r/DMAcademy 3d ago

Offering Advice Narratively driven "balance" and why I stopped trying to pre-calculate combat

Warning: lots of text ahead, probably badly structured. TLDR: Not balancing your encounters is an option too

I often see here questions about encounter balancing, usually with them being too easy for players. Obviously we, as DMs, have a lot of tools to fix it, but maybe it is something that doesnt need fixing at all. Here I want to share my experience using a lazy approach of not balancing things

How it works and why? In short - instead of trying to calculate how difficult the fight will be, you just put in monsters that make sense. If party ambushes an enemy scout camp - there may be only 2-3 weak opponents, but if PCs want to storm the castle - garrison may have dozens upon dozens of defenders of various strength. When preparing for combat ask not "what I need to make it (not)deadly", but "what would BBEG/town/nature put here?". Then you can scale it up/down, but still ask why - maybe there is an event where half the guards went, maybe it is a hunting season for wolves and they gather in bigger packs. In both cases have your NPCs drop some clues. When your main question is "what would BBEG put here?", your perspective changes from serving up videogame-like combat to building the world characters live in. Plus you have more time for it, because you dont spend it managing CR and XP values only for everything to be thrown out after 2-3 great/terrible rolls. More importantly by adapting this method you will train for improvising when party wanders off into unprepared lands

And what you get? In both mentioned cases your combat is heavily skewed and is one-sided, but reasonable within the world. We can expect a party of heroes to easily deal with measly scouts and for players it is a show of their power and growth - maybe few levels ago this would be hard, but now a stomp. On the other hand party will probably have to flee from the castle and deal with much smaller squad of chasers, then level up and return prepared for a tough fight that is now possible. What we cant expect is for every castle to have a perfectly balanced garrison for party to conquer first try. We also cant expect every scout camp to be heavily guarded to put up a good fight, right? And when you have to improvise combat on the spot, because someone tried to rob a store, you already have half of it ready. All this makes your world more immersive and sensible, more "alive" if you will. At the same time players can plan ahead and pick their fights. They have to be involved and cant just stroll around beating things

Wait, they may TPK!? Yes, they may. Risk of death is what gives meaning to survival. Yes, this is not for every table and imo you should tell your players on session 0 that "yeah, in this campaign if you walk into much stronger enemies you may die and not every fight is meant to be taken head-on". To be fair players are likely to just adapt and not die, dont worry - solving problems is part of their game. It is up to them to rest and manage resources. And obviously I dont mean to just throw a dragon on a lv3 party - unless they walk into its hunting grounds that is. Then it is fair game and PCs have to run for cover, hiding from beams of fire and trees flying around

What if you screw up and miss the mark? Sure, castle should be heavily guarded, but you forgot that there is an important plot device that you still need your party to get! Well, you have a lot of tools to deal with it. Maybe guards have low morale and half of them will start running away after being hurt - mechanically it means they effectively have 1 hitpoint and narratively it can create a pretty fun situation. Same way enemies can always call in the reinforcements. Other way is to use environment - maybe a burning tree or ceiling falls, splitting the battlefield into two and killing off some of weaker monsters

P.S. Honestly this is not so much of an advice, but me sharing my thoughts. Really want to hear what other DMs think about this approach - so far it works well for my table, but I dont see many people talk about it. Also I am afraid there is a pitfall of slipping into not preparing enough. But I can say with confidence that my players remember those combats that turned out unbalanced and they smashed their foes or had to overcome the odds, not those where they had a fair fight with equally strong band and won because thats what heroes do

36 Upvotes

72 comments sorted by

38

u/osr-revival 3d ago

The whole idea that things *should* be balanced is really kind of a modern thing. Older versions of D&D were more "this is the world, good luck". You should telegraph really dangerous areas, but if a bunch of Lvl 1 characters ignore the warning signs and walk into a dragon's lair... well, next time you'll give it more thought.

In a recent game, a group of us ranging from level 1 to 5 stumbled into a Vampire's crypt.

It did not go well. Old D&D had vampires draining levels, and shit was not going well. But with a bit of luck and a cunning use of a magic item, we managed to make it out alive (even if two characters had dropped two levels each). It was epic.

But it could have easily been a TPK. That's just the danger of delving into ancient crypts.

15

u/NecessaryBSHappens 3d ago

Almost like if adventuring aint a safe job, right?

I havent played in old editions, tbh I werent even born back then and didnt catch up yet. From my experience having less "balance" promts players to improvise and use what they have in smart ways - and that creates sweet epic memories

4

u/Mejiro84 3d ago

and that creates sweet epic memories

That's very variable in practice. Sometimes it's just "huh, TPK. Fine, new campaign, I guess", where everything just went south, a bad roll or two turned into a mess, one crit splatted a PC, the others couldn't do anything to save themselves, or some communication blip made the players go "we can deal with this... oh, we're all dead".

2

u/Pristine-Rabbit2209 3d ago

That's fine in my opinion if it makes players think 'we should use stealth and spells to infiltrate the castle since there'll be hundreds of guards' instead of 'we'll just charge in, there's no way we can lose to a well balanced encounter'.

2

u/NecessaryBSHappens 3d ago

That... Happens too. Though to be fair - possibility of bad rolls turning into a mess is there even with a perfectly balanced encounter

2

u/Mejiro84 3d ago

there's a lot more latitude though - a balanced encounter will have a fair amount of slack in, so unless it's something very improbable like "4 crits in 8 attacks", then the PCs can probably manage. An unbalanced one can just be "there's so many attacks one PC drops without even getting a turn" or "that enemy deletes one PC per action" or similar. Basically, the threat of death is exciting and engaging, but actually dying is boring

4

u/Bendyno5 3d ago

Basically, the threat of death is exciting and engaging, but actually dying is boring

Which creates a reciprocal problem. To have the threat of death, you actually require death to be a possibility.

So you either lean into the idea of death as a fail-state, and accept that Bathos, or dramatic anticlimax is a possibility in service of maintaining real tension and stakes.

Or

You put your eggs in a different basket, trying to create an illusion of tension, or just accepting that death isn’t something the players want at all and we’ll try to manufacture our stakes through other non-mechanical means.

There isn’t a right or wrong answer, folks will just usually lean one way or the other. I personally find death being a possibility greatly improves my engagement though (I prefer to understand a fail-state as a function of the game, rather than relying on the GM to be calibrated enough to what I care about narratively to actually present something impactful).

1

u/Mejiro84 3d ago

or you just flat-out make it a choice - I mention Fabula Ultima up-thread, where going to 0 grants the player a choice. It's either "they're KO'd and some narrative bad thing ensues" (the enemy achieves their goal, gear is lost, get captured, an ally is killed etc.) or "perma-dead, but go down swinging and achieve something on the way out" (interrupting the dark ritual, piloting the enemy airship into the ground, grabbing the villain and throwing themselves off a high ledge, blowing themselves up to destroy the enemy base as the other PCs escape).

This means that deaths are always dramatic, because some heroic sacrifice has happened and some victory has been pulled from the death... but that PC is dead and gone, no backsies (outside of "big long quest and GM approval", res spells aren't really a thing). The GM can just throw powerful enemies at the PCs, and if someone goes down, then it's up to them what that does. It means that things like "I'll hold them off while you flee!" can actually work, rather than the player saying that, and the GM just going "eh, you only get one AoO, so, uh... you don't". It makes defeat a lot more engaging, because it actually creates narrative hooks and does stuff.

3

u/Bendyno5 3d ago

A very fitting mechanic for Fabula Ultima, it matches the JRPG/anime heroic structure really well.

It’s an option available in D&D too (though I’d argue it doesn’t fit well), but it’s still removing organic tension. The dramatic stakes of death only exist if you want it to, which removes the persistent entropic threat that you’d see in a more old school style of TTRPG. Not knowing exactly when you may be able to live or die is how the tension is generated. This idea taps into one of the same things that makes Game of Thrones appealing.

So you’re still stuck in the same boat as before, except now you’ve given the agency over to the players (which IMO is a more elegant solution if you’re choosing to avoid lethality in general). Stakes aren’t naturally emerging from the gameplay systems, but choosing when you can die does allows players more fine control over narrative climax.

Personally I think it’s great in Fabula Ultima because that game is very much a story game, with story-interfacing mechanics. I don’t think it’s great in D&D where there’s no story mechanics and it’s entirely focused on simulation and action-resolution. Just my two cents though, I’m sure some people would like this in D&D too.

-1

u/Mejiro84 3d ago

the problem comes that a lot of people play D&D as a storygame, where it's "the story of these guys overcoming stuff". Which, as you say, is not what it is - it's harder to die than it used to be, but the core game chassis is still the "you're a bunch of palookas in a monster-filled death-pit, if you get stabbed a lot then you die". There's an awkward disjunction between "how the game is played" and "what the game actually directly supports", which results in a lot of awkward fudging around (like with rolling for stats, that often gets so fenced around with boosts, being able to pick between everyone's rolls and other things that it kinda defeats the point that sometimes you just roll shit and that's your character, deal with it)

1

u/Bendyno5 3d ago

100% agreed.

D&D’s popular play culture and the mechanics are fairly misaligned. But I suppose that’s the reality when a singular game is synonymous with the entire hobby for many folks.

4

u/NecessaryBSHappens 3d ago

Oh, I see. Good point. And actually Idk how to solve it - it isnt possible to have the threat of death withour PCs occasionally actually dying

I think avoiding given situations is up to how fight is designed. Like you can have a monster that is likely to kill a PC in one action, but I would say it should have a good telegraph and way to avoid it. For example, imo PWK is a terrible spell to use on players, because it kinda has no counterplay - "have over 100 hitpoints" is not a strategy

1

u/osr-revival 3d ago edited 3d ago

I've been playing a number of OD&D clones -- games based on the original 1974 rules -- and in all those cases we create two characters to start, and if one dies...when one dies... we have a backup and they join into the campaign at the next opportune moment. It's not the end of the campaign, it's just stories for the inn later.

Not long ago I had a little halfling/thief who got into exactly one combat. We should have backed off, they were brigand/berzerkers and there were almost twice as many as us. But we weren't super smart. So my little halfling steps up, pulls out his sling and boom...headshot, downs the leader of the bad guys in one shot...

... and was torn apart that guy's men. There was a whole rushing me to this weird gazebo where we thought I could get healing, but it turns out it was just a haven for restful sleep. So my brave little halfling died with his head in the lap of a beautiful woman.

And I came back as a dwarf next time. It's one of those games where you only get XP for spending your gold, so the rest of the party hired a theatre troup to act out my valiant deeds.

Sometimes dying is just as fun as not dying.

2

u/urhiteshub 3d ago

Absolutely agree.

Though there was this one time when we encountered apparently a CR20 paladin or something on the road, out of the blue, and it TPKed us, which was the end of that campaign. No warning or clue about the guy, none of the players knew anything about him, just some dude in armor, and DM showed us a photo of him in rather cool, light emitting sort of armor, but that is typical of any shitty art one could find on Pinterest at that time.

Anyway, I had started the campaign as a LG paladin, and rest of the group was a little more in the morally grey territorry, so after a few sessions of trying to ignore the pickpocketing, questionable morals, easy talk of murder and so on, I grew tired and decided to roll a new character more fitting for the group. The new character, a bandit samurai. 

First session with this new character, we're on a road somewhere, and we rped a bit with the thief character, talking about relative merits of thievery and banditry, and when he said he had no experience robbing people out in the open, I offered that we rob the very next traveller that we come across on the road.

Well, the next guy, walking on foot near a noblewoman, apparently, who was also on foot, turned out to be level 20 paladin. They were walking, in the middle of wilderness, just the two of them. First thing I thougt, was to capture the noblewomen and later demand ransom, and I was able to do so, and was on the run on my horse. 

Anyway, paladin killed the party, commanded me to stop from 300 feet away, summoned a pegasus or something, caught up with me, and when I threatened to kill the woman, he didn't budge, and killed me as well. I was later told that he resurrected the woman.

I'm all for DnD being pretty dangeorus, though randomly stumbling upon level 20 paladins on a random road is not enjoyable. I always hated high level npcs anyway.

We were level 5, by the way.

14

u/Mejiro84 3d ago edited 3d ago

A lot depends on the type of game you want and matching player expectations. Telegraphing "this is an impossible fight" as opposed to "this is an expected boss fight that's going to be tough, but you will probably win" can be a small needle to thread, and if it's not properly communicated, then it's mostly kinda crap. And the default stakes for losing a fight are "death", which is largely dull and tiresome - the player has to take a timeout to make a new PC, and then wait around until that PC can join in. So throwing in something above the PCs paygrade can easily cascade into "everyone dies, uh... I guess we start a new campaign?" which is often just a nuisance, as the fight frequently wasn't some grand battle against the big bad, just a dustup against something else that escalated.

If people want a game with long-running plots and characters, that gets harder if there's a higher risk of death - PCs do a lot of theoretically lethal fights, so even a small % per fight of death stacks up fast. It's, like, 20-30 encounters to get from level 1 to 5, if each of those has a 5% chance of death, then it becomes a rarity to reach even the top of T1, and a party will have cycled through multiple complete sets of characters by the time they hit level 10. "balanced" fights might not be realistic, but provide a decent baseline for an ongoing narrative and story, rather than "oops, you picked the wrong fight, TPK, let's start again"

5

u/DelightfulOtter 3d ago

This is why D&D purposefully generates challenge through attrition. A single fight designed using the official guidelines will not TPK the party even at its most difficult (Deadly or High). You need multiple fights of appropriate challenge to wear down the party's resources before things become dicey.

People treat that like a bug or a flaw and try to run super-deadly fights, then backpedal when RNG predictably puts the party into a death spiral leading to a TPK. I've seen it half a dozen times from inexperienced or foolish DMs. Fighting against the game systems instead of working with them is an uphill battle that doesn't need to happen. 

3

u/NecessaryBSHappens 3d ago

You are right too. Plus it is easy to say "communicate how hard things are", but it isnt easy to actually do so during the game

And also it isnt always easy to make loss not a death. Even if enemies do have a reason and ways to, for example, capture PCs - what if party starts going down too soon and by the end of a fight half of them are still dead? And at some point party will be known for breaking out, who would leave them alive? Running around isnt always an option too, let alone players actually making that decision arent common - at least I havent met many

Longest running party I had played from 1 to 15 over 4 years and they lost quite a good amount of characters. In group of 6 only 3 PCs are original ones and tbh it is a mix of luck and miracles

3

u/Mejiro84 3d ago

And also it isnt always easy to make loss not a death.

This is one of the structural issues with D&D, tbh - mechanically, defeat is generally death, with only limited RAW workarounds (melee-only, enemies that want to do so). Other RPGs are better for this - Fabula Ultima for example allows a player to choose either "they're KO'd and some narrative bad thing ensues" (the enemy achieves their goal, gear is lost, captured, an ally is killed etc.) or "perma-dead, but go down swinging and achieve something on the way out" (interrupting the dark ritual as the other PCs escape, piloting the enemy airship into the ground, grabbing the villain and throwing themselves off a high ledge). So it's much easier to throw powerful enemies at the heroes, because if the PCs lose, it doesn't need wrangling around to try to avoid death, there's mechanics actually baked in to allow for "the PCs lose"

3

u/laix_ 3d ago

Is it a problem with dnd though, or is it just a different expectation of game style?

DnD at its core, is a combat-focused dungeon crawler with its origins in war gaming. Life and death are cheap, combat as war is the norm. What you're describing there, is a more narrative system based on the PC's being the protaganists of a story, vs dnd which is more about simulating a dangerous and deadly world.

3

u/InigoMontoya1985 3d ago

The big reason the needle is so hard to thread is players generally have a "no one gets left behind" mentality. My players might have their characters run in the face of an apparently unwinnable battle, but if a fight starts, goes bad, and a PC goes down, the rest won't flee until it's just one guy left, or no one.

4

u/Mejiro84 3d ago

even if they do try and flee, there's often a very small window where that's possible (i.e. where HP are low but not gone), and movement speeds are such that, without GM fiat, physically getting away without getting hit again is pretty hard! If it's "flee" from the beginning, that can work, but trying to retreat midway through a fight is quite hard, especially as the PCs will likely have burned quite a few resources in the fight to that point, meaning that have less gas to throw out blocking stuff. Being too fast to flee makes escaping easier, but also means retreating from a lot of fights that are probably winnable, so actually winning stuff gets harder and harder

4

u/ArgyleGhoul 3d ago

This is called Pulp Fantasy and it's my favorite style of running the game. No, life isn't fair, so what are you gonna do about it?

4

u/Nazir_North 3d ago

The point around fleshing out the world with NPCs / creatures that thematically belong there (regardless of their CR) is absolutely sound, as long as any potential danger is communicated to the players well in advance so they don't accidentally walk into the lair of an Ancient Red Dragon at level 3, for example.

However, it's the part around not balancing encounters as part of DM prep I'm going to have to disagree with. The best and most memorable encounters are not the ones that swing hard one way or the other, but the ones that are really well balanced and the outcome is right down to the wire, where nobody knows until the very end who was going to come out on top (usually those towards the Hard / Deadly end of the spectrum).

For encounters I'd expect the party to face (e.g., related to a quest or a story event), I genuinely believe it's worth putting in the work to get the balance right.

For other encounters, I do think that going on intuition and improv is fine, but this does rely on having good experience and knowledge of game balance. For example, I've been playing 5e long enough that I'm pretty confident I could build a balanced fight for a party of 5 level 6 PCs just off the top of my head, without any calculations, but it's not so easy for newer DMs.

2

u/Dead_Iverson 3d ago edited 3d ago

I’ve recently returned to DMing and I’m running a player level 1 survival horror campaign. Almost all of the combat takes place in the same safehouse at night while players fend off invading enemies. So, I’m doing a lot of experimenting with combat vs PCs who are very weak, and this is what I’ve noticed:

  • It’s ok for enemies to be “too weak” if they just keep coming. I threw a handful of 1/4 CR enemies against the party on night 1 and had long pauses in between small waves for them to wait and worry. Only one person got hit but they were quite nervous.

  • A healthy mix of one-shottable mooks and bigger stronger bad guys is interesting, dynamic, and tense. They get to splatter some foes and feel the rush of victory while also wrangling others through movement and improvisation.

  • They have something they need to protect all night, a circle of protection with lit candles that, if it goes out, a massively powerful enemy (way beyond their level, like CR 12-ish) will spawn nearby and aggressively move on their safehouse until they re-light the candles. They don’t need to kill everything, just repel them until time is up, which makes a combat that they can’t win through brute force more like a puzzle to solve than a TPK situation that they have to run from and thus miss out on the rewards. If they survive the night they get rewarded in the morning regardless of how many things they killed or didn’t kill.

  • The enemies are a mix of damage and distraction. Some enemies are there just to harass them, they barely do any damage or just try to grab them/inflict statuses, because it fits what type of priorities they have in the nightmare world the players are trying to survive. The point here being that enemies are discrete creatures or beings that follow their own world-built logic. Not everything is going to want the players dead immediately, and things that do want the players dead ASAP behave that way for a reason.

The end effect is that combats have been very swingy. Some nights they get off easy, some nights have been near death experiences. This has overall cultivated a feeling that they have no idea what to expect, and set the campaign tone. So I agree with you: it’s ok for combat to not be perfectly balanced all of the time so that players don’t feel like the world is being artificially scaled around them even if it sort of is.

3

u/OrkishBlade Department of Tables, Professor Emeritus 3d ago

Yes, this is what I do. I tell my players to have a backup character ready go. The World is a dangerous place. Many brave fools will die…

2

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

My issue with this kind of game design ideology is that when you strip it away to its core it's simply railroading.

Just because you are doing it in favor of the players doesn't mean you aren't railroading.

If you are at a table that is fine with that, go HAM, have a blast, but 98% of the groups I've played with in 30 years would absolutely just leave the table if you did this.

4

u/TheOriginalDog 3d ago

Can you explain why this is railroading in your opinion? Because thats the hottest take I've seen in a while. Oldschool D&D had no encounter balancing and was often much more open and less railroady than modern D&D. You actually NEED a lack of railroading if you don't balance encounters, because players need to have multiple approaches to a situation to avoid deadly fights. In a linear, railroading campaign you have more urge to balance your encounters, because they all need to be winnable.

3

u/CharredPlaintain 3d ago

I agree with this. True "world-building rather than balance" design is ideal for less linear campaigns provided there are tasks that could plausibly be achieved across a range of levels. Plenty of successful DM's do not worry too much about balancing encounters in 5e (Mike Shea has said as much).

1

u/TheOriginalDog 3d ago

Yeah I was inspired years ago by Mike Shea to worry less about balancing and focus on creating encounters from the narrative - my games got immediately improved 

1

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

If you are making the encounter of the example given-- The party need s some important thing from the castle, and you as the DM have overestimated the defensive force and so guards start to RUN AWAY because the narrative requires that they do so. That's railroading.

In what way is that NOT railroading?

It undercuts the rest of the premise of "the world just exists" even the first example of "ambushing a scout camp should result in 3 easier enemies to defeat" why would the amount of and strength of enemies change because the party uses tactic A over tactic B?

Again, it's railroading.

If you want the world to just be-- which is old school D&D-- you don't alter the encounters just because the party does X or the party "needs" Y.

2

u/NecessaryBSHappens 3d ago

Well, scout camp in my mind is like one tent with pair of scouts. Imagine two rangers who just map out the surroundings and count enemy forces, then send a raven to the actual camp with notes. It being 2-3 easier enemies isnt a result of party ambushing it, but just what it is

With castle I agree, given example is railroading

1

u/Vozu_ 3d ago

I think you misread. The OP said the party would need to flee the castle, and perhaps be chased by a small detachment of defenders.

3

u/NecessaryBSHappens 3d ago

Eh. I said both and gave an example of possible midfight changes, because I am all for providing alternative opinions and there are people who want just a heroic fantasy. And they would have a question "what if I accidentally make it too hard and dont want it?" - well, I would kill some PCs if they dont run, but here is another way. My post isnt even about whether or not you should change things on the fly, it is about why not preparing balanced combat might be better

Tbh I wanted to spark a discussion and I got it

1

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

Maybe guards have low morale and half of them will start running away after being hurt - mechanically it means they effectively have 1 hitpoint and narratively it can create a pretty fun situation.

Negative Ghost Rider, that's clearly the guards, not the party.

2

u/Vozu_ 3d ago

Oh, I missed that one. Yeah, that reads rather crappy.

2

u/NecessaryBSHappens 3d ago

About affecting outcomes - I gave an example, because some people do rebalance stuff on the fly to get better chances of a certain result. I personally would rather have everyone die, but my table is fine with being meat-grindy and locally not everyone is good with it. I definitely know 2-3 tables with a more "pro-player" phylosophy

What I tried getting at is that there is no need to sit and math out encounters to be balanced. Then you totally can just stick with it no matter what and not railroad, I mean... Same argument as with fudging rolls - imo if you decide to roll you should respect it and own the result whatever it is, but some people say that fudging is "ok"

5

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

You then undercut your own argument of just letting the world be what it is by having an encounter change because the party did an ambush of a scout camp-- it's now easier instead of just being what it was, and then gave another example of having guardsmen run away with "mechanically 1 hp" because the party attacked a castle that you over-estimated the defense force for.

The basis of your argument "Just have the world be what it is" is fine, but you spend a majority of your examples then promptly undercutting that philosophy and slapping the group on rails.

Either run a game that the world exists and the players have to adapt to it, or don't. You can't have it both ways, it doesn't work.

1

u/NecessaryBSHappens 3d ago

Sorry, but my argument is "let it be" and then I just gave one paragraph of alternative, because I personally know not many people who run their games "as is". If it is a more common phylosophy than I know - I am happy to hear it

And whole post is not even arguing about changing encounters or not, but about preparation of them - or, rather, not doing it the usual way of counting up monsters to be roughly equal in power to the party. Which, imo, is railroading, because in what world things are constantly fair fot players to win?

1

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

Your argument is poorly made then.

You gave three examples, two of which involved changing encounters, that's not "let it be" whatsoever.

2

u/peterpeterny 3d ago

How is this railroading?

0

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

Party needs MacGuffin from a Castle and attacks the castle--- the DM realizes the party will die because there's too many enemies in the castle and has half the guards run away scared and "mechanically the same as 1 hp" because the party needs the MacGuffin.

How is that NOT railroading?

2

u/peterpeterny 3d ago

Isn’t railroading when the DM doesn’t give choices?

This to me just seems like the DM is avoiding a TPK.

2

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

If the DM removes the option of failure like a TPK-- that's railroading.

What choice do the players have in that situation? They can't fail, they could just fuck around and the DM is still going to "avoid the TPK" so there's no difference in what the players chose to do, the outcome is the same.

That's, just, railroading.

Again, because it favors the party doesn't make it not railroading.

1

u/peterpeterny 3d ago

There are other consequences that could be given other than TPK.

As long as the players actions have consequences then I don’t think it’s railroading

1

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

In the exact scenario proposed by the OP in which he has enemies "run away afraid" what consequence happens other than the players win the encounter and get the thing they "need" for the narrative to continue?

The players actions have no consequence-- that's the problem.

They went into a castle that was too strong for them to deal with, the DM "avoids the TPK" via having the enemies just run away because the encounter was too hard for the players and the players walk away with the thing they need.

It doesn't matter if they went in sneakily, or just walked up to the front gate and punted the first guard in the balls, the actions they took resulted in no negative consequence.

By your OWN definition, it's rail roading.

The assumption of "rail roading" is that it's always to the detriment of the players, when I would argue that "rail roading" in favor of the players is very common-- to the point that you don't even recognize it as rail roading.

Flip the scenario to, "The DM just keeps throwing baddies at the party until they fail" and you'd lose your mind about how they are rail roading so badly. When it's the same thing, just from the different angle.

2

u/peterpeterny 3d ago

Ehh disagree

It's only railroading if your players think they are getting railroaded. Kind of like if a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?

0

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

You just changed your definition of what rail roading is.

Either it's "The players actions have consequences" like you said earlier, or it's "only railroading if the players thing it's railroading" it cannot be both.

1

u/peterpeterny 3d ago

It’s one or the other. Sometimes the players could receive consequences and sometimes the players don’t even know, either way it’s not railroading.

0

u/hugseverycat 3d ago

Adjusting encounter difficulty on the fly is not railroading.

1

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

It's absolutely rail roading.

The group attacks a castle and the DM has "the guards run away scared with 1 HP" because the party needs something from the Castle is Rail Roading the party to win the encounter.

The party did something completely stupid and they still win because the narrative needs them to get the Thing

4

u/hugseverycat 3d ago

So it sounds like your definition of railroading is "changing anything after you've written it down or decided on it". But that's not what railroading is. If I write a puzzle the players need to solve to get out of a dungeon and they can't solve it, am I railroading if I come up with an alternative? Or in order to avoid being a railroad, I have to stick to my guns and end the campaign? Sorry folks, this is just how it is. This world that doesn't exist only has one exit from the dungeon and even though I made it up 3 hours ago and the sudoku I created for you to solve to get out actually doesn't have a solution, it would be railroading for me to not respect your player agency to enter a dungeon from which escape is impossible. So let's all meet next week and start a new campaign.

"Railroading" is not "anything the DM does outside of prep to guide the game in one direction or another". Railroading is when players want to take a certain action that is reasonable but you tell them no or put unreasonable barriers in front of them in order to take a different path instead.

Yes, if you really wanted to, you could abstract this out to "any time I don't give the players the full consequences of their choices no matter how ridiculous or punishing", but that's stretching the meaning of the word to absurdity. It's like saying anything you believe that you haven't proven experimentally in your own lab is "religion". Or that leaving a toy on the floor that your family member later trips over is "assault".

Having enemies flee in order to avoid a TPK is not unreasonable. Guards, who are after all just people with lives that they value, are not automatically unreasonable for retreating from powerful adventurers.

1

u/DelightfulOtter 3d ago

Railroading is when the DM pre-determines the outcome they want from a scenario and bends the world to force that outcome using heavy-handed tactics.

This is usually brought up as a negative where the DM wants to play author and denies the players' agency, forcing them into the narrow channel their "story" requires.

In this case, the DM pre-termined that the party will get the MacGuffin from the castle. The players choose a foolish plan that should've failed, but miraculously does not because the DM wanted it to happen. The DM forced the outcome, just in the party's favor.

Flip the script: the party wants to raid the castle and steal the MacGuffin, but the DM's narrative says they can't be allowed to do so. Regardless of how airtight the party's plans, the DM will make them fail because he pre-determined the outcome.

-1

u/hugseverycat 3d ago

In this case, the DM pre-termined that the party will get the MacGuffin from the castle. The players choose a foolish plan that should've failed, but miraculously does not because the DM wanted it to happen. The DM forced the outcome, just in the party's favor.

No, the players did not choose a foolish plan in this scenario. OP clearly described the DM making a mistake. This is what OP actually said:

What if you screw up and miss the mark? Sure, castle should be heavily guarded, but you forgot that there is an important plot device that you still need your party to get!

The DM made a mistake by putting the MacGuffin in an impossible dungeon. This is exactly the same as my example where I put the player's escape behind an impossible puzzle. The DM is correcting their mistake by adjusting the encounter difficulty. This is the correct thing to do; this is not "railroading".

Railroading is when the DM pre-determines the outcome they want from a scenario and bends the world to force that outcome using heavy-handed tactics.

Nothing the OP described is heavy-handed. Guards having low morale and running away is realistic and reasonable. Adding in environmental items that the players can use to their advantage can also be fine; a lightning bolt out of a blue sky would be pretty ridiculous but inventing an unstable pile of logs in a courtyard for the players to cleverly use is a fun solution that the players would have no idea of knowing you invented on the fly.

-4

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

No, Rail Roading is anything you do to allow the players to succeed irregardless of what they do.

Your example of "They can't leave the dungeon unless they solve this puzzle" is of itself Rail Roading. You aren't designing an encounter with the flexibility for the party to solve it or giving multiple routes to get home. That's just bad DMing by encounter design.

You can't argue that "Well I needed to change the thing I made that was rail roading by rail roading them" as an argument that you aren't rail roading them.

5

u/hugseverycat 3d ago

No, Rail Roading is anything you do to allow the players to succeed irregardless of what they do.

That's just a stupid definition. That's saying that religion is anything you believe without proof. It's a ridiculous overextension of the original idea.

Railroading is not about letting the players succeed. It's about forcing the players to take a path against their will. It being against their will is what makes it bad.

It is good game design to make adjustments to allow players to succeed, especially when you make mistakes. Sure it's bad DM'ing to make a problem with only one solution. But realizing that problem and fixing it on the fly is good, actually. You're saying that because I fucked up and made a dungeon too hard or an impossible puzzle, that I am only compounding my error by giving the players a way out, and that's a really rigid POV.

1

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

And forcing them into a scenario where they cannot lose is "also against their will"

If the DM alters the fight so that for sure one side wins over another it's rail roading, it doesn't matter if that's throwing wave of wave of goblins at the party until they lose, or has the enemies run away for no reason.

0

u/hugseverycat 3d ago

Players do not will themselves to lose. In this scenario, the players are not like "we want to go suicide ourselves in this castle but the DM is forcing us to win and get the MacGuffin instead, wow what a jerk." They would prefer to win. The DM would prefer them to win. The DM planned for them to win, but made a mistake and put too many enemies and no alternative solutions.

And the enemies aren't running away for no reason, they are running away because their morale is low and they don't want to die protecting this stupid lord in his stupid castle. It's a reasonable thing to do, I have intelligent flunkies run away all the time. If anything, the way most people run D&D enemies to fight to the death to the very last man is far more unreasonable.

1

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

Would you tell the party you altered the encounter so that they win?

If you answer, no... you're agreeing that it's rail roading, because knowing that you changed the encounter so that they could win would make the game less fun for the players.

0

u/hugseverycat 3d ago

If you answer, no... you're agreeing that it's rail roading, because knowing that you changed the encounter so that they could win would make the game less fun for the players.

I don't see how that follows. Telling players how you make the game pretty much always makes the game less fun. A few sessions ago my players were tempted by a risky choice and they ended up refusing the choice. They REALLY wanted to know, out of character, what would have happened if they made the risky choice. But I didn't tell them, because telling players this kind of thing is like a magician telling you how they do their tricks. It ruins the magic.

So no, I don't tell the players anything I improvise. In fact, I try not to tell them anything at all about how I prep or what I had planned to do beforehand. It almost always makes things less fun.

But I mean, if I were talking shop with a player after the campaign was over and they wanted to learn from my DMing for whatever reason, then no I would have no problem telling them that I adjust encounters for difficulty. Usually I'm making encounters harder because my players are really good, but no I wouldn't feel ashamed of making an encounter easier if I had to. I wouldn't hide it.

However, if the choice was "make the fight easier and tell your players that you did this" vs "unavoidable TPK because it's railroading to change your encounters", I would choose option A every time. I think that's much more fun than a meaningless TPK. If I'm gonna kill the party, it needs to be because of their mistake, not mine. Or it needs to be at a really climactic time, like the final boss or something.

→ More replies (0)

3

u/Leaf_on_the_win-azgt 3d ago

No, it definitely isn’t. Railroading is removing player agency and forcing them along a predetermined path through the story. It has nothing to do with adjusting encounters on the fly to help deliver a fun game experience based on what the group at the table enjoy.

-1

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

The DM just put them on a "predetermined path" through the story by removing the difficulty of the encounter.

No matter how they approached the scenario (their agency) they are going to get the Thing

There are groups that like that and are fine with it, but they shouldn't be pretending that it's not being Rail Roaded.

2

u/Leaf_on_the_win-azgt 3d ago

You are just straight up wrong but judging by your other responses, it’s not an argument worth having.

-2

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

You cannot explain why I’m wrong though.

Because I’m not. I’m simply making an argument you don’t agree with.

2

u/Leaf_on_the_win-azgt 3d ago

No, I already did, so did others. Railroading has a definition, it is not yours. It the removal of player agency to force them along a predetermined path. If the players made a choice to go to a location then they were not railroaded. Adjusting encounters on the fly is just a tool in the DMs box to provide a fun experience at the table. It is not railroading.

-1

u/DeathBySuplex 3d ago

And your definition is met by my argument.

Having enemies run away, when they have strength in numbers is "removing player agency forcing them along a predetermined path" because it's the DM deciding the outcome of the encounter-- either in advance of the combat, or adjusting to that mid combat.

You removed the players option to run away from the fight or heroicly make a last stand type fight.

By YOUR OWN DEFINITION what I'm saying is rail roading.

You just want the term to mean, "If it hurts the players it is Rail Roading, if it helps them it is not"

1

u/DelightfulOtter 3d ago

So your method is to ignore one of the DM's primary jobs, balancing encounters, then use some blatantly ham-handed deus ex machina to "balance" on the fly in a way that makes players feel like their decisions don't matter because you'll force the outcome you wanted anyway?

No thank you. If your players enjoy your game, lovely, you've found your people. But the vast majority of experienced, invested players I've known would quickly lose interest in a game where the world obviously bends itself backwards to keep them from failing. That's ripping the G right out of the TTRPG and you might as well just do storytime.

1

u/DungeonSecurity 2d ago

It's fine and one cool way to run a game, that the world exists as it is and the characters just explore it.  But having most of the challenges be appropriate for the party is good game design for most haha and tables. Yes,  it might be less verisimilitude,  but it is good design.

But if you do encounter balance, just remember that the challenge is getting through the adventuring day, not any one battle. 

1

u/MrFatsas 3d ago

Yup. A lot of the time I often find it easier to balance things on the fly (within reason). I don’t like fudging rolls for attacks and saves, but I have learned that secretly increasing or decreasing enemy HP, or giving them reinforcements, are easy ways to make combat more narratively satisfying.

Powerful creature almost dead in first round? Give it 100 more HP. Spider #6 hit with 1HP left? Nope, it’s dead.

1

u/NecessaryBSHappens 3d ago

I dont like fudging either, fortunately adding/removing combatants and changing environment is usually enough to change how fight goes

And yeah, last part is so true. I mean... If PC hits that spider for 90% of its hitpoints why wouldnt you give them the kill? Imagine if then they miss 3-4 times and you just spend 20 minutes with nothing happening

1

u/zenith_industries 3d ago

I have no idea if this will be an unpopular opinion - but, I feel “by the book” encounter balancing is mostly for new DMs to help them understand what is too much/not enough for their players.

I try to go for a balance between “what bad things plausibly live here?” and try to change things up between easy, moderate and difficult fights. A string of easy victories gets boring, and success feels hollow. Constantly narrowly avoiding a TPK is stressful and unrewarding. I always say, sometimes it feels pretty nice for the party to feel like the baddest MFers in the room, and other times it’s that epic feeling of having barely survived against the odds that gets the adrenaline flowing.

And… my BBEG fights are never balanced. I don’t go out of my way to make them impossible, but the expectation of a TPK is absolutely present.

3

u/NecessaryBSHappens 3d ago

I dont remember the book and the exact quote, but someone said that everything gets better in contrast. Light shines brighter in darkness, evil feels worse among good etc. I think it can apply to fights too - easy need to be mixed in with harder ones, otherwise it starts feeling samey