I'm what you might call a forgiving GM, although I think part of this is because I run games with just a 2 PC party. Because of this, I will occasionally give my players an 'out' if I think any encounter might be a bit too challenging for them. Nothing too obvious, but usually something they might notice enough so they can take that extra advantage. For instance, maybe having them come across a barrel of salt before facing a giant slug.
Does anybody else do this kind of thing? If so, what sort of things have you done to help the party along?
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The stuff i do to help them is allowwing Hero Points use in the campaign ;)
I sometimes treat encounters with animals and certain other creatures as "realistic". If the creature is clearly losing the fight it will retreat. The players have the option of pursuing if they want, but with an average party size of 3 players I find it's sometimes easier to give them this break.
It recently happened in a game with a creature called a deadly mantis, a colossal praying mantis. With only 4 players that session, the mantis was clearly going to win the fight, and I needed all 4 players to complete the adventure. So after doing nearly 80% of the creature's hitpoints in damage to it, it fled the fight. Maybe that makes me a wimpy GM, but I did it for the sake of the story.
I also allow Hero Points.
I think interactive environments (ex. old barrels of salt in an abandoned garden with a giant slug problem) are actually pretty fun design.
I think the key to doing it right is not having things be terribly obvious. The players can notice or ignore any given item in a dungeon, so a lot of it depends on their planning ahead, and/or being creative in combat.
Yeah, I never tell them why I'm doing it. They were terrified the mantis was retreating from something worse.
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So after doing nearly 80% of the creature's hitpoints in damage to it, it fled the fight. Maybe that makes me a wimpy GM, but I did it for the sake of the story.
If you have animals do that with semi-consistency - that wouldn't bother me at all. The preying mantis is just being smart - it likely doesn't know that it might have won the fight.
Besides - even if it knew that it'd be able to take down 1-2 of the characters before dying, it'd still run away.
I did once have a GM set up a fight where he knew we couldn't win and then had an NPC come save us Deus Ex Machina style. Now THAT was annoying.