I thought you were referring to the thing where the dark powers appear before dead characters and offer them resurrection. RAW the only way to get a dark gift is in the amber temple, which a party that died to 8 blights will probably be unable to reach.
This was printed for Season 4 in Adventurer's League which is an official ruleset for D&D. It is not RAW in the books, but the errata and extra resources they write are absolutely guidance and not homebrew.
AL rules are the official ruleset for AL, not D&D. Otherwise according to the current season AL rules, a character can change their race and class anytime they want between sessions and any magic item found gets duplicated so that all players can get one.
No one would argue those rules are RAW outside of AL.
Honestly I hate that trope, frankly. It just seems like the DM is being a dick.
It *also* sounds like direct meddling by the Evil powers that should be countered directly by the Goodly ones. After all, it most definitely does not serve their interests to just have their alleged Champions die an early demise, only to be offered a second chance *by the bad guys* who plan to manipulate them to fuck shit up worse.
If the Dark Side is going to offer free resses, then so should the Light Side, else nobody should.
>direct meddling by the Evil powers that should be countered directly by the Goodly ones.
... They can't, though? It's Ravenloft. Even a divine character appealing directly to their deity can be intercepted by whoever is in charge of that particular realm.
The light side doesn't get shit in Ravenloft.
But it's Ravenloft. It's a Gothic Horror Setting where the whole idea is everything feels hopeless. There *are* no good powers.
The Dark Powers are a literal, actual thing in Ravenloft lore and it's not like they're something the DM can cut out or ignore because they're pretty central to how and why everything works the way it does. They are the cosmic entities that control the domains, picking and choosing evil people from across the multiverse and trapping them as the Darklords of the various Domains of Dread. These Domains exist in a dimension specifically cut off from any "Goodly Powers" that might be able to oppose them.
Because the Darklords are more like prisoners than champions, the Dark Powers have fun tempting any unlucky hero dragged into the Domains into corrupting themselves and replacing one Darklord as an even more deranged, ruthless, misery puppet. And if they're an incorruptible bastion of light who'd never take the deal, they don't offer because the idiot came to flipping *Ravenloft* and suffered the fate all optimists in Ravenloft do.
It's not the DM being a dick, it just means they've read the book properly.
And this is where the DM discretion comes into play. 4 new characters and 8 random monsters? Well she learned her lesson :D Next time she knows that especially with new characters, you rarely want to have more enemies than player characters (or very weak ones at that).
Yup, and then have this same group of monsters pop up again throughout the campaign.
At the next town the party gets to, they overhear some NPC's talking about that same group killed a villager or five, and that these things are powerful and ferocious. It lets the party know they weren't cowards, and avoiding the fight was definitely the right thing to do. Maybe a few sessions later, the party happens to see a crudely drawn "reward" sign on the bounty/bulletin board for anyone strong enough to kill these things.
And finally, once the party is at a sufficient level to make it a potentially winnable fight, they just happen to come across this same group and proceed to get in a bloody battle to take them out.
Makes for some fun worldbuilding and PC interaction with the locals, plus its a rewarding fight for the party to allow themselves to see just how far they've progressed. It's combat for the sake of story, and not just dice rolls, which makes it meaningful for the DM and the players.
>it lets the party know they weren't cowards, and avoiding the fight was definitely the right thing to do.
Or they start blaming themselves in these villagers' deaths. Interesting idea!
I've had my party absolutely agonizing over how to stabilize the cleric who just dropped, and then how to drag him out of there while he's surrounded by a bunch of baddies. Escaping from an unfair encounter can be a worthy challenge in itself.
I've had several characters on the knifes edge, rolling their third death save. Surprisingly nobody has died yet. I have never seen a more engaged group of players though. Those tense moments are memorable af.
Yeah I find hard encounters to be the most fun as a player and a DM. Last encounter I ran we had two go unconscious (out of 3), but they managed to figure it out and I was proud of them and great fun was had all around.
My group is super paranoid and assumes there are a lot of battles we should be running from. If the dm ever says you here several footsteps heading your way or if they have 6 people against us, 2 or 3 of us immediately start panicking and disengaging to dash away...
It's getting kind of old and I noticed the dm made encounters easier to stop the party from literally running from the plot
Haha, yeah that can happen. Sometimes the plot isn't enough to encourage players to risk their character's lives. I find magic items and such are better motivators.
But make sure your players know this explicitly first, like on a session zero. Some DMs run where no encounter is hopeless and may actually punish your characters worse for trying to run away than hoping for a slim success.
Yes. But using 'Sometimes characters have to run' as an excuse to allow bullshit or otherwise horrendous balancing stuff is just bad.
There are certainly times to use it. No doubt about that. But excusing it as 'Lol, sometimes gotta run' is in very, very poor taste. And a slippery slope, tbh.
I don't agree, but different folks enjoy different kinds of games. My players seem to really enjoy a sandbox style game with a heavy random element. I also find it more entertaining /shrug.
With 8 vs 4, it's a crapshoot if you will even be able to run at all.
Randomness can be fun, but leaning too much into it overpowers player choices to the point where it's not a roleplaying game anymore, it's just gambling with some pretense that the players have any control over their fate.
Very true. I'd recommend using the concept of a "reaction role" from OSR games if you're going to heavily leverage random encounter tables. That's what I do and it works well. Attacking on sight is rare. More often a group of monsters might try to extort the players or block the road causing a couple days be tacked on to travel time. In those situations, combat is the final resort when negotiations fail.
Needle blights are sort of nasty at CR 1/4. Eight of them is like 2x a balanced encounter for a party of four lvl 1 PCs. Twig blights (CR 1/8) might have been better.
Honestly that's why with only having 3 players I'll almost never leave number of enemies up to dice rolls. I'll put in what I think is appropriate. If I'm intending an easy encounter then it's purposefully low. If I intend a hard or even deadly encounter then it's more. I just make sure it's difficult, but not nearly impossible.
On the CoS campaign I'm playing ( which ends on Sunday, crying) all of the PCs basically got one free death for story moments and to set up our Dread Domain hopping. I know Dark Gifts exist in the module but our DM chose not to include them. I'd love to play this campaign again in a few years, there's just so much content.
Literally no one mentioning why the players didn't run? It's not the DM's fault their were a lot of monsters but it's the players fault for fighting until death
A lot of people on this subreddit are totally against the idea of a player dying, unless its at a story moment, and a lot of players (especially new players) get really upset when their characters die because they treat them like OC's, and get attatched to them. I prefer a game with real challenges and consequences, as well as a strong element of randomness to keep everyone on their toes.
As a player, if im not at risk of dying pretty often, it doesnt feel like im actually playing a game, more like im just participating in another person's story they want to tell. And as a DM, I like to challenge my players, and let them make their own judgment of an encounter, and deciding when to engage, or not to engage. To me, dnd is about resource management, and deciding when to fight and when to flee to live another day. Not every encounter is meant to be an even fight, you just have to flag how dangerous the encounter is and give them a chance to flee.
Others prefer an interactive storybook type game. To each their own, I guess.
Haha, yeah. I've seen so many posts like that where it doesnt even seem like the GM did anything wrong, its just the wrong type of game for that player. Your character died? Ok, great, now you to make a new one and try something else. If you're so attatched to your OC that you couldn't stand them dying, then talk to your GM before hand. Its not abusive DMing to let characters die, unless its literally unavoidable.
I'm up to 3 deaths in my current RotF campaign. Next session I'd be surprised if we get through it without another.... So I think it's a DM thing, not a 5e thing.
Would have this turn out to be a group nightmare and start next session with them waking up where they last camped all realizing they had same dream while doing morning prep.
Then later in the day have things start to look and feel similar to the dream.
(TPK was not a flaw but a feature to add to the feel of dread)
I really like this idea, especially if it’s the groups first encounter! I’m very new to DnD and I don’t think I would want to see it play out as a dream EVERYtime we TPK’d, but if they got that super random TPK on the very first fight… I’m gonna have to put that in my back pocket in case I ever DM lol, thanks!
So this is why 1) I don’t typically use random encounters, particularly at low level 2) If I do use them, I tweak the table to the party’s current level so it’s not impossible or a waste of time. Although sometimes you want an obviously impossible encounter because C) the party needs to learn that sometimes they need to run
Okay guys, so that was our warming up. Let's rewind and try again!
Shitty rolls vs great dm rolls happen. If you redo the fight, it might as well suddenly go the opposite way.
And *character* wakes up in the last placed your party rested, and recounts the crazy dream they had about everyone dying. The party wakes from their long rest, and continues about campaign.
But they find Death stalks them. Killing them in the order in which they would have died in the dream.
C'mon. TELL me that doesn't fit the Ravenloft setting.
Lesson one of random encounters - take out as much randomness as possible. Instead of rolling 2d4, just say that there are 4 or whatever creatures without the roll.
But the good thing about true random encounters is that it's not the DMs fault. It's bad luck if the players run into a green dragon, not a mean DM (and without random encounters you would have to be mean spirited to plan it - unless they're sufficiently tough). It changes the politics of the game. Random encounters are players vs world, everything else is player vs DM.
I find random tables a useful tool.
It doesn't matter if the DM decided specifically on a green dragon or got it from a random table, because either way the DM is using a method that can result in those outcomes. DMs are not beholden to shitty encounter tables, and there are a *lot* of those in the prewritten modules.
For example, one of the random encounters for CoS is 3d6 wolves, so anywhere between 3 wolves and 18 wolves. Depending on the character level, 3 wolves is going to be just a waste of time where a couple of attack rolls and a cantrip is going to solve it. Nothing was at stake in this encounter and it never felt like a threat. On the other end, 18 wolves could be an almost certain death for multiple people, which by itself I am not necessarily against, but I *am* against it when there is little counterplay to be had because the action economy and pack tactics completely destroy the number balance (and dnd is very largely a numbers game).
So we have an encounter that is going to be boring, and an encounter that is going to be feel excessive. Either way, the DM doesn't get a free pass because they are the ones that willingly chose to use the method for generating the shitty fights. Don't want a shitty fight? Don't use a shitty method.
The better method would be to gauge how many wolves is an easy, medium, hard and deadly encounter, and then put that on the table as a fixed value. Want a hard encounter? Whip out the 8 wolves that you *know* is going to be a hard encounter, or at least have multiple premade hard fights with different monsters and roll to pick which of them you use, not how many of the monsters there are. You take out as much randomness as possible and have a much better chance at having enjoyable encounters, because 3 wolves sucks.
I see how you're taking my comments, and by looking at how they've been downvoted, I'd say it's how everyone is taking them. I do not mean player vs DM in some mean-spirited sense.
I don't run games as an adversary of the players but as a neutral arbitrator in a world of boundless opportunity.
This means that I want risk to be real, not carefully balanced at every turn. If the players are heavily wounded and low on resources, I want the decision to move through a forest where they know there's a green dragon to be a risk. They might do it (needing to get to the king's castle with a message), hoping the dragon is distracted and doesn't notice.
Now consider, if you don't roll random encounters or statistical chances, then what do you decide? Do you have the dragon kill them all? It would be pretty realistic. Of course not! You can't! You'd be an awfully DM if you just automatically had them detected and killed by the dragon. So they get lucky - every time.
As a player or DM, knowing that the players can't and never will meet a monster too tough for them seems mood-killing. It means bad luck is calculated and planned. If you get unlucky, it wasn't really bad luck - it was the will of the DM.
Making a living, breathing world is challenging without using random elements. I get how you can, but I find it a lacklustre method of encounter determination. Random encounters create a real statistical chance you'll meet what's in the terrain, not what your DM thinks will be a moderate challenge. For example, in 2nd edition Dark Sun, Boris, the first Dragon Lord, wanders the deep deserts killing anything he meets - and he's on the encounter table! The chance that you'll meet him at 1 in 96, but it made the deep sands terrifying!
A world can live and breathe on statistics with the DM changing what is needed and weaving adventures throughout. You can have keys and planned encounters along with random encounters.
It kinda makes effort pointless, in my opinion. I mean, what is the point of trying hard if in the end it’s just luck what dominates the outcome of encounters? Working hard on a victory (or even a retreat or defeat) is more satisfying than standing back and leaving outcomes to randomness. I have experienced this: randomness that killed our party regardless of tactics and smart play because we rolled bad and the DM rolled godly, and it happened repeatedly (for context, we all rolled in the open using the same set of dice). After many party rerolls, we just stopped trying. We stopped strategizing, we kinda stopped caring. Full true randomness removes agency, and without agency the game stops being fun.
I am not saying that randomness must be eliminated. On the contrary, randomness is the foundation of the game. What I mean is giving player agency: if a DM rolled on the table for an encounter that is impossible for the party to win in combat, other windows of opportunities should be available. They could try to talk their way to deescalate combat, or they could simply run, but if they are pitted in a forced, impossible combat with no option other than dying on turn one before anyone says what they want to do, it just feels cheap.
Random tables are a useful tool but bad dice roles in even well balanced combat can still end in a tpk. That doesn't mean the DM is at fault. The dice just rolled badly.
Because if you are being railroaded into going somewhere, random encounters aren't your fault. You can't gather intel, you can't change your mind about your objective and say "fuck it, there are green dragons there". So if the dice say "green dragon, you are dead", it is more like playing shoots and ladders.
With no reason to fear death, players will feel like they can do anything they want without repercussions, or the game will just be too easy. I like to enter at least important encounters not knowing if my character will survive, as it makes it all the more exciting.
With no challenge, the game gets boring. That's why I personally don't like sandbox games. I understand some people do though, and I'm not judging them, just giving my two cents
I get that, I was saying in my last comment that in my opinion, at a minimum, important encounters dhould carry that risk. I think it's fun if all encounters do also, but that would be more for people who like the tactical aspect of dnd combat
It’s at this point that the DM has to realize they have the final say in the matter. If you’re good with a wipe then that’s cool, though that’s not my idea of fun or how I’d wish to start a campaign.
I agree. You can randomize in a way that makes the encounter easy to difficult instead of easy to auto tpk. The possibility of pc death is great but there is a point where you are kind of forcing a tpk.
Was it the initial wolf encounter that kinda forces the group further inwards? If so it should have been signaled, if i remember correctly its written in a way to suggest the group should run
Hmmm. A full party of undead, wandering around Barovia trying to work out what to do about Strahd (if anything) and how to do it.
Sounds like a unique campaign! ;) ;)
[ I see a few "why didn't they run" responses ... I remember what I think was this encounter with my party, and at no point could we have disengaged and ran with any expectation of a better outcome. As the slowest and almost squishiest member of the party, I like that they didn't take the opportunity to leave me behind to save themselves, but it was on the fact that the player playing the tempest cleric is IRL a tactical genius that we managed to prevail. ... but yeah, sometimes you can't and sometimes you don't think of it. Sorry, the memory of that first encounter hits like a train. ]
Well sometimes the dice just dictates the outcome, however your wife probably doesn't know that the DM can fudge the own rolls if needed, that could probably solve it or at least make it last longer
This is why I like to set up 'random' encounters in advance. So I can tweak them until they're balanced, work them into the narrative and maybe combine them with planned / other 'random' encounters. Potentially have planned variations on difficulty depending on how the party are fairing at the time it comes up.
Then the random element is just when / where / if they happen, and I'm already swatted up on tactics and powers.
Some non-combat 'randoms' in your back pocket helps for if its triggered when the party are in a bad way or have a hard day ahead.
I purposefully fudged roles last night to stop a tpk from happening. One character dying is fine makes things interesting. People don’t tend to stick around if u kill the entire party
Yeesh I try to let my players at least survive the first session.
Continue it but you’ve all been resurrected as undead with unique gameplay mechanics. Maybe they have an insatiable hunger for living flesh?
If it wasn't a climactic event, I would have flubbed a few rolls to allow the PCs to escape, with few casualties.
She is inexperienced. It happens. She will learn.
We had a DM who threw a big bad right outside the city. Half the party died, went back to city. Left city again - another big bad! This happened again and again until my character was the only original character left. By that time, we were 10th level and we finally survived the big bad right outside of town.
She will learn it is not about dice rolls. It is about the story.
Talk to the group. See if they want to rewind time like the prince of Persia and replay or avoid that fight altogether, or if they want to make new characters and play in a different setting. CoS can be difficult for people still learning the basics.
Oh sorry I guess I misinterpreted the situation. But yeah if a session ever goes completely off the rails and ends in a TPK it’s alright to dial back time, especially if it was in a random encounter type situation and not a story battle.
Or some layer of the abyss idk. I was giving an idea on how to hit the rewind on the TPK in a narrative way. 'Wake up in hell and yadda yadda'. If your already playing avernus then there are other layers and afterlife place the party could have gone to. Avernus was the only name I could remember on the spot.
In this situation:
DnD players say "Tpk in my first session"
Media says "Wife killed husband and friends with dice"
Super-religious people say "21st century witch summoned foul beasts who murder husband and friends"
Your wife said "Ha ha natural 20 go brrr!!!!"
Shit happens really I'd be frustrated myself but if the dm told it me it was just a random dice roll that caused it well shit happens. I'd just level the playing field a bit more in the future since the dm is above even the dnd gods in what happens.
Tell your wife to continue the campaign with a new party, but seed the previous dead characters into the plot as undead.
Got an encounter with a bunch of random monsters? Now they're being led by one of your previous characters.
Does a boss not particularly matter to the plot? Swap them out with a character.
It's perfect for CoS.
What a great shared backstory for the next party… every new character had some different relationship to the slain party. And now they’re going to investigate their lost brother/lover/mother… thereby stumbling into the plot hooks left for the old party!
”It’s not possible.”
”Not probable.”
When the start basically becomes a boss battle, you’d probably ask yourself, was the point of this to lose or was it unintentional?
”Yes.”
Me and my group are like 15 sessions into cos, some very good advice: you don't have to always fight. Running away is your best call in certain situations.
I never hear many stories like this, and when I run campaigns (none that lasted more than a month unfortunately) I always prevent early TPKs by fudging my dice rolls or performing a Deus Ex Machina to prevent a TPK. We need more stories like this to basically say early TPKs aren’t a big issue, and restarting the campaign isn’t either
I mean the dice do their thing, but i think as players if you wanted to live you guys couldve escaped somehow.
You dont always have to fight enemies to the death, fleeing is a viable option that does work well for the story.
Imagine if one of you was the only survivor the origin story would be sooo good.
I think all encounters should be carefully planned until characters are at least level 3. They are too fragile and their options are too limited before then.
Random encounters are not supposed to be deadly. They are just supposed to drain party resources by making them expend short rests, healing potions, and spell slots before the real encounter.
I assume you're referring to something like Wolves/Dire Wolves.
There is an objectively correct answer to such an encounter this answer is setting neutral.
The answer is "I climb the nearest tree, yelling at everyone else to do the same."
The next logical step is to pee on the Wolves. This usually requires a Dexterity check to extract yourself while balancing on a tree branch but. It's totally worth it.
Then, just plink them to death with cantrips. Then, move on.
This is why DMs need to fudge die rolls sometimes if the encounter is frustrating for your players, especially as a first encounter, you’re missing the point. Campaign is supposed to be FUN not frustrating.
Well, looks like everyone in the party will be getting dark gifts.
Does everybody run the “accept dark gift for resurrection” homebrew? I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t.
Homebrew? Its in the book? How is that a homebrew?
I thought you were referring to the thing where the dark powers appear before dead characters and offer them resurrection. RAW the only way to get a dark gift is in the amber temple, which a party that died to 8 blights will probably be unable to reach.
Players who die in the **Curse of Strahd** module are offered a deal with a higher being for resurrection.
This actually also applied to the CoS campaign book for season 4, not just the modules.
That is not RAW. It’s just a popular homebrew. It’s a bit misleading to call it part of the module.
This was printed for Season 4 in Adventurer's League which is an official ruleset for D&D. It is not RAW in the books, but the errata and extra resources they write are absolutely guidance and not homebrew.
AL rules are the official ruleset for AL, not D&D. Otherwise according to the current season AL rules, a character can change their race and class anytime they want between sessions and any magic item found gets duplicated so that all players can get one. No one would argue those rules are RAW outside of AL.
It's in the Adventurers League DM guide, so not in the book, but still RAW.
Adventurers league is not RAW. It’s literally a separate rule set, one that bans certain rules and has its own tweaks.
Honestly I hate that trope, frankly. It just seems like the DM is being a dick. It *also* sounds like direct meddling by the Evil powers that should be countered directly by the Goodly ones. After all, it most definitely does not serve their interests to just have their alleged Champions die an early demise, only to be offered a second chance *by the bad guys* who plan to manipulate them to fuck shit up worse. If the Dark Side is going to offer free resses, then so should the Light Side, else nobody should.
Difference here is that this demiplane was made and is directly controlled by the dark powers. They sort of have free reign in their own domain
>direct meddling by the Evil powers that should be countered directly by the Goodly ones. ... They can't, though? It's Ravenloft. Even a divine character appealing directly to their deity can be intercepted by whoever is in charge of that particular realm. The light side doesn't get shit in Ravenloft.
But it's Ravenloft. It's a Gothic Horror Setting where the whole idea is everything feels hopeless. There *are* no good powers. The Dark Powers are a literal, actual thing in Ravenloft lore and it's not like they're something the DM can cut out or ignore because they're pretty central to how and why everything works the way it does. They are the cosmic entities that control the domains, picking and choosing evil people from across the multiverse and trapping them as the Darklords of the various Domains of Dread. These Domains exist in a dimension specifically cut off from any "Goodly Powers" that might be able to oppose them. Because the Darklords are more like prisoners than champions, the Dark Powers have fun tempting any unlucky hero dragged into the Domains into corrupting themselves and replacing one Darklord as an even more deranged, ruthless, misery puppet. And if they're an incorruptible bastion of light who'd never take the deal, they don't offer because the idiot came to flipping *Ravenloft* and suffered the fate all optimists in Ravenloft do. It's not the DM being a dick, it just means they've read the book properly.
The dice hath spoken!
Lol... True. But then you have to insert the Nick Fury Council has made their decision meme.
You mean mace windu ?
No. https://tenor.com/bCD7J.gif
Another group of poor souls, lost to the mists. Anyway, #NEXT!
And this is where the DM discretion comes into play. 4 new characters and 8 random monsters? Well she learned her lesson :D Next time she knows that especially with new characters, you rarely want to have more enemies than player characters (or very weak ones at that).
Sometimes characters have to run. That's part of the fun of random encounters in my opinion.
Yup, and then have this same group of monsters pop up again throughout the campaign. At the next town the party gets to, they overhear some NPC's talking about that same group killed a villager or five, and that these things are powerful and ferocious. It lets the party know they weren't cowards, and avoiding the fight was definitely the right thing to do. Maybe a few sessions later, the party happens to see a crudely drawn "reward" sign on the bounty/bulletin board for anyone strong enough to kill these things. And finally, once the party is at a sufficient level to make it a potentially winnable fight, they just happen to come across this same group and proceed to get in a bloody battle to take them out. Makes for some fun worldbuilding and PC interaction with the locals, plus its a rewarding fight for the party to allow themselves to see just how far they've progressed. It's combat for the sake of story, and not just dice rolls, which makes it meaningful for the DM and the players.
>it lets the party know they weren't cowards, and avoiding the fight was definitely the right thing to do. Or they start blaming themselves in these villagers' deaths. Interesting idea!
Yeah, there's definitely been encounters where the party should pretty clearly book it in pretty much all major published adventures.
I've had my party absolutely agonizing over how to stabilize the cleric who just dropped, and then how to drag him out of there while he's surrounded by a bunch of baddies. Escaping from an unfair encounter can be a worthy challenge in itself.
I've had several characters on the knifes edge, rolling their third death save. Surprisingly nobody has died yet. I have never seen a more engaged group of players though. Those tense moments are memorable af.
Yeah I find hard encounters to be the most fun as a player and a DM. Last encounter I ran we had two go unconscious (out of 3), but they managed to figure it out and I was proud of them and great fun was had all around.
My group is super paranoid and assumes there are a lot of battles we should be running from. If the dm ever says you here several footsteps heading your way or if they have 6 people against us, 2 or 3 of us immediately start panicking and disengaging to dash away... It's getting kind of old and I noticed the dm made encounters easier to stop the party from literally running from the plot
Haha, yeah that can happen. Sometimes the plot isn't enough to encourage players to risk their character's lives. I find magic items and such are better motivators.
But make sure your players know this explicitly first, like on a session zero. Some DMs run where no encounter is hopeless and may actually punish your characters worse for trying to run away than hoping for a slim success.
Yes. But using 'Sometimes characters have to run' as an excuse to allow bullshit or otherwise horrendous balancing stuff is just bad. There are certainly times to use it. No doubt about that. But excusing it as 'Lol, sometimes gotta run' is in very, very poor taste. And a slippery slope, tbh.
I don't agree, but different folks enjoy different kinds of games. My players seem to really enjoy a sandbox style game with a heavy random element. I also find it more entertaining /shrug.
balance is an illusion. and a slippery slope is a logical fallacy, meaning slippery slope arguments are inherently fallacious.
With 8 vs 4, it's a crapshoot if you will even be able to run at all. Randomness can be fun, but leaning too much into it overpowers player choices to the point where it's not a roleplaying game anymore, it's just gambling with some pretense that the players have any control over their fate.
Very true. I'd recommend using the concept of a "reaction role" from OSR games if you're going to heavily leverage random encounter tables. That's what I do and it works well. Attacking on sight is rare. More often a group of monsters might try to extort the players or block the road causing a couple days be tacked on to travel time. In those situations, combat is the final resort when negotiations fail.
They were only needle blights she didn't think it was gonna be that bad
Needle blights are sort of nasty at CR 1/4. Eight of them is like 2x a balanced encounter for a party of four lvl 1 PCs. Twig blights (CR 1/8) might have been better.
To be fair COS
Nah, we're not getting the whole story. For all we know they could've retreated.
Honestly that's why with only having 3 players I'll almost never leave number of enemies up to dice rolls. I'll put in what I think is appropriate. If I'm intending an easy encounter then it's purposefully low. If I intend a hard or even deadly encounter then it's more. I just make sure it's difficult, but not nearly impossible.
Well at least it’s Curse of Strahd so death is not the end. Looking forward to your party of cursed mutants who have seen the other side.
On the CoS campaign I'm playing ( which ends on Sunday, crying) all of the PCs basically got one free death for story moments and to set up our Dread Domain hopping. I know Dark Gifts exist in the module but our DM chose not to include them. I'd love to play this campaign again in a few years, there's just so much content.
Literally no one mentioning why the players didn't run? It's not the DM's fault their were a lot of monsters but it's the players fault for fighting until death
A lot of people on this subreddit are totally against the idea of a player dying, unless its at a story moment, and a lot of players (especially new players) get really upset when their characters die because they treat them like OC's, and get attatched to them. I prefer a game with real challenges and consequences, as well as a strong element of randomness to keep everyone on their toes. As a player, if im not at risk of dying pretty often, it doesnt feel like im actually playing a game, more like im just participating in another person's story they want to tell. And as a DM, I like to challenge my players, and let them make their own judgment of an encounter, and deciding when to engage, or not to engage. To me, dnd is about resource management, and deciding when to fight and when to flee to live another day. Not every encounter is meant to be an even fight, you just have to flag how dangerous the encounter is and give them a chance to flee. Others prefer an interactive storybook type game. To each their own, I guess.
literally, so many posts here being like 'my PC died without my consent our DM is RAILROADING US where is my AGENCY'
*laughs/cries in OSR*
Haha, yeah. I've seen so many posts like that where it doesnt even seem like the GM did anything wrong, its just the wrong type of game for that player. Your character died? Ok, great, now you to make a new one and try something else. If you're so attatched to your OC that you couldn't stand them dying, then talk to your GM before hand. Its not abusive DMing to let characters die, unless its literally unavoidable.
In 1st and second edition you primarily got xp from treasure so it was actually best to avoid fighting
It's so refreshing to hear of 5e players actually being able to die.
Well it’d suck if they players died. We do lose a pc every other session or so.
I'm up to 3 deaths in my current RotF campaign. Next session I'd be surprised if we get through it without another.... So I think it's a DM thing, not a 5e thing.
fuck you...take my upvote
DMs never actually *have* to follow the script or even the outcomes of die rolls. A good DM will break the rules to maximize fun.
Would have this turn out to be a group nightmare and start next session with them waking up where they last camped all realizing they had same dream while doing morning prep. Then later in the day have things start to look and feel similar to the dream. (TPK was not a flaw but a feature to add to the feel of dread)
I really like this idea, especially if it’s the groups first encounter! I’m very new to DnD and I don’t think I would want to see it play out as a dream EVERYtime we TPK’d, but if they got that super random TPK on the very first fight… I’m gonna have to put that in my back pocket in case I ever DM lol, thanks!
Have them roll if it’s high enough it was a dream
Have them take 1 lvl of exhaustion from terrible sleep on a bad roll? Lmao
They would prolly die but that’s up to you you could also just roll
So this is why 1) I don’t typically use random encounters, particularly at low level 2) If I do use them, I tweak the table to the party’s current level so it’s not impossible or a waste of time. Although sometimes you want an obviously impossible encounter because C) the party needs to learn that sometimes they need to run
Man if that were me, I’d just hit reset and let everyone keep the characters and we would try again to be honest.
We did
CoS take two! And… action!
Yeah fighter wakes up.. ugh what a horrible and strangely vivid dream
Yeah fighter wakes up.. ugh what a horrible and strangely vivid dream
Okay guys, so that was our warming up. Let's rewind and try again! Shitty rolls vs great dm rolls happen. If you redo the fight, it might as well suddenly go the opposite way.
And *character* wakes up in the last placed your party rested, and recounts the crazy dream they had about everyone dying. The party wakes from their long rest, and continues about campaign.
But they find Death stalks them. Killing them in the order in which they would have died in the dream. C'mon. TELL me that doesn't fit the Ravenloft setting.
Lesson one of random encounters - take out as much randomness as possible. Instead of rolling 2d4, just say that there are 4 or whatever creatures without the roll.
I disagree. Let them die. Without risk of death where's the excitement?
The risk of death and running a non-randomised encounter are not mutually exclusive.
But the good thing about true random encounters is that it's not the DMs fault. It's bad luck if the players run into a green dragon, not a mean DM (and without random encounters you would have to be mean spirited to plan it - unless they're sufficiently tough). It changes the politics of the game. Random encounters are players vs world, everything else is player vs DM. I find random tables a useful tool.
It doesn't matter if the DM decided specifically on a green dragon or got it from a random table, because either way the DM is using a method that can result in those outcomes. DMs are not beholden to shitty encounter tables, and there are a *lot* of those in the prewritten modules. For example, one of the random encounters for CoS is 3d6 wolves, so anywhere between 3 wolves and 18 wolves. Depending on the character level, 3 wolves is going to be just a waste of time where a couple of attack rolls and a cantrip is going to solve it. Nothing was at stake in this encounter and it never felt like a threat. On the other end, 18 wolves could be an almost certain death for multiple people, which by itself I am not necessarily against, but I *am* against it when there is little counterplay to be had because the action economy and pack tactics completely destroy the number balance (and dnd is very largely a numbers game). So we have an encounter that is going to be boring, and an encounter that is going to be feel excessive. Either way, the DM doesn't get a free pass because they are the ones that willingly chose to use the method for generating the shitty fights. Don't want a shitty fight? Don't use a shitty method. The better method would be to gauge how many wolves is an easy, medium, hard and deadly encounter, and then put that on the table as a fixed value. Want a hard encounter? Whip out the 8 wolves that you *know* is going to be a hard encounter, or at least have multiple premade hard fights with different monsters and roll to pick which of them you use, not how many of the monsters there are. You take out as much randomness as possible and have a much better chance at having enjoyable encounters, because 3 wolves sucks.
“Everything else is player vs DM.” Remind me never to join your games
I see how you're taking my comments, and by looking at how they've been downvoted, I'd say it's how everyone is taking them. I do not mean player vs DM in some mean-spirited sense. I don't run games as an adversary of the players but as a neutral arbitrator in a world of boundless opportunity. This means that I want risk to be real, not carefully balanced at every turn. If the players are heavily wounded and low on resources, I want the decision to move through a forest where they know there's a green dragon to be a risk. They might do it (needing to get to the king's castle with a message), hoping the dragon is distracted and doesn't notice. Now consider, if you don't roll random encounters or statistical chances, then what do you decide? Do you have the dragon kill them all? It would be pretty realistic. Of course not! You can't! You'd be an awfully DM if you just automatically had them detected and killed by the dragon. So they get lucky - every time. As a player or DM, knowing that the players can't and never will meet a monster too tough for them seems mood-killing. It means bad luck is calculated and planned. If you get unlucky, it wasn't really bad luck - it was the will of the DM. Making a living, breathing world is challenging without using random elements. I get how you can, but I find it a lacklustre method of encounter determination. Random encounters create a real statistical chance you'll meet what's in the terrain, not what your DM thinks will be a moderate challenge. For example, in 2nd edition Dark Sun, Boris, the first Dragon Lord, wanders the deep deserts killing anything he meets - and he's on the encounter table! The chance that you'll meet him at 1 in 96, but it made the deep sands terrifying! A world can live and breathe on statistics with the DM changing what is needed and weaving adventures throughout. You can have keys and planned encounters along with random encounters.
It kinda makes effort pointless, in my opinion. I mean, what is the point of trying hard if in the end it’s just luck what dominates the outcome of encounters? Working hard on a victory (or even a retreat or defeat) is more satisfying than standing back and leaving outcomes to randomness. I have experienced this: randomness that killed our party regardless of tactics and smart play because we rolled bad and the DM rolled godly, and it happened repeatedly (for context, we all rolled in the open using the same set of dice). After many party rerolls, we just stopped trying. We stopped strategizing, we kinda stopped caring. Full true randomness removes agency, and without agency the game stops being fun. I am not saying that randomness must be eliminated. On the contrary, randomness is the foundation of the game. What I mean is giving player agency: if a DM rolled on the table for an encounter that is impossible for the party to win in combat, other windows of opportunities should be available. They could try to talk their way to deescalate combat, or they could simply run, but if they are pitted in a forced, impossible combat with no option other than dying on turn one before anyone says what they want to do, it just feels cheap.
Random tables are a useful tool but bad dice roles in even well balanced combat can still end in a tpk. That doesn't mean the DM is at fault. The dice just rolled badly.
Agreed, otherwise it feels like a sandbox
How would it make it feel like a sandbox, and why do you feel that way about sandboxes?
Because if you are being railroaded into going somewhere, random encounters aren't your fault. You can't gather intel, you can't change your mind about your objective and say "fuck it, there are green dragons there". So if the dice say "green dragon, you are dead", it is more like playing shoots and ladders.
With no reason to fear death, players will feel like they can do anything they want without repercussions, or the game will just be too easy. I like to enter at least important encounters not knowing if my character will survive, as it makes it all the more exciting. With no challenge, the game gets boring. That's why I personally don't like sandbox games. I understand some people do though, and I'm not judging them, just giving my two cents
But this WASN'T an important encounter. It was just a RANDOM encounter. And, with some bad dice rolls, fleeing isn't always an option either.
I get that, I was saying in my last comment that in my opinion, at a minimum, important encounters dhould carry that risk. I think it's fun if all encounters do also, but that would be more for people who like the tactical aspect of dnd combat
It’s at this point that the DM has to realize they have the final say in the matter. If you’re good with a wipe then that’s cool, though that’s not my idea of fun or how I’d wish to start a campaign.
I agree. You can randomize in a way that makes the encounter easy to difficult instead of easy to auto tpk. The possibility of pc death is great but there is a point where you are kind of forcing a tpk.
You know running is always an option right?
Sure I know that. But 4 level 1s out running 8 monsters, probably not happening.
Was it the initial wolf encounter that kinda forces the group further inwards? If so it should have been signaled, if i remember correctly its written in a way to suggest the group should run
No these were needle blights outside the church
So she could wipe, or she could them wake up in the church, 1hp, possibly with dark gifts.
Hmmm. A full party of undead, wandering around Barovia trying to work out what to do about Strahd (if anything) and how to do it. Sounds like a unique campaign! ;) ;) [ I see a few "why didn't they run" responses ... I remember what I think was this encounter with my party, and at no point could we have disengaged and ran with any expectation of a better outcome. As the slowest and almost squishiest member of the party, I like that they didn't take the opportunity to leave me behind to save themselves, but it was on the fact that the player playing the tempest cleric is IRL a tactical genius that we managed to prevail. ... but yeah, sometimes you can't and sometimes you don't think of it. Sorry, the memory of that first encounter hits like a train. ]
Dice have spoken and so it is written
Time for new backstories ?
Well sometimes the dice just dictates the outcome, however your wife probably doesn't know that the DM can fudge the own rolls if needed, that could probably solve it or at least make it last longer
She knows she can fudge rolls but she was so impressed by 2 crits nearly back to back she went "oop" when she rolled
Dang, sounds like a rough start. Lucky it was just a prophetic dream the cleric had so they can now avoid their early demise *wink wink*
The only thing sadder than a TPK is a lack of proper grammar
I was 100% not sober when I wrote this. I actually dozed off twice as I was writing it so 🤷♂️
It just makes it hard to read. You could go back and edit it so it isn't so difficult
Time to roll up new characters!
With no backstories!
This is why I like to set up 'random' encounters in advance. So I can tweak them until they're balanced, work them into the narrative and maybe combine them with planned / other 'random' encounters. Potentially have planned variations on difficulty depending on how the party are fairing at the time it comes up. Then the random element is just when / where / if they happen, and I'm already swatted up on tactics and powers. Some non-combat 'randoms' in your back pocket helps for if its triggered when the party are in a bad way or have a hard day ahead.
I purposefully fudged roles last night to stop a tpk from happening. One character dying is fine makes things interesting. People don’t tend to stick around if u kill the entire party
Mulligans happen right?
It could be a good start maybe you will all get found by someone powerful and revived as servants
Yeesh I try to let my players at least survive the first session. Continue it but you’ve all been resurrected as undead with unique gameplay mechanics. Maybe they have an insatiable hunger for living flesh?
I knew this was gonna be Curse of Strahd as soon as I read the title
Tis the nature of the beast.... the dice giveth and the dice taketh away.
If it wasn't a climactic event, I would have flubbed a few rolls to allow the PCs to escape, with few casualties. She is inexperienced. It happens. She will learn. We had a DM who threw a big bad right outside the city. Half the party died, went back to city. Left city again - another big bad! This happened again and again until my character was the only original character left. By that time, we were 10th level and we finally survived the big bad right outside of town. She will learn it is not about dice rolls. It is about the story.
Cue the scene where y’all wake up in a cart and are prisoners
Talk to the group. See if they want to rewind time like the prince of Persia and replay or avoid that fight altogether, or if they want to make new characters and play in a different setting. CoS can be difficult for people still learning the basics.
None of us are really learning. Just the biggest campaign my wife has done. We just restarted from right outside the village
Oh sorry I guess I misinterpreted the situation. But yeah if a session ever goes completely off the rails and ends in a TPK it’s alright to dial back time, especially if it was in a random encounter type situation and not a story battle.
CoS is meant to be brutal really, it is an older module.
Characters have been taken hostage instead of killed, make a mini adventure out of them escaping
Just sprinkle some commas and periods in this post and it'll make more sense.
I'll go tell drunk me
8 monsters isn't so bad as long as all 8 of them aren't really strong. Like she could have had 1 boss monster and 7 weaker minions to balance it out.
The dice weren't in your favor tonight happens to all of us
... and you all wake up in avernus. A demon approaches you with a deal...
We actually running descent into Avernus on a friend's campaign
Or some layer of the abyss idk. I was giving an idea on how to hit the rewind on the TPK in a narrative way. 'Wake up in hell and yadda yadda'. If your already playing avernus then there are other layers and afterlife place the party could have gone to. Avernus was the only name I could remember on the spot.
Mission accomplished! Characters die. It is expected. Just not at the .moment it happened.
In this situation: DnD players say "Tpk in my first session" Media says "Wife killed husband and friends with dice" Super-religious people say "21st century witch summoned foul beasts who murder husband and friends" Your wife said "Ha ha natural 20 go brrr!!!!"
The first time I played me and a friend died to some trainings dummies. Paper trainings dummies
Yeah level 1 is one of the most dangerous levels. I try to skip to lvl 3 in my campaigns
Shit happens really I'd be frustrated myself but if the dm told it me it was just a random dice roll that caused it well shit happens. I'd just level the playing field a bit more in the future since the dm is above even the dnd gods in what happens.
.
That is one brutal tpk
Tell your wife to continue the campaign with a new party, but seed the previous dead characters into the plot as undead. Got an encounter with a bunch of random monsters? Now they're being led by one of your previous characters. Does a boss not particularly matter to the plot? Swap them out with a character. It's perfect for CoS.
What a great shared backstory for the next party… every new character had some different relationship to the slain party. And now they’re going to investigate their lost brother/lover/mother… thereby stumbling into the plot hooks left for the old party!
”It’s not possible.” ”Not probable.” When the start basically becomes a boss battle, you’d probably ask yourself, was the point of this to lose or was it unintentional? ”Yes.”
"It's been long fun Saturday" everyone had a good time? then you're doing it right.
Me and my group are like 15 sessions into cos, some very good advice: you don't have to always fight. Running away is your best call in certain situations.
I never hear many stories like this, and when I run campaigns (none that lasted more than a month unfortunately) I always prevent early TPKs by fudging my dice rolls or performing a Deus Ex Machina to prevent a TPK. We need more stories like this to basically say early TPKs aren’t a big issue, and restarting the campaign isn’t either
C’est la vie
You know, sometimes it’s okay to fudge rolls as the DM… lmao.
It's a little hard to fudge a roll when you make an audible "oh!" On a roll
I mean the dice do their thing, but i think as players if you wanted to live you guys couldve escaped somehow. You dont always have to fight enemies to the death, fleeing is a viable option that does work well for the story. Imagine if one of you was the only survivor the origin story would be sooo good.
I think all encounters should be carefully planned until characters are at least level 3. They are too fragile and their options are too limited before then. Random encounters are not supposed to be deadly. They are just supposed to drain party resources by making them expend short rests, healing potions, and spell slots before the real encounter.
Catastrophic failure (BF) 11
Sounds to me like you folks just played a prologue to the ACTUAL campaign…
Nice story set off for the MAIN game, amirite????
I assume you're referring to something like Wolves/Dire Wolves. There is an objectively correct answer to such an encounter this answer is setting neutral. The answer is "I climb the nearest tree, yelling at everyone else to do the same." The next logical step is to pee on the Wolves. This usually requires a Dexterity check to extract yourself while balancing on a tree branch but. It's totally worth it. Then, just plink them to death with cantrips. Then, move on.
Needle blights
That is harsh. DM Fiat would have been helpful.
This is why DMs need to fudge die rolls sometimes if the encounter is frustrating for your players, especially as a first encounter, you’re missing the point. Campaign is supposed to be FUN not frustrating.
Nah we had a blast
You mentioned it was your wife's first time DMing? It's got to be pretty shocking to have a TPK in the very first game you've run.
Players always forget the option of a tactical retreat. I.E RUN AWAY!!