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

[Oofta]

Personally I think the difficulty settings for encounters should just mean what they say on the tin.

I expect an easy encounter to basically be a cakewalk, people can just kind of clown around and make it through.

I expect hard to be....hard, aka if my players aren't bringing it they should expect someone to die.

I expect deadly to be...you know....DEADLY, I am assuming that someone is dying in this fight, and only expert play will prevent a TPK.

What I don't expect is for my players to walk through 3x deadly encounters with basically not a scratch on them (which they do commonly).

There are far too many variables to have a system that will work for everyone. Some games have people that aren't tactically adept, some use point buy, some roll until you have at least 1 18 before racial adjustments. Some have magic items up the wazoo, some don't have magic items at all. Some have 1 encounter per long rest, others have 10 while designing combats with environments that favor the enemy. I can fairly confidently say that a 3x deadly encounter would end up with a TPK with my group on a pretty regular basis if I wanted it to. Heck, high end hard encounters could probably kill off a PC on a regular basis if I really worked at it.

I can't tell you why you have a hard time challenging your group, I can only tell you that I've had no problem challenging multiple groups. With only rare deadly encounters.

P.S. Deadly just means a PC is likely to die. Not guaranteed, not a TPK, just likely.

 

[Blue]

I nevebalance for my party beyond a general look at the expected challenge (easy, hard, deadly, etc), if the party is weak at range and crowd control, that never matters to me when designing the encounter, I just build an encounter that seems to make sense for the situation.

Sure, fine, nice, great. But as my question was specifically in response to someone who was about choosing what type of party to balance against, also a bit out of scope.

In other words, the pre-condition was for picking a specific type of party to balance again.

 

[Blue]

I took the OP as a question of 'you are balancing a game' as 5e has its own parameters of balance for example.

Got it. You were looking at where the game should default. Thanks for explaining, that makes sense.

 

[Stalker0]

There are far too many variables to have a system that will work for everyone. Some games have people that aren't tactically adept, some use point buy, some roll until you have at least 1 18 before racial adjustments. Some have magic items up the wazoo, some don't have magic items at all. Some have 1 encounter per long rest, others have 10 while designing combats with environments that favor the enemy. I can fairly confidently say that a 3x deadly encounter would end up with a TPK with my group on a pretty regular basis if I wanted it to. Heck, high end hard encounters could probably kill off a PC on a regular basis if I really worked at it.

I can't tell you why you have a hard time challenging your group, I can only tell you that I've had no problem challenging multiple groups. With only rare deadly encounters.

P.S. Deadly just means a PC is likely to die. Not guaranteed, not a TPK, just likely.

While I agree not every variable can be accounted for, many of the ones you mentioned can be.

Magic items: add +.2 player level for each uncommon item they have, +.4 for rare, +.6 for legendary.

Multiply player level by .75 if they not a tactically strong player, x1.25 if they are highly tactical.

Etc

You can do some basic attempts at incorporating common encounter altering aspects (magic items being the biggest ones). And what’s nice about the ideas i mentioned above is because it’s for your players you have to do it infrequently. You calculate the average player level based on the notes, and only have tk recalculate when they level or find a new magic item.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And it's our jobs as DMs to stop that! We must protect the players from themselves!

If you want a challenge, the situation has to be challenging, yes.

 

[Oofta]

While I agree not every variable can be accounted for, many of the ones you mentioned can be.

Magic items: add +.2 player level for each uncommon item they have, +.4 for rare, +.6 for legendary.

Multiply player level by .75 if they not a tactically strong player, x1.25 if they are highly tactical.

Etc

You can do some basic attempts at incorporating common encounter altering aspects (magic items being the biggest ones). And what’s nice about the ideas i mentioned above is because it’s for your players you have to do it infrequently. You calculate the average player level based on the notes, and only have tk recalculate when they level or find a new magic item.

I ran simultaneous campaigns for 2 groups a ways back. Both groups had the same assumptions of number of encounters, point buy for stats, same level. Heck, they were in the same region facing similar foes. One group could handle far, far more than the other group just because of better tactical thinking and mix of abilities. I tend to adjust my target numbers based on the group, so the first group I would add 50% to the XP goal for the day, for the other group I kept it standard or even a bit lower.

All you can do is get to know what the group can handle and adjust accordingly They should talk more about this in the DMG but if you're having difficulty making combats hard enough there are plenty of resources out there. Or create a thread on this forum with some specifics and we can discuss.

 

[Stalker0]

I ran simultaneous campaigns for 2 groups a ways back. Both groups had the same assumptions of number of encounters, point buy for stats, same level. Heck, they were in the same region facing similar foes. One group could handle far, far more than the other group just because of better tactical thinking and mix of abilities. I tend to adjust my target numbers based on the group, so the first group I would add 50% to the XP goal for the day, for the other group I kept it standard or even a bit lower.

All you can do is get to know what the group can handle and adjust accordingly They should talk more about this in the DMG but if you're having difficulty making combats hard enough there are plenty of resources out there. Or create a thread on this forum with some specifics and we can discuss.

Sure, and as I just said, then the encounter math can be adjusted for this added tactical brilliance. aka the system directly acknowledges that a DM with veteran players won't be challenged by the base math, and gives you recommendations to adjust the matht o account for that.

But because its doesn't a lot of dms assume the system at its core is tough for veterans....and its not.

 

[Oofta]

Sure, and as I just said, then the encounter math can be adjusted for this added tactical brilliance. aka the system directly acknowledges that a DM with veteran players won't be challenged by the base math, and gives you recommendations to adjust the matht o account for that.

But because its doesn't a lot of dms assume the system at its core is tough for veterans....and its not.

Again, I think this should be discussed at least briefly in the DMG. But some things you just have to figure out for yourself.

 

[pointofyou]

The difficulty I see is that you wouldn't want the players to feel as though they were being punished for being more tactically competent. This isn't an inevitability of course but it seems like a thing to keep in mind as you prep the relevant encounters.

"You" in that paragraph is general.

 

[cbwjm]

Sure, fine, nice, great. But as my question was specifically in response to someone who was about choosing what type of party to balance against, also a bit out of scope.

In other words, the pre-condition was for picking a specific type of party to balance again.

Oh right, I couldn't tell that you responded to someone, they must be on my block list or I might be on theirs.