Why do some GMs ever go "halp...

I really like the opposite problem as a GM. It breeds cowards and terrible people. Players realize they value their character's lives more than the lives of innocents when you give them the choice of dying and saving others, or escaping and letting them die.

You ask them why they became heroes. Likely they don't have an answer.

>Pretending 3.PF is the only RPG in existence
>While whining about 3.PF
I thought you people all moved on to 5e

that's literally not a problem unless the PCs are supposed to be good

I uniformly play bleeding heart sappy heroic types even in 40krpg that'd rather die or be tortured than let innocents suffer but what can you do?

I do it to good parties. For evil parties I reverse it where they have to go into the burning building personally to FUCKING STAB those innocents.

>This is what makes powergaming a problem; if you have one character whose effectively punching at level 8 while the rest of the party are non-powergamed and punching at level 4, your options as GM are create something for the level 4 guys (in which case no challenge for the level 8 guy) or create a challenge for the level 8 guy (which is completely unfair for the level 4 guys)

Or maybe everyone could powergame.

>For evil parties I reverse it where they have to go into the burning building personally to FUCKING STAB those innocents.

Wow that's dedication

If you're not dedicated evil might as well be a dirty fucking neutral.

Not everyone wants to be a half-Ogre duskblade, Kevin.

or instead of playing "hits slightly harder because he's one size category harder at the cost of a level" you could play "hits much harder because he's three size categories larger at the cost of literally nothing"

>half-ogre duskblade
>powergamed

Kek.

>playing 3.5/PF in the first place

Your own damn fault for playing a shit game.

>why is that Touhou just letting someone stack biscuits on her nose like that?
Magic of course.

I have to ask: why are you giving the 'die or let this innocent die' choice? Are you insane? When you give a guarantee like that, of course the player is going to chose the option that lets him keep playing, and most characters will probably not be willing to be so selfless.

If you give them even the slightest chance that they won't actually die, they will be far more likely to try and save innocents. And they can't blame their GM for being a dick if the dice doesn't go their way, instead of if he kills off their character for being a good person.

Did he kill him?

That's a good point, honestly the universe forcing good PCs into a situation where they're guaranteed to die, just because they're good aligned, is fairly obnoxious. If that's what happened.

nope

Most people who have this problem have it because they are newer. They under-estimated an item. They under-estimate player cleverness. They are not smart enough to recognize that their clever player is only _slightly_ less of an idiot, and his plan never merited a roll. They thing everything deserves a roll. They didn't put their foot down when something seemed off. They're too proud to take it away, or too scared of player bitching. they have no idea how to roll with an off-beat concept without squashing it or letting it squash them. The think that they can make up for an imbalance on the player side by adding a counter-balance on the challenge side (which turns every encounter into a coin flip). They want to play by the rules, even though they will admit that they don't understand them. They're afraid of singling out the munchkin. They can't identify the munchkin. Their players bitch when they undercut those player's strengths with contrived situations. They thought their players enjoyed winning, not realizing he wasn't challenging them until it was far too late.

>why is that Touhou just letting someone stack biscuits on her nose like that?
Because awoo.

...

She's not a dog, she's a wolf!

Dogs are just advanced wolves.

...

>when you're a player and you go "these fights are baby shit I'm bored out of my mind every session"
I would rather suffer from a TPK than suffer from boredom. I would rather be at home playing videogames.

Eh I don't like killing my players. I've put a lot of work into the narrative to make them the focus. I've been getting better as a GM so maybe in the future I'll be able to handle it

>players

Look, you don't have to like it but sometimes you have to "Let a player go". It's sad, but necessary.

>Eh I don't like killing my players.

What exactly would warrant, in your view, doing that? Not using a coaster?

Many players are whiny bitches about character death.

As players push higher levels the gap between challenging fight and potential TPK shrinks.

The combination of these factors is the problem.

Of course, if player death is just something that happens then you never get a party that are all very high level and the problem never comes up.

If a fight isn't dangerous, why have it?

As a player, if an enemy can't reasonably kill me, then don't force me to roll for it.

Because they think their character is deep

That's why you should never hesitate to kill players.

>Dogs are just advanced wolves.
Actually, if one were to simplify it, it would be more accurate to say:
Dogs are just emotionally retarded wolves.

I say that as a dog-lover with no great affection for wolves.
Dogs work better with humans because they don’t develop into independent, full fledged wolves.
Instead, they retain underdeveloped, overemotional qualities of wolf puppies, give or take a few millennia of selective breeding.
A threatened dog will be more likely to react to the perceived threat in fear or anger, whereas a wolf will be more likely to watch and wait for the appropriate time to respond.

Also, the average dog isn’t smarter than the average wolf.
***
Thus ends this test of the autistic-post-making system.
Had this been actual autism, relevant studies would have been cited.
We now return you to your thread, already in progress.
***
>-vious solution is to gradually increase the difficulty of encounters until the party is sufficiently challenged?
Because far too few GMs have tried to boil a frog.

>Because far too few GMs have tried to boil a frog.

Glenn Beck? Is that you?

However, dogs have developed an astounding ability to emotionally manipulate humans to help ensure their own comfort and safety.
That's why we have the idiom 'puppy dog eyes'.

Because, in case of highly specialized characters, it can be hard to challenge them without having high chance of killing them. Take an optimized damage dealer in 3.x. Short of making custom monsters, it can be very hard to make an encounter they can't end in a round or two without making it so strong that it can kill them before they can kill it.

Any caster or caster monster ever.

Should depend on the campaign, really. For a grittier campaign, death should be a constant concern, but for a lighter campaign or high fantasy or something it should be something the players are still trying to avoid, but can only happen in big story moments or if they do something REALLY stupid.

Considering humans do half the work for them (people would dress a fucking rock up in a cute little sweater if they were primed to anthropomorphize it), and animal young manipulate their adult parents as a matter of survival, it's not really "astounding" so much as "a natural result of sticking a permanent child in the vicinity of a social creature like humans."

Not every GM wants to rewrite an adventure to throw in 2d6+2 Dragons that don't have any reason to be there other that to challenge a min maxed party.

create a threat that doesnt give a shit about the powergamer's character abilities. skelletons against archer for example. some bandit king with a chainmail of elemental defense against a wizard.
or a group of opponents which also have a high-power leader which would go for the strongest member first

But if they even suspect that is the case then there is no challenge, just grind.

That was supposed to be perma death but spell check didn't like it.

I know a lot of GMs don't want to kill their party because they think it'll hurt their feelings or whatnot, but it really does take the fun out when they're clearly trying to let you win. We fought a succubus in PF one time who basically came at us with only melee attacks once it was obvious that she would TPK or make us retreat with deaths otherwise.

The other extreme is the hex-crawl random gen GM who just goes "whoops, your Lv.3 party just got ambushed by 6 dire wolves" in which case you quickly learn to carry something that gives you invisibility and/or flying to gtfo

i always found the idea of lvl 10 characters finding lvl 9,10,11 challenges, having a group of powerful people only run into equally powerful people is kind of a boring story, I can just go play pokemon for that

It's more interesting for me to see a group of lvl 10s run into a large mob of low level enemies. They could slaughter these 50 people but then the word gets out that they are blood thirsty monsters and effect how the world looks at them.

Similarly having people who believe themselves powerful encounter challenges much above their level combat wise makes them try and do something that doesn't just involve rolling a die until a number reaches zero

>just got ambushed by 6 dire wolves

Don't worry, they'll die like bitches anticlimactically.

It is often a flaw of the game system, usually some variant of DnD, that means that for a properly optimized character challenge isn't just difficult to create, but outright impossible.

Note that challenge is different from defeat. Fro something to be challenging, there has to be a realistic change of failure but with enough room for victory that the players can achieve it if they are careful or skilled.

Consider a Wizard who goes into a fight with nothing but save-or-die spells. If any one of these spells succeeds, the wizards wins the fight and none of the health, stats, or abilities of the enemy matter in any way. They are just instantly defeated on the spot.

If the spells work on the enemy, the wizards wins effortlessly and no challenge exists.

If the spells don't work on the enemy, the wizard is absolutely boned because they 'optimized' and now have nothing they can use to impact the fight. If the enemy is outright immune to that kind of spell the wizard will probably have no choice but to run away, if the enemy just has really high saves the wizard will probably stand his ground and keep pressing 'fire spell' buttons until one of them lands and the fight ends instantly or he gets smashed without having done anything.

With such a character, its almost impossible to create a situation that isn't either instant victory or inevitable defeat within the rules of the game. You can't just scale the enemy up slightly, because its an all or nothing deal.

Unfortunately, the best solution to that problem isn't to change the encounters, its to change the character. The adult thing to do is to talk to the player and ask them to do something else, ANYTHING ELSE, than save or die spam. Killing off the character and having them make a new one accomplishes the same end, but crosses a vindicitive line not all GMs want to cross because it means targeting a PC for death specifically for metagame reasons.

Yes and?

>She's not a dog, she's a wolf!

Might be a good idea to read this: dynasty-scans.com/chapters/hunting_dogs_fangs#1

I like when the party still encounters low-level shit, because it actually shows how much the party's improved. If every challenge is always equal or slightly greater challenge to the players, it's basically just level scaling.

> party is pretty powerful
> we tell DM we're super powerful
> throws adult white dragon at us ( we're not that powerful)
> I'm playing a bard with max charisma pro in intimidation and persuasion
> convince dragon that I'm a legendary dragon slayer
> tell him of our sweet quest
> he gives us a ride to our location at the cost of a horse, and all the rewards from the dungeon
> convince dragon to go in first, big fight between dragon and cultists
> dragon comes out on top
> i roll nat 20 flip through the air, land on the dragons neck and slash it open
> dragon was left with one hp after cultist fight
> become actual dragon slayer
> group never plays again,

I know it was his first time DMing was with this group, but srsly dude

Because creativity, no matter how minor, and thinking for yourself is pretty hard apparently.

>> party is pretty powerful
>> we tell DM we're super powerful
>> throws adult white dragon at us ( we're not that powerful)

That's what happens when you lie to the DM. It's karma.

>adult white dragon
>white
Were you fucking 4th level bandit slayers? White dragons are the weakest dragons.

Because those GMs are spoonfed challenge ratings by D&D and simply stop designing encounters there. But actual combat doesn't just involve two groups smashing into each other at high speeds. Even low level bandits and a citizen's militia will form basic strategies in order to succeed in an objective while against a better equipped and well-trained force. This implies lying in ambush, setting basic traps, knowing when to fall back and retreat (having just ONE line of defense is dumb), and a bunch of other simple, logical things that most people just avoid thinking about when they can just mash numbers together.

D&D is a poorly designed game with an even shittier GM toolbox, more at 11.