Frequently the complete opposite is great, too: encounters where the PC's way outclass their enemies. They can feel like James Bond or John Wick casually mowing through a horde of goons like complete badasses. Serves as a great contrast for when they go up against that impossible challenge.
Yes, sometimes it's nice to let the heroes feel heroic. And I think it helps to show scale as if the enemies are always as strong as, if not stronger than the PC's then what's the point? You might as well name your character Sisyphus then.
It can be a great palette cleanser after a trying adventure to just mow thru some mooks. I try to give my players a breeze encounter from time to time. Ironically I set one up for the party recently that ended up as a doozy as one of the players split off from the party to deliver a message and ended up running into a rival adventuring party I had set ready to ambush the players on their way back down from the mountain they where on. It was intended to be something the party could mow thru after leveling up on the mountain, it ended up being a close call, but an awesome moment for that player in particular.
Fully agreed. I want the “oh f***” moments to really stand out when I use a vicious unbalanced encounter. By the same token, if they execute a good plan and work together it’s nice for them to feel that sense of accomplishment when they mop the floor with their enemies once in a while
I agree. My favorite thing about 4e (and honestly, the only thing I liked from the ruleset) was 1hp "minion" enemies who only served to absorb a single hit and die. They make great mook fodder for characters of any level, and the only thing I have to worry about is action economy.
@@havokmusicinc 4e gave me the concept of combat roles (artillerist, controller, soldier, brute, lurker, skirmisher) and that has completely transformed the way I build combat encounters. That and minions has been what I took from 4e. And some poison and monster mechanics that were cool looking...
No, it's not. I've seen some published works based on this thinking, and they are terrible. The last thing you want to do is create problems which you don't have a solution for yourself, and then hope the players find one you haven't thought of. There is a good chance that if you the DM, a creative and experienced player with all the information, can't think of several different solutions to the problem while you are creating it, that it doesn't have one. And if you don't think it's your job to create problems that have solutions, you are a terrible DM.
@@Zirbip Some things are subjective and some things are not. Presenting the players with a puzzle even you can't solve is objectively bad game mastery. And when you do this as a gate on a rail road in a linear adventure where story stops until the unopenable gate opens, there is no "to each their own" about it. It's just objectively wrong.
I think what PDM means is he doesn't create problems that have only one solution, or that are unsolvable, but open-ended challenges which can be solved in whatever way the pcs choose. And that's the opposite of linear rail-roading. And it frees the DM up as well, to accept and adapt to whatever methods the players try.
Had a totally unbalanced encounter last week. I fully expected the characters to run…but…one remembered they had a potion that could possibly do the trick but it required heroic action to succeed! The rogue flew through the air like Michael Jordan for a dunk for the ages! The table erupts in cheers! Epic! Heroic! Unbalanced!
@@paulsavas2394 I don't know, would the party have most likely died if the rogue had failed with the potion?? If so, then it was unbalanced. If the party would have survived, with minimal to moderate damage, regardless of the rogues amazing action, then it would have been balanced.
In my experience they never run. Even if I have a powerful NPC shout something like "Run, I'll hold them off!" They're always like, nah let's do this! Sometimes it works, and sometimes the new campaign was secretly a one-shot all along...
@@willmendoza8498 I've noticed that too... Even outnumbered 30:1 some players think they'll win (and while they slew a few goblins, they died in the end)! Another time I knew the random encounter was totally impossible for the players (they all needed to roll a 20 to even harm the creature). Rather than rerolling it, I thought about it for awhile and decided the creature was just passing through (the middle of their camp at night). It wasn't a predator, but it turned out to be one of the more memorable encounters as everyone tried to figure out what to do about this giant beast tramping through their campsite (arrows bouncing off its carapace, players riding on it's back... 😅). It was an exciting encounter for all involved! 🤣👍
@@willmendoza8498 It's human instinct too, kinda. Put a gun to their head and say "surrender, you cannot possibly win", they will tell them to gargle balls 99 times out of a hundred.
42 years of playing and dm'ing D&D, and I've yet to intentionally design a "balanced" encounter. In all that time, I've had lots of character deaths but only 2 TPK's that I recall... and both of those were mainly attributable to player carelessness or outright foolishness. I'm in complete agreement with Prof DM on this one. Make your encounters interesting and plausible given the campaign setting, and you'll be amazed at what your players will overcome and how they go about it!
PC's walk down a hallway to a room cover in patches of straw. a.) Under a random die roll a patch of straw is covering a shallow hole in the floor and floor spikes and a bear trap. Did the PC's just use their spears to broom the straw away to reveil the floor traps ? Nope, .. ! Result was TPK ! 9th level fighter with max hp fell face first into a bear trap and it closed onto the side of his neck with his forehead set off the pressure plate. His chain mail coif cut the blood flow going to his brain. Since everyone was dealing with their own problems, he just twitch till he pass out. b.) One fell into a floor trap so fast, the others didn't have time to realize how the traps were set up. Why, cause they were 9th level and none of their DM ever set trap up that simple were only parties under 3rd level would bother looking for.
Balanced = s predictability, and generally does not force players to consider options other than " *FIGHT!* " It amazes me the number of players that can not fathom an option other than playing until they drop dead, like they're some kind of programmed battle-robot that has no sense of self preservation. But, IMO this also comes from the widespread habit of many modern players to see their characters as a game piece rather than a virtual person. A game piece has no self preservation instincts, a virtual person would.
I found that was an easy habit to break among my players . I merely rewarded much higher for acting how you believe your player character would react , so unless your a paladin its unlikely you would charge to your death ,and I punish for not following your character motivations .Had a player give themselves the usual edgy loner anti hero type so when that player charged there character into a massivee fight for people they didnt know and no reason to care for , they were a little mift when they recieved almost no xp for barely surviving a fight there character would never have engaged in . This adjusts there risk reward responses.
It's a system flaw. Xp leveling is really antiquated, character optimization is antiquated too. Both of these are immensely supported by 5e and to top that monsters are really weak compared to other TTRPGS systems. Unless you run milestone leveling games I'm afraid that's all players will think about because it's in the game.
"But, IMO this also comes from the widespread habit of many modern players to see their characters as a game piece rather than a virtual person. A game piece has no self preservation instincts, a virtual person would." That is quite ironic, considering how modern players put than much emphasis on ROLEplaying, and disdain our old beloved dungeon crawls. In their attempt to create a deep character, they forget the basic (and realistic) instinct to... JUST... F***ING... RUN.
I do agree some people might be like that, but those are usually murder-hobos and nobody likes them. The only other motivations I can even fathom for "typical players of nowadays" to have for only fighting is either hubris, the thought that they are a main characters and cannot die or wrong expectations, the thought that tabletop rpgs are like some videogames and running away is tabboo on a meta level. Frankly, the idea of "game-piece" is something I imagine is way more prevalent in old-school "my character is going to die to a random crit anyways at low level so might as well yolo" players.
I even created a campaign where the characters literally could not die. None of the encounters were balanced. Based on the player choices, the encounters ranged wildly. And the inability to die was part of the trap they realized they were in. Yes, they became a lot more bold, when they figured out they couldn't die, but they realized before that there was a ticking clock connected to the BBE. They understood that they could loos any conflict, and did not want to waste that time. They also had plenty of mundane fights, which helped them feel as powerful as they were. It was a blast.
The players play more intelligently when there is the threat of death from an unbalanced encounter. It doesn't break down into simply have the PC stand there while the player rolls the dice. My players have learned to have tactics like a SWAT team and a retreat plan. They are always alert at the game table during combat sequences because many times the tide has turned against them in the past so the danger element keeps them engaged. Also, I remind them that running away (as a group) is always an option. Once or twice a player has run away alone leaving the rest of the party behind which is realistic and upsets the rest of the group (DM smiles).
Watching the video I could not help but think of all the fun possibilities had the players failed in their goal. Maybe they retreated only to have the building blow up anyway and now they have the both the city watch and the crime syndicate (who had already fronted the money for the moon snow) both looking for the culprits. Suddenly a battered party now has a forced mission of 'get out of town until things calm down.'
"I just create the conflicts and it's their job to solve them" YES This also leaves a lot of space for the DM to make crazy ideas viable. Player: "Is there a woden stick?" DM: (why would they w-) "Yes, there is!"
Professor Dungeonmaster could have made his alchemists and guards much higher level, able to flatten the party with little effort. Maybe I'm just arguing semantics here, but I would say he 'balanced' his encounter in the sense that the players has at least some chance of prevailing. Most DMs probably just make things a little too easy, which isn't really balanced at all. Maybe the word 'balance' is the stumbling block and we just need a new way to describe encounters.
There's a (actually fairly spacious) area between easy mode and "rocks fall everyone dies" that DMs can play in to make encounters. But I think what professor is trying to say is most people who talk about "balance" seem to think there's a very tiny space and anything outside it is some sortof mistake. But yeah I agree making an encounter impossible is also not fun and eventually boring.
@@WeShallLoveOn I think Professor DM and other DMs want the same thing: to give the players a good challenge. He's just less squeamish about it and doesn't mind if characters get killed here and there.
@@godsamongmen8003 yeah I don't disagree. I'm just saying a great deal of discussion around balance typically leads to the opposite, encounters end up either a slog or way too easy. It might be too late to change the balance discussion in the right direction because so many people have already ascribed a strict meaning to the term.
6:05 "But the alchemists are smart" - I'm not sure if "there are three different ways our hideout could explode with us in it in the next 30 seconds" is usually associated with "smart."
Well, to work with highly volatile substances and be successful, I would imagine they are pretty smart. Being interrupted during that process wasn't apart of their plan.
Why would alchemists who are basically wizards not be in a rickety tower. Also the threat of jihad is a pretty smart move, those alchemists made off with drugs they would have otherwise probably died defending.
The difference between a poor and a great unbalanced encounter is that in the second one the DM actually KNOWS how far the balance is. Balancing is a necessary skill, not a goal.
In other words, even good unbalanced encounters are balanced encounters - they just have a different balance point in terms of expected resources expended. Or, they are balanced with respect to some strategies and not to others, so that you have to find the right strategy for approaching the encounter and you the GM should give some hints as to what strategies might be easier than others. Hopefully those hints are rather elegant and not crude, but at least the essay's author partially is aware of what he is actually doing when he claims he's creating "unbalanced encounters"
What is the plan if the first 3 rolls are 20's? "And a success.... You are all dead. I hope you enjoyed that. Want to create more characters [for me to abuse]?"
All resurrection spells require a ton of gems. You can very much limit access to those components or make it a whole quest to go find a super valuable diamond that will allow a resurrection...yeah. resurrection doesn't have to be a sure thing by any stretch of the imagination.
You highlighted one of biggest mistakes in prepping an adventure. I always seem to worry about the solution more than the problem. I can't begin to count how many ideas I have tossed because of this. I never was a fan of random scenario generators, but now I have a better idea of how it can work.
This has got to be the BEST rpg channel on RUclips. I keep for Call of Cthulhu & all the advise applies. This channel has improved my ability to run an RPG! Thanks Professor!
Thanks. I've got a temple of evil druids (I know) who follow a very darwinian view of the universe and have a lab where they are designing/breeding the better frog but also producing potions from frog and other biological essences. I'd already given them quick access to an acid potion and one naptha fire ballish thingy, but I love the poisonous fumes and gas mask idea. I'll have to build in a double layer barrier to prevent the fumes from spreading and some sort of fume hood with a permanent gust of wind spell drawing fumes from the potion table. Also a strength draining or hallucinogenic or stupefying potion. They are also just around the corner from the Giant Horned Toad enclosure and their trainer who could arrive in 1 d 6 rounds with a couple giant horned toads. First round for the acid destroying the armour and some weapons rather than damage is great too. Yes Frog Face Gas Masks, very Cynidecian. And maybe have night vision goggles and a limited one hour air supply in them. (Hmm too much treasure.)
Excellent content. As a Pathfinder GM, I'm awarding you 1 Prestige Point. This is a very thought-inspiring subject you've presented. Where I am puzzled is the fact that your encounter almost guarantees that if the party chooses melee, the most probable outcome is a TPK. That is a type of 'arbitrary decision' by the GM to force a play style away from an obviously unbalanced strategy (combat) and toward the parley/negotiate aspect of play. Some might argue that's problematic to do as the GM. Where attacking players' abiilty scores is concerned, you had better be certain that your players understand the math of their characters before you do that. Nothing chunks up a game worse than having to walk through how their skill modifiers changed by 1 point per two points of STAT. I'm still having some twitching remembering my player who couldn't do that kind of math...
How dare you sir! Everyone deserves a trophy and all obstacles must be easily overcome! Modern players just want to be handed everything. Uber powerful etc. Sucks as far as I'm concerned but they are the majority so...shrug.
I agree with most of this, the major exception being the idea that a DM can go for broke toward the end of a session, and if you TPK that's okay. I feel like that's a really old school way of thinking - not inherently bad, mind - and it can really throw a wrench in the plans of players like me who value their character's narrative. Granted, a worthy death can make for an amazing story, but I would personally not like to measure my characters' lifespans single digit binary. I also feel that unbalanced encounters can sometimes swing the other way, where the PCs demonstrably outmatch whatever they're fighting. You could even make it interesting by having an extremely killable target, but attach some dire consequences if the PCs give in and actually murder them.
The only TPK I had was when I designed a “fatal funnel” to help my PCs. A narrow hallway only one person (badguy) could walk through at a time. The PCs all charged in one at a time and got slaughtered... XD
I am playing 3.5 and the problem is the crazy fast scaling of CR, in 3.5 if you throw a CR 5 monster to the typical 4 person party they may not be able to run and escape. I love 3.5 for various reasons, but in old school games I can see a first level party dealing with a 5hd critter. So an issue is how fast the leveling system scales.
One of the great benefits of an RPG like Champions is that superheroes (and supervillains) rarely die. Instead they are defeated. This allows battles to be a bit lop-sided without making the players feel like their characters are in mortal danger all the time. Instead, their character's reputation as a hero is as stake, along with other in-game things like the safety of dependent NPCs, the integrity of their secret identities, etc. I found that games where death is the primary means of "winning" an encounter drive players to view encounters as a do-or-die situations where "balance" is the only thing keeping them from a miserable evening's play. That's bad.
I am running 4 - 6th lvl characters thru S4. (ad&d module) its designed for 4 to 8 players lvl 6 thru 10. the players have to use there intelligence and discretion with each encounter. the fact that all the pc's are evil aligned is making many encounters very unique. I also don't use monster stat block directly from the monster manual. needless to say, most encounters are deadly and none of them are balanced. but these are the things that make the adventure fun and exciting! this is why Disney stories end at "happily ever after". without an antagonist, there is no story!
Great insight here -- my goal has been to push my DM to create encounters similarly difficult. When the players at our table are saying "I need a long rest after this to get my spells back" in the middle of a combat encounter, even as a player I'm a bit upset in that I don't want a guaranteed progression to end-game. I'd rather the players be thinking "how are we going to survive this?"
In Runequest 6 you have very fine control over combat balance through the fatigue mechanic which I like the idea of. You can quite easily set up what looks to the players like a hopleless situation but it isn't and conversely you can have two or three bandits be an extreme threat if the party is tired and the bandits are fresh.
Although the video advocates for including encounters that cannot be bruteforced (which I agree with), wording it like "you should never balance encounters" is going to give the wrong idea to new DMs. Recently, the DM attacked our party (3 5e characters at LVL 3) with an owlbear. He even gave it a surprise round, rolled well for its initiative, and seemed to have given it more than the average HP. Luckily, it spend its first round attacking the horses pulling the cart, because it nearly downed the 2 melee characters in 1 round while we only did 20% damage to it. In round 2, we just ran. The encounter wasn't interesting or fun, and it felt like a waste of our (the players') time. I could tell the DM lost control of the encounter and was pulling his punches once he realised he was going to TPK with a random encounter. When people complain about unbalanced encounters, it's not just muderhobo players complaining that they couldn't kill their way through every encounter. Sometimes, an unbalanced encounter is less of a problem to solve and more a thing that overwhelms the party.
IMO the best way for a DM to defuse that situation is to have the owlbear run away. The PCs are fighting for their lives while the owlbear is only fighting for its dinner; it shouldn't be willing to tolerate very much injury for that.
@@DecidedlyNinja He also described the owlbear as emaciated, meaning it was desperate for food. Our DM wrote himself into a corner, but in the end, no harm was done. I shared the story because I think the advice in the video is only useful for GMs who've mastered the basics and the title of the video could lead to a campaign ending prematurely and anticlimactically.
Stopped worrying about balance a long time ago when I realized that it's a myth. Now I just give my players the chance to gather information on their foe and the environment, and let them decide how to handle it. Level 1 adventurers could kill a dragon if they have the time and info to stack the deck in their favor.
that's funny, my players with lvl 20 characters run in terror at the mention of a dragon! I run dragons as true calamities, they will destroy cities and nations... if it's in their own interest.
@@bruced648 AD&D2e , 4th level party .. Group of related young adult green dragons drop down infront and around the party as a .. Role .. playing scare tactic. a.) Dumb azz fighter charges the dragon in front of him with his two hand sword in a swinging thrust to the dragon's heart. i.) He rolls a natural 20, and max dmg of 18 on 3d6. ii.) As the book rules stated, consider all PCs & NPCs to be Taking 10 on defense. So I roll d20 for the dragon's defense with a result under 5. iii.) The player took action and Thac0 with dmg ... before rolling Initiative. ... the dragon rolled 2. Cause of cool dice rolls in Pc favor, I told the player to make a strength roll to see if his fighter PC could keep a hold of his sword as the dragon falls dead and a Dex/ tumble roll to look graceful and he get pulled with his sword as the dragon's body weight shifts. That PC killed the dragon like a cartoon action hero. And the rest of the green dragons had no problem with the PC, and wanted to act as their mounts in village raids. Bonus side effect of the game I ran, the players also got to RP the over player's PC dragon.
it's a good encounter with an awesome out come. glad your players were excited with the results, something they should remember for a long time. it's stories like this, that role-playing is all about!
@@bruced648 In my early 20's I was always accuse of running a game as DM just so I could RP a giant of dragon to " up stage everyone " else, so I turned it around and had other people RP a monster or dragon of some type to get them out of their murder hoboing. I just had to figure it out .. how .. to RP a dragon or giant and set an acting example for everyone else to see what to play off. Another game a 8th level wizard got off a luck Polymorph Other spell on a female green dragon, turning her into a redhead Irish woman. Where by she was trained to be a .. noble .. lady .., still an insulting bickering " cough" slut. After a given bit of time, the baron's manor and township was .. her's .. prize ownership. Baron's son, " After this winter I look on you like a derange .. sister, yeah that is the work I was looking for, .. sister !" Dragon, " Stop looking at me like I'm your .. Sister ! " B.S. , " But you are a 20 ft long .. dragon ." Dragon, " And right now I'm the hottest redhead in the whole of the land !" Baron's mother, " Speak as such, if you are going to walk around inside the manor or town, you could at lest wear some .. clothes."
"Level 1 adventurers could kill a dragon if they have the time and info to stack the deck in their favor." If they could, why haven't some NPC's done that before? I mean if it really is just a matter of time and info to beat a dragon, given the tremendous rewards of doing so, why aren't dragons already dead? The answer is that dragons aren't dead because they themselves have agency and cunning and will not passively sit there waiting to be killed. Which is what it sounds like your dragons are doing in order to create the particular self-delusion you enjoy.
I'm gonna be honest, Professor, it seems like there's too many ways in which this tower can collapse in 1d4 rounds. In fact, it seems a lot of your encounters seem to have "tpk in 1d4 rounds" in it.
Yet it didn't. Because my players know I will kill them, they are very cautious and more willing to negotiate or retreat. Consider this: doesn't every action movie you've every seen have a time limit? Avengers, Star Wars, Batman, Star Trek, James Bond--all the movies have limits--usually bombs. Time limits jack up the tension.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 i might have expressed myself abrasively here; I think it's perfectly acceptable to have this 1d4 time limit for the exact reasons you state. Though i was definitely surprised with several of these death counters running in parallel in the same encounter.
Great video, I strongly believe in giving players "mindful challenge" rather doing CR math. I also think that big challenges are a lot more fun for everyone if the consequence for huge failure isn't death. Being captured, creating a new villain, etc. are all great ways to keep the players fearful of failure without losing characters. And telling players what is on the line should they fail is super important!
I once attacked a player’s prof bonus with a custom wraith. Each attack lowered it by one. He had been playing for 30 years and I was able to freak him out.
Ran a few games where werewolves get in close enough to engage in a wrestling match and out strength/ dex roll the PCs. Slow death without a magic weapon to swing.
That is so incredibly cheap. So, the only way you could provide a challenge to the character was to arbitrarily screw their abilities? Must have been so much fun...for you.
@@mattpace1026 It wasn’t at all. Older editions of D&D had monsters that would drain your Ability Scores and some monsters even had level drain. (Which yeah level drain sucks). I wanted something similar to level drain but not as punishing and not permanent (as I stated earlier, level drain sucked). I also wanted to make Wraiths terrifying. A death spiral design was intentional. I reassured him sure he would get his prof back at the end of a long rest. In the end it was just a character without his +3 proficiency bonus to his attacks and some skills. Not too big of a penalty. I landed only one hit with the wraith on him, so he lost -1 prof for the day. My players enjoyed the fight!
I'm confident that my players would befriend the doggos and turn them on the house. Great video as always Professor! You inspired me, Ill give it a go and see what they come up with.
Village chief lawman looks at a group of adventures and a wrymling red dragon, " You have a permit for that creature ?" Red dragon wrymling, " Creature is one, and since there is more than one, you should have said .. creatures. And why would I need a Permit for my lackeys ?"
I think that the 'Challenge' should meet the Player(s) abilities, how 'Mature' they are and 'Coping Skills'.Besides running a campaign with my 60yo sister (Who's never played) I was asked to run one with some 'Special Needs' Adults, so I have several things to take into account when DM-ing each campaign.
Absolutely. I have also run games for special needs kids and adults. I always make modifications and adjust the difficulty level for the audience. My recommendation for easing new players into the game is the XD20 system from Tracy Hickaman's XDM: Extreme Dungeon Mastery.
Social groupings .. a.) Wood goblins, they raid and eat humans but they will save humans for last cause they think humans don't taste very good and they would rather eat a rat, and all around not very nice to .. other .. goblin tribes. b.) Field goblins, they don't have a problem with eating field rats/ snakes season with human herbs cooked with render pig fat. More than happy to live in a farmers' barn eating rats and doing choirs during the night. They function as village watchmen at night. c.) merchant goblin, few goblins become traveling merchants cause humans refuse to cut them a fair deal, also goblins till to be den/ home bodies. But they will learn a craft or hawker at a tower market square during fair days. Goblins tend to be incline to lawful evil behavior and have a strange way for giving and keeping their .. Word. But if you stroke their ego, they are more than willing to Prove their word. .. for a price. Goblin, " Humans like a nice fat rabbit, and we get all the tasty rats ! " Human, " You're a little pig thief rat hunter." Goblin, " Rat do taste good cooked with pig fat ! " Human looks at his friends sideways and says to the goblin, " If you can catch 20 rats out of my barn, my wife will cook a feast of rats in pig fat and herbs." Goblin, " Deal ! " Before half day, the single goblin catches sixty rats out of the farmers barn. The farmer's wife cooks a feast for the goblin and the farmer smokes the rest for long time storage. The hamlet gains a goblin as a night watch.
I fear modern players only like it on easy mode and don't know what to do with challenges where the answers aren't spoonfed to them. I don't say that as a grognard on the sidelines, I say it as someone playing with these people.
Hi PDM Dan, Once again an interesting and useful video. I wholeheartedly agree. For me the fun is in the drama , and the heart of drama is fear , or at least uncertainty of outcome.
So I posted this take on reddit in DMAcademy about 4 months ago and it was very controversial. But my belief is that if you are balancing encounters (which in 5e means the encounters can be overcome without permanent negative consequences) then you are railroading the players and invalidating their choices. Good choices and bad choices don't matter because you as the DM have already determined that this encounter must be overcome.
As someone who used to run a lot of Pathfinder, I totally agree. It pains me that most games can't be ran without a sense of "balance". Throw a manticore at a low level party in PF2e. They have almost zero chance of hurting it, mathematically speaking. The "danger" is only coming from the statistics, rather than the Fiction, which makes for a good boardgame, but a bad RPG. No clever planning or trickery or tactics can save you there. That's why this is a controversial topic. People don't want to move outside of the safe, mathematically sound framework.
A reminder that _balanced_ doesn't mean that an encounter is just strong enough to challenge the players, it means that players should have a very high chance of failure, as in, _it hangs in the balance._
Have you ever tried to incorporate black powder weapons like a handgonne, wheel lock or Arquebus into game play and how do you balance it out to where it doesn't break the game?
Yes. d10 damage. Ignores all armor. Takes 12 rounds to load. It's essentially one and done for that combat. BTW--I remade this episode with more minis and models. Check it out! ruclips.net/video/95zr1mmx4vM/видео.html
I think my fellow players are starting to feel unsatisfied. At 10th level, I'm turning some undead, and banishing elementals and other creatures not native to our plane, before our fighters managed to kill them.
Balanced encounter, followed by unbalanced encounter in player favor, followed 2 balanced encounters and the unbalanced in enemy favor....game is balanced but not all of the encounters are
I think it's good to consider what kind of players you have too. New to the game? Veterans with decades under the belt? Strategists? Folks who barely understand the rules? I can see this perspective with a table full of vets, but not with newbs who really are excited to just survive the mundane at this point. Also, I think few players get bored with "winning" any tabletop RPG unless you really are the type of DM who does everything by the book, and each encounter is a perfect CR challenge. That definitely would be boring! Personally, I don't use CR at all, and I try to add a little spice here and there as we go. I don't think every encounter should be "deadly" or a super mix, but I do think those should be in the mix somewhere, especially down the line. They serve as a great crescendo! :)
@@DecidedlyNinja 50% of dwarves in heavy armors don't survive their first foray into the dungeon. You can help poor dwarves get lighter, mithril armors by calling 1-500-SAVE-BRUENOR
Wait!! WHAT!!!?? HE SWORE!!! LIKE TWICE!!!!.......But he wears a suit??? ......but nooo tie?, hmmmm???, the clues were there, the clues were there.......
I like your way of thinking, but it can be…. Difficult. I think that making an umbalanced encounter is easy: just put a big monster or too many enemies against a group of player and it’s done. The real problem, for me, is to make a difficult encounter seem hard but still enjoyable, “narratively fair” and NOT like a bully trying to flex their strengh. To put it in an exemple, I’d like my encounters to feel like “basket ball kids VS good and trained basket ball kids” and NOT “basket ball kids VS MBA superstars”😂
Thanks for taking the time to share. My wife would agree--my thinking IS difficult! If you thought this video was decent, you would enjoy The Reviled Society. I took all the models in this video, added new shots, and turned it into a three-part campaign series. Check it out! ruclips.net/video/W8JBzKCa3rk/видео.html
I disagree completely with this video. First, I think the idea of "Balance" portrayed here is over simplified. Everyone knows there are different difficulty levels of encounters. So I don't think anyone actually means that "balance" is some kind of perfect difficulty. What people mean by balance, is that a fight has the difficulty that is intended by the GM and feels fair to the players. And yes, all the examples shown in the movies, were balanced. Why? Because the writer had full control over the outcome. The wraiths didn't accidentally succeed on their perception check, Darth Vader didn't accidentally one-shot Luke with a critical hit. Everyone in these scenes succeded and failed exactly when and where the writer wanted them to. Basically, the encounter was balanced because the GM was fudging the dice. When people say something is unbalanced, what I think they mean is that either the GM had over/underestimated things resulting in an unsatisfying outcome. Or the players feel they stumbled/were forced into a situation that they had no way of knowing it was a one they had no way of getting out alive. Even if technically they did, it's about the perception. Because let's not forget, the players are sitting across the table of someone who is practically a god in their fictional world. And I don't think you want a situation where the players think that their "god" is abusing their powers. I also think "If characters aren't ever in danger, there's nothing at stake" is a huge disservice to story telling. Case in point, Critical role managed to get a huge audience even though characters barely ever die there. If the only risk you can think of in your game is your player characters dying, you don't have an interesting campaign because nothing in the campaign matters more than the lives of the player characters. In Lord of the Rings, the campaign is not about keeping Frodo alive, it's about making sure the one ring doesn't fall into the wrong hands (by destroying it). And there's plenty of other stories out there, that we know none of the main cast is going to die in, yet they are still entertaining. Conversely, there have been stories where the frequency of character death is so high, people have often stopped caring about characters altogether because their presence had become nothing more than being "the next on the chopping block". And yes, there are people who play TTRPGs like that, where they don't bother giving their character so much as even a name untill said character has survived at least a few sessions. That's not to say there's no place for these kind of encounters in TTPRGs. But I think it's more a matter of preference rather than a matter of fact.
The fact that he's using movie scenes as examples of balance implies he views D&D games as scripts to be followed, which is a huge red flag. Maybe his "unbalanced" encounters are just punishments for his players leaving his railroad.
The old B/X and BECMI D&D rules featured Morale. As do the newer OSR versions of them like Old School Essentials and Basic Fantasy. Each creature type has a morale rating which you roll 2d6 against at certain points such as when half the group of creatures is dead, or big bad has lost half hp, but it's GM's call when to do so based on situation. It's one of those simple mechanics which were unfortunately dropped from official rules long ago, but shouldn't have been. Easy and convenient way to differentiate how brave/foolish each monster type is, and when they'll flee or try to make a deal for their lives when things are going badly for them.
Brute force has failed? You haven't used enough of it!! Steal the McGuffin? Nah. DESTROY the McGuffin!! That tower would have fallen after round 2 in a fiery wreck. You tell players how something will explode, they'll make it happen.
100% agree. I have told every group that starts with me DMing, ' It is not my goal to kill off your character, it is your goal to keep your character alive'. I have never had players so upset with me over 'unbalanced combat' until I started playing again using 5th edition. The unbalance to me is not in the playing, it is built into PCs. In 5th you simply level up and aquire power, skills and even new classes. You don't adventure for your power, it's already built in. I loved AD&D and I remember when Class Kits came out and everyone thought they were totally awesome and they were!until DMs realized it robbed their players of the magic of imagination. Its been a slow down hill from here.
Randomly running into liches in Baldur's Gate 2 and random encounters in other games that I far underestimated are much more memorable than encounters that were fairly balanced. Also makes the world feel more complete and alive.
Well BG2 does have the advantage of having a reload feature if you get in over your head. I'm sure the game would have got old if you had to start over from scratch everytime you died with a new character.
Are you telling me that the last 60 sessions of my painstakingly calculated medium to hard encounters have been boring? Next session I'm throwing a Tarrasque at them.... no...Three Tarrasques.
It's easy to have a seemingly scary encounters that doesn't turn into a TPK, IF you don't use game rules. If the Ringwraiths actually rolled Perception and attack rolls versus the hobbits in a D&D game, the Ring would have been in Morder a lot sooner. Darth Vader wasn't trying to kill Luke on Cloud City. If he wanted to kill Luke, then Luke would have been dead in seconds. When Vader was trying to kill Luke and had a lock on Luke's X-Wing, Vader missed (DM fiat) before Han shot Vader's wingman. Had it come down to dice, Luke would have died.
You this; but I recently had a campaign fail because I used a Pathfinder one shot (Sundered Waves) as a 5E campaign. Nobody died nor even fell unconscious, and they stopped attacking him after he got below 20hp and summoned 3 skeletons. For clarification; they had just long rested and I skipped the CR 3 skeleton alligator because I felt it may be too much with the 2 CR 2 water weird and CR 3.5-4 boss skeleton for 4 level 4 characters. (I had originally balanced it for 6 PCs) I really don’t understand why that made them upset. It was a good fight that left them bruised but not dead and they got paid to over 1,500 gp for it. (High gold campaign in order to afford upgrades and repairs for their ship)
The early, iconic adventures like T1 (the Village of Hommlet) and S1 (the legendary Tomb of Horrors) were not balanced. They were total meat grinders designed to destroy players who preferred the hack n’ slash frontal assault. What was great about these old, unbalanced adventures was they required ingenuity on the part of the players. In the case of T1, a low level party (unless 9+ strong) needed to use some deception and stealth (long before these were actual skills) to infiltrate the bad guys’ stronghold. Level gain in this 1e adventure came primarily from looting the large amounts of treasure hidden in the module (which, if the party revealed its source, could get them killed). Same for S1, which abounded with “one-shot” traps and not many creatures-but the insane treasure, if discovered and looted, would assure a sizable chunk of experience, even for the higher level characters. Should I even discuss the Giant or Drow adventures (G 1 - 3 and D 1 - 3)? Is Snurre’s hall, or Erelhei Cinlu, a balanced encounter? Even the simple B2 (the Keep on the Borderlands) had areas loaded with unbalanced creature encounters-enough to assure a TPK for 1st level neophytes. And this was a beginning adventure (albeit B/X rather than 1e). Again, it was the party’s job to know when to fight, when to run away, and always to figure out how to loot while avoiding large battles. Love the miniatures, mood, and methods in this adventure. The alchemist minis are frightening! And the timer before the big bang is an excellent analog representation of the last board of a video game, where the hero(es) need to get out before the place goes MOAB and it’s over, regardless on the mission’s success. Talk about showing new players how balanced encounters are not for real adventurers! As usual, great job, Professor Dungeon Master. Your channel is a trove of valuable information for fantasy/S&S role players. Thanks for all of your hard work putting these together.
I'll say it again. I REALLY like those plague doctor minis! - My proposed solution for the encounter: make the tower topple and pick through the debris for the quest item. But that may not work for all randomly generated missions.
I'm a fan of the Dungeon Crawl Classics school of balancing encounters (TLDR; don't). And I like Davvy Chappy's assessment of the DM trying to balance encounters and how ridiculous it is, essentially racking your brains to make encounters challenging enough to be fun and defeat boredom, but not challenging enough that someone dies or so challenging someone rage quits. (paraphrase)
I started my last session (like my fifth with that group, two of my brothers, or like 7th session total,) with them following trails of four spies going into the woods. They were two level 2 characters, so I entered that in D&DBeyond's encounter builder and 2 CR 1/4 drow + 2 CR 1/8 kobolds were going to be an encounter bordering on deadly. Since I wasn't expecting my players to be fighting them to the death, as they needed information and I made it very clear they were outnumbered and the spy they talked to was very confident about having the upper hand, so I allowed it to be up to deadly, even though it's been a while since we last played. My players weren't very tactical about it and ended up attacking, opening with Inflict Wounds... nat 1 (again lol). Then came a whole round of my players missing everything and the spies hitting everything (though I made sure to spread the damage, both being realistic and helping balance what went down). I had the spy the party was familiar with shout out "You can still walk away!", which the less aggressive PC happily did. The encounter ended with me describing the other player as outnumbered 4 to 1, abandoned by his only ally, fighting enemies that seemed to take him down effortlessly, and him deciding to retreat as well. Making balanced encounters (neither too easy, nor too hard,) is impossible. Balancing unbalanced encounters as you go is a fine art worth mastering if you are a DM. Also, do mix up encounter difficulty. Their next encounter was just the 2 1/8 kobolds, which they made short work of. Letting your players decide when to fight and when to avoid fighting is part of a balanced campaign, where applying common sense and players making decisions for themselves are made crucial.
Im rather lucky. On the second campaign in the same world, with mostly the same group. One original player (my wife). Two that came in at around level 10 on the first campaign. Started with 5 players but sitting nicely with 4. This has been going nearly 3 years now. just about every Sunday.
Grognards everywhere approve of this message! PS- To one and all, palace/castle/elite city guards are supposed to be bad-sses, not cannon fodder. Level the baddies up and make em work for it, Think Swiss Guards at the Vatican... and keep the polyhedrons rolling! 8>D
I'm fine with unbalanced encounters, but there are risks. 1. I don't toss them against players who aren't used to it -- age, play style, etc. 2. You do use them sparingly. It is too easy to TPK the party or else 'intervene' to save them and that gets boring. 3. But some in where it is unbalanced in the player's favor. Sometimes it is nice just to let the players slaughter less creatures -- especially in a case where they setup surprise, ambush, etc. It's also quick to run. 4. As said, give fair warning. 5. Start with it balanced and put specific things in to unbalance it. A mundane encounter with a timer, some other issue, terrain, etc. can make things fun. 6. I sometimes like giving my party a 'get out of jail free' item -- say a ring of wishes or a teleport scroll (even at low levels). Single use, but if the encounter is just off (either from poor DM planning, stupid actions, fail to describe something well enough, etc.) then the PCs can "I wish I was out of this collapsing tower". Most players horse such items, so typically not a problem they will take stupid risks because of it. 7. I often find the best "unbalanced" encounters are actually balanced, just hard for the players to calculate the odds. My of my best encounters was a group of 4th-level PCs with two NPCs going after a frost giant, two winter wolves, two heavily armored hobgoblins, and 10 ogres in the nearby room. Insanely overpowered, except... one of the NPCs was equal to the giant, and all the PCs really needed to do deal with the hobgoblins, bar the door, and keep anyone from opening it. I've run the encounter like four times and each time the players thought it was insane and were so happy they succeeded. (and never tell the players that every other group succeeded also)
Why Professor Dungeon Master is the goat - today on… Edit: Was Die Hard balanced? Was Predator balanced? Was Rambo balanced?… Well maybe, the guy is a one man army.
Players also enjoy the occasional beat-down -- a combat encounter that's imbalanced in their favor. Every now and then, they just WRECK some opponents who deserve it. But even when the players easily win, there should be a wrinkle, a complication. Maybe an enemy scores a bit of lasting damage before he dies, or he steals (or destroys) something valuable. It keeps the story moving forward.
I'm DMing and also playing a halfling rogue in Lost mines of Phandelver. I'm still kinda new to D&D so its awesome but me and my niece got knocked out trying to save Sildar Hallwinter from the Cragmaws. We only lived because my nephew used Magic missile to end the fight. My niece and I had already failed twice on our saving throws. The adventures calls for four players but its just us three.
I had this video sent to me by someone arguing for a complete disregard for the strength of the party. I was expecting some nonsense just as dumb, but this is perfectly reasonable. Not every fight should be 'balanced', fights SHOULD be hard. Some should even be deadly. But they should be appropriate. The party shouldn't get a super easy fight from one hyped up all game because the DM decided to just throw something together without thinking about the party's strength. And the party shouldn't get destroyed by bandits that should've been easy because the DM forgot the party was lv1 and that action economy is nuclear. I like difficulty, not DM incompetence
I do what Metroid Prime did. After every levelup/power up, new magic item, after a boss ect. I drop difficulty but use the same monsters. Example: During a campaign I was fudging healths. Before killing the leader of the Blacktooth Ridge Ogres; a single or two ogres were rough to face, but after the big bossfight and level up, I gave them Orc stats with large size, they were taking on more and feeling badass while doing it. As far as hardening the difficulty, I run sandboxy games. If they ignore the content close to them, they will get creamed by the _fair_ content farther from civilization. If something is impossible, I won't have them roll, it isn't possible. If they can't beat a foe, I'll tell them what their _experienced and competent_ heroes know and could judge.
I think it's a lot more to setting up an insurmountable task though. Like some deliberate thought about how you present the scenario/encounters will definitely affect their view on what options exist? Huge difference between new & experienced players on this one as well. If I think back to my introduction to D&D we had some gruesomely flat games. Blunt deaths, no narrative progression, no idea what options we had or set up (info/objects) along the way to the encounter. Weirdly enough even through that, I really fell for the imaginative storytelling you'd act & visulize with your friends. /Still not totally reconciled with Call of Cthulhu though, It's a pointless fight that you're doomed to lose. ;P
The RUclips algorithm is an unbalanced encounter.
It is. I cannot figure it out. Talked to Dave over at Nerdarchy. He can't figure it out either.
Now that…. Was funny.
Frequently the complete opposite is great, too: encounters where the PC's way outclass their enemies. They can feel like James Bond or John Wick casually mowing through a horde of goons like complete badasses. Serves as a great contrast for when they go up against that impossible challenge.
Yes, sometimes it's nice to let the heroes feel heroic.
And I think it helps to show scale as if the enemies are always as strong as, if not stronger than the PC's then what's the point? You might as well name your character Sisyphus then.
It can be a great palette cleanser after a trying adventure to just mow thru some mooks. I try to give my players a breeze encounter from time to time. Ironically I set one up for the party recently that ended up as a doozy as one of the players split off from the party to deliver a message and ended up running into a rival adventuring party I had set ready to ambush the players on their way back down from the mountain they where on. It was intended to be something the party could mow thru after leveling up on the mountain, it ended up being a close call, but an awesome moment for that player in particular.
Fully agreed. I want the “oh f***” moments to really stand out when I use a vicious unbalanced encounter. By the same token, if they execute a good plan and work together it’s nice for them to feel that sense of accomplishment when they mop the floor with their enemies once in a while
I agree. My favorite thing about 4e (and honestly, the only thing I liked from the ruleset) was 1hp "minion" enemies who only served to absorb a single hit and die. They make great mook fodder for characters of any level, and the only thing I have to worry about is action economy.
@@havokmusicinc 4e gave me the concept of combat roles (artillerist, controller, soldier, brute, lurker, skirmisher) and that has completely transformed the way I build combat encounters. That and minions has been what I took from 4e. And some poison and monster mechanics that were cool looking...
This video really captures a lot of what makes your channel awesome 👏🏻
I'm so glad there's a D&D RUclipsr that understands the spirit of Old School D&D
"I don't think of solutions. That's my players job"
Great GM advice!
No, it's not. I've seen some published works based on this thinking, and they are terrible. The last thing you want to do is create problems which you don't have a solution for yourself, and then hope the players find one you haven't thought of. There is a good chance that if you the DM, a creative and experienced player with all the information, can't think of several different solutions to the problem while you are creating it, that it doesn't have one. And if you don't think it's your job to create problems that have solutions, you are a terrible DM.
@@celebrim1 To each their own.
@@Zirbip Some things are subjective and some things are not. Presenting the players with a puzzle even you can't solve is objectively bad game mastery. And when you do this as a gate on a rail road in a linear adventure where story stops until the unopenable gate opens, there is no "to each their own" about it. It's just objectively wrong.
I think what PDM means is he doesn't create problems that have only one solution, or that are unsolvable, but open-ended challenges which can be solved in whatever way the pcs choose. And that's the opposite of linear rail-roading. And it frees the DM up as well, to accept and adapt to whatever methods the players try.
Had a totally unbalanced encounter last week. I fully expected the characters to run…but…one remembered they had a potion that could possibly do the trick but it required heroic action to succeed! The rogue flew through the air like Michael Jordan for a dunk for the ages! The table erupts in cheers! Epic! Heroic! Unbalanced!
@Anne O'Nymous they got pummeled! A few went down. No perma-death…but point taken.
@@paulsavas2394 I don't know, would the party have most likely died if the rogue had failed with the potion?? If so, then it was unbalanced. If the party would have survived, with minimal to moderate damage, regardless of the rogues amazing action, then it would have been balanced.
In my experience they never run. Even if I have a powerful NPC shout something like "Run, I'll hold them off!" They're always like, nah let's do this! Sometimes it works, and sometimes the new campaign was secretly a one-shot all along...
@@willmendoza8498 I've noticed that too... Even outnumbered 30:1 some players think they'll win (and while they slew a few goblins, they died in the end)!
Another time I knew the random encounter was totally impossible for the players (they all needed to roll a 20 to even harm the creature). Rather than rerolling it, I thought about it for awhile and decided the creature was just passing through (the middle of their camp at night). It wasn't a predator, but it turned out to be one of the more memorable encounters as everyone tried to figure out what to do about this giant beast tramping through their campsite (arrows bouncing off its carapace, players riding on it's back... 😅). It was an exciting encounter for all involved!
🤣👍
@@willmendoza8498 It's human instinct too, kinda.
Put a gun to their head and say "surrender, you cannot possibly win", they will tell them to gargle balls 99 times out of a hundred.
42 years of playing and dm'ing D&D, and I've yet to intentionally design a "balanced" encounter. In all that time, I've had lots of character deaths but only 2 TPK's that I recall... and both of those were mainly attributable to player carelessness or outright foolishness. I'm in complete agreement with Prof DM on this one. Make your encounters interesting and plausible given the campaign setting, and you'll be amazed at what your players will overcome and how they go about it!
PC's walk down a hallway to a room cover in patches of straw.
a.) Under a random die roll a patch of straw is covering a shallow hole in the floor and floor spikes and a bear trap.
Did the PC's just use their spears to broom the straw away to reveil the floor traps ?
Nope, .. !
Result was TPK !
9th level fighter with max hp fell face first into a bear trap and it closed onto the side of his neck with his forehead set off the pressure plate. His chain mail coif cut the blood flow going to his brain. Since everyone was dealing with their own problems, he just twitch till he pass out.
b.) One fell into a floor trap so fast, the others didn't have time to realize how the traps were set up. Why, cause they were 9th level and none of their DM ever set trap up that simple were only parties under 3rd level would bother looking for.
Balanced = s predictability, and generally does not force players to consider options other than " *FIGHT!* "
It amazes me the number of players that can not fathom an option other than playing until they drop dead, like they're some kind of programmed battle-robot that has no sense of self preservation.
But, IMO this also comes from the widespread habit of many modern players to see their characters as a game piece rather than a virtual person.
A game piece has no self preservation instincts, a virtual person would.
I found that was an easy habit to break among my players . I merely rewarded much higher for acting how you believe your player character would react , so unless your a paladin its unlikely you would charge to your death ,and I punish for not following your character motivations .Had a player give themselves the usual edgy loner anti hero type so when that player charged there character into a massivee fight for people they didnt know and no reason to care for , they were a little mift when they recieved almost no xp for barely surviving a fight there character would never have engaged in . This adjusts there risk reward responses.
It's a system flaw.
Xp leveling is really antiquated, character optimization is antiquated too.
Both of these are immensely supported by 5e and to top that monsters are really weak compared to other TTRPGS systems.
Unless you run milestone leveling games I'm afraid that's all players will think about because it's in the game.
"But, IMO this also comes from the widespread habit of many modern players to see their characters as a game piece rather than a virtual person.
A game piece has no self preservation instincts, a virtual person would."
That is quite ironic, considering how modern players put than much emphasis on ROLEplaying, and disdain our old beloved dungeon crawls.
In their attempt to create a deep character, they forget the basic (and realistic) instinct to... JUST... F***ING... RUN.
I do agree some people might be like that, but those are usually murder-hobos and nobody likes them. The only other motivations I can even fathom for "typical players of nowadays" to have for only fighting is either hubris, the thought that they are a main characters and cannot die or wrong expectations, the thought that tabletop rpgs are like some videogames and running away is tabboo on a meta level. Frankly, the idea of "game-piece" is something I imagine is way more prevalent in old-school "my character is going to die to a random crit anyways at low level so might as well yolo" players.
@@AlbertoRodriguez-zb3iu Doesn’t that make it the players’ fault for limiting themselves?
I even created a campaign where the characters literally could not die. None of the encounters were balanced. Based on the player choices, the encounters ranged wildly. And the inability to die was part of the trap they realized they were in. Yes, they became a lot more bold, when they figured out they couldn't die, but they realized before that there was a ticking clock connected to the BBE. They understood that they could loos any conflict, and did not want to waste that time. They also had plenty of mundane fights, which helped them feel as powerful as they were. It was a blast.
The players play more intelligently when there is the threat of death from an unbalanced encounter. It doesn't break down into simply have the PC stand there while the player rolls the dice. My players have learned to have tactics like a SWAT team and a retreat plan. They are always alert at the game table during combat sequences because many times the tide has turned against them in the past so the danger element keeps them engaged. Also, I remind them that running away (as a group) is always an option. Once or twice a player has run away alone leaving the rest of the party behind which is realistic and upsets the rest of the group (DM smiles).
Watching the video I could not help but think of all the fun possibilities had the players failed in their goal. Maybe they retreated only to have the building blow up anyway and now they have the both the city watch and the crime syndicate (who had already fronted the money for the moon snow) both looking for the culprits. Suddenly a battered party now has a forced mission of 'get out of town until things calm down.'
"I just create the conflicts and it's their job to solve them" YES
This also leaves a lot of space for the DM to make crazy ideas viable.
Player: "Is there a woden stick?"
DM: (why would they w-) "Yes, there is!"
Professor Dungeonmaster could have made his alchemists and guards much higher level, able to flatten the party with little effort. Maybe I'm just arguing semantics here, but I would say he 'balanced' his encounter in the sense that the players has at least some chance of prevailing. Most DMs probably just make things a little too easy, which isn't really balanced at all. Maybe the word 'balance' is the stumbling block and we just need a new way to describe encounters.
There's a (actually fairly spacious) area between easy mode and "rocks fall everyone dies" that DMs can play in to make encounters. But I think what professor is trying to say is most people who talk about "balance" seem to think there's a very tiny space and anything outside it is some sortof mistake. But yeah I agree making an encounter impossible is also not fun and eventually boring.
@@WeShallLoveOn I think Professor DM and other DMs want the same thing: to give the players a good challenge. He's just less squeamish about it and doesn't mind if characters get killed here and there.
@@godsamongmen8003 yeah I don't disagree. I'm just saying a great deal of discussion around balance typically leads to the opposite, encounters end up either a slog or way too easy. It might be too late to change the balance discussion in the right direction because so many people have already ascribed a strict meaning to the term.
He clearly explains what he means by "not balanced". @6:40
Exactly
6:05 "But the alchemists are smart" - I'm not sure if "there are three different ways our hideout could explode with us in it in the next 30 seconds" is usually associated with "smart."
Well, to work with highly volatile substances and be successful, I would imagine they are pretty smart. Being interrupted during that process wasn't apart of their plan.
@@shirro6031 Sure, but a _smart_ villain would still choose a sturdy barn or warehouse over a rickety tower.
Why would alchemists who are basically wizards not be in a rickety tower. Also the threat of jihad is a pretty smart move, those alchemists made off with drugs they would have otherwise probably died defending.
Correction: absolutely WILL explode in 30 seconds (5 rounds = 30 seconds) and _could_ explode in 12 seconds.
The difference between a poor and a great unbalanced encounter is that in the second one the DM actually KNOWS how far the balance is.
Balancing is a necessary skill, not a goal.
In other words, even good unbalanced encounters are balanced encounters - they just have a different balance point in terms of expected resources expended. Or, they are balanced with respect to some strategies and not to others, so that you have to find the right strategy for approaching the encounter and you the GM should give some hints as to what strategies might be easier than others. Hopefully those hints are rather elegant and not crude, but at least the essay's author partially is aware of what he is actually doing when he claims he's creating "unbalanced encounters"
"3 Natural 20's and the tower falls" ... "may all your rolls be 20's" - you are a cruel man!
What is the plan if the first 3 rolls are 20's? "And a success.... You are all dead. I hope you enjoyed that. Want to create more characters [for me to abuse]?"
"Link to that in the doobly-doo"
My heart skipped a beat! I'd love to see a matt colville / professor DM cross-over!
"Attack their equipment and their 3-18 Ability Scores"
Excellent advice!
Balance?! Balance?! We don’t need no stinkin’ balance!
New favourite RPG channel, love your old school play style and I’ve been introducing the all at once initiative and it’s great
In a game with Ressurection spells. Why is important to balance, to begin with?
The first 4 levels 😆
Not all games allow resurrection spells.
@@anthonynorman7545 Even at 1st level, Healing Word (the best spell in the whole game) exists
@@havokmusicinc healing word isn't a resurrection spell and spell slots are limited.
All resurrection spells require a ton of gems. You can very much limit access to those components or make it a whole quest to go find a super valuable diamond that will allow a resurrection...yeah. resurrection doesn't have to be a sure thing by any stretch of the imagination.
Were the alchemists called Walt and Jesse, by any chance?
As long as the moonsnow is crystal clear.
I think Questing Beast has done the same video. Great minds think alike!
So?
The concept of combat as sport vs. combat as war is definitely evident here!
You highlighted one of biggest mistakes in prepping an adventure. I always seem to worry about the solution more than the problem. I can't begin to count how many ideas I have tossed because of this. I never was a fan of random scenario generators, but now I have a better idea of how it can work.
This has got to be the BEST rpg channel on RUclips. I keep for Call of Cthulhu & all the advise applies. This channel has improved my ability to run an RPG! Thanks Professor!
Balanced design equals playing a video game on recruit all the time.
Sometimes just ESCAPING mostly alive feels like a huge win.
An event occurs, the players set a goal, something complicates that goal. The players achieve their goal to some degree. Repeat and scale.
Thanks. I've got a temple of evil druids (I know) who follow a very darwinian view of the universe and have a lab where they are designing/breeding the better frog but also producing potions from frog and other biological essences. I'd already given them quick access to an acid potion and one naptha fire ballish thingy, but I love the poisonous fumes and gas mask idea. I'll have to build in a double layer barrier to prevent the fumes from spreading and some sort of fume hood with a permanent gust of wind spell drawing fumes from the potion table. Also a strength draining or hallucinogenic or stupefying potion. They are also just around the corner from the Giant Horned Toad enclosure and their trainer who could arrive in 1 d 6 rounds with a couple giant horned toads. First round for the acid destroying the armour and some weapons rather than damage is great too.
Yes Frog Face Gas Masks, very Cynidecian. And maybe have night vision goggles and a limited one hour air supply in them. (Hmm too much treasure.)
Excellent content. As a Pathfinder GM, I'm awarding you 1 Prestige Point. This is a very thought-inspiring subject you've presented. Where I am puzzled is the fact that your encounter almost guarantees that if the party chooses melee, the most probable outcome is a TPK. That is a type of 'arbitrary decision' by the GM to force a play style away from an obviously unbalanced strategy (combat) and toward the parley/negotiate aspect of play. Some might argue that's problematic to do as the GM.
Where attacking players' abiilty scores is concerned, you had better be certain that your players understand the math of their characters before you do that. Nothing chunks up a game worse than having to walk through how their skill modifiers changed by 1 point per two points of STAT. I'm still having some twitching remembering my player who couldn't do that kind of math...
The doobly doo?! Doesn’t Matt Coleville have a copy write on that?
Nope. It predates him by like 5 years.
@@AuntieHauntieGames my understanding is it's use on RUclips was coined by WheezyWaiter.
How dare you sir! Everyone deserves a trophy and all obstacles must be easily overcome!
Modern players just want to be handed everything. Uber powerful etc. Sucks as far as I'm concerned but they are the majority so...shrug.
Encounters are designed for drama and fun NOT balance.
What a unique encounter! Great for cyberpunk or sci-fi as well with some minor tweaks.
I agree with most of this, the major exception being the idea that a DM can go for broke toward the end of a session, and if you TPK that's okay. I feel like that's a really old school way of thinking - not inherently bad, mind - and it can really throw a wrench in the plans of players like me who value their character's narrative. Granted, a worthy death can make for an amazing story, but I would personally not like to measure my characters' lifespans single digit binary.
I also feel that unbalanced encounters can sometimes swing the other way, where the PCs demonstrably outmatch whatever they're fighting. You could even make it interesting by having an extremely killable target, but attach some dire consequences if the PCs give in and actually murder them.
The only TPK I had was when I designed a “fatal funnel” to help my PCs. A narrow hallway only one person (badguy) could walk through at a time. The PCs all charged in one at a time and got slaughtered... XD
LOL
we all remember what happened to the Republic when Quigon tried to bring balance to the force with Anakin Skywalker!!! all kneel before the emperor...
I am playing 3.5 and the problem is the crazy fast scaling of CR, in 3.5 if you throw a CR 5 monster to the typical 4 person party they may not be able to run and escape. I love 3.5 for various reasons, but in old school games I can see a first level party dealing with a 5hd critter.
So an issue is how fast the leveling system scales.
One of the great benefits of an RPG like Champions is that superheroes (and supervillains) rarely die. Instead they are defeated. This allows battles to be a bit lop-sided without making the players feel like their characters are in mortal danger all the time. Instead, their character's reputation as a hero is as stake, along with other in-game things like the safety of dependent NPCs, the integrity of their secret identities, etc. I found that games where death is the primary means of "winning" an encounter drive players to view encounters as a do-or-die situations where "balance" is the only thing keeping them from a miserable evening's play. That's bad.
I am running 4 - 6th lvl characters thru S4. (ad&d module) its designed for 4 to 8 players lvl 6 thru 10. the players have to use there intelligence and discretion with each encounter. the fact that all the pc's are evil aligned is making many encounters very unique. I also don't use monster stat block directly from the monster manual. needless to say, most encounters are deadly and none of them are balanced. but these are the things that make the adventure fun and exciting!
this is why Disney stories end at "happily ever after". without an antagonist, there is no story!
Great insight here -- my goal has been to push my DM to create encounters similarly difficult. When the players at our table are saying "I need a long rest after this to get my spells back" in the middle of a combat encounter, even as a player I'm a bit upset in that I don't want a guaranteed progression to end-game. I'd rather the players be thinking "how are we going to survive this?"
In Runequest 6 you have very fine control over combat balance through the fatigue mechanic which I like the idea of. You can quite easily set up what looks to the players like a hopleless situation but it isn't and conversely you can have two or three bandits be an extreme threat if the party is tired and the bandits are fresh.
Although the video advocates for including encounters that cannot be bruteforced (which I agree with), wording it like "you should never balance encounters" is going to give the wrong idea to new DMs.
Recently, the DM attacked our party (3 5e characters at LVL 3) with an owlbear. He even gave it a surprise round, rolled well for its initiative, and seemed to have given it more than the average HP. Luckily, it spend its first round attacking the horses pulling the cart, because it nearly downed the 2 melee characters in 1 round while we only did 20% damage to it. In round 2, we just ran. The encounter wasn't interesting or fun, and it felt like a waste of our (the players') time. I could tell the DM lost control of the encounter and was pulling his punches once he realised he was going to TPK with a random encounter.
When people complain about unbalanced encounters, it's not just muderhobo players complaining that they couldn't kill their way through every encounter. Sometimes, an unbalanced encounter is less of a problem to solve and more a thing that overwhelms the party.
IMO the best way for a DM to defuse that situation is to have the owlbear run away. The PCs are fighting for their lives while the owlbear is only fighting for its dinner; it shouldn't be willing to tolerate very much injury for that.
@@DecidedlyNinja He also described the owlbear as emaciated, meaning it was desperate for food. Our DM wrote himself into a corner, but in the end, no harm was done.
I shared the story because I think the advice in the video is only useful for GMs who've mastered the basics and the title of the video could lead to a campaign ending prematurely and anticlimactically.
Stopped worrying about balance a long time ago when I realized that it's a myth. Now I just give my players the chance to gather information on their foe and the environment, and let them decide how to handle it. Level 1 adventurers could kill a dragon if they have the time and info to stack the deck in their favor.
that's funny, my players with lvl 20 characters run in terror at the mention of a dragon! I run dragons as true calamities, they will destroy cities and nations... if it's in their own interest.
@@bruced648 AD&D2e , 4th level party ..
Group of related young adult green dragons drop down infront and around the party as a .. Role .. playing scare tactic.
a.) Dumb azz fighter charges the dragon in front of him with his two hand sword in a swinging thrust to the dragon's heart.
i.) He rolls a natural 20, and max dmg of 18 on 3d6.
ii.) As the book rules stated, consider all PCs & NPCs to be Taking 10 on defense. So I roll d20 for the dragon's defense with a result under 5.
iii.) The player took action and Thac0 with dmg ... before rolling Initiative. ... the dragon rolled 2.
Cause of cool dice rolls in Pc favor, I told the player to make a strength roll to see if his fighter PC could keep a hold of his sword as the dragon falls dead and a Dex/ tumble roll to look graceful and he get pulled with his sword as the dragon's body weight shifts.
That PC killed the dragon like a cartoon action hero. And the rest of the green dragons had no problem with the PC, and wanted to act as their mounts in village raids. Bonus side effect of the game I ran, the players also got to RP the over player's PC dragon.
it's a good encounter with an awesome out come. glad your players were excited with the results, something they should remember for a long time. it's stories like this, that role-playing is all about!
@@bruced648 In my early 20's I was always accuse of running a game as DM just so I could RP a giant of dragon to " up stage everyone " else, so I turned it around and had other people RP a monster or dragon of some type to get them out of their murder hoboing. I just had to figure it out .. how .. to RP a dragon or giant and set an acting example for everyone else to see what to play off.
Another game a 8th level wizard got off a luck Polymorph Other spell on a female green dragon, turning her into a redhead Irish woman. Where by she was trained to be a .. noble .. lady .., still an insulting bickering " cough" slut. After a given bit of time, the baron's manor and township was .. her's .. prize ownership.
Baron's son, " After this winter I look on you like a derange .. sister, yeah that is the work I was looking for, .. sister !"
Dragon, " Stop looking at me like I'm your .. Sister ! "
B.S. , " But you are a 20 ft long .. dragon ."
Dragon, " And right now I'm the hottest redhead in the whole of the land !"
Baron's mother, " Speak as such, if you are going to walk around inside the manor or town, you could at lest wear some .. clothes."
"Level 1 adventurers could kill a dragon if they have the time and info to stack the deck in their favor."
If they could, why haven't some NPC's done that before? I mean if it really is just a matter of time and info to beat a dragon, given the tremendous rewards of doing so, why aren't dragons already dead?
The answer is that dragons aren't dead because they themselves have agency and cunning and will not passively sit there waiting to be killed. Which is what it sounds like your dragons are doing in order to create the particular self-delusion you enjoy.
2 years ago i agreed with 5% of what you say.
Year ago i agreed with 20%.
Now i agree with 50% and i'm scared.
I'm gonna be honest, Professor, it seems like there's too many ways in which this tower can collapse in 1d4 rounds.
In fact, it seems a lot of your encounters seem to have "tpk in 1d4 rounds" in it.
Yet it didn't. Because my players know I will kill them, they are very cautious and more willing to negotiate or retreat. Consider this: doesn't every action movie you've every seen have a time limit? Avengers, Star Wars, Batman, Star Trek, James Bond--all the movies have limits--usually bombs. Time limits jack up the tension.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 i might have expressed myself abrasively here; I think it's perfectly acceptable to have this 1d4 time limit for the exact reasons you state. Though i was definitely surprised with several of these death counters running in parallel in the same encounter.
I let people run away if things go bad.
Because you cannot be ambushed by a dragon and not see it coming.
Great video, I strongly believe in giving players "mindful challenge" rather doing CR math. I also think that big challenges are a lot more fun for everyone if the consequence for huge failure isn't death. Being captured, creating a new villain, etc. are all great ways to keep the players fearful of failure without losing characters. And telling players what is on the line should they fail is super important!
I once attacked a player’s prof bonus with a custom wraith. Each attack lowered it by one. He had been playing for 30 years and I was able to freak him out.
Ran a few games where werewolves get in close enough to engage in a wrestling match and out strength/ dex roll the PCs. Slow death without a magic weapon to swing.
That is so incredibly cheap. So, the only way you could provide a challenge to the character was to arbitrarily screw their abilities? Must have been so much fun...for you.
@@mattpace1026 It wasn’t at all. Older editions of D&D had monsters that would drain your Ability Scores and some monsters even had level drain. (Which yeah level drain sucks).
I wanted something similar to level drain but not as punishing and not permanent (as I stated earlier, level drain sucked).
I also wanted to make Wraiths terrifying. A death spiral design was intentional.
I reassured him sure he would get his prof back at the end of a long rest. In the end it was just a character without his +3 proficiency bonus to his attacks and some skills. Not too big of a penalty. I landed only one hit with the wraith on him, so he lost -1 prof for the day.
My players enjoyed the fight!
This is evil. I love it!
Bonus points if you worded it like it would be permanent when in actually it wasn't
I'm confident that my players would befriend the doggos and turn them on the house. Great video as always Professor! You inspired me, Ill give it a go and see what they come up with.
Village chief lawman looks at a group of adventures and a wrymling red dragon, " You have a permit for that creature ?"
Red dragon wrymling, " Creature is one, and since there is more than one, you should have said .. creatures. And why would I need a Permit for my lackeys ?"
@@krispalermo8133 sounds about right to me.
I think that the 'Challenge' should meet the Player(s) abilities, how 'Mature' they are and 'Coping Skills'.Besides running a campaign with my 60yo sister (Who's never played) I was asked to run one with some 'Special Needs' Adults, so I have several things to take into account when DM-ing each campaign.
Absolutely. I have also run games for special needs kids and adults. I always make modifications and adjust the difficulty level for the audience. My recommendation for easing new players into the game is the XD20 system from Tracy Hickaman's XDM: Extreme Dungeon Mastery.
Couldn't agree more. D&D isn't a board game. It's about great stories.
Social groupings ..
a.) Wood goblins, they raid and eat humans but they will save humans for last cause they think humans don't taste very good and they would rather eat a rat, and all around not very nice to .. other .. goblin tribes.
b.) Field goblins, they don't have a problem with eating field rats/ snakes season with human herbs cooked with render pig fat. More than happy to live in a farmers' barn eating rats and doing choirs during the night. They function as village watchmen at night.
c.) merchant goblin, few goblins become traveling merchants cause humans refuse to cut them a fair deal, also goblins till to be den/ home bodies. But they will learn a craft or hawker at a tower market square during fair days.
Goblins tend to be incline to lawful evil behavior and have a strange way for giving and keeping their .. Word.
But if you stroke their ego, they are more than willing to Prove their word. .. for a price.
Goblin, " Humans like a nice fat rabbit, and we get all the tasty rats ! "
Human, " You're a little pig thief rat hunter."
Goblin, " Rat do taste good cooked with pig fat ! "
Human looks at his friends sideways and says to the goblin, " If you can catch 20 rats out of my barn, my wife will cook a feast of rats in pig fat and herbs."
Goblin, " Deal ! "
Before half day, the single goblin catches sixty rats out of the farmers barn. The farmer's wife cooks a feast for the goblin and the farmer smokes the rest for long time storage. The hamlet gains a goblin as a night watch.
I fear modern players only like it on easy mode and don't know what to do with challenges where the answers aren't spoonfed to them. I don't say that as a grognard on the sidelines, I say it as someone playing with these people.
Hi PDM Dan,
Once again an interesting and useful video. I wholeheartedly agree. For me the fun is in the drama , and the heart of drama is fear , or at least uncertainty of outcome.
I roll in the open. Dice usually decide whether the shit hits the fan of not.
"May all your rolls be twenties" ... not in this frail tower ^^
So I posted this take on reddit in DMAcademy about 4 months ago and it was very controversial. But my belief is that if you are balancing encounters (which in 5e means the encounters can be overcome without permanent negative consequences) then you are railroading the players and invalidating their choices. Good choices and bad choices don't matter because you as the DM have already determined that this encounter must be overcome.
As someone who used to run a lot of Pathfinder, I totally agree. It pains me that most games can't be ran without a sense of "balance". Throw a manticore at a low level party in PF2e. They have almost zero chance of hurting it, mathematically speaking. The "danger" is only coming from the statistics, rather than the Fiction, which makes for a good boardgame, but a bad RPG. No clever planning or trickery or tactics can save you there. That's why this is a controversial topic. People don't want to move outside of the safe, mathematically sound framework.
Another great video with useful information. Can’t wait for more Veiled Society content
A reminder that _balanced_ doesn't mean that an encounter is just strong enough to challenge the players, it means that players should have a very high chance of failure, as in, _it hangs in the balance._
Exactly
I like ur encounter, very interesting and well made.
Have you ever tried to incorporate black powder weapons like a handgonne, wheel lock or Arquebus into game play and how do you balance it out to where it doesn't break the game?
Yes. d10 damage. Ignores all armor. Takes 12 rounds to load. It's essentially one and done for that combat. BTW--I remade this episode with more minis and models. Check it out! ruclips.net/video/95zr1mmx4vM/видео.html
I think my fellow players are starting to feel unsatisfied. At 10th level, I'm turning some undead, and banishing elementals and other creatures not native to our plane, before our fighters managed to kill them.
End the campaign and start again!
Character fails con save: "No point in mentioning these bats, poor bastards will see them soon enough."
Fear & loathing. This literary allusion gets you +300xp.
I killed my players last session I DM’d, and they told me it was the most fun they had playing dnd. I had made a tough but fair encounter.
Awesome!
as Conan said "All that matters is that today, two stood against many"
Balanced encounter, followed by unbalanced encounter in player favor, followed 2 balanced encounters and the unbalanced in enemy favor....game is balanced but not all of the encounters are
I agree.
I think it's good to consider what kind of players you have too.
New to the game? Veterans with decades under the belt? Strategists? Folks who barely understand the rules?
I can see this perspective with a table full of vets, but not with newbs who really are excited to just survive the mundane at this point.
Also, I think few players get bored with "winning" any tabletop RPG unless you really are the type of DM who does everything by the book, and each encounter is a perfect CR challenge. That definitely would be boring!
Personally, I don't use CR at all, and I try to add a little spice here and there as we go.
I don't think every encounter should be "deadly" or a super mix, but I do think those should be in the mix somewhere, especially down the line. They serve as a great crescendo! :)
Players remember: Running away is also an option. Unless you can't. Then there's martyrdom
Running is an option unless your enemies have a higher speed than you and have a reason to chase you. #dwarfproblems
@@DecidedlyNinja 50% of dwarves in heavy armors don't survive their first foray into the dungeon. You can help poor dwarves get lighter, mithril armors by calling 1-500-SAVE-BRUENOR
Do the players know the result of the D4 for the room explosion?
Yes.
I am always frustrated by people insisting on balanced D&D encounters. All good points.
Wait!! WHAT!!!?? HE SWORE!!! LIKE TWICE!!!!.......But he wears a suit???
......but nooo tie?, hmmmm???, the clues were there, the clues were there.......
Last time I was this early Deathbringer was unpainted.
I like your way of thinking, but it can be…. Difficult. I think that making an umbalanced encounter is easy: just put a big monster or too many enemies against a group of player and it’s done.
The real problem, for me, is to make a difficult encounter seem hard but still enjoyable, “narratively fair” and NOT like a bully trying to flex their strengh.
To put it in an exemple, I’d like my encounters to feel like “basket ball kids VS good and trained basket ball kids” and NOT “basket ball kids VS MBA superstars”😂
Thanks for taking the time to share. My wife would agree--my thinking IS difficult! If you thought this video was decent, you would enjoy The Reviled Society. I took all the models in this video, added new shots, and turned it into a three-part campaign series. Check it out! ruclips.net/video/W8JBzKCa3rk/видео.html
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 thank you for the answer and the suggestion, but I can only watch the first episode. The other 2 are hidden
@@88Kinshin They will are released over the next 2-3 weeks.
If there’s no threat of death, it’s not a balanced encounter - it’s too easy.
+100xp for your insight. You are wise.
I Love ALL Dungeon Craft videos! Especially his back catalog.
Munchbergers and Weisbiers.... sounds like a fine lunch
I disagree completely with this video. First, I think the idea of "Balance" portrayed here is over simplified. Everyone knows there are different difficulty levels of encounters. So I don't think anyone actually means that "balance" is some kind of perfect difficulty. What people mean by balance, is that a fight has the difficulty that is intended by the GM and feels fair to the players. And yes, all the examples shown in the movies, were balanced. Why? Because the writer had full control over the outcome. The wraiths didn't accidentally succeed on their perception check, Darth Vader didn't accidentally one-shot Luke with a critical hit. Everyone in these scenes succeded and failed exactly when and where the writer wanted them to. Basically, the encounter was balanced because the GM was fudging the dice. When people say something is unbalanced, what I think they mean is that either the GM had over/underestimated things resulting in an unsatisfying outcome. Or the players feel they stumbled/were forced into a situation that they had no way of knowing it was a one they had no way of getting out alive. Even if technically they did, it's about the perception. Because let's not forget, the players are sitting across the table of someone who is practically a god in their fictional world. And I don't think you want a situation where the players think that their "god" is abusing their powers.
I also think "If characters aren't ever in danger, there's nothing at stake" is a huge disservice to story telling. Case in point, Critical role managed to get a huge audience even though characters barely ever die there. If the only risk you can think of in your game is your player characters dying, you don't have an interesting campaign because nothing in the campaign matters more than the lives of the player characters. In Lord of the Rings, the campaign is not about keeping Frodo alive, it's about making sure the one ring doesn't fall into the wrong hands (by destroying it). And there's plenty of other stories out there, that we know none of the main cast is going to die in, yet they are still entertaining. Conversely, there have been stories where the frequency of character death is so high, people have often stopped caring about characters altogether because their presence had become nothing more than being "the next on the chopping block". And yes, there are people who play TTRPGs like that, where they don't bother giving their character so much as even a name untill said character has survived at least a few sessions.
That's not to say there's no place for these kind of encounters in TTPRGs. But I think it's more a matter of preference rather than a matter of fact.
The fact that he's using movie scenes as examples of balance implies he views D&D games as scripts to be followed, which is a huge red flag. Maybe his "unbalanced" encounters are just punishments for his players leaving his railroad.
Do we have any links for the morale check ruleset?
The old B/X and BECMI D&D rules featured Morale. As do the newer OSR versions of them like Old School Essentials and Basic Fantasy. Each creature type has a morale rating which you roll 2d6 against at certain points such as when half the group of creatures is dead, or big bad has lost half hp, but it's GM's call when to do so based on situation. It's one of those simple mechanics which were unfortunately dropped from official rules long ago, but shouldn't have been. Easy and convenient way to differentiate how brave/foolish each monster type is, and when they'll flee or try to make a deal for their lives when things are going badly for them.
Please.. I’m begging here. Could you create a playlist of just encounters. Y our encounters are just the best. Thanks for doing what you do prof!
Brute force has failed? You haven't used enough of it!!
Steal the McGuffin? Nah. DESTROY the McGuffin!!
That tower would have fallen after round 2 in a fiery wreck.
You tell players how something will explode, they'll make it happen.
100% agree. I have told every group that starts with me DMing, ' It is not my goal to kill off your character, it is your goal to keep your character alive'. I have never had players so upset with me over 'unbalanced combat' until I started playing again using 5th edition.
The unbalance to me is not in the playing, it is built into PCs. In 5th you simply level up and aquire power, skills and even new classes. You don't adventure for your power, it's already built in.
I loved AD&D and I remember when Class Kits came out and everyone thought they were totally awesome and they were!until DMs realized it robbed their players of the magic of imagination. Its been a slow down hill from here.
Randomly running into liches in Baldur's Gate 2 and random encounters in other games that I far underestimated are much more memorable than encounters that were fairly balanced. Also makes the world feel more complete and alive.
Well BG2 does have the advantage of having a reload feature if you get in over your head. I'm sure the game would have got old if you had to start over from scratch everytime you died with a new character.
AMEN
I clicked "Like" so hard that I sprained my thumb. You'll be hearing from my attorney.
Are you telling me that the last 60 sessions of my painstakingly calculated medium to hard encounters have been boring?
Next session I'm throwing a Tarrasque at them.... no...Three Tarrasques.
It's easy to have a seemingly scary encounters that doesn't turn into a TPK, IF you don't use game rules. If the Ringwraiths actually rolled Perception and attack rolls versus the hobbits in a D&D game, the Ring would have been in Morder a lot sooner.
Darth Vader wasn't trying to kill Luke on Cloud City. If he wanted to kill Luke, then Luke would have been dead in seconds. When Vader was trying to kill Luke and had a lock on Luke's X-Wing, Vader missed (DM fiat) before Han shot Vader's wingman. Had it come down to dice, Luke would have died.
You this; but I recently had a campaign fail because I used a Pathfinder one shot (Sundered Waves) as a 5E campaign. Nobody died nor even fell unconscious, and they stopped attacking him after he got below 20hp and summoned 3 skeletons.
For clarification; they had just long rested and I skipped the CR 3 skeleton alligator because I felt it may be too much with the 2 CR 2 water weird and CR 3.5-4 boss skeleton for 4 level 4 characters. (I had originally balanced it for 6 PCs)
I really don’t understand why that made them upset. It was a good fight that left them bruised but not dead and they got paid to over 1,500 gp for it. (High gold campaign in order to afford upgrades and repairs for their ship)
The early, iconic adventures like T1 (the Village of Hommlet) and S1 (the legendary Tomb of Horrors) were not balanced. They were total meat grinders designed to destroy players who preferred the hack n’ slash frontal assault. What was great about these old, unbalanced adventures was they required ingenuity on the part of the players. In the case of T1, a low level party (unless 9+ strong) needed to use some deception and stealth (long before these were actual skills) to infiltrate the bad guys’ stronghold. Level gain in this 1e adventure came primarily from looting the large amounts of treasure hidden in the module (which, if the party revealed its source, could get them killed). Same for S1, which abounded with “one-shot” traps and not many creatures-but the insane treasure, if discovered and looted, would assure a sizable chunk of experience, even for the higher level characters. Should I even discuss the Giant or Drow adventures (G 1 - 3 and D 1 - 3)? Is Snurre’s hall, or Erelhei Cinlu, a balanced encounter?
Even the simple B2 (the Keep on the Borderlands) had areas loaded with unbalanced creature encounters-enough to assure a TPK for 1st level neophytes. And this was a beginning adventure (albeit B/X rather than 1e). Again, it was the party’s job to know when to fight, when to run away, and always to figure out how to loot while avoiding large battles.
Love the miniatures, mood, and methods in this adventure. The alchemist minis are frightening! And the timer before the big bang is an excellent analog representation of the last board of a video game, where the hero(es) need to get out before the place goes MOAB and it’s over, regardless on the mission’s success. Talk about showing new players how balanced encounters are not for real adventurers!
As usual, great job, Professor Dungeon Master. Your channel is a trove of valuable information for fantasy/S&S role players. Thanks for all of your hard work putting these together.
I'll say it again. I REALLY like those plague doctor minis!
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My proposed solution for the encounter: make the tower topple and pick through the debris for the quest item. But that may not work for all randomly generated missions.
I'm a fan of the Dungeon Crawl Classics school of balancing encounters (TLDR; don't). And I like Davvy Chappy's assessment of the DM trying to balance encounters and how ridiculous it is, essentially racking your brains to make encounters challenging enough to be fun and defeat boredom, but not challenging enough that someone dies or so challenging someone rage quits. (paraphrase)
I started my last session (like my fifth with that group, two of my brothers, or like 7th session total,) with them following trails of four spies going into the woods. They were two level 2 characters, so I entered that in D&DBeyond's encounter builder and 2 CR 1/4 drow + 2 CR 1/8 kobolds were going to be an encounter bordering on deadly. Since I wasn't expecting my players to be fighting them to the death, as they needed information and I made it very clear they were outnumbered and the spy they talked to was very confident about having the upper hand, so I allowed it to be up to deadly, even though it's been a while since we last played. My players weren't very tactical about it and ended up attacking, opening with Inflict Wounds... nat 1 (again lol).
Then came a whole round of my players missing everything and the spies hitting everything (though I made sure to spread the damage, both being realistic and helping balance what went down). I had the spy the party was familiar with shout out "You can still walk away!", which the less aggressive PC happily did.
The encounter ended with me describing the other player as outnumbered 4 to 1, abandoned by his only ally, fighting enemies that seemed to take him down effortlessly, and him deciding to retreat as well.
Making balanced encounters (neither too easy, nor too hard,) is impossible. Balancing unbalanced encounters as you go is a fine art worth mastering if you are a DM.
Also, do mix up encounter difficulty. Their next encounter was just the 2 1/8 kobolds, which they made short work of. Letting your players decide when to fight and when to avoid fighting is part of a balanced campaign, where applying common sense and players making decisions for themselves are made crucial.
hey professor, how do you handle healing?
how potion, spells and long rest works in a low fantasy osr game?
Im rather lucky. On the second campaign in the same world, with mostly the same group. One original player (my wife). Two that came in at around level 10 on the first campaign. Started with 5 players but sitting nicely with 4. This has been going nearly 3 years now. just about every Sunday.
Grognards everywhere approve of this message! PS- To one and all, palace/castle/elite city guards are supposed to be bad-sses, not cannon fodder. Level the baddies up and make em work for it, Think Swiss Guards at the Vatican... and keep the polyhedrons rolling! 8>D
I'm fine with unbalanced encounters, but there are risks.
1. I don't toss them against players who aren't used to it -- age, play style, etc.
2. You do use them sparingly. It is too easy to TPK the party or else 'intervene' to save them and that gets boring.
3. But some in where it is unbalanced in the player's favor. Sometimes it is nice just to let the players slaughter less creatures -- especially in a case where they setup surprise, ambush, etc. It's also quick to run.
4. As said, give fair warning.
5. Start with it balanced and put specific things in to unbalance it. A mundane encounter with a timer, some other issue, terrain, etc. can make things fun.
6. I sometimes like giving my party a 'get out of jail free' item -- say a ring of wishes or a teleport scroll (even at low levels). Single use, but if the encounter is just off (either from poor DM planning, stupid actions, fail to describe something well enough, etc.) then the PCs can "I wish I was out of this collapsing tower". Most players horse such items, so typically not a problem they will take stupid risks because of it.
7. I often find the best "unbalanced" encounters are actually balanced, just hard for the players to calculate the odds. My of my best encounters was a group of 4th-level PCs with two NPCs going after a frost giant, two winter wolves, two heavily armored hobgoblins, and 10 ogres in the nearby room. Insanely overpowered, except... one of the NPCs was equal to the giant, and all the PCs really needed to do deal with the hobgoblins, bar the door, and keep anyone from opening it. I've run the encounter like four times and each time the players thought it was insane and were so happy they succeeded. (and never tell the players that every other group succeeded also)
Why Professor Dungeon Master is the goat - today on…
Edit: Was Die Hard balanced? Was Predator balanced? Was Rambo balanced?… Well maybe, the guy is a one man army.
Dear Professor! As if you read my mind! I found my ''DM philosophy'' twin! ;)
Players also enjoy the occasional beat-down -- a combat encounter that's imbalanced in their favor. Every now and then, they just WRECK some opponents who deserve it.
But even when the players easily win, there should be a wrinkle, a complication. Maybe an enemy scores a bit of lasting damage before he dies, or he steals (or destroys) something valuable. It keeps the story moving forward.
I'm DMing and also playing a halfling rogue in Lost mines of Phandelver. I'm still kinda new to D&D so its awesome but me and my niece got knocked out trying to save Sildar Hallwinter from the Cragmaws. We only lived because my nephew used Magic missile to end the fight. My niece and I had already failed twice on our saving throws. The adventures calls for four players but its just us three.
Awesome! I’ve been rewatching the Room Design videos over again. Thanks for your take!
I had this video sent to me by someone arguing for a complete disregard for the strength of the party. I was expecting some nonsense just as dumb, but this is perfectly reasonable. Not every fight should be 'balanced', fights SHOULD be hard. Some should even be deadly. But they should be appropriate.
The party shouldn't get a super easy fight from one hyped up all game because the DM decided to just throw something together without thinking about the party's strength. And the party shouldn't get destroyed by bandits that should've been easy because the DM forgot the party was lv1 and that action economy is nuclear.
I like difficulty, not DM incompetence
I do what Metroid Prime did. After every levelup/power up, new magic item, after a boss ect. I drop difficulty but use the same monsters. Example: During a campaign I was fudging healths. Before killing the leader of the Blacktooth Ridge Ogres; a single or two ogres were rough to face, but after the big bossfight and level up, I gave them Orc stats with large size, they were taking on more and feeling badass while doing it.
As far as hardening the difficulty, I run sandboxy games. If they ignore the content close to them, they will get creamed by the _fair_ content farther from civilization.
If something is impossible, I won't have them roll, it isn't possible.
If they can't beat a foe, I'll tell them what their _experienced and competent_ heroes know and could judge.
I think it's a lot more to setting up an insurmountable task though. Like some deliberate thought about how you present the scenario/encounters will definitely affect their view on what options exist?
Huge difference between new & experienced players on this one as well. If I think back to my introduction to D&D we had some gruesomely flat games. Blunt deaths, no narrative progression, no idea what options we had or set up (info/objects) along the way to the encounter. Weirdly enough even through that, I really fell for the imaginative storytelling you'd act & visulize with your friends.
/Still not totally reconciled with Call of Cthulhu though, It's a pointless fight that you're doomed to lose. ;P