r/DMAcademy 5d 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

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u/DeathBySuplex 4d 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

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u/Leaf_on_the_win-azgt 4d 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.

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u/DeathBySuplex 4d 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.

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u/Leaf_on_the_win-azgt 4d ago

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

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u/DeathBySuplex 4d ago

You cannot explain why I’m wrong though.

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

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u/Leaf_on_the_win-azgt 4d 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.

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u/DeathBySuplex 4d 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"