt great.
Ha ha, those "eagles" (9:58) were actually Falcons, but anyway... This content about the social contract is so important for new (and some not-so-new) DMs and players to hear. Unlike games like Call of Cthulhu, many DnD tables, whether consciously or not, subscribe to a fantasy where the PCs should have a chance of winning any fight they get into (or beating any trap they fall into, solving every puzzle, etc). As you say, it's more immersive to have unwinnable encounters, but everyone needs to be on the same page about that possibility, and there needs to be a purpose to the encounter and a satisfying outcome available. Also, it’s very important that the unwinnable encounter is *clearly* unwinnable to the PCs at a point where they still have a chance to withdraw! Springing a foe on them that looks beatable but can unbreakably grapple them all in one go and is immune to all their abilities, or having the lair be a special DC45 forcecage which closes and seals them in with the overtuned foe, will not just end the campaign, it will probably end that DM ever running anything for that group, and it might end friendships. On the other hand, the scenario you laid out really takes the campaign up a notch with the PCs knowing so much more about what they face and possibly what they need to do to defeat it, and as a player I would love that.
Absolutely… «Run you fools!» encounters😂
Yeah I agree when you talk about the Social Contract.
It all comes down to what type of game you and the players have going on.
I have faced two encounters we were meant to lose and did not enjoy either one very much
I had a situation where a level 3 party decided to go somewhere I wasn't expecting, and bumped into a CR 8 creature. What I decided in the moment was that there was no reason for the creature to be initially hostile to people it did not consider a threat, long story short: the monster offered to reward them if they killed some other nearby monsters, and off they went! (to one of the encounters I had expected them to find)
The first time my party fought (buffed) Strahd, they were level 8, didn't have the Fated items, but Ireena just Woke Up to her past, and became the Ally.
It took a few rounds, but he dropped all of them, and finally teleported away when he realized he decked Ireena...
The players were actually excited, because despite them all falling, they got him down to quarter health before he healed with bites 🤪
I was gonna have medics run in to stabilize everyone after Strahd left (they were at the pool in Krezk), but they actually *wanted* to roll out their death saves to see who bled out 😮
(resurrections were eventually available for everyone, because that's part of our Social Contract).
I thought that was a real successful "no win" encounter.
I've done this multiple times.
My best advice when designing such an encounter is to always have a "fail forward" (as in, the plot can go on even if the characters chose to fight and are defeated) story option prepared.
This is because, even when they are clearly informed that the battle is probably impossible, a good chunk of the players will chose to try and fight to the end anyway, mostly because on the ludic level they are actually engaged in the idea of a very hard battle (an by personal experience, this could happen even if 7:40 is in effect); many parties also dislike the idea of fleeing away mid combat if even one member of the party is unwillingly.
A trick I like in this situations is to have a scenario in case the party is defeated and captured and to do a flash foward and switch the narration to a temporary party for 1-2 gaming sessions, show the consequence of the player's failure and use the temporary party to go on the rescue of the regular PCs.
Itf you realy need to force a retreat it's usually better if the scenario is presented in a way that even the basic combat options of the players are unusable or ineffective (Think Sul Khatesh from Eberron: having a first impossible fight were the party cannot use any magic nor magical items, but a the same time they cannot hurt her because she is immune to nonmagical damage is a great way to present her as a Major treat and force a retreat) because in this situation the players cannot engage in any way with the battle at the mecanical/ludic level and fleeing become clearly the only proper gaming option.
That said this should be reserved only for very major treats/villain and shouldn't be used more than once per campaign (otherwise players will fell frustrated for the continuos loss of agency).
One important way to approach this is perhaps not look into what "winning" may look like, but into what "losing" would look like.
For example, one thing I did in my games is removed dying! Which may sound weird at first, but here is the thing... if party TPKs, one of the following happens:
1) The party is saved by an ally (either established one or made up on the spot) who yoinks their beat-up bodies from the battle at nurtures them in the coming weeks. However, in this time, whatever dramatic thing that was going on escalates hard, and it escalates NOT in PCs favour. If you were protecting a village from goblins, sorry: only charred logs remain there now.
2) The party is saved by an ally who wins the battle for them (this one is used when not only TPK in unacceptable but also loss of battle itself in unacceptable, too). They really do win, but at a great cost. Kingdom's noble knights burst into the scene, but it effectively costs most of their force to make it though this one, and this loss has huge ramifications on the global state of affairs and is effectively one less ally for PCs to ba bale to call upon.
These 2 paths ensure that complete loss still has big negative dramatic effects that ensure that loss is still something very much real, but without needing to worry about campaign spontaneously combusting.
And it's this last part that really matters - see, if loss is completely Unacceptable, then your solution to unwinnable encounter (like the ones in the video) has to be Perfect. Like, looking on that example from the video, imagine some unlikely rolls happen early on and PCs don't get the message of needing to get the heck out of there fast enough, or rolls would dramatically favour the dragon before PCs can do anything. So it's not really a fully satisfactory solution!
But if you remove worrying about "oh no this ends the campaign!!" from the equation, then the video's solution, and solutions from the comments here start being good enough.
Of course, this is assuming that TPK that results in the campaign end is absolutely undesirable. If you think it's fine actually, then it's fine to leave it on the table. Though, most groups I've seen would rather keep the campaign, so...
(obviously, do have a conversation with your group if you are homebrewing death out of the game)
My players bit off more than they could chew given the starting conditions, and after the first round pretty quickly figured out that this was unwinnable. They managed to escape by the skin of their teeth and it made an epic session. They're already discussing ways to get the boss away from his minions, lure him out of the open, sneak up on him, or find some way to gather proof of his misdeeds so they can defeat him another way.
Q: Are there cases in fantasy fiction where the heroes found themselves having to flee from or find some other way to deal with an enemy they couldn't beat in a direct fight?
A: Yes, tons.
Q: Is it possible to design a fun gameplay scenario where players recreate such cases?
A: Yes.
So, there must be *some* cases where recreating such a scenario in tabletop is justifiable.
The main difference is that since you're dealing with players with agency and so the story is not predetermined, you have to account for that.
But if you have players who might occasionally be willing to find themselves recreating those sorts of scenarios, especially when it feels like a natural consequence of their own prior decisions, then there's no problem.
in the first minute of the video and its already great advice!
Impossible encounters can be fun, its just a matter of creativity. For example, maybe the objective isn't to actually defeat the impossible monster, its to survive for X rounds while a device powers up or a ritual completes in the next room. Or maybe the goal is to save as many NPCs as possible. Maybe its a heroic story sacrifice for one or more of the PCs that was worked out ahead of time. Or maybe its a straight-up fight, but the monster captures the PCs at the end, or causes a cave-in that separates it from them, or maybe the PCs black out and wake up elsewhere, or maybe they even die and come to on a different plane or in the bodies of their descendants. There are endless possibilities more interesting than simply handing them blank character sheets and shrugging.
My players get in session 0 some advices.
One advice, the world is not adapting to them, they adapt to the world.
If they hear in tavern that a dragon is roaming the area and they see it, hide, cover, sneak away or die.
If 50x trolls ambush you, run.
Mightiest weapon of players sits between the ears. Use it, or perish.
Same with getting arrested/captured.
I told them, original triology of Star Wars is so awesome, because the protagonists get captured so often.
My most important suggestion I would have for the DM is conveyance. If I, as the DM, have conveyed properly that a specific encounter for example will be almost to near impossible and the players proceed they take their characters' lives into their own hands. The social contract is important in this discussion but that should be conveyed to the players at session zero or session one.
Also, a trick I learned from Extra Credits Design Club series about Durlag's Tower in Balder's Gate 2, is to utilize gate guardians. Essentially if the players are going to encounter difficult fights in a dungeon that they may or may not be prepared for put gate guardians there. The encounter just outside or just inside should be more difficult than most if not all encounters in the dungeon save the boss. If they survive that then they can proceed with confidence or if they fail retreat while it is much easier to.
I love the idea of an encounter in the hoard of an impossibly tough dragon where the players may find great loot, but every minute or round they spend looking, they risk getting found or killed by the dragon. Maybe one of the first things they find after initiative is rolled is an item that lets them teleport away, but if they use it as early as possible to minimise risk of death, they miss out on all the cool loot they could find throughout the hoard. Of course, getting anything from this would require that the party plays smart and divert the dragon’s attention in such a way that the high investigation rogue gets some rounds to search before the whole party finds a way to escape, through the teleport item, a crack in the map they may find or other PC abilities or ideas that help them escape. Sure, the chances of slaying the dragon at their current level is next to none, but its their choice how hard they dial up the risk and reward.
One thing to realize is how player psychology usually means that they will never run. When a fight turns sour, one of the party will bring up fleeing. When a pc goes down, they start making a plan to leave, but one player still wants to get off a powerful turn. Then two are down and the action economy is fully against them. Fleeing won't work by the rules at that point.
Nice video.
For momentous occasions I have made impossible encounters because I trust the players will make them possible.
Presenting a problem but not knowing the solutions yourself can be a powerful tool when you know the group and their capabilities.
This is one of your best videos. Excellent advice and conversation pieces.
Glad you think so!
Thank you for making this video it's quite informative and was helpful for explaining a similar situation to my new players!
Glad it was helpful!
Part of it does need to be Session Zero or even Re-Session Zero territory to assess the game that everyone (to include the DM) wants to play. The other part of it ought to be narrative. You can have NPCs or in-game documents speak of the danger of a specific monster. It would be cool to see the occasional quest that is a suicide mission just for the purpose of inconveniencing the foe.
Agree with your video, and our situation was eerily similar to the OP setup. We were just a team of three (11th level bard, fighter/warlock, and me as an artificer, not an optimized crew really), and my friends decided to rob the current plot hook instead of run his errand. They didn’t do much recon (I missed that session), so we busted into his place. Little did we know that the BBG was an adult green dragon, and we drew him, his lackey sorcerer, 4 stone golems, and a couple of phase spiders to boot. Our bard tried The Scanlan approach to dragons without even having seen Vox Machina (using his immovable rod after dimension dooring inside it), and it had about as much effectiveness (I.e not much). That was round one, and I decided we had to get the f out of dodge. Through fly and liberal use of vortex warp, we got out of there just barely. That loss was one the most fun encounters IMO.
Great idea! Thanks Treantmonk!
My initial reaction to the scenario presented by the OP was, yeah... the players literally ignored your warnings and dug the hole they're in. It was the player's agency that brought them to that dragon. It sounds very much along the infamous Keyleth "we're basically gods" moment. And in the situation of a chaotic evil red dragon, I can't think of any reason they wouldn't just squash the ants invading their lair. Though there is some DM fiat to drop the players to 0, but not kill them outright, and have the dragon leave or an underling carry the bodies away to a classic trope unguarded location while the players roll to see who stabilizes; it's unlikely all of them would fail their death saves, so the remaining can pick up the pieces, and find a way to ressurect their allies (unless the dead player wants to create a new character).
But I do agree in a meta sense everyone at the table should be of the understanding that character death is a possibility, and the DM won't handhold them from getting in over their heads, from session 0. And it's also important when you arrive at those moments, for the DM to stop and frame the situation for what it is which it sounds like they had been trying to do.
As TM said, really depends on the players.
You could always have the players run in to some butler dressed creature that apologizes profusely that the master is not in at the moment. He can then reassure the party that the master will not be gone long, he simply left to go burn down their kingdom, or some place which is valuable to them. In the mean time, he can entertain them. Give them a difficult fight that will really tax the party, so they won't be so keen to face down the great wyrm, and once the battle is concluded have signs of his return. If that isn't enough intimidation then, well, some people need to learn the thin line between valor and recklessness unfortunately.
This has become a bit of an issue in my campaign. The party had a TPK when they entered a cavern that was sealed off and protected by a powerful guardian. This was meant as a hard "you're not supposed to be here yet" moment, and an NPC traveling with the party repeatedly told them this monster was beyond their skill. So, of course, they engaged and promptly got slaughtered. Fast forward to a brand new party who have been rewarded with some powerful magic artifacts to help them escape such scenarios..and they still choose to engage all the time. Other examples: A powerful cleric with a small army at her command has been trying to thwart the party from afar - so they sent a message to this cleric stating exactly where to find them at their base of operation. What happened? She descended upon them in force and they were forced to escape or be TPK'd again. Or when they were searching for someone in the Underdark and found a large drow camp and the surface elf in the party decided to just walk up and say hello to them. Now I've had a few conversations with the players and they seem frustrated that I've made things too difficult, when from my perspective they've been making really bad decisions and facing the consequences for them.
I've never DM'd a game, but the way I'd handle them fighting a creature early would depend on what kind of creature.
For a wizard/lich/etc. - This enemy is likely in the process of gaining more power, so it's not maxed out yet. It would attempt to flee if the party manages to damage it enough. I would then either boost the proper fight to show they worked a bit harder due to this close call, or turn up the timeline to say they worked a bit faster because of it.
For a dragon/etc. - This enemy is likely already at full power, so maybe it has a gem on it's chest. It also flees, and when the party learns more, they find out someone had sealed some of its power with that gem. Maybe the creature is seen clawing at the gem to no avail before choosing to flee, showing it wants to unleash the rest of its power. And it will do that at the proper time, but for now, the party gets to see it early.
I think the most important is that the encounters are consistent within the universe, so the characters and the players slowly gets a reference for the world.
There should be many possible encounters the players should learn never to force, if they do it should be a party kill.
But it is never fun if the DM is forcing encounters like this on the players, it should be something that happens if the players take bad decisions and do not think of the consequences.
I have an idea for a campaign which starts with an unwinnable encounter, a TPK, and the entire party Reincarnated by Druids. So they're alive again, but not themselves, with random race rolls. But then that's not really about the fight--it's about the aftermath. It's about the Dwarf who was Reincarnated into a Tiefling, and doesn't know how they fit into their tightly knit family and clan anymore. It's about the Halfling-turned-half-elf who's too tall for their home, or vice versa. And then the campaign keeps going, as close to normal as the players make it.
Other than that, I guess my view is that it's worth players knowing the risks and being given the opportunity to avoid peril, redefining "victory" so that winning the encounter isn't the same as killing the monster, and trying not to goof as a DM and set the bar too high.
I immediately thought of Curse of Strahd. We had the option early on of heading up to Ravenloft, and briefly toyed with the idea, but ultimately we made the decision not to TPK our party and to build ourselves up to a point where we could defeat Strahd. Frankly, it was actually nice to be able to make that decision ourselves.
My latest session began where the last had left off. My players made a deal to trade one of their party members with 2 evil organizations working together, but they were planning on double crossing the organizations and taking the items they were promised. The issue is they never actually had or made a coherent plan of how this was going down. So when they came to the meeting place, and saw that they were vastly outnumbered and the leaders of the organizations were present, they decided to be greedy instead of trying to flee they attacked. After downing my monk on the first turn the party said "ok we might need to run for our lives" then got the monk up and proceeded to not run. Then 2 were knocked and they said "we need to run" potioned up and again proceeded to stay and fight" then 3 were knocked all the while my Paladin (the one to be traded) is still saying we can do this.
I omitted a lot of important details of how they messed up but basically my paladin kept trying to get the party to stay in this terrible situation instead of running. So I killed their horses which they had called over to use as an escape (but literally chose not to run) then I prepared myself for their TPK but then I decided to just kill the paladin and leave the 2 monks bleeding out on the floor in fate's hands with 2 and 2 death fails and successes.
Long story shorter one of the monk insisted that he was only following the instructions of the Paladin and I said "since when was the Paladin your leader?" You all risked everything because someone else essentially told you to die. You knew that the best option was to flee but *you* chose to stay. So if every character except the barbarian died in that battle that was their fault for putting themselves in that situation
There's a lot of necessary subtlety in the answer to this question. As a DM, I prefer the occasional "deadly" encounter that has within it's design 3 things:
Lairs & Lair Actions (Inspired in design from MCDM's Where Evil Lives boss battle supplement. Good game design re-flavored for whatever campaign (and players) I am running.
Two escape routes: The shorter but more difficult route, and the longer easier route. Even escaping an encounter is part of the battle.
Alternate Victory conditions: This one has to be built more than explained. In a Mastodon (Giant Shark) Attack against four 4th level players had them taunting the shark towards a known threat: a trapped giant sea chest in the bottom of a cave. They used the significant damage from the trap to injure the creature in a way that allowed them to finish it off by using many of their resources.
What a cracking video! I wish more effort was put into the "social contract" and the framework of "session zero[es]", because it can get messy dealing with shizzle on the fly...
I've done an impossible encounter before,only once, and I think it was handled fine.
For context, my players had an arc where they were hunting down a false god worshipped by snakefolk that had an..extremist tilt to their (there were yuan-ti that were more moderate that were forced out of their city because the extremist summoned their own rendition of the god they worshipped and wanted to replace everything the moderates had with their own. The false god would have been a threat to the surrounding area)
The players took on an assortment of naga, snake-hybrids and yuan-ti, and were already sort of worn out by the previous encounter.
They had round 1 with the false god, and they saw that they COULD actually damage it, but they were running on fumes as is.
They ended up losing, but instead of dying, the false god destroyed the sandboat they were in to have them fall into a cavern.
So I think why it worked in my specific situation is because of the fact that the players SAW they could actually DAMAGE, the monster, and it gave the impression that if they weren't worn out by its minions, then they would have won.
A proud moment for myself personally, I think impossible encounters can be done right but I think the point is to not make the players feel COMPLETELY powerless.
Funnily enough I've actually done the whole "Big Bad shows up to kill the super boss." Few caveats though:
Super boss had a few gimmicks, including instant Resurrection 3 times, growing a size each time. The players already managed to properly kill it 3 of the 4 times.
Party had met with the Big Bad a couple of times, but recently really, *really* angered him, and blew off invitations to his castle (if you know, you know), so story-wise, they drug him here as much as the Super Boss evoking his rage.
The Big Bad did *not* just one shot the Super Boss. No no no, he simply diverted attention and tanked for two turns while the party continued to pour damage into the Super Boss. It was essentially a shaky alliance.
The encounter did not end when the Super Boss was dead. The Big Bad wasn't particularly hurt mind you, but the instance warped into a social encounter where the PCs had to convince the Big Bad to let them get just a liiiittle bit stronger so that they'd be an actual challenge, and they could have the romanticized Adventuring Heroes vs the Irredeemable Monster clash.
All in all, the players loved it because it set the stage for the final battle, reinforced the overarching reach of the Big Bad, and most importantly, they understood that this wasn't me sending him in to save them, or taking away their glory. It was a show of just how close they really were to the insurmountable mountain the Big Bad was. Was it an unwinnable encounter? Nope! They had already won it 3 times in a row, and this was the struggle to end the marathon.
In my western marches style game I've made it clear there are powerful things on the map they can't win against.
Sometimes these things are telegraphed.
As a consequence they scout 100% of the time and avoid encounters they have any doubt about.
I think that there should be different ideas on what it means to “win” an encounter. Why are the characters going to fight the dragon? Is it because the dragon is an active threat? Does the dragon have a magic item in its horde that someone wants?
In each case, there can be interesting ways to resolve the conflict beyond killing the dragon. Perhaps the party can negotiate with the dragon, offering some treasure in exchange for their objective. If they are looking for a magic item, the party could just grab the item and run.
I continue to remind my players that I am lazy and do very little balancing (not anymore, I do double check things now). "Running is always an option" is something I say every few sessions and they know dangerous regions have dangerous encounters.
I just put one of the biggest bads in my campaign in an encounter with my PCs, but it was built up enough and my PCs know there is real risk in this game, so they were smart and remained hidden rather than trying to take him out.
So it can work, but 100% on the social contract being required.
I remember throwing a leviathan against a lvl 3 starting ground, the campaign was a ship wreck campaign, so the leviathan was more like a way to play out how the campaign started. The group seemed to enjoy it. I also suggest this monster for it because for whatever reason, it’s damage output is very low, so it shouldn’t 1shot any characters, or at least not more than one, allowing the players to get them up and run
Wow, the timing, I am running an Impossible Encounter(“s”) this weekend. My players are in The Grand magic tournament in Melitis Theros to win a magic boat so the can sale to a distant island to beat the BBEG. I have a zombies or wave survival for this round of the Games. The teams have to work together to Defeat an endless wave of Enemies. Though they will get 10 minutes rests after Boss waves. If a player character “Dies” they teleported to an observering box to watch and they get to control some of the monsters. Or leave early if they wish. So the players will “lose” this fight eventually but never actually “lose”. They do not know of course but they will automatically make it far enough to move on to the next round but it will affect there seed for the next turnament round. So its kinda impossible to win and impossible to lose at the same time lol.
You should also have this dragon do absolutely unbelievable things. Have him take a player 100 miles away and plant him in the ground and sprout a volcano
I personally like lethal campaigns. I’ve had plenty of characters die, and it reminds you that you’re not all powerful. There is always something, or someone, stronger
Yes I definitely agree there should be unwinnable encounters, you should however give them some clue as to the danger level in advance and give them chance to realize they should not be there. Also the objective of such an encounter could be specifically getting past/away from whatever creature it is, or maybe survive x rounds until something happens.
I think another valid way to do an unwinnable encounter is for the opponent to have a goal other than the players' deaths.
Maybe he wants something they have and will just beat them down and take it.
I had a robin-hood type rob the party once, as a way of building party unity. It worked like a charm. They spent the rest of the campaign plotting to kick his ass.
"If he dies, he dies."
--Ivan Drago
Treantmonk is right. Players need agency. Players need to be involved in the storytelling, but there have to be risks to fully enjoy the award.
I stopped getting your videos recommended so I clicked the bell! Others do this as well!
The DM always designs the encounters and decides how high the stakes will be. It takes a lot of rewriting in prewritten adventures unfortunately or else there's usually either no stakes at all or too hard. The DM exists here to adjudicate the rules and ensure that the difficulty level is solid so there is challenge and excitement where there should be. They prepared everything and saw the rules in advance before the players even arrived to the scene. The DM has the power to intervene and ensure that the game night gets that fun boss fight. Not just a 1turn thing or instant TPK.
As a DM I learned that players often want to make the heroic choices. They want to go on the adventure despite the risk. They want to fight the BBEG despite the risk. They want to search the dark forest despite the risk. This isnt the players' fault. This is what almost all tables are like and what DMs should expect. It's not enough to say that that dragon looks big and dangerous. That makes it sound like it's not impossible but a heroic victory in the making. Make checks. Tell them how their father, a more seasoned adventurer and his party all died to a dragon half this size.
If you put a BBEG in front of most players. Especially if you tell them how evil and dangerous this antagonist is... ofcourse they will still try to find a way to defeat them. If you give them no other ways forward or tools to work with, they might attack the CR 22 endgame boss at lvl 5. They dont understand. They dont know what CR is. This is why stories usually prevent the hero from immediately attacking the BBEG and usually by storytelling tropes like mcguffins. "Find the 3x and do Y and the boss can be killed!". They are the heroes of the story. You told them that they should design characters that wants to go on this adventure. You asked them to create backstories to hate this antagonist. And you placed this antagonist directly in their path. This entire cascade of events was created by the DM. You can EASILY in any situation delay the fight with the BBEG in a thousand different ways. Or you can admit that you are tired of the campaign and just kill off all PCs you worked on for so long. It's all up to the DM.
The party might decide to attack the BBEG because you set it up like this. It's very common. You almost tricked them into fighting the BBEG too early by presenting it as time critical and a rare opportunity suddenly appears. Most parties are a little foolhardy and takes risk. This is a common choice. Not the stupid choice. They want action. Stakes. Drama. You created the situation. Now make the most of the situation. Give them what they asked for but not how the expected. Not just a TPK and say "I warned you!". That's the easy and boring way out. Punishing them for having fun and taking risks is a terrible precedent.
Examples of how to get out of a similar situation:
- Have the BBEG kill 1 players as a symbolic act and throw them out. The body of the PC is hung from the tallest tower to prove a point.
- The way to the BBEG is locked or protected in some way. A pretty big adventure to get this sorted - including fighting the BBEGs lieutenants and finding that magical key or whatever.
- The BBEG shows no interest in the players or isnt even there. Perhaps he is off burning down a castle or capturing another prince to put in its tower.
- The BBEG talks with the players and attempts to buy them off, make them offers or in some other way talks to them. Giving them opportunity to join the... cultist ranks and learn more about the situation or similar.
- The players arrive at the BBEG and challenges the boss. The boss dont see them as a challenge but as small animals not worthy of killing. Cute in their efforts. Perhaps if they train harder they might prove a challenge - finally - something not seen for long. The BBEG might even help them on their way and ask them to return within a year or he burns their home towns down.
- The players might approach the BBEG and due to a series of failed checks including critically failing a persuasion check there is a fight to the death with the BBEG and well TPK is it. It happens - but they had a chance to get out of it.
- Something disturbs the fight. Think gandalf/witch king when the horns sound outside gondor. This BBEG simply has better things to do. The BBEG leaves and sais sorry, I have things more important to deal with than pesky flies.
- The BBEG offers them patronage and offers them each a cursed weapon tied to the BBEG and sends them on a quest for power.
- The BBEG tries to put the players under a spell or perhaps sends them off to defeat a rival dragon in the next mountain over. They are also given a poison that works great on that type of dragon. Like an eternal flame that is hidden in a stone. Thrown into the mouth of a white dragon is a sure death sentence! But completely harmless to this red drake.
- The players all die and arise as undead controlled by this dragon.
- The players are resurrected by a wandering cleric and this cleric is now blackmailing them for the material costs.
Oftentimes, just because a situation is dire does not mean it is over. If you look at the common plot devices from the films that DND often seek to replicate parts of - it usually looks like its over several times. Each time the heroes overcome the problems. Almost every time. Leave a small risk for TPK but dont make it a certain thing. If you did - you are probably the one who did wrong or your descriptions of the risk were simply exciting - not good warnings. This does not always need to be the case but I dont TPK my party for fun. We have books of backstory. Hundreds of lose ends slowly being woven towards a story that spans ten years of roleplay. We dont just kill off all of the PCs for fun. This isnt tomb of annihilation.
But perhaps you are running a random weekly slaughterfest where you throw them all into the arena. This with beer is fantastic too. By any means, just kill them off. Just keep in mind that it wasnt necessary. You decided to do it. There is always a way to move forward in another way.
For me personally, I try to have atleast a high stakes battle near the end of each arc and as well as a very very very high stakes battle near the end of the campaign. I never ever include an auto TPK as one of the roads to take. "oh sorry we chose the left so we all died" doesnt cut it for my table. I want there to be a RISK for TPK. I want the party to feel the risk. To feel the stakes. Just give up and look at where their backup characters are.
I once had a DM make an encounter with a monster we weren't supposed to be able to win. He was thinking that we would have to negotiate or some such after realizing that we basically couldn't hurt him. Instead, I banished it on my first round and we took the extremely powerful home-brewed treasure it was guarding (which had further consequences and led to some future encounters with minions - after all, the demon wasn't dead and could report what we'd done and what we had). Completely ruined the DM's plans for the session.
Make it talk and know the party is weaker than it. Have them say it in the fight. Make it really obvious this beast is too much.
Prime example, if they must leave someone to die, have that character be imprisoned as a trophy in a cage instead of eaten. Rescuing their ally suddenly becomes the new mission, and have a new character with an idea to do that be the player's new character until they can save their old character.
The grey part is exactly what Treant was referring to. Defeating this foe is impossible, but the encounter itself isn't.
Maybe they get really lucky and escape unscathed. This leads to the dragon marking them as the only ones who have, sending people after them. This recklessness will haunt them, as normally safe areas might have enemies now. This choice will change things, but a tpk may not need to be what they suffer.