D&D 5E When it all goes wrong

[mamba]

without getting into specifics, there are times when I feel a player should be able to accomplish something with one of their various features, but the rules say "na, bro" without any real explanation as to why, lol.

you are the DM, if you do not like the rule in a particular case, you can break it

And every time this comes up, my house rules page gets bigger and bigger, lol.

apparently you do

 

[Deset Gled]

When it all comes together...

Two weeks ago, my players encountered Duergar in a small dungeon. After a Medium and a Hard encounter back to back, they were trapped by a cave-in. I told them they only had enough air to take a short rest before they would have to unbury themselves, but they came up with an ingenious idea and so were able to take a long rest.

I considered the design of the Duergar sector. It had been set up with roving patrols (random encounter) and there were several more major encounters ahead. But now that the Duergar had the party trapped I realized this could be tough. I warned the players about this, but, well, I'll continue.

So they extricate themselves from the cave-in. They are rejuvinated, having fully rested, and with a brief social encounter they recruited three NPC prisoners to join their cause. They find that the Duergar had sealed off the immediate escape route to funnel them towards what I hoped would be a challenging encounter with either a short rest before the next one, or a chance to negotiate with the leader to avoid it entirely.

That's not what happened. The party had a rough time with the CR 1 Duergar I'd put in their path, supported by a caster. During the fight, one player tried to escape, where they blundered right into the second encounter. Seeing a lone, wounded PC, I decided to roll with it and so the second encounter started immediately.

They won, but it was a very close thing. The multi-stage battle lasted most of the game session (4.5 hours). Everyone was exhausted afterwards (IRL and in game), so I awarded a ton of xp for their troubles, and creative solutions.

... You're framing this as problem, but with just a positive outlook and a couple minor adjective changes, it sounds like a really fun session. It had outside-the-box thinking to deal with the cave in, a social encounter with the freed slaves that turned into a combat boon, and by-the-seat-of-your-pants action. I'd be happy playing in this game.

 

[James Gasik]

When it all comes together...

Two weeks ago, my players encountered Duergar in a small dungeon. After a Medium and a Hard encounter back to back, they were trapped by a cave-in. I told them they only had enough air to take a short rest before they would have to unbury themselves, but they came up with an ingenious idea and so were able to take a long rest.

I considered the design of the Duergar sector. It had been set up with roving patrols (random encounter) and there were several more major encounters ahead. But now that the Duergar had the party trapped I realized this could be tough. I warned the players about this, but, well, I'll continue.

So they extricate themselves from the cave-in. They are rejuvinated, having fully rested, and with a brief social encounter they recruited three NPC prisoners to join their cause. They find that the Duergar had sealed off the immediate escape route to funnel them towards what I hoped would be a challenging encounter with either a short rest before the next one, or a chance to negotiate with the leader to avoid it entirely.

That's not what happened. The party had a rough time with the CR 1 Duergar I'd put in their path, supported by a caster. During the fight, one player tried to escape, where they blundered right into the second encounter. Seeing a lone, wounded PC, I decided to roll with it and so the second encounter started immediately.

They won, but it was a very close thing. The multi-stage battle lasted most of the game session (4.5 hours). Everyone was exhausted afterwards (IRL and in game), so I awarded a ton of xp for their troubles, and creative solutions.

... You're framing this as problem, but with just a positive outlook and a couple minor adjective changes, it sounds like a really fun session. It had outside-the-box thinking to deal with the cave in, a social encounter with the freed slaves that turned into a combat boon, and by-the-seat-of-your-pants action. I'd be happy playing in this game.

I'm happy to hear you say so, but I'd have much rather run the session I intended instead of the one I got, lol. Though upon reflection, I don't think it could have gone much differently with the decisions made on both sides of the table.

One thing I have realized is that if there's a possibility for multiple running encounters like this, I need to ease up on the individual ones. With the small amount of time I have to work with, more than two combat encounters per session hasn't been feasible simply because I have this love of "setpiece" battles when I likely should have more minor skirmishes.

 

[el-remmen]

Given that we only get to game 2x a month and sessions run from noon to 5-ish (we game on Sundays and some people have to work in the AM), I have a good reason to be concerned about adventure advancement, I think.

Man, I wish I got to play as often! My both games I run meet every 3 to 5 weeks and sometimes even six weeks if that is how schedules work out (my remote game has one player in Milan, and in order to not skip or session or have to have a player miss out what is likely to be a crucial scene in that game, he agreed to one-time scheduling that will have him playing from 1:30 to 4:30 am his time!). The in-person group plays 4 to 5 hours and the online group (which I find more exhausting to run) plays for 3 hours.

Anyway, I bring this up because the way we play means that some times our sessions are nothing but one long running combat. . . heck, sometimes they last into the next session! As long as everyone has fun and every session is not like that, we're good with it. I feel like not every session can have a balance of varied elements, but as long as in the aggregate we have a balance we enjoy over multiple sessions, it works.

That is not to say, I never get a little bummed about lack of progress (I recently had what I thought was gonna be a part of one session combat turn into a multiple retreat and attack sorties three-session fracas b/c PC tactics were awful), but in general I know that I prefer a play to find out approach (wherein I can try to predict and be prepared, but cannot always predict, so prepare the basics of people/places and go from there) even if it means things take longer. I may try to quicken (or slow) the pace when it is in my power to do so (like travel and downtime), but in general, I let the players set the pace. One benefit of this approach is that I am almost always overprepared because I try to prep just a little bit more than what I need for session and often that turns into enough for multiple sessions, allowing me to either spend my between session time doing something else (I love building terrain and painting minis) or tweaking what I have already prepared (and the party has not interacted with yet) based on how things are going or just what I think is a better idea.

Anyway, I will echo what many others have said, that I think this sounds like a great session to me - but obviously, ultimately it is up to you and your group to decide if that was actually the case, so I'd ask them.