Sitting on the sofa after dinner, my wife is reading a book by Lucinda Riley, and I’m following a discussion about old school gaming on Discord.
Ah, Discord. Like IRC: everything can be rehashed forever and nothing is ever collected in blog posts. Or is it? I’m going to put my answer on this page! 😁
spuds_larsson says:
I hear that the OSR largely shuns the “modern” idea of “balanced encounters” and so, I ask, what does this all mean? How does one “balance” an encounter in an old school game?
I think the balancing happens by the players: the referee is supposed to provide a description sufficiently detailed so that the players can make a decent risk assessment and then engage on their own volition, or seek some place safer, but with less treasure, of course.
For the players to be able to make this decision, all they need to know is “how dangerous are these encounters” and “where can we find less dangerous ones”.
If you have these two properties, and the party comes upon a rubbery, green, tall, gaunt fellow with black pools instead of eyes and claws five inches long, the players can use their *experience* to decide whether they want to engage or not. Does it look like the troll is guarding treasure? That should also influence their decision.
If players can use their experience to choose whether to engage or not, then the referee doesn’t have to adjust encounters: no fudging of dice to save characters, no appearance or disappearance of monsters to make the fight tougher or easier, no thinking about challenge levels, nor monster ranking, no wondering whether these many hit dice are appropriate for that many characters, and of what level, no complaining about level-appropriate magic items, and on and on. If the players feel that they are outmatched, they can retreat and pick another fight; if the players feel that this might be worth it and doable, they can engage.
What are the mistakes adventure writers and referees might make that undermine the self-adjusting process described above? Here are the things we should be avoiding:
If monsters have surprise, they get a free round of attacks. Depending on the monsters and the party, this is your total party kill right there. At the same time, we want monsters to surprise the party every now and then. You just have to be careful. One way to handle this is to have a way for players to avoid being surprised, if they play well. If they kick in a door, perhaps they surprise monsters. If they stand in the corridor bickering about what to do, perhaps a surprise by random encounters is a well deserved consequence. If tough monsters are easy to detect and if sneaky wandering monsters are weak, then that makes for a better design. If they have party members which can see in the dark scout ahead a few feet, if they stand guard, if they bore little peeping holes into wooden doors, if they wedge doors shut with spikes, and on and on, they can prevent surprises. That is to say: avoiding surprise is a reward for skilful play. The harder it is to avoid being surprised, the weaker the monster should be.
I recently had a room with hidden, poisonous spitting cobras, and no sign of them visible in the room except for the junk. Of course players searched the junk, got surprised by the cobras, a character was hit, failed their save, and died. That was not so great design and I should have caught it. Have a dead snake skin be easy to spot before beginning the search, for example.
Another thing to avoid is an abundance of unknown monsters. I know, some people love this. Re-skin the monsters, they say – i.e. use the stats for a monsters but change the description. The result is that players cannot use their experience to judge whether they are in over their top. You prevent players from learning from their experience. It’s not worth remembering anything about trolls if the next troll looks completely different. You can compensate if your description of the next monster that is as dangerous as a troll sounds as dangerous. I’m just not sure it’s worth the effort.
This is why I avoid random monster generators. If I introduce new monsters, they are rare. I try my best to describe them as dangerous as they are and to provide advanced warnings. Let players make informed decisions. If they make informed bad decisions, it’s on them. If they make uninformed bad decisions, it’s on the referee.
Another thing to avoid is lack of alternatives. If the players can’t go elsewhere, or can’t learn of a place to go to that is less dangerous, then they can’t make an informed decision either. It’s the railroad or nothing at all. If the referee runs a railroad, then correctly designing the encounters ahead for maximum enjoyment is of course imperative. But it’s hard, and it prevents players from using their experience. They are at the mercy of the referee. The railroad must be interesting, challenging, entertaining, and it’s all on the referee. That’s a heavy burden to carry. Don’t burn out.
And finally, if monsters “fight to the death” as I’ve seen in many adventures, then that’s a sign of a game with a potentially well designed sequence of encounters. If monsters just retreat, surrender, or ally with the party, it endangers The Plan. Can’t have that, no! A well designed sequence of encounters usually implies a railroad, and so players soon learn the rules: no retreat, no surrender. And they don’t question this, because monsters behave the same way.
Don’t do this. Force yourself to roll morale checks at least twice: after the first casualty, and after half the monsters are incapacitated. Feel free to roll more morale checks for spectacular magic, the use of illusions, clever disguises, good speeches, whatever. Make sure players can talk to intelligent monsters and force yourself to always roll a reaction roll, and roll with it.
Avoid the pitfalls we just went through and remember the two key points at the beginning: all the players need to know is “how dangerous are these encounters” and “where can we find less dangerous ones”. Allow your players to find out and make meaningful decisions.
#RPG
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Yeah, I had this balance epiphany when playing, IDK, Gaudia Quest or Dragon Warrior or The Final Fantasy Legend or similar video game. It was up to me when to return to the village, when to use potions, when to cross the river, when to enter the forest etc. I mostly use models but when I do homebrew, I never balance to the party, I only balance to the area, relative to other monsters. Which is much easier.
Create a world and let the players loose in it.
When a DM isn’t doing that, when they’re trying to keep serving up balanced encounters to the party, they then become responsible for that balance and ultimately even for the outcome of the battle. That usually leads to DMs eventually starting to fudge. I wanted to avoid that.
– Sandra 2022-08-10 07:47 UTC