Facing increasingly more deadly foes in /tg/ games is a cornerstone of the game's progression -- but I always like to remind my characters how strong they've become by tossing in some either A. previous enemies that they've faced that have made them sweat that are now a piece of cake, or B. build up some threat around a group of monsters that are kind of a walk in the park for the party.
Obviously you should still throw challenges at your party most of the time, but I see a lot of DMs ONLY offering progressively more challenging encounters. Punctuating those with these encounters can help your party feel that "frick yeah, I'm so powerful now" sensation that is frankly just an awesome thing to feel.
This thread is likely to die quickly as it isn't a clear content grab or a question meant to incite spewing of information or basically bait to trigger a response, so I'll just say thanks for saying it Anon. Its a piece of advice a lot more folks should actually use but honestly forget since tabletop gaming is first things first a supremely social game.
Solid advice. By the same token, it can be good to throw heavily overpowered challenges at low-level parties. It helps further emphasise how much they've grown later on as well as making the world feel more 'real' (it's not just some artificial playground that coincidentally is perfectly tailored to the power level of the party) and making them think laterally (or at least take actions beyond "I approach the monster and attack" - Do they run? Hide? Negotiate?).
This needs to be done with some care though, you don't want to unfairly trap the party into a situation where your options as a GM are to either let the party all die or whip out some hackneyed deus ex machina rescue like 'decides to let you live when by all rights it should kill you because you're not a challenge' or some bullshit. You also don't want to ruin the mystique of end-game opponents through overexposure.
Well obviously the world should be realistically populated. The vast majority of the world should be full of mooks. Certain areas like underworlds and badlands should have stronger power level averages but the idea should be that as players get stronger, the world doesn't adjust to them, they just move to stronger and stronger areas. As they get strong, the majority of the world would naturally seem weaker in comparison.
You were pretty based today OP, this is good advice
Counterpoint - such easy take up session time and unnecessarily pad the game.
Counter point: easy combat is faster because, aside from the enemies having less HP, the players don't need to spend so long thinking about their actions.
This, most of us are adults with a limited amount of free time and aren't playing 8 hour sessions anymore. Fewer, but more challenging and rewarding combats are the way to go.
Players should be thinking about their actions on other players' turns anyway.
>most of us are adults with a limited amount of free time and aren't playing 8 hour sessions anymore
Then either change your schedule to allow for a reasonable amount of time to play, or accept that you're too old for TTRPGs and get out of the hobby to wherever it is that joyless boomers go to die.
A reasonable amount of time is 3 hours
I’ve never done an 8 hour session. Even when I was young the longest might have been 6 hours when we were all at a friend’s place. I find people lose energy during a session that long.
Easy encounters should probably not involve actually moving to combat. You can instead just let your PCs describe what they did and describe the result. If the result isn't in question, there is no need to start a formal encounter and start rolling. If a level 10 fighter gets a punch thrown at him in a bar, we don't need to start rolling dice to determine what happens next.
>boo fricking hoo I only have twenty minutes of free time before I have to go back to wageslaving all day to provide for my wife and her boyfriend
Go play a mobile video game if you want mindless instant gratification. Some of us still have fully functional dopamine receptors and like to enjoy the worlds we play in.
Nah, i just build a fixed array of challenges. Eg: current game (3.5e) has an encounter range between negligible (CR 1/4 or less) to CR 9 averaging on CR 3 most of the time, PC are 1st level. I'm not going to adjust the encounter level like a TESbrained Gankertard, once the pc become the top dogs of the area the campaign will just end.
>Protip: don't run your games with the same level scaling as Oblivion
I mean, it's not bad advice, but anyone with two braincells figured it out already.
> but anyone with two braincells figured it out already.
And that's usually most of any userbase, sadly. The vast majority of people either don't introspect or don't bother to think about what they're doing. This thread itself is an example. As you said, level scaling is trash because it will never allow you to be too much above or below the challenge, making things feel samey as you go on. Yet that's exactly how most people runs games: a constant pacing of medium-hard encounters.
And imo, it's less about giving your players easy or hard encoutners and more to show the world has many things living in it.
A setting where every time I open the door there's someone around my or abovepowerlevel feels very video-gamey to me, not very compelling.
My games are just location based so if players get into a random encounter in a civilized area or on a higher dungeon level they'll probably stomp it easily or just scare it away.
I do enjoy watching the players stomp some c**ts out occasionally.
Only if becoming stronger is a focus of the game, and even then combat is often the least interesting way to show that the PCs have risen above the masses.
not op, but what do you suggest anon?
what challenges can i throw at my PCs to make them feel strong?
Life hack: don't forget to breathe.
No, the local lord will destroy my players the first chance he gets. his 1000 men at arms surrounding them and instantly killing them. If they escape every villager will rat them out as they die of plague and starvation as adventurers are killed on sight
Imagine wasting 30 minutes caving in goblin skulls for paltry treasure and xp.
>revious enemies that they've faced that have made them sweat that are now a piece of cake, or B. build up some threat around a group of monsters that are kind of a walk in the park for the party.
I have a friend that would vehemently rail against the idea that you actually "level up" or progress in a game. Everything should be a static challenge that is equally or equally difficult to fight against at all times.
Obviously I haven't played with this dude in over a decade- cause he's unbearable to play with, but he manages to constantly find more games and more players than I do. Do who knows maybe he's on to something... But I just can't get mad enough at game mechanics like he does.
He is motivated to find new games because he doesn't want to run out of things to be mad at, and thus he will even accept bad games anon. It's not a you problem.
That's not how several game systems work now, though. they have encounter and even gear scaling hard coded right into the rules. See: various gay shit from paizo.
Are they going to smash down my door and tear up my books if I give my players an easy encounter?
Yeah actually
They’re welcome to try. Me and my gun will be ready to defend my property as is my second amendment right.
>They’re welcome to try. Me and my gun will be ready to defend my property as is my second amendment right.
And my axe! You're not in this fight alone. Huzzah motherfricker
I've had players argue that they should be able to kill everything they come across, but rarely have i heard that everything should be an exact challenge.
I'm not OP but the idea is something they've fought before but had trouble with. Giant, ogre, troll, some kind of beast that was a low level boss. Bring it back.
Whoever thought this meant bar fights and goblins was way off the mark on how this works.
Bring it back with a twist, like two of them and an ambush and watch the players realize that they know what they're doing and are stronger now.
If you can make it look like a trick or you're out to get them all the better. Some of you guys are players so deep in your heart that you forget what we do as GMs...
We're setting up things so you think you're clever, so you feel like you just barely made it, or you had just the right spell ready. AI won't be able to replace the ability of a person to read a room. It'll give you "appropriate leveled monsters," not the right monster to help someone feel glad they made their build and picked their class the way they did. The guy who's hogging all the attention doesn't need that, the quiet guy who isn't sure if he's doing the right things yet does.
>See: various gay shit from paizo.
Difficulty: A string of moderate-threat encounters can feel flat. Use low- and even trivial-threat encounters to give PCs chances to really dominate, and severe-threat encounters for especially powerful enemies. Extreme-threat encounters should be used sparingly, for enemies who match the threat posed by the PCs and have a solid chance of beating them!
- Game Mastery Guide p 46
OPs post is literally part of Pathfinder 2e game design from the get go. WTF are you talking about?
Balance is for gays. The world exists as it does and players can look for challenges they think are on their level.
Learn to fricking play
For once OP wasn't a homosexual. It's always fun for the players to just wipe out a swarm of weaker enemies now that they're super strong, it gives them that confidence boost they need before a tough boss fight and also shows their progression.
What if you're playing a game with uber deadly encounters like Call of Cthulu?
RPGs like those are about players generally getting weaker over time. I guess you could do the opposite where you have PCs return to doing tasks they could've previously done before to see how they have become weaker.
You know that bit you sometimes get in spooky shows, where our naive young band meets a 'professional' group of old hands who suddenly start pulling out the weirdest shit ("why do you have a rose tied around a mouldy carrot?") and make really obtuse references? Maybe you could try that, in reverse. I'll admit it's not as quick and easy to set up as OP's scenario, and there's far less guarantee of the party getting that power thrill, but it's the first idea that comes to mind.
Random table encounters for each biome type.
Random amount. Player character death on 0 hp.
The frick do I care how powerful they feel…
Floor 1 encounter 1d6 F1 monsters. 1d3 F2 monsters.
F2 encounter 2d6 F1 monsters.
Random table monster goals, situation, distance.
Not much of a game if it's over after one or two sessions because of TPKs.
Did the players choose to exercise caution, knowing they might encounter something that could easily kill them?
Did the players choose to evade or escape monsters that might have easily killed them?
If not, this is their loss.
Let's long rest (or return to town, if wandering monster ambushes are a thing) and fully recover after each encounter. It's the only way to be sure.
And this is why you add time management to your games. The PCs are adventurers, professional risk-takers. It is their job to look at a situation and evaluate their chances of success before taking action. There are times where they will have to take calculated risks, and times where danger should be avoided entirely.
Difficulty should not be a gradual curve. It should go up down along with the plot of the story to make the most important fights more memorable.
Final Fantasy 1 is basically the perfect guide on how to GM.
*2
imho, a good way to handle this is for the main focus to be a low-combat intrigue.
Like diplomatic adventure, negotiating, investigating, and then you could end up in fights that are fairly simple.
Like oh, this guy you're trying to question he's got two guards, but then they fall pretty quickly because you're big time heroes now.
It's cool.
We had a rough go with some orcs in an early level, and then to show us how tough we were, our DM had us absolutely BODY a bigger gang of orcs at a later level.
This is good. It gets so tiresome when the DM levels EVERY encounter to your character. Go from fighting goblins, to orcs, to bugbears, to ogres, to trolls, etc, never seeing goblins ever again. Makes players wonder why they even level if everything is always matched and if it mgiht be better if they stay forever at level 1 - goblins are the same threat as trolls at higher levels but with much less paperwork. Computer platform games ruined RPGs.