Candid thoughts on pixels, polyhedrons, and paper.
Hello, my name is Jerry and I’m a carebear Dungeonmaster. I’m here to inform you all briefly of an encounter I ran this weekend that actually managed to incap two of my players (nearly killing one). Some of you may have read my previous article about being a little too easygoing on my players, and what I should do to combat it. Well I designed a rough encounter and ran it this weekend and let me just tell you that the pit of my stomach fell a bit as I heard “wow I’m dying, my character is gonna die”. I knew I’d finally managed to make them sweat in an encounter to the point of incapacitation and possible death, but I felt horrible about it!
Now I must admit, for a party of 5 level 4 characters (and a level 3 NPC who’s an amateur at best) an XP budget of 1300 is kinda high, but hey that was the point
So ever since I’ve picked back up D&D 4th edition, I’ve been trying to heed the “leave them bruised and broken, but still alive” philosophy, however apparently not broken enough. It’s been about 5 months now since our campaign has started, due to scheduling and other elements my players are only level 4 now and I’m starting to see the errors of my ways when it comes to fudging one too many dice rolls. My players are outright shocked if a monster or trap deals them too much damage, fail a skill challenge or drop to zero hit points – well that’s just unheard of! I always try and make sure my players are having a good time and honestly I don’t want to kill them off, so I always make sure that doesn’t happen. After explaining my style to a good friend (and boss) who is relatively new to D&D aptly termed this “Carebear DM’ing”
