Player feels encounter was "unfair."


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Shadow Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber

I debated whether to tell him they'd hit, but I reasoned that since it was an elemental, and thus made out of air itself, there'd be no reason to have the bullets react very different. I wasn't sure if this was the best call at the time.


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The Morphling wrote:
I debated whether to tell him they'd hit, but I reasoned that since it was an elemental, and thus made out of air itself, there'd be no reason to have the bullets react very different. I wasn't sure if this was the best call at the time.

Spray of bullets probably means you'll notice if some of them just vanished and didn't kick up any dirt. And there's the fact it would probably scream or something. Heck, whose to say they don't bleed wisps of distorted air or something?

Like I said, best to just err on the side of giving up more information. It is almost always for the best, and helps the player's navigate the world better.

Contributor

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Ask your player this simple question:

"How many of your real life, day-to-day encounters are fair?"

Unfairness is the essence of roleplaying.


Read the first couple of posts, but my 2 coppers is that your player needs to grow up. That's a very immature way of looking at this encounter. Nobody died, it wasn't a TPK and just because he wasn't the star of the show the first time around doesn't make it an unfair encounter. You played it perfectly with your hit and run tactics against a party that SHOULD have been better prepared for invisible creatures, especially at their level.


Bruunwald wrote:
EDIT: Are you saying there were actually 3 stalkers? Because that's an EL 10 vs an APL of 8, being generous. PLUS the rickety boards. Probably EL 11, all told, easy.

As far as I've understood it, the actual encounter was with 2 stalkers, but the players mistakenly thought there were 3.


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I actually love these kinds of encounters and think they're a super important part of making an exciting game. Not *every* encounter mind you, but making an encounter that exploits the weaknesses of a player is one thing. Making an encounter that exploits the weaknesses of the *team* is awesome... Even more stunning that the team would be built in such a way that to handle something as run of the mill as invisibility is a problem. Hard lesson learned the hard way. It's cool and I'll bet they'll be ok with it at the end of the day...

Nobody likes being hit in their sensitive spot and this was sneak attack damage to the player's sense of how ready he was for appropriate encounters of the level he's currently at. The gunslinger in particular has just now learned one of the many things that gunslingers aren't particularly good at. Now it's his turn to find ways to help his character against invisible creatures whether thats a magic item or a spell from one of his buddies. Not everybody's good at everything.

I think this encounter worked out exactly as it should have and that maybe the player overreacted in the moment out of frustration. A gunslinger in particular is the kinda guy who solves problems by pointing and shooting them so his weakness might be no area of effect attacks or not enough points in perception.... This fight was not designed as his opportunity to shine. And those kind of battles are great, IMHO.

It didn't violate CR... Me personally? Wouldnt change a thing. I would definitely let the player know that there will be encounters that are built specifically to target the holes in his build. And thats an important part of every good campaign.. If I notice nobody in the party is putting points into the swim skill you better believe I'm gonna have a river. Hopefully given time to think about it he'll realize how much the battle got him excited and engaged instead of how much the battle got him pissed.


Alexander Augunas wrote:

Ask your player this simple question:

"How many of your real life, day-to-day encounters are fair?"

Unfairness is the essence of roleplaying.

Yes, but remember, this is still a system of numbers based upon probability of success. CR (APL+5) should be around the max, or if the party is more than 4 people, CR (character level +1) should be the max per person if going for a "boss" encounter at the end of a campaign.

Then again, this is out of the scope of what you are getting at, so Carry on, carry on.


Kirth Gersen wrote:
Hitdice wrote:
(Kirth, weren't we going to talk about the difference between optimization, and specialization, with DM collusion taken into account, on some other thread?)
I forgot -- and, anyway, did that thread get locked? Or just abandoned?

The thread was abanocked.


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Alexander Augunas wrote:

Ask your player this simple question:

"How many of your real life, day-to-day encounters are fair?"

Unfairness is the essence of roleplaying.

I'd probably tell a DM who said that to stuff his self-righteous attitude and realize we're here to play a game and have fun.

The whole fact there ARE CRs and encounter design inherently means things should be "fair" on some level. A DM who can't realize that has some sort of problem that may or may not affect the quality of his game.


I think throwing things with SR would be better as Witch, druid and alchemist use spells.

Liberty's Edge

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From the perspective of the PCs, they were up against an unknown number of invisible enemies, they did kill one pretty easily but just could not reach the others (in fact could not even detect them and apparently did not hurt them). It would stand to reason that they felt overwhelmed and that this was all a trap encounter that they had zero chance to win. Especially since they had no reason to believe that all of their attackers were similar to the one they killed, quite the opposite.

You know that it was not so because you are the GM and you know the truth of the encounter. The players do not. And the PCs even less.


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Maybe he's just scared because that third one is still out there ;)


SiuoL wrote:
I think throwing things with SR would be better as Witch, druid and alchemist use spells.

Alchemist yeah, but the witch has a lot of supernaturals to fall back on and the druid has a lot of indirect abilities to use too allowing those two at least to avoid some of the problems SR seeks to provide.

The alchemist could also go buff crazy and simply be whacking things.


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The black raven wrote:

From the perspective of the PCs, they were up against an unknown number of invisible enemies, they did kill one pretty easily but just could not reach the others (in fact could not even detect them and apparently did not hurt them). It would stand to reason that they felt overwhelmed and that this was all a trap encounter that they had zero chance to win. Especially since they had no reason to believe that all of their attackers were similar to the one they killed, quite the opposite.

You know that it was not so because you are the GM and you know the truth of the encounter. The players do not. And the PCs even less.

I play and GM so I have to disagree with you here.

The problem arises when players think that they should know everything about anything that they fight. The game doesn't always work like. Sure they may have felt overwhelmed not knowing how many invisible creatures they were facing, but that's precisely the point. There are times players can brute force bust faces and times when they have to be more tactical and know when to back off and come back another day to play.

When I GM I tell my players up front that there are areas in the world where they can get TPK'd pretty easily such as them knowing the location of an ancient red dragon that has been on a rampage. They can choose to try their luck at any time, but they know they will die unless they are prepared.

The problem here is that with this level of encounter players know enough about the world to be more prepared to face invisible foes. The fault does not lie with the GM and the game he has prepared, it moves into the players' corner and them going in with enough spells or not even having something as simple flour to toss out on the ground.


Going on what uber nerd says, Now could be a good time to point the gunslinger's player towards Ashiel's wonderful adventuring preparedness guides and TARKXT's combat 101 guides. Those are much better to memorize than the bestiary, which he seems to have been trying to memorize.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I think this is a situation where you might encourage your players to think of non-linear solutions to their problems.

A gunslinger can solve 90% of his combat problems in the game by shooting it to death. Which is good, but now he's out of his comfort zone he should think about every resource he has and try to make use of it.

I would suggest to him: "Okay there's an invisible foe, do you have anything on you that might negate that advantage? Take a look through your inventory."

A bag of flour (or in this case a handful of Gunpowder) would make it easier to find the Invisible Stalker. Add to that some alchemist's fire and you have a recipe for dead invisible stalker.

Talk to your player about not limiting his own actions, and thinking about creative solutions to tricky problems.


Another thing to point out, while the "player" may know what they are fighting and such. The "character" may not. Was this their first time running into one? If so, since you say this guy likes to RP a lot, he of ALL people should be doing that, instead of "omg, are there more then 2? That's not fair, QQ."

So, while it may be rude, throw back in their face that they are losing opportunities to role-play even more by doing encounters like that.


There is a shift in the game when level appropriate monsters start using "magic" instead of just weapons. If this kind of encounter is new for the group, then one invisible creature would have sufficed, accompanied by a few other critters. But your battle was not out of line. In the future they will be better prepared. Wait till they start failing saves for debuffs, charms, and the such. There might be a new batch of complaints.


Adamantine Dragon wrote:

Again, this sounds like a group dynamics problem.

You need to sit down with this player and essentially create a social contract that describes how the game will be run. If he won't agree to one that is agreeable to you, then you are incompatible at the game table.

This is not a game problem. This is a social dynamics problem. You have to deal with it that way.

I agree with Adamantine Dragon. Of course, if he doesn't agree, then, you have to decide what to do with the incompatible player.


I think a lot of this depends on your play style and what "rules" you as the GM are beholden to. In my group, the players know that I don't really follow any of the soft rules, such a CR-equivalent fights, wealth-by-level, etc. There will definitely be times where there is an opponent that the PCs cannot defeat.

If your agreement with your PCs (either explicitly stated or assumed based on past experience) is that every encounter they get in must fall someone on the chart of challenge difficulty, then maybe this one was slightly too powerful.

More likely than not, this is simply a player frustrated due to the fact that he did not expect invisible opponents.

Liberty's Edge

ub3r_n3rd wrote:
When I GM I tell my players up front that there are areas in the world where they can get TPK'd pretty easily such as them knowing the location of an ancient red dragon that has been on a rampage. They can choose to try their luck at any time, but they know they will die unless they are prepared.

With this kind of advance warning, I agree that players cannot really complain overmuch, except of course if low CR encounters keep on disappearing after the PCs advance in levels ;-)

But the OP never said he gave this kind of notice about his playstyle to his players

Quote:
The problem here is that with this level of encounter players know enough about the world to be more prepared to face invisible foes. The fault does not lie with the GM and the game he has prepared, it moves into the players' corner and them going in with enough spells or not even having something as simple flour to toss out on the ground.

That I absolutely do not agree with. It is the very first time these players enter 7th-level territory. Unless the GM already warned them of the new abilities monsters will exhibit at this level, they can only rely on their own experience, which is of enemies who do NOT have this kind of abilities.

Expecting them to be prepared to face things they have never encountered (or even heard of before) IS metagaming.

bfobar wrote:
Going on what uber nerd says, Now could be a good time to point the gunslinger's player towards Ashiel's wonderful adventuring preparedness guides and TARKXT's combat 101 guides. Those are much better to memorize than the bestiary, which he seems to have been trying to memorize.

Actually, I consider this even worse metagaming than reading the Bestiary (as you can always reskin monsters on the fly).

To the OP, it seems to me that your player is definitely not confident in his ability to have his character survive the game. And likely he invested a lot of emotional attachment there. You need to reassure him that his PC will still be able to contribute to fight later on AND have not only a fighting chance, but a reasonable survival rate.

If this is not enough, it likely means that the trust your player puts in you is not yet high enough compared to his fear of his character dying. This can be improved through talking and especially working out the social contract of gaming you are both comfortable with.

Note that some players have such a high fear of their character dying and high emotional investment that it verges on a phobia (ie quite irrational behaviour). if such is the case, you will need to take great precautions in managing your player's emotions.

It is a difficult and even thankless job, but you accepted it when your players put the fate of their characters in your hands.


The Morphling wrote:

My party of 5 7th level characters recently found themselves ambushed by two invisible stalkers while walking across some rickety planks above a nasty pit. The druid had a single casting of faerie fire, and managed to land it quite well on one of the two (the round after a full attack dropped her to 3 hit points).

The witch, druid, and alchemist made short work of that one while the monk and gunslinger took a severe beating from the other one across the room. They both acrobatics'd their way out (guessing expertly which square it was striking from) and then huddled in a corner with the others while it attacked them with hit-and-run tactics (stealth up one round - next round, attack and flee). They quickly became convinced there was more than just one remaining, and fled. Luckily, it was bound to a single chamber and didn't follow them.

The gunslinger was furious at me for throwing such an "unfair" encounter at the party, despite the fact that they trampled half of it easily and escaped unscathed. They came back the next day loaded with piles of invisibility-detection gear and killed the sole remaining stalker in seconds.

Is my player's anger justified? I felt the encounter went beautifully - they faced a difficult challenge and had to work hard to overcome it. Particularly because the gunslinger is such a devastating combatant, it was nice to see how he'd adapt when facing a foe that was difficult for his arsenal to affect (lots of gunshots and attacks were fired into empty squares). How would you respond to a player being unhappy with a situation like this?

I think I know what AP this if from, and things will get worse. If this is not from an AP I will still say that encounter was fair. By 7th level parties should be able to deal with flying and invisible creatures.

PS: If this is an AP, then I know what it is, and he will be complaining even more later on.


Abraham spalding wrote:
SiuoL wrote:
I think throwing things with SR would be better as Witch, druid and alchemist use spells.

Alchemist yeah, but the witch has a lot of supernaturals to fall back on and the druid has a lot of indirect abilities to use too allowing those two at least to avoid some of the problems SR seeks to provide.

The alchemist could also go buff crazy and simply be whacking things.

In that case, anti magic field?


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Twoswords wrote:
Invisible creatures? Could have been thwarted by a bag of flour....

Would that have worked in this case, against a creature of elemental air like an invisible stalker? I am not cracking wise here; I'm just not familiar enough with Pathfinder's rules.

The encounter was not remotely unfair. The toughest lesson for a gunslinger: Guns do not solve every problem.


The black raven wrote:


With this kind of advance warning, I agree that players cannot really complain overmuch, except of course if low CR encounters keep on disappearing after the PCs advance in levels ;-)

I just tell my players that I don't give XP for anything less than CR-3. So as they level up, it's assumed they run into the occasional hungry lone wolf, or get ambushed by goblins, or whatever. But it's become such a minor thing that they don't even use up resources on it. So they don't get XP for it, but we also don't take up game time having them kill of 5 attacking 1st level goblins who got in over their head. :)

Then again, I also use a kind of 'situational awareness' for games. That is, if you look at animals in the wild, they have a 6th sense what they can take down safely, and what they can't. Instinct wise. I assume wild beasts have this in game, and it's rare when a lone wolf would attack a bunch of adventurers, nor is it often that 4 gobby's attack 4 seasoned well equipped adventurers. It does happen, but no reason to slow down the game for it. Such minor encounters usually are assumed to fund such minor things as partying in town when they get back the first night. So reduced costs on partying here and there, non-encounters happen as backstory.

Liberty's Edge

I get your point, mdt, but really adding such a trivial encounter every now and then might work wonders for a gaming group's dynamics as it shows the players that they are still playing in the same world as when they were 1st level AND it allows them to fully enjoy their advanced abilities.

Obviously, this should be used very sparingly but it has its benefits IMO ;-)


Very fair encounter.

You have a druid. they have 9 ways from Sunday of shutting down invisibility.

Farie fire (get a wand, there's no save)
Blind sense (Hey guys, aim just below the bat.. and watch the friendly fire!)
Scent (where are they boy? Point boy. Good boy!)
Air elemental/whirlwind: I try to move through the entire room, one square at a time. Let me know when i bump into something.

Everyone delays until the druids turn, scent/blindsense then suck up the 50% miss chance.

Liberty's Edge

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BigNorseWolf wrote:

Very fair encounter.

You have a druid. they have 9 ways from Sunday of shutting down invisibility.

Farie fire (get a wand, there's no save)
Blind sense (Hey guys, aim just below the bat.. and watch the friendly fire!)
Scent (where are they boy? Point boy. Good boy!)
Air elemental/whirlwind: I try to move through the entire room, one square at a time. Let me know when i bump into something.

Everyone delays until the druids turn, scent/blindsense then suck up the 50% miss chance.

Problem here IMO is that we are all taking this for granted but the OP's players DO NOT.

Because they lack the experience-driven metagaming.

So we end up actually bashing players for NOT metagaming :-(((


The black raven wrote:


Problem here IMO is that we are all taking this for granted but the OP's players DO NOT.

Because they lack the experience-driven metagaming.

So we end up actually bashing players for NOT metagaming :-(((

Its not metagaming.

If you're fighting in the dark, and only one of you has night vision goggles, that person calls out their location (FOUR O CLOCK! FOUR O CLOCK!) and then the entire group lights it up. If you're standing there and don't see anything yet, then you wait. The party should know that the druid is.. well the party seeing eye dog. (and there's a reason my PFS druid didn't leave batform for 4 levels...)

The game represents that with a delayed (or held) action. Just because an action is represented with a game effect doesn't mean its metagaming. The player is waiting for another player to do their job, the character is waiting for another character to do their job. No meta-gaming required.


The black raven wrote:
BigNorseWolf wrote:

Very fair encounter.

You have a druid. they have 9 ways from Sunday of shutting down invisibility.

Farie fire (get a wand, there's no save)
Blind sense (Hey guys, aim just below the bat.. and watch the friendly fire!)
Scent (where are they boy? Point boy. Good boy!)
Air elemental/whirlwind: I try to move through the entire room, one square at a time. Let me know when i bump into something.

Everyone delays until the druids turn, scent/blindsense then suck up the 50% miss chance.

Problem here IMO is that we are all taking this for granted but the OP's players DO NOT.

Because they lack the experience-driven metagaming.

So we end up actually bashing players for NOT metagaming :-(((

The game assumes a certain tactical acumen. Part of that is the idea that at 7th level you ought to have some way to deal with invisible creatures. Spells to locate them have been around since 1st level, there are numerous cheap items to buy, being able to turn invisible can be done at 1st or 3rd level for many classes.

Hopefully if you don't think ahead, then getting into a tough spot will result in more planning for the future.

It's hardly metagaming for a group of adventurers to figure out how to handle enemy capabilities that they could easily be aware of. Heck, a 7th level wizard can cast Greater Invisibility and Fly. To say nothing of tons of other possible enemies.

And, to be fair to the characters, they grew up in a world with magic and this sort of craziness. So they likely know more about it than newer players.


The should. Be glad it happened, it will teach them not I maximaze, To buy scrolls ad learn blind fight


Was it unfair? Certainly!
At some point everyone has to learn to have fun through adversity. Nothing is going to go your way forever. Best to take a situation that is difficult for you and have fun with it. So don't feel sorry that you gave them an unfair situation; instead smile, hug them, and encourage them to overcome the difficulty.

I am reminded of a time when I was playing rifts and my little occult researcher was massively over shadowed by some gate guardians that the GM made to challenge a couple of the parties heavy hitters. I could have sulked that my attacks were pointless and whined to the GM... But instead during the fight I actually holstered my pistol and simply walked past the big fight to decipher the gate activation puzzle. It was perfectly in character to lose myself in mystic or scientific puzzles and fail to see the big picture going on around me, so I just went with it. The GM told me I had turned the whole encounter on it's ear by doing that. Now the guardian's were forced to focus attacks on a non-combatant and it placed them at a big disadvantage when the heavy hitters could free up those actions they were using for defense and open up on the guardians with all guns blazing. Sure I almost died. BUT I had fun and the group made sure I was equipped with a strong force field after that too; so it was a total win win situation.

Lantern Lodge

If the gunslinger translates his out-of-character frustration into in-game frustration, nothing is lost, and your campaign is better for it.

It's idealism meeting realism. Conflict makes for good story.

And from here, the party will know that the enemy has tricks, too. The difficulty, the lethality, the intensity, the immediacy of encounters have all been increased.

Make sure the party knows that tougher encounters is now the norm. "The enemy is firing real bullets," as my old history teacher would say.

Nothing will be easy from this point on. (Then maybe make the next encounter a little easier, so as to stress that the party's skill is improving steadily.)


It's only unfair if the DM forces a situation, simply because "they say so." Being reminded of a campaign that I was part of, in that the DM outright killed my character while trying to play off that I had an opportunity to survive via saves, afterwards telling me that my character had no chance of survival. All this, simply because my character was being thoroughly screwed with by the DM and was being an absolute skeptic and didn't like being toyed with. THAT's unfair.

Giving them a reasonably placed encounter with a fair chance of survival while still being slightly challenged, pshh, dude you are not in the wrong.

Dark Archive

Azten wrote:
Um, wouldn't he notice where the scattershot hit? I know they are tiny, but if flour makes invisible things visible, then he should get a check to notice the bullets floating in midair.

Flour does not actually make invisible things visible. It just becomes invisible the second it makes contact with the invisible creature's body. Now what it COULD do, assuming a cooperative GM, is make their tracks obvious if you throw flour all over the floor.


Powder

Powder wrote:

Source Advanced Player's Guide

Powdered chalk, flour, and similar materials are popular with adventurers for their utility in pinpointing invisible creatures. Throwing a bag of powder into a square is an attack against AC 5, and momentarily reveals if there is an invisible creature there. A much more effective method is to spread powder on a surface (which takes 1 full round) and look for footprints.


If you are looking for invisible things Prestidigitation worked in 3.5 and might still work in Pathfinder? I used it to create a soft rain of flower petals around me. However any prestidigitation created object vanished in 3.5 when it came into contact with stronger magic. So the square that had no petals falling into it was the square where the invisible guy was.


After reading through the tread, I spotted the big problem: Gunslinger!

Dark Archive

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Vincent Takeda wrote:

The gunslinger in particular has just now learned one of the many things that gunslingers aren't particularly good at. Now it's his turn to find ways to help his character against invisible creatures whether thats a magic item or a spell from one of his buddies. Not everybody's good at everything.

I think this encounter worked out exactly as it should have and that maybe the player overreacted in the moment out of frustration. A gunslinger in particular is the kinda guy who solves problems by pointing and shooting them so his weakness might be no area of effect attacks or not enough points in perception.... This fight was not designed as his opportunity to shine. And those kind of battles are great, IMHO.

It didn't violate CR... Me personally? Wouldnt change a thing. I would definitely let the player know that there will be encounters that are built specifically to target the holes in his build. And thats an important part of every good campaign.. If I notice nobody in the party is putting points into the swim skill you better believe I'm gonna have a river. Hopefully given time to think about it he'll realize how much the battle got him excited and engaged instead of how much the battle got him pissed.

Two things. A.) It is very easy to build a gunslinger that is 100% effective in all situations, period. And that isn't even an exaggeration.

B.) Going at the weak spots of specific party members is likely to make them simply quit the game if it happens more than a handful of times. I don't know of anyone that would enjoy routinely having their character wind up useless, especially if it is through no fault of their own. As for the swim skill, most classes just don't have the skill points to run it up very high. I dare say most people only have one point in it, and swim DCs are so low that that's usually enough. So if you see someone isn't running their swim skill absurdly high, do consider for a moment that they might just not have the option to. Challenge is a good thing. Intentionally invalidating people's characters frequently and as a matter of course (or taking advantage of the fact that mechanically, they just can't get their swim score higher than a very reasonable +6 or so) is off putting to a lot of people.

Also a quick note to Abraham Spalding: Note that it does not say the invisible creature becomes visible, nor is that even remotely close to being implied in the words. Revealing something is THERE and making it visible are two different things. Anyone attacking it will still take the miss chance as per invisibility.


The Morphling wrote:
The gunslinger did have a scatter weapon, and did hit the monster more than once with it. I didn't tell him whether he'd hit, though, and told him "You may have hit, but you can't see."

This is the only (and minor) thing I might suggest doing differently in the future. I think the game does typically assume that characters know when they hit something. Sounds like you ran a pretty tight ship overall though.

Lamontius has a good point, though. Your players are basically moving out of one "band" of levels (~1-6) and into another (~7-12/13) than can sometimes handle very differently.

A player quoting monster stats to the table that his character has no way of knowing is not cool and he should stop that.


Theres your problem right there.

The Beard wrote:
I don't know of anyone that would enjoy routinely having their character wind up useless

Challenging the part of your build that isn't good isn't the same as being useless. Sometimes it requires out of the box thinking to overcome, and thats almost always a good thing. Especially if it was specifically the point of the designed encounter.

To put it another way... If the point of 'facing 2 invisible foes' isnt 'lets see how well you can do against 2 invisible foes....' then whats the point of even having that encounter?

I've always believed that you should build your challenges in a way that the players will find fun and exciting, and that of course could be taken to the logical extreme that if your players never want to be challenged then never throw a challenge at them.... I've never sat at a table like that though.

From the sounds of it the initial reaction was that the encounter was horribly challenging, but truth be told not only was the party not prepared for it but defeated the enemy anyway *and* survived... Even if the group doesn't like to be challenged it sounds like this encounter lived up to their expectations at the end of the day.


DMs, according to some, shouldn't consistently target players' (or their characters') weaknesses ...

... but in-game enemies should absolutely target the weaknesses of characters.

That may not be inherently contradictory, but ... the balance is not easy to continually maintain, even for the best DMs.

So ... a game should be built so that the PCs:

  • essentially cannot win (<5%)
  • can come out the other side if everything breaks their way (6-15%)
  • have a fighting chance at victory (16-33%)
  • have relatively even odds of making it happen (34-67%)
  • customarily emerge on top (68-84%)
  • almost always get it done, and with relative ease (85-94%)
  • invariably triumph in curb-stomp fashion (>95%)

What say you?

(I myself have run versions two through five, and played in the same.)


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I'm a sandbox gm. Always have been always will be. My philosophy for encounter difficulty and design is that every campaign needs an even mix of challenging and easy elements.

-Take each player's character sheet and find the things they're really good at
-Then find the things they really suck at.

Try your best to make each session include something for each character that requires the use of that thing that they're really good at so they have a chance to shine and feel badass like they made a good choice.
Then make sure each session includes something for each character that requires the use of something that they suck at, to enforce the idea that nobody can do everything and that's why you're in a TEAM.
Give them plenty of encounters that are hordes of pushovers... nobody doesnt love laying waste to hordes of baddies.
Every once in a while toss in something that nobody in the entire team is equipped to deal with in a staggeringly obvious way to remind the players that no matter how powerful they get, they're small in a big big powerful world.


I recognize the encounter setup from an AP, so in this particular case I doubt the DM was specifically trying to target the party's weaknesses (unless he created an encounter that was very similar by chance).

If the encounter was from that AP, I'll note that the AP in question includes some parts that can be very rough on the survival of the PCs (especially if the players are new), while other parts are fairly easy.

Hopefully the OP's group makes it through to the end :)


I agree. In this case it sounds like an AP. For good or bad, the publisher thought 'this is something that is appropriate for a group to encounter at this point. The party winning and surviving even unprepared shows that the publisher wasn't necessarily in error.

I'm not sure I'd say I hope the players make it to the end, but I do hope either way that they enjoy the journey!

Dark Archive

I would not force PCs into an unwinnable situation without a viable means of escape, personally. There was a time when my goal was a GM was to build a giant pile of bodies, but that was over ten years ago. The primary job of the GM is to make sure everyone is having fun, and a reasonable challenge is part of that fun.

The challenge presented by the OP of this thread seems quite reasonable to me, and seemingly accomplished the goal of giving them a good time (except the gunslinger). You can't please everyone at any given time, but what you can do is ensure that people that do not appear to be having fun are provided with an opportunity to do so.

We'll use an example discussed above. Aiming at the weak spot of a build by designing an entire encounter around doing just that, while it will definitely offer a good challenge, is not for everyone. A group of casuals would probably have no idea how to handle it if all of their usual tactics went out the window. Scale the challenge to the party; don't necessarily expect the party to scale to the challenge. Obviously, this outlook may become more or less extreme depending on the players present. Sounds like the OP was doing things the right way for their group, at any rate.


I'd say that in my experience, I've discovered that a lot of players expect a smash-and-grab type adventure. (Again, my experience, not everyone.) In many cases I've had players get angry with me when opponents actually started using this mysterious thing called intelligence to fight. When you're fighting some brain-dead beast, yeah, it'll probably stick around and wail on you forever. However, when you're up against an intelligent creature, there are four of you, three of you can't harm it, and the one person that can is the squishy gunslinger hiding in the back, you can expect that it'll make a beeline for the gunslinger. (This is from my experience.)

I've also had several players in the past argue with me about the CR of encounters being too high, when the CR was actually equal to (or less than) the effective "CR" of the party. The way I've looked at it until now, is that usually, if the encounter is truly unfair, I'll get an inkling of that way before it comes into play. If an encounter truly ends up being unfair (Bonestorm, I'm looking at you), and I wasn't truly aware of it until it began, I will usually end up handicapping the monster in some way, by either toning down some of it's abilities or just reducing it's hitpoints overall.

To directly answer your question OP: No, I don't feel that that fight was unfair at all. The party handled it to the best of it's abilities, managed to escape relatively unscathed, and in fact came back for the cleanup later after figuring out where their frailty was. In fact, I should expect that in the future they will be far more prepared for invisible opponents, because they learned their lesson after this one.


The Beard wrote:


Going at the weak spots of specific party members is likely to make them simply quit the game if it happens more than a handful of times.

I'm not sure what kind of players you're dealing with, but intelligent enemies should target player character's weaknesses EVERY time. If they don't, then you're not playing the intelligent enemies fairly.

But as with everything else, this all boils down to how the group enjoys playing. I've had players tell me they didn't like it when their characters had long-term debuffs (poison, disease, curses). I've had players say they don't like fighting enemies with spell resistance. I've had players say they don't like it when they fight incorporeal enemies.

Does that mean I never used such enemies/tactics again? Of course not. Its part of the challenge of the game. And the game gives you the ability to compensate for it as player characters with feats, magic items, spells, etc.

If as a player you don't like fighting against things that poison or disease you because you'd prefer not to have to purchase a potion or two of cure poison/disease, or memorize that spell in a slot, etc., tough luck.

If as a player you only take the skills/feats that make your character more powerful overall, without ever taking into consideration the odd encounters that will hit you at your weaknesses, touch luck. You're more than welcome to make such a character, but you forfeit the legitimacy to complain about it when you had opportunities to compensate for it, but chose to put your skills/feats/money in a different direction.


Sounds to me like your player just had a learning experience.

Tell him to turn it into an opportunity for character growth and have his gunslinger come up with interesting ways to counter invisible enemies.

Shadow Lodge

Morphling - did the player actually say why he felt it was unfair? (if not, did you ask?)

That wasn't in your post and it's the most important part to answering this properly.

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