D&D General Should D&D Be "Hard"

[Reynard]

EDIT: I intended this question to be about your personal preferences, but I guess I phrased in in such a way that indicated I was asking about what the game's default design should be. That's a totally valid discussion, just not the one I was intending to have.

This is a simple question with a lot of complex possible responses, so I decided to not do a poll.

The question is: should D&D be hard? That is, is D&D better when the chances of success are slimmer, when encounters and puzzles are more difficult, when a bad die roll or a poor decision can end lives, adventures or whole campaigns?

If your tabletop D&D campaign had a video game style difficulty slider, what would you set it at? Why?

And how do different kinds of "hard" interact?

 

[aco175]

The game should be hard, but not gotcha. There should be a chance to die, but not from a random thing. Combat should require teamwork and still be somewhat balanced. It is easy to make it 'hard' if you control infinite dragons.

 

[Scribe]

The age old question.

Do you balance for optimization, or do you balance for a complete casual lack of assumption.

If you balance around optimization, you just stomped on the dreams of the casual.
If you balance around casual, your content will get smashed by optimization.

Personally, I believe you need to make some basic assumptions.

You will have healing, you will have a tank/front line, you will have a caster, you will have a face. After that, you start to push the needle into a more competitive territory which I think would cut out a lot of the casual types.

From there, the DM can make it harder if they want if the party is full on optimized.

 

[pointofyou]

It probably should be as hard as the players consider after the fact to have been fun. And regardless of difficulty it should be fair.

 

[deganawida]

This is a simple question with a lot of complex possible responses, so I decided to not do a poll.

The question is: should D&D be hard? That is, is D&D better when the chances of success are slimmer, when encounters and puzzles are more difficult, when a bad die roll or a poor decision can end lives, adventures or whole campaigns?

If your tabletop D&D campaign had a video game style difficulty slider, what would you set it at? Why?

And how do different kinds of "hard" interact?

Hmm, difficult question to answer. Even ignoring table taste , you have to really define what “hard” means, and what one means by asking it.

Not trying to be pedantic (too late!), but I would actually rephrase the question more like, “How competent are the PCs, and how does that competency compare to the level of challenges expected to be experienced?”

The Soulslike games are hard, but one can “gitgud”, and, assuming time investment and patience, beat them easily. High competence, high challenge is the proper way to describe them, I think.

Meanwhile, you have a game like Dragon’s Dogma (will never stop plugging this game), which begins low competence and high challenge, but, as you progress, the scales tip in the other direction, before both meeting in the middle.

Zero-to-hero always starts at low competence, but, if the challenge level is set to high for low competence, it may be stuck there until the player or PC gets higher competence, at which point the challenge level decrease. This fulfills power fantasies, of course, and gives satisfaction for time and effort put in.

Other games always require high competence, and always have high challenge, as a single misstep can end everything. When everything comes together? It’s amazing. But that requires a high degree of performance reliability on the part of the player and, if a tabletop game, cooperation from the referee. It’s all too easy to err on the side of ultra challenge, rather than allowing the player some leeway, as players are not machines.

Hopefully, this makes sense. It’s a great question, but I’ve also had a couple of Blue Moons tonight (my biweekly Saturday treat), and may not be articulating my thoughts well. For that, I apologize.

 

[Oofta]

I discuss difficulty with my players and we go from there. Another consideration is things like puzzles, a lot of people just find them annoying so I tend to avoid them.

I'll never have the game so easy that it risks getting boring, but otherwise I'll adjust based on what people want.

 

[cranberry]

There should always be the risk of character death. Permadeath....

D&D currently makes it too easy to recover from zero hp.

 

[LordEntrails]

D&D should be fun. Everything else depends on the players.

When I was 10 years old, hard was not fun. In my 20's it was all about mathematical optimization. In my 30's about the challenge and figuring out ways to pull victory from the jaws of defeat (i.e. hard!) Decades later, eh, it should be hard enough. Fun is more about the people at the table and telling stories together.

 

[mamba]

There is no right answer here, whatever the players enjoy.

I’d say death should not be flat out impossible, but it either needs a sufficiently big, semi-optional reward (ie very helpful in the campaign, but not required), or it takes the chars screwing up, or it is one of a few climactic encounters within the campaign arc, then it being hard is fine.

Just randomly strolling into a Sphere of Annihilation Tomb of Horrors style is not now and was not then, at least for me

 

[payn]

I hate to be a broken record, but I had real high hopes for modularity in 5E. I was hoping it would act as a difficulty slider among many things. I think D&D would benefit greatly from it, but its not really needed because 5E is successful without it.

I think the 5E default is what I would call "normal" in video game terms. That means if a group is following the books the challenge is casual, but a savvy GM can turn up a decent challenge. If the default was "hard" I imagine challenge level would be high and death would be common. I think that would not work for casual players, nor folks who enjoy a player driven dramatic campaign. So, I guess my answer is, no, D&D shouldn't be "hard" by default, but it would be nice if you could dial it up.

Now, the above is general speaking. What is "hard" can come in many forms. I was just having discussion yesterday here at EN world about PF2. To summarize the system, the higher level an encounter, the more players need to rely on tactics and team work. The game math works in a way that players most impactful options will be sidelined in favor of less powerful options. The players need to work together well, because the enemy will have a great chance at scoring critical hits and landing devastating blows. This makes it possible to have a solo fight that doesn't just get overwhelmed by the action economy. By limiting the PCs best options, focus fire isnt an option either. The players must widdle the enemy down while avoiding its attacks which for some folks feels hard and scary.

I think the above example is "hard" but its not an enjoyable feel, YMMV. I want the PCs to toss out their big bangs and score those timely criticals to save the day. I'd rather save the middling slow the enemy by 5ft or standard attack options for the goblin patrol. Make the boss fight a big damn spectacle. So, while I can admit that PF2 design can and is "hard" its not the type of "hard" im looking for. However, the CR is very accurate in PF2, so the slider idea of difficulty can be done well.