Here's a fairly abstract question:
So i have multiple players in the party. Some of them enjoy having a casual session in which they dont really want to be challeged but do some fun things and partake in some fun situations. They like the feeling of being More-than-human kind of people, A natural hero. The others want a challege and want to be on the verge of death when they win a battle, something that they really have to work at in order to defeat a creature.
How do I balance the game play between PC's? When i make it relaxed just to have fun, the one side looses interest. Then when i do the opposite, the other side just gets frustrated with how tough or complicated it is. Any help?
I think most groups tend to have this mix of goals to a greater or lesser degree. The way I usually approach it is to provide some of both types of encounters if I can't figure out how to roll both goals into a single encounter.
One way I've approached satisfying both styles in the same encounter is to ramp up the role playing while still pushing the tactical activities. In the role playing I do what I can to encourage the opportunity for cinematic and creative approaches to the battle so that those who want to focus on tactics can do so, and those who just want to shine get a shot at taking the spotlight for a minute. Usually if they get a shot in the spotlight the "just want to have fun" players tend to get drawn into the tactical activities too.
But it's a difficult balance to be sure.
Yeah, how about just mix it up? Some of both.
Sometimes a session with all of one sometimes all of the other, sometimes some of both. They'll never know which is coming.
THe mix of encounters can be good - instead of all encounters with one or a few monsters at or above CR as the challenge, encounters with larger numbers of opponents, built to still be at least somewhat challenging, but allow the heroic-types the funs of fighting and defeating larger numbers of enemies (and thus the sense of being larger-than-life heroes) could help.
Now days it's often that many if not most encounters consist of one foe, sometimes slightly below CR, often at CR, and sometimes somewhat above CR, or one main foe and his/her/it's sidekick/bodyguard (usually 1-2); such that 4-5 PCs are facing fewer enemies, and it is the *enemies* then who seem heroic/larger-than-life. And this certainly has it's place (PCs should not always be the biggest on the block, after all), and the main reason for using it is a good one: fewer pieces on the board speeds combat, and nobody wants a slow game.
But there are ways of using larger numbers of opponents while still not slowing down combat too much, and this can help provide a good mix/change-up in encounters, period.
Plus hopefully people will find the fun in being challenged. Maybe they will if they can also feel larger-than-life at the same time, at least some of the time.
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In case I wasn't clear, I make it a point to provide encounters that the players should just blow away the enemy. It is part of my general story arc for the PCs to build confidence and demonstrate their raw heroism. If they don't get enough of that, even the hard-core tactical players eventually get worn down. Everybody loves kicking some serious butt on occasion.
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Totally off-topic, but Porphy:
Sorry OP, carry on.
Yeah, how about just mix it up? Some of both.
Sometimes a session with all of one sometimes all of the other, sometimes some of both. They'll never know which is coming.
I like this idea. Same as what Wraith said. I have a mix of encounters. Mystery, puzzels, heavy combat nights, tactical encounters, political intrigue, ect.
And I am a big fan of throwing big numbers of low CR creatures at the party so they can go to town and feel like epic heroes. Last one I did was an party of level 8 characters that took over an over-run keep from a horde of orcs. Most of the encounters just had a bunch of CR1 orcs and I threw 2 Ogres and a Cyclops in at one point just to switch it up. The leader was a 5th level Barbarian Orc.
They creamed the place and had a blast.
Totally off-topic, but Porphy
Huzzah for our team! ^_^
+1 To mixing it up. Even players who like to be challenged also like to completely just PWN stuff sometimes. I know... because I'm one who likes to be challenged. :p At the same time, it doesn't hurt to engage casual players in a fight for their lives every once in a while. As Adamantine Dragon said, every player wants something different from the game and "fun" means different things for everyone. Instead of trying to please everyone with every event in your game, try to please each player with individual events in your game.
For example: Ryan the NPC is desperate. His wife and 4 year old daughter were violently murdered last night and his home was ransacked, all because the culprit was looking for a particular amulet. He refuses to report the incident to the town guard, because he knows something important about the amulet that he doesn't want anyone knowing about. He painfully covers up the mess in the house while the group is to look for the stolen necklace. The PCs know that the necklace is important for them, too, but they're not sure what's so special about it either... so they set off.
They discover that a group of goblins holed up in an abandoned warehouse nearby were probably the ones behind this mess. When the PCs enter the warehouse, they immediately find a bunch of goblins who waste no time in giving themselves away because... they're goblins. -_- Insert "Oh god, they found us! They've come for the amulet! Don't let them find it!" or similar comments just before initiative (hopefully one of the PCs can understand Goblin).
A slaughterfest ensues. The goblins are no match for the heroic PCs. The goblins try to shoot their crossbows and swing their shortswords... and maybe even one of them can Magic Missile... but the PCs have great fun spilling pools of goblin blood all over the warehouse floor. You can even add more silly comments like "OH GOD! I knew we shouldn't have killed those humans!" or "WE MUST PROTECT THE CHEESE! THE CHEESE IS OUR LIFE!" etc etc. A laughing good time.
The PCs eventually find the amulet which has an ominous aura about it that the PCs can just... feel. Almost harrowing. As the PCs are leaving the warehouse, an unexpected turn of events occurs! *dun dun dun...* A hell knight mounted on a black steed with firey eyes glares down at the PCs, accompanied by some demon henchmen. A raspy whisper from the black knight: "Kill them and retrieve the amulet," and initiative ensues. This fight is no cakewalk. The PCs are forced to "blow their wad" in this one if they hope to walk away with their lives.
This was a long example... but you get the picture. In this example, every character has a chance to have fun. There would obviously be some skill checks involved too, in gathering information / getting into the warehouse (perhaps there are traps) / finding the amulet inside the warehouse.
Mix it up, but I think any player when faced with a good challenge will learn to enjoy it.
There is something to said about the increase in joy in success when one risks losing everything.
It's why player versus player in a videogame with full loot or permadeath is far more exciting than PvP where you can't lose stuff.
Here's a fairly abstract question:
So i have multiple players in the party. Some of them enjoy having a casual session in which they dont really want to be challeged but do some fun things and partake in some fun situations. They like the feeling of being More-than-human kind of people, A natural hero. The others want a challege and want to be on the verge of death when they win a battle, something that they really have to work at in order to defeat a creature.
How do I balance the game play between PC's? When i make it relaxed just to have fun, the one side looses interest. Then when i do the opposite, the other side just gets frustrated with how tough or complicated it is. Any help?
I would mix the encounters up. Having a few easy fights, and then the occasional hard fight. That way everyone gets what they want. I would also inform the group of this. It is better to have both sides happy sometimes than to have one side that is always unhappy, IMHO.
Good topic! When I GM'd I frequently tried to leave the PC's barely standing after most fights. After a while I found that players were getting frustrated, and focusing on a more mechanical/rules heavy play style. Combats were taking a long time, and becoming very repetitive.
Once I started introducing more mooks and easier encounters, players started taking risks and varying their tactics much more then before. I also used less enormous creatures, and more variation among enemies within a single encounter.
I found that players want to use their best abilities to good effect. They don't want to do things their characters are not good at, even if there is a good chance of success. They don't want their best abilities to fail or have little effect. Most players will enjoy easy encounters, as long as they don't become repetitive.
The best advice I can give is to mix it up. Use several different types and numbers of creatures in most encounters. Have most encounters be fairly easy, but mix up the difficulty as well.
You could also add different levels of success to encounters. For example, the faster the PCs can defeat the alchemist, his body guard, and minions, the more potions they end up with, and less damage they do to the villages hospital. If the fight lasts specific amounts of time, then enemies start escaping, with a variety of consequences.
Having a good time can revolve around having a challenge. Just make sure the challenge itself is based on their abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.
When planning an adventure I will use the following as a rough guide for planning the encounters: 10% epic (2-3+ above CR) 20% at 1+CR, 30% at CR, 30% 1-2 below CR. The remaining 10% are hazards, tricks traps and planned story awards. The individual encounters vary from one or two creatures to hoards of beasties depending on the narrative of the adventure. Over time I have found that using this rough guide gives my players get a nice mix of fairly easy encounters and a few nail biting just on the edge of death; This (or some variation there of depending on your particular needs) may satisfy the mixed desires of your players.
It's a nice example and could be a fun adventure, but I don't think it really merges the two styles. Even challenging games have some easy fights, probably quite a few. It's the aggregate challenge that's the problem. The standard dungeon design advice has always been a bunch of easy encounters leading up to a few tough ones.
In your example, the goblin fights seem easy, but since they lead directly into the hard fight, they still count. You can't take them lightly because if you screw around and take too much damage or use up too many resources you'll still win those fights, but you'll be in trouble against the knight.
If you know that any easy fight can be followed by a close one, you still need to optimize. You might have fun spilling pools of goblin blood, but if you waste spells making goblins explode in interesting ways, you'll regret it.
I intentionally didn't specify APL or CRs in my example, but I'm obviously assuming that the goblins' CRs are well below the APL, and the knight's CR is at least 2 above the party's APL.
To be even more specific, let's assume the APL is 10. The goblins are 1/3 CR each; maybe 1 or 2 of them actually have a class level. Regardless, the party would need next to no resources to dispatch them.
The knight's encounter, however, is a different story. Let's say the hell knight is a level 12 antipaladin (CR 11), there are 2 Shadow Demons (CR 7 each), and the hell knight's steed is a fiendish heavy horse (CR 2). This encounter is just slightly over a CR12 and should pose a significant challenge to the average APL10 party (especially since some of the players are very casual).
If you think the example still doesn't cater to the mixed group, then I'm not sure what more to say. It can't get much more "mixed up" than this.
I'll admit I wasn't thinking the goblins were that far down, but that's not really my point. My point wasn't that it needs to be more mixed, but that mixed doesn't get what you want.
Actually, the goblin encounter may be too weak to even be fun for the casual players.
A martial type could probably walk in and handle them all solo without significant damage. OTOH, the casters can't really go in and have fun with the goblins without wasting resources. I guess they could use crossbows or something, but that's not really fun. If they play around with spells, as I said exploding goblins in interesting ways, then they don't have those spells available later.It would work better if the easy fun encounters and the challenging ones were on different days, but you'd still have to know ahead of time which you were dealing with, which is too much metagame for me.
If I'm playing a flawed character, as I mentioned in another post, I don't want him to act impulsively and do tactically stupid things in the easy fights and then have to switch back to tactically optimized behavior for the hard ones. That breaks me out of character more than just always being optimized does.
I'm not saying it's not possible to make a mixed group work, just that flipping back and forth between ridiculously easy and ridiculously hard encounters isn't a good way to go. It's probably better for both sides to compromise and work with more standard encounters, remembering that the recommended style is still more easy encounters mixed with fewer climactic challenging ones.
Agreed - compromising is an option too. Mixing it up and just finding a middle ground are both viable. It would be great if everyone could all like the same thing, but it never works that way - especially when you're lucky to even have a group in your area that even wants to PLAY (which is the case for me), and you can't always please everyone.
On a different note - the slaughtering of the goblins could most certainly be fun, especially if you add silly commentary and such. :p What's more, making light of the matter and turning it into sort of a comedic relief can ensure an even bigger surprise when the big bad knight shows up to shut down the party. :) Just because the goblins pose no real threat doesn't mean it has to be boring or pointless.
If you find mixing it up doesn't work best, consider developing (or searching on the web as most everything under the sun has been developed and put out there by much more talented people) some kind of "Aggro" mechanic... that way the people who need to be on the verge of death can court the most disaster, and the challenge can shift on the other players to pulling enough weight to get the thrill-seekers out of trouble.
This could be as simple as having one or two monsters in a group be a little bigger or be "personalities" with more (or more threatening) combinations of feats and such. The big bouncer orc can always end up squared off against your most reckless player(s) and the less threatening baddies spread around elsewhere. The reckless guys won't get more XP or rewards for beating these guys, it can be chocked up to THEIR "alphas" naturally seeking our YOUR party's "alphas"...
my 2 cents...