>be DM, system makes combat a bit deadlier than usual, you can take about one hit and then anything after that starts racking up some penalties >party has 0 healing magic, despite the fact that a few people could pick up some heal spells with a not-huge investment of build to do so >whatever, it's fine, their characters and all >adventure starts, obvious tracks leading to bad guy camp, camp is obviously large and relatively well-fortified, party is free to engage it at their leisure after working out some kind of strategy >party walks up to front gate, talks with obvious bandits for a bit, currently there are 7 bandits at the gate chatting with the 5 party members >barbarian charges into the middle of all of the bandits, yells "sorcerer drop it on me I can take it!" >sorcerer drops big-ticket AoE spell on top of barbarian, takes out ~half of the HP of all the bandits and the barbarian, giving them all decent levels of penalties due to getting electrocuted >AoE lasts for a while, blocks off entrance to bandit camp >rather than retreat until later, sit outside the walls and lie in ambush, or literally anything that isn't 100% straightforward, half the party jumps the wall and gets inside the camp >party is split, like 2 people are taking the brunt of all the attacks as the OBVIOUS happens and more bandits rush out to see the commotion >entire party almost dies, barbarian goes down but is given a potion a few rounds later, they manage to fight off the rest of the bandits and narrowly live >party is mad fight was so difficult
I just can't. They're normally not the kind to get all buttmad about stuff like this, so I'm going to assume it was temporary frustration, but still. How often do people bitch about encounters being overtuned when they're just approaching it like a retard? I'm all for having fun with combat, and you don't have to have a min-maxed character, but if you're going to be willfully reckless and it backfires how can you be even remotely surprised?
I was wondering, how are you guys handling dialogue between NPCs, if at all?
While I understand to keep dialogue between NPCs to a minimum (can be boring for player; might make you look like an asshat etc.), dialogue between NPCs can be an invaluable tool at helping with exposition, especially in terms of exposing the world or the location to the players; which even if their characters should be familiar with it, the players will not.
How much carnage do you typically depict or get depicted in your games? Do your players stumble upon it themselves, do they cause it, or some kind of other consequence of their actions? As a secondary question to this, is it possible to have no-win situations/failures in an enjoyable experience for players, or is it usually too difficult or risky to try?
My GF is going to play a campaign with me and my freinds issue is she was raped not too long before I met her so the word gets her on edge. So should I force the players and everyone in game to pronounce it wrong or just ban the item for the campaign?
I need some advice for being a really good GM.I have been a GM now for about 3 years for my group and I want to get better. By which I mean I want to be able to make more engaging stories, better npcs, more exciting dungeons etc. I see a lot of threads for newbie GMs advice, but nothing relating to what to do once someone already knows that.
I know that the skill of GMing is more of an art then a craft, but I think that the people of this board have a lot more experience than I do, and that I can avoid a lot of mistakes once I hear it.
