Quote from: Justin Alexander;806201In Master of the Game he also writes that the "superior role-playing game offers players continuity of play through ... avoidance of 'fatality' through some form of 'luck' or magic" (pg. 57) in order to sustain campaigns that would otherwise end due to PC death.

That's what prisoners we find in the dungeon are for... and the guy we hired as extra muscle.

Quote from: cranebump;806189With the OP on maybe drinking the kool aid, then coming around to what the system actually is.  Characters are tough in 5E. They get death saves, for one thing, which is already a safety net. Granted , at lower levels you can get smeared into a little, pulpy dirt streak, even with that, but honestly, fat chance of that when you live in CR world. No wonder you hear some players bitching about a lack of challenge--the system isn't even set up, by default, to scare them.

I honestly doubt you've played the game. Unless the GM is pulling punches, 5e is pretty deadly, though probably not OD&D deadly. Though I've always found the "You are either perfectly fine, or completely dead" kind of silly. You mean, no one is ever taken out of combat then bleeds to death? So I like death saves. Also, death saves mean jack in the case of a TPK or a retreat in which on one can reasonably grab your unconscious body on the way out.

Even at higher levels, against even CR opponents, you can be taken down in only a few rounds, in fact, other than the prevalence of Save or Die in older editions, I would say that at higher levels you are MORE likely to die in 5e. (and Save or Die exists in 5e, go read the Medusa entry, its petrification ability is pretty brutal).

Also, there is a difference between

1. Including possible ambushes from creatures that would TPK the party in random encounters in areas the PCs are expected to be able to travel through.

and

2. The players travelling into areas they are told are ridiculously dangerous willfully.

I sincerely believe the advice was referring to #1, not #2.

EDIT: Dammit Justin, stop being so reasonable when I had the misconception of you being a twat. Its making me have to actually like you.

Dude, I played every packet, plus ran the basic rules in a pair of sessions recentl featuring Lvl 7-8 characters. It's pretty damned hard to die. Those characters are tough, even without the feats and widgets and bullshit tacked on. I'm not sayng GMs should be out to kill characters. I am saying it's okay to run a campaign in which the world isn't fair. Character death happens. Sometimes, it's all the characters.  You're not a shitty GM if this happens. It's just part of the game.

(I think bitching about char death must be an online thing, because I've never had players who whine when characters die. We've never wiped, but there have been some 50% and more casualties, couple with flat out retreats.  Sometimes we fail. Game goes on.)

So far our 5e games have felt... middle-dangerish. We had close to a TPK once (at 3rd level) and one PC died (though there may have been some GM/Player collusion there). We've been presented with a few situations where retreat was the best choice and we took it.
Mostly I think it's come down to the GM and how he's presenting stuff. It at least SEEMS like he's willing to let us die if we do stupid stuff... but we've been careful, mostly.

If the group walks outside the village and an ancient red dragon ransomly appears and targets the level 2 group without any warning or chance to wheel and deal or hide. Then Yes. That is unsatisfactory. Especially in 5e due to the fact the DM had to have deliberately put an ancient red dragon in the random encounter table.

I think what the entry in the DMG is trying to say, and failing slightly, is use some common sense. Which is really the thrust of that section anyhow. Build your random tables with some thought into the region. What makes sense to be there. Dont overuse the random encounters.

And there is the fact that an encounter might not be inherintly hostile. Something easily forgotten.

There are a whole mix of different elements going on here.

i) The desire for the DM to run a game that challenges the players but at the same time doesn't overwhelm them.

ii) The desire to run a believable world in motion.

iii) The desire for the PCs to interact with GM created content as that is "superior" to randomly created content

iv) The Heroic paradigm

The truth is that the book is right. Having the PCs killed by a random encounter is anti-climatic especially if you played the creature to the limits of its abilities. We have a thread where the books are being chastised for not making beasts scary. Well if a lion is scary how fucking scary do you think a dragon is going to be?
Take the dragon as an example. An Apex level predator with genius intellect and a single powerful weapon with limited uses per day. A creature like that is going to ambush its prey hit it with the killer weapon and then finish it off or its going to cripple its prey then toy with it like a cat if its cruel enough.
So your typical dragon will hide motionless (lizards are really good at that) then as the party approach release a breath weapon as a surprise attack. Then finish off the party with tooth and claw. Now that is going to be tough for the party sub 6 or 7th level that roll a random encounter with one.
Roll perception... okay right ... the dragon releases its breath weapon.... roll to say... okay the barbarian is still on 10 HP the rest of you are down. Barbarian roll initiative its you versus the dragon....
Random encounters work because we soften them as GMs. When a 3rd level party encounter a dragon they see it up in the sky miles off so they have time to hide. When a bunch of 3rd level PCs encounter a band of orcs the orcs haven't prepared an ambush with hidden bowmen etc etc .
When we randomised the monsters we tailored the circumstance so that the challenges were passable, and yes that meant running away sometimes but in reality the option to run away is just like a CR cap.

If you spend hours creating content for your players to consume its only natural to want them to interact with it. You don't want to spend 4 hours setting up a megadungeon with your dwarven forge scenery that cost you $1000 to have your party killed at the crossroads on the way there by a random group of bandits. In the storytelling model we even want to link those random encounters back into the bigger story. If there is an army of orcs massing to the east having a random encounter with a random group of Goblins feels weird.

The Heroic paradigm does constantly enforce the belief that retreat is failure. The governing heroic characteristic is not skill at arms or great strength its fortitude the ability to push on when all is lost and overcome great odds, we see this from Frodo to Odysseus, from Indiana Jones to Rocky (its not how hard you can hit its how hard you can get hit and still keep on going). We don't judge heroism through good tactics and the sense to know when to quit, characters like are anti-heroes, therefore its not surprising that in Heroic Roleplaying the heroic activity is the one people try to emulate.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;806204Also, there is a difference between
1. Including possible ambushes from creatures that would TPK the party in random encounters in areas the PCs are expected to be able to travel through.
and
2. The players travelling into areas they are told are ridiculously dangerous willfully.

I sincerely believe the advice was referring to #1, not #2.

Unfortunately, since they put no qualifying statements on "bad form", "not satisfying", etc other then attributing them to level inappropriate random encounters period, we'll never know what they may have possibly meant by it, just what they said.

Quote from: Omega;806216And there is the fact that an encounter might not be inherintly hostile. Something easily forgitten.

yeah, toasting random travelers seems like something a young, inexperienced dragon might find amusing... but an older one may have moved beyond such base entertainments and is less likely to be leaping out of the bushes to attack for no reason at all. There's all sorts of things it might be up to besides looking for an easy kill.

Quote from: Simlasa;806225yeah, toasting random travelers seems like something a young, inexperienced dragon might find amusing... but an older one may have moved beyond such base entertainments and is less likely to be leaping out of the bushes to attack for no reason at all. There's all sorts of things it might be up to besides looking for an easy kill.

Or the dragon is pretty beat up after trying to muscle in on someone elses lair and is at the village looking to hire adventurers. Or fakes being at full strength and tries to bully the PCs into doing the job.

Its up to the DM to make the random encounter not the equivalent of Pokemon "A wild Displacer Beast appears! Roll initiative."

Which is why I liked some older modules that had random tables with reasons why the whatits were there.

Quote from: Jaeger;806144Part of the problem is that many of the current generation of D&D players will not necessarily run away if they start getting their asses kicked.

Because for many years with organized play, many D&D PC's have gone into every "encounter" with the assumption that they will win.

Previous editions with their emphasis on "balanced encounters" have literally trained players into believing that they can win every fight.

DCC's adventure funnel idea is a great one for breaking gaming groups out of the "perfect encounter" paradigm. My group had a blast playing Starless Sea, and the concept works in D&D as well.

One of my players was saying to me that another player won't be able to make it for a couple of months due to work. So I might want to include that when I was working out the encounters.

I just laughed. First that he thought I worked out encounters in advance and second that I was going to reduce the skill or number of the bad guys just cos there were less PCs.

However, in actual play I had already done one thing deliberately to weaken my force.
the force was a group of 200 goblins with 40 wolves,6 orc captains an Orc Shaman and his pet giant spider.
The party of 5 or 6 started at 1st level.
They were fully aware that toe to toeing with more than 10 goblins at a go was certain death.

Now I split the goblins up into raiding parties of 8 6 of foot with 2 wolf riders. The goblins were raiding travellers and spreading mayhem in these groups.
I took a bunch of magic cards and slipped in a dozen goblins. this was my wandering monster deck. If I drew a Goblin they met a raiding party. I rolled for 1 encounter every 4 hours.

On their way to the goblin base which they learned about from a goblin they charmed  they met and defeated 2 bands of goblins. Then they met another band supported by an orc.

When they got to teh "base" there were 30 goblins 12 wolves the orcs shaman and spider.

They killed everything that didn't run away mostly in a massive battle on top of a temple which on paper they ought to have lost, and in doing so have pushed themselves up to 3rd level.

I ran it straight and never pulled punches. We had 2 near TPKs but no PCs actually went down.

Now on the outside that was strong play, good tactics, a lot of luck but I set the raiding party size of the goblins to be deliberately manageable. I knew that 20 goblins would have overwhelmed the party and realistically units of 20 goblins would have been a good way to organize those troops. But I set up the bad guys to be beatable. I didn't make them weak I didn't use poor tactics, but I set that unit size to make them manageable.
Now I think that is good GMing. the PCs feel like they have  been through the wringer and they have completed their first "quest" to drive these goblins out of the area and protect the village that half of them are linked to.

Now they met handful of other encounters. One was with pilgrims that they worked with and who they have helped. One was with a viper that nearly killed the scout, one was with a giant leech that attached and nearly killed the paladin's horse and one was with some deer one of which they killed to eat.

Now in that random encounter deck there are a few hero NPCs, there are some nasty villains and there are a couple of trolls, a giant, basically all the stuff I thought might live int eh area. I haven't stated any of it I will just make up stats and stuff as the card is drawn. By no means are all the encounters combat but all the combat stuff will fight to it's best ability.

I really think a random table for the status of the encountered creature is something 5e should have include. the difference in thread level between a Giant asleep under a tree, a Giant making camp, a giant looking for food, a giant cooking dinner and a giant laying in ambush for unsuspecting travelers is far greater than the difference in threat between a Giant and an Ogre or a Giant and a Grizzly bear. Now I will use that difference to give the PCs an opportunity to deal with random encounters but I can see if you wanted to create an unbiased "manly" game rolling for activity woulld be interesting.

In the light of day, I admit that I committed a crime I hate in other posts.  I intentionally used inflammatory words when other ones could have been used in their place.  Kool-aid, references to addition warring, etc.  And I could as easily named the thread "Has the DMG gone soft of me?"  

This confessed, I still feel let down by Chapter III.  I keep finding myself cruising along, digging what I am reading (especially Complications and Twists), and then I come to a screeching halt with sentences like these:

Look for opportunities to surprise and delight your players.

Too many surprises can be off putting to players.

Wilderness areas sprinkled with interesting landmarks and other features are better than vast expanses of unchanging terrain.

You want the players to go home looking forward to the next session, so give them a clear sense of where the story is headed, as well as something to look forward to.

Random encounters should never be tiresome to you or your players

I guess it just comes down to (1) not liking the writing style and (2) not agreeing with the advice.  Oh well, to each his own.  The DMG comes across as just too Pretty Pony for me.  I know, inflammatory and judgmental again.  I mean I get some of it, but I can't shake the feeling that there are two different writers to this section, with two different voices.  

[Solid advice] [Solid advice] [Now make sure your give your players a cookie with sprinkles] [Solid advice]

Ok, I'm done now.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the DMG advising that some players find a TPK from a random encounter unsatisfying. The DMG has lots of directly contrary advise, on purpose, and you are free to ignore the advise. That's the structure they've set up, and I for one am glad.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with characters running away - or further than that, hiding from an overly powerful adversary.

When I am running a new game I always reiterate to my players that I have populated the world beforehand with monsters - with no concern for their level, and if they get into a fight they don't want to be in they should get creative, or run away.

I've only been running games for 15 years, but I've had only two TPKs with this approach, and those were due to major player blunders. Generally, people wise up or do something amazing. It's worth it for the amazing.

//Panjumanju

Quote from: CRKrueger;806220Unfortunately, since they put no qualifying statements on "bad form", "not satisfying", etc other then attributing them to level inappropriate random encounters period, we'll never know what they may have possibly meant by it, just what they said.

Too bad there isn't an entire chapter around that bit of text which explains the context or anything.

The sentence is just pointing out that a lot of players (not all players) don't enjoy random death of characters that they spent time developing a personality and background for who are invested in the world around them. Many players like focusing on plots and enjoy some random encounters along the way to fill the gaps without enjoying being wiped out by random orc scouting party #354 because they were outmatched and unable to avoid the encounter.  

There are plenty of ways to make an unbalanced encounter play out that involves negatives and penalties for the characters without simply killing all of them.

What Snooggums said, and I'll refrain from injecting my annoyance and ire in this thread since I was goddamned stupid and posted it to the wrong thread.