No amount of damage can kill Talakeal's gaming horror stories!

[Talakeal]

So, I had another explosive session last night.


I had an optional boss in the dungeon. It was truly optional, it had no storyline relevence, no XP award or treasure tied to it, there was no quest or moral imperitive to kill it, and it wasn't time sensitive or linked to the rest of the dungeon. It was however, guarding a very powerful magical weapon that was significantly above what the party should have at their power level.

The monster itself was the ghost of the demon prince of violence (which had been killed by the PCs in a previous epic level campaign). It was a fairly strong but not unbeatable monster, but with one catch: It was immune to HP damage and everytime it took damage equal to its HP it would gain a substantial stacking buff. It was not immune to anything else, it could disabled, debuffed, knocked out, put to sleep, grappled, trapped, tricked, charmed, turned to stone, polymorphed into a frog, etc.

So, the player charged in, fought it for a while, and realized that it was only getting stronger rather than dying, so they retreated. All good.

They went back to town, did some reasearch, and found an oracle who told them "It is born of violence. It feeds off of violence and can never be killed by violence."

So the players assumed that this was a puzzle of some sort. They went back to the dungeon and started trying to do all sorts of crazy things; smashing objects in its room, healing the monster, singing to the monster, hugging the monster, talking to the monster, etc. This didn't work, so they decided to just run past it into the room it was guarding and grab the magic weapon and see if it they could kill it with the magic weapon.

They couldn't, and at this point they had buffed the monster again and were super low on HP. At this point I asked them what they were going to do, and they said they were going to give the artifact to their fastest team member and have him run back to town with it while the rest of them would simply stand in front of the monster and block its way.


Now, those of you who have been following my threads know that I am not playing with character death. A character who is at zero HP has simply lost the will to fight through a combination of pain, exhaustion, and morale loss, and if the entire party is out of HP they are forced to retreat and scattered. At one point I had the players roll on a mishap table when this happened, but the players complained that it was too random, so I changed it to a flat monetary penalty, however this was causing the players to be extremely cautious and simply waste a ton of time both in and out of character by going into extreme 15MWD mode and going back to town to rest up and bank their treasure after every single encounter. So, at this point I removed the penalty for dying entirely.


So, the players plan was that that as they had the artifact, and there was no penalty for dying, so they no longer had to try and win the fight or even survive.

So, the monster proceeded to knock the rest of the party down to zero HP, and then proceeded to slaughter all of their followers and henchmen.


So, back in town the players decide to get their hirelings raised, and when I tell them how much the temple is going to charge for this (a little over half of the total treasure haul from the dungeon) the players start in on one of their usual whinge sessions, but this one keeps escalating. In short, they accuse me of intentional putting an "unbeatable" monster in their path, then intentionally tricking them by telling them "violence can't kill it" which, to them, clearly implied that their goal was to kill it in a manner that didn't involve violence, and then violating the "gentleman's agreement" by attacking their allies once the party is down.


And the last one is kind of accurate; if the group makes a good faith effort to do their best, I am not going to "punish" them for failing, but the idea that they would actually come up with the idea of "grab the treasure and run" and not even try and defend themselves is, too my mind, already tearing up any gentleman's agreement we might have and stomping on it.


So, I tried explaining the situation to them, basically stating everything I have put in this post, and their whinging escalated to actively bitching and telling me that once I started trying to "screw them" with "unbeatable monsters" and "misleading clues" that they simply no longer cared about their characters or my game as a whole, so why should they put forth any effort?

At this point I tried to explain how they could have beaten the monster, at which point the players turned on eachother and started bickering about how the other person cost them the fight, and it escalated until they were literally screaming at one another at the top of their lungs, at which point the session kind of broke apart.

Everyone seems to have calmed down and apologized after having slept on it, and we are still on for the next game in two weeks, but at this point, just yikes.

[Particle_Man]

I think you should have dropped more hints about what positive stuff would have affected it as the party clearly thought the negative information “immune to violence” extended beyond “immune to hp damage” to include “immune to any combat relevant spell or maneuver the party had access to”.

[Talakeal]

I think you should have dropped more hints about what positive stuff would have affected it as the party clearly thought the negative information “immune to violence” extended beyond “immune to hp damage” to include “immune to any combat relevant spell or maneuver the party had access to”.

I don't think so, they stunned it several times during the fight.

[Particle_Man]

Temporarily. Was the party aware that they had any way of dealing with it permanently?

[King of Nowhere]

At this point I tried to explain how they could have beaten the monster, at which point the players turned on eachother and started bickering about how the other person cost them the fight


Exxxcellent. Divide and rule.:smallcool:

Anyway, I can totally see how they misinterpreted the clue. i would have tried healing it too. there was a monster in baldurs gate II that you had to defeat that way.

failing most stuff, I would also have tried to grab the artifact and run. I would have tried to not die, though, as actively trying to profit from your "death is consequenceless" rule actually did break, as you yourself pointed, the gentlemen agreement. Heck, I would have run away, get healed, and try again another time.

Just a little DM tip:
any optional boss guarding unique items? that's NOT optional.
The party WILL try it with everything they have. In fact, the party will leave the main plot in front of the promise of a unique item.
You put one such encounter in the dungeon, you can be sure they are never going to relent until they got the prize

[Particle_Man]

I believe the reverse goblins (called nilbogs) way back in AD&D first edition (fiend folio IIRC) were healed by damage and harmed by healing.

[Talakeal]

Just a little DM tip:
any optional boss guarding unique items? that's NOT optional.
The party WILL try it with everything they have. In fact, the party will leave the main plot in front of the promise of a unique item.
You put one such encounter in the dungeon, you can be sure they are never going to relent until they got the prize

I never expected them to skip it entirely, but they could have easily ignored it for now and then come back when they were stronger / better prepared.

This kind of highlights a disconnect between my style and my groups style. They seem very keen on judging risk vs. reward and simply ignoring any adventure hooks that don't seem to offer a great ratio of reward to risk. Likewise, once things start going bad they want to simply abandon the mission and spend the rest of the session crafting in town for a fraction of the reward, which frustrates me to know end as I am prepping all of these cool adventures for them but they seem like they would be much happier playing Accountants and Actuaries.

At one point they literally called completing a dungeon while wounded "throwing good money after bad" even though with my consequence free death system they couldn't actually explain to me what they had to lose except for nebulous ideas like "adventuring while wounded / low on resources isn't something real people would do and kills my immersion".


Temporarily. Was the party aware that they had any way of dealing with it permanently?

I have no way of knowing.

[Inchhighguy]

Seems like a normal enough encounter.

That the players were locked on ''take away it's HP and kill it" is mostly all on the players. Games have TONS of ways of dealing with foes other then ''just hit them until they have no HP".




This kind of highlights a disconnect between my style and my groups style. They seem very keen on judging risk vs. reward and simply ignoring any adventure hooks that don't seem to offer a great ratio of reward to risk. Likewise, once things start going bad they want to simply abandon the mission and spend the rest of the session crafting in town for a fraction of the reward, which frustrates me to know end as I am prepping all of these cool adventures for them but they seem like they would be much happier playing Accountants and Actuaries.


There might be another disconnect: How often do you use ''hard" foes that the character can't just ''HP hack" them to death?

If you run every combat encounter as ''oh players, here is the foe, now have your characters HP hack it to death".....and then suddenly, out of nowhere toss in a foe that is special.....that might be a stlye issue. Sure in theory you can use any foe or any foe type at any time...but if you use the same one over and over and over, with none of the others, that can be a problem.

Once you set up the expecation that ''all foes are defeated by HP hack", you can't suddenly toss in one that is not just to say ''Gottcha! Haha!" to the players.


And, as well, this is the problem with homebrew: Wacky special stuff. Before 2000 it was common for a monster stat block to have wacky special rules...just for that monster. Players had no choice but to just figure out things For Real. Of course, after 2000 the Everything goes by the Rules is common: Everything in the game must always follow the basic rules...that the players know.


So, you might have lots of stlye diffrences with your players.....

[Talakeal]

There might be another disconnect: How often do you use ''hard" foes that the character can't just ''HP hack" them to death?

If you run every combat encounter as ''oh players, here is the foe, now have your characters HP hack it to death".....and then suddenly, out of nowhere toss in a foe that is special.....that might be a stlye issue. Sure in theory you can use any foe or any foe type at any time...but if you use the same one over and over and over, with none of the others, that can be a problem.

Once you set up the expecation that ''all foes are defeated by HP hack", you can't suddenly toss in one that is not just to say ''Gottcha! Haha!" to the players.


And, as well, this is the problem with homebrew: Wacky special stuff. Before 2000 it was common for a monster stat block to have wacky special rules...just for that monster. Players had no choice but to just figure out things For Real. Of course, after 2000 the Everything goes by the Rules is common: Everything in the game must always follow the basic rules...that the players know.


So, you might have lots of stlye diffrences with your players.....

This is the first time I have used that particular "gimmick," but I tend to use customized monsters quite often, and I would say that rarely a session goes by where they don't encounter something with a unique ability and / or something where engaging it in a straight up fight is not the optimal solution.

Also, I am not sure I would agree with your post 2000 analysis. While I agree that 3E D&D is a lot more codified and streamlined, not all games work that way, and 4E, for all of its flaws, actually seemed to go out of its way to make every monster seem unique and special and make sure no two encounters played out the same.

[patchyman]

Insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I think this one is on you. You have mentioned in a previous post that one of your players has told you that he doesn't trust you to run monsters in a fair manner.

"Ah ha!" you say "I'll include a homebrew monster that can't be defeated by HP damage, and instead gets a substantial buff when it takes its HP in damage! That will prove that I run monsters in a fair and aboveboard manner!"

Second, how did you envision this encounter taking place? You mention that the characters only got their first clue after they had retreated from the monster and returned to town. Were there other clues they missed? What options did the characters have available to them to solve this puzzle if the initial clue was not enough or was misinterpreted (or even if they missed the first clue)? Good encounter design is to include 3 clues for any puzzle, so characters have multiple opportunities to come to the right decision.

Third, your post states that the monster was only immune to HP damage. You then give a list of things the monster was not immune to. That doesn't answer the question of which of those options were available to the PCs. One of the PCs seems to have been a monk with stunning fist, but did the PCs have any other concrete options to defeat the monster? Otherwise, yes, the monster may as well have been invincible.

Fourth, at some point, even if the characters don't come up with the answer you envisioned, if they come up with a cool answer, just go with it. If the players steal the weapon the monster is guarding and try to use it against the monster, why not retcon the solution on the fly, and have the characters' solution be the proper one? I'm pretty sure that they would have found that battle epic (and fair). Even if they had asked you to explain your clue afterwards, you could be upfront with them: the solution they came up with wasn't what you had thought up, but that solution was too awesome just to ignore.

Finally, even if your TPKs do not result in the players having to retire their characters, a TPK is a TPK. In your posts, you have indicated that there have been at least 2 TPKs, and from what you have described in the past, your players do not seem to enjoy TPKs. If that is the case, why not simply scale back the difficulty of the monsters?

Honestly, while your players have on many occasions crossed the line into toxic behaviour, it seems that instead of preparing a campaign for the players you have, you are preparing a campaign for the players you wish you had. In that case, it is not surprising that you are frustrated with your players failing to live up to your expectations, and your player are frustrated with not getting the game that they have told you they want.

True story time: I was really excited about a homebrew campaign I was preparing. The campaign was going to be a heavy intrigue campaign in which the players recruited allies to oppose the current pretender to the throne of Neverwinter. One player created an intrigue-based character. The three others created: (1) a member of the underclass with a short temper and a huge chip on his shoulder; (2) a ranger who had never been in a city before; and (3) a doctor from outside the city who wasn't involved in the intrigues. Conclusion: I shelved the intrigue campaign and ran a dungeon crawler with a couple of intrigue missions for the one player who was interested in them.

My recommendation, try running a few published modules with your players. It is less work for you, and if a player complains about difficulty or anything else, after the encounter, you can just show them the stat block.

[Talakeal]

Insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I think this one is on you. You have mentioned in a previous post that one of your players has told you that he doesn't trust you to run monsters in a fair manner.

"Ah ha!" you say "I'll include a homebrew monster that can't be defeated by HP damage, and instead gets a substantial buff when it takes its HP in damage! That will prove that I run monsters in a fair and aboveboard manner!"

Second, how did you envision this encounter taking place? You mention that the characters only got their first clue after they had retreated from the monster and returned to town. Were there other clues they missed? What options did the characters have available to them to solve this puzzle if the initial clue was not enough or was misinterpreted (or even if they missed the first clue)? Good encounter design is to include 3 clues for any puzzle, so characters have multiple opportunities to come to the right decision.

Third, your post states that the monster was only immune to HP damage. You then give a list of things the monster was not immune to. That doesn't answer the question of which of those options were available to the PCs. One of the PCs seems to have been a monk with stunning fist, but did the PCs have any other concrete options to defeat the monster? Otherwise, yes, the monster may as well have been invincible.

Fourth, at some point, even if the characters don't come up with the answer you envisioned, if they come up with a cool answer, just go with it. If the players steal the weapon the monster is guarding and try to use it against the monster, why not retcon the solution on the fly, and have the characters' solution be the proper one? I'm pretty sure that they would have found that battle epic (and fair). Even if they had asked you to explain your clue afterwards, you could be upfront with them: the solution they came up with wasn't what you had thought up, but that solution was too awesome just to ignore.

Finally, even if your TPKs do not result in the players having to retire their characters, a TPK is a TPK. In your posts, you have indicated that there have been at least 2 TPKs, and from what you have described in the past, your players do not seem to enjoy TPKs. If that is the case, why not simply scale back the difficulty of the monsters?

Honestly, while your players have on many occasions crossed the line into toxic behaviour, it seems that instead of preparing a campaign for the players you have, you are preparing a campaign for the players you wish you had. In that case, it is not surprising that you are frustrated with your players failing to live up to your expectations, and your player are frustrated with not getting the game that they have told you they want.

True story time: I was really excited about a homebrew campaign I was preparing. The campaign was going to be a heavy intrigue campaign in which the players recruited allies to oppose the current pretender to the throne of Neverwinter. One player created an intrigue-based character. The three others created: (1) a member of the underclass with a short temper and a huge chip on his shoulder; (2) a ranger who had never been in a city before; and (3) a doctor from outside the city who wasn't involved in the intrigues. Conclusion: I shelved the intrigue campaign and ran a dungeon crawler with a couple of intrigue missions for the one player who was interested in them.

My recommendation, try running a few published modules with your players. It is less work for you, and if a player complains about difficulty or anything else, after the encounter, you can just show them the stat block.

God, that just seems so... wrong.

My player hates when I tailor fights to screw him and doesn't trust me to not retcon the monsters to make him look bad, so to show him that I can be trusted and am running a fair table, I should start tailoring the monsters to lose to him and retconning the monsters to make him look good.

I mean, it would probably work, but that just feels so damn wrong...

[Excession]

It was immune to HP damage and everytime it took damage equal to its HP it would gain a substantial stacking buff.

"It is born of violence. It feeds off of violence and can never be killed by violence."

These things are not the same. Immune to violence and immune to damage are not the same. Turning someone to stone is absolutely a violent act. I can fully understand why your players got confused by that. Once they are confused and started trying random stuff they were stuck. In many cases, no amount of "What do you do?" or "it hits you even harder" will break someone out of that. You should probably have stopped and asked the players OOC what they thought they were doing well before it reached a TPK.

What was the point of it gaining a buff when it took damage? To even bother thinking about that seems to indicate that you wanted the players to attack it so you could punish them. Stop doing that. A flat immunity to damage is easier to telegraph "the enemy isn't even scratched by your attack, but they are stunned" is far better than writing down the damage until you can spring a surprise buff on the players.


My player hates when I tailor fights to screw him...

That is a perfectly understandable position for players to take. I too dislike fights that are specifically designed to make my character choices worthless. Stop doing that.


Also, I am not sure I would agree with your post 2000 analysis. While I agree that 3E D&D is a lot more codified and streamlined, not all games work that way, and 4E, for all of its flaws, actually seemed to go out of its way to make every monster seem unique and special and make sure no two encounters played out the same.

I think you're misrepresenting 4e with that statement. Monster abilities are still kept within some pretty strict power levels. There are precisely zero 4e monsters that can't be killed with HP damage for example. Flight and especially phasing can let them run away successfully some of the time at best.

[Talakeal]

That is a perfectly understandable position for players to take. I too dislike fights that are specifically designed to make my character choices worthless. Stop doing that.

Are you joking or did you misunderstand something I said at some point?

To clarify; this campaign was designed in a vacuum as a sandbox, balanced against a generic party, some two years ago, long before I knew who was going to be playing in it or what their characters would be, and I am running it as written.

[zinycor]

{Scrubbed}

First, you did setup a puzzle of the worst kind here, the sort of puzzle that only has one solution, "No matter how you go about it, you will have to solve the puzzle in the way I intend to" in this case the player tried many things that would make sense, and could bring the moster down.... But since you didn't care for people solving the problem in any way other than the ways you imagined, you just discarded them...

{Scrubbed}

[Talakeal]

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

First, you did setup a puzzle of the worst kind here, the sort of puzzle that only has one solution, "No matter how you go about it, you will have to solve the puzzle in the way I intend to" in this case the player tried many things that would make sense, and could bring the moster down.... But since you didn't care for people solving the problem in any way other than the ways you imagined, you just discarded them...

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}

{Scrubbed}


What was the point of it gaining a buff when it took damage? To even bother thinking about that seems to indicate that you wanted the players to attack it so you could punish them. Stop doing that. A flat immunity to damage is easier to telegraph "the enemy isn't even scratched by your attack, but they are stunned" is far better than writing down the damage until you can spring a surprise buff on the players.

I expected they would attack it for a bit, realize their attacks were making it stronger rather than killing it, and then either switch to various "crowd control" tactics or fall back and return when they were better prepared.

Out of curiosity, do you feel the same way about a bog-standard Lernean hydra? Because it has more or less the exact same shtick and was the mechanical basis for the fight.

[zinycor]

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}



{Scrubbed}

[Excession]

Are you joking or did you misunderstand something I said at some point?

To clarify; this campaign was designed in a vacuum as a sandbox, balanced against a generic party, some two years ago, long before I knew who was going to be playing in it or what their characters would be, and I am running it as written.

The encounter as you described it was not "balanced against a generic party". It was a trap. You had it take damage (or at least appear to based on you tracking that damage) only to turn that into a "you've activated my trap card" moment when it got a buff instead of dying. The clue of saying it was immune to violence was not enough, in fact that may have been discarded as soon as their attacks landed, proving that it was not in fact immune.

[Talakeal]

The encounter as you described it was not "balanced against a generic party". It was a trap. You had it take damage (or at least appear to based on you tracking that damage) only to turn that into a "you've activated my trap card" moment when it got a buff instead of dying. The clue of saying it was immune to violence was not enough, in fact that may have been discarded as soon as their attacks landed, proving that it was not in fact immune.

Ok, so it was a "trap". So what? The game is full of traps. Including modules that say they are designed for X number of characters at X levels.

They didn't get that clue until after they had already landed attacks on it.

Edit: I do want to start a full thread on the nature of traps and player knowledge though, I have been having a lot of thoughts about that recently and am looking to ruminate on them.

[Mr Beer]

Yeah I would probably find this a frustrating encounter. I think telegraphing how to defeat the boss monster better would have helped. It's a puzzle rather than a fight so assume players will misunderstand any single clue, make sure you give three of them.

That said raging at the DM is lame for this level of offence. People who literally scream at each other are not the kind of people I'm going to game with anyway, it's not high school and I'm not voluntarily spending time with people who haven't developed emotionally past the age of 15.

[zinycor]

Yeah I would probably find this a frustrating encounter. I think telegraphing how to defeat the boss monster better would have helped. It's a puzzle rather than a fight so assume players will misunderstand any single clue, make sure you give three of them.

That said raging at the DM is lame for this level of offence. People who literally scream at each other are not the kind of people I'm going to game with anyway, it's not high school and I'm not voluntarily spending time with people who haven't developed emotionally past the age of 15.

Very well said. Good advice here.

EDIT:

Ok, so it was a "trap". So what? The game is full of traps. Including modules that say they are designed for X number of characters at X levels.

They didn't get that clue until after they had already landed attacks on it.

Edit: I do want to start a full thread on the nature of traps and player knowledge though, I have been having a lot of thoughts about that recently and am looking to ruminate on them.

Well, "Traps" as excession is based on the GM making a deception on the players. Which can work as long as you have trust with your players and have been given consent by them to do these sort of tricks.

{Scrubbed}

[Excession]

Ok, so it was a "trap". So what? The game is full of traps. Including modules that say they are designed for X number of characters at X levels.

The so what is that your players were justified in being annoyed with you. Not for screaming about it, but as others have said, you keep on playing with these people, and they keep playing with you, so I guess you all get the game you deserve.

Are you looking for help with this post? Confirmation that you're a good GM and your players are bad? Are you just giving people the chance to laugh about your terrible gaming?

[zinycor]

The so what is that your players were justified in being annoyed with you. Not for screaming about it, but as others have said, you keep on playing with these people, and they keep playing with you, so I guess you all get the game you deserve.

Are you looking for help with this post? Confirmation that you're a good GM and your players are bad? Are you just giving people the chance to laugh about your terrible gaming?

{Scrubbed}

[Talakeal]

Are you looking for help with this post? Confirmation that you're a good GM and your players are bad? Are you just giving people the chance to laugh about your terrible gaming?

Mostly the question about whether or not saying "It can't be killed by violence" really does come across as an intentional attempt to mislead my players into thinking they have to find a way to kill the monster that doesn't involve violence and ideas about how to uphold the "gentleman's agreement" not to attack kill characters when they are literally using them as human shields.

[zinycor]

Mostly the question about whether or not saying "It can't be killed by violence" really does come across as an intentional attempt to mislead my players into thinking they have to find a way to kill the monster that doesn't involve violence

That would be my first thought, yes.



and ideas about how to uphold the "gentleman's agreement" not to attack kill characters when they are literally using them as human shields.

Well, mabe having seen the big heroes fall most of the followers run away, and only 2 or 3 people die. And telling the players that having their followers dying is a possible consequence of their current strategy would be nice. That would mean that if they fall, and the horrible monster kills a bunch of NPCs, then they gave consent since they knowingly took that choice knowing it could have those consequences.

[Excession]

Mostly the question about whether or not saying "It can't be killed by violence" really does come across as an intentional attempt to mislead my players into thinking they have to find a way to kill the monster that doesn't involve violence and ideas about how to uphold the "gentleman's agreement" not to attack kill characters when they are literally using them as human shields.

Yes, that could easily come across as misleading. It's easy to assume that means it is immune, and combined them clearly being able to damage it the clue ends up being dismissed as irrelevant. In universe, it's a fairly poor guardian if just taking the treasure and running works. I would expect doing that to turn into a messy running fight (Indiana Jones vs. boulder for example) or for this dangerous enemy turn up in town the next day for round two.

For the hirelings, this is probably why I don't use them. The story of my D&D campaigns is one of heroes facing danger and fighting monsters, not Alice and Bob the cart drivers getting eaten by a goblins while waiting outside a dungeon. Hirelings just aren't part of the stories I'm interested in telling. Bad guys have minions, because they don't care if the minions die. Heroes risk themselves rather than risking others.

[Talakeal]

Yes, that could easily come across as misleading. It's easy to assume that means it is immune, and combined them clearly being able to damage it the clue ends up being dismissed as irrelevant.

The clue was "It feeds and violence, and can never be killed by it." It didn't say anything about damage, and the players didn't accuse me of giving them an irrelevant clue, they accused me of actively trying to trick them by implying they needed to kill the monster rather than disabling it, which in truth completely baffles me as that was the furthest thing from my mind.


In universe, it's a fairly poor guardian if just taking the treasure and running works. I would expect doing that to turn into a messy running fight (Indiana Jones vs. boulder for example) or for this dangerous enemy turn up in town the next day for round two.

It DID turn into a messy running fight; at that point the players decided that they would let the fastest character run away with the artifact while the rest of them just decided to play human shield.

[zinycor]

The clue was "It feeds and violence, and can never be killed by it." It didn't say anything about damage, and the players didn't accuse me of giving them an irrelevant clue, they accused me of actively trying to trick them by implying they needed to kill the monster rather than disabling it, which in truth completely baffles me as that was the furthest thing from my mind.
Emphasis mine.

That is completely normal, whenever one does a puzzle or riddle is very common for those trying to solve it to go with solutions very much outside of what the one asking the riddle came up with.

[gooddragon1]

Emphasis mine.

That is completely normal, whenever one does a puzzle or riddle is very common for those trying to solve it to go with solutions very much outside of what the one asking the riddle came up with.

It is for this reason that the few times I have dm'd I always included a brute force clause in my puzzles. It's costly, but it's always there.

Basic example:
Runescape flip tiles puzzle
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yKPJ0TjyS4k

[zinycor]

It is for this reason that the few times I have dm'd I always included a brute force clause in my puzzles. It's costly, but it's always there.

Nice, I like it.

[gooddragon1]

Nice, I like it.

Basic example:
Runescape flip tiles puzzle
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yKPJ0TjyS4k

You can play lights out, or you can force tiles.

[Excession]

The clue was "It feeds and violence, and can never be killed by it." It didn't say anything about damage, and the players didn't accuse me of giving them an irrelevant clue, they accused me of actively trying to trick them by implying they needed to kill the monster rather than disabling it, which in truth completely baffles me as that was the furthest thing from my mind.
"You can't kill it with violence" can mean that you can kill it, just not with violence. Otherwise why mention violence at all? It's similar to "No man can kill me" meaning you just need to find a woman, or a halfling, or both. It's not what you meant, but it's possible to interpret it that way. When players are about to do something that seems really stupid to you, stop and ask them OOC what they think will happen. You may just need to correct a simple misunderstanding before everyone gets angry. Letting them flail about with clearly the wrong idea shouldn't be fun for anybody.

Alternatively, they actually have a good idea, but you haven't understood the plan. Then you can adjust to let their idea work.


It DID turn into a messy running fight; at that point the players decided that they would let the fastest character run away with the artifact while the rest of them just decided to play human shield.
That's not quite the same thing. Did you actually play out the entire run back through the dungeon as this unstoppable force pursued the party? Did the players have any reason to believe the enemy would stop at the entrance anyway? In theory that sort of fight could be fun, but nobody has a battle map big enough, making it a bit of a pain, or a game of GM-may-I if played in theatre of the mind.

Three people just saying "eh, I'm done with this, I'll eat the cost of losing to get it over with" isn't really fun.

[Talakeal]

"You can't kill it with violence" can mean that you can kill it, just not with violence. Otherwise why mention violence at all? It's similar to "No man can kill me" meaning you just need to find a woman, or a halfling, or both. It's not what you meant, but it's possible to interpret it that way. When players are about to do something that seems really stupid to you, stop and ask them OOC what they think will happen. You may just need to correct a simple misunderstanding before everyone gets angry. Letting them flail about with clearly the wrong idea shouldn't be fun for anybody.

Yeah, it can mean then; but honestly if you are going to play word games like that then there is very little that can't be twisted.

Honestly, I guess what seems shocking, is that my players are so distrustful of me that they think that I would go out of my way to intentionally try and trick them with a stupid word game.

[zinycor]

Yeah, it can mean then; but honestly if you are going to play word games like that then there is very little that can't be twisted.

Honestly, I guess what seems shocking, is that my players are so distrustful of me that they think that I would go out of my way to intentionally try and trick them with a stupid word game.

Well, "Stupid word games" are a staple of prophecies, riddles, puzzles and the like. I can say comfortably that I would be surprised that it wasn't a "stupid word game".

And you weren't exactly clear with your "It feeds and violence, and can never be killed by it." If I were to take those words literally I wouldn't know what to make of them.

[Excession]

Honestly, I guess what seems shocking, is that my players are so distrustful of me that they think that I would go out of my way to intentionally try and trick them with a stupid word game.

Oh woe is you, that has such mistrustful players. Obviously they are the problem here.

Maybe they just made a mistake, maybe this has nothing to do with trust. You can start by assuming the better of them, before demanding that they do the same for you.

[Fable Wright]

My thoughts:

1. Yeah, referencing "killed by it" was, in hindsight, going to make them think it was beatable.
2. Was there a way to discern this? No, not really. As you said, there's infinite ways to interpret some things. In the future, now you know that you should, explicitly, telegraph that certain enemies cannot be killed, and must be instead bound. Was this a failing? No.
3. You've got a great group of people! You taught them to retreat the first time, rather than throwing themselves at an unwinnable encounter. Even Bob. That says a lot. You did good there.
4. Killing all of the hirelings was probably excessive; none of them escaped?
5. You've almost got the group where you want it to be. They see the unbeatable monster. They choose to cut their losses and flee, rather than suicide on the boss thinking there must be a solution. They come up with a desirable strategy to deal with it (grab the trinket & run while we hold it off)! You were so close to having a good night, with a great payoff! Then they just refused to defend themselves. If they pulled it off, it would have been high fives all around, and a great night to remember! The scales were so very close, and all it took was one last thing to put it in the player's favor.

Honestly, the only thing that I'd recommend that you do differently? Give them clearer hints in the end. When they've committed to the self-suicide plan, give them some tiny incentive, some last thing to fight for—possibly tell them that "It will take five rounds to clear your hirelings out of the building and make it clear. If you can manage to last those five rounds, you're home clear—and every round you're short by means that more hirelings will die." That would have been an epic capper of a last stand to the fight, and it would have gone down perfectly. Some bitter regret at their failing, and more joy at the treasures they uncovered and how well they did at the end.

Sounds like you almost have the group dynamic down!

[Mr Beer]

There's not much point complaining about your players being distrustful bad-tempered emotional children when you are already aware of that fact and choose to spend time with them anyway.

[Phhase]

So, I had another explosive session last night.
I had an optional boss in the dungeon.

No, I'm on the DM's side for this one. If you've thrown custom puzzle bosses at them before, they should know to expect something unorthodox. While I get that they tried many solutions that didn't work and thus felt that they were righteous in their indignation, they did chance upon the answer several times and didn't pursue it. It's on them. Especially if they thought they could game the death system. Anyone who takes a lenient death system for granted or exploits it is forgetting that the alternative is death. It's foolishness of the highest order.

That said, there are a few ways you could've pulled it off better. For one, "Cannot be killed by violence," does not translate as readily as you's think to the conclusion "Cannot suffer HP damage, but still vulnerable to status effects." The application of most status effects (Grappling, Casting a disabling spell, knocking out) still feel like violent acts (especially something like hitting to knock out), and don't spring to mind as solutions to an "Immune to violence" enemy. The idea of "No violence" got your players thinking in a figurative/moral frame of mind, as in the concept of violence, rather than the hard ingame mechanical principle of violence. From their perspective, it must've seemed like a "Gotcha!" loophole rather than a legitimate mechanic, because they weren't approaching it from the right angle.

Now, that's not to say this fight was badly designed, not at all. It's perfectly reasonable. You just needed to give the right hints to get the players thinking in the right way. For example:

In order to access the chamber with the item, the act of opening the door will release the demon ghost from its imprisoning chains. This clues the players in that it can still be bound.
There are carvings on the catacombs walls depicting its previous defeat. Things like wizards casting swirly-eye spells, fighters suplexing it, or entangling it.
There is a dungeon feature that the players can use against the creature during the fight. For example, a Symbol or Glyph of Warding of any disabling stripe.
The ghost present signs of obvious bondage, like trailing manacles or feet that are bound together (Though that wouldn't affect it as it hovers I guess).

This way, the players think in mechanical terms rather than the abstract concept of violence, which may be misconstrued in any number of ways.

[Pelle]

Mostly the question about whether or not saying "It can't be killed by violence" really does come across as an intentional attempt to mislead my players into thinking they have to find a way to kill the monster that doesn't involve violence

Maybe it does, and maybe it doesn't, so what? A more relevant question would be how to mitigate it if it indeed does come across that way. It seems like you are more interested in finding out who is to blame, than how to solve issues when they come up.



and ideas about how to uphold the "gentleman's agreement" not to attack kill characters when they are literally using them as human shields.

It's kind of annoying when players abuse those kind of agreements and rules abstractions. I think a way of handling it is to cleary specify the assumptions and intentions of the gentlemans's agreement, and then point out when the players are violating the assumptions. "Not killing your hirelings is based on the assumption that you will keep them away from harm, guarding your supplies back in the camp. Now you are violating that assumption by using them as human shields, and the agreement doesn't apply for this situation. If you have them flee from the monster instead, the agreement still holds and they will be safe."

[Stuebi]

I have no idea about you or your groups history, but from what you write here, this just strikes me as a fundamental difference in interests.

You read like somebody who likes to implement a challenge, or at least tailor an encounter as to not be so simple as to be ultimately boring, and need to work on your wording. Your players seem more like people who would be better off installing Diablo 2 and getting the whole "Click, Loot, Rinse, Repeat" out of their system.

In all fairness, I do think your wording was ambiguous enough that it does seem a little too open to different interpretations. I would have assumed that the whole "born of violence" thing would imply that no violent act of any sort would work, and probably also be one of the people trying to heal, persuade, hug or guilt-trip the Monster into handing over the treasure. I would've probably given up eventually, and just assumed a specific answer was needed (Mind Control or some such), the fact that your group apparently arrived at the conclusion that you had designed an unwinnable engagement just to be mean is... weird. Do you actually like playing with them, and vice-versa? Because from what I'm reading about all those accusations, I am honestly surprised this is a functional group at all.

[AvatarVecna]

1) 5e encounter design approaches CR in a very intuitive fashion: "how difficult a monster is to defeat" is calculated by looking at its effective DPR and HP, and how those things compare to the party's effective DPR and HP. Conditions are cute, but effects that impose conditions rarely last long enough to call "fulfilling victory conditions". This encounter design is reflected in monster design in that monsters are rarely resistant/immune to very much and are almost universally nonresistant to magic weapons - both by WotC and by homebrewers, to the point that it's almost eerie. People will build all kinds of absolutely BS CR 20+ monsters to **** over players, myself included, but including so much as resistance to magic weapon damage is basically verboten. They can be difficult, they can unintuitive in their victory conditions, they can even pretty blatantly cheat...but if a party of sufficient power is incapable of straight-up murdering it, it's not functionally a monster, it's a puzzle. The "designer's intent" starting point of this isn't precisely true for other editions/systems but the end conclusion effectively is: a monster that cannot be overcome in combat is a puzzle boss, and most frequently, defeating puzzle bosses is less about "abandon HP defeat and seek out some other means of subduing them" and more "figure out the trick that turns off their damage immunity". At least in 5e, "puzzle bosses" are done via giving damage immunity that is overcome by some clever solution or specific material, for example, but older editions had the Nilbog, which was healed by damage and damaged by healing.

2) Because any monster along these lines is in some way or another a puzzle boss, they need to be set up like a puzzle. If the first clue your players got as to the nature of a puzzle is "after the puzzle nearly killed them and they returned to town, they got some info on it", then you set up your puzzle wrong. While it's less true online because I can usually count on at least one player being unscrupulous enough to google a puzzle that's giving them problems, a good general rule of thumb is "when you design a puzzle and you've added what you feel is a sufficient number of good hints, add a couple more anyway; they're only overly-obvious clues to you because you already know the answer".

Speaking personally, if I caught on to the fact that a monster I was fighting was getting stronger the longer I fought it, or maybe heard the "violence can't defeat it" clue before fighting it, I'd probably think of four different approaches based on existing monsters along those lines. The first is the nilbogs from early editions, that were damaged by healing and healed by damage, so...try a healing spell? If that doesn't seem to be working, I might remember that in Beowulf, Grendel's mother was immune to mortal weapons but was vulnerable to magic ones, and there's a magic weapon in the next room maybe go grab it and see if that can pierce the monster's immunity? Failing that, I might recall the myth where Heracles faced off against Antaeus, the son of Poseidon and Gaia who was invincible as long as he was in contact with the ground, and so might try to use some sick wrestling moves to get him off the ground, or maybe out of the room? Failing that, and assuming I'm not yet dead, I might think maybe he's "powered by violence" the same way that Vehemence in Grrl Power is, and the way to defeat him is to play defensive while he burns up his stored "violence energy" trying to kill me, hoping that if he burns through enough of it he'll eventually have low enough reserves that trying to kill him makes him dead faster than it makes him stronger. But all of that's only if I got the clue before going into the fight. If I didn't...I'm not sure how I'd even go about fighting this thing. If I was told it was immune to HP damage flat-out, trying much of anything is just wasting abilities for no payoff. Golly gee willickers I stunned it for a round! Now I've got the opportunity to coup de grace it for...massive...damage...huh. I guess being able to stun it is worthless if I don't use the opportunity to run. It doesn't give me an opportunity to win, it just means it takes longer for me to lose. Speaking of losing...

3) That's your job. Your job, as DM, is to lose. Constantly. Continuously.

Your job as a group is to work together to have fun. On the DM side of the screen, that means putting together stories for the sake of seeing them played out, one way or another; seeing others explore your work is the reward. On the player side of the screen, "having fun" generally means being challenged but ultimately still winning; different groups will have different idea of how much effort, how much power, how much investigation, and how much trickery is necessary to win, and there's definitely some that want to play on hard mode. But people don't play D&D like playing a wargame, in an "us vs the DM" kinda way, because that's self-defeating; it's like playing chess, except you're white, and black gets to have as many queens as he wants, and gets to rearrange the board as desired whenever he pleases. The DM's side is as strong as the DM decides it is; it's entirely possible to design an adventure such that every fight, if pursued in a straightforward manner, is more or less a coin toss for who wins, but if you're players aren't the kind that enjoy that kinda game, running it anyway makes you a killer DM. And unless you're playing a game like that, where players are on board with a high skill floor for tactics and strategy and accept that encounters will be generally unforgiving of mistakes and will often be lethal, including a monster like this without dropping hints or clues as to the nature of the puzzle boss is kinda a **** move. On the flip side, I'm pretty sure you're not intentionally running a game like that with players like that, because you have that nifty "not death" mechanic where dying doesn't actually kill players either. So I guess this is a more lighthearted game where consequences don't matter because it's more about just grinding through monsters and having a good time being badasses, but then why include an invincible puzzle boss? But most games aren't gonna be that deadly, they're going to be closer to "challenging...to a point".

It's a rough balancing act, finding the way to challenge your players just enough to where they don't feel like they're being pitied, but just weak enough that they don't feel like they're being ground under the boot heel. Combined with how losing isn't a ton of fun for DMs either, and it's understandable why more people don't DM. Being able to adjust on the fly in order to keep the game fun is an important quality in a DM, I feel. If the boss encounter is overwhelmingly difficult, or underwhelmingly dull, it should be adjusted to try and hit that balance point. Yeah, it's hard, but hitting that sweet spot makes things just so much better for everyone.

At the end of the day, it sounds like your group is at least still intact, which is something, but I think you need to seriously re-evaluate what you and your players want out of this game, because it sounds like the game you're trying to run and the game they're trying to play differ more than a little bit. I saw farther down in the thread that you think it's wrong to adjust things to make it easier on the players than you originally intended, and that's not a bad way to play, because there's not really a bad way to play, but it's not going to fit every group.

EDIT:


Are you joking or did you misunderstand something I said at some point?

To clarify; this campaign was designed in a vacuum as a sandbox, balanced against a generic party, some two years ago, long before I knew who was going to be playing in it or what their characters would be, and I am running it as written.

"I didn't design this encounter to screw over this particular party, just a particular playstyle in general! That they happen to fall into that playstyle and I chose to run the encounter against them anyway isn't my fault."


There's not much point complaining about your players being distrustful bad-tempered emotional children when you are already aware of that fact and choose to spend time with them anyway.

Story of Talakeal's life, the poster child you point to when anybody disagrees with the phrase "no gaming is better than bad gaming", in a "this is what happens when you try bad gaming anyway" kinda way.

[King of Nowhere]

I think some people are giving tal too much crap.

he tried to give the party a puzzle boss. it's a perfectly legitimate challenge.
his clue was too vague and misleading. ok, he made an honest mistake there. this kind of things happen.

as my piece of advice, don't give that kind of clues if you want the players to figure it out. when i give subtle clues, i do it expecting that they'll miss them, and the intention is that when the villain will spring his master plan, I can point the clues and say "see, it makes sense". Because i believe in establishing the villain as a competent and credible threat by letting him win something, and/or letting at least a few things go his way before the heroes are stopping him at every turn.
of course, i can do that because my players trust me

in fact, those kind of things happen regularly in any party that i know of, and they never escalate because a sane roleplaying group is based upon reciprocal trust, where tal group is based upon... seriously, i have no idea what keeps that group together.


My thoughts:

5. You've almost got the group where you want it to be. They see the unbeatable monster. They choose to cut their losses and flee, rather than suicide on the boss thinking there must be a solution. They come up with a desirable strategy to deal with it (grab the trinket & run while we hold it off)! You were so close to having a good night, with a great payoff! Then they just refused to defend themselves. If they pulled it off, it would have been high fives all around, and a great night to remember! The scales were so very close, and all it took was one last thing to put it in the player's favor.

I fully agree. it would have made for a great session, with a great payoff, if the players had done the heroic you shall not pass and tried to make it work.
instead, they tried to abuse lenient death rules, which ruined it.

[patchyman]

God, that just seems so... wrong.

My player hates when I tailor fights to screw him and doesn't trust me to not retcon the monsters to make him look bad, so to show him that I can be trusted and am running a fair table, I should start tailoring the monsters to lose to him and retconning the monsters to make him look good.

I mean, it would probably work, but that just feels so damn wrong...

Let me clarify my recommendation.

My general recommendation when a player has said that they do not trust the DM to enforce the rules and run the monsters in a fair and impartial manner is to stop DMing for that person. There is no value judgment on the player or the DM. An RPG requires a level of trust between the players and the DM, and if that trust is not there, you can no longer DM effectively.

You have expressed that you have reasons why you cannot stop DMing for that players. This leads me to my specific recommendation: because a basis of trust is so important to run the game, you need to regain the player’s trust. This recommendation stands even if the player is wrong about mistrusting you.

A player not trusting the DM is a serious situation calling for extraordinary measures, and even if implemented, it will take time to regain trust.

Suggested measures:
- Roll dice in the open (only use the screen to shield your notes);
- Only use existing monsters. At the beginning of each session, state that if a player asks, you will e-mail them the stat block of the monster you used after the session. This works in your favour as well: if your players are upset about an encounter in the heat of the moment, you can ask them to reserve judgement until they have seen the star block. They may cool down by the time they can read the stat block;
- Run published adventures where you can point to the adventure to address concerns about unfairness;
- Be transparent when running the monsters. If a monster of humanoid intelligence is targeting a spellcaster or focussing fire, tell the players what you are doing while you are doing it. Run unintelligent monsters consistent with their intelligence;
- Run debriefing sessions after the game (by e-mail if necessary), so players can emphasize what they liked and disliked and show that you are listening to them.

Finally, using published monsters does not mean choosing monsters that make encounters a cakewalk.

[Talakeal]

Let me clarify my recommendation.

My general recommendation when a player has said that they do not trust the DM to enforce the rules and run the monsters in a fair and impartial manner is to stop DMing for that person. There is no value judgment on the player or the DM. An RPG requires a level of trust between the players and the DM, and if that trust is not there, you can no longer DM effectively.

You have expressed that you have reasons why you cannot stop DMing for that players. This leads me to my specific recommendation: because a basis of trust is so important to run the game, you need to regain the player’s trust. This recommendation stands even if the player is wrong about mistrusting you.

A player not trusting the DM is a serious situation calling for extraordinary measures, and even if implemented, it will take time to regain trust.

Player trust is so hard to come by for me, and it is just frustrating because I am one of the most transparent and "by the book"* DMs I know.

In this case it is especially troubling because it wasn't "Bob," my usual paranoid problem player making the accusation, but one of my new players who has, up to this point, been almost totally drama free. I am not sure if Bob is rubbing off on her or I am doing something to give her the impression that I can't be trusted, but either way I would really like to resolve the issue before I have an entire group of Bobs.


*: Meaning that I follow through with what I have designed and don't change things on the fly, not that I don't use home-brew content.


In all fairness, I do think your wording was ambiguous enough that it does seem a little too open to different interpretations. I would have assumed that the whole "born of violence" thing would imply that no violent act of any sort would work, and probably also be one of the people trying to heal, persuade, hug or guilt-trip the Monster into handing over the treasure. I would've probably given up eventually, and just assumed a specific answer was needed (Mind Control or some such), the fact that your group apparently arrived at the conclusion that you had designed an unwinnable engagement just to be mean is... weird. Do you actually like playing with them, and vice-versa? Because from what I'm reading about all those accusations, I am honestly surprised this is a functional group at all.

Which is why I added the part about it not being able to be killed by violence. The problem is, I meant it as "It cannot be killed by violence" where as they heard it as "It cannot be killed by violence", so instead of looking for ways to defeat it that didn't involve killing, they were leaking for ways to kill it that didn't involve violence, and then perceived that miscommunication as a deliberate attempt to deceive them.


Oh woe is you, that has such mistrustful players. Obviously they are the problem here.

Maybe they just made a mistake, maybe this has nothing to do with trust. You can start by assuming the better of them, before demanding that they do the same for you.

I don't think that it was that unusual an encounter; mechanically it was a by the book hydra that was weak to grapples and sleep spells rather than sunders and fire spells. But ok, let's say that it was a complete screw-job, the biggest pile of BS traps since the original Tomb of Horrors, and that I am a completely incompetent killer GM.

To me, that still doesn't justify saying that you think the DM is intentionally trying to trick and mislead you out of character, and that level of distrust is a, imo, a way bigger problem than either clueless meathead players or overly difficulty stubborn DMs.

I am trying to figure out if the player was just lashing out because they were frustrated, or if this really does come across as me trying to deliberately deceive my players, because that is a far bigger issue and something that really does need resolution beyond "mismatch of play-styles" type issues.

[Gallowglass]

Talakeal -

I would like to give you some axioms to paste on the top of every threat you post about your gaming adventures:

"Point the 1st: I, Talakeal, believe that some gaming, no matter how terrible, is better than no gaming. The reverse of the "no gaming is better than bad gaming" maxim. If your reply to this thread is any variation of "No gaming is better than bad gaming" do not bother responding.

Point the 2nd: I, Talakeal, will continue to game with this band of players, no matter the abuse, no matter the vitriol. I will not or can not, find another group. I will not, or can not, kick any member out. Also, its obvious at this point, that the members of my band of players feel the same and they will continue to not leave the game. So if your reply to this thread is any variation of "leave the game." "Kick the player." "Find a different Group" do not bother responding.

Point the 3rd: I, Talakeal, am the only member of this group willing or able to DM. So if your reply to this thread is any variation of "make someone else DM." "Take a break from DMing." do not bother responding."

If everyone follows these axioms, it will clear up 95% of the volume of posts you have to wade through.

(Granted, not everyone will follow the axioms. So maybe it will only clear out 30% of the volume. For every response that doesn't follow the axiom, you should only reply with "Please read the axioms on top of the thread. And no other response.)

[Talakeal]

2) Because any monster along these lines is in some way or another a puzzle boss, they need to be set up like a puzzle. If the first clue your players got as to the nature of a puzzle is "after the puzzle nearly killed them and they returned to town, they got some info on it", then you set up your puzzle wrong. While it's less true online because I can usually count on at least one player being unscrupulous enough to google a puzzle that's giving them problems, a good general rule of thumb is "when you design a puzzle and you've added what you feel is a sufficient number of good hints, add a couple more anyway; they're only overly-obvious clues to you because you already know the answer".

Speaking personally, if I caught on to the fact that a monster I was fighting was getting stronger the longer I fought it, or maybe heard the "violence can't defeat it" clue before fighting it, I'd probably think of four different approaches based on existing monsters along those lines. The first is the nilbogs from early editions, that were damaged by healing and healed by damage, so...try a healing spell? If that doesn't seem to be working, I might remember that in Beowulf, Grendel's mother was immune to mortal weapons but was vulnerable to magic ones, and there's a magic weapon in the next room maybe go grab it and see if that can pierce the monster's immunity? Failing that, I might recall the myth where Heracles faced off against Antaeus, the son of Poseidon and Gaia who was invincible as long as he was in contact with the ground, and so might try to use some sick wrestling moves to get him off the ground, or maybe out of the room? Failing that, and assuming I'm not yet dead, I might think maybe he's "powered by violence" the same way that Vehemence in Grrl Power is, and the way to defeat him is to play defensive while he burns up his stored "violence energy" trying to kill me, hoping that if he burns through enough of it he'll eventually have low enough reserves that trying to kill him makes him dead faster than it makes him stronger. But all of that's only if I got the clue before going into the fight. If I didn't...I'm not sure how I'd even go about fighting this thing. If I was told it was immune to HP damage flat-out, trying much of anything is just wasting abilities for no payoff. Golly gee willickers I stunned it for a round! Now I've got the opportunity to coup de grace it for...massive...damage...huh. I guess being able to stun it is worthless if I don't use the opportunity to run. It doesn't give me an opportunity to win, it just means it takes longer for me to lose. Speaking of losing...

3) That's your job. Your job, as DM, is to lose. Constantly. Continuously.

Your job as a group is to work together to have fun. On the DM side of the screen, that means putting together stories for the sake of seeing them played out, one way or another; seeing others explore your work is the reward. On the player side of the screen, "having fun" generally means being challenged but ultimately still winning; different groups will have different idea of how much effort, how much power, how much investigation, and how much trickery is necessary to win, and there's definitely some that want to play on hard mode. But people don't play D&D like playing a wargame, in an "us vs the DM" kinda way, because that's self-defeating; it's like playing chess, except you're white, and black gets to have as many queens as he wants, and gets to rearrange the board as desired whenever he pleases. The DM's side is as strong as the DM decides it is; it's entirely possible to design an adventure such that every fight, if pursued in a straightforward manner, is more or less a coin toss for who wins, but if you're players aren't the kind that enjoy that kinda game, running it anyway makes you a killer DM. And unless you're playing a game like that, where players are on board with a high skill floor for tactics and strategy and accept that encounters will be generally unforgiving of mistakes and will often be lethal, including a monster like this without dropping hints or clues as to the nature of the puzzle boss is kinda a **** move. On the flip side, I'm pretty sure you're not intentionally running a game like that with players like that, because you have that nifty "not death" mechanic where dying doesn't actually kill players either. So I guess this is a more lighthearted game where consequences don't matter because it's more about just grinding through monsters and having a good time being badasses, but then why include an invincible puzzle boss? But most games aren't gonna be that deadly, they're going to be closer to "challenging...to a point".

It's a rough balancing act, finding the way to challenge your players just enough to where they don't feel like they're being pitied, but just weak enough that they don't feel like they're being ground under the boot heel. Combined with how losing isn't a ton of fun for DMs either, and it's understandable why more people don't DM. Being able to adjust on the fly in order to keep the game fun is an important quality in a DM, I feel. If the boss encounter is overwhelmingly difficult, or underwhelmingly dull, it should be adjusted to try and hit that balance point. Yeah, it's hard, but hitting that sweet spot makes things just so much better for everyone.[/spoiler].

Its funny that you mention Hercules, because the myths of Hercules were actually one of my inspirations for this encounter. He constantly fought monsters that were immune to weapons; Anteus as you mentioned, but also the Nemeon Lion who couldn't be harmed by weapons, Stryfe, who grew stronger each time he was attacked, and the Hydra who couldn't be harmed by weapons and grew stronger each time he was attacked.

I pretty much agree with everything you are saying here, except I am kind of curious about when the three clue rule came to mean that players were entitled to get plenty of hints for every puzzle; unless it is something that will actually cause the game to stall out and come to a halt, I don't think there is anything wrong with a puzzle that is meant to be solved through trial and error or where failure is a genuine possibility. I think this is probably cause for a new thread though.

[Gallowglass]

Mostly the question about whether or not saying "It can't be killed by violence" really does come across as an intentional attempt to mislead my players into thinking they have to find a way to kill the monster that doesn't involve violence

Having a story encounter that "can't be killed by violence" thus requiring out of the box thinking and solution engineering is not a bad thing. Not bad DMins. Not an, on the surface, intentional attempt to mislead your players. <remove obvious and repetitive point of order that your experience is not the standard experience and your players are not standard players>

I'm more concerns about your "this is an encounter with no XP" line. That makes it sound like, when you design an adventure, you assign XP rewards only to certain encounters, but don't give experience for other encounters. That's not a good system.

XP is a reward for things they DO. Not things you want them to do.

If you start the adventure with "okay, on the border of the town is an old abandoned keep. It is said that a mighty lich lives there and guards the lost treasure of antiquity...." and the PC response is. "A mighty lich? Eff that. There's a port in this town right? Let's go down and sign up on a boat as security so we can get the hell out of here." Then you go off on a ocean cruise, are you saying that they won't get XP for fighting the inevitable pirates? Because its not on your approved encounter list?



and ideas about how to uphold the "gentleman's agreement" not to attack kill characters when they are literally using them as human shields.

This was the inevitable and unavoidable conclusion of your rule about not killing the PCs. Because what you saw as a "gentleman's agreement" where you would not kill the PCs and they, in turn, would not seek to abuse that security. They did not actually agree to. All they saw was a new exploitable resource that they have now found a way to weaponize.

the "gentleman's agreement" only ever existed in your head.

Even if you once outlined it, and they verbally agreed to it, it still only ever existed in your head.

[Talakeal]

Having a story encounter that "can't be killed by violence" thus requiring out of the box thinking and solution engineering is not a bad thing. Not bad DMins. Not an, on the surface, intentional attempt to mislead your players. <remove obvious and repetitive point of order that your experience is not the standard experience and your players are not standard players>

I'm more concerns about your "this is an encounter with no XP" line. That makes it sound like, when you design an adventure, you assign XP rewards only to certain encounters, but don't give experience for other encounters. That's not a good system.

XP is a reward for things they DO. Not things you want them to do.

If you start the adventure with "okay, on the border of the town is an old abandoned keep. It is said that a mighty lich lives there and guards the lost treasure of antiquity...." and the PC response is. "A mighty lich? Eff that. There's a port in this town right? Let's go down and sign up on a boat as security so we can get the hell out of here." Then you go off on a ocean cruise, are you saying that they won't get XP for fighting the inevitable pirates? Because its not on your approved encounter list?



This was the inevitable and unavoidable conclusion of your rule about not killing the PCs. Because what you saw as a "gentleman's agreement" where you would not kill the PCs and they, in turn, would not seek to abuse that security. They did not actually agree to. All they saw was a new exploitable resource that they have now found a way to weaponize.

the "gentleman's agreement" only ever existed in your head.

Even if you once outlined it, and they verbally agreed to it, it still only ever existed in your head.

I use milestone XP. In this case, thr milestone was for "exploring the dungeon", not for doing or killing anything specific while there.


The players were the one's who used the phrase "broke the gentleman's agreement," not me.

[Gallowglass]

I had an optional boss in the dungeon. It was truly optional, it had no storyline relevence, no XP award or treasure tied to it, there was no quest or moral imperitive to kill it, and it wasn't time sensitive or linked to the rest of the dungeon. It was however, guarding a very powerful magical weapon that was significantly above what the party should have at their power level.


You should not have possible encounters that don't give XP. XP is for what they DO, not for what you WANT them to do.


EDIT: Oh milestone XP. Okay, never mind then. I get it now. I was just confused by you describing that they would get no XP for the encounter.


No PC is ever going to stop trying to get the magical macguffin once they know it's there.



The monster itself was the ghost of the demon prince of violence (which had been killed by the PCs in a previous epic level campaign). It was a fairly strong but not unbeatable monster, but with one catch: It was immune to HP damage and everytime it took damage equal to its HP it would gain a substantial stacking buff. It was not immune to anything else, it could disabled, debuffed, knocked out, put to sleep, grappled, trapped, tricked, charmed, turned to stone, polymorphed into a frog, etc.


Do the PCs have Polymorph? Do they have Flesh to Stone? Charm Monster? Ghost Touch uh... grappling gloves? Ghost Touch Manacles?

You describe it as a ghost which generally speaking would be immune to everything you list here. Can't be knocked out, can't be put to sleep, can't be grappled, can't be charmed, can't be turned to stone. Did they have some reason to suspect it didn't have standard ghost immunities?



So, the player charged in, fought it for a while, and realized that it was only getting stronger rather than dying, so they retreated. All good.

They went back to town, did some reasearch, and found an oracle who told them "It is born of violence. It feeds off of violence and can never be killed by violence."


Okay so far....



So the players assumed that this was a puzzle of some sort.


It -is- a puzzle.



They went back to the dungeon and started trying to do all sorts of crazy things; smashing objects in its room, healing the monster, singing to the monster, hugging the monster, talking to the monster, etc. This didn't work, so they decided to just run past it into the room it was guarding and grab the magic weapon and see if it they could kill it with the magic weapon.


All of these things go along with trying to follow your prophecies instructions. I don't see anything there that I might not have tried in their place. They are literally doing what you asked them to do. Try different alternative solutions to violence.




They couldn't, and at this point they had buffed the monster again and were super low on HP. At this point I asked them what they were going to do, and they said they were going to give the artifact to their fastest team member and have him run back to town with it while the rest of them would simply stand in front of the monster and block its way.


Again. A viable alternative solution to the problem that is now frustrating.



Now, those of you who have been following my threads know that I am not playing with character death. A character who is at zero HP has simply lost the will to fight through a combination of pain, exhaustion, and morale loss, and if the entire party is out of HP they are forced to retreat and scattered. At one point I had the players roll on a mishap table when this happened, but the players complained that it was too random, so I changed it to a flat monetary penalty, however this was causing the players to be extremely cautious and simply waste a ton of time both in and out of character by going into extreme 15MWD mode and going back to town to rest up and bank their treasure after every single encounter. So, at this point I removed the penalty for dying entirely.


No comment



So, the players plan was that that as they had the artifact, and there was no penalty for dying, so they no longer had to try and win the fight or even survive.


You built the physics of the world. They are trying to work with it.



So, the monster proceeded to knock the rest of the party down to zero HP, and then proceeded to slaughter all of their followers and henchmen.


So, back in town the players decide to get their hirelings raised, and when I tell them how much the temple is going to charge for this (a little over half of the total treasure haul from the dungeon) the players start in on one of their usual whinge sessions, but this one keeps escalating. In short, they accuse me of intentional putting an "unbeatable" monster in their path, then intentionally tricking them by telling them "violence can't kill it" which, to them, clearly implied that their goal was to kill it in a manner that didn't involve violence, and then violating the "gentleman's agreement" by attacking their allies once the party is down.


And the last one is kind of accurate; if the group makes a good faith effort to do their best, I am not going to "punish" them for failing, but the idea that they would actually come up with the idea of "grab the treasure and run" and not even try and defend themselves is, too my mind, already tearing up any gentleman's agreement we might have and stomping on it.


Go back a few paragraphs.



They went back to the dungeon and started trying to do all sorts of crazy things; smashing objects in its room, healing the monster, singing to the monster, hugging the monster, talking to the monster, etc. This didn't work, so they decided to just run past it into the room it was guarding and grab the magic weapon and see if it they could kill it with the magic weapon.


^^^All of this? This is THEM TRYING to make a good faith effort to do their best. This is their best. Sorry you had ideas as the encounter generator that they didn't think of. But, given their historically limited cleverness, this absolutely WAS them TRYING TO MAKE A GOOD FAITH EFFORT TO DO THEIR BEST.

DM to the level of your players.



So, I tried explaining the situation to them, basically stating everything I have put in this post, and their whinging escalated to actively bitching and telling me that once I started trying to "screw them" with "unbeatable monsters" and "misleading clues" that they simply no longer cared about their characters or my game as a whole, so why should they put forth any effort?


"You guys don't care about your characters any more? Okay, then you can make new ones for next game and we'll start a new game."



At this point I tried to explain how they could have beaten the monster, at which point the players turned on eachother and started bickering about how the other person cost them the fight, and it escalated until they were literally screaming at one another at the top of their lungs, at which point the session kind of broke apart.

Everyone seems to have calmed down and apologized after having slept on it, and we are still on for the next game in two weeks, but at this point, just yikes.


Hey at least they are yelling at each other instead of you for once.

[Talakeal]

Looks like I need to lay out a longer description:


Do the PCs have Polymorph? Do they have Flesh to Stone? Charm Monster? Ghost Touch uh... grappling gloves? Ghost Touch Manacles?

You describe it as a ghost which generally speaking would be immune to everything you list here. Can't be knocked out, can't be put to sleep, can't be grappled, can't be charmed, can't be turned to stone. Did they have some reason to suspect it didn't have standard ghost immunity?

Fluff wise it is the vestige of an elder evil that is haunting the place where it was killed. When someone enters the area without first performing a human sacrifice, it will create an aspect which will attack the interloper. Violence towards this aspect empowers the vestige, and if the aspect is killed two more will soon take its place.

Mechanically, it was a hydra of an appropriate CR for the party, except that instead of being weak to fire and sundering, each head was treated as an individual medium sized humanoid.

From the player's perspective, it looks like a large scary guy covered in scars and holding a bloody cleaver, kind of like a fantasy Jason Voorhes. When killed, it shatters like a mirror and a few moments later two identical copies of the original emerge from the shards.

It was not, either mechanically or flavor text wise, incorporeal, ethereal, or otherwise non-living. Atleast, the aspects weren't, the actual vestige itself was just a statless entity that could neither interact with nor be interacted upon by the PCs.


All of these things go along with trying to follow your prophecies instructions. I don't see anything there that I might not have tried in their place. They are literally doing what you asked them to do. Try different alternative solutions to violence.

It was not an in character "prophecy" as such. They merely went back to town, did some research, consulted with sages and oracles, and OOC I told them that they came away with the knowledge that it fed on violence and couldn't be killed through violent means. I suppose in hindisight I should have phrased it "It is born of violence, it cannot truly be killed and with each death it only grows stronger," or something like it, but I was just speaking colloquelly and off the cuff at the time rather than trying to lay down specific letter of the law instructions.



It -is- a puzzle.

I suppose it is a puzzle in the sense that everything is a puzzle and that the most obvious solution (hit it until its dead) doesn't work; but when I say "puzzle" I mean something like where there is a single obscure solution that the DM has decided upon like in a video game where there is one (or several) correct solutions and normal means to bypass it are arbitrarily shut down.


Again. A viable alternative solution to the problem that is now frustrating.

You built the physics of the world. They are trying to work with it.

^^^All of this? This is THEM TRYING to make a good faith effort to do their best. This is their best. Sorry you had ideas as the encounter generator that they didn't think of. But, given their historically limited cleverness, this absolutely WAS them TRYING TO MAKE A GOOD FAITH EFFORT TO DO THEIR BEST.

Going to have to hard disagree with you here.

The players immortality is not "the physics of the world," they are not playing highlanders. It is a narrative tool which allows for the players to play daring heroes who brave dangerous situations and pull through by the skin of their teeth without me having to start a new campaign every few weeks.

Using their characters as living shields because they know they can't permanently die is, in my mind, meta-gaming plain and simple. It is using out of character knowledge to gain an in game advantage by taking actions which you're character has no reason to take, and is only slightly better than buying a copy of the module the DM is running so that your character knows exactly where every hidden trap and secret door is located.

But, even if it was a perfectly viable action, the issue wasn't that I got mad at the PCs. The issue was that they were mad at me for not extending their immortality to the NPC allies who accompanied them.

[Gallowglass]

Fluff wise it is the vestige of an elder evil that is haunting the place where it was killed. When someone enters the area without first performing a human sacrifice, it will create an aspect which will attack the interloper. Violence towards this aspect empowers the vestige, and if the aspect is killed two more will soon take its place.

Mechanically, it was a hydra of an appropriate CR for the party, except that instead of being weak to fire and sundering, each head was treated as an individual medium sized humanoid.

From the player's perspective, it looks like a large scary guy covered in scars and holding a bloody cleaver, kind of like a fantasy Jason Voorhes. When killed, it shatters like a mirror and a few moments later two identical copies of the original emerge from the shards.

It was not, either mechanically or flavor text wise, incorporeal, ethereal, or otherwise non-living. Atleast, the aspects weren't, the actual vestige itself was just a statless entity that could neither interact with nor be interacted upon by the PCs.


You very obviously did not answer my questions, simply talked around them.

In your first post you enumerated a number of ways that would have been acceptable to you as ways to defeat the monster.
Did The PCs have any of those tools?

Did they have polymorph
Did they have flesh to stone
Did they have charm monster

Can you give us the list of spells that the PCs tried casting? Or did they never cast any spells?
What spell-casters and levels do the party have?



I suppose it is a puzzle in the sense that everything is a puzzle and that the most obvious solution (hit it until its dead) doesn't work; but when I say "puzzle" I mean something like where there is a single obscure solution that the DM has decided upon like in a video game where there is one (or several) correct solutions and normal means to bypass it are arbitrarily shut down.



Please go back and read your post. Now explain how this wasn't an encounter with "one or several correct solutions and normal means to bypass it are arbitrarily shut down"?

This is a puzzle in the sense that IT IS A PUZZLE. Full Stop.

Remember that this is a role-playing game. Your normal mode of dealing with obstacles is hitting them until one of their seven to ten Health Pools run out (default HP). Outside of that, D&D post 2nd Edition have defined pretty much every possible encounter as something you can roll past with either combat prowess or the skill system. "Roll to Diplomate!"

Any "obstacle" that can't be dealt with through combat or through the skill system and must be thought around by the players IS A PUZZLE. If that doesn't meet your definition of Puzzle then we simply have different vocabularies.



Going to have to hard disagree with you here.

The players immortality is not "the physics of the world," they are not playing highlanders. It is a narrative tool which allows for the players to play daring heroes who brave dangerous situations and pull through by the skin of their teeth without me having to start a new campaign every few weeks.

Using their characters as living shields because they know they can't permanently die is, in my mind, meta-gaming plain and simple. It is using out of character knowledge to gain an in game advantage by taking actions which you're character has no reason to take, and is only slightly better than buying a copy of the module the DM is running so that your character knows exactly where every hidden trap and secret door is located.

But, even if it was a perfectly viable action, the issue wasn't that I got mad at the PCs. The issue was that they were mad at me for not extending their immortality to the NPC allies who accompanied them.

To you: It is a narrative tool which allows for the players to play daring heroes who brave dangerous situations and pull through by the skin of their teeth without me having to start a new campaign every few weeks.
To them: It is the physics of the world.

You sandwiched three of my replied together, so it makes me look like I'm saying something I'm not.

No, the players should NOT be using the plot-armor you have given them as a weaponized way to bypass obstacles. I agree with you. That's very badwrongfun of them.

But it was the obvious and inevitable outcome that most everyone in this conversation saw coming when you first told us about it threads ago.

According to you, they used the term "gentleman's agreement" and not you (I don't buy this as I've heard you, in earlier threads, mention the term before and mention that you were the deviser of that faustian pact, but I don't want to fight about it). Fine. We can now agree that they don't play by the assumed nature of the pact so now you have to take it away. They don't trust you. You can't trust them. As long as it exists, they will continue to try and use it as the physics of the world whether you meant it to be or not. Just look at any one of a thousand threads on this board about people finding a dysfunctional rule and using it to gain an advantage.

Even if you have a good conversation with them about it and it seems like you are all on the same page. You might be at that moment. But the next time there is a difficult or frustrating encounter that doesn't go their way, they are going to get frustrated and throw up their arms and say "oh well, doesn't matter." and wait to wake up from their death-fugue.

But when I talked about the players "TRYING TO MAKE A GOOD FAITH EFFORT TO DO THEIR BEST" I'm not referring to their last stand plot-armor wall. I mean them coming back to the obstacle and trying non-traditional means. Like Hugging it. Like Talking to it.

I don't know why you say they could "charm" it, if they couldn't even talk to it. What happened when they tried to talk to it? Did they get attacked? Ignored? Did it not seem to respond to their entreaty in anyway? Why should I think a Charm Monster spell would work on something that makes no indication of understanding my words.

I don't know why you say they could "grapple" it, if they couldn't even "hug" it. What happened when they tried to hug it? Did they get attacked? Did they go through the thing like a ghost. Did it shrug them off. Did you indicate that when they went to hug it, it felt like it "could potentially be held if you tried to grapple it. That if feels no stronger than a regular man."

I'm not trying to blame you for this, but I can't wrap my mind around how this encounter could've turned out differently without knowing what actual things the people tried. Becuase ultimately they DID try things. And whatever they tried did NOT meet your prescribed list of things that would work. And that puts us back at "one or several correct solutions and normal means to bypass it are arbitrarily shut down" which is apparently what it felt like to them.

[denthor]

So simple 2nd level necromancy spell command undead would work. It is a charm person spell for undead.

Do I have that correct?

[Quertus]

Wow, there's a lot of scrubbing already. That's intimidating.

Hmmm… I think I am simultaneously going to be Talakeal's biggest fan, and worst detractor, on this. So, here's the post that I most agree with:



Well, "Stupid word games" are a staple of prophecies, riddles, puzzles and the like. I can say comfortably that I would be surprised that it wasn't a "stupid word game".

And you weren't exactly clear with your "It feeds and violence, and can never be killed by it." If I were to take those words literally I wouldn't know what to make of them.

Conventional wisdom says "Rule of Three" everything. But this was "optional content", and obscure wording is a thing (and a cool thing, IMO), so the Rule of 3 needn't apply here.

Personally, I'm a fan of this encounter. 100%. Love it. Assuming that the source of the odd "cannot be killed by violence" phrase was appropriate - an ancient translation, a prophecy, etc - then it's a great "can you think laterally" puzzle, *where failure is an option*. You allowed them to retreat, and even allowed them to steal the McGuffin / loot the room *without* killing the creature. Yeah. Love this encounter. 100% approval rating from me.

But, as another poster said, you seem to be making encounters for the players you wish you had, rather than the ones you actually have. I don't know your players will enough to know how true that is here. I don't know their characters to know how many options each one had to deal status conditions. In general, there is a huge style mismatch between the game they want, and the game you run. But I cannot comment on the extent to which that may or may not be the case / the problem here.

What I can say is, your treatment of their defeat seems punitive, and juvenile. When you don't play the game fairly, you simply further erode their trust. If you cannot play the game fairly, don't play.

I'll second the recommendation to run your group through a published module. It should be far more obvious to you when your players complaints about you changing things are valid that way. And, perhaps, the truth will be more obvious to them, too, when y'all can compare the hard facts of what you ran to what's written in the module.

Be a fan of the PCs. I'll add, be a fan of the players. If you're going to change things, it should be *exclusively* to make the game *better*. That's why people keep telling you to make their plans work. Because that's the type of change that (they believe) makes the game better.

Now, me? **** that. I stick to the Facts, I don't change things just because the players don't have a clue. But, then, I also don't change things to take away their earned victories, or slaughter their henchmen because I don't like their attitude.

My house rules are "balance to the group", "balance to the module", and "don't be a ****". My advice to the GM includes, "be a fan of the PCs" and "if you're going to change anything - please don't - but if you're going to change anything, make it to match what the players believe is true and will help them - that's generally what makes for a better game".

Again, I'm a fan of the encounter. Not a fan of changing things to **** the players at the end, though. Yes, even though I'm not a fan of the way that they approached the problem, that still was not a valid response.

EDIT: however, if the players knew that their henchmen were not covered by the immortality clause, it becomes much more complicated.

[Talakeal]

Please go back and read your post. Now explain how this wasn't an encounter with "one or several correct solutions and normal means to bypass it are arbitrarily shut down"?

This is a puzzle in the sense that IT IS A PUZZLE. Full Stop.

It is the difference between listing the things you can do and the things you can't do.

A fixed list of immunities is fundamentally different than being immune to everything except for a fixed list of vulnerabilities.

In this case, the guy was immune to HP damage. Everything else would have worked. The number of things that would have worked is way too long for me to list or even think of.

Do you also consider trolls, hydras, tarrasques, pit fiends, balors, solars, etc. to be puzzles? All of them cannot be killed by straight HP damage unless it comes from a specific source.


You very obviously did not answer my questions, simply talked around them.

Did they have polymorph
Did they have flesh to stone
Did they have charm monster

Sorry, the list of suggestions you gave looked like you were assuming it was incorporeal / undead and so I was rectifying that rather than addressing those specific examples.

They did not have any of those specific spells. They did have mind control magic which could have worked on it, they were strong enough to simply restrain it and did have rope and manacles, and they had numerous terrain control spells that could have trapped it, and while they don't have a dedicated rogue they did have several party members that could have snuck past it.

They also had the ability to purchase scrolls, wands, and potions of virtually every spell in the game or to hire mercenary spell casters when they fell back and retreated to town after their first attempt.


I don't know why you say they could "charm" it, if they couldn't even talk to it. What happened when they tried to talk to it? Did they get attacked? Ignored? Did it not seem to respond to their entreaty in anyway? Why should I think a Charm Monster spell would work on something that makes no indication of understanding my words.

I don't know why you say they could "grapple" it, if they couldn't even "hug" it. What happened when they tried to hug it? Did they get attacked? Did they go through the thing like a ghost. Did it shrug them off. Did you indicate that when they went to hug it, it felt like it "could potentially be held if you tried to grapple it. That if feels no stronger than a regular man.".

Charmed creatures are prevented from attacking regardless of language, and while it didn't speak to them, there was no reason for them to believe it couldn't speak or understand them.

They hugged it, and it did not stop attacking them. They did not pass through it or anything like that. At one point they did ask how strong it was, and I told them that it was exceptionally strong but not inhumanly so.


I'm not trying to blame you for this, but I can't wrap my mind around how this encounter could've turned out differently without knowing what actual things the people tried. Becuase ultimately they DID try things. And whatever they tried did NOT meet your prescribed list of things that would work. And that puts us back at "one or several correct solutions and normal means to bypass it are arbitrarily shut down" which is apparently what it felt like to them.

Ok, so going by that definition, a normal monster, like say, an owl-bear, is a puzzle. Because breaking things in its lair, hugging it, dancing for it, healing it, etc. are not going to stop a raging owl bear from attacking you.

It isn't a prescribed list, its anything that would defeat normally defeat an opponent that isn't HP damage. I don't have a prescribed list, because I could literally sit here all day trying to think up solutions and still not list them all.

Not to be insulting, but at this point I am starting to wonder if you aren't being deliberately obtuse to try and make a point.


So simple 2nd level necromancy spell command undead would work. It is a charm person spell for undead.

Do I have that correct?

It wasn't technically undead, so no. But it was fully susceptible to mind control spells, so something else like charm person or slumber would have done the job just fine.

[patchyman]

According to you, they used the term "gentleman's agreement" and not you (I don't buy this as I've heard you, in earlier threads, mention the term before and mention that you were the deviser of that faustian pact, but I don't want to fight about it).

To Takaleal: Context may be key here so I want to make sure I understand how the gentleman’s agreement came about because there have been several posts on it and I may have inferred things incorrectly.

I thought that the situation was that you wanted a deadlier game but your players did not, so you arranged it that if the party TPKed, instead of having to roll new characters, their characters were knocked out. Initially, there were additional penalties, but over time, you have removed the additional penalties.

Is this more or less how the agreement came about? If so, did the players have any input int the agreement or was it pretty much just you proposing something to address their concerns about the deadliness of the game?

[Talakeal]

EDIT: however, if the players knew that their henchmen were not covered by the immortality clause, it becomes much more complicated.

I have no memory of ever giving them any indication that their henchmen were covered by the immortality clause, but the players (and apparently Gallowglass) have it in their head that I told them we had a gentleman's agreement that I wouldn't kill their followers. I am not sure what exactly they were supposed to be doing for me in return as generally a gentleman's agreement goes both ways and they certainly hadn't been refraining from killing enemies or anything like that.

[King of Nowhere]

The players immortality is not "the physics of the world," they are not playing highlanders. It is a narrative tool which allows for the players to play daring heroes who brave dangerous situations and pull through by the skin of their teeth without me having to start a new campaign every few weeks.


wouldn't it be better to just lower some encounter difficulty - or giving them a few more xp and loot to make the same encounters easier - and not have to face a tpk on a regular base?

no, wait, let me guess: when they were actualy risking death, they basically stopped undertaking any adventure for fear of it going wrong. so brave, to be willing to risk nothing at all. I seem to remember that you mentioned bad things happening upon character death otherwise. haven't been foollowing you regularly, but I did read some stuff.

Anyway, since it looks like they are now decently leveled, and you did specify they have access to almost any spell by shop, can't you just give them easy access to resurrection? encourage them to buy some diamonds and scrolls just in case?
that way, death will still be expensive enough that they will try to avoid it, but not too bad that they won't adventure. hopefully. it works on sane players, can't say anything about yours.

[Talakeal]

wouldn't it be better to just lower some encounter difficulty - or giving them a few more xp and loot to make the same encounters easier - and not have to face a tpk on a regular base?

no, wait, let me guess: when they were actually risking death, they basically stopped undertaking any adventure for fear of it going wrong. so brave, to be willing to risk nothing at all. I seem to remember that you mentioned bad things happening upon character death otherwise. haven't been foollowing you regularly, but I did read some stuff.

Anyway, since it looks like they are now decently leveled, and you did specify they have access to almost any spell by shop, can't you just give them easy access to resurrection? encourage them to buy some diamonds and scrolls just in case?
that way, death will still be expensive enough that they will try to avoid it, but not too bad that they won't adventure. hopefully. it works on sane players, can't say anything about yours.

Although I am sure my players would disagree, I don't tend to run that hard / deadly of a game; but bad things happen, and a tactical blunder or string of bad dice rolls can kill a character at any time.

And yes, they are extremely cautious, to the point where they actually consider adventuring when low on spell slots to be "throwing good money after bad" even when there are no penalties for death. I keep trying to lower the penalty for death; but it isn't helping. At this point there is no penalty for a TPK, but they still turn back early because "Adventuring when low on resources breaks their immersion".


To Takaleal: Context may be key here so I want to make sure I understand how the gentleman’s agreement came about because there have been several posts on it and I may have inferred things incorrectly.

I thought that the situation was that you wanted a deadlier game but your players did not, so you arranged it that if the party TPKed, instead of having to roll new characters, their characters were knocked out. Initially, there were additional penalties, but over time, you have removed the additional penalties.

Is this more or less how the agreement came about? If so, did the players have any input int the agreement or was it pretty much just you proposing something to address their concerns about the deadliness of the game?

See above.

The no permanent death rule came about because I want players to be invested in their characters and I like making long-running plots that revolve around their characters connection to the world, and I want them to be playing daring adventurers who go out and take risks in braving the unknown.

[Excession]

Charmed creatures are prevented from attacking regardless of language, and while it didn't speak to them, there was no reason for them to believe it couldn't speak or understand them.
An enemy not speaking is actually pretty good evidence that it can't. Normally in D&D the hard part is getting intelligent enemies to shut up.

A new question. What was different between the two times they fought it? The first time they escaped and nobody died, so exactly what did they do differently the second time that meant all their followers died?

[Talakeal]

An enemy not speaking is actually pretty good evidence that it can't. Normally in D&D the hard part is getting intelligent enemies to shut up.

A new question. What was different between the two times they fought it? The first time they escaped and nobody died, so exactly what did they do differently the second time that meant all their followers died?

The first time they retreated as a group.

The second time they grabbed the artifact, gave it to their fastest member and told him to run, and then the rest stayed behind to act as human shields.

[Gallowglass]

It is the difference between listing the things you can do and the things you can't do.

A fixed list of immunities is fundamentally different than being immune to everything except for a fixed list of vulnerabilities.

In this case, the guy was immune to HP damage. Everything else would have worked. The number of things that would have worked is way too long for me to list or even think of.

Do you also consider trolls, hydras, tarrasques, pit fiends, balors, solars, etc. to be puzzles? All of them cannot be killed by straight HP damage unless it comes from a specific source.


All of those things CAN be killed with straight HP damage. They just need specific types of damage. (i.e. +x weapons, fire, etc.. And each of them are well-worn and known entities to anyone who has every played the game.

Your guy wasn't just immune to HP damage. Not in the "you need cold iron, or a +3 sword or fire or etc. etc." way that everyone is used to in this game. Just flat immune. At that point, he's not a monster. He's an obstacle. (a puzzle by any other name) He was immune to diplomancy, bluff, intimidate and any and all social skills. He was immune to being reasoned with, bartered with, fooled, bribed or lured away. There was nothing in your post that indicated that stealth was an option and, from the way you've set it up, I can't see how they would've thought stealth could be an option. But again, I wasn't there, just going off what you post.



Sorry, the list of suggestions you gave looked like you were assuming it was incorporeal / undead and so I was rectifying that rather than addressing those specific examples.

They did not have any of those specific spells.


I assumed incorporeal and undead because you called it a ghost.

I was not the only one in the thread who you confused with that.

So, just to be clear, they did NOT have any of the specific spells that you specifically called out as viable strategies at the top of the thread.

But I'm the obtuse one?




They did have mind control magic which could have worked on it, they were strong enough to simply restrain it and did have rope and manacles, and they had numerous terrain control spells that could have trapped it, and while they don't have a dedicated rogue they did have several party members that could have snuck past it.

They also had the ability to purchase scrolls, wands, and potions of virtually every spell in the game or to hire mercenary spell casters when they fell back and retreated to town after their first attempt.


Also: Third time I'll ask this.

What spells DID they try?

Also, I would pay real money if everyone would stop with they "they could've gone back to town and bought a special equipment and/or henchman follower to deal with the problem" solution. Not everyone defaults to the magic mart mentality of defeating foes through WBL.

Let's just say that your players have proven to not be keen or capable of that robust of a solution set.






Charmed creatures are prevented from attacking regardless of language, and while it didn't speak to them, there was no reason for them to believe it couldn't speak or understand them.


Charm spells -are- language dependent, aren't they? Am I on the wrong edition of D&D here?

If I'm faced with a faceless, voiceless seeming illusion that does not interact with me and only responds to block me from moving past it and cannot be hurt, I am going to assume that it can't speak and can't be charmed. I really don't think I'm alone in that. I wouldn't have tried a charm spell. If I was a psionic character I might've tried mind control, but that would be my main schtick at that point.

Also, by the level they are and facing single foes, by this point I, and most players, have given up on charm person and sleep because they rarely if ever get back the HD limit to be worthwhile. That's why I called out Charm Monster. I find it hard to believe that either charm person or sleep would've worked on this creature. But I guess it only needed 1 HD with its immunity to all physical damage.



They hugged it, and it did not stop attacking them. They did not pass through it or anything like that. At one point they did ask how strong it was, and I told them that it was exceptionally strong but not inhumanly so.


P1: *thinking* "hmmm, I wonder if we can restrain it... Hey DM how strong does it seem to be?"

DM: "Exceptionally strong."

P1: "Well never mind then."






Ok, so going by that definition, a normal monster, like say, an owl-bear, is a puzzle. Because breaking things in its lair, hugging it, dancing for it, healing it, etc. are not going to stop a raging owl bear from attacking you.


A OWLBEAR IS NOT FIAT IMMUNE TO THE CORE MECHANIC OF COMBAT.

I'm sorry, but every game is portioned into encounters. and those encounters are either

1> things you interact with through the combat subsystem.
2> things you interact with through the skill subsystem.
3> puzzles that the player has to solve

You built an encounter that you dressed up as 1 but was firmly in 3.



It isn't a prescribed list, its anything that would defeat normally defeat an opponent that isn't HP damage. I don't have a prescribed list, because I could literally sit here all day trying to think up solutions and still not list them all.


Too bad your players can't. And have proven to not be able to. And have proven to not enjoy.

DM to your players. Even QUERTUS agrees with that. And he's the most "world over game" guy I've met on this forum.



Not to be insulting, but at this point I am starting to wonder if you aren't being deliberately obtuse to try and make a point.


I think if we polled 10 people at random, I wouldn't be the one marked as obtuse by 9 of them.

However, I can see that I have insulted you. For that I apologize. I feel really bad for you. All of my posts, while blunt, are meant as tough love, brother. I really wish you could find players that matched your style and enthusiasm.

[Excession]

The first time they retreated as a group.

The second time they grabbed the artifact, gave it to their fastest member and told him to run, and then the rest stayed behind to act as human shields.

That's it, no more details? Based on that then, you did screw them over. They had good reason to believe that the enemy would not follow very far, because it didn't last time. Unless the followers were in the same room they had the same chance to retreat as before, and should have lived.

Even if the enemy was following the stolen artefact it also had no reason to stop and kill anyone else.

[Talakeal]

Even if the enemy was following the stolen artifact it also had no reason to stop and kill anyone else.

It was following the stolen artifact.

It stopped to kill people because they were explicitly trying to block it from following the artifact.

Edit: The clarify a bit, it was guarding the artifact in a meta-game sense. In universe, the explanation was that the creature fed upon violence, but had limited ability to interact with the world outside of the site of its death, but the artifact, being the weapon that initially killed it, also had a supernatural connection to the creature, allowing it to exert its power in the weapon's presence.

[Talakeal]

Sorry for the double post, I didn't see Gallow's rather long post on the previous page.



I assumed incorporeal and undead because you called it a ghost.

I was not the only one in the thread who you confused with that.

I already said that I needed to clarify the nature of the monster in my previous response to you. The players had no indication that it was incorporeal, or illusionary, or undead, or anything of the sort.



So, just to be clear, they did NOT have any of the specific spells that you specifically called out as viable strategies at the top of the thread.

No... but they did have access to most of the non-spell methods I set out, and several spells I didn't list.


...it was not immune to anything else, it could disabled, debuffed, knocked out, put to sleep, grappled, trapped, tricked, charmed, turned to stone, polymorphed into a frog, etc...

Also, they frequently employ henchmen, many of them who are spell-casters, so they could potentially have had those specific spells at the time, and the alchemist in the party could have prepared potions that replicated those spells while they were in town.



Also: Third time I'll ask this.

What spells DID they try?

They tried command and entangle, both of which it could have worked but made its saving throw against. They also threw lots and lots of direct damage at it, even after they had already decided that damage was only making it stronger; the fact that the sorcerer kept blasting it was one of the things that really turned the encounter around, and was one of the main reasons they turned on one another in the end.


Charm spells -are- language dependent, aren't they? Am I on the wrong edition of D&D here?

In every edition that I am aware of being charmed makes the enemy stop attacking you by default and then you need varying degrees of communication ability to make it obey your commands.



P1: *thinking* "hmmm, I wonder if we can restrain it... Hey DM how strong does it seem to be?"

DM: "Exceptionally strong."

P1: "Well never mind then.

If that's how you think this hypothetical player thinks, then I guess I can't argue with the straw PC, but at the actual table we have two player characters that are as strong or stronger than the monster was and knew it.

Not that grappling something that is stronger than you is impossible in any case, especially when you have multiple people assisting one another.



1> things you interact with through the combat subsystem.
2> things you interact with through the skill subsystem.
3> puzzles that the player has to solve

You built an encounter that you dressed up as 1 but was firmly in 3.


I guess I just fundamentally disagree with you. Let me try one more example: The Ghost.

According to the 3.5 SRD It has the following abilities:

Manifestation (Su)

A ghost dwells on the Ethereal Plane and, as an ethereal creature, it cannot affect or be affected by anything in the material world. When a ghost manifests, it partly enters the Material Plane and becomes visible but incorporeal on the Material Plane. A manifested ghost can be harmed only by other incorporeal creatures, magic weapons, or spells, with a 50% chance to ignore any damage from a corporeal source. A manifested ghost can pass through solid objects at will, and its own attacks pass through armor. A manifested ghost always moves silently. A manifested ghost can strike with its touch attack or with a ghost touch weapon (see Ghostly Equipment, below). A manifested ghost remains partially on the Ethereal Plane, where is it not incorporeal. A manifested ghost can be attacked by opponents on either the Material Plane or the Ethereal Plane. The ghost’s incorporeality helps protect it from foes on the Material Plane, but not from foes on the Ethereal Plane.

When a spellcasting ghost is not manifested and is on the Ethereal Plane, its spells cannot affect targets on the Material Plane, but they work normally against ethereal targets. When a spellcasting ghost manifests, its spells continue to affect ethereal targets and can affect targets on the Material Plane normally unless the spells rely on touch. A manifested ghost’s touch spells don’t work on nonethereal targets.



Rejuvenation (Su)

In most cases, it’s difficult to destroy a ghost through simple combat: The "destroyed" spirit will often restore itself in 2d4 days. Even the most powerful spells are usually only temporary solutions. A ghost that would otherwise be destroyed returns to its old haunts with a successful level check (1d20 + ghost’s HD) against DC 16. As a rule, the only way to get rid of a ghost for sure is to determine the reason for its existence and set right whatever prevents it from resting in peace. The exact means varies with each spirit and may require a good deal of research.


In my opinion Manifestation does not make it a puzzle, it is just a normal monster with a very broad set of immunities, however the Rejuvenation ability does as it requires one specific thing to take it down.


But I suppose it really is a sliding scale as there is no clear line between what you consider a type 1 problem and a type 3 problem; after all a player who doesn't think at all and just sits there drooling and rolling a d20 will be able to beat, and no matter how many convoluted immunities a monster has you will still need to utilize the mechanical combat system to destroy it.


Edit: Also, the debate is really splitting hairs. While I don't consider it a puzzle monster and you clearly do, in the end it doesn't matter. There is nothing wrong with putting puzzles in the game; many famous modules include them, and many groups consider them to be one of the core pillars of game play.

[Excession]

It was following the stolen artifact.

It stopped to kill people because they were explicitly trying to block it from following the artifact.

Edit: The clarify a bit, it was guarding the artifact in a meta-game sense. In universe, the explanation was that the creature fed upon violence, but had limited ability to interact with the world outside of the site of its death, but the artifact, being the weapon that initially killed it, also had a supernatural connection to the creature, allowing it to exert its power in the weapon's presence.

Why would the hirelings be stupid enough to try and stop something the party was either running from or defeated by? That doesn't make sense.

[Talakeal]

Why would the hirelings be stupid enough to try and stop something the party was either running from or defeated by? That doesn't make sense.

I agree with you there.

[Gallowglass]

They tried command and entangle, both of which it could have worked but made its saving throw against. They also threw lots and lots of direct damage at it, even after they had already decided that damage was only making it stronger; the fact that the sorcerer kept blasting it was one of the things that really turned the encounter around, and was one of the main reasons they turned on one another in the end.



So they tried a mind control spell. It didn't work
They tried a area control spell. It didn't work.




In every edition that I am aware of being charmed makes the enemy stop attacking you by default and then you need varying degrees of communication ability to make it obey your commands.



That's not my understanding, but its not important and you could certainly be right about it. Regardless, they tried a command spell. And it didn't work.




I guess I just fundamentally disagree with you. Let me try one more example: The Ghost.

In my opinion Manifestation does not make it a puzzle, it is just a normal monster with a very broad set of immunities, however the Rejuvenation ability does as it requires one specific thing to take it down.

But I suppose it really is a sliding scale as there is no clear line between what you consider a type 1 problem and a type 3 problem; after all a player who doesn't think at all and just sits there drooling and rolling a d20 will be able to beat, and no matter how many convoluted immunities a monster has you will still need to utilize the mechanical combat system to destroy it.


Edit: Also, the debate is really splitting hairs. While I don't consider it a puzzle monster and you clearly do, in the end it doesn't matter. There is nothing wrong with putting puzzles in the game; many famous modules include them, and many groups consider them to be one of the core pillars of game play.

Similar to the owlbear, the troll, the balor, the ghost is not fiat immune to the combat subsystem.

I realize that, from your perspective, that your blanket immunity to HP damage is just another thing like "needs cold iron" or "needs ghost touch". I get that that's how you see it. There may even be others who see it that way.

But you -seem- to want to understand things from your player's perspective. You seem genuinely want to understand how they see the universe different than you.

And to them, they don't see it as another thing like "needs cold iron." To them they see "oh, this isn't something i"m supposed to be able to beat with my sword. So its a puzzle.

Can't beat it through violence? hmmm... We'll, let's try some spells.

I try commanding it.

doesn't work

I try entangling it.

doesn't work.

well... lets try non violence. I try talking to it

doesn't work

I try healing it

doesn't work

I try hugging it

It attacks you.



So, its not about what I believe or what you believe, its about understanding what they believe.

Other than your sorcerer who kept spamming it with firebolts and making it stronger. That guys a dummy.

So when they switched to "its a puzzle mindset" then when they tried command it didn't work. they're not going to just spam it with more commands until it works because they assume it is immune. When they tried entangle and it didn't work, they're not going to just spam it with entangles, they assume it is immune.

That's two more spell classifcations written off the books for this puzzle.

I realize that you're not listening to me, so I'll quit. I just, once again, want to say I hope you find people who appreciate your hard word.

I, personally, agree with Quertus and think your encounter is great. I love puzzles.

[Talakeal]

I realize that you're not listening to me, so I'll quit. I just, once again, want to say I hope you find people who appreciate your hard work.

Boy, that's a great way to get someone to pay attention!

That's actually a good point though, from the player's perspective it is hard to tell the difference between an immunity and a passed saving throw.


That is one of the things I have noticed about my players over the years is that if their first plan doesn't work (for any reason) they tend to assume that I am just arbitrarily shutting them down and stop trying to find workarounds.

You don't know how many times a failed lock picking roll has rendered an entire section of the dungeon unexplored because once that happens they simply assume I don't want them there and stop trying to find alternate routes / look for a key / cast passwall / bash the door down; and then after the session I get a tongue-lashing for putting an "impossible puzzle" in front of them.

[Koo Rehtorb]

It is a thing I've noticed with new/bad players, actually. A certain fragility to their decision making where they interpret an obstacle in their path as "We're not supposed to do this let's give up". For new players I'd suggest just explaining that to them, that obstacles do not equal something being impossible and often times if they push past those obstacles they'll see results. For bad players, I'd suggest not playing with them because they're bad players, so I don't know what to recommend for yours.

Edit - if people are misinterpreting passed saving throws as immunity, though, then that's a problem with your descriptions.

[Talakeal]

If people are misinterpreting passed saving throws as immunity, though, then that's a problem with your descriptions.

I don't know if they did or not, I was just doing what Gallow was suggesting and trying to look at it from their perspective.

[King of Nowhere]

Although I am sure my players would disagree, I don't tend to run that hard / deadly of a game; but bad things happen, and a tactical blunder or string of bad dice rolls can kill a character at any time.

And yes, they are extremely cautious, to the point where they actually consider adventuring when low on spell slots to be "throwing good money after bad" even when there are no penalties for death. I keep trying to lower the penalty for death;


The only more thing you can do at this point is to give them rewards for tpk :smallbiggrin:

"the giant toss your limp body down a ravine, counting on the fall to finish you. fortunately, your fall is broken by a large patch of moss. your fall dislodges the moss, and you discover it had grown over a massive pile of diamonds"

"the enemy sticks his sword in your gut, but by luck he misses any vital organ (there are a couple places where it can happen). you run away with the sword still stuck inside you it's +3, by the way"





but it isn't helping. At this point there is no penalty for a TPK, but they still turn back early because "Adventuring when low on resources breaks their immersion".

The no permanent death rule came about because I want players to be invested in their characters and I like making long-running plots that revolve around their characters connection to the world, and I want them to be playing daring adventurers who go out and take risks in braving the unknown.

Well, here for the first time I see a clear fault in you. Several faults combining, actually.

the first is wanting to impose your style on the characters.
Now, some will say that you have to cater to the players, submit your will to their. that's wrong. you are entitled your fun. and if you want to play a certain kind of setting and explore a certain kind of themes, you are entitled to do it, at least to some extent.
But you can't tell the players how to play their characters. you want them to be playing daring adventures taking risks, you are overstepping your DM boundaries. they want to roleplay cautious people, they are entitled to that. forcing them to not be cautious is bad, and giving them rewards for it... well, it comes with its own issues, as you discovered.

But this bring us to the second, most important point: I want them to be playing daring adventurers who go out and take risks in braving the unknown
You want them to roleplay goddamn idiots!
Taking risks for high rewards is brave. it can be heroic. taking risks for no reason, or taking bigger risks when preparation could reduce the risk, that's idiotic and downright insane.
Let me explain the difference with an example: at a train station, two men jump on the tracks in front of a moving train. the first man is trying to rescue a child who fell on the tracks. the second man has a friend recording and wants to make a badass video to post on youtube.
Both those men are taking risks in daring adventures. Except one of those men is an hero, and the other is darwin-award level idiot.
Let's try with another example, closer to your campaign. An adventuring party sees a treasure chest at the bottom of a ravine. So they a) bravely climb down the ravine, facing death at every turn while a thunderstorm is making the stone slippery, or b) go back to the nearest town and buy a rope; the treasure has been there for years, and it will still be there when they come back.
It seems to me you really want them to pick a) because it's brave and daring, but of course they'd rather do b), because their characters are not morons.

Seriously, you need to reevaluate your concept of bravery .
by the way, I disagree with the common notion that bravery is feeling the fear, but overcoming it. I believe that bravery is knowing the danger, but accepting it because you are doing something important and there's no better way. recklessness is dismissing the danger because you don't really think anything will go wrong
and as a consequence, you can't have a hero without a proper motivation for doing heroics. you can't have an hero throwing himself in front of a train without having a child fallen on the tracks, else the man is not a hero but an idiot. you can't have a d&d session about heroes facing danger on a regular base, unless they have good reasons to put themselves in danger. else they are not heroes, but idiots.

So, your players are simply taking the sane approach to adventuring. they are wounded and low on spells? why take unnecessary risks, then? the treasure will still be there tomorrow, after we refill out spell slots.

If you want the party to play when low on spells and resources, you have two ways to make it work: 1) they are on a time schedule, they know it will be more dangerous to continue, but they can't afford to rest any more than necessary, or the dark lord will do . 2) they are stuck there and must overcome some more obstacles before they can leave.

And it seems they are not on a time schedule, as they see themselves free to take the time to engage an optional boss over several days.
that's where most traditional sandboxes (meaning "no overarching plot, there are some places to explore that will always be there") fall apart. with no plot to hurry along the characters, they stop engaging in "heroic bravery" (moronic idiocy) and start using caution and common sense, accidentally killing the game. on the other hand, jumping head-first into danger when you could take reasonable precautions is moronic, and doing it kills your suspension of disbelief. without suspension of disbelief, your immersion goes away, and attachment to the character follows.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Long story short, you should not resent your players for wanting to take the safe and sane approach. they are doing what their characters would do, they are doing what is smart, and it's their choice anyway.

Giving meta-story incentives for taking risks (but it's not really a risk, because if you die nothing bad will happen) is also not helping, and it is introducing other problems.

what you should do if you want them to match your concept of heroics is to give them some [B]sensible, in-world reasons for taking risks.
Good news, you don't need a main villain or a strict timetable for that. You can do it locally.
Maybe a child was kidnapped by some undead horror living in the dungeon, to be sacrificed in a ritual that must be performed at midnight. if your heroes want to rescue the child, they cannot afford the time to rest and regain spells.
Maybe that monster, in its death throes, smashed the pillar that held the ceiling. the ensuing cave-in blocks the main entrance. now the heroes must find a way out to safety with the meager resources they have. of course they could try to rest in the place, but there are monsters around, can't guarantee a random encounter won't disturb their sleep*
Or maybe in town you hear voices about the treasure you just discovered, and you see some well-armed people around organizing an expedition of their own to recover it.

You can find different excuses motivations every time, and give your players a good reason to play the way you'd like that works better than "gentleman agreement" or "metagame cheap death"

* we had one such encounter, with wurms attacking us while we were resting. it was decided that the martials could handle it and it was important to let the casters recover spells. led to some great roleplaying moments as the fighter was being swallowed by a purple wurm while the wizard was complaining on the lines of "will you kids cut down the ruckus? I'm trying to study here"

[Talakeal]

Snip

I don't really see the GM stating what sort of characters will be appropriate at its outset to be overstepping their bounds. If the players don't want to play that sort of campaign, then you renegotiate or agree to play something else, but imo the player is at fault if they insist on making a character who is contrary to nature of the campaign and hide behind the old "I am just doing what my character would do," argument.


As often happens on the internet, you seem to be reading a lot more into my words than is intended.

What typically happens is that they spend several weeks of game time and several hours of real time trekking out to the adventure site, and then decide to turn back because they used more resources dealing with encounters getting there than they had planned. If there is a time sensitive goal, expect lots of OOC temper-tantrums as a result.


Honestly I really feel like they would be happier playing Accountants and Actuaries as they really do seem to prefer playing an overly cautious workaholic and squeezing every drop of money out of their professions that they can without ever leaving town, but that's really not a game I have any interest at all in running.

[Beleriphon]

You don't know how many times a failed lock picking roll has rendered an entire section of the dungeon unexplored because once that happens they simply assume I don't want them there and stop trying to find alternate routes / look for a key / cast passwall / bash the door down; and then after the session I get a tongue-lashing for putting an "impossible puzzle" in front of them.

I think you might need to go with "You're skill check failed, do you want to try a different tactic?", even outright stating what the DC of things will be in advance, so that way they know they could succeed, and its either dumb luck or their own approach that is failing.

[Studoku]

I for one think you are right, your players are wrong, and you deserve a trophy for being so innovative.

Happy?

[TheYell]

If you're continually misunderstood, maybe it's time to learn how to talk down to people so they like it?

[zinycor]

Honestly I really feel like they would be happier playing Accountants and Actuaries as they really do seem to prefer playing an overly cautious workaholic and squeezing every drop of money out of their professions that they can without ever leaving town, but that's really not a game I have any interest at all in running.

That's a very valid way to play. In fact it describes my best experience at role-playing on a long term table. You have pretty much 3 choices, 1) You accept that's the way they want to play and learn to enjoy it, 2) You bring that problem to the group, hope that they make a compromise to be more adventurous, but you don't punish them for taking daring actions, in fact reward them. Or 3) you know.

[Talakeal]

I was just thinking, a source of the problem might be a lot more fundamental.

Half the group are night owls who rarely go to bed before dawn, and the other half have to be at work at 6AM the next day, so no matter what time we schedule the game for at least half the group is tired and cranky.


I am also going to be taking a long break from DMing come November; it will be interesting to see how long it lasts. In the past every time someone else has tried DMing for this group the incessant player bitching has gotten them to quit after 3-4 sessions; I really hope we can find a way to keep it going longer at this point because I am about worn out.

[zinycor]

I was just thinking, a source of the problem might be a lot more fundamental.

Half the group are night owls who rarely go to bed before dawn, and the other half have to be at work at 6AM the next day, so no matter what time we schedule the game for at least half the group is tired and cranky.


I am also going to be taking a long break from DMing come November; it will be interesting to see how long it lasts. In the past every time someone else has tried DMing for this group the incessant player bitching has gotten them to quit after 3-4 sessions; I really hope we can find a way to keep it going longer at this point because I am about worn out.

How long are your sessions?

[Talakeal]

How long are your sessions?

6-8 hours every two weeks, although if people focus on the game they can be done in four and if they are constantly on their phones or dealing with out of game issues / table chatter can sometimes balloon out to 10-12.

I have proposed playing 4-6 hour sessions every week instead, but nobody really seems interested in that.

[zinycor]

6-8 hours every two weeks, although if people focus on the game they can be done in four and if they are constantly on their phones or dealing with out of game issues / table chatter can sometimes balloon out to 10-12.

I have proposed playing 4-6 hour sessions every week instead, but nobody really seems interested in that.

At my regular group we started doing 4 hours sessions... which seemed really weird and we would never be able to do anything on that amount of time... Fast forward to today, now I have 3 groups, all with 3-4 hours sessions, is very good, everyone is energetic and always willing to try new things. I definitely recommend it.

[Excession]

Honestly I really feel like they would be happier playing Accountants and Actuaries as they really do seem to prefer playing an overly cautious workaholic and squeezing every drop of money out of their professions that they can without ever leaving town, but that's really not a game I have any interest at all in running.
If you're making them track resources in detail, Accountants and Actuaries is exactly what I would expect them to play. That is a sensible response to the conditions. Personally, I don't like that game style, so I don't require players to track that much. Short of winding up lost in a desert they will have enough food and water, arrows, ritual components, spare daggers, etc. to last until they get back to town. Once there, they have enough gold to restock stuff, throw a party, or whatever. I also run magic item light games so buying those is uncommon.


You don't know how many times a failed lock picking roll has rendered an entire section of the dungeon unexplored because once that happens they simply assume I don't want them there and stop trying to find alternate routes / look for a key / cast passwall / bash the door down; and then after the session I get a tongue-lashing for putting an "impossible puzzle" in front of them.
It is often said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same actions while expecting a different result. This sort of thing should not happen more than once. If they need an explanation of other options for opening a door, give them that.

"You examine the door. The lock is pretty good, thievery DC 24, the hinges are on the other side, so no luck there, but the wood has not lasted well in the damp dungeon, so DC 15 strength check to break it."

Breaking the door does have some disadvantages of course. It's loud, it might take longer, and you can't close it again afterwards.

[Talakeal]

If you're making them track resources in detail, Accountants and Actuaries is exactly what I would expect them to play. That is a sensible response to the conditions. Personally, I don't like that game style, so I don't require players to track that much. Short of winding up lost in a desert they will have enough food and water, arrows, ritual components, spare daggers, etc. to last until they get back to town. Once there, they have enough gold to restock stuff, throw a party, or whatever. I also run magic item light games so buying those is uncommon.

I don't like that style of gaming either, and don't track stuff, which constantly frustrates my players.

[OldTrees1]

Talakeal, you mentioned you have difficulty cultivating player trust.

It is also self evident from reading these threads that your difficulty is partially self inflicted.

Have you considered altering the playstyle to require less player trust? Decrease the difficulty, decrease the punishments, DM to the player's ability rather than your own, avoid puzzles (including fights like this) unless you have placed 6+ clues per revelation and checked the clues from the player's points of view rather than your own, avoid homebrew unless the players can see it, etc, etc, etc

We all know that your players "have issues". However we also know you "have issues" as a DM. Luckily you are willing to improve.

Once you adopt a playstyle that does not require the players to be more trusting that they are, then you can live up to their trust. By doing so their trust will grow. This is in contrast to how your current playstyle undermines and decreases the player trust (even the trust of players that only ever hear YOUR side of the drama).

[Excession]

What typically happens is that they spend several weeks of game time and several hours of real time trekking out to the adventure site, and then decide to turn back because they used more resources dealing with encounters getting there than they had planned.


I don't like that style of gaming either, and don't track stuff, which constantly frustrates my players.

I don't understand, what resources are they using up if you're not tracking stuff? Are they not able to get spells back while camping outdoors? You also mentioned them using professions to earn gold in town. Gold is just another resource you don't need to track, so what's actually going on? When I say I don't track this stuff, I also wouldn't let players track it. They can write "enough food" on their character sheet if that makes them feel better about it.

[Mr Beer]

The only more thing you can do at this point is to give them rewards for tpk :smallbiggrin:

"the giant toss your limp body down a ravine, counting on the fall to finish you. fortunately, your fall is broken by a large patch of moss. your fall dislodges the moss, and you discover it had grown over a massive pile of diamonds"

"the enemy sticks his sword in your gut, but by luck he misses any vital organ (there are a couple places where it can happen). you run away with the sword still stuck inside you it's +3, by the way"

I love it, time to invent "problems" that Talakeal's players would find acceptable:

"The monk hits you a shattering blow in the kidneys, luckily this fixes a long standing alignment issue with your spine, gain +10 Move"

"The evil wizard fireballs you, since the weather has been nasty you are now pleasantly warm, gain immunity from fear effects and cold and necrotic damage "

"The drow cleric smashes you in the skull with an adamantine mace, this jogs your memory, regain all your used spell slots for the day"

[Galithar]

I don't know if they did or not, I was just doing what Gallow was suggesting and trying to look at it from their perspective.

I just wanted to throw my two cents in on this. I actively work to avoid this miscommunication in how I describe the spell taking effect.

Example: The Druid tries to cast Entangle on a creature that is immune to the restrained condition.
I describe how vines shoot up and around the creature, but as they begin to tighten down on it they simply pass through the creature unable to restrain it.

On the contrary a successful save would be narrated more like: The vines wrap up around the creature legs, but it deftly twists to the side avoiding a particularly large Vine and then kicks forward ripping the others from the ground.

[Kane0]

Uh, did you play 'guess-what-i'm-thinking'?

Never play guess-what-i'm-thinking.

Edit: WAIT A SEC, you said that they tried things that could have worked but make its save. Did you communicate this effectively?
Its fine if you dont want to metagame and outright say ‘he saves’, but did you at least describe that in-game?
Its okay to give that sort of information to the players, IMO.

[Cluedrew]

Remember that this is a role-playing game. Your normal mode of dealing with obstacles is hitting them until one of their seven to ten Health Pools run out (default HP).You're not so much wrong as I hate that you're kind of right.

To Talakeal: I'm going to say your current situation is dysfunctional. As in unless you leaving some great stories of good times out I have no idea why you are still running this game. I think you should either abandon it or go for a serious re-invention. As you are leaving the game seems unlikely at this point I bring this up because I have an idea for the re-invention: Write out the "gentleman's agreement" and include the conditions.

For instance: If a player character dies I may decide to allow the character to survive through "luck" (narrative contrivance). For this to happen several conditions must be met. First the player must want the character to come back (you can let your character die if you want). Second you must not have let the character die because they will come back by this rule. In other words no death abuse. You may take risks but you must have a plan to survive.

I could write up a draft for the "you will not be attacked on the way home" rule to. Or go on about "lip service to having a plan does not count, run it by me first if you are worried about it". The trust issue can only really be solved with time. But this idea of the gentleman's agreement, maybe make it a bit more explicate. Maybe my legalize is a bit too much, maybe just try writing down some things and giving some conditions. "Player deaths can be negated. But no death abuse." You know your group better than I do.

[Segev]

Here's the thing I don't get: If they don't trust you, why do they play?

[Gallowglass]

"The foul Lich commands his minions to cast you into the deepest darkest dungeon. Once there you find a willing band of nymph spa attendants who help you relax and enjoy your three week dungeon spa excursion. You are exfoliated for +2 natural armor"

"The Black Dragon spews his acid breath upon you. It clears up your psoriosis. +2 charisma."

This is fun! Going in the signiature!

[King of Nowhere]

I don't really see the GM stating what sort of characters will be appropriate at its outset to be overstepping their bounds. If the players don't want to play that sort of campaign, then you renegotiate or agree to play something else, but imo the player is at fault if they insist on making a character who is contrary to nature of the campaign and hide behind the old "I am just doing what my character would do," argument.


As often happens on the internet, you seem to be reading a lot more into my words than is intended.

What typically happens is that they spend several weeks of game time and several hours of real time trekking out to the adventure site, and then decide to turn back because they used more resources dealing with encounters getting there than they had planned. If there is a time sensitive goal, expect lots of OOC temper-tantrums as a result.


Honestly I really feel like they would be happier playing Accountants and Actuaries as they really do seem to prefer playing an overly cautious workaholic and squeezing every drop of money out of their professions that they can without ever leaving town, but that's really not a game I have any interest at all in running.
okay, perhaps I overstated your words. when you said you wanted them to be more "daring" and "take risks", it really triggered a lot of alarms, because it really looks like you wanted them to be morons.

probably they are overdoing the cautious part. they are your players, after all. still, it's not bad to want to be cautious. most people find more rewarding to overcome challenges because they were smart about it (so, caution and planning) than because they had higher numbers printed on their character sheet.

anyway, I believe you have a problem in the style of game you and your players want. you want them to spend less time planning and gauging resources, they want to spend more time doing so. this difference in expectations cannot really be fixed. you want different things, and that's all.
I have decided to stop rpging with my old group because we had different expectations, me and a player wanting more engagement with the plot and the campaign world, the rest of the party wanting mindless adventures with less intrigue and more excuses for rolling dice. nobody is a problem player, but we just can't get all we want out of the game, so we're better off splitting.

no, i'm not telling you to leave your group, as you already decided to not do it

[Talakeal]

To Talakeal: I'm going to say your current situation is dysfunctional. As in unless you leaving some great stories of good times out I have no idea why you are still running this game. I think you should either abandon it or go for a serious re-invention. As you are leaving the game seems unlikely at this point I bring this up because I have an idea for the re-invention: Write out the "gentleman's agreement" and include the conditions.

For instance: If a player character dies I may decide to allow the character to survive through "luck" (narrative contrivance). For this to happen several conditions must be met. First the player must want the character to come back (you can let your character die if you want). Second you must not have let the character die because they will come back by this rule. In other words no death abuse. You may take risks but you must have a plan to survive.

That's almost exactly how I currently have it, the only difference is that instead of saying they must not let a character die, if they are engaging in blatantly suicidal actions I will warn them that they will not be protected by this rule and ask if they want to go through with it anyway.

The "gentleman's agreement" was that their followers were also protected by this rule, which was never my intention.


anyway, I believe you have a problem in the style of game you and your players want. you want them to spend less time planning and gauging resources, they want to spend more time doing so. this difference in expectations cannot really be fixed. you want different things, and that's all.

That's actually kind of the complete opposite of the problem.

They don't really plan, or communicate at all. The players almost never talk to one another during the game and it often bites them in the butt. I remember one "mystery" plot where the players each picked up on different clues over the course of the session, but because they never communicated what they were thinking and just assumed everyone else was thinking the same thing they were completely unable to put the whole thing together.

Likewise, it isn't so much that they gauge their resources or portion them out, they tend to splurge on the first couple of encounters and then want to just go back to town and spend the rest of the session crafting items for a pittance of the profit they would have had if they had continued on into the dungeon.

Also note that I don't use "HP as meant," I explain to them that their HP are a guage of their fatigue, morale, and pain threshold, so they aren't really "injured" when they decide to turn back, just not feeling 100%, but still well above their breaking point.


I don't understand, what resources are they using up if you're not tracking stuff? Are they not able to get spells back while camping outdoors? You also mentioned them using professions to earn gold in town. Gold is just another resource you don't need to track, so what's actually going on? When I say I don't track this stuff, I also wouldn't let players track it. They can write "enough food" on their character sheet if that makes them feel better about it.

I track HP, potions, action points, charged magic items, scrolls, spell slots, that sort of thing.

I do not track food, ammunition, lamp oil, etc.

I do track gold, I just do it in large chunks (for example I will say "The monsters hoard contains various gems worth 1,000 gold" instead of "6 diamonds worth 75gp each, 4 small emeralds with 30gp each, 12 rubies worth 90gp each...").

I do not track the costs for small purchases or living expenses. One of my players is constantly trying to game this system spending inordinate amounts of time trying to find a buyer who will pay full price for every little thing they come across on their adventures and insisting that because their character works 18 hour shifts seven days a week during their down time and lives off bread and water in the cheapest slum they should have more money than their party members who spend their downtime drinking and whoring. And if he has to use a scroll or a potion during an adventure or hire an NPC spell-caster to perform a ritual, its like prying out his fingernails.

As for regaining spells in the dungeon, I am running a heavily simplified and house-ruled game to teach new players to game. In brief, spells work kind of like 4E, tactical spells are mostly at-will while strategic scale spells that 4E would dub rituals can only be performed and prepared ahead of time in places of power. I don't really want to get into the specifics as it is a complete tangent to this thread.


Have you considered altering the playstyle to require less player trust? Decrease the difficulty, decrease the punishments, DM to the player's ability rather than your own, avoid puzzles (including fights like this) unless you have placed 6+ clues per revelation and checked the clues from the player's points of view rather than your own, avoid homebrew unless the players can see it, etc, etc, etc

Once you adopt a playstyle that does not require the players to be more trusting that they are, then you can live up to their trust. By doing so their trust will grow. This is in contrast to how your current playstyle undermines and decreases the player trust (even the trust of players that only ever hear YOUR side of the drama).

I am just not interested in running that sort of game; it sounds really really dull.

I do try and make the game less punitive though; but its a tough line. If I go too far in one direction, it actually rewards failure, which actively teaches the players bad habits, and it can also make the players choices meaningless and feel like a railroad if their actions don't actually have consequences.

Honestly though, my big fear is "Bob". I think he is just paranoid, I have played with him under of DMs and he is far worse about trusting them than he is when I DM.

My real fear though is that his constant talk about how I am out to screw them is infecting the rest of the group, as last session it was the normally drama free players

[Cluedrew]

That's almost exactly how I currently have it, the only difference is that instead of saying they must not let a character die, if they are engaging in blatantly suicidal actions I will warn them that they will not be protected by this rule and ask if they want to go through with it anyway.

The "gentleman's agreement" was that their followers were also protected by this rule, which was never my intention.What about the "we stood in the way as a meat shield and allowed ourselves to be struck down"? By my understanding of the situation I could call that a suicidal action.

So why did the PCs even come back in this situation? Did I miss/forget something?

As for my overall impression of the incident, a misunderstood puzzle that raised tensions far too high. I think more clues would have been good but I don't know if your group would have looked for them.


I do not track the costs for small purchases or living expenses. One of my players is constantly trying to game this system spending inordinate amounts of time trying to find a buyer who will pay full price for every little thing they come across on their adventures and insisting that because their character works 18 hour shifts seven days a week during their down time and lives off bread and water in the cheapest slum they should have more money than their party members who spend their downtime drinking and whoring. And if he has to use a scroll or a potion during an adventure or hire an NPC spell-caster to perform a ritual, its like prying out his fingernails.This is probably not productive but I kind of want to give it to him (smaller than he initially thinks of course) and then start slapping on penalties for malnutrition and exhaustion. Because if we are going to track things to that level do you think I am going to let you get away with an unbalance diet and an unmaintainable sleep schedule? No I will not.

On Caution: I don't understand the carefully prepared and "safe" adventurer. If playing it safe was an option than we wouldn't need adventurers. And by we I mean whatever citizens of this action fantasy world that has adventurers.

[TheYell]

Honestly though, my big fear is "Bob". I think he is just paranoid, I have played with him under of DMs and he is far worse about trusting them than he is when I DM.

My real fear though is that his constant talk about how I am out to screw them is infecting the rest of the group, as last session it was the normally drama free players

You tend to be cryptic, you know exactly what you're doing but you don't always communicate that effectively to others. There are plenty of examples on this thread where you've confused posters with your responses.

If you sense a problem there, would you be open to looking to make changes in your communication style? You may have to recognize that others minds don't work like yours.

I have the same problem myself. I'm an INTP personality type, and only 3% of the population thinks like me. i have to work at communicating my plans coherently to other people.

Because things went so badly, you might want to have a session zero to analyze what happened. Sit down and explain that nobody betrayed anybody, and you weren't out to TPK. Explain the attributes of the monster, and listen to what points of confusion were raised by the gameplay. If the sorcerer had known blasting would heal the damn thing, he probably wouldn't have blasted it repeatedly. What didn't he realize about the fight? THis one time, because you had them screaming at each other, I recommend you lift the DM screen and maybe even retcon the whole session away because they resent losing their followers. If you demonstrate good faith and benevolence then you won't have to worry about not communicating your good intentions. Just my two cents, because having the party yell at each other that they're killing each other is poison.

[Talakeal]

You tend to be cryptic, you know exactly what you're doing but you don't always communicate that effectively to others. There are plenty of examples on this thread where you've confused posters with your responses.

If you sense a problem there, would you be open to looking to make changes in your communication style? You may have to recognize that others minds don't work like yours.

I have the same problem myself. I'm an INTP personality type, and only 3% of the population thinks like me. i have to work at communicating my plans coherently to other people.

Because things went so badly, you might want to have a session zero to analyze what happened. Sit down and explain that nobody betrayed anybody, and you weren't out to TPK. Explain the attributes of the monster, and listen to what points of confusion were raised by the gameplay. If the sorcerer had known blasting would heal the damn thing, he probably wouldn't have blasted it repeatedly. What didn't he realize about the fight? THis one time, because you had them screaming at each other, I recommend you lift the DM screen and maybe even retcon the whole session away because they resent losing their followers. If you demonstrate good faith and benevolence then you won't have to worry about not communicating your good intentions. Just my two cents, because having the party yell at each other that they're killing each other is poison.

Yes, communication is hard for me.

Its especially hard online where you have to balance getting all of the relevant facts into the discussion without causing people's eyes to glaze over as they try and pick the relevant details out of the giant wall of text.

[OldTrees1]

I am just not interested in running that sort of game; it sounds really really dull.

I do try and make the game less punitive though; but its a tough line. If I go too far in one direction, it actually rewards failure, which actively teaches the players bad habits, and it can also make the players choices meaningless and feel like a railroad if their actions don't actually have consequences.

Honestly though, my big fear is "Bob". I think he is just paranoid, I have played with him under of DMs and he is far worse about trusting them than he is when I DM.

My real fear though is that his constant talk about how I am out to screw them is infecting the rest of the group, as last session it was the normally drama free players

Talakeal,
I understand that building / cultivating player trust is work.
I understand that compromises result in each party having a less than perfect outcome.
I would personally consider making that group work to be too much effort and too much compromising.
However you have decided to try to make that group work.
Will you do what it takes? Or are you seeking excuses?

Step 1: Get the trust of your players. This involves scrapping everything that is hindering you obtaining that trust. A lot of RPGs only work when there is sufficient player trust. Take time to sow that trust so you can reap the rewards. By using an easier to trust playstyle you earn the trust needed to play a harder to trust playstyle. This is especially true because your current playstyle erodes player trust (based on the stories) in that group. This is work and there is a higher DC than normal due to the personalities involved. I consider it too much effort but you want to stick with the group so you WANT to do this work as a means of achieving the player trust you NEED.

Step 2: Compromise on what you are looking for in a campaign. Time and time again you mention you are not interesting in running what the forum recognize your players are demonstrating they would prefer. Sometimes the only compromise requires too much give and take. However you want to stick with the group so you have decided it is not one of those times. You have decided you can be willing to run what produces the most satisfaction for the group as a whole even if it is not satisfying for you.

This is part of the overarching social contract.
1) Trust is earned before it can be used. If trust is lacking, go earn it rather than rack up debt.
2) What the group plays is based on what the group wants. Not what one member wants.
Obviously I would also be telling this advice to each other member of your group, but you are here.

My specific examples are merely examples. If you can satisfy those 2 steps in another way, you can do that too.

Otherwise you will merely create your next horror story. Just like this time when you tried something with insufficient player trust and then miscommunicated in a way that eroded more player trust.

[Friv]

Here's the thing I don't get: If they don't trust you, why do they play?

*sing-song* Stockholm syndrome with di-ice!

In all seriousness, this really does feel like the platonic ideal of a Talakeal thread.

1. Talakeal comes up with a neat idea.
2. Talakeal makes a small mistake that fails to communicate the idea properly to his group.
3. The group explodes wildly out of proportion to the level of the error.
4. Talakeal gets defensive and lashes back, and it takes three pages to explain that the original error took place.
5. Talakeal accepts that an error was made, but there's no way to fix Step 3, so fixing the error won't fix the group.
6. Nothing changes.

[Talakeal]

*sing-song* Stockholm syndrome with di-ice!

In all seriousness, this really does feel like the platonic ideal of a Talakeal thread.

1. Talakeal comes up with a neat idea.
2. Talakeal makes a small mistake that fails to communicate the idea properly to his group.
3. The group explodes wildly out of proportion to the level of the error.
4. Talakeal gets defensive and lashes back, and it takes three pages to explain that the original error took place.
5. Talakeal accepts that an error was made, but there's no way to fix Step 3, so fixing the error won't fix the group.
6. Nothing changes.

That actually sounds like a pretty accurate summary of my life.


Talakeal,
I understand that building / cultivating player trust is work.
I understand that compromises result in each party having a less than perfect outcome.
I would personally consider making that group work to be too much effort and too much compromising.
However you have decided to try to make that group work.
Will you do what it takes? Or are you seeking excuses?

Step 1: Get the trust of your players. This involves scrapping everything that is hindering you obtaining that trust. A lot of RPGs only work when there is sufficient player trust. Take time to sow that trust so you can reap the rewards. By using an easier to trust playstyle you earn the trust needed to play a harder to trust playstyle. This is especially true because your current playstyle erodes player trust (based on the stories) in that group. This is work and there is a higher DC than normal due to the personalities involved. I consider it too much effort but you want to stick with the group so you WANT to do this work as a means of achieving the player trust you NEED.

Step 2: Compromise on what you are looking for in a campaign. Time and time again you mention you are not interesting in running what the forum recognize your players are demonstrating they would prefer. Sometimes the only compromise requires too much give and take. However you want to stick with the group so you have decided it is not one of those times. You have decided you can be willing to run what produces the most satisfaction for the group as a whole even if it is not satisfying for you.

This is part of the overarching social contract.
1) Trust is earned before it can be used. If trust is lacking, go earn it rather than rack up debt.
2) What the group plays is based on what the group wants. Not what one member wants.
Obviously I would also be telling this advice to each other member of your group, but you are here.

My specific examples are merely examples. If you can satisfy those 2 steps in another way, you can do that too.

Otherwise you will merely create your next horror story. Just like this time when you tried something with insufficient player trust and then miscommunicated in a way that eroded more player trust.

Ok, so I am seriously considering your idea, but it isn't easy.

I don't know how to keep myself invested in such a game, and its hard to run a game that I am not invested in, especially one that the players would enjoy.

Second, I don't know that it actually would pay off with increased trust.

Third, it might actually make my player's problems worse by giving them a false sense of entitlement / unrealistic expectations. Going to back to a normal game after spending a whole campaign on easy mode where the DM gives in to you all the time could be a huge shock and create even more problems in the future.

But yeah, it is something I am open to, so please feel free to throw some ideas at me for how it should be done.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Alternatively, run the game you want to run and say "**** them". Care nothing for their feelings, let their whining slide off you like water off a duck's back. They seem to be at least some level of captive audience, so they're easy prey to indulge your gaming whims with without having to worry too much about them quitting.

Or, you know, play with better people.

[OldTrees1]

Ok, so I am seriously considering your idea, but it isn't easy.

I don't know how to keep myself invested in such a game, and its hard to run a game that I am not invested in, especially one that the players would enjoy.

Second, I don't know that it actually would pay off with increased trust.

Third, it might actually make my player's problems worse by giving them a false sense of entitlement / unrealistic expectations. Going to back to a normal game after spending a whole campaign on easy mode where the DM gives in to you all the time could be a huge shock and create even more problems in the future.

But yeah, it is something I am open to, so please feel free to throw some ideas at me for how it should be done.

Yeah, as we have all said before, we would not be willing to keep that group together. However you want to so we give the best advice we can. I am going to keep it a bit abstract / reference your knowledge rather than my own in order to keep it as relevant as possible.

What don't your player's trust you about? Listen without rejecting their concerns and worries. The veracity of the concerns is irrelevant. What is relevant is how those concerns have/are/will erode trust.
A player fears you might use your control of the difficulty to spite them? Don't ride the knife's edge of balance. Make it an easier game with accomplishment in how well they achieve rather than whether they will achieve.
Or maybe they just don't trust you to ride that knife's edge? Maybe they suspect you overestimate their ability and underestimate the challenge? Tone down the difficulty if they fear it.
A player fears you made something unbeatable? Use challenges with at least one obvious and achievable win condition.
A player fears you are making things up to spite them? Use content they can verify after the fact.
A player fears it might rain, offer to share your umbrella. Actually, helping them out of game counts as does other forms of showing you care about them. You already knew this but the umbrella joke appeared in my head and I needed to write it.
A player fears they might forget / not know something their character would remember / know? Account for that by having the character remember what they would remember and tell the player if there is something relevant the character knows.
A player fears certain topics? Exclude those topics.
A player fears you ignore them? Listen to them and show you heard them by repeating back what they said and demonstrating in game you heard them.
Etc etc etc

Let your players feel safe enough that they can start to trust you. When they are willing to push their boundaries, reward their trust by being trustworthy with those pushed boundaries.

I had a dungeon rogue that was thinking they were going to be teleported into a room filled with water. They had with them a portable hole filled with air. To their surprise they were send to a room with no air. Despite the character expecting to need a full breath of air, I had not explicitly said that out loud. So the DM treated it as if the rogue did not hold their breath. Furthermore despite the room and the portable hole both being 10ft cubes, opening the portable hole did not add air to the room. During this time I was slightly panicked because I might be killing off 2 characters (mine and someone else's) over a decision I had made and was being interpreted pessimistically by the DM. At one point the rogue was about to unknowingly solve the room by the DM describing a side effect the process made me the player forget I had not resolved the action. So the DM treated it as unresolved despite me thinking that method had been tried & eliminated. We eventually succeeded.

When I write it out you can see lots of mistakes and miscommunications made by the DM and Myself. I trusted the DM, which helped me trust the encounter, which helped me calm down and discover & rediscover the solution. I was still able to enjoy myself and the risk because I trusted the DM. I trusted them because they had earned that trust beforehand. I know the traps sometimes lack verisimilitude, but that is due to the author of the module rather than the DM. I know the DM buffs / modifies encounters* and they have demonstrated that they are mindful of their modifications. I know they listen and care about our concerns because it shows in what they say and do. At the end of that encounter I only trust them more. The way the DM handled the prior traps (before, during, afterwards) gave me confidence they would be fair & reasonable with even a trap that looked that unfair. If they can be consistently trusted with traps that look that unfair, they I can extend my trust to traps that appear even more unfair. Because they have rewarded my trust in them by having those traps be doable relatively-fair challenges. This is good because we plan to head into the Tome of Horrors next.

*Last week they almost killed 2 PCs. We are +1 Tier over what the module is designed for, so the DM already has a hard time raising the difficulty. These particular enemies could be buffed in a few ways. One of those ways would have accidentally lead to an OP TPK. The DM knowingly avoided that option and we had a fun talk about it after the session.

[kyoryu]

I don't think you need to go easy mode. I do think you'd be well served by serving a different type of challenge.

Specifically, I think you have a certain amount of problems with insufficient disclosure of information. So I'd go the opposite way - create encounters that are still challenging even if you know the statblock, and then find ways to disclose that information. The ghost you mentioned earlier is a good example - its incorporeality makes it a difficult fight that requires different tactics than a "normal" fight.

The fewer gotchas you have in the game, I think the less "paranoid" your players will play. If missing a piece of information leads to near-TPK or whatever a lot of the time, then of course the players will end up being extremely cautious.

It doesn't necessarily mean you have to read the stat block. But if there's an opportunity to give info, do so. When the critter failed its save, describe it in a way that makes it obvious that it could have worked. When someone picked up the sword, describe something that makes the connection between the two obvious - describe it as a pulling from one to the other. Make legends that are easily found with just a little digging about the ghost and make the weakness obvious.

[Kane0]

I don't know how to keep myself invested in such a game, and its hard to run a game that I am not invested in, especially one that the players would enjoy.

Second, I don't know that it actually would pay off with increased trust.

Third, it might actually make my player's problems worse by giving them a false sense of entitlement / unrealistic expectations. Going to back to a normal game after spending a whole campaign on easy mode where the DM gives in to you all the time could be a huge shock and create even more problems in the future.

But yeah, it is something I am open to, so please feel free to throw some ideas at me for how it should be done.
Why do you DM? What about it engages you? Is it coming up with unique challenges? Worldbuilding? The challenge of thinking on your feet? Do you hate running book campaigns? What is a dealbreaker for you?

You're beyond the point of the payoff being worth the investment anyways, what have you got to lose?

It might, it might not. I haven't tracked the whole chain of threads, have you tried before? Is a game that is 'easy' for you 'normal' to them? Do you draw a distinction between giving in and being transparent?

Being straightforward isn't the same as being easy. To earn trust, give them all the information. All of it. Knowing is half the battle, but it only gets you so far. You might know you have to hit AC 18 and deal 263 damage to drop it, but when push comes to shove someone still has to roll and get it done.
If you want to run a non-standard challenge like a trap, puzzle, intrigue, etc then state that outright and upfront. Don't be coy, batter them with the clue-by-four. If they come up with something that sounds even half as plausible as what you had considered then go with it. Keep the flow of the game going, [half a session] spent opening one door puzzle is [half a session minus 10 minutes] wasted.
Never say 'no'. Get in the habit of saying 'Yes AND' or 'No BUT'. I'm sure you've already tried assuming the best until proven wrong but paranoia doesn't help you build trust. If you can't trust them to trust you, at least trust them to be untrustworthy. Never attribute to malice what you can to ignorance (though you can probably disregard that last one in all honesty).

[Earthwalker]

I don't think you need to go easy mode. I do think you'd be well served by serving a different type of challenge.

Specifically, I think you have a certain amount of problems with insufficient disclosure of information. So I'd go the opposite way - create encounters that are still challenging even if you know the statblock, and then find ways to disclose that information. The ghost you mentioned earlier is a good example - its incorporeality makes it a difficult fight that requires different tactics than a "normal" fight.

The fewer gotchas you have in the game, I think the less "paranoid" your players will play. If missing a piece of information leads to near-TPK or whatever a lot of the time, then of course the players will end up being extremely cautious.

It doesn't necessarily mean you have to read the stat block. But if there's an opportunity to give info, do so. When the critter failed its save, describe it in a way that makes it obvious that it could have worked. When someone picked up the sword, describe something that makes the connection between the two obvious - describe it as a pulling from one to the other. Make legends that are easily found with just a little digging about the ghost and make the weakness obvious.

I was going to try to add to this thread yesterday but here is similar to what I was going to say.

I agree with what kyoryu is saying here. I would add that for certain types of games there is nothing wrong with telling your players the rules.

Like the current example. An Oracle saying "It is immune to violence"...its perfectly fine for the GM to back that up with... "This means that it is immune to HP damage, everyone get what I mean ?"

Now some people don't like how this destroys immersion and fair play to them.

For me its a simple matter of which is worst, destroyed immersion or a shouting match at the end of the session.

In your case I would go with Tell your players the rules.

[kyoryu]

You don’t even have to be blatant about it in most cases. “It cannot be harmed by violence - it must be taught restraint” is still IC, and hints at the solution.

“As the Sleep spell hits it, it seems to slow down for a second. You can see it struggle to maintain focus, then it shakes its head vigorously and renews its attack” sounds a lot more like a failed save than “nothing happens.”

Sure going OOC for clarifications can help in some cases but it’s not the only tool in the box.

Mostly what I’m advocating for is moving the challenge from “figuring out what to do” to “doing the thing.” I think Talakeal has some issues with divulging the right amount of info for this group, and so using the “execution” type of challenge will go better.

[King of Nowhere]

anyway, I believe you have a problem in the style of game you and your players want. you want them to spend less time planning and gauging resources, they want to spend more time doing so. this difference in expectations cannot really be fixed. you want different things, and that's all.

That's actually kind of the complete opposite of the problem.

They don't really plan, or communicate at all. The players almost never talk to one another during the game and it often bites them in the butt. I remember one "mystery" plot where the players each picked up on different clues over the course of the session, but because they never communicated what they were thinking and just assumed everyone else was thinking the same thing they were completely unable to put the whole thing together.

Likewise, it isn't so much that they gauge their resources or portion them out, they tend to splurge on the first couple of encounters and then want to just go back to town and spend the rest of the session crafting items for a pittance of the profit they would have had if they had continued on into the dungeon.

Well, you've still got a problem with different, irreconciliable styles.
your players don't seem to know what kind of style they'd prefer. probably they don't have a style at all; they have a jumble of confused expectations that are self-conflicting, and they lack the intelligence and maturity to question themselves and figure out what they actually want. probably they are used to videogames, when things always go their way and they can reload the game if they don't. and they don't have to deal with other real humans who aren't willing to take an unlimited amount of crap.
they don't know what they want, but they are vaguely aware that they're not getting it and this makes them nervous, and so they throw tantrums because they lack the emotional maturity to do otherwise.

this only makes it difficult to find an acceptable style. I don't know if there would be something satisfying for them.

[Quertus]

DM to your players. Even QUERTUS agrees with that. And he's the most "world over game" guy I've met on this forum.

I've been pondering since I read this.

I suppose I believe that, if these two are in opposition, it represents a fail state.

If you need to change the *world* to make a better *game*, then you failed to make (or pick) a good world to begin with. So, learn from your failure, and make a better world next time.

Also, know your group. I often build worlds / adventures / content that, later, I realize will not be appropriate for a given group. So I don't run them through that scenario / in that world.

(Yes, putting those last two paragraphs together, a world can be "good", but not good/suitable for a given group)

As a metaphor, yes, my restaurant serves grilled cheese sandwiches, because I believe that some people like grilled cheese sandwiches. But I don't force everyone to eat grilled cheese sandwiches - I have a conversation with my customers to find out what they want to eat, out of the things that I can serve. And, when I learn that there's a new trend, like vegetarianism or Atkins or Whole Foods or Lactose intolerant, I have to evaluate whether and to what extent to modify my menu accordingly.

The food has to be good, regardless of the customers. But a food product with no potential customers - no matter how good it may otherwise be - probably just isn't worth the time to put on the menu.

So, yes, I am world first - but always with an eye to the question, "why am I spending time making this content?".

-----

Also, they're are changes in delivery that do not necessitate changes to the world. For example, describing the 4-attuned Demon vs giving its name vs handing over its stat block.

For Talakeal's group, I might recommend doing all 3.

[Kane0]

I remember 4e had some excellent statblocks printed on cards, I think they came with the minis. Those are convenient to just hand to the players as needed instead of paging through the book.

[Quertus]

I remember 4e had some excellent statblocks printed on cards, I think they came with the minis. Those are convenient to just hand to the players as needed instead of paging through the book.

I don't know about 4e, but 3e certainly did.