Howdy folks (decided to put a warning here as I ramble a lot but I'm at work and it's slow so I have time, this may be long)
I was just curious about how other gm's run things and player thoughts on it, as a general rule of thumb, I hate weak encounters. I generally find them to be snore filled slugfests not worth the time they waste.
For example, we are playing though Way of the Wicked. An evil campaign I'm quite enjoying (I'll be avoiding spoilers) however the players are closing in on 15th level now and more and more I find myself looking at some of the fights and going meh why bother.
I'm thinking I may be a bit bias as I find these encounters to be a waste of time where the players will use virtually no resources, and beat the guys around like crib locked babies. Now perhaps this has it's place, the players should certainly get to feel strong too at times, and there are ways to do that rather than just overcoming a massive challenge, but these fights just seem like wasted potential, each one is a fight that COULD have been interesting.
More and more as the campaign goes on I find myself wanting to gloss over the filler fights and get to the good stuff. Is this a common issue? I know back when I did homebrew campaigns I had an issue with all my fights being life or death, and honestly I preferred it that way, though the Nova factor of pathfinder doesn't exactly lean itself towards that.
TL DR: what are your guys thoughts and the weak filler fights? remove them? Amp them up to 11? How do you all handle it /enjoy it?
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At high level though, the game becomes a bit of a game of rocket tag, and PCs tend to be pretty good at it. I'll admit, weak encounters bore me too. That's why I tend to alternate between sessions heavy on rp, planning, and meat grinder of mooks, and sessions focusing on enemies whom could easily beat the party if they misplay. Deaths also just a status condition eventually. Just the progression of the game imo.
I wouldn't remove weak encounters tho. Invalidating a PCs power or abilities is generally a jerk move. Letting them feel they are powerful, is a means of preventing that.
I think weak fights should be over before they have time to be boring. There is just something awesome about one-shoting a room full of guards or bandits.
It's that Inigo Montoya moment where he drops 3-4 guards in one round and then stares down his mega-evil.
Personally, I find it annoying to have to fight tooth and nail at level one just to not die.... and STILL have to do it level 17. It really feels like I haven't progressed at all as a fighter or character if I'm having JUST as much trouble getting past the guy guarding the latrine as I did 6 months ago...
Gotta find the balance in there. Easy fights should be easy, Mega fights should be mega-fights... Nothing worse then having a harder time GETTING to the Big Bad then we did BEATING the Big Bad.... It can be anti-climactic.
I actually did a similar thing with the martyr's and the abbot , as I couldn't picture that abbot fight being anything other than a joke, A non ally supported caster standing in an open room? Did the designers just hate this guy?
That fight actually proved to be rather taxing on the players, as I kept funneling more martyr's in each fight, and I included the Iron Angel's into the fight in the second half of the fight.
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Sometimes a weaker encounters can be more of a drain on resources than one strong encounter.
I find weaker encounters basically have two purposes.
1. Drain resources.
2. Let the players feel powerful-->If you fight something and struggle with it at level 7 and you barely get by, and you fight it again at level 10, and bulldoze it, then you get some indication of how far you have come.
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Sometimes a weaker encounters can be more of a drain on resources than one strong encounter.
I find weaker encounters basically have two purposes.
1. Drain resources.
2. Let the players feel powerful-->If you fight something and struggle with it at level 7 and you barely get by, and you fight it again at level 10, and bulldoze it, then you get some indication of how far you have come.
With you but I think what he's talking about is when you get a string of weak encounters and the whole thing starts to feel pointless. In that regard all I can say is that it's really about balance and communication between the GM and the party. If players feel unsatisfied with the combats they keep find themselves in just talk to the GM, and should start thinking of ways to upgrade the encounters to be more rewarding. Such is the juggling act of the GM.
I never mess around with speedbump encounters. If I have a fight, it's going to be an event, a plot-relevant set-piece.
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A while back I had a long argument about this with my GM. He was only throwing extreme encounters at us, because he felt that smaller encounters were uninteresting.
Also, because "there wasn't enough time for more than one fight anyway". But that was at least partly because the encounters were so hard. There's some weird tradition here locally of having basically one fight per session, so the fight needs to be a tough one.
I tried to get him to understand that it would be nicer to vary things a bit. Instead of only extreme fights, try to a couple of simpler fights. Because now we were basically getting bored by every fight being a big fight to the death.
There's a particular category of easy fight that's very entertaining for players: the one against monsters you've fought before, when you were lower level. Back then those monsters were hard enemies; now you're curbstomping them and you really feel that you've gotten more powerful. That's much more satisfying than an easy fight against things you've never fought before.
A variant on this is the fight against previously hard enemies, now in bigger numbers. In the past killing five orcs was hard. Now you take on fifty orcs. If you win it feels like a real triumph, because it was previously established that five orcs were difficult. That really shows that you've become more powerful.
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A 'weak' encounter is not necessarily a bad thing. Not everyone is on the same power level as the PCs, so it's nice for them to sometimes have that fact acknowledged.
Delaying tactics and attrition are perfectly valid uses of inferior forces, particularly if the commander doesn't care about casualties.
Speaking from a player perspective tough fights can be fun but when every fight has players loosing characters or the party expending all its resources it sucks the fun right out of the game. You need a balance of easy fights to feel tough (and expend some light resources) with a few climactic epic battles. Doing it that way helps make the big bad guys memorable.
(now for personal story time / player complaining lol)
I once played in a game were the GM would throw nothing but encounters that would be classed as legendary or epic given the difficulty guidelines in the book. Every fight was tooth and nail and would require resting afterwards (yep 1 fight per day) as the party would expend almost all its resources. It was particularly frustrating when the GM would become upset at the party when we would rest rather than continue on with roughly 10% HP and no heals left. We got to level 7 and at no point did we feel powerful, as a matter of fact several discussions of buying a tavern and retiring were had because the adventuring life was just far too dangerous.
I'm not a fan of weak encounters but I agree they aren't necessarily bad; what is bad is a pointless encounter. A bunch of weak guys who are there to act as attrition before the big fight is fine as it serves a purpose. What isn't fine is essentially do Final Fantasy style random encounters were PCs fight disjointed garbage enemies just because they are there; if it is so weak as to not be a credible threat and it serves no larger purpose (for instance you know the PCs will definitely be able to rest again before anything important) then all its really doing is burning game time. Want the PCs to still feel badass? Have the bandits look at them and apologize for their insolence. Have the grizzly bear turn tail and run after the party barbarian roars at it. Or just ask them if they want to fight and describe them winning, or hell, let them describe it, and get on with the game.
I have DM'd for over 20 years. I have had groups that like weak encounters as it made them feel powerful but they tended to roleplay more. I currently have a bunch of min maxers that like AP+4 to AP+6 and tho it is rocket tag and I don't pull punches they still mop up. Mostly I just talk to my groups after a session or 3 and ask what they liked and what not. Also why they liked/disliked it, seems fitting the game to the players keeps everyone happy and alot less work for me.
Take half of the "easy encounters" and make them moderately difficult. Do not remove all of the easy fights. Do not make them all knock down, drag out, fight to the last HP style combats. Its up to the GM to give the (RP and combat) encounters enough variety that everyone at the table has something to look forward to.
1 word... traps... 2 things... traps and kobolds...
If played properly, Kobolds are terrifying little buggers...
Especially Kobolds that follow the Kobold God of Tactics, Tucker.