Once again, just how tough should fights be?

[Mark Hoover 330]

A quote from a regular forum poster named Melkiador from a thread about the utility of Channel Positive Energy:

Melkiador wrote:

If you have a small party size(3-4), then there is a fair chance that your party will need in combat healing on a regular basis. If you're not, then your GM is probably being very kind and never going for a kill, even if doing so would be logical for the enemies.

So yesterday I had another session of my infamous megadungeon campaign. Without going into too much detail, the PCs are a half-elf u-monk 7, an elf u-rogue (scout) 7, a half-dwarf paladin 7 and a human wizard (fire elementalist) 7.

They have rolled stats, so their stats are much higher than a 20 pt buy. They have avg WBL but supplement this with consumables (now that I bullied them into it). Each is optimized for combat with the monk acting as a dpr/grappler, the paladin is the low-damage tank with a sacred mount for more damage, the rogue is getting SA on about 1/2 her attacks and the fire wizard is all about ranged energy damage.

Finally, they got Leadership as a free feat (homebrew campaign) at level 7 so two of the four cohorts are traveling with them. Suffice it to say, I estimate them at APL 8 and build encounters accordingly.

Now, I DID recently kill 2 of those PCs last level, but the foe they were attacking was a CR 10 young adult black dragon and they used terrible tactics. Most of the time my fights include a couple waves of low CR monsters, perhaps 1-3 of such creatures per wave, with one big foe. That "big" one is either a support type that tries to make the wave creatures stronger or is some big bruiser type.

It is common for me to deal a LITTLE damage to these PCs, but 1. with the exception of the dragon encounter they rarely even come close to death or even get knocked out; 2. its not unusual to have one entire wave of foes not deal ANY damage at all; 3. if I target their saves with anything except an EXTREMELY optimized enemy it is a wasted action on my part.

Based on Melkiador's comment and similar sentiments on these boards... I feel like I am probably a pushover GM.

Am I supposed to be "going for the kill" more often than not when I design my combat encounters? Like, if you still use CR's I usually design my fights to be like equal to or 1 higher than the APL. Should my "average" fights be tougher?

And before I get a million folks asking me yes; my players say they're having fun. That being said, I still think I'm doing them a disservice. Most of their fights are very minimal threat and resource investment, but often when I then put a really tough fight down they use poor tactics, get complacent and in that dragon fight it cost half the party their lives.

[DungeonmasterCal]

I think my combats are far and away not hard enough. My players have fairly high stats from rolling dice but they are woefully under-equipped magically (which is sort of how I've always done things). But practically nothing is a challenge for them. The party doesn't even have a healer and it's not a problem for them. I think I've just gotten really complacent over the last two or three years and I really need to start paying more attention to possible foes than I've been doing.

[Senko]

I'd say your doing fine from the sound of it the deaths were their fault so the fights your throwing at them can kill PC's but are winable with reasonable tactics and not being overconfident. Which is what I generally aim for. Hard enough to kill but not you must be maximum optimized and fight like super geniuses to win (which a lot of people seem to like these day's take owlcat's wrath of the righteous where the "hunt a dragon" quest at lvl 10 is a CR 25 red dragon which ambushes and attacks the party when you walk in that direction generally resulting in at least one wipe).

I do try to vary mine from curbstomp to impossible as its a living world and not everything is going to be perfectly balanced for party progression. However anything they shouldn't be able to handle is clearly signposted before they get into combat giving them plenty of time to turn around and find another way. Plus I always enusre to tell my players this will be the case before starting the game so they know just because there's a high level challenge here they're not expected to interact it just quietly tip toe by like everyone else. I feel it helps the players feel like actual heroic adventurers at level 1 you struggle against a couple of bandits then at level 7 you slaughter a much larger and more organized group trying to take down the new "law in town". Sure the larger group isn't a challenge to your party but it allows the party to actually feel like they are heroes now and remember back when this attack would have killed them all then they turn and look at the wyvern flight preying on towns in their area and think "One day we'll be strong enough to take them down."

I know not everyone agrees but I find my realism and enjoyment is reduced with every fight being perfectly balanced to be equal or a hard challenge to the party because your always fighting for your life and never get to feel like youv'e become actually powerful because you never get to fight a comparable challenge to your earlier days and see how far you've come. One of my favorite memories was a "plot hook" encounter where our caravan got attacked by bandits and my wizard literally never got up from the cart they were sitting on just casting spells from there. I actually felt like my mage was becoming a powerful spell caster in their own right "Bandit ambush? Pah not worth getting up for I'll just deal with it from here."

[DungeonmasterCal]

I have, at least in the past, always strived for an approach like yours when it came to combat. You win some, you lose some. But my group isn't losing any and I've got to take a serious look at the nuts and bolts of my campaign as well as their characters. And I'm going to have to really start paying more attention to the encounters I plan for my group.

[Sysryke]

I think the longer you play with the same people, the better the stories, but the harder it is to make challenging combats. Certainly this isn't true for all group's, but generally people get into a groove/rut and patterns of behavior form. This extends to understanding of tactics and game mechanics too. When you do try and challenge a longer established group, boosting the baddies can go too far.

Part of the issue too, is that I think too many if us forget that retreat is sometimes the better part of valor. If you or your players see every encounter as a fight that MUST be won, then you build and play that way.

From a role play perspective, I think the "killer" elemental doesn't have to come from especially powerful monster's, but making sure that monster's use smart tactics. Vary the objectives of your creatures and have them act accordingly. Dumb animals with strong senses should occasionally continue to savage/damage a downed/unconscious PC. Bandits or raiders should knock out and carry people off before every combatant is down. A smart devil should take a kill shot if they aren't in immediate danger, at least sometimes. Basically, if the players might do it, then there should be a chance the villains do too.

This is also where combat maneuvers, dirty tricks, ambushes, and traps come into play. They may be overly complicated sometimes, but those mechanics exist to liven up and vary the challenges of encounters.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

It all come down to how hard you want things to be and how hard the players want things to be. The two don't always match and can lead to problems. As the GM you have a better understanding of what these people are capable of and how hard they like things to be and, sorry to say, it's your job to determine how closely you want to aim towards what they find appropriate as opposed to what you find appropriate.

I strive to have a variety of difficulties in the encounters I make - from cakewalks to skin-of-their-teeth survival, from near-boring to frustrating. I've been playing with the same group for 15+ years so I know what they're capable of and it makes it a lot easier to balance encounters. Accidents do happen however well one balances things.

[Mark Hoover 330]

Sysryke wrote:

Part of the issue too, is that I think too many if us forget that retreat is sometimes the better part of valor. If you or your players see every encounter as a fight that MUST be won, then you build and play that way.

I don't have the exact words, but early on in the megadungeon game, 2 of my players said to me they don't usually run from fights unless it's an OBVIOUS outmatch, like level 1 PCs against a dragon they identify as an Adult dragon.

Their basic idea was classic murderhobo: if the GM drops an encounter, its likely that they were SUPPOSED to encounter it. If the GM wanted them dead, they'd just kill the PCs, period; the fact that there's a fight means there's a chance. After that, it comes down to treasure.

If the encounter turns into a fight then there must be SOMETHING of value, even just XP (which I use) as a reward. If they run away, there's no reward. If the foe tries to talk its way out, its too weak to fight; if the monster tries to bribe its way out, its too weak to fight.

This mentality has persisted. At this point they ALMOST never retreat; it's happened once or twice. I've watched them wade through waves of vanilla gnolls and flinds at level 5, just to get at the chieftain; I've borne witness to kobold hordes, ghoul and festrog mobs and now waves of generic wights drop with barely a scratch on them.

I think part of this is my near-compulsive adherence to numbers. I still, to this day, calculate fights using the CR system. I count the party as APL 8, so I give myself an XP budget of 4800 and then I "buy" a wave of foes with that XP.

The fact that has been dawning on me for a while now is that if I pick a foe that is less than 2 CR below what the APL is, it doesn't matter WHAT Aid Another or Flanking tactics I use, this fight will be over in seconds. The ONLY thing my players can't handle is invisible foes.

Twice now I've dropped an Invisible kobold sorcerer into a fight and had said sorcerer running around delivering buff spells to the "brute" monster. Its made things SLIGHTLY more challenging in one of those fights and directly contributed to PC deaths in the other.

But I don't want to ALWAYS have some hidden spellcaster delivering buff spells to the enemy. I don't want to use the same tactic over and over.

[Ryze Kuja]

I think the CR system has its uses, but is not infallible, especially considering power gamers, 25pt buys, and/or allowing races with 5+ RP (such as Aasimars, Centaurs, Drow, etc). The CR system is based around having 4 PC's with 20 pt buys and 0 RP (such as humans, elves, dwarves), and is meant to drain the PC's of 25% of their resources in a single given combat.

So, after 4 combats in a single day of APL=CR creatures that drain 25% of the PC's resources each combat, your PC's *should* be running on fumes at that point, in theory.

Anywho, if you're the GM and you've allowed them 25 pt buys and 5+ RP races, or if you're dealing with power gamers, or have 5+ PC's, or for whatever reason you're finding that you're throwing 4 combats per day at your PC's with appropriate APL=CR and they're barely breaking a sweat and mowing through your encounters, then bump the CR up to 4x combats @ APL+1=CR for a couple of in-game days. If they're still mowing through the encounters, bump it up to APL+2=CR. And if they're still beating encounters but not being drained of their resources, then bump it up again.

Once you arrive at an APL+X that drains them to running on fumes after 4 combats in a given day, that's an appropriate CR to throw at them. You might even find that you have to do a little mix'n'matching of CR levels in a day, such as APL+2 for x2 combats and APL+3 for the other x2 combats, because maybe APL+3 x4 combats is simply too much for them in a given day. Also, if you throw APL+X x4 encounters during the day, and then you do your random %die roll for an encounter in the middle of the night, make sure that middle of the night encounter is APL=CR or APL-1=CR, because you've already drained them (unfairly) by boosting the CR all day.

Another thing to consider is that your PC's party composition might be particularly adept at dealing with negative energy and fear effects, while the party comp is underperforming on encounters with high DR, Acid, and Lightning, so they might appear to breeze through negative energy/fear encounters at APL+3=CR and severely struggle with high DR, Acid, and Lightning encounters that are at APL+2=CR or even APL+1=CR. So keep this in mind when boosting the CR higher than APL, because you don't want to TPK your group either. Ideally though, the PC's should do recon and prep, but sometimes you can't, such as when you're far from Ye Olde Magic Shop exploring a megadungeon somewhere and "perfect preparation for a specific encounter" simply wasn't an option, or sometimes the PC's are caught with their pants down when the GM casts the legendary spell DM's Curveball and they're not prepared for it.

==============================

One of the best resources that I've ever used for this is Combat Manager, and this allows me to boost or reduce CR on the fly with a click of a button. I just keep this program on my Surface laptop, and it's perfect for generating random encounters in under 2-3 minutes right there at the table, or even during the week when you're making planned encounters as well.

One mistake that I made when I first started using this Combat Manager program is that I boosted a particular monster's stats too high, and it made their spell's Save DCs simply impossible for the PC's to save against, but it gave me the +attack and HP that I wanted. So be mindful of how high you boost them, and make sure that their Save DC's aren't in the clouds when you've finished customizing your monster. Lesson learned: boost the monster as high as you're willing to go while keeping their Spell/Ability DC's normal, and then copy/paste the monster to an excel sheet, and manually add HP or +Hit or w/e you want. Another mistake I made was boosting a particular mook too high and then I had access to spell levels that were simply uncounterable by the PC's; specifically, PC's were lvl 7, and I boosted this particular necromancer wizard NPC past CR11 for the stats that I wanted, but it gave me 6th level spells, and then I used a Circle of Death spell against the PC's when they had 1) no defense against it, and 2) no ability to "fix" the deaths when 2 of them failed. But I knew that I had screwed the metaphorical pooch on this one, so we talked about it, and I ended up retconning the 2 dead PC's to -1 HP and stable. Lesson learned: when boosting monsters above APL, don't use spells that are more than 1 spell level higher than the PC's can cast.

I learned a lot from making those mistakes, but it's been smooth sailing since and I highly recommend this program. It will make your GM prep go from 5-10 hours per week to 1-2 hours per week, easily. Anywho, if you do use this Combat Manager program, be mindful of this and don't make the same mistakes I did.

[Neriathale]

Why are the group playing the game? If it’s to have a dice throwing combat fest then fights should be hard. If gaming is really an excuse to get together with your friends and socialise then maybe not.

But it is hugely dependant on the campaign, character build and so forth. I’m currently playing War for the Crown where the party are 7th level and most of the characters were built for intrigue/social roleplay. As a result pretty much every fight feels dangerous, and about half of them end up with a PC unconscious because we don’t have the sort of characters who have untouchable AC and dish out massive damage. But that was a conscious decision by the players to create those characters. The same group did Giantslayer before that and the combat optimisation steamrollered every encounter* even with the GM doubling the number of opponents and slapping advanced templates on everything… it was boring as hell.

*Apart from the mammoth tender who used a bucket to sunder both the paladin’s bonded weapon and another PC’s artefact weapon. He was dangerous.

[Ryze Kuja]

As far as landing spells and abilities on your PC's, I like to "probe" my PC's by casting lots of different effects at them on a regular basis. So if a particular combat calls for a caster of some kind, I will usually make sure there are 2-3 casters, and I don't really care if their spells fail, I'm doing it to take mental notes of what their saves are without flat-out asking them what their saves are (because I see they rolled a 7 and they tell me their Fort save result is 15), while at the same time making them feel like the heroes that they are when they resist things on a regular basis. Now they feel like a stud muffin, but I know their Fort is +8, so if I want to hit their Fort save on a regular basis, I need a DC that is 19 or higher in a later encounter that I care about.

Now on specific encounters where I actually want them to fail a save, I have a decent battle plan. I make sure that I'm targeting the low Will saves of the group with Enchantments and the low Refl saves of the group with fireballs, low Fort saves of the group with Cold effects and Disintegrates, bad Touch AC's with rays. You don't need optimized NPC's for when you want them to fail.

As far as hitting a Monk with spells tho, don't even bother unless they are indeed an Optimized BBEG. I'd throw secondary effect on save spells at them that aren't reflex-based, because they have Evasion, to keep the target-distribution amongst the PC's "somewhat honest". When you really need to hit a Monk with something, I would Dominate the PC's caster and use them to cast things at the Monk, or use an optimized BBEG.

[Name Violation]

Ryze Kuja wrote:

races with 5+ RP (such as Aasimars, Centaurs, Drow, etc). The CR system is based around having 4 PC's with 20 pt buys and 0 RP (such as humans, elves, dwarves)...

Just to correct something

Humans are 9 rp, Elves are 10 rp, and Dwarves are 11 rp, not 0.
Drow are 14 rp, Tiefling is 13 rp, Aasimar is 15 rp. Centuar is 28 rp.

I feel Dwarf is arguably better than Aasimar most of the time. A few rp don't make *that* big of a deal

[ErichAD]

How tough should a fight be for dice to be rolled, and how tough should a fight be to grant xp, are both different questions. How tough should a fight be to keep the players entertained is also a very different question.

I think the players should have to spend some resources in order for it to be an xp granting encounter. If the PCs are optimized for fighting and wipe out a cr accurate encounter in one standard action, cool, but that tells me that similar encounters can just be narrated without granting xp from then on.

"The corridor continues to fill with zombies pressing through the crumbling walls and falling in from the shattered floor above. Alan the fire kineticist continues to fill the area with fire as the party turns their attention to other things."

Also, remember that if you're placing enemies based on how the world works, keep in mind that the enemies also know generally how the world works. If the enemies know they are going to encounter something beyond their level, use hit and run tactics, memorize no save spells, probe the party with scouts and summons. Change the players strategy for the encounter by changing the failure state from kill or be killed to stopping a scout, silencing a signal horn, keeping their abilities obscured, and so on.

[Mightypion]

At my tables, several big dragons are forgotten, but a set of highly intelligent Kobolds, Speznaz Succubi, and very high achieving Ettercap are still remembered.

[SheepishEidolon]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

And before I get a million folks asking me yes; my players say they're having fun. That being said, I still think I'm doing them a disservice. Most of their fights are very minimal threat and resource investment, but often when I then put a really tough fight down they use poor tactics, get complacent and in that dragon fight it cost half the party their lives.

I saw the same phenomen happen: When players became overly confident, a sudden difficulty spike caused PC death.

You can try to a) increase difficulty gradually or b) foreshadow "that thing is really dangerous". Or c) keep combat easy all the time - that's a valid campaign style, too. Once the aspiration "must challenge my players, must challenge my players" is gone, encounter design becomes way more relaxed and you can spend energy on other things.

Side note: Most of my players were actually fine with their PCs dieing - as long it was their mistake, and not just randomness or an unfair GM. It helped that they knew their PC will be back soon.

[Mightypion]

SheepishEidolon wrote:

I saw the same phenomen happen: When players became overly confident, a sudden difficulty spike caused PC death.

You can try to a) increase difficulty gradually or b) foreshadow "that thing is really dangerous". Or c) keep combat easy all the time - that's a valid campaign style, too. Once the aspiration "must challenge my players, must challenge my players" is gone, encounter design becomes way more relaxed and you can spend energy on other things.

Side note: Most of my players were actually fine with their PCs dieing - as long it was their mistake, and not just randomness or an unfair GM. It helped that they knew their PC will be back soon.

I have this thing too, I do like to fire warning shots, as in, present a relatively clear proof, perhaps from captured communications, that a new lieutenant with a very clear head on his/her shoulders appeared, and that proper anti party measures are being instituted.

[Sysryke]

Mark Hoover 330 wrote:

Sysryke wrote:

Part of the issue too, is that I think too many if us forget that retreat is sometimes the better part of valor. If you or your players see every encounter as a fight that MUST be won, then you build and play that way.

I don't have the exact words, but early on in the megadungeon game, 2 of my players said to me they don't usually run from fights unless it's an OBVIOUS outmatch, like level 1 PCs against a dragon they identify as an Adult dragon.

Their basic idea was classic murderhobo: if the GM drops an encounter, its likely that they were SUPPOSED to encounter it. If the GM wanted them dead, they'd just kill the PCs, period; the fact that there's a fight means there's a chance. After that, it comes down to treasure.

If the encounter turns into a fight then there must be SOMETHING of value, even just XP (which I use) as a reward. If they run away, there's no reward. If the foe tries to talk its way out, its too weak to fight; if the monster tries to bribe its way out, its too weak to fight.

I remember reading the whole adventure from a 2nd Ed. starter set my mom got me for Christmas as a kid. Sadly, I never actually got to play with it. Anyway, one thing that I found interesting, is that the GM notes gave different levels of XP for different methods of handling encounters. For example, there was a dwelling of Xvargs in the tunnels that the adventure went through. If the party slayed the Xvargs there was maybe 450 xp to be had. If they used diplomacy instead they could earn 600 xp, and pick up some useful info about more serious threats further into the tunnels. The point here is, you can still give xp for the party retreating. If that is the more sound tactic, then maybe running away nets more xp, or some other non-xp reward beyond just survival. Obviously you don't want to railroad your players into specific actions, but hopefully you can adjust the reward structure to incentivise them into making smarter and or more creative choices.

As for the CR number issue, I think Ryze's suggestions are awesome.

For varying tactics, how well do your players handle switching up between melee and ranged. I'm thinking some monsters with fire auras could cause them some trouble. Wizard can't burn them, and the baddies burn the other 3 if they get close enough to melee. I'm sure you're players are smart/optimized enough to plow through the damage if they have to, but it's at least a different obstacle to invisible foes.

[Mightypion]

Sample "warning shot", related to the aforementioned Succubus Speznaz.

You find a piece of paper with the following orders on it:

Orders:

"Warriors of midnight!

The enemy has penetrated deep within our sacred cathedral, killing important servants of our Lady and looting or destroying powerful artifacts.
They will be stopped, I have arrived and with me the Nights witches!
By the order of Lady Bigbadeevilguyina, All of your are under my direct command, as such, I order the following immidiate adjustments.

--Each defensive detachment will volunteer one clear headed individual, to accept either my profane gift or that of one of my fellow witches of midnight. This will not the the units officer. The individual chosen will not receive any additional markings, to make him/her/it indisinguishable from his comrades.
--Upon any contact with the invaders, this individual will immidiatly use the link to inform me, and thus of the number, and point of origin of the invaders.
--Any defensive detachment that is made aware of an ongoing battle in a neighbouring area is to immidiatly reinforce its neighbours. Tardiness in executing this order, be that for personal antipathy or any other reasons, will not be tolerated.
--The establishment of telepathic links between neighbouring detachments is encouraged.
--Rest assured that myself and my strike squad stand ready to assist any detachment that manages to inform us, and that puts up a credible defense. It was us who inflicted the first death upon Luralune, so that our Lady herself could kill her again immidiatly thereafter.

Signed

Lady Shanina, Blade of Midnight and strike leader of the Nights witches.

Profession Soldier DC20:

These are good orders, not unlike what you would have ordered in their situation.

Sense motive DC25:

The part with the non officer being in control also means that trust in the enemies forces is low. You may be able figure out who is the "profane pacted" troop in a group by observing how they interact with their officers.

Knowledge Planes DC 30:

Luralune was a demon lord associated with Songs and forgotten valleys, she was killed by Nocticula and her corpse is a midnight isle.
Demon Lords have to be killed twice within a year to truely kill them, if Luralunes first death was at the hands of the Night witches, you are now facing enemies capable of bringing down an albeit minor demon lord, probably from ambush.

Knowledge history DC 25 or Hellknight:

The Nights witches are an elite unit of Nocticula, although they can sometimes be hired as mercenaries. They are unusual for demons in that they display very high degrees of unit cohesion and cooperation, while fractricide between Nights Witches is apparantly not happening at all, a very unusual features for any unit made of Demons.
The Nights witches were responsible for several setbacks suffered by hells forces when fighting those of the Abyss, their favored tactics can be fairly described as hit and run, they reconoitre well and typically attack or disable those they perceive as arcane or divine spellcasters first, then fade to exhaust the enemies resources. Once they perceive resources as exausted, they strike for real.
All night witches can strike at both long range and in close combat, and are noted for their ability to quickly overpower and capture isolated enemies for interrogation and/or conversion.

Very few of the nights witches are actually witches, plenty of gunslingers among them though. All of them are Succubi or Alu, although they often have competent auxillaries as well, these can even be mortal.

Knowledge planes DC40:

You do not, despite of your extensive knowledge of Demonic hierarchy, know of a Lady Shanina. You have a hunch that it is a false name, and perhaps switching names around is part of why the Nights wichtes are cooperative team players towards each other.