Was I a bad DM?

[Terdarius]

Ok so I had an ‘interesting’ session a few days ago.
I’m DM of a party of mid paragon character and the party was traversing a frozen plane somewhere in the elemental chaos.

The encounter of the night was a guard post situated on a raised hill with 6 frost giants on the lookout. The players were approaching from the north while the hill had a steep path up to the top on the south side.
I started them pretty far from the hill noticing the hill and when closing a perception check revealed several giant sized figures moving about (probably on the lookout).
I even told them that they (somehow) noticed there was a path to the south leading upwards to the top of the hill.
The players split up in 2 groups planning one group to climb the hill from the north and the other to circle around and scale the path upward. They moved closer to the hill trying to go unnoticed (on a clear plane of ice…) They rolled stealth and I rolled perception checks for the giants.
One group was discovered and fired upon by the giant with crossbows and ice balls. (I gave them greater range due to the elevation of the hill than would be normal (25/50 range), matching the ranger with a great bow in range.)

Once the first attacks where made I let the party leader roll an insight check and told him that the projectiles where most likely at their maximum range.
So after they got attacked the party decided to just zerg the hill… running straight for it at all of their best speeds. (splitting the party up quite a bit.)
Once most of them reached the hill they abandoned the walk around plan and most just tried to scale the icy cliff to get to the top. Of course the giants were actively harassing the people climbing the wall, trying to make them fall etc.
The climb check wasn’t that bad (DC 20) but one of the melee had terrible luck with the climb checks and spend ¾ of the encounter trying to climb up and doing nothing but rolling climb checks.

About half way through the encounter I was accused by another player that I was being a bad GM for letting the melee guy struggle so much getting to the top of the hill… I didn’t really know how to respond to that, because I was already dumbfounded by their tactics and by the actions of said melee guy. I would have happily given him some bonuses on the climb check if he tried to improvise or do something clever, but he just rolled his die every turn and pretty much gave up on trying pretty quick. So the melee guy didn’t really like the encounter very much since he felt useless.

So was I being a bad DM by not just letting him magically climb the wall?
Any advice on how to handle these kind of situations would be appreciated. Thanks!

[Inevitability]

You weren't.

You put the DC at 20, which is moderately difficult for 11th-level characters. Unless you had people make another roll each round, or make them fall instantaneously when being hit by an attack, they just had terrible luck and decided to blame you for it.

[Yakk]

I can see some problems with your encounter design.

As a first approach, sneaking up on the castle looks like something that should be skill challenge based, not in-combat stealth checks. Then look up a good skill challenge system. Note that in a skill challenge, one player losing a check doesn't result in "they see you at the edge of line of sight and start bombarding you".

So with a SC, you might require (players*2+1) successes before 3 failures. If there are 5 players, that is 11 successes before 3 failures (with not just stealth being rolled). Now divide the sneak into 10 "zones" or so: the players get spotted (total successes-total failures) steps along that track, where 11 or 10 means that the players actually reach the castle unnoticed.

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As a second approach, you should be using giant passive perception in this situation. You probably also want to do some penalties based on distance/darkness/etc. (so if they have a passive perception of 21 and a player rolls a 18, they won't spot them at the edge of LOS, but rather at a pretty close spot).

You can also roll some implied aid another into this, where good checks mitigate bad checks somewhat. As an example, every check that beats the giant's passive by 5 offers the lowest ally a +2 bonus. If it beats it by 10, the two lowest allies. These bonuses cannot cause more bonuses to occur. In the game fiction, the more skilled are naturally going to show the less skilled where to walk, help with dulling metal and wrapping, tell the team when to stop moving, etc.

This tells you how close the party gets before being spotted, instead of "party spotted at max attack range".

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Another problem is where you boosted every one of the giants range to just happen to match the player who has the most range. Imagine if you didn't have that player: I suspect that the giants would have had less range! This is an example of where the DM punishes players who have abilities by specifically countering them.

At the same time, letting the greatbow win seige is also silly. So give the giants a ballista that has range exceeding a greatbow slightly, with a slower rate of fire. Make the ice balls and the like shorter range, or even have them donkey-kong like "roll down the hill" and be avoidable that way.

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Any obstacle that every member of a party need surpass, if it is moderate difficulty, results in the party seeming to be incompetent.

A moderate obstacle that you are forced to make multiple checks to defeat, sometimes with penalties due to being interrupted, is nintendo hard -- and/or practically basically impossible. You should be saying "this does no look like you can climb it without magic or a rope", rather than "roll". The player being discouraged is natural.

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"They moved closer to the hill trying to go unnoticed (on a clear plane of ice…)"

So there is this thing called "my guy syndrom". That is where a player says "My guy would do X", where X causes unfun. Maybe my guy would attack the diplomat, or run away with the macguffin behind the other player's back, or whatever else. The important part is that it causes unfun (not the details -- those same actions can also cause fun!), and the player claims to be helpless because "my guy" would do that.

The problem is that the player dictates what "my guy" does. "my guy" doesn't have to do anything -- the player *crafted* that character. They are the ones who determine "my guy"'s personality and motivations, not the other way around. Part of the social contract at most tables is to create a "my guy" who only causes unfun in very rare cases.

You are the DM. Your "my guy" is the situation you created. A flat ice sheet, giants who have no problem seeing at dark with great attention who constantly scan with active perception, the ice wall that your adventurers (if spotted) will fumble climbing repeatedly, the monsters who just happen to have massively better extreme range damage dealing than the extreme range damage dealing hero in the party, etc.

While you "just set DCs" and "worked out the consequences of the situation", you *also defined the situation*. And with hindsight, I can work out that the players *would* almost certainly be spotted, and would be bombarded, and cannot climb that cliff without at least one player sliding to the bottom repeatedly.

There may have been a path that wouldn't lead to that, but creating situations where anything but the path you design is going to be frustrating for the players and characters. Players are forced to guess what the right path is (maybe the front gate was really heavily guarded with traps -- of course it is! -- while the feast led to the back side having a drunk guard. All they had to do was sneak one person forward and spot the drunk guard to know this, easy-peasy, or even use a ritual to ask the right questions!).

The point and genius of the skill challenge system is that anything reasonable leads towards victory, not just figuring out the right route. And the rules of skill challenge encourage the DM away from making a single failure be "write off your attempt", and bound how many checks they demand of players before there is "success".

[ThePurple]

They rolled stealth and I rolled perception checks for the giants.

First error right here. You should *really* avoid having roll offs, mainly because it creates an almost absurd level of variation.

Also, unless the giants were already alerted to the players and knew what to look for, they shouldn't have been "actively looking". They were on guard, but guard duty is extremely long stretches of absolutely nothing happening (and they were probably expecting nothing to happen).

I generally avoid having my monsters roll their skills, if at all possible, in a "conflicted skills" situation. I would rather the players roll and just have the monsters use a "passive" skill that the players are trying to defeat (e.g. monsters with +11 skill bonus equate to a 21 DC). Pretty much the only time I would have monsters roll is if I don't want the players to know what's happening (at which point I'll use the players' "passive" skill as the DC).

(I gave them greater range due to the elevation of the hill than would be normal (25/50 range), matching the ranger with a great bow in range.)

The range might have been greater, but that doesn't mean that it should have been just as accurate at those extreme ranges. You might be able to throw a dagger for 100 yards off of a suitable tall tower, but that doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to be as accurate as an arrow since arrows are actually designed to be accurate at those extreme ranges while daggers are not.

If you're going to provide "elevation bonuses" to ranges, I wouldn't increase the range increment. I would, instead, simply provide an additional range increment ("extreme long range") with a greater penalty to the roll (-5) than for long range. This would allow them to still "attack" but not do as effectively, still providing the range focused character with an advantage at that range.

Once the first attacks where made I let the party leader roll an insight check and told him that the projectiles where most likely at their maximum range.

This should have been a Perception rather than an Insight check. Perception is for noticing physical details. Insight is for personal interaction.

So after they got attacked the party decided to just zerg the hill… running straight for it at all of their best speeds. (splitting the party up quite a bit.)

This is the fault of the players. You gave them a scenario in which they had the option to continue at a significant disadvantage or regroup and try again in a different way to avoid that disadvantage, and they chose to continue at the disadvantage.

The climb check wasn’t that bad (DC 20) but one of the melee had terrible luck with the climb checks and spend ¾ of the encounter trying to climb up and doing nothing but rolling climb checks.

How many checks were you requiring for them to scale the wall and how many rolls were they allowed to roll per round? Unless it was a crazy high wall, the players should have been able to scale the wall in single round with 2 checks, assuming they start at the base. If you made the wall too high such that it required more than 2 checks or 1 round to get to the top, I'd say you made it more difficult than it should have been.

I would have happily given him some bonuses on the climb check if he tried to improvise or do something clever, but he just rolled his die every turn and pretty much gave up on trying pretty quick.

Did you at least try *prompting* him for something other than a straight up dice roll? If a players is bashing their head against the wall and not having fun doing it (I know some players that actually do like doing that), it would behoove you to actually try and get them to see other options.

So was I being a bad DM by not just letting him magically climb the wall?

There were problems on both side of the screen. On the player side, they made bad tactical decisions and then refused to deviate from those decisions even when it turned out that such decisions were not conducive to success. This happens with a lot of groups that believe that the GM should always work to make sure that the players' plan works, even when that plan is really bad. On the GM side, you didn't really give the players many options, and the only attempts made to get them to stop bashing their heads were passive (e.g. give them the options at the start; when they choose poorly, keep reporting their failure without comment, hoping that they'll remember the other options on their own since they're not really working as it stands).

[Beoric]

I wouldn’t say that Terdarius has made errors in encounter design or adjudication. He presented the players with a situation that might have been resolved with a little creativity (camouflage, creating distractions, etc.). Instead the players tried to muscle through using nothing but die rolls. Big surprise, it didn’t go well.

I also wouldn’t take issue with the calls he made in adjudicating character actions. He has provided a brief synopsis of what was probably hours of play. You can’t know everything that was going on. His decisions deserve deference.

In particular, I would not suggest his view of physics was wrong, or that he chose the wrong skill to apply. I would never suggest that he was wrong to choose to play out a specific scenario with known adversaries in a defined environment, rather than using the abstraction of a skill challenge.

The real question here was, “Is it ok to allow characters to succeed or fail based on their choices and the die rolls?” The answer is, “yes.” There is no hint that he was singling anyone out, or trying to be a jerk. I take at face value his statement that the range was extended to account for the fact that the giants were throwing downward; I see no reason to infer that he was actively trying to match the players’ ranged attacks.

I do see a possible problem at the table, which I attribute to nobody in particular. It appears that the players, or at least some of them, have become accustomed to “pushing the skill button” rather than to thinking creatively, whereas the DM appears to want them to take it a little slower and think things through. This is a play style difference that needs to be reconciled.

There are things the DM can do to encourage players to think outside the box, which can be summed up as, “if you want the players to interact with things, you need to give them things to interact with,” and probably be pretty heavy handed about it until they get the hang of it. Finding a corpse with a tattered grey blanket that is about the color of the ice comes to mind, or hinting at other approaches that might be used.

But DM and players need to figure out if that is something everyone wants to do. This probably means an out of game discussion, and a trial period, and maybe a short-term NPC who can show the players the possibilities. Who will not become an all-powerful DM avatar, and will leave or scale it back once the players have caught on.

[Yakk]

In twilight or darkness, the color of a blanket does nothing. So that is an example of a DM expecting you to do something nonsensical (use gery blankets as camo) to succeed at a task that should be just as easy without it, if not easier

Having that plan have a higher chance of success than the PCs plan of sneaking and scouting is an example of wanting players to read your mind as a DM. And that exactly is why "having a model of physics" in practice rarely works: when it does work, it is because you and your players have the same biases and errors, often because you mutually trained each other (with, say, hints, and disaster randomly whenever they deviate from your biases).

The DM is auto-scaling foes to match player capabilities. Both how slippery the wall is, and how long the giants range was, exactly scaled with player capabilities. If the players had got a feat to boost their bow range, this time or the next the foes would gain yet more range. (The player already spent one feat on that, and coincidentally the foes match it exactly!)

Justifying range, justifying "they spot you", justifying "you cannot climb that", justifying "if you do not attack now you are screwed", justifying "if you do not retreat and regroup you are screwed" -- those are *all easy*. There is not reasonable way for the party to possibly know what path the DM wanted, and they *did* try a reasonable one, which the DM (violating encounter building guidelines) caused to be a disaster. You can play "well they could have", but I can play heizen-DM and make your plan clearly a failure as well.

[icefractal]

justifying "you cannot climb that",

Not only was the wall not un-climbable, there was a much easier path up the hill that the players already knew about. I don't think the GM has any obligation to make literally any solution equally viable (or should even try). If there's an open doorway and a stretch of wall next to it, going through the doorway is obviously going to be easier than smashing your way through the wall, and that's not a bad thing.

No harm in giving more hints though. Sometimes players are picturing the scene significantly differently than the GM, and need a very blatant and un-subtle hint to realize that disconnect is present. If a player declares an action that seems to make no sense, I'll usually ask what they're intending to do, or mention the consequences that would be obvious IC ("So you're going to run right past all those hobgoblins with spears to reach the lever? They'll get to attack you." for example; and then maybe it turns out the player thought the hobgoblins were unarmed).

[Kish]

If there's an open doorway and a stretch of wall next to it, going through the doorway is obviously going to be easier than smashing your way through the wall, and that's not a bad thing.

I remember a module where the evil wizard banked on intruders assuming exactly that.

(The doorway was covered in nasty self-resetting traps. The fact that there was no way for the wizard to bypass the traps was a clue for the players. In fact, when the wizard needed to get into the next room himself, he walked ten feet to the left of the doorway and cast passwall, a method which was well within the abilities of a party of the expected level for the module; the doorway was literally the worse place to try to get through. This is off-topic, but that line made me think of it.)

[Beoric]

@Yakk: I was, in fact, suggesting the opposite of what you think I was suggesting. I am not suggesting that the DM determine a course of action and gimp the players if they don’t follow it. I am suggesting that the DM give players stuff to play with and then sits back to see how they play with it.

The blanket was only an example, not the whole argument, but sure, let’s talk about that. You are making assumptions about how the blanket would be used. I am not; I have an idea about how it might be used (which I did not fully explain because, again, that would be missing the point), because that way it is more likely to be useful than if I give them random objects, but how they actually use it is up to them. Maybe they try to make a parasail out of it, I don’t know.

The DM allowed an attempt at a stealth check on an open sheet of ice, and the characters failed their check. He was, in fact, throwing them a bone, because strictly speaking you need superior cover to make an attempt to be hidden, unless the opposing NPC is distracted. It appears that this DM decided to rule that sentries were not distracted, and he allowed the players to discover that before they decided on their strategy. If it had been my table, trying to hide on an open ice sheet with no cover, opposed by sentries whose job it is to stay alert, would have been an automatic failure; but it was his table, and he runs it his way, and I am not going to second guess him on any of that.

[Terdarius]

Thanks for all the comments. It’s definitely helpful for me to get different perspectives on these situations and I hope to improve and make things more fun for everyone.

Let me clear some things up though.
The encounter wasn’t completely my design. I am currently running the Revenge of the giants adventure with my party. I am however modifying it heavily to make it more fun to play.
This particular encounter was intended to be a pretty straight forward combat encounter as described in the book though.

The encounter took place on a frozen island where they are currently shipwrecked. It’s pretty much their call where to explore and how to handle the various situations on the island. They decided to approach the guard post on the hill from the north and this was the result. (I also see a lot of people talk about darkness or twillight, but it the encounter was during the day...)

I started them 100 squares away to give them ample time to come up with a plan. I pretty much insisted on them try to work out some strategy and even pointed out some flaws and possible problems. (which they mostly ignored) I didn’t feel it prompted a skill challenge, though if they had tried to be creative it could have resulted in a freeform sc.
I also made it clear that I welcome creativity and I would have happily given them bonuses if they had tried anything to conceal their approach or whatever. Unfortunately they didn’t provide anything creative at all.
In regards to this I think it is a good suggestion to have a ooc discussion with the players about being more creative. I have actively tried to give them opportunities to be creative and allow a lot of stuff as long as it is fun and remotely feasible, but so far it doesn’t really feel like they try much. (although some of them may just not be very creative…)

The range of the giants was chosen arbitrarily and not to counter specific people. The normal range was 15/30 and I simply added 20. (I actually thought a great bow was 30/60 range :P)
It was however very unlikely (unless they did something brilliant) that they would have approached without being detected, but I had fully expected them to navigate around the hill and approach from the south so they could simply walk up the path… (this was how the encounter was designed in the book)
I also shot at them at max range and pretty much told them that if they took a few steps they would be out of range. (you know, so if you keep that distance you can easily move around to the back.)

The climb was DC 20 but they are lvl 16 characters. The character that had bad luck had to roll a 6 to succeed I believe. I would have happily given him further bonuses if he for example spend a standard action tying his daggers under his shoes to climb the wall, but he is a type of player that when faced with an obstacle simple beats his head against a wall and refuses to even consider anything else. (even when suggested)
And I did ask to roll a climb check each time they climbed further. (it was a 3 round climb for him) If they had stuff falling on them (blocks of ice, or in one case a dead giant) I asked another climb check with DC25.

Their approach to the encounter made a relative easy encounter a difficult one and made one of the players not enjoy it much, but otherwise all was fine as far as I’m concerned.
The comment about being a bad DM just caught me off guard considering the situation. It wasn't about the enitre encounter, just that the melee guy was not having fun because he was banging his head against a wall due to having bad rolls...
The suggestion was that I should have let him climb it regardles of his die rolls... which i just didn't agree with.

Thanks again for all the helpfull replies. :)

[analyst123]

I just like to make a general comment that at the end of the day, dnd is about having fun. I think one important aspect is that everyone is having the same expectation. Clearly, in this case, you as a DM expect the players to be more creative or bear the consequences of their "bad" decisions, while some of your players expect you to be more accommodating. Difference in expectation + bad dice rolls = frustrated players.

In your specific case, as you said the player could have used a dagger to help him climbing, or he could go around and take the path(no sure abt how long the path was though).
As a DM, you could allow him to roll an easy perception to spot an easier path, thus lowering the climbing dc.
And at last, any other character who was already up the top could drop a rope to help etc. At the end of the day, nothing happened, and player was annoyed.

Finally, i consider dnd as a cooperative game. Even though in game, its generally PC vs evil dudes, but the game is never about players vs DM. Everyone around table should work together to ensure a wonderful experience together. When something really bad happens unexpectedly, we general prefer players to step up, since that will give them a sense that they do something extraordinary to turn the table. However, sometime players are really stuck, I think it ultimately up to the DM to give the players a little bit help, since DM is the moderator of the game.

[MoutonRustique]

Thanks for all the comments. It’s definitely h...[snip]...ll the helpfull replies. :)

Personal take:

You made a few mistakes in managing the situation, the players made some bad calls. Nothing strikes me as "You were BAD!" or "The players were IDIOTS!". Sometimes things don't gel as we hope they do...

As you noted, there is plenty of advice above. I'll add my own (which very well may repeat previous offerings) :

- when you see things will go South, you can change the tone by offering to flip into an escape, or outmaneuver SC.
The escape could be "free" and allow for a "take 2" done in a few hours in-game and a few minutes real-time.

The outmaneuver SC could lead to the players getting up the climb, the giants coming down, or something of the like.

For my part, in such situations (which have happened to me), I try too lead with an admission of guilt/responsibility on my part and explain that this is going nowhere fast - I then explain the situation as I see it, ask the players what they think could work withing that framework and we go from there.

Retcons might be the EVIL-DEVIL-BAD-VERY-WRONG, but if it saves an hour of gameplay, recriminations and general "un-fun", I don't care. I just don't. I'm there to have fun, my friends are there to have fun - that's what matters at the end of the day.

[Dimers]

In twilight or darkness, the color of a blanket does nothing. So that is an example of a DM expecting you to do something nonsensical (use gray blankets as camo) to succeed at a task that should be just as easy without it, if not easier.

A blanket would break up the general humanoid shape, as well as disguising any major difference in tone even if colors can't be determined. It might or might not hinder Perception to notice movement (it could if a character had e.g. a black jacket and bright white pants), but it would definitely interfere with positive identification. Going by real-world assumptions, at least.

@Terdarius: Yeah, the giants should've been using passive Perception unless they were actively scanning for intruders at that moment. It's how the Stealth rules work, and it's much more realistic for human-like creatures. I'd say you started the encounter at rather long range, just because so few 4e abilities work beyond 10 or maybe 20 squares. I mean, look at the warlock, wizard and rogue powers -- they're dinky. Spending combat turns on mere movement is not heroic or interesting. I recommend starting at least 70% of fights within 20 squares (or adjusting the ranges of all ranged attack powers on both sides). But I know that competes directly with other DM desires, like providing a bigger and different challenge by allowing the giants to start firing early.

Regardless, you didn't do a bad job, the main problem was just failure to notice and recover from the players' crash early enough. I wouldn't have done better. It's easy for me to identify a problem in retrospect, but in person face-to-face across a table from someone frustrated ... eh. If it were me, I'd say, "Sorry guys, that's my flub of the month, I'll be sharper next time." No real harm done.

[Yakk]

Oh ya, I should be clear, I'd have screwed this one up to!

Half of the point of using skill challenge like pacing (not the mechanics directly) is to remove the cognitive load required to build an actually consistent world: humans are not up to that task, at least without cheating.

You don't have to (and I in fact discourage) having an explicit skill challenge. Instead, you'll want to figure out how hard the task is *in general* and ask them how to solve it.

You'll need to improvise up to (complexity*2+3) problems they have to solve along the way. Each problem solved is "a success point", each failure a "failure point". A failure means things go less the way they want, story-wise. As an example, the first stealth failure, instead of "the giants spot you and starts throwing stones" becomes "the giants think they spotted something, but aren't sure".

This might cut off an option (say, now instead of one giant doing patrols, one of the giants is standing at the top of the damaged part of their wall which the players where going to use to climb easier).

Or maybe they'll crash through some ice while diving for cover when the giants start looking, and take a healing surge worth of cold exposure.

On the second failure, maybe they giants will send some dire wolves out to see if there is something out there. This gives more time pressure (before the dire wolves arrive), or might require fast thinking (use an illusion to make it look like the dire wolves are fighting a dire bear).

Skills become one way to resolve defeating problems, but don't require skills all the time -- a spell, an attack, a utility power, etc are all viable ways to defeat a problem.

The skill challenge toolbox -- group checks, pick a player and get them to roll something, ask the players how to approach a problem, failures resulting in damage, etc. -- becomes a way to have go-to reactions by the DM.

But, at the core, the point of the skill challenge system is that you measure how many "things" the players have to do to reach their goal, and you measure how many "failures" they have to get before their goal becomes hopeless, instead of having an arbitrary number of "things" that can grow without bounds, and the first failure causes catastrophy.

[Sol]

I started them 100 squares away to give them ample time to come up with a plan.

I hate this. And I don't use that word lightly. Hate it. Zero interest in participating in anything like this combat sounds.

Combat maps set up the expectation of fairly imminent combat. 100 squares is 10 rounds of melee-character double-movement, and then another few rounds to climb up the wall? That's awful. And, obviously the giants are going to spot the party before 10 rounds are up. You set that up to fail and to feel awful.

I assume you didn't actually start initiative until (at least) the giants started firing, but keep in mind that the giants started fighting 5 rounds before a dwarf could be at the base of the wall.

Now, just the presence of a map isn't a bad thing, but a square-count heavily indicates that combat is about to happen -- otherwise, there's really no need to be at all specific about how many squares are involved. And if a player doesn't have a token sitting on a map, they're far, far more likely to be in pre-combat strategy mode, rather than, "must kill it before it kills me!" mode.

A better approach around the south, you say? Why set the players up for failure by starting them 100 squares to the north? Why not show them a general map of the area, generally where they're coming from, and read off, "As you descend onto the ice sheet you see a central pillar guarded by several large, mostly-stationary figures. A trail winds around the pillar to the south, presumably winding its way to the top. Between the sheer cliff and the guards on duty facing north, you suspect winding your way to the south would be a better approach, but frontal assault is possible. A or B?"

Making the path of least resistance ("run straight at the monsters that are firing at us!") the worst possible choice is....not great encounter design. I'm unfamiliar with the adventure path you're running, so it's entirely possible that that's not on you. But still, it's pretty easy to fix by offering them limited choices, or else presenting the strategy session outside of the framework of combat.

The range of the giants was chosen arbitrarily and not to counter specific people. The normal range was 15/30 and I simply added 20. (I actually thought a great bow was 30/60 range :P)

It's your job to know the range of your players. Range as extreme as a greatbow is, additionally, entirely anomalous in a system where the vast majority of implement powers are ranged 5 or 10 (and none exceed 20). As has been noted, extending the range with no accuracy penalty is a highly inaccurate and totally unnecessary attempt at modeling physics.

Even if the players had swung around to the back, the giants would have had a minimum of 5 rounds of tossing projectiles at them while they were within range. Knowing that they had this minumum anyway, your players chose the most direct route to the giants from their current position. If they had advanced straight at the wall and then ran around to the back of the hill to the path, how many extra rounds of one-sided combat is that? One-sided combat is awful. Have you ever played a melee character who the DM kept immobilized for an entire combat? It's tactically sound, and no fun at all.

it was a 3 round climb for him

Is 3 rounds more or less time than it would have taken him to move around to the south entrance and up the hill? Honestly? I'm guessing less.

I would have handled the entire approach and climb as a skill challenge. Advancing and then climbing (or going around) while under barrage, with acrobatics checks (or other creative things!) to dodge projectiles while traversing the ice and wall.

I feel that there are very, very few situations in which it does anything but destroy the enjoyment of your melee party members to have a combat start before they're within move+charge range. One round of movement to get into move+charge range hurts, but is sometimes necessary. 5 rounds is approaching "i get up and leave to do something more productive with my time" territory.

[Beoric]

Really? When I play, there is nothing I enjoy more than the challenge of an assault on a fortified position. It should be hard.

I would take the time to scout the whole area, right the way around the fort, and get every detail I can. Who long is the path, does it offer any cover, are there any cracks in the ice that might hide tunnels, is there anywhere where the walls are not as high, what are the sentries' patterns of movement, do any seem less attentive than the others? Do the sentries change over time, when are the shift changes, can I estimate how may there are in total? Who comes and goes, are there regular supply runs into the fort, what doe their allies look like, can we pass ourselves off as some?

If I couldn't bluff or sneak my way in side I might try to cause a diversion on one side while having that party sneak up on the other, or I might use a pattern of attack and retreat, find out the range of their weapons, do a little damage and then back off (PCs win the war of healing surge attrition).

I'm less patient as a DM, because there is a tendency to always try to keep things moving, and I know what goodies lie inside. But I see that as an issue with my DMing that I try to overcome, because I know my players who choose to do that are choosing it because they enjoy it.

[Yakk]

You get within LOS. Your stealth check is compared against all 5 giants on watch's active perception actions, 3x per round.

If you move more than 2 squares per action, you have to reroll at -5.

LOS starts 100 squares away. Going once around the castle is 200-400 squares of movement, so at least 250 skill checks by the giants.

Odds are at least one of them rolls a 20 in that time (1 in 269 thousand odds against this does not happen).

So your initial skill check has to exceed their passive perception by 10.

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Now, maybe that didn't happen. But the above is how giants looking for intruders can, by RAW, act.

So my heisen-DM used RAW to make your scouting plan a horrible idea that makes hiding impossible. You, however, have no idea that the giants will almost automatically know where you are after you execute your plan.

50 squares is 250', or almost 100 meters. Doing an insight check without magical aid at someone more than 100 meters away is going to be tricky. So to get some of your information you'll have to get within attack range, at which point the giants fire a massed volley of rocks and crossbows at just you. There is a good chance you die, alone, on the ice.

Maybe the DM won't do this, but everything I did was RAW and at least somewhat reasonable. The stealth rules indicate you are spotted. You have to get close to answer some of your questions. They have (by the OP) attacks that can focus-fire on you. You don't expect the focus-fire, so drop dead before you can react.

Tactically, we where already operating in initiative order. They readied an action on their previous turn to attack you when you moved 20 more feet, which is your 2nd action. They all fire. The turn ends, and they get to go again. They all fire again. Two rounds, 5 giants. They have penalties (due to range), so deal ~40% less damage than expected. But that level of focus fire from a non-trivial encounter has a decent chance of dropping you.

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Is this a good encounter? I don't think so. But my entire point is that a DM can use the rules to build bad encounters that are hard or impossible in ways that do not make good encounters challenging.

[Sol]

Really? When I play, there is nothing I enjoy more than the challenge of an assault on a fortified position. It should be hard.

Okay.

I would take the time to scout the whole area, right the way around the fort, and get every detail I can. How long is the path? Does it offer any cover? Are there any cracks in the ice that might hide tunnels? Is there anywhere where the walls are not as high? What are the sentries' patterns of movement? Do any seem less attentive than the others? Do the sentries change over time? When are the shift changes? Can I estimate how may there are in total? Who comes and goes? Are there regular supply runs into the fort? What do their allies look like? Can we pass ourselves off as some?

These are all fantastic and tactically sound questions, all of which go right out the window once you're asked to roll initiative.

While starting a combat at 20-50 squares is, very rarely, a good way of letting your party's Bow/Crossbow user be a badass, spending multiple turns under barrage from unreachable enemies, with no available cover and no means of reaching them beyond "circle around outside of their range, and then spend ~5 turns running at them" is pretty incredibly unfun for anyone else.

If this had not been resolved as a combat encounter from the start, your tactical questions would have been far more relevant.

edit: @OP: to be clear here, I'm not attacking your DMing ability. Just this encounter, which it sounds like you're not fully responsible for creating.

[Terdarius]

I love the fact that some people are making assumptions and are getting somewhat upset about those assumptions :p

As someone said this was a long playing session with lots of things happening that i won't go into.

But to clear some things up again..
- No i didn't roll initiative at 100. We rolled when they were first detected. (So they could have made it in a skill challenge if they wanted to and gotten creative)

- yeah i gave the giants penalties for the long range.
i also didnt attack with all 6 from the start since some where guarding the path. (I believe i trickled 3 in over about 6 turns)

- there was no fort or anything on the hill. It had a flat top where the giant where standing on the edge.

- we made some weird mistakes about the distance units (my bad explanation of the distance to blaim) which resulted in them only needing 3 turns to make it to the base of the hill. They had spilt up in 2 groups so the 2nd group was detected 2 turns out...

-the other characters where far from ineffective, with the first giant going down before anyone could even get up the hill. So they were very hittable by ranged attacks once they closed the distance.
(one of the characters even simply teleported up top from below...)

- this encounter was completely optional and they could have simply ignored it all together. But my players always have xp signs in their eyes and kill anything they vaguely think is worth killing :/

Were there things i could have handled better? Sure. I never pretend to be the worlds best DM.
Though I have been DMing for this party for about 4 years now so they seem to like my style or we would have quit long ago :P

Was it a bad encounter? No not really, except for the one guy who didn't get to do much which my question was really about...

[Delicious Taffy]

My advice, based on my own limited DM experience, is to give your melee guy something else to do after a couple failed rolls. Maybe the giants have a pet dire penguinbear or a couple ice zombies, and he gets to deal with that while the others take on the giants. Don't be too rigid with your monster groups, I've found.