Walk Away
It’s been a while since we talked about the need to retreat. The trouble is that the need is rarely obvious. That’s because there’s a funky metagame element going on with very-deadly-encounters.
“Yeah, I saw the red dragon fly by overhead. It nearly dropped that half-a-cow on us, remember? But it’s probably a social encounter. What kind of jerk GM springs an ancient wyrm on a third-level party?”
*cue burning and screaming SFX*
The problem is that some GMs follow our hypothetical player’s line of thinking as well. Every encounter is level-appropriate. Every situation is winnable. That’s not bad or wrong, but the existence of these two competing styles — Gygaxian Naturalism vs. level-appropriate design — sets up a weird interaction that I think of as “The Forest of Doom.” You’ve probably heard of it. Rumors of that fell wood abound in all the inns and ale houses of the kingdom.
“To set foot within the Forest of Doom is death!”
“That’s a cursed place, and no mistake! Those who venture beneath its boughs are never seen again.”
“I’ve head that even that shadow of the trees can kill. Beware, adventurer. Beware the Forest of Doom!”
Meanwhile I’m sitting there like, Holy shit you guys! I bet there’s all kinds of treasure in there! That’s because all those fun, fluffy rumors are typical quest text. NPCs are expected to play up the dangers of local dungeons, making me feel like a big damn hero when I stride boldly forth. But if the Forest of Doom is in fact a straight-up death trap, and if it’s a DC 25 save to avoid insta-death every round you’re in there, then we’ve got a set of competing expectations at play.
Ideally, players show proper caution. The respond appropriately to the dire warnings. They note the dead woodland creatures that ring the edges of the Forest of Doom, and realize from context clues that, “Oh. This isn’t a proper dungeon. It’s a setting element meant to show us that the ancient Hex War left an indelible scar on the land. Let’s maybe not go in there.”
But sometimes GMs rely too broadly on hints. Flirting with danger begins to resemble flirting in high school, and GMs are left just as frustrated as their cheerleader counterparts: “I gave him sustained eye contact. I laughed at his jokes. I even flipped my hair! Why won’t he realize that touching the gilded skull will cause him to explode without a save?” In those situations, I tend to fall back on the same advice for GMs and high school sweethearts: If all else fails, don’t be afraid to just be honest. Tell him that you like him… alive and un-vaporized. Explain your GM philosophy up front (preferably in Session Zero), and be explicit when your dangers are too dangerous.
So how about it, guys? Have you ever fallen victim to the Forest of Doom? And if you’re a GM, have you even been surprised when your players ignored all your dire warnings and did the “obviously stupid thing?” Sound off with your tales of very-deadly dangers and missed warning signs down in the comments!
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The 5th ed group I am currently playing in fell afoul of this. It was a bit our fault (we know the DM doesn’t pull punches, and to always assess a threat), and a bit the DM’s (for mixed messages in his telegraphing).
When travelling between two locations, we passed a location that a previous plot encounter had occurred at, and which we knew now had been more significant than we had realised at the time. We had no reason to call in, but we were nearby, and we reasoned there might have been clues we missed the significance of at the last visit, so we stopped by. And a small group of the BBEG’s henchmen were there.
Ah-ha we thought, there was something. So we crept in, ambushed the henchmen in their sleep (making a trivial encounter of what in hindsight would have been really very hard, and should have been our first warning), and walked smack face to face with Mr BBEG himself.
Now the problem was, we didn’t realise he was the BBEG. All evidence up to this point suggested he was either a puppet of a shadowy power, or the war between his army and our employers was a massive misunderstanding perpetrated by another. Our group was split over which it was (my belief was the misunderstanding), so some of our group attacked on sight (to be fair, he had just caused a major war crime, so even in a misunderstanding, he had some paying to do) while I tried parlaying between sword thrusts.
Long story short, we were wrong. Very wrong. The DM gave us an out; the guy opened with mostly crowd control and attempts to escape, but we were too good, and either broke the attempts to lock us down, or counterspelled his escape magic. So we left him only one avenue to disengage. He drew Blackrazor (from its life drain ability, I assume that was what it was), and he one-shot the party Wizard. And the following turn he one-shot the party Fighter. And the rest of us Sir-Robin’ed it for the hills.
How exactly to the DM mix his telegraphing? That’s the big question given today’s topic.
This happened to me in my first ever session.
We were in a post-apocalyptic desert type environment, and the game opened with the village being attacked by huge bug guys riding an enormous bug. Having gone to my house to pick up my starting equipment, I then heard a bug snuffling around the door, and another one around the back wall. My character was a Level 1 Doctor, and while he had a tiny pistol that didn’t sound very intimidating against giant bugs.
My friends had been outside the town, and were still running toward the horizon.
Having checked what the walls and door were made of (solid wood) the only thing I could think to do was try to hide or escape. A few checks revealed nowhere to hide. So I asked if I could climb into the roof beams (success), then on to the roof (success), then leap to another house (success) and bypass the bugs.
I felt pretty good about the whole thing, but afterwards the DM was really puzzled why we had all run away without fighting.
“Those guys weren’t tough, you could have taken them easily,” he said. “Why didn’t you just shoot them?”
Well… because the way they were described made them sound really dangerous. As complete noobs, we didn’t have any expectations set, and were all thinking of something out of Starship Troopers from the description. We assumed the scenario was “avoid TPK” when actually it was “squash bugs, save village”.
Giant bugs are especially tough to deal with. That’s because “giant bugs” is not a helpful description. If that spider is crawling harmlessly across my lawn, it’s tiny. If it’s in my bed and coming right for me, you can bet your ass it’s giant.
So true, and these were described as “bigger than human-sized”. I maintain that running for the hills was thoroughly in-character.
I’d be running for the hills if the bugs were the size of my Shih Tzu.
I maintain that Samwise only got in there and mixed it up with Shelob because his GM is bad at describing scale.
So my players are in the Goblin Market, trying to buy something that has sold with the caveat that it not find its way back to the Chicago Freehold; The memories of the Spring Queen. Several negotiations all over the Market lead them to three different Goblins who can start the “Trading quest chain” I had set up. The first would trade for the engagement ring one of the players intended to give to his beloved the night he was taken. One would trade for “A song to make the stars themselves cry” (which they knew a changeling noted for her singing voice who was plot important and this was designed to make them go to her.) The third had jokingly replied he could get the the item for “the tears of the Fox Who Cannot Be Caught”. Note that said Fox is somewhere in the Hedge, hiding from her captor, the Hunter.
So they decide that the Fox’s tears are the obvious plot hook here, and trade two or three other significant things to find her general location. Stunned and working from a position of surprise, the Goblin says the Fox can be found in “The Forest of Silence, on the doorstep of Arcadia itself.” At least the Autumn Court rolls a knowledge check and finds that the Forest is so named for it enforces silence, those who make sound have it weaponized against them. After a few more trades trying to find something that would hinder the Hunter that they could trade to the Fox to get her tears, one of them gives up the memory of the song that led them out of the Hedge and back home to find out that the Hunter reveres the Five Nations.
The party heads out of the Hedge and back to the city to chat with their Seasonal Kings. I’m thinking they’re going to track down singing NPC. Nope, they ask how to find the Forest of Silence and tell them they’ll be out of communication for a few days. Every king repeats that the Forest is “on the doorstep of Arcadia” and “very deep in the Hedge” and “exceedingly dangerous and hostile”. Then they rob a museum to get an ancient banner that the Five Nations used in one of their last official battles.
So now I’m committed to this. They head into the hedge, five deadly hobgoblin encounters later, they arrive at a forest of trees with ice for leaves and where snow covers the ground. One of them steps forward and the snow crunches loudly under his feet, sending vibrations through his leg that deal 2 Lethal damage to him. So they start into the forest and one says “I roll to try and track the Fox.”
So I gave him a dead stare for a moment before nodding. “You attempt to track the Fox Who Cannot Be Caught like a common hunter. Roll Wits+Wyrd to see if you can even find the trail.” At which point they suddenly realize that they have agreed to find someone whose specialty is NOT BEING FOUND. Now, the Fox had stats and was built like a Changeling. Unfortunately, none of them were specialized in what they needed to oppose her. So my players end up wandering the Forest of Silence a while, occasionally taking damage from not being quiet enough before they see a flash of pink. This leads them to an owl made of glass who is wearing what appears to be some odd pink and orange band on one of its legs. One of them makes a Academics roll and recognizes it as a snap bracelet, popularized in the 80s. The owl tells them in telepathy (because speech is a death wish here) that he got it from the Fox a long time ago in exchange for the secrets of the Forest. After trading a few Glamour for minor details, they eventually confirm that the Fox was spotted near the old man’s cabin, near the center of the forest. So they head there and find a pathway lined with strange hollow sticks. One of the players makes a Crafts roll and identifies them as broken sets of panpipes. They approach the cabin and speak with the old man for a little before they realize he is carving a set of panpipes. When they bring it up, he breaks them and laments he can never practice his craft again, for the Gentry have corrupted it. They realize they are speaking to the Pied Piper, a changeling forced to use his music to steal children. They ask him about the Fox and he replies that he knows her and is protecting her currently. After a few social rolls, they manage to convince him to reveal the Fox, who looks like a sixteen year old girl with fox ears and tail. They ask her for her tears, and she looks at them like they are crazy. They explain that the Goblins don’t understand why she cries, and want her tears to know why. At which point she tells them she cries for the Hunter’s hounds, who are kids taken to hunt her. They convince her to cry for them by talking about how horrible that is, and then collect the tears after giving her a banner from the Five Nations, which they believe will prevent the Hunter from being able to kill her. Then they barely manage to find their way back to reality before they are killed by hobgoblins and hedge traps.
My players told me I am no longer allowed to write quest hooks when I’m in a depressive swing of my bipolar phase. Then remarked at how amazingly hard and dangerous the whole thing had been. Then I pointed out they were supposed to go talk to singing NPC who was in the town. They all looked at each other. One of them facepalmed, one of them laughed and said “nah.” The third said he was going along with the other two. x.x
That’s the issue right there. That’s standard quest text, not a dire warning.
It may not be an ideal solution, but I like to break character during those moments and explain to the group in mechanical terms that “this is a bad idea.” That might look like “roll a know things check” for common sense, or it might be a straight up, “Guys. Seriously. Who has the highest tracking skill?”
I’m not one of your players, but it sounds like this might be an instance where this kind of miscommunication worked out. It sounds like they got a super-tense brush with severe danger that worked out fine for them in the end, which can be fun (though they might have just felt frustrated, which is a different matter). And no one died!
…It does seem like they should have put a little more thought into the “how to catch the Fox Who Cannot Be Caught” plan.
That’s a good call. If it worked out, and if the consequences are “difficult but survivable” rather than “TPK,” then everything is groovy.
I worked hard to make it “Dangerous but survivable”, as instant death makes me feel narratively unfufilled. And it did work out. But it was just that I expected them to do the relatively far simplier thing and they just decided nah.
Player agency FTW. 😀
I’m running a game for my semi-regular group on Sunday, and I’m planning to start the session with a speech along the lines of “some of you may die, and that’s a risk I’m willing to take”. I know that their current dungeon has at least a couple of deadly encounters, and one encounter that almost certainly cannot be won by brute force.
It feels a bit meta-gamey to give them a warning at the start of the session, but they’re all quite new players and I don’t want to be responsible for killing their first ever characters without warning.
If it goes well I might make that speech a staple of my games anyway, just to remind them that there are more ways to win encounters than beating everything to death.
Experience will learn ’em. Either that or it will level them up.
Well, I didn’t kill them. They were also smart enough not to charge headlong down a corridor packed with darkmantles, so I guess the speech got them suitably cautious. Still had two making death saves against the final boss.
And they did indeed level up.
With new players especially, giving them the “The kids gloves are off” speech is not bad. There is an expectation of the GM will take it easy on us because we are new. Directly telling them that is no longer the case is probably a good idea.
I’m glad I did it – they played a bit smart as a result and it was also quite fun to scare them at the start of the session!
The BBEG (A king who’s roughly a Warlock/Eldritch Knight, used his pact for good before his Archdevil patron twisted him into a tyrannical power addict) in our campaign actually isn’t the most powerful of our enemies. That award goes to his enforcer, a Paladin with a shitload of extra abilities that are designed to make him somewhere in the realm of CR 25-30. The Paladin, Sir Renault (now known as The Empty One) was basically the mortal plane’s equivalent of Superman before the BBEG destroyed his free will with a dark ritual.
This ain’t the Forgotten Realms; there’s less than ten people who are the NPC equivalent of a level 20 PC. The Empty One is comparable to an epic character and has Legendary Actions among other special bonuses.
So far, we have yet to encounter him. One of our members, a Warlock (who later switched to a Monk), had a vision of him obliterating the starter town’s militia, then massacring the populace, but other than that all we’ve heard is hype from my Fighter (who’s the BBEG’s nephew) and NPCs. If my suspicions are true and the DM is planning to throw him at us before we’re ready to fight him to see what happens, I have the following line prepared in case the rest of the party is crazy enough to try:
“He can reduce you to a bloodsplatter, get your heads out of your asses and run like fuck!”
lol. Yup. That’s about as clear a warning as you can get.
subtle hints or double entendres are for cowards: They are a preparation for a cheap exit on the lines of „you must have misunderstood“.
My not so subtle hints at a self designed encounter looked that:
Brought my freshly aquired Gargantuan Green Dragon to an early session „look at this beatiful case incentive I got with 75% discount“.
Surrounded a 12mile hex with basalt pillars engraved with „cut no trees in this forrest“. The players came past that on the way to the troll layer in Kingmaker part2 (CR8 appropriate).
I‘m sure one of them had enough ranks in diplomacy, and all of them enough intelligence to keep it a social encounter, but the players where not interested to follow the cavern beyond where medium creatures could comfortably go.
PLAYERS — “Why do you have that enormous green dragon mini?”
GM — “No reason.”
PLAYERS — O_O
GM — :3
my reaction was similar to that… Green Undead Thinge 😉
anyways, I now got the encounter firmly set smack in the middle of my sandbox, with added complications.
We had the opposite problem in a game I play in. The DM described a cave with a bunch of skeletons outside it and we collectively said “Nope! We have places to be”… we later found out that the DM was planning on us going in there and was the majority of what they had prepped for the session… we still make jokes about the “murder cave”
Nope. Same problem. Different permutation.
lol murder cave. That Forest of Doom has many forms!
In a Witcher game some time ago we got to choice between venturing into a forest black as night forgotten and cursed, full of monsters and Scoia’tael brigands… Or gong back to tavern for some Gwent rounds. We choose Gwent and i win with my monsters deck a nice trip in carriage to the nearby city and some rest during the travel. Fights and treasure are nice and all but there isn’t biggest treasure than the look in the face of your DM when you ruin him the plans for several sessions 🙂
The real monster was you all along.
Very fitting of a Witcher game now I think about It 😀
I’m generally pretty up front with my players about the fact that I design most encounters to be potentially deadly by challenge rating because I give them a free feat at level one and enough money to generally keep themselves well equipped. There are cinematic enemies sometimes, but everything can be fought and potentially killed and will react accordingly to the players’ hostility. My favorite monster so far for that was a warlock clad in armor that makes it resemble a mind flayer and moves partially in and out of the planes, the second being a fallen warrior that could have reasonably one rounded one of the players if they hadn’t played it smart and tricked it with illusions and mobile cover via mold earth.
That said, the thing that put the fear of the gods in them was several swarm enemies in an old mansion. Rats and wasps and centipedes in particular.
Swarms are no joke. If the team hasn’t shelled out of alchemist fires — especially at low level — you’re SOL.
the general player bias might be overcome with a straight on „I have a few TPK build in“ in Session One.
Plus handing out partial XP
– for avoiding an encounter that is OP and
– for bailing out when Shit hits the Fan.
rather than just for „overcome“ encounters.
Or/and (yeah, this might sound heretic) giving extra XP for trying diplomacy or other non-violent solutions first.
XP should be given for dealing with encounters. Not just “dealing with” encounters. If a party tricks their way through a bunch of bandits demanding a toll and doesn’t kill them, that’s full xp. If a party sneaks past the rampaging troll rather than murdering it, that’s full xp. If the party engages, realizes they are outclassed or just lady luck isn’t on their side, that’s full xp. The only time I would reduce XP is if an encounter was designed with the fully telegraphed “you can’t kill the death knight who strides like a god among men” menality and running is the only option in which you live. Cause then it’s just set-dressing.
It’s an interesting problem. In my mind, XP is for “overcoming challenges.” In some cases, that means avoiding combat with the troll. If the troll is guarding a bridge, however, and if you just decided to ignore the goal of getting across the bridge by retreating, you didn’t overcome the challenge.
If you construct an elaborate pole-vaulting strategy, however, then you get full XP.
I do miss XP when it isn’t on hand as a reward. Milestone leveling is nice and all, but the metacurrency goes a long way in making players feel clever.
Our group doesn’t use or track exp – since we use APs which suggest the parry level at various points, our DM just tells us when we all level at certain campaign book milestones or segments. Gets rid of the math and there are no downsides to skipping monsters or encounters (e.g. if we beeline for a boss instead of exploring a big dungeon) other than reduced loot, nor any expectations of how to overcome an encounter.
Ugh, I’m going through this as a DM right now. I gave them an infiltration mission, made significantly easier than it needs to be due to them only being level 6 as well as the target being an actively used castle.
I ended up giving them a boon when one player showed up to the session having forgotten his sheet 45 minutes away, so he was handed their contact to play, the contact having additional knowledge that would aid them…
And then after getting inside, they drew the attention of the guards and holed up in a section of the castle I designed to only have one way in and out. They chokepointed themselves, and then after getting out of the chokepoint took a short rest.
So now the guards know they’re there, the royal family has been evacuated through secret tunnels, and sensitive intelligence has been hidden or taken, as well as the most valuable of valuables. Then I had to make up some excuse for the court mage’s absence because otherwise they’d all be dead. The enemy knows an infiltration happened; the party triggered a fail state.
And then to make matters worse, they ended up winning against the remnant of the guard, though admittedly they exhausted their healing and are trapped inside the fortress.
They treated the whole thing like a “storm the castle” mission instead of just infiltrating. One of the players has gloves of climbing, and the caster has levitate. Another has boots and cloak of elvenkind. They have tools that would aid them in avoiding conflict, and instead all they considered was “let’s kill every guard”. It nearly got three of the five killed, and they lack a healer in the fight (because their healer was the PC left at home).
It’s just annoying is all. On the plus side, the only thing they’re upset about is that the court mage’s lock requires a DC 30 to pick (which the rogue can’t do because they chose to spend ASI on feat instead of making their Dex mod high as it could be).
Players. They never make it easy.
All you can do at that point is gesture towards the “open window in the tower” and the “easily climbable trellis.” Maybe they’ll get the hint and keep it in mind for next time.
As a player I manage to Kirk my way through any situation. As a DM I try and avoid throwing unbeatable scenarios at my party, but the BBEG is around if they want to drop everything to pursue him directly.
I imagine you characters a proficient in Acrobatics. Action roll, Captain Kirk! Action roll!
My usual GM was a fan of Gygaxian Naturalism and would throw at our party some encounters that weren’t level-appropriate (sometimes underleveled, sometimes overleveled) since he had an obsession for believable settings. As we were gaining experience with the game and became ressourceful (this was the first time I decided to explore options outside my murderhobo comfort zone and try the ninja, for instance), we found ways to beat some of the hard encounters anyway with pure cunning and clever use of items and abilities, and the GM apparently loved it.
I talked about my GM before and he had a real problem with allowing some pretty ridiculous things in terms of magic items, his motto was globally “any spell can be made into a magic item, my job here is to give it a cost”, and someone in my group would always play a caster specialized in item crafting. Then inevitably at some point we were so loaded with insane items that even very overleveled encounters wouldn’t be an obstacle. Another problem our GM had was his obsession with maintaining the setting’s status quo and he would throw divine interventions or some similar bullshit at us (generally enemies with access to even more ridiculous magic items than we could think of) to keep his setting intact and make us feel like meaningless maggots no matter how strong we would become.
All his campaigns would go the same way: at first very fun and interesting to later become a vortex of pure frustration and boredom once we were all supremely powerful but somehow still unable to affect the setting meaningfully.
I think your GM might be the reason that most campaigns peter out around 11th level.
It does make me want to try out E6 though.
I’ve always been a person for a realistic world. Some things are way above you, and some things are way below you, and defensible, fortified locations are REALLY dangerous.
So cue early on in my most recent party’s sessions, back when we were still playing Pathfinder. They’re on a mission to curb the underground delving of some orcs because their drow patrons would rather avoid dealing with them. Now, this wasn’t just a handful of orcs, this was a massive group that had taken over an old stone giant fortress.
It was enormous, several hundred feet to a side, constructed logically and defensibly, and FILLED TO THE BRIM WITH ORCS.
But they started off well. They talked to them, they found out that there had been a splinter group that had broken off and was occupying one of the major natural corridors that they used for foraging. They spoke with the chief and his daughter, and his daughter offered to show them the way. Now before they left, this chieftain warned them that if for ANY REASON his daughter did not return, he would hunt them down to the ends of the earth.
Fast forward a bit – they fought the splinter group, and defeated them rather handedly with some good rolls and the assistance of the daughter who was essentially running an equivalent number of class levels to the players. It was going well. After the fight though, they didn’t heal her saying they didn’t have the resources to do so and she believed them. I knew for a fact they were lying through their teeth and were planning something questionable (Read: Stupid).
So, one dead daughter later, they are on their trek back to the fortress to inform the chieftain of his daughter’s unfortunate death in battle. Why? Because they wanted to hold a feast in her honor. That they would poison, with the hope of wiping out the orcs because they wanted the fortress.
At this point I knew they were doomed for death. I wanted to try to find some out for them. I threw an npc in the caves that they encountered, talked to, and essentially reiterated how extremely furious her father was sure to be when finding out she was dead. They continued on.
At this point, I accepted that they were all going to die. They told the father about his daughter’s death from in front of the fortress gates. He invited them to come inside once things were ready. They waited outside the gates for 10 minutes for the doors (Very massive, fortified doors) to open.
They walked inside. It was really barren in the entry hall. Not an orc in sight, as opposed to the literal dozens they saw the last time they came in. They continued inside. The door shut, and the chieftain came around about 30 seconds later fully armed and with as many of his elites as he could scrounge together.
They died horribly. However, it is worth mentioning that the antipaladin actually managed to kill the chieftain in a single round through all of his guards, dealing like 140 damage before anyone could do anything.
It was just about the only kill they had in there, fighting literally hundreds of orcs (Who I just moved in massive clumps to avoid calculating distance).
And that was when my party learned: Not every encounter is level appropriate.
In the third session.
With a TPK.
#BelieveNPCs
Hahaha I died laughing, but I love any comic with these three.
I love Gygax Naturalism, Versamilitude is the only tude for me when it comes to running games, except trying to softly and unseenly cushion the players from a TPK/inconvenient character death unless they do something stupid.
That alt-text is too real though, man. WHY MUST YOU REMIND ME AS A GM AAH.
Cheers! The scroll-over on this one made me laugh. Then it made me sad.
Let me tell you about a particular toxic DM and the AP of Iron Gods.
The DM felt a need to inject ‘drama’ into encounters, beefing up monsters into the unreasonably powerful, in a campaign that his chock full of some of the worst, unbalanced, TPK-y monsters in the game. One particular encounter versus a lone enemy became a game of Alien Isolation (we couldn’t see it, it could ignore practically any obstacle… We had to explode it via plot and just ran from it). A combo of force cage and cloudkill, way before we had any way to counter either, almost wiped us. Several PCs died instantly to attacks that the DM eyeballed ‘thought they could survive, including Phantasmal Killer and several psionic brain-blasting aliens ganging up on our rogue in a terrain that we could not safely rest because there were chances of brain-hijacking monsters creeping up on us and could sense us mentally. I left the campaign after my cleric was unable to raise an ally and the DM deus-ex-machina’d a druid with reincarnation instead. Later on I heard that the DM forcefully ended the game by spawning demons of enormous CR to just destroy the party with no fighting chance. A setting that’s already lethal to begin with, turned horrific with the wrong kind of DM.
Other ‘lethal as heck’ settings I’ve been through include Way of the Wicked (due to a few mechanics, particularly if your party isn’t prepared) and Rappan Athuk (an adventurer-grinding dungeon), where we accidentally ended up summoning a demon lord who just massacred us all… But not before one party member decided to betray us and tried to trick the demon lord into soul-contract… Despite not having a soul to begin with (me, being idealistic and new to the game, didn’t see how crazy this game went).
No kidding that was a toxic DM. Why the crap would you need to “inject drama?” Just show a little patience! Even an easy encounter can get tense if the dice go wrong. You just have to wait and let it happen.
Last campaign, the players decided to enter into a draconian war at level 10, then almost immediately after arriving, went to assassinate the most powerful figure in the war, an ancient red dragon. Because level 10. When they went to his lair, they didn’t find the dragon (he was away), but did find his human wife and half-dragon kid. So, naturally, they kidnapped them both, and rather than go into hiding thanks to the massive target on their backs, they decided to instead continue the hunt for the ancient red.
During the campaign, though, the players have managed to create their own dangerous situations to enter, such as goi g after Zheng headquarters at level 4, and using sending to arrange a meeting “just to talk” with the BBEG at level 8.
Error: “during the campaign” should be “during the current campaign”
It’s super tricky to figure out that something is beyond your level. Part of it is that you don’t want to metagame more knowledge than you should have. Another is that unless the DM very explicitly tells you that “Hey, you’re going to DIE if you do that”, the party will see it as a challenge that they’re supposed to be able to take on and won’t realize that they’re in over their heads until half the party is dead. A great example of this is the Iron Shepards ambush in Critical Role. The Mighty Nein came up with a pretty terrible plan against a formidable enemy that they weren’t ready to face and were nearly wiped.
I haven’t got to that bit yet, but I know Mercer doesn’t go in for table talk. Did he do anything to hint at the mismatch, or did he just sit back and watch it happen?
My group sometimes uses weird custom random encounters while traveling. One encounter was a bunch of gnomish mad scientists looking for volunteers for vague magical experiments. Galaxy-Brain, the group idiot, asked if the experiments would make him stronger; they said sure. My character, being the responsible party leader, was planning to go along with to make sure nothing bad happened to him or the other character he talked into it.
Thankfully, someone found a successful way to question the gnomes’ trustworthiness, since the DM didn’t have any plans beyond “if one goes with, he’s never seen again”. Two plus a chaperone would have broken his encounter entry.
The DM that took my Arcane Tricksters Arm suffered this problem constantly. On one hand, his world was very vibrant and had a huge mythos underpinning it all, but on the other hand, there wasn’t much place that WASN’T the freaking forest of doom. In an effort to keep us from bullying and/or picking on rando NPCs, every person and his brother was 4 character levels higher than any of us, and we were constantly getting sent on quests where it was like “if this is so important, why are you sending us to handle this instead of dealing with it yourself?”
Looking back, it seems more and more likely that the real issue was that the DM hadn’t really left room for the players to actually PLAY in his story, he really just wanted to be able to show off his story, and that is not a fun time for players.
I think a good idea for giving players a good hint at whether an area is dangerous or not is by having clues as to who else has traversed the area safely before. Starting at “a well-protected civilian caravan every month” to “a contingent of the king’s knights a couple of times a year” to “a famous wizard and his cadre of extradimensional allies every decade or so” to “I think a legendary hero did it a thousand years ago or something.”
That way, players have a measure for how likely they can make it through said area and come back alive.