Author Topic: Encounters - status quo or tailored?  (Read 11299 times)

Offline ImperatorK

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Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« on: November 14, 2011, 09:14:21 AM »
Which do you use in your games most often?
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Offline Mooncrow

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2011, 10:05:45 AM »
Pretty much always tailored; I find that it's not possible to give my players a good challenge on a consistent basis otherwise. 

Offline Slaughterhouserock

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #2 on: November 14, 2011, 10:20:34 AM »
I always have the party in mind when making encounters.  If running something from a module, I'll always change things around based on the characters abilities.  I've actually had DMs get frustrated when my teammates and I would plow through their encounters when they just used the stock ones from modules.  Never was able to convince any of them that it was the modules that were the problem, not the characters though.
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Offline Basket Burner

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #3 on: November 14, 2011, 10:59:13 AM »
N/A.

Offline archangel.arcanis

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #4 on: November 14, 2011, 11:18:26 AM »
I basically never run modules so everything is customized. I try to make sure that it is logical for the creature(s) to be there and that it is a good challenge for my group. There is nothing gained from using a stock encounter in a module if it is inappropriate for the group (either way too hard or easy) it just leads to frustration or boredom by the players.

Offline Unbeliever

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #5 on: November 14, 2011, 11:27:04 AM »
I almost never run modules either.  My gf is running us through Savage Tides, and she mods the encounters to varying and lesser degrees. 

One of my favorite things about D&D, and one reason I keep coming back to it as a game, is its "plug and play" nature.  I can usually just thumb through some monster manuals or have an idea for a monster and find stats that are very close to what I need.  Sometimes I make slight tweaks -- like what spells a particular Grisgol has -- but generally I use monsters "as is."  The most common change I make is increasing hit points. 

The exceptions would be monsters that scream out for customization, like liches (who are really just NPCs with a template) or dragons (which aren't really pre-statted in the books). 

Offline RobbyPants

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #6 on: November 14, 2011, 11:58:55 AM »
I don't run modules. Sometimes I take stock monsters right out of the MM and sometimes I mix and add feats or stat up NPCs from scratch.
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Offline Sinfire Titan

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #7 on: November 14, 2011, 12:47:34 PM »
I usually use MM3/4/5, and avoid MM1/2. The later MMs had better encounter balance (it's still swingy, but not nearly as bad as MM1), and are more useful right out of the box.

That said, I enjoy custom encounters and I never send a dragon at the party without being very careful with its spells/feats/items. Although I don't enjoy customizing enemies enough to DM a game of WW or V:tM.
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Offline Nachofan99

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #8 on: November 14, 2011, 02:00:01 PM »
Oh man I was going to make a thread about this topic!  Score!

I have used both Tailored and Status Quo.

I think Tailored encounters "deals with" a lot of the inequity of the classes; T1 guys are going to be challenged more in Tailored encounters - and you can throw lower Tiers a bone as well.

Status Quo has kind of grown on me, however, because the group expects to die if they go fuck with the great wyrm red dragon as level 3s.

Too often we were finding that "Well we know it's about as strong as us, because it's a Tailored encounter, so we automatically fight everything".

So previously, I used Tailored all the time.  Now, more and more, I'm using Status Quo.

Offline Basket Burner

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #9 on: November 14, 2011, 02:31:20 PM »
The topic title implies that there are only two options. There clearly are more than that though, as is demonstrated by the differing definitions as to what those words mean. It's a false dilemma, which is why I originally posted N/A.

Going by the official definitions, status quo means things are what they are. They are preset in advance, and while they are not static, they are predefined. The alternative is that enemies are specifically designed around the party. But think about what that means for a moment.

If the Fighter increases his AC by 2, suddenly all enemies get +2 to hit from somewhere. He should have saved his money.
If the Wizard gets a Wand of Invisibility, more opponents will be creatures with natural scent/blindsense/etc than if he did not. Again, he shouldn't have bothered.

As you can probably imagine, the effect of the alternative is that your actions and decisions do not matter, because they will be entirely nullified. Instead you should run around naked while shouting your own name as loudly as possible. Then 90% of your opponents will magically vanish and the remainder will forget 90% of their combat ability! Just like the Elder Scrolls series.

With status quo however the enemies are predefined. They are what they are. And what they are is creatures in a very dangerous world in which magic is the greatest threat they will possibly face and mundane attacks are easy to nullify. Given that, you aren't going to have very many enemies easily shut down by magic. It doesn't matter that you aren't specifically nullifying a specific caster because high saves, touch AC, immunities etc are simply logical things for them to have if they can get them.

They are not static however. If some enemies become aware of the party, they are likely to start taking more specific countermeasures. As is though they are what they are. There are no solutions built in, but there are solutions that can be found. What that means is that good players/characters/plans get rewarded and bad ones get punished.

You can probably already imagine which I go with but in case you haven't gotten it yet here is the most recent example:

I had the first encounter in my campaign entirely designed before I knew anything about the party other than the starting level and party size I wanted. I didn't even know who would be playing through it yet.

By the time the first encounter was done, I had the first 15% of the campaign designed.

By now, I have the first 35% done.

Knowing that their actions are what delivers or damns them is motivating my players to play intelligently and to regard dangerous situations as dangerous.

Offline ImperatorK

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #10 on: November 14, 2011, 02:36:53 PM »
So you're using Status Quo.
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Offline veekie

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #11 on: November 14, 2011, 04:16:53 PM »
Generally tailored, with abilities that key off party weaknesses and strengths, depending on the type of combat. Tailoring isn't complicated anyway, with practice I can cook up an encounter with a monsters by CR index or a regional random encounter table, a few feat/equopment swaps, and throw in terrain in under 10 minutes, during which I just need to distract them long enough to construct the scenario.

Routine encounters tend to play to the party's strengths(souping up health and DR so that they can get more of a challenge against the party's massive physical output, but also with crucial vulnerabilities built in like being evil(gogo paladin), vulnerable in a particular save or just being stupid), critical encounters exploit party weaknesses(theres a weakness is crowd control so if outnumbered 2:1 things get Interesting)  or gaps.

The group tends to find Status Quo type encounters more boring, the enemies having AC that don't matter, health that goes pop in a single salvo, and still being able to oneshot PCs.
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Offline Bozwevial

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #12 on: November 14, 2011, 04:34:45 PM »
Tailored, but not in the sense that Basket Burner mentions. If there is something for which my party has absolutely no counter, I'll either remove it (not a huge fan of this) or tone it down for the first time they ever run across that particular ability as a sort of wakeup call. Generally that works pretty well--my players will try and work out some sort of contingency plan should that ever happen again. They're actually not half bad for a new group--after an encounter where they were hit from ambush by an invisible creature, they started preparing countermeasures for invisibility, which worked to their advantage the next time I used something that could turn invisible.

As far as what the group fights, though, I don't pull punches there. I'll drop hints that hey guys, holy shit that's a really huge dragon in his cave over there, maybe your plan shouldn't be to try and fight it? If they still try and bloody its nose, then yeah, they're probably going to get murdered, but that's the logical consequence for attacking something so far out of your weight class, and I don't feel that the convenience of not having to roll up new characters is worth the loss of verisimilitude that happens when no matter what they do, the PCs will always have a fight they are capable of winning.

Not everything in the world is there because I intend for the PCs to fight it at some point.
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Offline Basket Burner

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #13 on: November 14, 2011, 04:37:26 PM »
You're defining status quo as stock enemies veekie. That's specifically why I described what I meant.

Offline Mooncrow

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #14 on: November 14, 2011, 05:00:45 PM »
You're defining status quo as stock enemies veekie. That's specifically why I described what I meant.

Designed or stock, it's irrelevant.  If you don't bother to take PC abilities into account, actually optimized characters will steamroll them.  Or, if you're designing solely for highly optimized T1's, they'll kill everything T3 and below. 

Offline Basket Burner

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #15 on: November 14, 2011, 05:06:39 PM »
You're defining status quo as stock enemies veekie. That's specifically why I described what I meant.

Designed or stock, it's irrelevant.  If you don't bother to take PC abilities into account, actually optimized characters will steamroll them.  Or, if you're designing solely for highly optimized T1's, they'll kill everything T3 and below.

He describes it as "the enemies having AC that don't matter, health that goes pop in a single salvo, and still being able to oneshot PCs." AC that doesn't make a difference, HP that goes quickly when properly made characters attack it, and 1-2 rounding PCs is something that'd happen anyways. Yet he is describing it as if it were something different, just with solutions built in instead of being found.

That also isn't necessarily true. Unfortunately I can't give specific examples out in the open without them being a spoiler.

Offline Mooncrow

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #16 on: November 14, 2011, 05:20:08 PM »
You're defining status quo as stock enemies veekie. That's specifically why I described what I meant.

Designed or stock, it's irrelevant.  If you don't bother to take PC abilities into account, actually optimized characters will steamroll them.  Or, if you're designing solely for highly optimized T1's, they'll kill everything T3 and below.

He describes it as "the enemies having AC that don't matter, health that goes pop in a single salvo, and still being able to oneshot PCs." AC that doesn't make a difference, HP that goes quickly when properly made characters attack it, and 1-2 rounding PCs is something that'd happen anyways. Yet he is describing it as if it were something different, just with solutions built in instead of being found.

That also isn't necessarily true. Unfortunately I can't give specific examples out in the open without them being a spoiler.

The thing is, if you "reward" optimization by characters getting ahead of the +attack and +damage curve, eventually Team Monster's AC and hps don't matter, while the PCs AC and hps will still matter to the NPCs.  Or, if you assume that level of optimization when designing encounters, the types of characters that can't reach that level in everything (ie. all of T3 and some of T2) end up having gaping vulnerable points that will eventually get them killed. 

This is especially true if you go with CR as any kind of relevant measure. 

On the other hand, if you've come up with a way to make static characters that somehow don't run into those problems, I would love to see how.  Even if it has to wait until you've thrown them at your PCs.  And that's not sarcasm, that's dead serious. 

Offline Basket Burner

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #17 on: November 14, 2011, 05:38:27 PM »
You're defining status quo as stock enemies veekie. That's specifically why I described what I meant.

Designed or stock, it's irrelevant.  If you don't bother to take PC abilities into account, actually optimized characters will steamroll them.  Or, if you're designing solely for highly optimized T1's, they'll kill everything T3 and below.

He describes it as "the enemies having AC that don't matter, health that goes pop in a single salvo, and still being able to oneshot PCs." AC that doesn't make a difference, HP that goes quickly when properly made characters attack it, and 1-2 rounding PCs is something that'd happen anyways. Yet he is describing it as if it were something different, just with solutions built in instead of being found.

That also isn't necessarily true. Unfortunately I can't give specific examples out in the open without them being a spoiler.

The thing is, if you "reward" optimization by characters getting ahead of the +attack and +damage curve, eventually Team Monster's AC and hps don't matter, while the PCs AC and hps will still matter to the NPCs.  Or, if you assume that level of optimization when designing encounters, the types of characters that can't reach that level in everything (ie. all of T3 and some of T2) end up having gaping vulnerable points that will eventually get them killed. 

AC already doesn't matter. For either side. HP needs to be taken out quickly, while your own needs to not be taken out quickly. So I'm not seeing the problem.

That's also not quite how optimization works. A Beguiler has most of the same defenses as a Wizard. A Warblade is only slightly less squishy than a Fighter. The breakdown isn't a matter of tiers so much as it is access to non AC defenses for physical attacks and lots of save boosters and so forth.

Quote
This is especially true if you go with CR as any kind of relevant measure. 

On the other hand, if you've come up with a way to make static characters that somehow don't run into those problems, I would love to see how.  Even if it has to wait until you've thrown them at your PCs.  And that's not sarcasm, that's dead serious.

As I said, I cannot discuss them openly. Think about it.

Offline ImperatorK

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #18 on: November 14, 2011, 05:47:30 PM »
Sorry for interrupting, but you're both going off-topic.
"Encounters - status quo or tailored? Which do you use in your games most often?"
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Offline veekie

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Re: Encounters - status quo or tailored?
« Reply #19 on: November 14, 2011, 05:50:52 PM »
You're defining status quo as stock enemies veekie. That's specifically why I described what I meant.
Party of T4s and T3s, mostly optimized for physical damage(rapid shot + optimized bard). Level appropriate monsters, by the book, turn into meat paste about as many actions. Non custom challenging encounters would have a chance of oneshotting the party right back.

And still get turned into meat paste.
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