5e Game - Part 4

"Last time," he said with a sonorous tone, "on the continuing adventures of [your group]." I start each session out that way (fully stolen from Mr Matt Colville - it's not plagiarism if it's an homage). It took my group about 3 full sessions of me reminding them (and threatening to call them "My Little Ponies" and play the intro theme song as well, every session) to come up with a group name and while it's not as sweepingly cool as what I was hoping for (Colville's friends' Revenant Vow, or Critical Role's Vox Machina), it is their own creation and it fits the group. Totally necessary? No, until this group I've only had one other group that had a group name, and it was more indicative of the group of us players and not of the PC party. Ran fine before that and since, but I really felt my party needed the common identity a group name provides.

I've been gathering carrots and sticks, and by that I mean I have been figuring out both rewards and punishments in case the dreaded "fight/encounter, short rest, fight/encounter, short rest, fight/encounter, long rest" pattern ever raises its ugly head. Fortunately, I have not been tempted to use any of the carrots or sticks, as the group has pretty much run through an average of 6 fights/encounters before they take any rest, long or short. It does help that I've warned them that I expect them to not waste the group's gaming time - that is the biggest problem I see with the fight/rest/fight/rest pattern, it wastes the group's limited time at the table figuring out all the resting; next in line, of course, is it doesn't make sense in world for the bad guys to not press the attack and allow the group that breathing room - and I will bring the pain should they draw my ire. But as I said, while planning on my sticks, I am a kind DM and have also been thinking of carrots to reward the players, if it comes to that.

Sticks
- The classic comes immediately to mind: DON'T LET THE GROUP REST. Oozes attacking around the door (or even the stones around them turning into oozes), the baddies break down whatever barrier the party is hiding behind (or burn it down, threatening the party with fire and smoke inhalation), or even have the baddies locate the party (you have to let them know they've been found to be really fair) (or not, it's your game) and set up a trap or ambush right outside the PCs' safe room.
- You can also reverse your carrots (see below).

Carrots
- Put out a "bonus dice" bowl, where you put in a d4 for the 2nd encounter after a rest, a d6 for the 3rd, a d8 for the 4th, and so on. These bonus dice can be grabbed by any of the players and added to any roll (yes, any roll - to hit, damage, save, ability check, any roll). And yes, it may be a d4, but that's not an automatic +4 to any roll, they have to roll it in addition to any other roll they've made. The stick to this is that you as the DM build your own "detriment bowl" and every time the PCs rest, you add a d20 (yes, a d20), and you get to roll it and add (not advantage, a full add) to any roll you make. Harsh stick, to be sure, but it gets the point across rather quickly.
- For each fight/encounter past the first one, give more experience (heard Scott "The Angry GM" and Brian "Fiddleback" discuss this one over on the Digressions and Dragons podcast, which I can't recommend enough) in an ever increasing amount. First encounter, 1x; second encounter, 1.1x; third encounter 1.2x; fourth 1.3x; fifth 1.4x; and sixth and above 1.5x. You don't want to encourage them to go past 6 encounters in a day, that might be construed as encouraging them to push themselves too far so they die. The stick to this is you go the other direction - first encounter 1x; rest; next encounter 0.9x; rest; next encounter 0.8x, and so on.

Like I said, I haven't had to use any of the above, my players are hard chargers and want to get to the next challenge (they are more "roll" players rather than "role" players, but they're learning), though I am always adjusting the adventure to keep their tensions up. I'm running the adventure The Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde from WotC, 3.5 era, and translating it pretty much one for one from 3.5 to 5e. However, I do add in more baddies as the party wanders the ancient halls of Slaughtergarde, or take them out, and always finding myself adjusting hit points (usually up) for the monsters mid-combat. The hit point averages suggested in the 5e Monster Manual are usually good enough I don't bother changing them (I roll damage, because I like rolling dice, and the exact same damage every time just feels a little too same-y and brings you out of the fantasy) right off the bat, but if the party is having too easy of a time of it, well, the average HP in the MM is just an average, so I can go all the way to the max of the hit dice before the players can really cry foul.

You want to challenge your party, not every fight, but you also do not want to give them a cake walk. How exciting would it not be for a party of 5 to always fight just one goblin (or its equivalent) over and over again? And I'm not saying that the only XP a party earns should be from fighting, nor that every game session should end in the party gaining a level, but think how long it would take a party of 5 splitting 50xp each time to level up.

One last thing before I forget (I know, I know, long post) - my players really don't want me to have a named baddie that gets away and then comes back later to mess with the party, as they will run anything and everything down once they decide it needs to die. How do you fix that? How do you keep your players from killing everything? Either you plan really well (scrolls of teleportation for every named baddie gets boring, and predictable, though), or if you want to bring a baddie back, every named baddie has a relative out there waiting to avenge them.

5e Game - Part 3

A new player joined the party for this weekend's game. We took a break last week for Mother's Day, the game is important but not so important we can't take a break from it. Anyway, the new player joined us and he chose to roll up a PC of a class we already had (druid, which is only important for one reason, as you'll see shortly). Why did I allow it? I felt the party was already fairly strong, but I'd have allowed it if I felt it wasn't - it's not my job to guarantee the PCs an easy go of it, they either create a balanced party that covers every aspect/skill/combat situation, they learn to cover the areas they are lacking in, or they fail. If they want to make the mono-race/class/whatever party, I'd let them, it's about the fun they find at the table not if they complete the adventure or not that is important.

Just like party balance, it's the players' responsibility to integrate the new character into the party, though I help as I can ("you guys are going into the dungeon after the drow? I got this map from an escaped slave two nights ago, and I can't take them all on just by myself"). Still wished for a little more talking amongst the PCs before they welcomed this complete stranger into the group, but they found it adequate, so I don't dwell on it. As I keep reminding myself, this is a campaign with the training wheels still firmly attached, a training ground both for players new to the game and for a DM that is rusty at running an adventure arc. If a PC or two were to die, maybe the introduction of the new PC to the party will have more role playing.

At the end of the session, the party's original druid decided that he had been a ranger the whole time. I let him rewrite his character from a druid into a ranger due to the whole party being only 3rd level and the addition of the new druid into the mix. Without both of those, I would have required the PC or the party go on a quest to, I don't know, acquire the Three Items of Power (The Tome of Knowledge, The Diadem of Change, and The Thingy of Whatchamacallit) to change the druid into a ranger. But it wasn't that big of a change from one to the other, the characters are very low level, and to be honest, I really wasn't prepared for the PCs to abandon their current dungeon and story-line to go haring off on a quest that I frankly didn't have ready. Sometimes to preserve the illusion of sandbox, you have to keep the players firmly on the train tracks. Or maybe I'm just a big softie.