Hey folks, last weekend I ran my two main campaigns. While the first one is doing fine and we’re problably aproaching the end (they’re on level 6~7), the newer group kept rolling terrible on their second session (they get such bad rolls that we had a PC death in the first session).
One thing that makes me worried is that battles take way longer then they were supposed to take, the group barely survived an encounter with a few blink dogs that kept dragging on and on. The encounter itself was pretty fun, I believed I used the dogs’ fast movements and abilities quite well, and the deadliness made this fight a pretty tense one, but still It took too much time of our session (actually I made the dogs fall back after getting badly hurt so the story could move forward, even though they were clearly winning the battle)
Any suggestions on what should I do to prevent overly long scenes?
Do the battles in both games take too long? Or just battles with the newer group?
Chris Stone-Bush The newer one. They keep failing their rolls and getting stomped by enemies.
But if they’re missing rolls and getting stomped, why are the battles taking a long time? Shouldn’t the PCs either be dying or running away if things are going that badly?
Running away was my suggestion – for both sides. You have to convince sides to cut their losses when they can see the inevitable ending
Chris Stone-Bush That’s the point. It seems that they never get to finish a fight, either they end up running away or I make the monsters leave (also I like to give detailed descritions and encourage them to do so, pretty sure It helps making the game flow slower).
In any case, this group has less time available than the other one, and its kinda hard getting much done when they get stuck in every single fight, you know, its hard to put the story fowards when they keep running away : P
Maybe I’m DMing wrong, and need time to adjust to this other group’s playstyle.
I’m brand new to dm’ing but my thoughts would be first that my encounters are too difficult for this group for whatever reason. Maybe try a smaller outing where they do something more like the early stages of a video game. “Clear the rats from the cave” style of quest. Give everyone an easy thing to do together so they can build on an easy win.
Also, if they’re failing a lot, shouldn’t they be leveling and getting stronger so they are better equipped to deal with the things they had previously run away from?
Also, consider that some enemies may be overcome with some Defy Danger roll. You don’t always need to whittle away hit points. Sometimes you just tackle the lead orc and make him yield.
When a single player rolls poorly often, I tend to use softer moves, or sometimes even decide when they come up with a clever tactic to combat the poor dice, I follow the fiction and just let it work. (Pushing over a bookshelf on a draugr? Excellent! It topples over and crushes his brittle bones to powder in a cloud of decaying pages and dust. The thick cloud even gives you some cover while plotting your next move.) Rolling poorly often will cause them to level up a lot faster, too, which hopefully they’re bolstering the stats that are poor. Multiple players, though… that’s rough. I’d follow the fiction at that point – go get a boon from a god or an artifact to help on their task, or introduce a quest to have them “restore their luck”.
But… if they’re getting into character and enjoying the combats, it might not even be a problem for the players – though, doing something and losing constantly is a drag for me, personally. Since the second group is a lot newer, don’t forget that “lower level” means that characters fail more often, (+0 means that you’ll miss fail ~42% of the time, while +3 means that you only miss ~8% of the time!) not fight lower level bad guys like in that other fantasy system.
Some question hit my head while reading this post. Are you following your principles and agenda? Are you overusing movements that make damage? Which is the purpose of those battles? What if they had other motivations than killing the foes? Why not capturing them instead of killing? Which is the purpose of the attacking guys?
Eneko Sanchez They’re pursuing the man that killed their companion (the Player Character that died on the first session) seeking revenge.
The thing is that they discovered that this villain is a member of some kind of “drug cartel” that is very influential on the region.
With that in mind, maybe they should try another aproach instead of going head on against those criminals. But of course I will let them find out by themselves.
Maybe you can leak information through an npc that there’s someone willing to give up intelligence on the cartel. So it becomes a search mission instead of straight up combat.
I like the cartel idea because there’s so many ways it can be approached. Sometimes revenge is killing a dude and sometimes it’s ruining his life.
Mario Morales I really like that. Maybe they can take one of his goons and interrogate him/her, getting the information so they can realize that going head on is not a good idea, you know, these guys have trained blink dogs patrolling the area around their hideout, they’re definately well prepared.
How do local drug dealers have blink dogs as their guard dogs?!
james day What is the problem with that? These are very powerful drug lords, with connections all over the kingdom, and even though they weren’t this wouldn’t be a problem, this is a fantasy world after all, why bandits wouldn’t be able to use its magic in their favor
Adventurers do that ALL the time, don’t they?
Pedro Bastos I guess its your world but I’ve always felt blink dogs either independent or being controlled by a big enemy like a demon.