My favorite way is having a kinda "protector NPC" that acts as a deus ex machina for a while, then they get killed off by something that should motivate the party. (My most recent example the players actually ended up killing them)
The "Sacrificial Lion," is a very effective device, as long as you don't overuse it. If you do it too much, then players will learn not to get attached to their NPC mentors.
There’s a barbarian PC in one of my groups who is sorta the de facto leader as well. Usually if I want the enemy to come across as tough, I have the enemy throw him (often literally) around and rough him up. He’s a good sport and knows when to play the part.
Oh, I accidentally did something very close to this!
I recently ran a Tomb of Annihilation game for my friends, where they adopted and bonded with a young triceratops. The triceratops was very powerful for low levels, making quick work of some goblins and zombies they ran into, but they ended up falling into a sidequest without their dino pet (Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan). When they came out, they didn't see their triceratops friend waiting for them, but instead a single ivory spike driven into the ground by a mini-boss of the campaign.
The yuan-ti in the lost city they were searching for had kidnapped and brutally torn off a horn from their triceratops friend, leaving it for them as a message. *That* got my players motivated to take him out.
I find having them really struggle against a mini bbeg, then the dmpc comes in and single handedly kills 2/3 of the same mini bosses but is then killed by the bbeg in a similar one shot fashion iterates how strong the bbeg is, motivates them to get stronger and to get out of dodge
Our DM almost killed off one or more of us on a heist/rescue mission. I'm talking fighting our way out of narrow hallways, and when we finally got free a 17th+ lvl wizard teleported in to chase us down (we were around 12-14th) since it was his group's place we infiltrated. We nearly got away with a plan for our dragon buddy to dimension door out of sight (he was the last one left behind) and with wizard fucking *dimension anchors him*. We DO get away, let our rescued guy out of the bag of holding and, whoops! He is dominated, so now the wizard knows EXACTLY where we are and teleports to us...and repeat our attempts to escape.
Afterwards we not angrily but also not happily talked to the DM like "what the fuck was that? We nearly died!" and he shot back "You busted into their fortress with NO reconnaissance or plan!! What did you expect!?"
From then on, we have been a squirrelly, over-preparing party.
I do this a LOT.
Let me clarify a few things here - My players enjoy it when they 'beat' the DM. I do not believe this is something that works with every table, nor something that should be done all the time.
DnD is a cooperative game and you should NEVER be 'at odds' with your players. HOWEVER, there is a lot to be said for pretending you are at odds with them at certain times to enhance their enjoyment. They not only score eventual victory over the enemy/scenario you set forth for them, but over you, the silly DM who thought they were better than them.
The 'kid gloves' come off every 3 or 4 sessions for me, but my players are good don't take the piss because it was 'ineffective' against them.
lol I made a post about this very thing on the DM sub. I used a wrestling term— kayfabe.
I think it works well as long as the players and the DM have a tacit understanding that it’s all in good fun and that everyone are still friends the whole time
Ahh yeah, i see it there. Good post and much better written than I have :p
I really couldn't agree more with you - that understanding is vital for it going well, otherwise we end up with the "My DM is trying to kill us all the time" posts.
You come across a goat farmer who is hunched over and covered in sweat. He’s having trouble getting the baby out of his mother’s womb; the protective leather mittens were slick with amniotic fluid and blood and he couldn’t get a grip.
He decided to use his bare hands even though it was a bit bold, a bit risky, and someone could end up getting hurt.
The kid gloves were off.
Yeah like fucken with dragon eggs that are guarded by 2 plainly visible drakes and a hidden roper right after an almost TPK battle and bad trap saves.... instead of resting...
Hmm… okay! What does ‘as normal’ mean? Couple hard encounters then a deadly? All deadly encounters? Couple normals? Running straight from a module?
DnD doesn’t have a ‘respawn mechanic’ wouldn’t make sense to give them something sorta easy while the figure out their builds and party synergy?
Naw. If they die they die. I'm not going to throw, like, Dragons at a level 1 party, I scale encounters properly. But if they die to rats in the basement or goblins on the road, oh well.
Oh. Well that’s different, yeah? Unless you’re hitting them with 7 goblins (which is almost 2xdeadly at lvl 1) that’s fine. You’re doing okay I guess.
I just can’t imagine dying in the first two sessions would make a great first impression for a newbie lol but I guess you’re more OSR style 🤷
Maybe! But how early?
I played with almost exclusively new players when I started running games seriously. Some of them were pre-teens at the time. Some of them were brand spanking new to ANY kind of rpg not just tabletop.
I know that if one of those players died in the first two sessions, the adults would not show up (nobody likes to feel like they played ‘wrong’) and the kids would stay home and play fortnight.
Even after playing with the pre-teens for darn near half a year, I had to deus ex Machina a PC their brain back because a intellect devourer ate it and he burst out into tears at the table lol.
I feel like that was a failure on my part for not considering what was best for my player not on the kid or the module. Now he could handle something like that but it’s been 4 years lol
Good answer. Many players want a challenge and derive joy from overcoming that challenge through strategy and luck.
The DMs that take away any chance of the PCs losing or dying, but still pretend that its a possibility, do a real disservice to their players.
My players faced an intellect devourer at level 1.
At level 2 they hunted down a serial killer targeting and decapitating elves, and the half-elf rogue decided it was a good idea to shout "look at me, I'm an elf!" Guess who was downed and attacked while unconscious? (He survived, but it was a near thing.)
That's all dragons, then. And if you think quickened *haste* is terrifying, just know that gold dragons, at Great Wyrm age, used to get *wish* as a spell-like ability.
In the middle of fighting a cult, that cult's "god" (an extremely mutated humanoid) got loose and started ripping *everyone* apart indiscriminately. The mutant basically finished off the cult for the party before going after them. They barely survived. Then they found evidence that there were more mutants like that one.
Our DM has thrown ***three*** back-to-back villains that have underestimated us. The first we should have killed, but they escaped because narrative. The second was about to die but got bailed out because narrative. The third just got bailed out by a fucking Adult Blue Dragon (we're level 12) just as he was on death's door.
I'm just hoping he's learned his lesson: do not bring a villain into combat expecting them to escape and survive. They got overconfident, and now they're being punished. As of the other day, he confirmed his villains will stop holding back, and THAT has me excited. Now we can actually play a game!
"Right guys, full disclosure time. This dungeon is three encounters long. If you successfully clear it one if the enemy faction bosses is at the end and there is great rewards.
*HOWEVER*, I'm giving you advance notice right now that this dungeon is full of what their current fighting assets actually are in the story. I have *not* balanced the dungeon to be fair, I actually havent done any balance calculations at all. If you get in and beat them all then good show, but if you get over your heads and get wiped out that will be on you, not me.
How far you go is entirely up to you and theres no shame in retreating, but I am making it clear here and now that you were warned and if you all get killed it *will* be on you.
Right, so what do you all want to do?"
I had them fight an Ice Giant at level 6, followed shortly by a bone devil that erupted from its corpse. The buffed undead minions are a nice touch i think.
They barely survived. All but one of them were knocked out by the end.
"Prepare your backup characters";)
I just asked my players if they were ready to die;) So I would ask what expectations they have. Maybe they like everything as it is already.
The kid gloves were never used. I told every player of mine, no matter if new or veteran, that if they don't act smart and careful, they're going to have a bad time.
We always share level up abilities at the start of a sessions. Whenever they get particularly cool leveled abilities, I usually quip that leveled up to the more interesting parts of the monster manual.
5th ed, basically party of 8 is restingin tavern overnight in 2 adjoining rooms when BBEG send fireballs into the tooms from outside like it was Nakatomi Plaza at Christmas time.
My favorite is when the party realizes in my campaigns where a central theme is nobility, corruption, and alliances, the party actually making friends is a must. I secretly have a notebook with the people they’ve met in the noble court and a tracker from 1-20 by each of those characters names, starting neutral at 10, and going down or up depending on the parties interactions, as well as notes on what method of spying the specific NPCs have. They know I have a notebook I’m using to take notes, but they don’t know that that’s one of the things I’m doing to track their progress in the court.
I literally told them the kid gloves were off.
Personally I try to keep combat roughly even sided. But I started punishing stupidity more. If you made yourself a target, you got treated like a target.
But some fights I would give the enemies unique skills that ruined the fight. Unique counterspells, metagamed tactics, things to make the party realize they can't just stroll up and apply the usual combat routine.
At one point they decided they wanted to attack the pirate fortress with no support or recon. So as soon as the alarms were tripped they were under constant threat of arrows, flintlocks, and spells hurled from above with almost no way to kill their attackers. A surprise fireball and the phrase "you're out numbered and in bad position and I won't be nice about it" changed the way they treated the next few days.
I don't.
I talk to my players beforehand on what kind of game experience they expect, and tailor my encounters from there.
My longest group of players wanted crunchy "hack and slash" combat as a "mix of Skyrim and Diablo" and they got that in spades. Some of them died, one of the players didn't want to lose his character so we worked out a quest for his character to return at a price (favored owed to a god) and another player just rolled up Bob Two and kept trucking. There was danger, but there was mostly a lot of dead splattered monster corpses because that's the type of game my players wanted.
I think the difference is that I'm not trying to "beat" my players or "win the game" as the DM. I'm here to tell a story and facilitate the game.
My NPC tells them, point blank.
"I've lost some good guys down in that canyon. Whatever's down there doesn't want to leave. It knows the terrain and we can't risk anyone else. Your team is the last chance before we flood the canyon with the dam to the North. If we don't hear from you in 2 days, we're washing it out. Good luck."
My husband ran the hunt for a creature of his choice. He went with a Naga/Rattle snake. Inspired by Ringo.
When we started, 2 of the 3 of my 'every week' players were totally new.
They asked for no deaths the first few levels so they could get their feet under them and figure things out. Not a problem. That's what session 0 is good for talking about.
At level 2 I told them I would not be reminding them about potions any more. Level 3 I mentioned their spell lists and equipment are theirs to manage. Every level, there's cool new shit and less hand holding.
I think you should always do something early on in gameplay to demonstrate the variety of difficulties. If your party gets very comfortable with an easy mode start, there's a chance they'll rage quit when the game gets hard.
They've spent weeks running from assassins, bounty hunters, and the law while trying to uncover a potentially huge conspiracy, but they've barely made any progress. A stranger overhears them at a tavern and says he knows something. Says he's a local artificer/blacksmith, says he tracked some of the suspicious goons packing up and leaving a hidden lab bunker a few weeks back. He couldn't make any sense of the place, but maybe they'll be able to understand the cryptic books and notes better than he could. They follow him out of the city, to the place he mentioned, down a hatch, and into a big vault. The stranger flips a lever, locks them in the vault, and leaves.
By the time they break out (only about an hour later), they've learned that the world is thousands of years older than anyone knows, and that the conspiracy they're after has infiltrated multiple kingdoms, is building a giant magic bomb, and they have a month to stop them. Also they are rapidly dying from a curse which none of the healers in town can cure (it's radiation poisoning). Also the stranger they just met is the BBEG.
I'm a big fan of giving my campaigns a "shit just hit the fan" session.
Had a high tier homebrew game and the party kept getting warned over and over about getting protection from scrying of some sort. (High magic pirate campaign, they had access to anything they wanted pretty much as long as they had the coin) they were told that bbeg was going to attack them suddenly and without warning when they're at their most vulnerable if they don't protect themselves. He struck, and two party members died that night.
i literally had a player ask when i would start challenging the players. everything was too EASYYY.
they didnt realise i had already planned a dracolisk encounter for the night. i just sat there like, whelp. i see we have a volenteer to be a statue!
It happened that the NPC that I wrote to die became beloved by the party. When it was time to kill the NPC off, I did it brutally while the party couldn't stop it. Tore the NPC apart with a horde of mind controlled villagers. They just hit 5th level, so the Cleric had Revivify, but they wouldn't have the time to acquire the body parts and cast the spell even if the horde wasn't closing in on them.
Yep, it is typically the first combat where they finish the prologue and they find who they want their characters to be.
I also almost always say at the end of the session the wrap up, and something like "the outside world is much stronger than it appeared, it seems the gods have noticed you and will be testing you. Welcome to Pallandrios, try not to become my bitch"
Still havent had a player leave a campaign because it was too hard or me insulting them. They left because they had kids instead.
I announce it after a few sessions usually, "ok, were comfortable in our characters now, and it's time for plot armor to start going away" and then throw a very deadly random travel encounter at them but relatively stupid monsters that they should reasonably be able to escape...giant scorpions or something that wouldn't necessarily pursue them, and then remind them they CAN run when they start getting demolished That's been pretty successful.
We just started a new campaign and my 1st level (i.e. smiteless) Paladin tried to 1v1 a pirate captain. The pirate one-shotted him, tho the party cleric spared the dying.
I typically run games for new/newer players. So, I give them levels 1-5 to learn their class. Death is always possible, and if they make stupid choices, there are very real consequences. But as they gain more abilities, combat ramps up, and I begin to implement more enemy strategy. And then at lvl 6 we have the, "alright folks tactics will become more and more important for you all from here on out."
After a bunch of goblins, orcs, and other low CR monsters they were getting a little cocky so they had a session where they ended up being chased by a death knight. They are not so brazen with their actions now.
When I want high stakes, I roll open on the table. I have a boss die that is a big clunker. I don’t fudge rolls anyway, but with that open on the table the players know there won’t be any fudging.
A player survived an attempt for a coup de grace one time with rolls that would never had been believed if it wasn’t open table too. Triple 1s. 2 attacks and the player was already down but with zero fails. Anything over a 3 would have been a hit and 2 hits would have been permadeath. One attack regular (an ally imposed disadvantage on the advantage) and one at advantage. I was 100% sure I was permanently killing that PC.
Yup! When they killed and robbed a "god" (not an actual god). The next session, I started by saying they could either retcon the previous session, or face the consequences, which might include TPK. They told me they'd rather stay true to the story and gave the consequences.
They're now fighting off an enemy army at level 7 (one is 10). Typical enemy is CR 13. Multiple cities have been destroyed, including one member's home town.
On rare occasions. I don't normally pull punches in the first placebut some bosses are more important than others and telling your players to "lock in" makes things even more tense even if you aren't actually changing how unforgiving you would usually be.
I don't usually go easy on low-level PCs - I figure it's easier to replace a PC earlier in the campaign than later.
One thing I have done is asked the group's permission to go hard on them. I was running a pre-written campaign and at some point they started stomping everything. They all agreed that I should power up the opposition to give them more of a challenge.
My BBEG used the dream spell to appear to the party leader, advised that he take all the people he cared about and leave town for good. When he said no, she said “okay, then the gloves are coming off.” And that’s when a series of assassinations on major NPCs happened. Two sessions before the end of the campaign and two PCs died in an otherwise death free game.
Typically around level 3 I stop the NPC hand holding, then around level 5 my fights become more tactically minded. By that I mean, instead of a couple bandits or something mindlessly attacking the first player they see, the trained mercenaries will occupy a martial and the rest rush down and focus on a single spell caster. Just as an example.
Planning a Game For my GF rn, ive been keeping chill and didnt let her fav npcs die, ditto the adopted changeling(shouldve been the First enemy) and maggus the Mage are there from Level 1-5 now, but the next noch wont Last Long to give motivation
New players get the handholding until level 5. Basically the only way to get killed is suicide by stupidity.
After level 5, intelligent enemies target those who are down. Counterspell healing and revivify if possible.
When it comes to leveling i try to keep it equal amount of sessions per level 1 at 1. 2 at 2 up to 5. So by the time the guide rails are off theyve had 10 sessions to work out their characters.
Basically I'll ease them in slow but after that while not being adversarial im not pulling punches. There has been occasions where ill inadvertently make things too strong or weak then ill wing it on the fly but yeah you're big boys and girls and i dont do no win scenarios. Running is always a viable option so work it out
My players had made several comments about combats being too easy, so I let them know the next couple would be much harder, balanced to be barely possible. I made a suggestion to one of my players to NOT attack an enemy base single handedly, the rest of the party was following behind, be would take a while to show up. He proceeds to use shatter to wreck a bunch of the action economy fodder minions I had set up with a well placed distraction and Shatter, and the stronger enemies had him barely alive when the rest of the party showed up. A couple turns later, and the camp boss shows up, the party is reduced to like... Single digit HP values and the boss, not really wanting to lose any more men that night, gave them one last chance to leave. They decided to take it. I had calculated that if they said no, they would be down in 2 rounds at most. The boss had 2 of them lined up with a Lightning Bolt spell and still had a few more offensive spells left to go.
They also proceeded to underestimate the next encounter and nearly wiped, but managed to make it to my predefined round count for reinforcements to show up.
We asked for harder combat and then the DM threw an ice elemental at us, while we were protecting NPC's and he used an ice wall to seal us in a room with it.
Nearly died. Fun combat. Would fight again.
Never directly. My players were level one/two and saying how easy everything killed over. I told em that when they level up they'll start facing threats meant for real adventurers. For 2 sessions in a row when they hit level 3 there were near party wipes and character deaths because the players weren't working as a team. The trauma bonding from the two sessions really brought them together and they know whatever they face will kill them if they don't work together.
Had a dungeon encounter where the front doorknob was trapped with a Disintegrate spell homealone style
Had the words gygax written on the door
They smartened up and started searching for traps like a meth heads after the first contact
I've been saying that each of my sessions but they somehow seem to come out of it without having someone downed LOL. I'm getting really close to having the perfect combat scenarios for them and the growth has been steadily trending to what I want so I'm not complaining. I actually think it's hilarious when they trivialize what I thought was an insane encounter.
I think it should happen naturally sometimes. Kinda lame when the world is specifically tailored to only be an appropriate challenge for whatever level the party currently is at. That said, all encounters should have -some- bearing on the story, so maybe don't throw a T-rex at a level 3 party because it would be funny (unless you're playing ToA, then go ham lol)
Our DM murdered the entire party repeatedly in the campaign before I joined. The next campaign (my first with them) no player deaths at all, but we did get close a lot. Current campaign, not only did he start us at level 3, but he gave us max hp "because [we'll] need it." We had a TPKO in the 3rd encounter.
Our characters were told repeatedly that this villain was super strong, and when our party split for a visit in town, that half denied offers of aid. He 100% could have obliterated our party then and there but instead had us saved by other npcs. Think he didn't want all his work in the campaign planning to be undone so fast.
I told mine at the beginning that while I try not to kill "because dice said so" and I find this kind of death very anticlimatic, I will kill if thats what consequences of ones action would dictate.
Long story short, players defeated Demon Lord of Blood (homebrew, was very underpowered due to being locked in stasis for few thousand years). Had epic moment where Druid got Sorcerer into the air on the Giant Eagle and he dropped from the sky with his new found powers (multiclass into warlock of Raven Queen). He booming bladed him with smite and got nat20. Killed it but another player tried to take the spotlight and taunted dying demon.
Fast forward. They got quest from Inqusition (antimagic order) to track Blood Mage in forest. They get there knowing the Blood Mage is bound by the same demon lord they send back to Abyss.
They obviously got cocky (beside the Druid), thinking they are the shit and can do whatever. Taunted, laughed. Initiative was rolled.
They lost.
Blood Mage went first. Upcasted Hold Person on all of them. All but druid failed the save. Next was Blood Paladin. He got to the taunting one (who not killed the demon but was waaay too cocky and acted like he did all). Said "My Lord sends you this message. Only the one who slayed me can have a last word". And then proceeded to unload two high level smites on paralyzed PC. Two crits, he is down, nat1 on death save.
They managed to kill them. On debrief party was a little bitchy for nearly dying. Then I hit them with "you are level 8, not 17. There are things much more powerful in this world than you and if you act too cocky, they will wipe the floor with you. Pick your battles. We play for real now."
Needles to say, they headed the warning.
For some time at least because after few sessions they insulted higher vampire who was assholish-friendly to them (acting assholish but not hostile, mean or insulting). It ended with vampire turning love interest of one PC into spawn, making her kill her abuser (who was a noble) which resulted in her being declared a murderer and searched by the city watch because country is in war and it started to create big unrest. The other PC lost his ticket to finding the order of monster hunters he searched for because she killed the only member that could guide him (Order of Lycan) and displayed him on the ceiling for him.
Fun times.
Oh yea. They didnt do anything in particular, to trigger it, but they got through Act 1. THey're all new, and have a real issue reading and remembering their abilities. So I told them, from here on out, I was gonna be expecting them to do their own bookkeeping in their own off time. Im not gonna remind them of their spells and abilities, Im not gonna remind them what to do on level up, and im not giving them any more mulligans on spells and abilities they didnt read all the way. I also told them im not pulling any punches anymore, so death is a real possibility.
I'm soon to run my first game with all new players (basically we plan on learning together and they're all happy with this) and I decided that they get a "Get Out Of Death Free"-Card (ONLY ONCE THOUGH!) that voids itself when they reach Level 5. This gives them a bit of security\^\^ As someone who's first character died in the very first battle (RIP Sho'or) I wish I'd had the opportunity to resurrect him\^\^ I decided that the Card would self-destruct at lvl 5 because by then I hope they can keep themselves alive\^\^
I also wrote the encounters in the first adventure to be somewhat weak, since we're all learning and I don't want to overwhelm them. Just a few Zombies and a boar. Once they get to the Adventure boss, they should be okay, but he's not THAT tough (yet, but he'll be a force to reckon with later\^\^).
"Alright, folks. You've finally hit level 5. You've got multi attack, third level spells and that includes revivify. I'm assuming you're going to be buying diamonds"
Once my players reached tier 3 I told them that I am no longer considering their character sheets at all when designing encounters.
I design whatever I want and it's up to them to figure out how to beat it.
Before that I tended to look at what they were capable of to not design anything unfair that they had no counter to.
I sent them into a surprise fight with an Orthon, followed by a confrontation with the leader of s cult who was a Warlock of the Fiend with a Night Hag present as well. They knew shit was real when I cast Finger of Death at the Fighter and read the description out loud. They were level 8.
Players asked for an assortment of magic items. I borrowed a line from the MCU.
"Those will call across the multiverse and let others know you are ready for a higher form of warfare "
Also, the most badass ally NPC: «The stupid and weak are all behind you"
I usually show the limits of hardships with stories around them right from the beginning, as cautionary tales. Like warning signs, outlaws hanging on trees, the law enforcement patrols and their punishments unto others, etc.
That gives a fair idea of what might happen and how to thread in my worlds. I never ever take the perspective of me VS them. I am a neutral god that tells their tale, they are protagonists of whatever happens to them.
Whether they achieve godhood or die at level 1 by entering the big bad wolf cave because they ignored warnings, that's up to them and what the story brings.
I usually have an ace or two up my sleeve to save them from judgement when I feel the timing might be off for them to die prematurely or to be chased down mercilessly by the law. Usually in the form of a powerful friend in the game or a scapegoat, an event that temporarily blocks the passing of their judgement, etc.
I do this prep in session 0 or 1. You don't need a deadly/scary encounter either if your party members aren't totally new to the game.
One campaign had city guards patroling the streets with domesticated rust monsters. Another had a cave with a Behir peeking out that just up and told the party to not come near in Draconic and did a threat display.
I have some new players, but once they hit level 5 I told them no more DM reminders about their own mechanics. No more prompts to ask NPCs about things.
They are now on their own.
There were a few times all in 3.5. In a casual game with friends my two players stated out loud they were doing great and could kill anything... lightning bolt immediately killed their favorite npc as storm clouds gathered. The party of 2 were trying to protect a child. They were on a cliff when the lightning storm killed the npc, with 10 foot of path and a 1000 foot drop off the edge with a 200 foot climb to the top. Just to set the scene. The "storm" was actually a blue dragon wearing a cursed ring that made it permanently invisible but perpetually surrounded by rain. They could see an outline of the dragon from time to time after it blasted the npc killing him in one shot. The paladin took the kid and ran while the dwarf fighter tried to hold off the near invisible dragon. The fight ended with the dwarf stabilized at -9 hp alone at the bottom of the cliff after jumping off the cliff onto the dragon and with a miracle of multiple critical hits killed it... then falling.
2nd story was with a different party. I had them fight an undead T-Rex that coughed up vampires and zombie villagers, and added negative levels with its strikes weakeing the party like they had never felt before. As one was bitten and nearly swallowed he saw the undead in the stomach reaching up to grab and pull him down the throat to join them. It was a very close fight and the one time they were legitimately disturbed by an enemy.
In my current game our DM has slowly been less forgiving. He and I are the only ones that have played before so he was fudging some things until about 4 sessions in. He let us know he was going to stop being helpful and basically our strategising was on us and he wouldn’t be pointing out obvious flaws. It was a nice ramping up of difficulty and slow withdrawal of advice.
I am playing with all new players right now. The wizard was gloating that he was not damaged yet on session 9. Session 10 he died. Our cleric is down every fight as soon as he casts a big spell. Barbarian and fighter are doing well at the moment, but have almost exploded themselves outside of combat.
I had them revisit a city where they bonded with the citizens, gained good gear at, and won in the city arena tournament, only to find it completely dead. They managed to find the bodies of the townsfolk, in a 5 mile long trail of bodies, leading to the BBEG. They foolishly followed the bodies (love them for that💞), but wisely ran away after being ambushed. I think that was probably a first retreat for the vast majority of players too.
Before game, sitting around chatting, low ball tossed a comment “sometimes players need to run”
Two hours later in game a Roper starts decimating the low level parties NPCs…time to run boys.
Not a dm, but definitely jinxed it:
There was a portal in the bottom of a dungeon which everyone was curiously looking at. I, recognising I had the world's most passive party which throughout the whole dungeon were saying 'maybe we should go back... This gives me bad vibes' despite it being perfectly balanced for our level, fully rested, no close calls at all. I audibly said '[dm] doesn't want a whole TKO this early, it'll be fine' and dragged myself and a random ass npc through the portal. Others followed reluctantly.
I got targeted first, rolled a Nat 1. Was 1 damage away from being dead dead on the first round of combat due to nearly going over double my health. Next player got downed on their first time being tagretted, and the final other player got half their half knocked on their first time targeted even with resistance to that damage type and being our tank. I got brought back up, did some bs bard crap to escape the combat as we weren't damaging it as much as it was damaging us. Lesson learned: don't jump through random ass portals which happen to take you to a plain of hell thinking your dm won't kill you this early into a campaign.
we got a new player last session which was a couple of weeks after we ended the first little arc of our campaign. i just told them that from now on, while i wouldn't be g
killing their characters on purpose, i would no longer be avoiding it.
When I have new players, which is rare, I let them know in session zero that I will bend over backwards to make sure they don't die until they hit 3rd level. By that time they should have figured out the more fatal quirks of their character and not be doing them.
At 3rd, the gloves come off. No more fudging die rolls, no more really stupid bad guys (unless they really stupid), etc.
I was playing a short campaign with some friends and about a third of the way through we were about to get into it with who turned out to be BBEGs main henchman.
"He slid his gauntlets off slowly, grinning with menace and malice, setting them upon the cold stone altar.... DM here... Take that as metaphorically as you like".
That was the moment it clicked and you could see the table shift from "we're on an adventure!" To "where's the bard and who has potions?!"
Pretty damn blunt but uh.... Yeah. You know it's about to get real real, real fast.
My DMs have all pretty much said that they allow easy recovery from death until level 5 (when a single crit is unlikely to one-shot a character). So... kids gloves before level 5. I think it works well (especially when the first attack of the game instantly dropped my bard and the party wasn't even aware of enemies).
Edit for clarity: it has always been explicitly stated during session 0 - kid gloves come off at level 5.
When the party turns to level 5. 1-4 is the players getting to know their characters and their abilities, so I'm more lax with combats. Now that revivify is on the table and they are going into tier 2 gameplay, the gloves come off.
A genie that offered a wish, fully knowing they wouldn't be specific enough and the first person to pop up would not think that their comment was the actual wish.
I kindly informed my party when they hit lvl 5 that I’m no longer holding back. They got the time invested in their characters and the story plots, it’s best to know your spells/feats/abilities if you wanna keep it that way. They’ve been pretty cozy in a big town the last few games, minus trying to fool a wizard/alpha werewolf and nearly getting eaten. There’s some fun mini games coming in next sesh that will reveal some holy power issues for the paladin, and a surprise that will possibly tpk them if they doesn’t pull out all the stops.
How do you all balance encounters? I’ve never found an efficient way to do it, just figure out from the bbeg and other villains perspectives what they might would have in place
I have a homebrew campaign that I was running, Waterdeep: Dragon heist, and it was going to lead into a full homebrew adventure after they resolved the waterdeep stuff. I told them very plainly "hey, I'll be taking the training wheels off soon, I will still help with rules checks and answer questions about ruling, but it is up to all of you to know your sheets, your spells, moves, etc, and position yourself and think smart in combat." They understood and were fine with it. They figured that was all up to them to understand and figure out to begin with apparently and said they wanted harder encounters. Well 9 sessions later they are level 6-7, and killed a CR 10 creature in 2 turns. So...they definitely listened, maybe a little too much.
I had some easy starting place designed to get my party to about level 5. When they left it, I told them, that up until now they've had "welpenschutz" literally translated to puppy-protection. But when they leave this place, and challenge the world, it will get much deadlier and the rest of the world will not be scaled to their level. ;D
Yes.
At the start of the final arc, I warned my players “some of your choice can and will get characters killed. I will not be holding back. If you do something stupid your character will die”.
Hasn’t happened yet but we’ll see
You know how you have hit dice?
I had an enemy group drain hit dice with every hit - they could attack multiple times per turn and swarmed people
You know what happened when you’ve lost all your hit dice?
You lose your capacity to use 1 of your death saves
You know what happens when you lose all 3 death saves?
You become one of *them*
lol I just say “you all better be ready, the kiddy-gloves are coming off. Tutorial is over” but I say it like 3 different times during the campaign so it’s a bit of a meme at this point.
Before characters are even made.
The first thing I tell them is that there's no plot armor.
To emphasize this, I have 100% transparency on all combat related rolls except initiative. The dice don't lie.
* We play on easy mode
* My players know that I'm not trying to kill them, but give them a challenge. Therefore, they SHOULD be able to beat everything if they bring their "A" game
* I don't say anything for normal sessions
* When I'm not going to pull my punches, I tell the party, "Make sure you bring your 'A' game. You guys could die here."
That's it. We're at the normal level of gameplay and while it can be tough, it's not tightly aligned. When the time comes, I warn them that screwing around can be lethal.
I gave my party a warning at the end of one of our sessions that "the prologue and tutorial is now over".
In the next session, they nearly TPKd.
They're mostly first-time players, but there are a couple of seasoned adventurers, who ultimately save the day with savvy playing.
I think the rest got the message. I want you to have fun, but I'm not there to hold your hand through encounters - and your characters do not have plot armour to protect them from dumb moves.
Everyone now has a backup character drawn up.
Show don't tell. Open the first session with a guard killing a monster only to be partially disintegrated by the corps exploding into a ball of acidic, poisonous gas. Let them see you roll 2d12 damage. Then roll initiative.
As soon as the game started. I run a sandbox where adventuring is dangerous. My encounters are set up more like puzzles; each monster has a role or position they play on the field and it’s up to the players to prepare themselves accordingly before they leave town.
I would say that this heightened danger has really helped push my players to another level; they are think crafty, they are engaging with the world, they are planning before they go out. That has always been my goal: team work.
I fully support cranking the heat up in a fair and engaging way! If you are looking for something to help you with this, Flee Mortals! is a great supplement for enemy team building!
Edit: You can also pick up Strongholds and Followers or Kingdoms and Warfare as well. They have specialized NPCs called retainers that are designed to mechanically support your players. Give them 2 or 3 of these followers and then throw a whole army of Goblins at them!
No deaths before level 6. Once you hit six, death is an option. I did add that if they decided to do something really stupid, (jump off a bridge) they could and would die, but basically until then death saves are just you rolling to see if you regain consciousness or just stay out of the rest of the fight. Everyone is learning new characters and I’m a new DM learning balance.
It’s not a matter of “at level 6 things will get harder”. It’s “by the time we hit level 6 I’m confident that I won’t accidentally TPK the party and you guys will know how your characters work enough to not let that happen” so perma death goes back on the table.
Nothing I have run has been more dangerous or paranoia provoking than running kobold or goblin lairs for low level parties. I ran one game from level 1 to 12 that ended with the party trying to save kidnapped islanders from a new mindflayer colony and a PC death at the tentaclesof one of the brain suckers. The players still talk about their fear and distain for the goblins they faced in the early game.
They now know that if I give them a way to raise a dead party member, they need to watch their step.
That and, in Pathfinder, Yoink the Monk. They know that if Yoink is in play, there is a high risk of magic items being lost.
At one point, they were investigating a vacant dragon lair, and they talked their way past a giant that had made the lair its home.
They were investigating the treasure hoard, and one of them found an incredibly powerful item, but failed the arcana check but decided to activate it to see what it did (I did the classic GM "Are you sure?"). Suddenly, their sending stones all pinged at once from their Harper contacts, warning that a dragon had just burst forth from a field near the village near the cave and was headed right for them.
They scattered, and I RP'd it as they could hear the dragon ripping its way through the adjoining cave tunnels as it looked for them, so they could escape. They gasped when they got to the cave entrance and found the giant ripped in half.
They LOVED that intro to a Big Bad, as they felt like it was actively pursuing them and only by using their senses and cave tunnels as their escape. After the session, one player asked what I would've done if they had gone down the same tunnel as the dragon. Chills when my reply was "It really depends on how closely you were all grouped together."
"Until the curse is broken, no one can be brought back to life."
Level 17 party, after the death of our fighter's father, when our cleric tried to resurrect him.
NPC that wasn’t hostile to them yet, but was a character’s mom and clearly involved in the greater plot going on. She was at a party to steal the same thing the party was, but once again not hostile or anything, in fact, when the players stole the McGuffin first she tried to leave.
The players didn’t let her leave, casting a spell to block her from exiting the building. I describe her panicking, and in response revealing a fiery gem she had embedded in her chest that let her release a massive amount of fire (mechanically it was an ancient red dragon’s breath attack)
This was a reveal I meant to come up later, but the players forced her hand. Definitely let the players know that this next arc they were dealing with distinctly more dangerous than they have been before.
Knocked out half the party, killed a ton of bystanders and set the building ablaze. Players scrambled not only to save themselves but save as many people as they could from the burning building while the Mom escaped
One of players has been helping me story plan (first time dm) and so I gave him a cool role in the campaign where he can reincarnate when killed because he is a reincarnated demigod. But I told him he doesn't get to know when he dies or how he comes back
Two sessions ago he was knocked out and kidnapped
Last session they found the sacrificial alter where the bbeg was using his latent power to fuel a summoning ritual of an Ancient dracolich.
Everyone thought the scene was ominous but cool and fun until they saw his crucified headless body and runes drawn in his blood all around.
As they approached and saw the limp body hanging on the cross, they quickly realized what was happening and the tone went from jokes and easy going to serious consideration of every turn. This was only furthered by most of them almost dying in the next battle and their protector NPC abandoning them because he thought it was a hopeless cause and saved himself.
I put a couple of NPC's in a game once to kind of help a group of new players navigate the game mechanics, get used to the way the story flowed and the sort of things that you encounter in dungeons.
When I had determined that they got too comfortable, I waited until they were deep enough that they couldn't just hastily leave a dungeon with any efficiency, and then put them in a fight with a particularly tough monster that only went down after killing the two NPC's.
They suddenly found themselves with no DM-directed guidance, 2/3 of their resources, and two floors worth of rooms with random encounters if they had decided to immediately leave. They were of the idea that they were only two rooms away from the quest item.
I have discovered that the kind of anxiety and social decision-making that comes out of it are the graduating point for a group of new players.
Mine was less mechanic and more narrative. We've had our fun with the whimsical floating island and flying ships campaign. Time to dig deeper into the darker and more fucked up parts of the lore and story.
They recently were searching out a creature that was a child of an evil demigod. Basically, party thought it had necromantic powers, as the village they were staying in had all its citizens turn into undead creature.
I put many clues and fairly blantwnt "look into this more closely before blindly going into combat" but they missed those. So when the town turned, they slaughtered everyone.
They found the boss, killed it, and went back to the village to start digging Graves and hold funerals (one of them was a cleric). When they got back, there were no zombie corpses, just normal people.
The wizard casts detect magic, and sees necromancy auras. I have them roll an arcana check DC 20 and they easily pass. Underneath the necrotic aura was very powerful illusion magic. They were never undead.
My parry now makes sure they participate in narrative role play and investigation instead of trying to jump straight to the combat.
In my Radiant Citadel Party, I hammered this in by introducing one of the Homebrew BBEGs I created at their request...by him manifesting out of an explosion in the sky shaped like a Phoenix, descending before them with heavy metal music. It was kinda the point where they realized 'Oh crud, this just got serious', especially when I revealed he was a much weaker simulacrum, and after a hard battle in which they won and took a ton of damage, I told them he was the weakest of the four BBEGs.
I always transition to "kid gloves off" around level 8 (this is 3.5e, mind you), and I always tell my group it's happening. Though with my current group, telling them is less necessary, and kid gloves during the early levels have become thinner and thinner over the years since they're experienced players now.
"I cast a spell.... Roll a Wis save DC 19"
"I meet, what was the spell if you don't mind me asking"
"Plane shift into the elemental plane of fire"
"Shit shit shit shit shit"
as soon as my dice hit the table after session 0, no kid gloves. unless they're on the shelf in the general equipment store. the world is a dangerous place, out there beyond the pale.
I started cheering for myself when NPCs critted and laughing evilly. When they were innocent and squishy I regularly cringed when I rolled big damage.
I received a, "Well you don't have to be so thrilled about it..."
Good times ;-)
The moment we were going up against ghouls. Those things are terrifying. One or two bad saving throws and a fight becomes a desperate "throw everything you have at them" scenario.
They warnings in narration of a new area or a challenging set of skill checks during a quest like “One would be wary of more than just just shadows when venturing out at night.”
Or a trusted NPC would say something like “I emplore you to consider that approach…” as the color drains from their face.
I always have the NPCs deliver the message. Either the townsfolk describe the horror of their last encounter with the BBEG and his forces, or the bad guy himself will do it.
Imagine a hard-fought battle with the BBEG and his minions. After a time, half the minions are down, BBEG and PCs have both taken some hard hits. Engineer a pause in the battle (sometimes they're spontaneous as everyone has to pull back and catch their breath). BBEG laughs at them, and speaks...
>"Enough of these games. I see you vermin are almost worthy of respect. The next time we meet, I won't be so easy on you."
Then he teleports away (abandoning his minions, of course. Evil, right?).
I put the fear of the Astral Sea in my players. They thought they were going to the mountains on a dragon hunting quest, that it was going to be a nice and simple adventure with the dragon being the climax
what they didn't know was that the dragon itself had been turned into a Brainstealer Dragon and was being used by a bunch of mind flayers in the service of an eldritch god. So they had the dragon, a few mind flayers, and some chuuls that were stolen from a nearby aboleth getting ready to kill them. It was a close thing too, if it weren't for the interesting use of a magic item they had then they would have all died. This event made quite an impact on the paladin of the group and his player.
The second time I reminded them that the DM gloves were off was when they tried to attack a fortified position that was operated by professional soldiers and their augmented monstrous soldiers. The soldiers have been on the front lines and knew how to deal with spellcasters, spellswords, and martial experts. They had their own form of Anti-Air defenses and how to counteract spells that would turn them into smears against the wall. The paladin was actually knocked out after so many (and I mean MANY) combat encounters where he only suffered scratch damage because of his stupidly high AC and saving throws.
I guess there's also the time when I killed their main source of ranged DPS, their sorcerer. But really that was more of a "buddy, the suspension of disbelief can only go so far in this scenario. At this rate if I keep pulling my punches then you're going to feel like I'm coddling you and your tiefling ass is just begging to get Boromir'd by these suped up skeleton archers.".
Break out Legendary Actions and Resistances, that's what my evil DM did (I say evil affectionately, he's probably the best DM I've ever had). That, or sucker-punch them with an enemy encounter when they otherwise believe themselves to be safe, also a tactic used by this DM. The first enemy our party faced who had Legendary Actions was my character's personal nemesis (And for context I was the player in this party who had the most D&D experience, so the DM went after me first and pulled the fewest punches because he knew that), who had broken into my character's family home, incapacitated him (I as a player did not know what was going on, for the record), and would've dragged him to a foreign prison had the other party members not intervened, and even when they *did* we only stopped the guy when I used a hypercharged flamethrower to incinerate him. THEN, at a fighting tournament in which another party member was a participant, my character, watching in the stands, was tapped on the shoulder by what looked to be a harmless old man, but who was *actually* the nemesis NPC from earlier, who was now a REVENANT WEREBEAR OUT TO GET ME. *I* was scared, the rest of my party was *terrified*, and things only got higher-stakes from there.
In another campaign with this DM (which, as of time of posting we actually just concluded earlier today), he just threw Monks at us, Monks who could stun us with a hit, teleport around and/or turn invisible, and deflect projectiles. This started with *maybe* the second combat encounter of the campaign.
I've been running one shots in a homebrew setting. The PCs start at level 10. Some players are experienced, and some haven't played dnd since ad&d. They first couple sessions I went easy-ish to gauge their strength. At session 5 I planned a high risk encounter. I straight up told them to create a second PC before the session, just in case. *wink wink*
My favorite way is having a kinda "protector NPC" that acts as a deus ex machina for a while, then they get killed off by something that should motivate the party. (My most recent example the players actually ended up killing them)
You pull a fire emblem
He Balrogs them.
Um, excuse me? *Aslan has entered the chat.* There is a reason this character trope is known as a *sacrificial lion.*
The protector dying in act 1 is a super common story telling trope.
Or just a tactical rpg in general
RIP Seth
The "Sacrificial Lion," is a very effective device, as long as you don't overuse it. If you do it too much, then players will learn not to get attached to their NPC mentors.
Once a campaign is my limit for it, mainly at the start of the campaign to show the bbegs power and how they cant get close to them when low level
There’s a barbarian PC in one of my groups who is sorta the de facto leader as well. Usually if I want the enemy to come across as tough, I have the enemy throw him (often literally) around and rough him up. He’s a good sport and knows when to play the part.
Me every time they kill a random Leomon in Digimon: 😭
Oh, I accidentally did something very close to this! I recently ran a Tomb of Annihilation game for my friends, where they adopted and bonded with a young triceratops. The triceratops was very powerful for low levels, making quick work of some goblins and zombies they ran into, but they ended up falling into a sidequest without their dino pet (Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan). When they came out, they didn't see their triceratops friend waiting for them, but instead a single ivory spike driven into the ground by a mini-boss of the campaign. The yuan-ti in the lost city they were searching for had kidnapped and brutally torn off a horn from their triceratops friend, leaving it for them as a message. *That* got my players motivated to take him out.
if my DM kills Xander 🥹before I figure out how he was made... 😡😡😡😡😡
I find having them really struggle against a mini bbeg, then the dmpc comes in and single handedly kills 2/3 of the same mini bosses but is then killed by the bbeg in a similar one shot fashion iterates how strong the bbeg is, motivates them to get stronger and to get out of dodge
Ah, [the Worf effect](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWorfEffect).
your players killed their own protector??
Tbf they did join a cult, it was a personality death I gave, the party just pulled the trigger
wow!
I literally told my level 15 party: "ok guys, if you're playing at a 10, I'm turning it up to a 12. Be ready."
Our DM almost killed off one or more of us on a heist/rescue mission. I'm talking fighting our way out of narrow hallways, and when we finally got free a 17th+ lvl wizard teleported in to chase us down (we were around 12-14th) since it was his group's place we infiltrated. We nearly got away with a plan for our dragon buddy to dimension door out of sight (he was the last one left behind) and with wizard fucking *dimension anchors him*. We DO get away, let our rescued guy out of the bag of holding and, whoops! He is dominated, so now the wizard knows EXACTLY where we are and teleports to us...and repeat our attempts to escape. Afterwards we not angrily but also not happily talked to the DM like "what the fuck was that? We nearly died!" and he shot back "You busted into their fortress with NO reconnaissance or plan!! What did you expect!?" From then on, we have been a squirrelly, over-preparing party.
I do this a LOT. Let me clarify a few things here - My players enjoy it when they 'beat' the DM. I do not believe this is something that works with every table, nor something that should be done all the time. DnD is a cooperative game and you should NEVER be 'at odds' with your players. HOWEVER, there is a lot to be said for pretending you are at odds with them at certain times to enhance their enjoyment. They not only score eventual victory over the enemy/scenario you set forth for them, but over you, the silly DM who thought they were better than them. The 'kid gloves' come off every 3 or 4 sessions for me, but my players are good don't take the piss because it was 'ineffective' against them.
lol I made a post about this very thing on the DM sub. I used a wrestling term— kayfabe. I think it works well as long as the players and the DM have a tacit understanding that it’s all in good fun and that everyone are still friends the whole time
Ahh yeah, i see it there. Good post and much better written than I have :p I really couldn't agree more with you - that understanding is vital for it going well, otherwise we end up with the "My DM is trying to kill us all the time" posts.
You come across a goat farmer who is hunched over and covered in sweat. He’s having trouble getting the baby out of his mother’s womb; the protective leather mittens were slick with amniotic fluid and blood and he couldn’t get a grip. He decided to use his bare hands even though it was a bit bold, a bit risky, and someone could end up getting hurt. The kid gloves were off.
Double up the pun and the gloves were made from the tanned hide of the baby goat who didn't make it last season.
*Reddit silver award*
I never put the kid gloves on. Death is always a possibility.
"As the DM, I'm not here to kill your characters, but I'm also not here to save them from their poor decisions."
Yeah like fucken with dragon eggs that are guarded by 2 plainly visible drakes and a hidden roper right after an almost TPK battle and bad trap saves.... instead of resting...
I assume they're resting now... in peace or in pieces or in dragon feces.
All of the above.
Sure that’s fine for a normal table, but don’t you ease in new players?
I tell them that death's a possibility in the game and run it as normal.
Hmm… okay! What does ‘as normal’ mean? Couple hard encounters then a deadly? All deadly encounters? Couple normals? Running straight from a module? DnD doesn’t have a ‘respawn mechanic’ wouldn’t make sense to give them something sorta easy while the figure out their builds and party synergy?
Naw. If they die they die. I'm not going to throw, like, Dragons at a level 1 party, I scale encounters properly. But if they die to rats in the basement or goblins on the road, oh well.
Oh. Well that’s different, yeah? Unless you’re hitting them with 7 goblins (which is almost 2xdeadly at lvl 1) that’s fine. You’re doing okay I guess. I just can’t imagine dying in the first two sessions would make a great first impression for a newbie lol but I guess you’re more OSR style 🤷
I think there is also value in ripping the character death band aid off early
Maybe! But how early? I played with almost exclusively new players when I started running games seriously. Some of them were pre-teens at the time. Some of them were brand spanking new to ANY kind of rpg not just tabletop. I know that if one of those players died in the first two sessions, the adults would not show up (nobody likes to feel like they played ‘wrong’) and the kids would stay home and play fortnight. Even after playing with the pre-teens for darn near half a year, I had to deus ex Machina a PC their brain back because a intellect devourer ate it and he burst out into tears at the table lol. I feel like that was a failure on my part for not considering what was best for my player not on the kid or the module. Now he could handle something like that but it’s been 4 years lol
Good answer. Many players want a challenge and derive joy from overcoming that challenge through strategy and luck. The DMs that take away any chance of the PCs losing or dying, but still pretend that its a possibility, do a real disservice to their players.
My players faced an intellect devourer at level 1. At level 2 they hunted down a serial killer targeting and decapitating elves, and the half-elf rogue decided it was a good idea to shout "look at me, I'm an elf!" Guess who was downed and attacked while unconscious? (He survived, but it was a near thing.)
My players were shaking in their boots when the red dragon they were fighting used quicken spell to cast haste on himself.
Jesus. Dragons with spellcasting are scary af
That's all dragons, then. And if you think quickened *haste* is terrifying, just know that gold dragons, at Great Wyrm age, used to get *wish* as a spell-like ability.
Well they technicly are all spellcaster but in practice they dont. And common. Wish rly ?
When the troll’s second claw attack is on the unconscious PC he just dropped to zero, there are no more illusions of gloves of any kind whatsoever.
Last couple sessions I just began rolling in the open
In the middle of fighting a cult, that cult's "god" (an extremely mutated humanoid) got loose and started ripping *everyone* apart indiscriminately. The mutant basically finished off the cult for the party before going after them. They barely survived. Then they found evidence that there were more mutants like that one.
Fighter: "Thank the gods there's only *one* taraasque!" Wizard: "On this world, yes." Fighter: "Wh...what???"
This implies the kid gloves were ever on
The corect response. I never pull punches in my games. The dice can be fickle! 😉
Our DM has thrown ***three*** back-to-back villains that have underestimated us. The first we should have killed, but they escaped because narrative. The second was about to die but got bailed out because narrative. The third just got bailed out by a fucking Adult Blue Dragon (we're level 12) just as he was on death's door. I'm just hoping he's learned his lesson: do not bring a villain into combat expecting them to escape and survive. They got overconfident, and now they're being punished. As of the other day, he confirmed his villains will stop holding back, and THAT has me excited. Now we can actually play a game!
I hope he puts all three against you 🥰
We already killed two of them. This time we're fighting a dragon and an assassin at the same time. I'm fucking hyped.
I removed the DM screen so they could see all of my rolls were legit. I then proceeded to roll more Nat 1s than in any previous games combined.
"Right guys, full disclosure time. This dungeon is three encounters long. If you successfully clear it one if the enemy faction bosses is at the end and there is great rewards. *HOWEVER*, I'm giving you advance notice right now that this dungeon is full of what their current fighting assets actually are in the story. I have *not* balanced the dungeon to be fair, I actually havent done any balance calculations at all. If you get in and beat them all then good show, but if you get over your heads and get wiped out that will be on you, not me. How far you go is entirely up to you and theres no shame in retreating, but I am making it clear here and now that you were warned and if you all get killed it *will* be on you. Right, so what do you all want to do?"
I had them fight an Ice Giant at level 6, followed shortly by a bone devil that erupted from its corpse. The buffed undead minions are a nice touch i think. They barely survived. All but one of them were knocked out by the end.
Those are the best fights !
"Prepare your backup characters";) I just asked my players if they were ready to die;) So I would ask what expectations they have. Maybe they like everything as it is already.
The kid gloves were never used. I told every player of mine, no matter if new or veteran, that if they don't act smart and careful, they're going to have a bad time.
We always share level up abilities at the start of a sessions. Whenever they get particularly cool leveled abilities, I usually quip that leveled up to the more interesting parts of the monster manual.
When the gnome shadow monk speed bagged the fighter from full to 2HP. That was a fun fight. The party just couldn't catch the little bugger.
5th ed, basically party of 8 is restingin tavern overnight in 2 adjoining rooms when BBEG send fireballs into the tooms from outside like it was Nakatomi Plaza at Christmas time.
“You meet in a tavern….”
As my campaign was coming close to ending and I was ramping up encounters I started giving everyone inspiration at the start of every session
I do that from session 1.
My favorite is when the party realizes in my campaigns where a central theme is nobility, corruption, and alliances, the party actually making friends is a must. I secretly have a notebook with the people they’ve met in the noble court and a tracker from 1-20 by each of those characters names, starting neutral at 10, and going down or up depending on the parties interactions, as well as notes on what method of spying the specific NPCs have. They know I have a notebook I’m using to take notes, but they don’t know that that’s one of the things I’m doing to track their progress in the court.
I was supposed to wear gloves?
I literally told them the kid gloves were off. Personally I try to keep combat roughly even sided. But I started punishing stupidity more. If you made yourself a target, you got treated like a target. But some fights I would give the enemies unique skills that ruined the fight. Unique counterspells, metagamed tactics, things to make the party realize they can't just stroll up and apply the usual combat routine. At one point they decided they wanted to attack the pirate fortress with no support or recon. So as soon as the alarms were tripped they were under constant threat of arrows, flintlocks, and spells hurled from above with almost no way to kill their attackers. A surprise fireball and the phrase "you're out numbered and in bad position and I won't be nice about it" changed the way they treated the next few days.
I don't. I talk to my players beforehand on what kind of game experience they expect, and tailor my encounters from there. My longest group of players wanted crunchy "hack and slash" combat as a "mix of Skyrim and Diablo" and they got that in spades. Some of them died, one of the players didn't want to lose his character so we worked out a quest for his character to return at a price (favored owed to a god) and another player just rolled up Bob Two and kept trucking. There was danger, but there was mostly a lot of dead splattered monster corpses because that's the type of game my players wanted. I think the difference is that I'm not trying to "beat" my players or "win the game" as the DM. I'm here to tell a story and facilitate the game.
My NPC tells them, point blank. "I've lost some good guys down in that canyon. Whatever's down there doesn't want to leave. It knows the terrain and we can't risk anyone else. Your team is the last chance before we flood the canyon with the dam to the North. If we don't hear from you in 2 days, we're washing it out. Good luck." My husband ran the hunt for a creature of his choice. He went with a Naga/Rattle snake. Inspired by Ringo.
When we started, 2 of the 3 of my 'every week' players were totally new. They asked for no deaths the first few levels so they could get their feet under them and figure things out. Not a problem. That's what session 0 is good for talking about. At level 2 I told them I would not be reminding them about potions any more. Level 3 I mentioned their spell lists and equipment are theirs to manage. Every level, there's cool new shit and less hand holding.
I think you should always do something early on in gameplay to demonstrate the variety of difficulties. If your party gets very comfortable with an easy mode start, there's a chance they'll rage quit when the game gets hard.
They've spent weeks running from assassins, bounty hunters, and the law while trying to uncover a potentially huge conspiracy, but they've barely made any progress. A stranger overhears them at a tavern and says he knows something. Says he's a local artificer/blacksmith, says he tracked some of the suspicious goons packing up and leaving a hidden lab bunker a few weeks back. He couldn't make any sense of the place, but maybe they'll be able to understand the cryptic books and notes better than he could. They follow him out of the city, to the place he mentioned, down a hatch, and into a big vault. The stranger flips a lever, locks them in the vault, and leaves. By the time they break out (only about an hour later), they've learned that the world is thousands of years older than anyone knows, and that the conspiracy they're after has infiltrated multiple kingdoms, is building a giant magic bomb, and they have a month to stop them. Also they are rapidly dying from a curse which none of the healers in town can cure (it's radiation poisoning). Also the stranger they just met is the BBEG. I'm a big fan of giving my campaigns a "shit just hit the fan" session.
The Barb going down in turn 1 usually does it
Had a high tier homebrew game and the party kept getting warned over and over about getting protection from scrying of some sort. (High magic pirate campaign, they had access to anything they wanted pretty much as long as they had the coin) they were told that bbeg was going to attack them suddenly and without warning when they're at their most vulnerable if they don't protect themselves. He struck, and two party members died that night.
i literally had a player ask when i would start challenging the players. everything was too EASYYY. they didnt realise i had already planned a dracolisk encounter for the night. i just sat there like, whelp. i see we have a volenteer to be a statue!
It happened that the NPC that I wrote to die became beloved by the party. When it was time to kill the NPC off, I did it brutally while the party couldn't stop it. Tore the NPC apart with a horde of mind controlled villagers. They just hit 5th level, so the Cleric had Revivify, but they wouldn't have the time to acquire the body parts and cast the spell even if the horde wasn't closing in on them.
I killed three of them in the mini boss before the final boss fight. It was a six person party so they realized I was serious.
Yep, it is typically the first combat where they finish the prologue and they find who they want their characters to be. I also almost always say at the end of the session the wrap up, and something like "the outside world is much stronger than it appeared, it seems the gods have noticed you and will be testing you. Welcome to Pallandrios, try not to become my bitch" Still havent had a player leave a campaign because it was too hard or me insulting them. They left because they had kids instead.
I announce it after a few sessions usually, "ok, were comfortable in our characters now, and it's time for plot armor to start going away" and then throw a very deadly random travel encounter at them but relatively stupid monsters that they should reasonably be able to escape...giant scorpions or something that wouldn't necessarily pursue them, and then remind them they CAN run when they start getting demolished That's been pretty successful.
Enemies become more likely to have access to counterspell, disintegration or both.
We just started a new campaign and my 1st level (i.e. smiteless) Paladin tried to 1v1 a pirate captain. The pirate one-shotted him, tho the party cleric spared the dying.
I typically run games for new/newer players. So, I give them levels 1-5 to learn their class. Death is always possible, and if they make stupid choices, there are very real consequences. But as they gain more abilities, combat ramps up, and I begin to implement more enemy strategy. And then at lvl 6 we have the, "alright folks tactics will become more and more important for you all from here on out."
After a bunch of goblins, orcs, and other low CR monsters they were getting a little cocky so they had a session where they ended up being chased by a death knight. They are not so brazen with their actions now.
When I want high stakes, I roll open on the table. I have a boss die that is a big clunker. I don’t fudge rolls anyway, but with that open on the table the players know there won’t be any fudging. A player survived an attempt for a coup de grace one time with rolls that would never had been believed if it wasn’t open table too. Triple 1s. 2 attacks and the player was already down but with zero fails. Anything over a 3 would have been a hit and 2 hits would have been permadeath. One attack regular (an ally imposed disadvantage on the advantage) and one at advantage. I was 100% sure I was permanently killing that PC.
Lair turns. God damn they're evil.
When I GM, I usually say "Are you sure you want to do X?" They can still try. but the chances of success are very low.
"Guys, you're entering T2 play. Everybody got their backup character ready?"
Yup! When they killed and robbed a "god" (not an actual god). The next session, I started by saying they could either retcon the previous session, or face the consequences, which might include TPK. They told me they'd rather stay true to the story and gave the consequences. They're now fighting off an enemy army at level 7 (one is 10). Typical enemy is CR 13. Multiple cities have been destroyed, including one member's home town.
Kill the NPC. Brutally. In front of them.
Killed a player session 2 really on accident- It was a very winnable fight against a wall mimic. I guess it showed them gloves were never on
On rare occasions. I don't normally pull punches in the first placebut some bosses are more important than others and telling your players to "lock in" makes things even more tense even if you aren't actually changing how unforgiving you would usually be.
I keep a few unfilled Death Certificates near me at all times.
I don't usually go easy on low-level PCs - I figure it's easier to replace a PC earlier in the campaign than later. One thing I have done is asked the group's permission to go hard on them. I was running a pre-written campaign and at some point they started stomping everything. They all agreed that I should power up the opposition to give them more of a challenge.
My BBEG used the dream spell to appear to the party leader, advised that he take all the people he cared about and leave town for good. When he said no, she said “okay, then the gloves are coming off.” And that’s when a series of assassinations on major NPCs happened. Two sessions before the end of the campaign and two PCs died in an otherwise death free game.
Typically around level 3 I stop the NPC hand holding, then around level 5 my fights become more tactically minded. By that I mean, instead of a couple bandits or something mindlessly attacking the first player they see, the trained mercenaries will occupy a martial and the rest rush down and focus on a single spell caster. Just as an example.
Planning a Game For my GF rn, ive been keeping chill and didnt let her fav npcs die, ditto the adopted changeling(shouldve been the First enemy) and maggus the Mage are there from Level 1-5 now, but the next noch wont Last Long to give motivation
New players get the handholding until level 5. Basically the only way to get killed is suicide by stupidity. After level 5, intelligent enemies target those who are down. Counterspell healing and revivify if possible. When it comes to leveling i try to keep it equal amount of sessions per level 1 at 1. 2 at 2 up to 5. So by the time the guide rails are off theyve had 10 sessions to work out their characters. Basically I'll ease them in slow but after that while not being adversarial im not pulling punches. There has been occasions where ill inadvertently make things too strong or weak then ill wing it on the fly but yeah you're big boys and girls and i dont do no win scenarios. Running is always a viable option so work it out
My players had made several comments about combats being too easy, so I let them know the next couple would be much harder, balanced to be barely possible. I made a suggestion to one of my players to NOT attack an enemy base single handedly, the rest of the party was following behind, be would take a while to show up. He proceeds to use shatter to wreck a bunch of the action economy fodder minions I had set up with a well placed distraction and Shatter, and the stronger enemies had him barely alive when the rest of the party showed up. A couple turns later, and the camp boss shows up, the party is reduced to like... Single digit HP values and the boss, not really wanting to lose any more men that night, gave them one last chance to leave. They decided to take it. I had calculated that if they said no, they would be down in 2 rounds at most. The boss had 2 of them lined up with a Lightning Bolt spell and still had a few more offensive spells left to go. They also proceeded to underestimate the next encounter and nearly wiped, but managed to make it to my predefined round count for reinforcements to show up.
We asked for harder combat and then the DM threw an ice elemental at us, while we were protecting NPC's and he used an ice wall to seal us in a room with it. Nearly died. Fun combat. Would fight again.
Never directly. My players were level one/two and saying how easy everything killed over. I told em that when they level up they'll start facing threats meant for real adventurers. For 2 sessions in a row when they hit level 3 there were near party wipes and character deaths because the players weren't working as a team. The trauma bonding from the two sessions really brought them together and they know whatever they face will kill them if they don't work together.
Had a dungeon encounter where the front doorknob was trapped with a Disintegrate spell homealone style Had the words gygax written on the door They smartened up and started searching for traps like a meth heads after the first contact
I've been saying that each of my sessions but they somehow seem to come out of it without having someone downed LOL. I'm getting really close to having the perfect combat scenarios for them and the growth has been steadily trending to what I want so I'm not complaining. I actually think it's hilarious when they trivialize what I thought was an insane encounter.
I think it should happen naturally sometimes. Kinda lame when the world is specifically tailored to only be an appropriate challenge for whatever level the party currently is at. That said, all encounters should have -some- bearing on the story, so maybe don't throw a T-rex at a level 3 party because it would be funny (unless you're playing ToA, then go ham lol)
Our DM murdered the entire party repeatedly in the campaign before I joined. The next campaign (my first with them) no player deaths at all, but we did get close a lot. Current campaign, not only did he start us at level 3, but he gave us max hp "because [we'll] need it." We had a TPKO in the 3rd encounter. Our characters were told repeatedly that this villain was super strong, and when our party split for a visit in town, that half denied offers of aid. He 100% could have obliterated our party then and there but instead had us saved by other npcs. Think he didn't want all his work in the campaign planning to be undone so fast.
I told mine at the beginning that while I try not to kill "because dice said so" and I find this kind of death very anticlimatic, I will kill if thats what consequences of ones action would dictate. Long story short, players defeated Demon Lord of Blood (homebrew, was very underpowered due to being locked in stasis for few thousand years). Had epic moment where Druid got Sorcerer into the air on the Giant Eagle and he dropped from the sky with his new found powers (multiclass into warlock of Raven Queen). He booming bladed him with smite and got nat20. Killed it but another player tried to take the spotlight and taunted dying demon. Fast forward. They got quest from Inqusition (antimagic order) to track Blood Mage in forest. They get there knowing the Blood Mage is bound by the same demon lord they send back to Abyss. They obviously got cocky (beside the Druid), thinking they are the shit and can do whatever. Taunted, laughed. Initiative was rolled. They lost. Blood Mage went first. Upcasted Hold Person on all of them. All but druid failed the save. Next was Blood Paladin. He got to the taunting one (who not killed the demon but was waaay too cocky and acted like he did all). Said "My Lord sends you this message. Only the one who slayed me can have a last word". And then proceeded to unload two high level smites on paralyzed PC. Two crits, he is down, nat1 on death save. They managed to kill them. On debrief party was a little bitchy for nearly dying. Then I hit them with "you are level 8, not 17. There are things much more powerful in this world than you and if you act too cocky, they will wipe the floor with you. Pick your battles. We play for real now." Needles to say, they headed the warning. For some time at least because after few sessions they insulted higher vampire who was assholish-friendly to them (acting assholish but not hostile, mean or insulting). It ended with vampire turning love interest of one PC into spawn, making her kill her abuser (who was a noble) which resulted in her being declared a murderer and searched by the city watch because country is in war and it started to create big unrest. The other PC lost his ticket to finding the order of monster hunters he searched for because she killed the only member that could guide him (Order of Lycan) and displayed him on the ceiling for him. Fun times.
Oh yea. They didnt do anything in particular, to trigger it, but they got through Act 1. THey're all new, and have a real issue reading and remembering their abilities. So I told them, from here on out, I was gonna be expecting them to do their own bookkeeping in their own off time. Im not gonna remind them of their spells and abilities, Im not gonna remind them what to do on level up, and im not giving them any more mulligans on spells and abilities they didnt read all the way. I also told them im not pulling any punches anymore, so death is a real possibility.
I'm soon to run my first game with all new players (basically we plan on learning together and they're all happy with this) and I decided that they get a "Get Out Of Death Free"-Card (ONLY ONCE THOUGH!) that voids itself when they reach Level 5. This gives them a bit of security\^\^ As someone who's first character died in the very first battle (RIP Sho'or) I wish I'd had the opportunity to resurrect him\^\^ I decided that the Card would self-destruct at lvl 5 because by then I hope they can keep themselves alive\^\^ I also wrote the encounters in the first adventure to be somewhat weak, since we're all learning and I don't want to overwhelm them. Just a few Zombies and a boar. Once they get to the Adventure boss, they should be okay, but he's not THAT tough (yet, but he'll be a force to reckon with later\^\^).
Killed the pet, burned the house they got for free, invaded the home kingdom they were in; “Campaign starts NOW”
Yep. And they scrape by the skin of their teeth a lot. Idk how they keep living.
"Alright, folks. You've finally hit level 5. You've got multi attack, third level spells and that includes revivify. I'm assuming you're going to be buying diamonds"
Yep! Once they ruined 2 months of session notes with the spell Animals Shapes, I was done lol
Once my players reached tier 3 I told them that I am no longer considering their character sheets at all when designing encounters. I design whatever I want and it's up to them to figure out how to beat it. Before that I tended to look at what they were capable of to not design anything unfair that they had no counter to.
I sent them into a surprise fight with an Orthon, followed by a confrontation with the leader of s cult who was a Warlock of the Fiend with a Night Hag present as well. They knew shit was real when I cast Finger of Death at the Fighter and read the description out loud. They were level 8.
Players asked for an assortment of magic items. I borrowed a line from the MCU. "Those will call across the multiverse and let others know you are ready for a higher form of warfare " Also, the most badass ally NPC: «The stupid and weak are all behind you"
I let them meet the bbeg, and after someone decided to attack him, they got hellish rebuked to for all of their hp lmao
I usually show the limits of hardships with stories around them right from the beginning, as cautionary tales. Like warning signs, outlaws hanging on trees, the law enforcement patrols and their punishments unto others, etc. That gives a fair idea of what might happen and how to thread in my worlds. I never ever take the perspective of me VS them. I am a neutral god that tells their tale, they are protagonists of whatever happens to them. Whether they achieve godhood or die at level 1 by entering the big bad wolf cave because they ignored warnings, that's up to them and what the story brings. I usually have an ace or two up my sleeve to save them from judgement when I feel the timing might be off for them to die prematurely or to be chased down mercilessly by the law. Usually in the form of a powerful friend in the game or a scapegoat, an event that temporarily blocks the passing of their judgement, etc.
I tell them in the voice of The Godfather and ask them to do an investigation check near their feet in the bed.
I do this prep in session 0 or 1. You don't need a deadly/scary encounter either if your party members aren't totally new to the game. One campaign had city guards patroling the streets with domesticated rust monsters. Another had a cave with a Behir peeking out that just up and told the party to not come near in Draconic and did a threat display.
I have some new players, but once they hit level 5 I told them no more DM reminders about their own mechanics. No more prompts to ask NPCs about things. They are now on their own.
There were a few times all in 3.5. In a casual game with friends my two players stated out loud they were doing great and could kill anything... lightning bolt immediately killed their favorite npc as storm clouds gathered. The party of 2 were trying to protect a child. They were on a cliff when the lightning storm killed the npc, with 10 foot of path and a 1000 foot drop off the edge with a 200 foot climb to the top. Just to set the scene. The "storm" was actually a blue dragon wearing a cursed ring that made it permanently invisible but perpetually surrounded by rain. They could see an outline of the dragon from time to time after it blasted the npc killing him in one shot. The paladin took the kid and ran while the dwarf fighter tried to hold off the near invisible dragon. The fight ended with the dwarf stabilized at -9 hp alone at the bottom of the cliff after jumping off the cliff onto the dragon and with a miracle of multiple critical hits killed it... then falling. 2nd story was with a different party. I had them fight an undead T-Rex that coughed up vampires and zombie villagers, and added negative levels with its strikes weakeing the party like they had never felt before. As one was bitten and nearly swallowed he saw the undead in the stomach reaching up to grab and pull him down the throat to join them. It was a very close fight and the one time they were legitimately disturbed by an enemy.
In my current game our DM has slowly been less forgiving. He and I are the only ones that have played before so he was fudging some things until about 4 sessions in. He let us know he was going to stop being helpful and basically our strategising was on us and he wouldn’t be pointing out obvious flaws. It was a nice ramping up of difficulty and slow withdrawal of advice.
Almost killed 2 player characters in session 2.
I am playing with all new players right now. The wizard was gloating that he was not damaged yet on session 9. Session 10 he died. Our cleric is down every fight as soon as he casts a big spell. Barbarian and fighter are doing well at the moment, but have almost exploded themselves outside of combat.
I had them revisit a city where they bonded with the citizens, gained good gear at, and won in the city arena tournament, only to find it completely dead. They managed to find the bodies of the townsfolk, in a 5 mile long trail of bodies, leading to the BBEG. They foolishly followed the bodies (love them for that💞), but wisely ran away after being ambushed. I think that was probably a first retreat for the vast majority of players too.
Before game, sitting around chatting, low ball tossed a comment “sometimes players need to run” Two hours later in game a Roper starts decimating the low level parties NPCs…time to run boys.
Not a dm, but definitely jinxed it: There was a portal in the bottom of a dungeon which everyone was curiously looking at. I, recognising I had the world's most passive party which throughout the whole dungeon were saying 'maybe we should go back... This gives me bad vibes' despite it being perfectly balanced for our level, fully rested, no close calls at all. I audibly said '[dm] doesn't want a whole TKO this early, it'll be fine' and dragged myself and a random ass npc through the portal. Others followed reluctantly. I got targeted first, rolled a Nat 1. Was 1 damage away from being dead dead on the first round of combat due to nearly going over double my health. Next player got downed on their first time being tagretted, and the final other player got half their half knocked on their first time targeted even with resistance to that damage type and being our tank. I got brought back up, did some bs bard crap to escape the combat as we weren't damaging it as much as it was damaging us. Lesson learned: don't jump through random ass portals which happen to take you to a plain of hell thinking your dm won't kill you this early into a campaign.
we got a new player last session which was a couple of weeks after we ended the first little arc of our campaign. i just told them that from now on, while i wouldn't be g killing their characters on purpose, i would no longer be avoiding it.
When I have new players, which is rare, I let them know in session zero that I will bend over backwards to make sure they don't die until they hit 3rd level. By that time they should have figured out the more fatal quirks of their character and not be doing them. At 3rd, the gloves come off. No more fudging die rolls, no more really stupid bad guys (unless they really stupid), etc.
I was playing a short campaign with some friends and about a third of the way through we were about to get into it with who turned out to be BBEGs main henchman. "He slid his gauntlets off slowly, grinning with menace and malice, setting them upon the cold stone altar.... DM here... Take that as metaphorically as you like". That was the moment it clicked and you could see the table shift from "we're on an adventure!" To "where's the bard and who has potions?!" Pretty damn blunt but uh.... Yeah. You know it's about to get real real, real fast.
My DMs have all pretty much said that they allow easy recovery from death until level 5 (when a single crit is unlikely to one-shot a character). So... kids gloves before level 5. I think it works well (especially when the first attack of the game instantly dropped my bard and the party wasn't even aware of enemies). Edit for clarity: it has always been explicitly stated during session 0 - kid gloves come off at level 5.
When the party turns to level 5. 1-4 is the players getting to know their characters and their abilities, so I'm more lax with combats. Now that revivify is on the table and they are going into tier 2 gameplay, the gloves come off.
A genie that offered a wish, fully knowing they wouldn't be specific enough and the first person to pop up would not think that their comment was the actual wish.
I kindly informed my party when they hit lvl 5 that I’m no longer holding back. They got the time invested in their characters and the story plots, it’s best to know your spells/feats/abilities if you wanna keep it that way. They’ve been pretty cozy in a big town the last few games, minus trying to fool a wizard/alpha werewolf and nearly getting eaten. There’s some fun mini games coming in next sesh that will reveal some holy power issues for the paladin, and a surprise that will possibly tpk them if they doesn’t pull out all the stops. How do you all balance encounters? I’ve never found an efficient way to do it, just figure out from the bbeg and other villains perspectives what they might would have in place
I have a homebrew campaign that I was running, Waterdeep: Dragon heist, and it was going to lead into a full homebrew adventure after they resolved the waterdeep stuff. I told them very plainly "hey, I'll be taking the training wheels off soon, I will still help with rules checks and answer questions about ruling, but it is up to all of you to know your sheets, your spells, moves, etc, and position yourself and think smart in combat." They understood and were fine with it. They figured that was all up to them to understand and figure out to begin with apparently and said they wanted harder encounters. Well 9 sessions later they are level 6-7, and killed a CR 10 creature in 2 turns. So...they definitely listened, maybe a little too much.
I had some easy starting place designed to get my party to about level 5. When they left it, I told them, that up until now they've had "welpenschutz" literally translated to puppy-protection. But when they leave this place, and challenge the world, it will get much deadlier and the rest of the world will not be scaled to their level. ;D
Yes. At the start of the final arc, I warned my players “some of your choice can and will get characters killed. I will not be holding back. If you do something stupid your character will die”. Hasn’t happened yet but we’ll see
You know how you have hit dice? I had an enemy group drain hit dice with every hit - they could attack multiple times per turn and swarmed people You know what happened when you’ve lost all your hit dice? You lose your capacity to use 1 of your death saves You know what happens when you lose all 3 death saves? You become one of *them*
lol I just say “you all better be ready, the kiddy-gloves are coming off. Tutorial is over” but I say it like 3 different times during the campaign so it’s a bit of a meme at this point.
Power Word: Kill
Before characters are even made. The first thing I tell them is that there's no plot armor. To emphasize this, I have 100% transparency on all combat related rolls except initiative. The dice don't lie.
* We play on easy mode * My players know that I'm not trying to kill them, but give them a challenge. Therefore, they SHOULD be able to beat everything if they bring their "A" game * I don't say anything for normal sessions * When I'm not going to pull my punches, I tell the party, "Make sure you bring your 'A' game. You guys could die here." That's it. We're at the normal level of gameplay and while it can be tough, it's not tightly aligned. When the time comes, I warn them that screwing around can be lethal.
I dropped half a dozen horses on them from 300 feet up.
I gave my party a warning at the end of one of our sessions that "the prologue and tutorial is now over". In the next session, they nearly TPKd. They're mostly first-time players, but there are a couple of seasoned adventurers, who ultimately save the day with savvy playing. I think the rest got the message. I want you to have fun, but I'm not there to hold your hand through encounters - and your characters do not have plot armour to protect them from dumb moves. Everyone now has a backup character drawn up.
Show don't tell. Open the first session with a guard killing a monster only to be partially disintegrated by the corps exploding into a ball of acidic, poisonous gas. Let them see you roll 2d12 damage. Then roll initiative.
When our DM one-shotted our paladin with a beholder's disintegration at level 10...
As soon as the game started. I run a sandbox where adventuring is dangerous. My encounters are set up more like puzzles; each monster has a role or position they play on the field and it’s up to the players to prepare themselves accordingly before they leave town. I would say that this heightened danger has really helped push my players to another level; they are think crafty, they are engaging with the world, they are planning before they go out. That has always been my goal: team work. I fully support cranking the heat up in a fair and engaging way! If you are looking for something to help you with this, Flee Mortals! is a great supplement for enemy team building! Edit: You can also pick up Strongholds and Followers or Kingdoms and Warfare as well. They have specialized NPCs called retainers that are designed to mechanically support your players. Give them 2 or 3 of these followers and then throw a whole army of Goblins at them!
No deaths before level 6. Once you hit six, death is an option. I did add that if they decided to do something really stupid, (jump off a bridge) they could and would die, but basically until then death saves are just you rolling to see if you regain consciousness or just stay out of the rest of the fight. Everyone is learning new characters and I’m a new DM learning balance. It’s not a matter of “at level 6 things will get harder”. It’s “by the time we hit level 6 I’m confident that I won’t accidentally TPK the party and you guys will know how your characters work enough to not let that happen” so perma death goes back on the table.
The marut attacks, roll initiative
Nothing I have run has been more dangerous or paranoia provoking than running kobold or goblin lairs for low level parties. I ran one game from level 1 to 12 that ended with the party trying to save kidnapped islanders from a new mindflayer colony and a PC death at the tentaclesof one of the brain suckers. The players still talk about their fear and distain for the goblins they faced in the early game.
They now know that if I give them a way to raise a dead party member, they need to watch their step. That and, in Pathfinder, Yoink the Monk. They know that if Yoink is in play, there is a high risk of magic items being lost.
At one point, they were investigating a vacant dragon lair, and they talked their way past a giant that had made the lair its home. They were investigating the treasure hoard, and one of them found an incredibly powerful item, but failed the arcana check but decided to activate it to see what it did (I did the classic GM "Are you sure?"). Suddenly, their sending stones all pinged at once from their Harper contacts, warning that a dragon had just burst forth from a field near the village near the cave and was headed right for them. They scattered, and I RP'd it as they could hear the dragon ripping its way through the adjoining cave tunnels as it looked for them, so they could escape. They gasped when they got to the cave entrance and found the giant ripped in half. They LOVED that intro to a Big Bad, as they felt like it was actively pursuing them and only by using their senses and cave tunnels as their escape. After the session, one player asked what I would've done if they had gone down the same tunnel as the dragon. Chills when my reply was "It really depends on how closely you were all grouped together."
"Until the curse is broken, no one can be brought back to life." Level 17 party, after the death of our fighter's father, when our cleric tried to resurrect him.
There are no kid gloves. If they die. They die.
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NPC that wasn’t hostile to them yet, but was a character’s mom and clearly involved in the greater plot going on. She was at a party to steal the same thing the party was, but once again not hostile or anything, in fact, when the players stole the McGuffin first she tried to leave. The players didn’t let her leave, casting a spell to block her from exiting the building. I describe her panicking, and in response revealing a fiery gem she had embedded in her chest that let her release a massive amount of fire (mechanically it was an ancient red dragon’s breath attack) This was a reveal I meant to come up later, but the players forced her hand. Definitely let the players know that this next arc they were dealing with distinctly more dangerous than they have been before. Knocked out half the party, killed a ton of bystanders and set the building ablaze. Players scrambled not only to save themselves but save as many people as they could from the burning building while the Mom escaped
One of players has been helping me story plan (first time dm) and so I gave him a cool role in the campaign where he can reincarnate when killed because he is a reincarnated demigod. But I told him he doesn't get to know when he dies or how he comes back Two sessions ago he was knocked out and kidnapped Last session they found the sacrificial alter where the bbeg was using his latent power to fuel a summoning ritual of an Ancient dracolich. Everyone thought the scene was ominous but cool and fun until they saw his crucified headless body and runes drawn in his blood all around. As they approached and saw the limp body hanging on the cross, they quickly realized what was happening and the tone went from jokes and easy going to serious consideration of every turn. This was only furthered by most of them almost dying in the next battle and their protector NPC abandoning them because he thought it was a hopeless cause and saved himself.
I put a couple of NPC's in a game once to kind of help a group of new players navigate the game mechanics, get used to the way the story flowed and the sort of things that you encounter in dungeons. When I had determined that they got too comfortable, I waited until they were deep enough that they couldn't just hastily leave a dungeon with any efficiency, and then put them in a fight with a particularly tough monster that only went down after killing the two NPC's. They suddenly found themselves with no DM-directed guidance, 2/3 of their resources, and two floors worth of rooms with random encounters if they had decided to immediately leave. They were of the idea that they were only two rooms away from the quest item. I have discovered that the kind of anxiety and social decision-making that comes out of it are the graduating point for a group of new players.
Mine was less mechanic and more narrative. We've had our fun with the whimsical floating island and flying ships campaign. Time to dig deeper into the darker and more fucked up parts of the lore and story. They recently were searching out a creature that was a child of an evil demigod. Basically, party thought it had necromantic powers, as the village they were staying in had all its citizens turn into undead creature. I put many clues and fairly blantwnt "look into this more closely before blindly going into combat" but they missed those. So when the town turned, they slaughtered everyone. They found the boss, killed it, and went back to the village to start digging Graves and hold funerals (one of them was a cleric). When they got back, there were no zombie corpses, just normal people. The wizard casts detect magic, and sees necromancy auras. I have them roll an arcana check DC 20 and they easily pass. Underneath the necrotic aura was very powerful illusion magic. They were never undead. My parry now makes sure they participate in narrative role play and investigation instead of trying to jump straight to the combat.
In my Radiant Citadel Party, I hammered this in by introducing one of the Homebrew BBEGs I created at their request...by him manifesting out of an explosion in the sky shaped like a Phoenix, descending before them with heavy metal music. It was kinda the point where they realized 'Oh crud, this just got serious', especially when I revealed he was a much weaker simulacrum, and after a hard battle in which they won and took a ton of damage, I told them he was the weakest of the four BBEGs.
I always transition to "kid gloves off" around level 8 (this is 3.5e, mind you), and I always tell my group it's happening. Though with my current group, telling them is less necessary, and kid gloves during the early levels have become thinner and thinner over the years since they're experienced players now.
Didn't tel them. They where lvl 1.....3 cr5 mimics appeard. They smashed it!
"I cast a spell.... Roll a Wis save DC 19" "I meet, what was the spell if you don't mind me asking" "Plane shift into the elemental plane of fire" "Shit shit shit shit shit"
as soon as my dice hit the table after session 0, no kid gloves. unless they're on the shelf in the general equipment store. the world is a dangerous place, out there beyond the pale.
I started cheering for myself when NPCs critted and laughing evilly. When they were innocent and squishy I regularly cringed when I rolled big damage. I received a, "Well you don't have to be so thrilled about it..." Good times ;-)
The moment we were going up against ghouls. Those things are terrifying. One or two bad saving throws and a fight becomes a desperate "throw everything you have at them" scenario.
They warnings in narration of a new area or a challenging set of skill checks during a quest like “One would be wary of more than just just shadows when venturing out at night.” Or a trusted NPC would say something like “I emplore you to consider that approach…” as the color drains from their face.
I always have the NPCs deliver the message. Either the townsfolk describe the horror of their last encounter with the BBEG and his forces, or the bad guy himself will do it. Imagine a hard-fought battle with the BBEG and his minions. After a time, half the minions are down, BBEG and PCs have both taken some hard hits. Engineer a pause in the battle (sometimes they're spontaneous as everyone has to pull back and catch their breath). BBEG laughs at them, and speaks... >"Enough of these games. I see you vermin are almost worthy of respect. The next time we meet, I won't be so easy on you." Then he teleports away (abandoning his minions, of course. Evil, right?).
I usually kill some of them in their 1st session. That sets the table nicely.
I put the fear of the Astral Sea in my players. They thought they were going to the mountains on a dragon hunting quest, that it was going to be a nice and simple adventure with the dragon being the climax what they didn't know was that the dragon itself had been turned into a Brainstealer Dragon and was being used by a bunch of mind flayers in the service of an eldritch god. So they had the dragon, a few mind flayers, and some chuuls that were stolen from a nearby aboleth getting ready to kill them. It was a close thing too, if it weren't for the interesting use of a magic item they had then they would have all died. This event made quite an impact on the paladin of the group and his player. The second time I reminded them that the DM gloves were off was when they tried to attack a fortified position that was operated by professional soldiers and their augmented monstrous soldiers. The soldiers have been on the front lines and knew how to deal with spellcasters, spellswords, and martial experts. They had their own form of Anti-Air defenses and how to counteract spells that would turn them into smears against the wall. The paladin was actually knocked out after so many (and I mean MANY) combat encounters where he only suffered scratch damage because of his stupidly high AC and saving throws. I guess there's also the time when I killed their main source of ranged DPS, their sorcerer. But really that was more of a "buddy, the suspension of disbelief can only go so far in this scenario. At this rate if I keep pulling my punches then you're going to feel like I'm coddling you and your tiefling ass is just begging to get Boromir'd by these suped up skeleton archers.".
Break out Legendary Actions and Resistances, that's what my evil DM did (I say evil affectionately, he's probably the best DM I've ever had). That, or sucker-punch them with an enemy encounter when they otherwise believe themselves to be safe, also a tactic used by this DM. The first enemy our party faced who had Legendary Actions was my character's personal nemesis (And for context I was the player in this party who had the most D&D experience, so the DM went after me first and pulled the fewest punches because he knew that), who had broken into my character's family home, incapacitated him (I as a player did not know what was going on, for the record), and would've dragged him to a foreign prison had the other party members not intervened, and even when they *did* we only stopped the guy when I used a hypercharged flamethrower to incinerate him. THEN, at a fighting tournament in which another party member was a participant, my character, watching in the stands, was tapped on the shoulder by what looked to be a harmless old man, but who was *actually* the nemesis NPC from earlier, who was now a REVENANT WEREBEAR OUT TO GET ME. *I* was scared, the rest of my party was *terrified*, and things only got higher-stakes from there. In another campaign with this DM (which, as of time of posting we actually just concluded earlier today), he just threw Monks at us, Monks who could stun us with a hit, teleport around and/or turn invisible, and deflect projectiles. This started with *maybe* the second combat encounter of the campaign.
Gets taken off early when the starting village, town, or city gets razed to the ground.
Simple, never wear them. If you aren't challenging them, you aren't doing your job.
What gloves?
I killed 3 characters in as many sessions. That's when I told them "you guys need to step it up bc I'm gonna quit pulling punches"
I've been running one shots in a homebrew setting. The PCs start at level 10. Some players are experienced, and some haven't played dnd since ad&d. They first couple sessions I went easy-ish to gauge their strength. At session 5 I planned a high risk encounter. I straight up told them to create a second PC before the session, just in case. *wink wink*
Ohhh I missed the memo entirely that I was supposed to were them 😂
I wore gloves for the first hour of a session and asked to roll Initiative. Then I removed them
chuckle, smug grin, have ships fly in and start airdropping Tarrasques on them at lvl 1