Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Balance in RPG games

One thing that I feel like the new editions of the game have moved towards is the notion of encounters must be balanced. CR for monsters, the ability of player characters to virtually smash and hack their way through most everything has led to the era of story and adventure path gaming. This is all kind of crap to me, but why is that you say?

Well gang, life is tough...daily at my corporate push button job there are times I cannot resolve issues with my standard practices or operations, you have to get creative, seek help and adjust on the fly. Roleplaying games should not be any different, what fun is it to just attack and hack every encounter to death?

So...how do we fix this...especially for 5th edition which has certainly made the entitled generation of characters much more over-powered than they should be? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Make your games more of a sandbox. Move away from the adventure path, tell a story type of gaming. Your players will develop their own leads, their own backstories through play and experience. Just give them a world and a few set places to play with and expand on that through play.
2. Place unwinnable encounters and monsters in your world. Obviously don't place these right outside of town or do....maybe that cave on the edge of town holds something dark and deep that should not be discovered. Those warnings in the tavern had some merit. Have encounters that the PC's cannot immediately win, they will run away hopefully, remember that encounter and seek ways to go back and win it. Trust me, most players are dying to know every little secret and when they do find a creative way to resolve it, reward them. You can even do this by ramping up the number of creatures encountered...5 kobolds, no sweat....50 kobolds waiting to ambush the party as they exit the dungeon, now we're talking.
3. Power up your PC's with magic items, not feats. This one is a little tougher with the newer editions of the game, but you can certainly house rule as needed for your tastes. In my games, there are no feats, but I allow my players to attune to 5 magic items as opposed to the standard 3. This motivates to go into those dark and dangerous places, poke around where they shouldn't, and hopefully discover those items that push them over the edge.
4. Change your monsters. This is a fun one...we all have that one player in our group who's memorized the monster manual, knows what is coming the moment you describe what their character sees. Adjust the stats, the abilities, hell even the look of your creatures....that group of goblins, give them players abilities and levels, then sit back and watch the confusion and panic.

Hopefully this plants some seeds to go challenge your players, the game is much more fun when it is challenging. When your players have to get creative, suffer, and work hard to overcome, those are the stories that will be told years from now around the gaming table.



No comments:

Post a Comment

Recent posts.

My favorite D&D media