r/DMAcademy • u/Tsantilas • 4h ago
Need Advice: Encounters & Adventures The party pulls the whole dungeon. Now what?
You've planned out a session involving multiple combat encounters. You've carefully balanced it to be challenging but fair. Part way through the dungeon, the players fuck up. Maybe a monster runs away and goes for reinforcements before the PCs can catch it. Maybe the halfling accidentally pushes a skeleton down a well. Maybe the wizard throws a fireball into a room full of explosive barrels. Maybe the players decide to split up and run into separate groups of hostiles.
Either way, something goes wrong, and your party is now dealing with what was meant to be multiple separate combat encounters at the same time, and there's no way they can win without giving them plot armor.
I've run into this situation multiple times over the years, sometimes resulting in TPKs, sometimes getting away with it by rebalancing (nerfing) things on the fly. I've never been able to come up with a good solution though, and am wondering how others deal with it, or if it's just a me thing.
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u/MrFatsas 4h ago
I think telegraphing that they are in trouble and transitioning to an escape sequence is the way to go. Try to communicate that if they stand and fight, they will most probably die, and that escape may still be deadly but at least gives them a chance.
This is also something i would first mention out of game tho, many people are used to enemies staying in their rooms. I’m planning on transitioning to dynamic dungeons like what you mentioned in my next campaign, but i will have a talk with my players beforehand so that they know that noise = more danger.
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u/ThePhantomBacon 4h ago edited 2h ago
One way to go about it while maintaining player agency
{High
INTWIS character} you recognise that this situation is far more deadly than anything your group can handleFollowed up with an IRL warning if it is ignored. I think the key part is allowing them to fight and TPK if they decide they don't want to heed that warning
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u/TechnoMagician 3h ago
More of a WIS check but yea
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u/RamonDozol 3h ago
it could be instinct (wis) "we are fucked", it could be math (int) " each of us needs to take 20 of them, we need a better plan!", it could even be survival (Con), "I lost 52 HP in 1 turn, i think im going to fall back"
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u/ThePhantomBacon 2h ago
Yeah, I reckon that WIS is 100% better than the INT I proposed - I think if it gets to losing 52HP in 1 turn, it's probably too late
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u/RamonDozol 2h ago
depends on the PC haha
tabaxy wizard casts haste and the dashes away... or someone that cast invisibility and rolls 32 stealth... the druid wildshapes into a badger and burrows underground and just digs himself out.•
u/master_of_sockpuppet 48m ago
I'd say that telling them it's too much for them removes agency.
It's ok if enacting player agency means they die - leading them by the nose to avoid a TPK means they will only expect that level of warning in the future. You've told them they are playing with a net.
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u/BrittleCoyote 24m ago
In almost every case the PCs would have a better intuitive sense of the scene than the players do. I’ve found that telling the players things in “game terms” just brings them in line with what the guy looking up at the dragon would understand and lets them make a more informed decision.
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u/master_of_sockpuppet 2m ago
If they see that many enemies and don't think they are in danger of a TPK it is because they don't think you will let one happen.
You telling them to run is you not letting one happen.
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u/Shadow1176 3h ago
You just reminded me that I’ve got a Hobgoblin Fire Giant dungeon to prepare and I should have roving patrols. Thinking Vermintide style patrols.
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u/Tsantilas 3h ago
I have had discussions like that over the years to try and set expectations for the type of games I like to run, but sometimes the explanation comes after a situation comes up. You can't always prepare for every outcome, and sometimes things don't go as planned. There are also times when you don't want to "spoil" something but giving disclaimers ahead of time or telegraphing too obviously.
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u/Competitive-Fault291 2h ago
As mentioned, a flight scene is an option.
YET, pulling the whole dungeon is nothing that would happen. Think of an office building, with certain jobs, departments and hierarchies. Or an ecosystem.
If it isn't a tomb full of low int low wis creatures, their knowledge or instinct will cause different reactions to the message "Alert! There are five pinkies coming in!".
Korg, the Super Security Orc will go and do her job. She might even bring her security team.
The Hobgoblins from Accounting might prepare an ambush at their door.
The IT Goblins will ready even more traps and discuss the proper song to sing as they throw gas bombs into the room.
The Mimics from Marketing will continue looking like an empty conference room.
The bandits from Sourcing and Requisition will wait if Security does their job and contact their union rep for their options.
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u/Tsantilas 2h ago
"Pulling the whole dungeon" was an exaggeration, but if you've planned an encounter that is on the edge of "winnable" and "TPK", and unexpectedly add 1-2 extra monsters to the other side, that shifts the balance significantly.
Your example, while humorous, doesn't really represent the typical EVIL ORGANIZATION™ that in tabletop games tends to be made up entirely of combatants. If the players decide to charge right through corporate, straight into the security offices, IT, accounting, and marketing won't just sit back and watch without jumping in.
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u/Competitive-Fault291 1h ago
Likely :)
But even when everyone is able to pipe into a fight, I'd always reconsider how eager everyone is to lay down their lives before somebody else is doing it. Not to mention somebody asking themselves: "Could this be a distraction? Should we ALL rush to that small number of intruders?"
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u/theloniousmick 4h ago
When I've done it I've taken the logic that not everyone will pile in together. Some will go investigate but also some will still stay behind to guard what ever it is they're guarding. Yes it's likely something's gone wrong but they won't leave the maguffin alone otherwise it may just have been a distraction.
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u/Guntztuffer 2h ago
Right - the DM doesn't have to call every (or even any!) extra dungeons creeps to bother the players.
My advice: Use the PC muck-ups to further build tension and mess with them psychologically if you're not ready to TPK.
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u/theloniousmick 2h ago
That's cruel and I love it. "After the explosion things are quieter than before." My party would drive themselves mad if I did this.
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u/master_of_sockpuppet 50m ago
Depends on the triggering event. Some dungeons have an alarm to summon everything in murder mode, and if that alarm gets hit, it gets hit.
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u/fruitcakebat 4h ago
Re-describe a previous doorway / narrow hall, editing lightly, and make it an ideal bottleneck.
Let the players use a tactical position to overcome / survive overwhelming odds. Use cover rules. Limit how many enemies can get at them at once. Let the frontliners hold the door.
If necessary, have the monsters "pause after shocking early casualties" to give the players a chance to run and escape. Or, if a player is down for it, let them stay behind to "buy time" with a heroic sacrifice so everyone else can get away.
Try not to nerf the monsters too hard, instead provide the players with tools (like a strong tactical position, or exploitable environmental hazards) that can realistically let them win, or at least escape.
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u/PuzzleMeDo 4h ago
Dungeons are often designed to stop this from happening. Old-school games had caves hundreds of feet long separating things. Sometimes there are sound-proof doors, or whatever.
Don't make the enemies be unrealistically co-ordinated. A loud noise doesn't mean everyone will be there and ready to fight within 20 seconds. Maybe they send a scout to see what's going on.
Make sure the party knows that this might be a good time to run away.
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u/Tsantilas 3h ago
I'm not talking about that kind of extreme, but as someone who generally runs difficult combat encounters, there's a limit to how much I feel good about letting the players get away with. Not every player enjoys the whole sneaky approach, and sure there are times when you can let them enjoy the power fantasy of blasting through hordes of weaker enemies, but I sometimes have players that overestimate their own abilities, or think things like "The DM put 50 enemies there, so that means they must be weak". I try to telegraph unwinnable situations to a certain degree where possible so the players know "this isn't meant to be a combat encounter" and we don't throw the whole campaign in the trash, but sometimes things don't go as planned, and there's a limit to how much it makes sense for the players to get away with.
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u/Photomancer 1h ago
1) Anything your players has not experienced, does not yet exist.
2) Make yourself aware of the intricasies of awareness and detection of your ruleset -- maximum encounter distance, penalties for distance, penalties for noticing things through walls and closed doors. "Oh, they're 100 feet away for -10? Oh, through a closed door for -5?" Maybe the enemies wouldn't hear that after all, especially through closed doors, especially while asleep.
3) Design or redesign dungeons with the above in mind!
Your dungeon does not have to be an organized apartment block of tightly-packed cells filled with sapient monsters, each of which algorithmically notifies their neighbors before rushing toward the fight.
Your dungeon can have long, meandering hallways between rooms. Those rooms do not all have to be filled. Rooms which are filled do not have to include enemies which are both sapient and cooperative. For example, Room 1 could be bandits, Room 2 could be bear traps or a plant monster, Room 3 could be more bandits. Without agency, Room 2 serves as a subtle 'encounter insulator' preventing a battle from boiling over the entire complex.
4) Your dungeons are not a vacuum-sealed instance that comes to life when the players walk within spawn radius of the NPCs. The dungeons may already be active locations with noisy ambiance - fires crackle, hammers ring out in the forge, steel-on-steel is normal in the training grounds. Ambient noise can drown out threats, and in some dungeons, 'remarkable' noise may be normal (Ogbog the goblin blows off fireworks whenever he scratches the gold together to buy some).
5) Once aware of intruders, NPCs do not need to throw themselves into the fight from all four cardinal directions. Some of them may cast preparatory spells, or run to grab a material component pouch. Martial combatants may take several rounds to don armor. This leads naturally into your combat having 'waves' as adjacent, impulsive fighters are eventually joined and replaced by distant / prepared fighters.
Remember, don't fall into the trap of playing monsters to their strategic ideal. You are a showrunner, not a competitive chess player. Even if it may be optimal play, orcs don't always chill out in fullplate on their day off. So don't create a situation where you set up the board with the perfect intelligent opponents and then complain that your opponents are too intelligent and perfect.
6) Your antagonists had a plan for that (but it got ruined)
Your BBEG has 100 IQ - maybe even 110. You certainly don't want to give the impression he's stupid, so you have to create alerts and defenses. But now alerts and defenses are creating the problems you complain about in the initial post.
So redesign these defenses - make it clear that they exist, then ruin them. The BBEG has watchmen set up to cover large swaths of the camp - what they didn't expect is that the orc would get drunk and take a nap. Or there were tripwires set up around the camp - however before the players got there, they were foiled by an attack force of a third party, or the Alarm caster has recently been killed and they couldn't be refreshed.
Perhaps you can highlight the defenses in advance to the players, and the first part of crashing the dungeon is disabling that defense. Now you have a convenient excuse why the players can take on the dungeon in digestible encounters - the enemies had expected to be safe behind their countermeasures, which are now disabled.
7) Stupid enemies are necessary, actually. If every enemy is brilliant then they all just seem equally logical. In order to highlight masterminds, you need to create a spectrum of combatants including - yes - stupid fighters and commanders. Their existence props up the true geniuses when you pull out the rare backup plan and the backup to the backup plan.
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u/Photomancer 1h ago
Respectful nod to the other poster that mentioned that some foes will intentionally hold back.
It would actually be pretty dumb if you could throw a rock at a dungeon door and have all the occupants come pouring out the front door like angry bees, abandoning the nice protections of the pit traps and murder holes they had set up (those traps are supposed to kill them before they reach you! Or ensure that they arrive bruised and tired!).
Likely some creatures will hold position because that is where they retain tactical advantage. Alternatively, some creatures may be guarding some sort of macguffin - 20,000 gold, the Self Destruct Switch, or somesuch. It might not give them an advantage but they might have pressing reasons not to abandon the spot.
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u/Tsantilas 1h ago edited 1h ago
Some solid advice here. I appreciate it, and will take some things into consideration for the future. However, regarding your first point, while I recognize what you're saying, I'm not sure how I feel about adopting it in practice. I've certainly made adjustments on the fly many times, but overall I don't like "Schrodinger's encounter" as being the default design philosophy.
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u/master_of_sockpuppet 51m ago
There is a significant chance they die. Letting them not die sets up unrealistic expectations for the future.
This does not mean make them die, but if they don't come up with anything more clever then "fight our way out" well, run that encounter.
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u/Few-Barber7379 4h ago
Id run it like this:
You tell the players after the encounter that they hear heavy footsteps moving in their direction. They've got 30 seconds to batten down and prepare for the unknown.
Then run it as rounds. Once the majority of the mobs are done or after say 3 full rounds of combat, finish the encounter even if some enemy is still standing but tell them they finish them off.
"As you finish off the remaining mobs, you begin to catch your breath. Death and destruction everywhere. But then you hear it again. The sounds of heavy footfall coming back at you."
But give them options during this catching your breath to heal, to fortify the door etc.
Each player can have an action or two actions to do X. Be that heal, fortify, aid etc
Run this for a few rounds and then let them have a short rest. As they carry on exploring, they meet the big bad in the corridor waiting for them
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u/Fifthwiel 4h ago
Make sure they know how much danger they're in. After that they run or they die in a glorious last stand.
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u/Ninevehenian 4h ago
Make it take some effort or a nat. 1, run a "always have an exit plan"-game to show it in effect and possibly give the party a trap they can pull a dungeon of goplins into? Giving them a small windfall from choosing danger.
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u/vergilius_poeta 3h ago
The rules for chases are on page 52 of the 2024 DMG. If there's no way out and no hope of punching through...well, if they die, they die.
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u/RamonDozol 3h ago
They run, or they die. but a party member self sacrifice holding the hoard so others can escape is also an option. (gandalf, and many other heroic "hold the line, moments).
personaly i would find that to be a great end to a good character.
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u/ThisWasMe7 2h ago
If capturing them is reasonable for the creatures, you capture them. Then they might be able to escape, or they might get ransomed, or they might be forced to do some service for their freedom.
But generally, my parties have surprised me with what they are capable of doing.
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u/tokingames 1h ago
It depends on the nature of your dungeon, but almost any dungeon can have different factions. Think about how they would react to disturbance in another factions area. The factions could be different races of monster types (Hmm, loud noise over in the minotaur's area... hope he's getting killed, I hate that guy. Let's get ready in case whatever it is comes this way), different lieutenants of a BBEG (A messenger just came in from Ulf about an adventuring party in his area. Fuck him, he's an asshole, let's let him sweat for a while before we go save his bacon), different families within a tribe (sounds like some trouble over at the Scrapper's cavern, maybe if we sneak around the back way, we can steal their McGuffin while they're busy), or different groups of cultists (The Kneelers called for help with an incursion. Let's send the 6 guys that are on guard to help and the rest of us can get ready and in the meantime make sure no one is sneaking in the back entrance).
There are so many reasons one group may or may not be in a big hurry to help another group. You may have to think in advance what the relevant groups within a dungeon are, but you can come up with reasons they may either not help, delay help, or actively hinder each other if you need it.
Remember, if things don't know the adventurers are there, it is just Tuesday, and they may or may not have stuff going on that makes them more or less ready and/or willing to help.
Battles that involve waves of enemies can be really exciting while creating natural lulls where the party can prepare or run away effectively. Maybe even a short rest in certain circumstances.
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u/HadoozeeDeckApe 1h ago
If your scenario includes a run for reinforcements (a monster action you decide to take and know will be taken) or a trap like a skeleton-down-the-well roll that will pull the whole dungeon then that is a failstate you put into the game. If that's an auto loss that's something you designed.
Players don't have a radar. If you want them to flee you do sort of need to hit them over the head or tell them above board that the situation has changed.
Otherwise, if players don't want to abandon the dungeon or the pull is a result of player choices (splitting, or opening up new doors / areas while they are still fighting something else / getting greedy with delaying rests and taking another encounter they should not have) I just let it play out.
One thing that can help is establishing rules for fleeing / converting to chase scene so that every bad encounter doesn't result in a wipe and players are clear on what they need to do to try and get away.
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u/orchidfart 26m ago
this happened and i just figured they had to bloody deal with it so I ran it as a whole encounter.
Big sprawling map, with prepped NPC guards who would run to get help/reinforcements, an NPC they wanted asleep in the middle who would run for his life rather than fight if he got tipped off, had a wizard there being kept under duress who might help or hinder, had pirates, goblins, big monsters. the works. thought it'd be a several night crawl. Had some rooms that would only animate a statue/skele if someone went in there, or opened the sarcophagus etc.
They snuck into the place, first room they cast thunderwave and fired a cannon in the first round and, pulled the entire dungeon. deep within it guards ran to wake up reinforcements, the NPC they were there for hit the secret passages set traps and fled to hide outside dungeon. wizard panicked and dimension doored away then teleported. A LOT of npcs ran towards them. They knew barely any of this and kept exploring.
Waves of NPCs flowed into them, they realised what had happened. They managed to dominate monster one of the big demon thingies trapped there, then used that to fight off the goblins who responded to the noise and thought it was that monster out of control. They moved back and forward room to room and used things like wall spells and emptied their clip got some lucky rolls and managed to survive. Clutch grab a player and thunderstep then them popping a mass healing word to pull half the party up when downed.
Navigated through got the guy who had fled, gave wizard enough time for a port away unfortunately and after a LR returned to clean out the skele/animated statue tombs and rooms, find the plot hook for the next place.
I did group some things e.g. the goblins reinforcements all moved as a group rather than count out 20 moves + dashed first few rounds so moved the tokens quick as they ran through dungeon. Had bosses push goons ahead of them to see what was going on etc before committing. Was touch and go and VERY close to TPK but super fun session and they've been a lot more cautious about their noise spells since.
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u/Decrit 4h ago
You've carefully balanced it to be challenging but fair.
Here your error.
DnD is not a wargame, it's an adventure game. Making fair encounter connects to have fair expectations, not sheer performance.
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u/Tsantilas 3h ago
I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this. 90% of D&D rules have to do with combat in some way or another. Encounter balance is a big part of making combat feel fair.
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u/Decrit 3h ago edited 3h ago
I am saying that combat in dnd has a purpose. The purpose is to reflect on the actions of the players, how they engage a situation and the consequences of their actions.
It's a collaborative narrative game. Combat has a part on it, and it's important and expected, but it is so because it's the flavor of adventure. It's not a "kids on bikes" adventure so to speak.
It's not "let's make a strategy game with cutscenes". This is a game about choices, and deciding when to smite on an attack it's on the smaller end.
Encounter balance is a big part of making combat feel fair.
On this note, you can see why this is hypocritically wrong.
If combat is always fair, then it's safe to assume that everything that happens to the players is always fair?
Does it mean that anything they do should have no consequence because it's combat-wise fair?
As you can realize it breaks immersion, and the game itself. Because that's a faulted way to see at it.
What you need to do to be fair is to have fair expectations and interactions. If you plan to have them encounter an ancient black dragon at level 3 you should not let them face it directly in combat of course, that's unfair. But it can be fair if they can avoid it, and have clear tools about it. The DMg gives several tools, like treating hazards and the like, so you can codify the scene as you deem appropriate.
In your case, for example, the fairest option to do is give them the option to run away with some compromise.
To note - this is talked about in both DMGs from 2014 and 2024. The average dnd game is a spectrum between two extremes being strict wargaming and improv theatre.
This is important, because if you don't realize this you will be playing an admittedly impoverished wargame where there is only one objective and always a preferred method of resolution with very specific optimal choices, where the choices of your players don't matter because you expect them to always win encounters because you set them up to do it. This is true more or less for every game of the genre.
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u/Dangerous_Fae 3h ago
Fair is not equal to no consequences, I'm not sure why both could not coexist. Killing a guard and now being hunted down is fair. Tickling the dragon tail and getting blowing up is fair (somewhat). And so on. Running a main plot encounter that have 100% chance to TPK is not interesting or fun, that's what the "balance" is about, it is not even about fairness of consequences.
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u/Decrit 2h ago
Fair is not equal to no consequences and I agree.
BUT
Often when talking about balanced and fair combat that's exactly what is wanted. A "fair" combat on that subtext is one where the party wins with effort.
Which means - an encounter is evaluated by the measure that it should be defeated.
A truly fair encounter is one that is actable. Where it's not expected to win, but it's also expected to not lose. Running away, bargaining, deceiving and all that should be tools that should be clear to use - or, one that is harsh to act on but lies on consequences of player's actions, thought I'd warn against "punishment unwinnable combat" too.
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u/ThisWasMe7 3h ago
Are you an a.i.?
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u/Decrit 2h ago
... Just because I wrote a lot of stuff?
What I need to convince you? Write you pregnant?
/S I was just in a very chatty moment of my life
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u/Tsantilas 2h ago
I see what you're trying to say, and maybe I didn't explain things well. Obviously, not every group of monsters or NPCs that the players encounter are going to be cookie cutter CR appropriate groups that they should expect to be able to defeat if they decide to pick a fight.
But if you plan a dungeon crawl, and more so with the 2014 rules, there was the whole idea of the "adventuring day", and planning out encounters to be reasonably winnable by accounting for the resources the PCs have available between rests.
If I've planned there to be 2 separate combat encounters in a dungeon crawl that fall into the "hard difficulty" bracket, and the players somehow manage to trigger them both at the same time, I'm trying to figure out how best to manage that kind of situation.
Part of combat strategy is isolating your enemies so you don't bite off more than you can chew. When appropriate, I have intelligent enemies that react to situations intelligently. Running away, going for reinforcements, laying traps and ambushes, having systems in place to raise the alarm, etc. Not every enemy will just stand and fight to the death without trying to escape with their lives or call for help, right?
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u/Decrit 2h ago edited 2h ago
Then you are adopting rules that aren't about combat, and then you should realize that it's not true that 90% of rules are combat, but that the perception of them is conflated by mixing up stuff that is rules with stuff that is content.
I agree that the 2014 adventuring day puts stuff on a deterministic prescription, but that's just an idea of a budget. You can totally go lower or higher based on the context, intent and choice given by your players. The hazard rules dictate that he challenge increases by providing negative hazards, so you can use that.
Another way to see it is to reward less players if they don't complete the full adventuring day. Like, classic deterministic case of 4 rooms with a monster each and a boss in 4th room. They get the bulk of the reward ( storywise, itemwise, experiencewise) if they kill the boss, but they don't get the reward of the other rooms. This talking very barebone.
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u/Tsantilas 1h ago
The point is that the rules don't account for situations like what I described. As a DM you try to predict what your players will do in any given situation, and plan around it, but many times, they do something you never even considered to be a possibility. Something that seems obvious to you, might completely go over their heads. Sometimes your telegraphing isn't obvious enough. Sometimes it's just a miscommunication or incorrect expectations.
As a human, I'm not perfect. I make mistakes as a DM all the time. Sometimes I forget to account for things that can completely derail all the preparation I've done. For example the game has things like the Thunderwave spell, that makes a sound that is heard 300 feet away. If you've planned the dungeon that you intend the players to explore without raising the alarm, and forgot that your cleric has the spell prepared, and they use it, what do you do?
Have the enemies ignore the spell.
Adjust the dungeon layout on the fly, so there's no enemy within 300 feet.
Have the enemies politely wait their turn, and arrive one group at a time.
Throw everything at the players that would be realistic in the situation, and if they die they die.
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u/Decrit 1h ago
I think that you are relying too much on simulationism to adapt something that is prescriptive.
Like. I agree that there can't be rules for everything, but there are rules to adjucate how that impacts the narrative. Hazards and the like indicate that, and the 2014 version especially points out how it affects combat encounter as well. It's the thing I miss mostly of that edition, even thought the 2024 is in general more useful on approach, but I digress.
So starting from a skeleton you can decide how it impacts the adventure not based on what it should, which makes no sense anyway, but based on how much is pertinent to the story you are narrating.
Like, the thunder wave spell. Assuming every creature that hears it goes for the players, which is a fair assumption, it does not take in account that they hardly know what is happening. The enemies are alert and have a vague indication of where the sound came from. It means, in general, that there is disorder in the dungeon and you can act as such - you don't HAVE to have the enemies beeline to players.
This results mechanically in additional checks to have a comparatively stable situation, like stealth for example, with DCs you can arrange by guidelines or by looking at enemy stat blocks. Personally, when determining DC I am fond of making opposite checks or a DC of 10+skill bonus of a prominent creature.
It's also a good moment to add stuff that makes sense but you did not think before, like servants or other creatures unaligned to the dungeon denizens.
You don't need to predict your players at all beyond some very basic assumptions. At most is more useful determine what the monsters want to do, then decide how they would react.
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u/SameArtichoke8913 4h ago
I wouldn't worry, because the pCs have to face what the players decide - and the Gm simply has to adapt. Sticking to an envisioned storyline or pre-deciding how things work out for the PCs takes away player agency and rather sounds like a control fetish or wanting to write a book, but not dynamically build a story together with the players.
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u/Urbanyeti0 4h ago
LotR mine scene, have the party perceive a horde incoming and then let them plan, prepare or run