"DM, we've gone through high hell and back, and we might have lost a few characters along the way, but I think we've proven that we can handle it." The rest of the group agreed. The guy who always played fighters also spoke up. "Yeah, as long as you don't do anything dumb like put in a dragon at level 1, I'm pretty sure we can take whatever it is you have to dish out."

DM: "Oh, no, I'd probably only need things like orcs, lizardfolk, and kobolds to do it, honestly. I'm not sure you guys could make it to the higher level stuff." Again, hurt pride. But now I was determined, and I think the rest of us didn't want him to just sit there, looking down on us like that. We practically begged him to run a game for us the way he wanted to. He eventually broke down, but was still adamant that we couldn't handle him on "full blast", so his compromise was this.

"I'll run a few test games first. Just dinky little one-shots. If you get through the first one, I'll raise the difficulty of the next one, and if you can get through all of them, I'll concede defeat and even apologize to you for saying you couldn't handle it. Deal?"

Us: "Deal. We'll take down your fucking dungeon and make you get on your hands and knees in a dress by the time we're through. We'll show you that we can handle it."

We couldn't handle it.

2/7

A little something about our DM. He might have been blunt, but he was fair. He always rolled out in the open, always was completely transparent about the rulings he made, and even would listen to us if we thought the situation was unfair. He's a great DM, but something I didn't really think about until after that incident was the fact that he was a genius. He always quickly adapted to anything he got his hands on, was able to see the pros and cons of something faster than any of us, and any game he got hold of, he would pretty much win if there wasn't too much luck involved. I always kind of thought he was smart, but I didn't really know HOW smart he was. To put it simply, we were outplayed.

The first level alone nearly did us in. I think if we hadn't had our pride hurt so bad, we would have stopped the first time someone died. Or the second.

We wiped.

Three times.

Just on level one. One of them being the first encounter.

It wasn't even anything special is what pissed me off the most. The dungeon was barebones and barely had any of the intricate flavor text he would normally put into rooms. He told us that it was just a "test environment". Something to control the variables as he threw them at us. And he was right. He didn't really need more than just the orcs. Those god damned orcs. The orcs were what really got us. We saw some orcs marching around, and we thought "Piece of cake. We can take this with no problem". We were fools.

Afterwards, he gave me what notes he had on the thing. I wasn't shocked afterwards by what I had seen, because I think by the end of it, we had discovered everything he had done. All he did was adjust the stat block according to some behind the scenes rules he had made.

To start with, everything in here was part of a military force we were sent to wipe out as they had been encroaching on our territory and it was up to us to stop them. So, naturally, the military had a lot of structure to it we weren't expecting. Each encounter was just written as a squad with a squiggly symbol next to it which was actually an orc letter. At minimum, each squad was composed of 10 units. 8 of those units had improved armor. Splint mail at the minimum. 4 of them came with swords and shields, while the other 4 came with longbows and greataxes. The 2 other units were always spellcasters. No squad left base without them. They could be any two spellcasters, but they were usually a wizard and a cleric at the bare minimum. They weren't higher level over their comrades. Just a different skill set.

Their strategy was brilliant in its efficiency. When encountering an enemy, the ones with bows fall back to surround the spellcasters and reign death from afar, and drew into greataxes if anyone approached the precious glass canons. The ones with the shields would spread out to avoid AoE spells, and immediately target the ones with the weakest armor, while the mages threw status effects and saving throws at our high-armored warriors. Our deaths were quick, and quite painful. Even starting an a higher level than normal, we just weren't ready for that kind of thing.

The DM was no longer giving us hints and nudges when we were about to do something stupid, either. None of the signs of "Are you SURE you want to do that?" or "Your character would know..." or "roll an intelligence saving throw to see if you realize what is about to go wrong for you." Just cold, stony silence.

In retrospect, I think that he might have intentionally made it this hard to set a point. But when I asked him that, he just assured me that he likes it when stories don't pull out any stops like that for someone as nitpicky as he was to tear it apart.

4/7

It took us two more tries before we finished that dungeon he made. At first, we were the normal, quirky, rag-tag group of young kids, bright eyed and eager to take on the world. By the time we finished with the third party, we were different. We were a swat team. We cleared every corner, established safe meeting locations, secret codes, ambush tactics, you name it. Going head to head with the orcs was something that you didn't want to do. Not without a larger force, or something to deal with the mages in the back. We scraped every single dirty tactic out of the book to make it through it. We felt fucking fantastic when we got out of there with only a few HP lost after the struggle we went through. I have to admit, it was a little bit of a buzz to know we surmounted something THAT hard. We felt almost unstoppable for a few days after that. Until the next session, that is.

"Oh, cool. You guys made it out. Alright, time for level 2."

If the first lesson was just common tactics for battle field, this was a hard lesson in espionage. He had adjusted the orcs a little bit more now. Not by much. He now gave the orc members a kit. It was just a standard item box of things he thought a soldier ought to have out on the field. 2 potions of healing, 2 flasks of oil, bags of sand, just minor little things that made all of the difference in the world when he used them. I like my DM and I think he's a fantastic guy, but I almost straight up punched him when he said that the orc cleric suddenly popped a healing potion on one of the archers we had downed in the back.

What really killed us though were the new members. The orc squad now had a minimum of 12 members. But we never saw all 12 of them together. Orc members 11 and 12 were a patrol unit. Plate mail, shields, and most annoyingly, a magic sending stone. They were easy to take down before they got their sending stone off.

5/7

What we didn't realize is how advanced the system he had in place was set up. We thought if we just stopped them before they rang a bell, we'd be safe.

Until a voice came out over the stone asking for a report.

After the bitter defeat at being slain by three squads quickly tracking our position in their base and slaughtering us all like the idiots we were, we found out that the deception roll hadn't failed, we just were missing information. The guards patrol a specific wing, then, every 10 minutes, a voice would ask for a report, which the stone-holder would have to respond with in a certain code. If you responded with the code too soon or too late, or forwent the code altogether, the base was put on high alert until their trackers could find out where you were and hone in on your positions. Once we discovered that tidbit though, we mostly did fine, just using more of our items to counter the orcs using their own items on us with precision. (We had one more death because one of us thought it was a great idea to collect the stones and report back when needed, but didn't think to mark down where we got WHICH stone, which resulted in our rogue giving the wrong code to the wrong stone.)

We were tired. Playing on this kind of level is mentally straining. I felt like I had been spending 3 hours just boxing by the time I went home, even though I had only been sitting down and eating pizza the whole time. I finally asked him, after the 2nd level. "How many of these are there?"

"Hmm...about 5."

We didn't make it past third level. We were beaten into submission until we finally gave up. It was those fucking kobolds.

Or, we THINK they were Kobolds. We never actually met them. In fact, I take that back. We KNEW they were kobolds because of their goddamned traps. The orcs were still there, and luckliy they had no more adjustments. "I think the orcs are at their highest level they can go so I'll work on dungeons instead."

6/7

I'm sure you've heard of Tucker's Kobolds. I certainly have after this shit. The traps were borderline unfair. One thing that we managed to get by on was a little bit of predictable-ness from the DM. One of his favorite traps was to have a trap, and then hide another trap behind it to make us walk into it. We were expecting it. We weren't expecting the third one. Or the snares. Or the fact that he would use the easier traps and our fear of them to funnel us into an ambush. Or the fire. Oh boy, there was a LOT of fire. What made it worse was the traps were dynamic. The kobolds must have been wandering around, resetting traps. Every time we went in, the traps were reset, the bodies were gone, and the blood cleaned off. And the traps were different. What was an acid trap, was now 50 feet back the other direction. What was once a fire trap? Now just gone. He was MESSING with us at this point.

We lost about 40 characters to this before we told him we had enough. It took us three days. THREE. DAYS. And we had no idea if there was even an end in sight. By the end of the third day, each of us was just showing up with 6 characters each in hand, and we wound up making 2 more before the session ended. It was hell. We were tired. We were frustrated, but most of all, our prides were hurt. I don't even want to THINK about what he would have done had we gone up to level 5. This wasn't the type of game we were ready for.

After that, we took a break, and we went back to playing our normal game. Some happy news, thanks to those sessions, he's been having a lot more fun now. We went back to our quirky antics like normal, but we've been a little more conscious about how we behave as a team. Our DM's had a taste of blood, so we kind of worry sometimes what his lich and dragon battles would be like, but other than that, we're having very cautious fun.

End

>>46381067
I don't know. I'm a bit 'cool' and a bit 'meh'.

He, obviously, really upped the intelligence that orcs typically have. Not to mention cooperation etc. Major increase in the amount of magical support they have as well.

Really, at that point, they were no longer 'orcs' in the classic D&D sense. Hell, if he had his orcs organized that way how in the heck were his human military organized? Did he give every human squad that stuff?

What he was really doing was using a modern military structure and equipment (sorta) in a fantasy world and showing how it would really fuck up things. Which is fine. Although I doubt if magical resources would be available like that.

Still, cool stuff. What you need to do is adapt and do the exact same thing. Where are your two healing potions per character? Your adventurers, you should have dozens really. If orcs can have radios, then certainly they would be standard issue for everyone in the world.

I suppose we could say this was a super special thing that was just starting. But it sort of sounded 'standard'.

>>46381494

His logic was "just because they might talk funny or barbaric doesn't always mean they're stupid. A wolf has a really low intelligence, but wolves run in packs and are able to use tactics to take down much larger prey. I'm more running them by their wisdom and giving them extra funds to afford shit they need, along with a little training."

I really wouldn't like to see what he was planning with the more intelligent shit. We only really got by because the Orcs were easily distracted. And yeah, we had our potions too. Especially having to scavenge their packs for supplies quite often.

The whole thing REALLY made us step up our game, I didn't realize how weakly our team had been playing up until then.

It might not be amazing for you guys, but for us, it blew us away just how hard he was holding back the punches.

Man, if I ever run a game, I think I'll borrow some of this guys ideas for the most dangerous of enemies. Could be really challenging, and that's what a good endgame needs.

>>46381067
Holy shit anon it sounds like you got absolutely destroyed and by nothing more extreme than smart enemies with decent gear I love it.

DMs having their monsters and NPCs act according to their smarts in combat is one of my favourite things to read about. I mean you got crushed but it sounds like you eventually started really thinking about how to overcome the challenges laid before you and you'll probably take some of that knowledge away with you and play your normal games a lot smarter now.

Ask your DM friend if he could slowly ramp up the difficulty in your usual games, see if you guys can slowly rise to the challenge with him. I reckon it'll be a lot of fun for the lot of you, and will revitalize his interest in the games, and if it starts getting too bad tell your DM, he's then found a good point to flex between and knows exactly how hard he can push you.

>>46381640
Good story anon.

We recently came to an agreement with our old DM. Instead of following this approach she dropped higher and higher CR stuff on us. Eventually spell casters were neutered due to high saves and higher SR, and only one character could hit most enemies short of a crit, let alone damage them. It was a right shame. We then TPK'd to a mythic wisp with magic jar abilities.

>>46381640
Just use the meta as well. I realize that probably none of you are light infantry, but take a look around. If he can meta up some radios for his orcs, you can meta some stuff up as well.

I'd also question, because of the changes he made, the CR of the creatures you were facing. Just exactly how could your team with the equipment you had actually defeat them? Sure, you could do better tactics. But at some point their gear, numbers, etc just make them stronger than what you can bring. If the answer is 'you should have brought more guys' then again I am a bit 'meh' as that answers for first level guys taking on ancient dragons as well.

I'm all about smart enemies. Especially ones that should have experience to fall back on. But I'm not sure if this was really a straight fight.

Although a better use of the (presumed) orcs chain of command would have likely ended in a TPK every single time you encountered an orc patrol - regardless of level. First thing that should have happened should have been the orcs calling 'higher' and reporting in 'contact' which should have then brought a reaction force that you could not have dealt with.

I'd be better if (and maybe he intended) if this was supposed to be an exploratory adventure where you are scouting the orcs for a larger attack force.

I'm telling you, the most powerful thing he gave them was commo.

Almost wiped my group in 5e by giving for goblins hand sign communication in a forest, and using hit and run tactics. A small "AI" boost can go a loooong way. Especially against a party that isn't very cohesive.

>>46382532
*four

File: save_the_orcs.jpg (34 KB, 500x250) Image search: [Google]

34 KB, 500x250

>>46381494
It would have worked with hobgoblins though.

Also swapping stats and equipment is great for tactics (and a sense of variety) but this seems very heavy for first level NPCS.
It almost sounds like they had player level gear.

Do you know if he used the guidelines for NPC equipment? I mean, he sounds like the type of guy who would. But stil..

Sounds like a fun experiment though and I'm sure your games will improve.

File: 1457907031135.png (1 MB, 852x854) Image search: [Google]

1 MB, 852x854

This sounds fucking amazing. I agree with the Anon who was kind of questioning why these orcs have access to so many sending stones and healing potions and all kinds of crazy magic shit, but this still sounds great. I would love to play in a game like this, where every adventure was a real tactical challenge that you weren't necessarily meant to overcome, that was just sort of there, win or lose.

>>46382619
I was thinking of hobgoblins when I was reading his story. Tactics as described would have made more sense, at least bothered my grognard less.

The magic though, the commo...eh. Depends on the campaign of course. But it just seems a bit more than a bit much. But maybe it works for them. My view of 5e is pretty magic item scarce, so it may be me.

Give it to hobgoblins, put some sort of magical item creating mage in charge, and have at it. 'Must kill the boss' sort of thing, before it gets out of hand.

Am I really the only one who completely calls bullshit on this type of story?

Literally nothing about this was anything more than throwing more and more stuff at you until it was an unreasonable level for your characters to deal with.

Of course a group of orcs that's balanced with ranged, melee, and spellcasters is going to be more difficult than just 10 plain old orcs. Then your DM just starts giving them free items on level 2. If an orc is CR 1 in the MM, and then you change their stat block completely, create new kinds of orcs to throw in, and then start adding tons of free items (some of them even magical for christ's sake), they are obviously not going to be CR 1 anymore.

I'll give you that level 1 was a legit increase in difficulty, but level 2 and 3 are just bullshit. Traps in general are the single most retarded "difficulty increase" in all of D&D. They are literally nothing more than set resource drains that are meant to wear a party down before a real fight happens. Traps are either "did I fail the perception check? If yes, I lose X health, if no I don't lose anything". That's it. There's no counter play to it, you don't get any decision making to it like you would in an actual fight that requires tactics, it's just a perception roll and then possibly a saving throw. And then for your DM to just bombard you repeatedly with more and more of these resource drains, of course you're going to fucking die! I can kill a party if I force them to make 10,000 perception checks and saving throws, because statistically they are going to fail them eventually. And then he fucking starts moving traps? Come the fuck on.

You're DM is far from a "genius".

>>46384106
Give me an example of a genius DM from one of your play sessions.

>>46384106
"its totally just a perception check" Obviously you don't think out side the box with your traps. That sounds like a problem with your thought processes not with traps in general.

>>46384830

"I'm sure you've heard of Tucker's Kobolds. I certainly have after this shit. The traps were borderline unfair. One thing that we managed to get by on was a little bit of predictable-ness from the DM. One of his favorite traps was to have a trap, and then hide another trap behind it to make us walk into it. We were expecting it. We weren't expecting the third one. Or the snares. Or the fact that he would use the easier traps and our fear of them to funnel us into an ambush. Or the fire. Oh boy, there was a LOT of fire. What made it worse was the traps were dynamic. The kobolds must have been wandering around, resetting traps. Every time we went in, the traps were reset, the bodies were gone, and the blood cleaned off. And the traps were different. What was an acid trap, was now 50 feet back the other direction. What was once a fire trap? Now just gone. He was MESSING with us at this point."


I completely understand the difference between complex and simple traps, and what's required to clear both of them. It's 100% obvious from the OP's description that these are mostly simple traps; acid traps, fire traps, snares, things that can be reset easily by a kobold patrol.

Get over yourself. OP's DM isn't a genius.

>>46384106
>Traps are either "did I fail the perception check? If yes, I lose X health, if no I don't lose anything".
No wonder you think they're nothing but a mindless resource drain.

>>46381934
>>Ask your DM friend if he could slowly ramp up the difficulty in your usual games

This. And remembers, the fact that you were in a "test area" meant that you couldn't take advantage of any of the things which make the PCs more powerful, like prep time and research.

File: learnings.jpg (1 MB, 901x729) Image search: [Google]

1 MB, 901x729

>>46384106

Confirmed for never playing an edition of D&D that didn't have 'perception checks'.

Old-school modules had traps all over the place, and you couldn't just "roll perception", because there was no such thing. You had to describe which parts of the room you were searching, how you were checking the door, what you were using. "I check the door for traps" was not a valid action, at least at my table and under Gygax's advice. Good players said things like, "I use the end of my quarterstaff to push on the door near the latch, slowly increasing pressure," or "I hold my torch high and kneel down, and examine the floor for any out of place flagstones." The GM would take into account what you were doing, and decide if that would trigger a trap, or help you find one, or if you would be out of harm's way.

Really good players would actually (gasp!) learn about the dungeon before they entered it by asking locals, interrogate creatures that lived in it, or shadow them so they could find the safe routes. Players that immediately drew swords and killed every ugly creature in every dungeon would die from traps, which were much more deadly than most combats. What's more, they'd get barely any experience, because they'd never find treasures, because you'd generally have to either ask someone who knew where the treasures were or be exceptionally lucky.

If you run traps, hidden doors, and other secrets as mindless 'perception checks', then yeah, they'll be mindless perception checks.

>>46381934
>Ask your DM friend if he could slowly ramp up the difficulty in your usual games,
We'll probably do that once we get over the trauma. Honestly trying to actually outthink him on his own level felt pretty good when we managed to beat him. Even though we didn't make it to level 5...

>>46382175
He said that the biggest thing was the sending stones. We were actually all at level 4 for this to start with, so CR wise we would have been fine with the as-written monsters. But you're right, it wasn't a straight fight, but he didn't ever really present it as much. His notes said that he was "less concerned about fairness and more about what a military leader would arrange for". Basically, the orc military itself didn't have to be smart, just the guy who was running the show and organizing the training.

The orcs themselves were still stupid, just not braindead. We managed to get by one group through distracting them by having our ranger lure a pig through their camp, and they all got caught up in trying to catch it so we could sneak by their hide out. He was still playing as fair as possible. He just upped the difficulty.

>>46382619
They had player level gear, but honestly, nothing that was abnormal. They had nothing more than chainmail, shields, longbows, basically things like that. The orc mages and clerics weren't even wearing armor. They really didn't need to with the archer unit.

>>46383760
>The magic though, the commo...eh
This one I was kind of expecting when we went in. He always hated forgotten realms because its a high-magic setting, but "everyone acts like they've never even heard of the concept of magic whatsoever. Its like all their leaders are retarded." I think what he was going for is how someone would change their way of life when they know of the existence of magic.

>>46381067

Was your DM Bruce Wayne?

Sending stones cost 1400 GP each, which is literally more than 80% of each scouting party's treasure ratio. If you simply riddled one guy with arrows and scarpered the enemy encampment would be bleeding 1400 GP every encounter.

I would have played it like elves. Everyone gets a bow, everyone shoots the same guy in the surprise round, everyone snipes a mage from as far back as they can manage then runs away.

You would leech their money up until the point where larger folk came out to play.

>Giving an organized group of enemies tactics and equipment
>hard

Since the limitations you were given in character creation and intelligence gathering weren't given I can't say much, but this should be expected with any sort of force that isn't your ragtag group of hide wearing bandits.

This was a test dungeon so the orcs being smart, or at the very least seemingly not propa orky, doesn't matter at all just replace orcs with human mercs and its fine. But this seems like basic stuff to myself when I make dungeon/base encounters for my players.

I don't go walkie-talkie mode with sending stones for almost all of them, but what sort of military force that can supply a squad with adequate armor, support, and weaponry would throw all of it away by NOT training their units to fight in multiple formations?

Again, I'm sure you guys kinda got fucked seeing as this was a "testing" dungeon and you couldn't do a few things that most people would do to prepare for assaulting an enemy base/assassinating the head of a hidden cult/army/whatever the hell they were meant to be, but welcome to the world outside the easy-mode playground you guys had apparently been playing before.

File: 1304283009031.jpg (112 KB, 554x439) Image search: [Google]

112 KB, 554x439

Not OP, and I know it is fun to pick apart the OP's scenario and critique (seeing as /tg/ is %80 GMs). Lets get this thread back on track though, if only for brainstorming intresting tactics. What have you guys done, or had done to you, that invoked the same idea of "playing smarter"?

>>46381494
>Although I doubt if magical resources would be available like that.
I felt the same, after reading this. Giving every orc a healing potion would only be fair if the PCs could afford to equip every character with a healing potion before every battle, as well.

>>46381494
I doubt 7 intelligence is enough to successfully mass produce healing potions. Replace the orcs with hobgoblins, and it might have been more appropriate.

>>46385701
>Old-school modules had traps all over the place, and you couldn't just "roll perception", because there was no such thing. You had to describe which parts of the room you were searching, how you were checking the door, what you were using. "I check the door for traps" was not a valid action, at least at my table and under Gygax's advice. Good players said things like, "I use the end of my quarterstaff to push on the door near the latch, slowly increasing pressure," or "I hold my torch high and kneel down, and examine the floor for any out of place flagstones." The GM would take into account what you were doing, and decide if that would trigger a trap, or help you find one, or if you would be out of harm's way.
This requires that the players know how real traps actually work, though. Not to mention all the potential magical traps that wouldn't exist in real life. Disarming a trap should require in-character knowledge, not player knowledge, in my opinion. Would it be fair if a DM provided their players' characters with a series of chemicals, and expected them to know which specific chemicals to combine to get a compound necessary to complete a challenge? I think not. A DM expecting players to have out-of-character knowledge that he or she has to complete a challenge is not fair.

>>46385701
>Old-school modules had spells all over the place, and you couldn't just "cast a spell", because there was no such thing. You had to describe which syllables of the incantation you were stressing, how you were preparing reagents, what you were using. "I cast magic missile" was not a valid action, at least at my table and under Gygax's advice. Good players said things like, "I extend my staff and say Galamor Foedal Eluvion while making the Sevenfold Sign," or "I raise my magic sword high and shout BY THE POWER OF GRAYSKULL." The GM would take into account what you were doing, and decide if that would cast a spell, or help you cast one, or if you would be out of harm's way.

>>46389374
>This requires that the players know how real traps actually work, though. Not to mention all the potential magical traps that wouldn't exist in real life

there is a middle ground

something between "i roll to find traps" and needing to be a locksmith

describing the gist of actions your character would know, rather than simply declaring a stat to roll, is just good roleplaying

>>46389338
And if their boss is a 20 int lich or some other spooky wizard?

File: hong meiling WOW_1.jpg (51 KB, 735x384) Image search: [Google]

51 KB, 735x384

>>46381067 (OP)

>My GM "beat" us in what amounts to a war game where he establishes the field of engagement, number of enemy forces, and provides said forces with infinite traps to work with AND advanced communication capabilities, in a system known for its swingy low level combat

>>46384106
The easiest counter to traps in the world? A ten foot long pole, or some rope and a rock. Walk around tapping shit like a blind man, or tie a heavy rock to your rope and chuck it down any hallways and drag it back to you before you walk down the hallway. Give every door a solid poke before you open it (using rope and standing a little bit back) in order to set off most traps harmlessly. Simply by being a little bit cautious and thinking before you act you can generally avoid most traps. At higher levels magic traps can just detect living things, and that's why I always have a ferret breeding facility at my character's houses. They're good for throwing.

>>46389319
I felt like the orcs were far better equipped as a group than the PC's. Certainly they seemed to have much better resources than what your typical orc should have available. Or PC.

>>46389338
>>46389519
Both hobgoblin and lich master would have been fine. Thing is, if you make enough changes to the monster it isn't really that monster any more. It is instead something else. There is a difference between giving a monster a new 'twist' and making enough changes that it isn't really the same thing any more. I really think that OP's DM did that here.

They weren't Orcs any more. OP's group went up against a heavily magic'd enemy that was very disciplined and well trained. In effect a modern military equipped with magic stuff instead of tech stuff.

>>46386067
>Basically, the orc military itself didn't have to be smart, just the guy who was running the show and organizing the training.

Actually the orcs still have to be smart. If the orcs aren't smart, no matter the training, they are still going to only be capable of wave attacks. You are coming up against a hard limit here. Training does not enable everything.

At the least you would have needed mutant smart orc squad and team leaders. That is a minimum.

And all of it adds up to some pretty cool stuff, really. So there is a high level mage out there who has taken over a large orc tribe. He has a bunch of sub mages making magic items for him (maybe he discovered some super secret method). Even worse, he has figured out how to mutate orcs and advance them. Such that approx 30% + have at a minimum human average int. He even managed (if I read this correctly) to mutate them so that a further 20% can be some sort of low level (or med) magic user - which is likely way above what most player races have as a general population.

I disagree that this is a 'fair' test bed. I disagree that you got owned fairly. I do think though that such a scenario, fleshed out some more, could be very fun.

>>46389374

I guess we just have a different set of expectations for the game. I like a game that rewards players for being smart and knowing about stuff. If they have fun with it, and it also inspires them to go grab a book and read a thing, that's a double victory. Player knowledge should absolutely be a factor, because otherwise there's no real way to be good at the game—it's just a series of die rolls.

That's not to say that character stats shouldn't *help*, or that players shouldn't get any support at all from the mechanics. It's not a very Gygaxian way to do things, but I let players roll Intelligence or Wisdom checks to get hints. But a player who understands the basics of how a door hinge works or understands what a trip wire is will be able to get past those challenges without even rolling, much of the time.

It's a style of play that requires the DM to be much more descriptive, though, otherwise it devolves into a game of "Uh uh uh, you didn't say the magic word!" A mechanical trap will smell of grease, and stick out a little in the environment. A fire trap will smell of oil, and the players might even see a pipe running through the room. Locks with poison darts will necessarily have a small mechanism next to the lock. Trip wires will flicker under torchlight. If the DM doesn't give these kinds of hints, then traps are just a mindless "gotcha!" and are terrible dungeon design. *With* these kinds of hints, the dungeon becomes much more real, and the players have a sense of mastery when they recognize things in the description.

File: re2pect.gif (4 MB, 480x480) Image search: [Google]

4 MB, 480x480

>>46389697

This guy dungeon crawls.

>>46381067
>>46381084
>>46381109
>>46381133
>>46381149
>>46381176
>>46381198
Good story anon! Thank you for sharing.

>>46390145
> A mechanical trap will smell of grease, and stick out a little in the environment. A fire trap will smell of oil, and the players might even see a pipe running through the room. Locks with poison darts will necessarily have a small mechanism next to the lock. Trip wires will flicker under torchlight. If the DM doesn't give these kinds of hints, then traps are just a mindless "gotcha!" and are terrible dungeon design. *With* these kinds of hints, the dungeon becomes much more real, and the players have a sense of mastery when they recognize things in the description.

If the players look, that is what they find. I sort of use skill checks as a saving throw. So if you didn't look for something, your perception will kick in. That sort of thing. Although I do allow that a character action can nullify any real chance of detection.

What I do try to do is never say 'you detect a trap'. Instead I try to give a description along the lines that you describe above. 'You see a wire across the hallway' sort of thing.

It makes things a little more difficult on my end, but I think it adds to the game. It certainly seems to encourage players to look for traps (through actions, not perception default) during play. I think it is because they see that there was something there that could have been found.

File: toh demon head.jpg (182 KB, 651x1024) Image search: [Google]

182 KB, 651x1024

>>46390352

Here's the difference in how I run it:

Let's say we've got a trap that spits a jet of fire when someone crosses a tripwire. The pipe supplying oil is already there, so I describe that before dice ever the table. It's part of the room description. The fire has to come from somewhere, there must also be a spigot—probably hidden in a fresco. So the fresco is part of the room description. And the oil is more or less exposed, so they'd smell that when they walk in.

"Looking through the doorway, you see a narrow, unlit corridor of sandstone, stretching off into darkness. Frescoes of animal-headed figures enacting a strange ritual cover both walls. A pipe runs along the ceiling, along the right-hand wall. Through the stench of your companions' sweat, you smell lamp oil, and you feel a warm breeze coming down the hallway. The floor is not quite even—a shallow rut has been worn down through traffic over the years."

If they don't look at the fresco, check where the pipe goes, or generally look around for signs of a trap, *then* they deserve the blast of fire that's coming. Players have a chance to use their brains to solve the problem. If they go searching in areas that will lead them to bypassing the trap, then a good roll will give them more information, but even rolling a 1 will give them *some* information. 1) "You're not sure what to make of the fresco, but you're pretty sure it's important." 10) "Something about the way the figures' mouths open is unsettling." 15) "Each of the figures has its mouth open. Upon close inspection, you see that they're all holes, opening up into the plaster and lathe wall." 20) "Further down the hall, you see one figure whose mouth is open particularly wide. The hole behind the mouth glimmers in the torchlight."

If you make it all about the players' perception checks, then there's no way to actually be good at the game. Every trap that goes if is just like, "Whelp, guess you should have rolled higher on your Wisdom!"